C.S. Lewis and Religion

Step One – Numinous Awe

Numinous is a word in which most of us will be unfamiliar. Commonly defined, it is the supernatural and mysterious. When describing a person, it is used as sensing the presence of divinity. Lewis’ practical example of the numinous involves a scenario. Suppose you were told there was a tiger in the next room and believed it. You would feel fear. The tiger is bigger, stronger, and more aggressive than you; fear is only natural. Now suppose you were told that there was a ghost and believed it. What you felt would be radically different because you don’t understand ghosts. You’ve never seen one. You’ve never talked to one. It’s different and strange. The disturbance felt would be profound because you did not quite understand.

Lewis’ assertion is that nothing is more certain that throughout human history, man has felt this numinous awe; the feeling that the world “has been haunted by spirits.” Lewis realizes he will meet opposition to this point through those who have been captivated by the Enlightenment, Naturalism, or Evolution. Those who say the supernatural does not exist.

In defense, Lewis differentiates between fear and awe. It is only natural to feel fear within solitudes that ancient man experienced and thus fear could be expected. But, Lewis claims and I agree that awe is a jump from fear. “Danger cannot give the slightest conception of ghostly dread or awe to the mind that does not already understand them.” Dread and awe come from an interpretation of danger and death, an impression we get from the unknown of death. The peculiar feeling isn’t natural in the sense that it can be deduced; rather, it has always been by human nature.

So, there are logically two possibilities that can explain the sense of numinous awe. 1) It’s a mere twist of the mind, serving no biological function and helping survival none, yet showing no tendency to be removed through evolution as even the finest minds of “poets and philosophers” possess it. 2) Or it is a direct experience of the supernatural, given rather than deduced.

Step One is the foundation of sensing that which is supernatural. The supernatural, in which, oddly enough we all possess knowledge of through experience if we do not suppress it. For as Lewis states to deny the experience of the supernatural is to “part ways with half the great poets and prophets of his race, with his own childhood, and with the richness and depth of uninhibited experience.