Somerville College
Somerville College, a University of Oxford college, is established in February 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of Oxford’s first women’s colleges. It is named after the Scottish scientist, writer, and campaigner Mary Somerville (1780–1872). The first female students are not permitted to attend lectures or to take degrees. Between 1880 and 1882, several lectures are opened to women. Oxford University examinations are opened to them in April 1884. In 1889, the first research fellowship is established, and the library is built. At a time when women are not permitted access to the University’s Bodleian Library, Somerville College is one of the first women’s colleges to build its own library. In 1894, Somerville Hall is renamed Somerville College. In 1920, Oxford allows women to take degrees. Somerville College finally receives the full status previously granted only to men’s colleges in 1959. The college welcomes its first male undergraduates in 1994.
Socratic Club
Towards the end of 1941, Monica Shorten, an undergraduate at Somerville College, complains to Stella Aldwinckle (1907–1990), Chaplain to Women Students, about a lack of opportunity to ask elementary questions about the Christian faith in Oxford. Aldwinckle organises a meeting in the East Junior Common Room at Somerville College and encourages Shorten to call on all students who feel the same way to attend. That meeting is the impetus for the founding of the Socratic Club. The club is named after the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates (470–399 BCE). He exhorted men to ‘follow the argument wherever it leads’, and the Socratic Club aims to apply this principle to the pros and cons of Christianity. The club’s goal is to be an open forum where Christians and non-Christians can dispute Christianity’s intellectual claims, where the various intellectual prejudices arrayed against Christianity can be appropriately challenged, and where the integrity of the Christian belief can be demonstrated. The first meeting of the Socratic Club is hold on 26 January 1942 and is visited by both male and female students. After that, meetings are hold every Monday during term time. Each session begins with the presentation of a paper, followed by a formal reply by a speaker chosen to represent a contrasting viewpoint, which is intended to spark a lively and engaging discussion afterwards.
President
As every university society is required to appoint a senior member to oversee the club’s activities, Stella Aldwinckle asks C.S. Lewis to take on the role of the Socratic Club’s president. During the years he presides, the club hosts some of the most influential atheists of the day and entertains the weighty arguments they brought against the Christian faith. As president, Lewis aims to create and maintain an atmosphere where faith can flourish. As the Socratic Club’s point man, he is relied upon to represent the Christian position and to argue its case against the opposition. During Lewis’s presidency, the Socratic Club is one of Oxford’s best-attended societies. After Lewis goes to Cambridge University in 1955, interest sharply declines, and the Socratic Club ends in 1972. As of 2007, there has been an Oxford University Socrates Society with similar aims to those of the Socratic Club.
Miracles
On Thursday 26 November 1942, C.S. Lewis preaches a sermon on miracles at the Church of St Jude on the Hill in London. In the summer of 1943, he begins to write a book on miracles. It is published in May 1947 as Miracles: A Preliminary Study. In this book of Christian apologetics, Lewis deals with the fact that many people reject the Gospels because they cannot accept the miracles in them. For Lewis, this is mainly a result of the rise of modern science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which increasingly saw the world as a closed system subject to the laws of nature. Therefore, we shall not regard experiences as miracles if we already hold a belief that excludes the supernatural. So, Lewis knows from the beginning that a defence of the miracles recorded in the New Testament has to begin with a philosophical attack on unbelief. In his book, Lewis notes that Christianity differs from many of the world’s major religions in that miraculous elements are essential to its very nature. Christianity is the story of a great miracle. To Lewis, that is the Incarnation, God becoming man. Every other miracle prepares for, exhibits, or results from this.
Criticism
C.S. Lewis’s argument for the possibility of miracles is based on the distinction he makes between naturalism and supernaturalism. According to Lewis, reason cannot explain itself within naturalism and, therefore, requires a supernatural reality. This constitutes the basis for his proof of God’s existence, which he elaborates further in the third chapter of Miracles. However, the prevailing philosophy at Oxford in the 1940s differs from that of the 1920s, when Lewis was a student. At a meeting of the Socratic Club on 2 February 1948, Elizabeth Anscombe (1919 –2001), a research fellow at Somerville College and later Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University, reads a paper criticizing Lewis’s argument that naturalism is self-refuting, as he elaborates in Miracles. Lewis replies to this criticism of his book, and a tremendous debate follows. Afterwards, Lewis feels defeated and thinks that his proof of the existence of God is destroyed. However, he recovers and revises the third chapter of Miracles before it is reissued in May 1960.
› Read more about Somerville College
Sources
Walter Hooper, C.S. Lewis. Companion & Guide
Simon Horobin, C.S. Lewis’s Oxford
Jeffrey Schultz & John West, The C.S. Lewis Readers’ Encyclopedia
Photo by Oxford College Archives