Patricia Hofer

CS Lewis poses the idea of many floors, “different Natures” of being

CS Lewis: “We are prepared, on the one hand, for the sort of reality that Naturalists believe in. That is a one-floor reality: this present Nature is all that there is. We are also prepared for reality as ‘religion’ conceives it: a reality with a ground floor (Nature) and then above that one other floor and one only—an eternal, spaceless, timeless, spiritual Something of which we can have no images and which, if it presents itself to human consciousness at all, does so in a mystical experience which shatters all our categories of thought. What we are not prepared for is anything in between. (Miracle 251). Lewis then continues on to pose the idea that there might really be many floors, “different Natures, different levels of being, distinct but not always discontinuous” (Miracles 254). One of these floors could, according to Lewis, explain what happened after Jesus’ resurrection. It was a time when “Christ withdrew from one of these [levels] to another.” The Son of God was not “confined to any place at all,” wrote Lewis, because it is “in Him that all places exist” (254). (Used as support in “Can Reincarnation and “near death experiences” be Christian?”)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *