On saints
God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo.
Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious /than unfallen humanity would have been,
more glorious than any unfallen race now is (if at this moment the night sky conceals any such).
The greater the sin, the greater the mercy:
the deeper the death, the brighter the re-birth.
And this super-added glory will, with true vicariousness, exalt [all creatures],
and [those //who have never fallen] will thus bless Adam’s fall.
* The greater the sin (is), the greater the mercy (is):
https://cslewisthoughts.tumblr.com/post/186538218228/if-the-redemption-of-man-is-the-beginning-of
“If the redemption of Man is the beginning of Nature’s redemption as a whole,
must we then conclude after all that Man is the most important thing in Nature?
If I had to answer ‘Yes’ to this question I should not be embarrassed.
Supposing Man to be the only rational animal in the universe,
then (as has been shown) [his small size and the small size of the globe he inhabits] would not make it ridiculous to regard him as the hero of the cosmic drama:
Jack after all is the smallest character in Jack the Giant-Killer.
Nor do I think it in the least improbable that Man is in fact the only rational creature in this spatio-temporal Nature.
That is just the sort of lonely pre-eminence—just the disproportion between picture and frame—
which [all //that I know of Nature’s ‘selectiveness’] would lead me to anticipate.
* Preeminence is the state of being preeminent—extremely distinguished, outstanding,
or superior to all (or the majority of) others.
But I do not need to assume that it actually exists.
Let Man be only one among a myriad of rational species, and let him be the only one that has fallen.
Because he has fallen, for him God does the great deed;
just as in the parable it is the one lost sheep //for whom the shepherd hunts.
Let Man’s pre-eminence or solitude be one not of superiority but of misery and evil:
then, all the more, Man will be the very species //info which Mercy will descend.
For this prodigal the fatted calf, or, to speak more suitably, the eternal Lamb, is killed.
But once the Son of God, drawn hither not by our merits but by our unworthiness, has put on human nature,
then our species (whatever it may have been before) does become in one sense [the central fact in all Nature]:
our species, rising after its long descent, will drag all Nature up with it
/because in our species the Lord of Nature is now included.
And it would be all of a piece /with what we already know
/if ninety and nine righteous races /inhabiting distant planets that circle distant suns,
and needing no redemption on their own account, were remade and glorified by the glory
//which had descended into our race.
For God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo.
Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious /than unfallen humanity would have been,
more glorious than any unfallen race now is (if at this moment the night sky conceals any such).
The greater the sin, the greater the mercy:
the deeper the death, the brighter the re-birth.
And this super-added glory will, with true vicariousness, exalt [all creatures],
and [those //who have never fallen] will thus bless Adam’s fall.
* The greater the sin (is), the greater the mercy (is):
From Miracles
Compiled in Words to Live By
Miracles: A Preliminary Study. Copyright 1947 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1947 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Revised 1960, restored 1996 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.