Religion According C.S. Lewis:
What is Religion?
C.S. Lewis said something about religion that is both obvious and profound, meaning in
practice that it's almost universally ignored. To paraphrase, "The most important thing
about any religion is simply whether it's TRUE or not." (Emphasis mine.) He was
pointing out that most people simply practice, whether poorly or well, whichever religion
their family or most of their neighbors practice. He was pointing out that most people of
every religion don't take it as seriously in their everyday practice as they do theoretically;
and in fact most people don't even bother to delve more deeply than they have to into
whatever religion they profess.
It's a sad fact that Christianity has degraded from a living faith that let 120 disciples begin
turning the world upside down, to a faded, compromised, bastardized pastiche of Biblical
ideas and pagan philosophy/practices. And those few souls who do want to go deeper into
their faith are still inevitably painted with the same brush as the half-hearted majority,
who only want enough "religion" to keep them from going to a hell they only half believe
in.
Religion is not about ethnicity. Religion is not about whatever faith your family
professed. Religion is not about external clothing and hairstyles and bumper stickers and
diets and specialized vocabularies. Religion is not about "fitting in." Religion is about
truth, or else it's worthless. And of course, that means that for ANY religion to have any
meaning, some genuine truth must actually exist. And if some genuine truth actually
exists, then some religions will be "closer" to it and others will be "farther" from it. By
definition, two religions that say opposite things about the nature of the universe and life
as we know it, can't both be right.
By Pete http://www.geocities.com/maranathapmoore
ound Bites – Definitions of “Religion”
“…a system of symbols, myths, doctrines, ethics, and rituals for the expression of
ultimate relevance” Denise L. Carmody and T.L. Brink Ways to the Center
"Recognition on the part of man of some higher unseen power as having control of his
destiny, and as being entitled to obedience, and worship." (Oxford English Dictionary
1971)
"The essence of religion consists in a feeling of absolute dependence. . ." (Frederick
Schleiermacher, (1768-1834) The Doctrine of Faith)
"Religion is a human response to mystery. . . . not as a deadly emptiness, but somehow as
a reality in which lies the meaning of human existence. . . . The response to the mystery
as fullness is religion. In general, religion is a way of relating to mystery as a sacred or
divine reality rather than as useless or meaningless." Michael H. Barnes, In the Presence
of Mystery, 1f.
“Religion is the sign of the oppressed creature… It is the opium of the people… Religion
is only the illusory sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around
himself.” Karl Marx
“Religion is what an individual does with his solitariness.” Alfred North Whitehead
“Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands.” Immanuel Kant
"A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to
say, things set apart and forbidden - beliefs and practices which unite into one single
moral community called a church, all who adhere to them." (Emile Durkheim, The
Elementary Forms of the Religious Life)
Religion is "an hypothesis which is supposed to render the Universe comprehensible. . . .
Now every theory tacitly asserts two things: first that there is something to be explained;
secondly that such and such is the explanation . . . that the existence of the world with all
it contains is a mystery ever pressing for interpretation . . . [and] that it is not a mystery
passing human comprehension." (Herbert Spencer, (1820-1903) First Principles)
Religion is "a pathological manifestation of the protective function, a sort of deviation of
the normal function . . . caused by ignorance of natural causes and of their effects." (G.
Sergi, Les Emotions, 404)
"Religious life consists of the belief that there is an unseen order and that our supreme
good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto." (William James, The Varieties of
Religious Experience, 53, 1902)
Philosophy of Religion Course Notes
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Evil and the Power of God
C.S. Lewis
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Problem:
If God is Omnipotent, then why does Human suffering occur?
Asking the Question: “Why couldn’t God have made the world without it?”
Presupposition of the view is that humans have free will.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Lewis’s approach:
Argues that it is possible to affirm both :
Divine Omnipotence
That it is impossible for God to create a world containing free beings that would also not
allow for the possibility of evil.
Such a world is intrinsically impossible.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Conditional and Intrinsic Impossibility:
Conditionally impossible:
The claim that a thing or act is impossible unless certain other conditions obtain.
Intrinsically impossible:
The claim that a thing or act is impossible under all conditions and in all worlds for all
agents.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Intrinsic impossiblities:
Square Circles
Uncaused acts
Free Will and an absence of evil?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------The meaning of Omnipotence:
“With God all things are possible”
Does this mean:
God can do anything? (Even the Intrinsically Impossible?)
or - God can do that which is not Intrinsically Impossible
Is it a limit of Omnipotence to not be able to do that which is not a thing?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Possible vs. Impossible Worlds:
If we can speak of the possible worlds God could have created,
we can also talk of the impossible worlds which God could not create.
Because they involve a contradiction - something which is intrinsically impossible
A World without the possibility of Evil could not contain free beings.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Evil is necessary if we are to be free:
1. Beings with free choice need things to choose from some of these choices will be better than others, some worse.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Evil is necessary if we are to be free:
2. The environment required for free choice must be one in which actions have
predictable consequences.
God cannot suspend the natural order for some, or the freedom of all is compromised.
If God acted to prevent evil, then our brains would be incapable of thinking of it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Evil is necessary if we are to be free:
3. In order for humans to relate, we must be physical. If we are physical, we must be
capable of being hurt.
In order to feel a caress, we must also be capable of being injured.
In order to develop morally (a choice), we must have the possibility of Evil.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Conclusions:
God can still be thought of as omnipotent, but as incapable of doing that which is
intrinsically impossible.
As to why God would create a world of free beings (or any world at all), we have no way
of knowing.
Capturing C. S. Lewis’s “Mere” Christianity:
Another Look at Shadowlands
By Mary Dodson
Summary
[1] In his The Achievement of C. S. Lewis (1980), Thomas Howard reflects that Lewis’s
life was “not terribly exciting,” and adds, “[i]t would be hard to make a big box-office
film of it.”1 Hard--yes. Impossible--no. Thirteen years after Howard’s statement and
thirty years after Lewis’s death, Richard Attenborough brought Lewis’s life to the big
screen. Philip Yancey notes that “[s]ome evangelicals complain that the movie distorts
Lewis’s life and waters down his Christian message.”2 I contend that even the most
fundamental evangelical should have no complaints and that the highly religious film
deserves another look.
Article
[2] In Shadowlands (1993), director Richard Attenborough exquisitely uses film
techniques to present an ever-so-accurate presentation of Lewis, the man of books, and of
his philosophy, his "mere" Christianity.
[3] First, how does Attenborough's film biography portray C. S. Lewis? Linda Seger,
author of The Art of Adaptation, advises anyone attempting a biographical film to
remember that "it is impossible to tell a 'Womb to tomb' story in two hours."3 Thus,
Attenborough's decision to stick with screenwriter Nicholson's portrayal of only a few
short years in Lewis's life was a wise one. Basically, the time under consideration is a
two-to-three year telescoped period in the early 1950s focusing on Lewis's falling-inlove-with-Joy experience. The telescoped "facts" revealed in the film are on track:
Attenborough's C. S. Lewis (Anthony Hopkins) is a late middle-aged professor, a writer
of children's stories, and an author of Christian apologetic works. He is a bachelor living
with an alcoholic elder brother in an old country home (The Kilns). Three of the most
important aspects of C. S. Lewis are foregrounded: the film portrays Lewis as a brilliant
debater, as a beloved public figure, and as an emotionally isolated man. Attenborough
does, indeed, capture the essence of the man. However, of greater significance to the
film's worth is Attenborough's ability to adapt Lewis's philosophy, his Christian theism.
Lewis himself defined his "mere" Christianity as "the belief that has been common to
nearly all Christians at all times."4 He was not interested in divisive doctrines,
describing his The Case for Christianity as "more what might be called philosophy" and
defining philosophy as did Plato--not as a subject but as a way.5 However,
Attenborough's film illustrates that Lewis's way was less easily traveled than the scholar
had--for twenty-five years--proclaimed.
[4] To Attenborough's credit he covers all of the ever-so-big issues Lewis addresses in his
writings: death, heaven, hell, pain, faith. The film's question is: Do C. S. Lewis's ready
answers suffice? The answer is the film's story of life being driven to a deeper level of
experience.
[5] The obvious subject of concern in the film is death--not the Merle Oberon Wuthering
Heights mystical, romantic, beautiful death--but the morphined, agonizing, suffering real
death of a real person: Joy Gresham Lewis. Joy credits her acceptance of Christianity
with sustaining her through years of marriage to a philandering alcoholic husband.
Attenborough's Joy's admission to Lewis that her showing up on his doorstep was a
"running away" from problems at home was true-to-life. She later said: "I was so much
under Bill's influence that I had to run away from him physically and consult one of the
clearest thinkers of our time."6 She did consult Lewis, inviting him to the now-famous
luncheon portrayed in the film, and the rest, as they say, is history. In the film, shortly
after a "technical" marriage, Attenborough shows Joy suddenly falling down in her
apartment. Doctors diagnose cancer. Jack faces the truth; he is in love with this sick
woman. Joy's cancer goes into remission. A happy period follows, but the shadow of her
illness grows ever longer. The cancer, again active, consumes her body. She suffers.
She dies.
[6] Jack's grief was intense. His "faith--so ardently championed in his books--was shaken
to its very foundation."7 Attenborough's film visually captures this dark period of doubt
and bitterness. The suspense builds as the viewer wonders if Lewis can continue to
regard death as a simple river-crossing on a bridge built by the great Bridge Builder.
Shortly after Joy's death, Jack attends a social gathering. Everyone turns as Jack enters
the room, quietly whispering, one by one, "so sorry, Jack," "so very sorry." Harry
Harrington (Michael Denison) reminds him that "we see so little here." Faith, he points
out, is all that sustains one. "Only God," he says, "knows why these things happen."
Jack turns on him with a vengeance, angrily shouting: "We're the creatures in the cosmic
laboratory. I have no doubt the experience is for our own good, but it still makes God the
villainous vivisectionist!" The film lays out the harsh reality of death.
[7] The reality of heaven, too, is certainly explored and affirmed. Indeed, Attenborough
pays great attention to Lewis's belief in the reality of heaven. When Jack voices his anger
at Riley's suggestion that the Narnia wardrobe is a Freudian sexual image, insisting
instead that it is a symbol of magic, he implies much. The Lewis scholar, Thomas
Howard, argues that Lewis's greatest achievement was his attempt to return the modern
child to the possibilities of imaginative truth--to embrace fantasy, imagination, and the
supernatural and the possibilities of glories and the glorious.8 Lewis was convinced that
the myths of all cultures shed some light on the "one myth that really happened."9 Thus,
the Narnia wardrobe that the children in the stories must open, enter, and push through in
order to magically enter another world is but a metaphor for the courage to leave the land
of the material and open the door to the possibilities of the metaphysical.
[8] However, the greatest illustration in the film of Lewis's thoughts regarding heaven is
given via the Golden Valley picture. As Joy enters Lewis's masculine study surrounded
by books, she stops and stares at a picture on the wall. Jack tells her that when he was a
very little boy it hung in his nursery and that he thought it was a picture of heaven. Later,
after the "marriage before God and the world" on Joy's hospital sickbed and during her
period of remission, Joy suggests taking a holiday and locating the actual valley
portrayed in the picture. When they arrive at the inn and ask the keeper for directions,
she informs them that the valley's name was mistranslated. The actual translation from
the French should have been "door," not "golden." They drive to the place, get out of the
car, and behold--before them lies the door to Narnia! The English countryside has never
looked more radiant; golden shafts of sunshine bathe a green, green meadow. A perfect
sky smiles down on Joy and Jack as they walk through the pasture, holding hands and
laughing over little intimate jokes. It very much is the Golden Valley of the picture; it
appears to be as mystical a place as the imagination can conjure. However, rain soon
begins to fall, reminding all that "the old Narnia" does sometimes provide a glimpse of
heaven but clouds soon appear, shadows soon fall. The "real country"--the new Narnia-heaven--can only be reached by opening death's door. The film's most blatant address of
the issue of heaven occurs after Joy's death. Its poignancy relies on effective
understatement. Douglas asks his stepfather: "Do you believe in heaven?" and Lewis
firmly responds: "Yes, I do."
[9] Not only heaven but hell, too, is addressed in the film. Joy is in the hospital daily
taking cobalt treatments, suffering from her fight with cancer. Jack, too, suffers-intensely. It is this intense suffering that wakens him to the realization of how very much
Joy matters to him. He puzzles over his feelings for Joy and says to himself: "How could
Joy be my wife? I'd have to love her, wouldn't I? I'd have to care more for her than for
anyone else in this world. I'd have to suffering the torments of the damned," and, through
sobs and tears, realizes that he is. His state of grief over the possibility of separation
from Joy is so intense that he parallels it to his vision of hell--eternal separation from the
God of Love. Thus, Attenborough's film makes it increasingly clear that the love that
exists between Jack and Joy mirrors the love that Lewis advocates between God and
humankind and that Jack's separation from Joy mirrors his hell that is separation from the
source of all love.
[10] "Something must drive us out of our nursery into the world--we must grow up!"
becomes the film's C. S. Lewis dictum. This statement very much summarizes the plot of
Attenborough's story. The "something" that drives Lewis out of his cloistered and safe
world--his nursery--into the real world of open spaces full of bright joys and dark
shadows is love; the something that forces the man to grow up is intense suffering and
tragic loss--pain. Attenborough illustrates this humanizing journey through careful
attention to Jack's progressive relationship with Joy, his detached professor to human
being relationship with a student, his increasingly intimate relationship with Douglas, and
his maturing relationship with God.
[11] Attenborough's attention to Lewis's "faith journey" deserves further comment. For
decades Jack Lewis had been voicing and writing words of faith; the film does not
neglect this issue. Lewis had habitually addressed even great losses with ready answers.
In one of the lectures portrayed in the movie, he waves a newspaper at the audience. And
begins:
[12] Yesterday I read a letter that referred to an event that took place almost a year ago.
That was the night a number 1 bus drove into a column of young Royal Marine cadets in
Chatham, and killed twenty-four of them. You remember? The letter asks some simple
but fundamental questions. Where was God on that December night? Why didn't He
stop it? Isn't God supposed to be good? Isn't he supposed to love us? Does God want us
to suffer? What if the answer to that question is yes. You see, I'm not sure that God
particularly wants us to be happy. He wants us to love and be loved. He wants us to
grow up. I suggest to you that it is because God loves us that he makes us the gift of
suffering. Or to put it another way, pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
[13] Lewis continues his discussion, reasoning that "we're like blocks of stone, out of
which the sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of His chisel, which hurt so
much, are what makes us perfect." Attenborough's film suggests that Lewis's God put the
man and his philosophical claims to the test. What does a writer do when overcome by
any emotion? He writes. Lewis's " Grief Observed," claims Ralph C. Wood, is "darker
than anything in Kafka or Sartre."10 Lewis accuses God of being a Cosmic Sadist, an
evil tyrant. Lewis later described the book as one "which ends in faith but raises all the
blackest doubts en route."11 In the film, a drained Lewis, sitting behind his desk, voices
his Grief Observed thesis. He turns to his brother and admits: "I'm so terribly afraid. Of
never seeing her again. Of thinking that suffering is just suffering after all. No cause.
No purpose. No pattern. No sense. Just pain, in a world of pain."
[14] Some Christian critics negatively assess Attenborough's film's ending, suggesting
that it belittles the reality of Lewis's re-established, re-strengthened, "metal toughened by
fire," faith. I disagree. The final scene is, once again, Narnia-like in its imagery. A long
shot reveals Lewis and Douglas walking through another Golden Valley meadow.
Richard Dyer explains: "The romance literally embodies the theology and, as suggested
by the last surging (music, camerawork, rolling green valley) shot, [Lewis's] love for God
is enriched by his experience of love in the here and now."12 Attenborough leads into
this final shot via bleedover. Lewis has previously been "interviewing" a new tutoree.
He has been asking the boy probing questions, not delivering his previous pat answers.
He asks the new student what he thinks of the notion that we read to know we are not
alone. The lad thinks this through and begins voicing his opinion. Lewis goes to the
classroom window and looks outside. Attenborough uses voice-over: Lewis queries,
"Why love if loving hurts so much? I have no answers; only the life I've lived. Twice
I've been given a choice: the boy chose safety; the man chooses suffering." The film in
its entirety answers the "Why love" question. It proclaims that it 'tis better to have loved
and lost than never to have loved at all; indeed, pain and suffering is part of the living
experience. As Joy puts it, "it's part of the deal." To further clarify, safety provides only
that - safety. Accepting the risk of suffering, however, provides the possibility of
experiencing great joy. Furthermore, the film, and specifically Lewis's "I have no
answers" concluding statement reiterates the thinking of a previous great intellect: "There
lives more faith in honest doubt...than in half the creeds."13 Indeed, faith can only be
faith in the absence of certainties.
[15] As he concludes A Grief Observed, Lewis muses: "The best is perhaps what we
understand least." 14 Attenborough provides a perfect example of such. In the film,
Lewis, who was troubled by the issue of prayer since childhood, continually prays.
When Joy's cancer goes into remission, Reverend Harrington tells Jack, "God is
answering your prayers." Jack replies with fervor: "That's not why I pray--I pray because
I can't help myself--the need flows out of me. It doesn't change God; it changes me."
Thus, the film suggests that prayer, never understood by Jack, was still one of the "best"
things. Life, the intellectual Lewis finally learns, is not to be fully understood. Shortly
before his death, Lewis concluded an interview with these thoughts:
[16] The world might stop in ten minutes; meanwhile, we are to go on doing our duty.
The great thing is to be found at one's post a child of God, living each day as if it were
out last, but planning as though our world might last a hundred years.15
[17] Attenborough's final portrayal of Lewis shows him practicing this advice. He is "at
his post," taking care of Douglas, enjoying the Narnia that sometimes resembles heaven,
contemplating the mysteries of this experience called life. The camera dollies farther and
farther back; a long shot reveals Douglas and Lewis, arm-in-arm, walking toward a
horizon of blue cloudless skies.
[18] There is yet one aspect of the film that must be addressed. The title. Never, I dare
say, has one author used one word quite so consistently throughout his canon. Never, I
dare say, has one director managed to use shadows more philosophically. Attenborough
opens his film with a long shot of a glorious sunrise; however, the sky is not cloudless-"heaven" is obstructed from clear view. The clouds make shadows on the land below.
The clouds become heavier, hanging somewhat ominously over an impressive Oxford
skyline. Attenborough then cuts to a shot of shadowy, flickering candles as solemn,
Latinate choir music is heard as the Oxford chapel comes into focus. An astute viewer
perceives that this is a land clouded by shadows and that the light of knowledge is, at
times, dim and uncertain. When Douglas visits the Lewises for the first time, he asks if
he might see their wardrobe. Douglas enters the attic; a low-angle shot pans the piece of
furniture, and the wardrobe--the gateway to the magical other world described the Narnia
stories --casts a long shadow over the child. Thus, Attenborough communicates Lewis's
contention that each person must choose whether or not to journey through the shadows
of the mind and embrace the possibilities of the imagination--the possibilities that lie
beyond scientific reason. After Joy's initial visit with Jack and Warnie, she boards the
train leaving Oxford. She looks at the brothers through the window; they appear
shadowy. In this scene, Attenborough ever so cleverly manages to use shadows as a
foreshadowing: Jack and Warnie are later left behind in the land of shadows as Joy
departs on yet another journey--a journey to the shadowless land of heaven.
[19] The final chapter in Lewis's Narnia books is entitled "Farewell to Shadowlands."
The children have arrived in the "new Narnia," i.e., heaven. They have left the
Shadowlands behind. Lewis's description of this world as a land of shadows accurately
describes his final thoughts on Christian theism. This world, he contends, provides rare
glimpses of the perfection that awaits the believer in the new, shadowless land. Human
comprehension, too, is, at best "shadowy"; Lewis finally concludes that there is much that
lies beyond human reason--"uncertainty," he told Joy shortly before her death, "is what
God has given us for a cross." 16
[20] Attenborough's Shadowlands reminds us that all thinkers long to make sense of life,
arriving at perfect answers to life's questions, but that even the greatest intellects have
met with defeat. The complexities of pain and suffering are perhaps best approached by
contemplating Attenborough's Lewis's final words on the subject: "The pain now is part
of the happiness then." Attenborough's film reminds all Christians that the pain we
confront while living in the shadowlands will--one day--serve to intensify the joy of a
shadowless heaven.
Notes
1. Brian Sibley. C. S. Lewis Through the Shadowlands. (Grand Rapids: Revell, 1994)
131.
2. Brian Sibley, 131.
3. Linda Seger. The Art of Adaptation. (New York: Henry Holt, 1992) 52.
4. C. S. Lewis. Mere Christianity. (New York: Macmillan, 1952) 6.
5. C. S. Lewis. The Case for Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1968) Preface.
6. Brian Sibley, 107.
7. Ibid.
8. Howard, 13.
9. Sibley.
10. Ralph Wood. Rev. of Shadowlands in The Christian Century 111, no.6 (February
1994) 203.
11. qtd. in Richard L. Purtill. "Did C. S. Lewis Lose His Faith?" in A Christian for All
Christians,
eds. Andrew Walker and James Patrick (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1992)
33.
12. Richard Dyer, "Feeling English" in Sight and Sound 4, no. 3 (March 1994) 17.
13. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses" in A Pocketful of Poems, ed. David Madden (Ft.
Worth: Harcourt, 1996) 114-15.
14. C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed. (New YOrk: Walker and Company, 1961) 71.
15. qtd. in Karen Lindskoog. "Farewell to Shadowlands" in Mythcon Proceeedings,
(1971) 12.
16. Brian Sibley, 131.
C. S. LEWIS’S THEOLOGY:
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN RANSOM AND REEPICHEEP
JAMES TOWNSEND
Bible Editor
Cook Communications
Elgin, IL
I. INTRODUCTION
Would you like to pretend that you haven’t just read the title above and to try your hand
at a trivia quiz? Here goes. Who was the gentleman who:
was converted to Christianity while riding to the zoo in a sidecar of his brother’s
motorcycle?
had his Christianity affirmed by Dr. Bob Jones but questioned by Dr. Martyn LloydJones(!)?
would never have been a professor if the entrance math exam (which he failed to pass
twice) hadn’t been conveniently dropped as a requirement?
taught at colleges spelled with one letter’s difference-Magdalen and Magdalene?
smoked at least sixty cigarettes a day-between pipes?
lived in the same house for thirty years with a woman to whom he wasn’t married?
had tiffs with the other leading Anglican literary critic of his time (T. S. Eliot)?
had as his longest lifetime friend a homosexual (Arthur Greeves)?
died the same day as President John F. Kennedy?
This composite trivia quiz does not sound like the personality profile of a candidate for
the "evangelical of the year." Then again, modern conservatives probably wouldn’t have
picked three murderers (or accomplices to murder), such as Moses, David, and Paul were,
to have authored nineteen books of God’s inspired Word! In light of this, it’s rather
amusing that C. S. Lewis-so much read by evangelicals-would probably be turned away
from many of their churches if he were an aspiring pastoral candidate.
In the subtitle for my article, I placed Lewis: "Somewhere between Ransom and
Reepicheep." These two Rs are characters in Lewis’s fiction. The fictional Dr. Elwin
Ransom is a Cambridge philologist (as Lewis was) whose first name has the same letters
(except the substitution of an "n" for an "s") as Lewis’s last name. Ransom appears in
Lewis’s space trilogy as the Christian character whose chosen role is to save the world.
Another of Lewis’s fictional characters, Reepicheep, appears in his Narnia series.
Reepicheep, an oversized mouse with a needle-like sword, possesses chutzpah
disproportionate to his mousely size. Therefore, I raise the question: did Lewis see
himself as Ransom or Reepicheep-or a bit of both? Was he the chosen apologist of the
age, whose role was to save the planet (like Ransom) or was he merely a minor critter
with an oversized sense of the daredevil, taking on all comers (like Reepicheep)?
Lewis’s friend, clergyman Austen Farrer, asserted: "You cannot read Lewis and tell
yourself that Christianity has no important moral bearings, that it gives no coherence to
the whole picture of existence, that it offers no criteria for the decision of human
choices…." Lewis became a Christianized version of movie swordsman Errol Flynn with
his apologetics swordplay. Like Robert Louis Stevenson’s swordsman in Kidnapped,
Alan Breck Stewart, he was (to borrow Austen Farrer’s image) "a bonny fighter."
Lewis’s long-term friend Owen Barfield noted that Lewis’s former student John Lawlor
had reported that in Lewis’s presence he felt like he was "wielding a peashooter against a
howitzer." John Beversluis called Lewis "the 20th century’s foremost defender of the
faith." Lewis’s apologetics was so barbed because his learning was so encyclopedic.
William Empson believed Lewis "was the best read man of his generation, one who read
everything and remembered everything he read." Lewis was reputedly Oxford’s most
popular lecturer for many years. By 1978 Macmillan had "published more than fourteen
million copies of Lewis’ books."
Biographical sources are particularly rich for Lewis since many of his friends wrote
biographies about him. Lewis’s father left a "mass of diaries, letters, and papers" and
Lewis’s brother, Warnie, spent "several years typing the 3,563 pages that make up the
eleven volumes of Lewis Papers…which cover the years 1850-1930." In addition, there is
the "million-word diary of Warnie Lewis" and Lewis’s extensive correspondence,
including close to 300 letters interchanged with lifetime friend Arthur Greeves.
II. A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
Riding in the upper story of the family omnibus of C. S. Lewis’s chromosomes was a
paternal great grandfather, Joseph, a Methodist minister, and a maternal great
grandfather, Rev. Hugh Hamilton, who had been Bishop of Ossuary in Ireland. Lewis’s
maternal grandfather, Rev. Thomas Hamilton, was an Anglican chaplain in Rome and
rector of St. Mark’s Anglican Church in Dundela. With all this religious genetic baggage,
it is surprising that C. S. Lewis’s own father and mother were rather nominal Anglicans.
Lewis’s mother, who died of cancer when he was only eight years old, had graduated
from Queen’s College in Belfast, Ireland with first-class honors in logic and second-class
honors in mathematics. Lewis described his father, Albert, as "almost without rival the
best raconteur [or storyteller] I have ever heard…" However, as with Fyodr Dostoevsky
and Robert Louis Stevenson and their fathers, Jack’s (C. S. Lewis’s lifelong nickname)
relationship with his father was always strained. Albert was a Belfast court police lawyer.
After Jack’s mother died, he increasingly bonded with his brother, Warnie. As an adult,
Warnie became a noted British major, was a member of the Inklings group, wrote seven
books on seventeenth-century France, and, sadly, was subject to alcoholic binges.
Both Lewis and his wife-to-be were precocious learners. Jack "knew both Greek and
Latin by the age of six." By ten years old he had read Milton’s Paradise Lost. Similarly,
Joy Davidman had "read H. G. Wells’s Outline of History at age eight and promptly
announced her atheism." Though Lewis’s childhood home was not especially happy or
religious, he was taken to St. John’s Anglican Church twice each Sunday where, he
reported, "I here heard the doctrines of Christianity…taught by men who obviously
believed them."
Jack attended four different boys’ schools from 1908 to 1914 and presented a bleak
picture of them in his autobiography. He became a young atheist and owned up to sexual
immorality on one occasion.
From 1914 to 1917 Jack studied privately (to prepare for Oxford) with his father’s former
college headmaster, W. T. Kirkpatrick (affectionately known as the "Great Knock").
Young Lewis expected Kirkpatrick to be maudlin like his father, but was jolted upon
their initial meeting by the atheist Kirkpatrick’s rigorous grilling in logic over the most
mundane matters. Three years of logical dueling left an indelible impression upon the
malleable mind of Lewis, the future apologist. During that time Jack "found that he could
think in Greek." Little wonder, since practically all Jack did for three years was to
translate the Greek and Latin classics under Kirkpatrick’s tutelage. Kirkpatrick reported
to Jack’s father (September 16, 1915): "He is the most brilliant translator of Greek plays I
have ever met," and (on April 7, 1916): "He has read more classics than any boy I ever
had-or indeed I might add than any I ever heard of…"
Also during his younger years, Jack formed a lifelong friendship with Arthur Greeves,
due to their mutual interest in "northernness" or Norse mythology. Greeves’s harsh father
was of a strict Plymouth Brethren background. Ironically, Lewis and Greeves later
crisscrossed in their theological thinking. Whereas Lewis moved from atheism to
Christianity, Greeves shifted from conservative Christianity on through Unitarianism,
Bahai, and Quakerism.
Jack’s entrance to Oxford University was interrupted by World War 1, in which he was
wounded with shrapnel and once (to his relief) found sixty German soldiers emerging
from the fog with their hands up surrendering to him. Before entering battle, Jack had
compacted with his friend Paddy Moore that if Paddy should die, he would assume
responsibility for Paddy’s mother (and sister). As a result, the forty-five-year-old Mrs.
Moore moved in with eighteen-year-old Jack. Her daughter, Maureen, was then eleven.
Virtually all Lewis biographers agree that young Jack had a romantic crush on Mrs.
Moore-though only the warts-on biographer A. N. Wilson concludes that theirs was an
explicitly sexual relationship. For thirty years they occupied the same house, and when
senility forced her to enter a nursing home, Jack visited her each day for a year until she
died.
Lewis failed the entrance math exam to Oxford twice, but it was then waived for
returning soldiers. At University College, the oldest of the thirty Oxford colleges, Lewis
graduated with honors in Greek and Latin classics, English literature, and philosophy.
On October 12, 1916, Lewis penned his position in a letter to Arthur Greeves: "I think
that I believe in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a
philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best. All religions, i.e., all
mythologies…are merely man’s own invention-Christ as much as Loki. In every age the
educated and thinking [people] have stood outside [religion]."
Slowly Lewis’s view shifted. On June 3, 1918, he again wrote Greeves: "I believe in no
God, least of all in one that would punish me for the ‘lusts of the flesh’; but I do believe
that I have in me a spirit, a chip, shall we say, of universal spirit…"
In addition to his reading of George MacDonald, Lewis seemed to be surrounded with
Christian influence at Oxford. Owen Barfield, a lawyer, would later become an
anthroposophist. Nevill Coghill ("clearly the most intelligent and best-informed man in
that class…a Christian") was later to become Merton Professor of English at Oxford.
Hugo Dyson was an Anglican. J. R. R. Tolkien, a Roman Catholic, taught Anglo-Saxon
at Oxford.
From 1925 to 1954 C. S. Lewis was a tutor and lecturer at Magdalen College at Oxford.
Lewis lost four different professorships while at Oxford, and so in 1954 he moved to take
the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at rival Magdalene College at
Cambridge University, where he remained until 1963.
During those middle years, Lewis was to write of his ideological safari: "My own
progress had been from ‘popular realism’ [atheism] to Philosophical Idealism; from
Idealism to Pantheism; from Pantheism to Theism; and from Theism to Christianity."
On December 21, 1929, Lewis-upon reading John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding-wrote:
"I…am still finding more and more the element of truth in the old beliefs [that] I feel I
cannot dismiss… There must be something in it; only what?" In this pre-conversion
period Lewis wrote: "I felt as if I were a man of snow at long last beginning to melt." As
a result, in 1929 Lewis was converted to theism. He journaled of that experience: "I gave
in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed; perhaps, that night the most
dejected and reluctant convert in all England," but this conversion "was only to Theism. I
knew nothing about the Incarnation."
Lewis’s autobiography zeroes in primarily upon his conversion to theism (in 1929) rather
than on his conversion to Christ (in 1931). In fact, his Christian conversion almost seems
anticlimactic.
That his views had not settled into concrete is apparent from his letter of January 9, 1930
to Arthur Greeves: "In spite of all my recent changes of view, I am…inclined to think
that you can only get what you call ‘Christ’ out of the Gospels by…slurring over a great
deal." In a letter of January 30, 1930 to Greeves, he "attribute[d] everything to the grace
of God…" On March 21, 1930 Lewis wrote to A. K. Hamilton Jenkin that what he held
"is not precisely Christianity, though it may turn out that way in the end." During this
period Lewis was attending the morning university chapels. By January 10, 1931 his
brother "was beginning to think the religious view of things was after all true."
The critical change came in September of 1931. The night of September 19, Lewis
walked and talked (until around 4 a.m.) with J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson about
myth and Christianity. Hugo Dyson’s "main point was that Christianity works for the
believer. The believer is put at peace and freed from his sins."
On September 28, 1931, at age thirty-two, Lewis was "riding to the Whipsnade zoo in the
sidecar of Warren’s motorcycle. ‘When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is
the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.’" According to 1 John 5:1 and 5, all
those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God are "born of God." To Arthur Greeves on
October 1, 1931, Lewis wrote: "I have just passed from believing in God to definitely
believing in Christ-in Christianity."
From June 1930 to August 1931 he’d been reading Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the
Presence of God, Thomas Traherne’s Centuries of Meditation, William Inge’s Personal
Religion and the Life of Devotion, Richard Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, and others. In
December of that year Lewis began "communicating," that is, taking communion in his
local Headington (Anglican) church.
Lewis’s fame as a Christian did not emerge until his BBC radio broadcasts (which later
developed into the book Mere Christianity) and his 1942 publication of Screwtape
Letters. About the same time students founded the Oxford University Socratic Club for
Christians, agnostics, and atheists to have discussions, and Lewis served as president of
the club for twenty-two years.
One highly significant Socratic Club debate occurred on February 2, 1948. Lewis had a
debate with a woman-Elizabeth Anscombe, a Roman Catholic philosopher who would
later be professor of philosophy at Cambridge University. Anscombe’s position was
opposed to that of Lewis’s chapter 3 in his book Miracles, namely, that "Naturalism is
Self-refuting." "The meeting is said to have been the most exciting and dramatic the
Socratic [Club] has ever seen." John Beversluis observed, "Although hardcore [Lewis]
loyalists disagree, the unanimous consensus of those actually present was that Anscombe
had won hands down…" George Sayer, Lewis’s former student and friend, asserted that
Lewis told him: "I can never write another book of that sort" [as Miracles] "and he never
did. He also never wrote another [distinctly] theological book [except Reflections on the
Psalms]." Any analyst who is a gender equalitarian can easily point to at least fifty
references in Lewis’s fifty-something books where his traditionalist views on gender
would be offensive (at best) to an equalitarian; some would think him a misogynist. The
blow to Lewis’s ego at being defeated philosophically and publicly by a woman would
have proven psychologically very difficult for him.
In light of his known views on the issue of gender, it seems all the more ironic that when
Lewis was fifty-eight he married a woman who was ultra-outspoken. Joy Davidman was
an intellectual American Jewess (an ex-Communist) with practically a photographic
memory. She entered college at age fourteen, graduated at nineteen in 1934, and got her
master’s degree from Columbia University in 1935 after three semesters. By age twentyfour she had authored a book of poetry. However, her marriage to Bill Gresham proved
disastrous, since he was an alcoholic, physically abusive, and a womanizer. After her
divorce, she and her two young sons wound up on the doorstep of C. S. Lewis in Oxford
in 1952.
To protect her from being extradited back to America and the abusive Gresham, she and
Lewis underwent a civil marriage in 1956. (Later Bill told Joy-despite his profession of
Christianity: "I am not a Christian and will probably never be one since I cannot…accept
["the basic doctrines"]…"
In 1957 when it became apparent that Joy had cancer, she and Lewis underwent a
religious marriage ceremony and she moved into his home. At that hospital bedside
wedding, Reverend Peter Bide prayed for her healing, and her cancer went into
remarkable remission for several years. In 1960 Joy "died at peace with God." Lewis
himself died in 1963 on the same day as President Kennedy and Aldous Huxley.
III. BOOKS
Lewis penned over fifty books, some of them compiled posthumously. There are
seventeen biblical, theological, and philosophically related works, fourteen works of
literary criticism, twenty of a more imaginative literary nature (including seven children’s
books, four science fiction thrillers, and four books of poetry-two of these penned as a
youthful atheist), and three compilations of his letters.
His close friend Walter Hooper claimed that Lewis "was a failed poet," presumably
because Lewis’s early ambition was to become a poet and because T. S. Eliot (whose
poetry Lewis strongly disliked) proved to be a successful poet. England’s two most
famous Christian literary critics of their epoch never hit it off-despite the fact that their
mutual friend, writer Charles Williams, got them together for an experimental lunch
(which failed).
Lewis’s first two books of atheistical poetry were published under a pseudonym-Clive
Hamilton (his first name and his mother’s maiden name). Interestingly, even his first
book written as an unbeliever borrowed a biblical title-Spirits in Bondage (1919), a
phrase suggested by 1 Peter 3:19.
Two years after his Christian conversion, Lewis transformed his philosophical and
experiential journey into an allegory-The Pilgrim’s Regress (1933). His first intellectual
volume, The Allegory of Love (1936) is considered by some to be "his greatest scholarly
book." It earned Lewis the Hawthornden Prize and was the catalyst for his most
meaningful male friendship with Charles Williams.
From 1938 to 1945 he was engaged in publishing his space fantasy in a trilogy. The first
two books land the reader on Mars and Venus (under other names). Regarding the second
of the trio Richard Cunningham said: "Perelandra is the most hauntingly beautiful and
theologically important of the [space travel] trilogy." The last and bleakest of the trilogy,
That Hideous Strength, had its theological counterpart in his 1943 The Abolition of Man.
Concerning this last volume Peter Kreeft wrote: "The Abolition of Man contains the most
important and enlightening single statement about our civilization that I have ever
read…"
The Screwtape Letters (1942) proved Lewis’s most popular seller. The seven-book
Narnia series was also perennially popular, though Lewis was hurt by J. R. R. Tolkien’s
negative criticism of it. The final book in the series, The Last Battle, won the Carnegie
medal in 1956.
Lewis’s most massive volume was English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding
Drama (1954). He frequently abbreviated it OHEL since it was one of the multi volume
set entitled the "Oxford History of English Literature." A. N. Wilson appropriately
appraised the tome by saying that it "must rank as about the most entertaining work of
criticism ever written."
Surprised by Joy (no sure relation to his wife’s name) was his autobiography, written
eight years prior to his wife’s death. Lewis considered the allegorical Till We Have Faces
(1956) his best book. At least fifteen of his books were released after his death. Kathryn
Lindskoog questioned the authenticity of The Dark Tower and Other Stories (1977).
IV. THEOLOGICAL SURVEY
Friends accused Lewis of a rumpled dress and a somewhat rumpled theology too. In
explanation, Clyde Kilby wrote: "It is not correct to say that Lewis has a ‘theology,’ if by
that term is meant a systematic, all-embracing complex like that of John Calvin or Karl
Barth." Yet, as Elizabeth Elliot wrote in a 1982 interview for Discipleship Journal, Lewis
claimed he was no theologian, "but he was. He covered the whole field of theology in
popular, understandable language."
Not only did Lewis dress in a rumpled theology (like the rather unsystematic John
Wesley), but he was somewhat like quicksilver in that he was difficult to pin down or
classify. In Mere Christianity he professed to be promulgating only the beliefs which all
orthodox Christians commonly hold. As a Christian supernaturalist he once observed
"how much more one has in common with a real Jew or Muslim than with a wretched
liberalizing, occidentalized specimen of the same category."
In two of his books he acknowledged accepting "the Nicene or Athanasian creed."
Nevertheless, Lewis appeared as "an unorthodox champion of orthodoxy." Below we will
survey Lewis’s treatment of the salient subjects of the traditional theological categories.
A. The Bible
Naturally one who espouses Darwin’s theory of human biology forces a different view of
some parts of the Bible than the traditionally accepted evangelical viewpoint. This was
the case with Lewis.
On the positive side, Lewis owned: "The Scriptures come before me as a book claiming
divine inspiration." Also he wrote that "all Holy Scripture [including even the
imprecatory psalms] is in some sense-though not all parts of it in the same sense-the word
of God."
The following statement would seem to categorize Lewis as neo-orthodox in his
understanding of the Bible: "Naivete, error, contradiction, even (as in the cursing Psalms)
wickedness are not removed [from the pages of the Bible]. The total result is not ‘the
Word of God’ in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or
history. It carries the Word of God…"
In his books Lewis amplified on his understanding of the Bible’s inspiration: "The
earliest stratum of the Old Testament contains many truths in a form which I take to be
legendary, or even mythical…things like Noah’s Ark or the sun standing still upon
Ajalon," while in the New Testament "history reigns supreme." Elsewhere he wrote, "The
first chapters of Genesis, no doubt, give the story in the form of a folktale…" Referring to
the notion that "every sentence of the Old Testament has historical or scientific truth,"
Lewis admitted: "This I do not hold, any more than St. Jerome did when he said that
Moses described Creation ‘after the manner of a popular poet’ (as we should say,
mythically) or than Calvin did when he doubted whether the story of Job were history or
fiction." Again, Lewis penned: "The Old Testament contains fabulous elements" which
would include "Jonah and the Whale, Noah and his Ark,…but the Court history of King
David is probably as reliable [historically] as the Court history of Louis XIV."
Lewis appraised the New Testament documents as falling in the realm of authentic
history-and so at this point he was anti-Bultmannian. He opined: "As a literary historian,
I am perfectly convinced that whatever else the Gospels are, they are not legends." In
another context he reiterated: "I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to
regard the Gospels as myths." Elsewhere Lewis stated that finding "a ‘historical Jesus’
totally different from the figure in the Synoptic tradition…I confess is a mode of
‘research’ I heartily distrust."
Not only did Lewis widen his view of inspiration to include Old Testament myths, but he
also allowed for the "inspiration" of later extra-biblical material. He once wrote (in a May
7, 1959 letter) to Clyde Kilby: "If every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of
lights, then all true and edifying writings, whether in Scripture or not, must be in some
sense inspired." With reference to the writing of Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan said: "It
came," and Lewis remarked: "It came. I doubt if we shall ever know more of the process
called ‘inspiration’ than those two monosyllables tell us."
After researching such preceding material, Edgar Boss concluded: "Lewis does not
accept the plenary verbal theory of Inspiration." Similarly, Lewis analyst Richard
Cunningham deduced: "Lewis did not believe in the infallibility or the verbal inspiration
of the Scriptures." Michael Christensen’s conclusion differs when he says that Lewis’s
"example proved that one can be a dedicated evangelical, accept the full authority of
Scripture, yet disbelieve in inerrancy." Of course, in order to buy Christensen’s
conclusion one would have to present a formulated definition of what constitutes an
"evangelical."
B. God and His Work
Because Lewis adhered to the traditional orthodox view of God (though he always
managed to derive fresh insights from it), we will pause only briefly on this subject.
Though Out of the Silent Planet is fictional, Lewis was representing his own view when
he commented: "There was one God [according to the hrossa or inhabitants of the planet
Malacandra]…[who] made and still ruled the world." In arguing for monotheism as over
against dualism, Lewis affirmed: "You cannot accept two conditioned and mutually
independent beings as the self-grounded, self-comprehending Absolute."
Lewis subscribed not only to the unity of God but also to the Trinity. He wrote: "In God’s
dimension…you find a being who is three persons while remaining one Being, just as a
cube is six squares while remaining one cube."
On the subject of divine predestination, Lewis’s views come through his fiction in the
mouth of Dr. Ransom who held: "Predestination and [human] freedom were apparently
identical. He could no longer see any meaning in the many arguments he had heard on
this subject." (Later we will see that Lewis would be classified as Arminian.)
In the matter of God’s creation, Lewis had no difficulty in being committed to theistic
evolution. Lewis called man "the highest of the animals." He also acknowledged: "If by
saying that man rose from brutality you mean simply that man is physically descended
from animals, I have no objection." Elsewhere he said: "What difficulties I have about
evolution are not religious…."
Lewis made the following distinction: "Evolutionism is something quite different from
Evolution as the biologists understand it." Concerning the former, Lewis stated: "In my
opinion the modern concept of Progress or Evolution (as popularly defined) is simply a
myth, supported by no evidence whatever." Consequently, while he denied uniformitarian
evolution as an inevitable theory of all human development, Lewis declared, "I am
assuming that Darwinian biology is correct." Obviously theistic evolution is not
considered kosher by many evangelicals, though such Bible scholars as A. T. Robertson,
B. B. Warfield, and Augustus Strong either espoused it or did not rule it out as a live
possibility.
C. Christ
In Mere Christianity Lewis referred to "Christ, the Man who was God." In The Problem
of Pain he spoke of "the Incarnate God" and the Son "co-eternal with the Father." In The
Weight of Glory Lewis mentioned "the humanity of Christ" and "His deity." The liberal
scholar Norman Pittenger blamed Lewis "for believing that Jesus claimed deity because
the fourth Gospel says He did," to which Lewis replied: "I think that Jesus Christ is (in
fact) the Son of God." To Arthur Greeves (December 26, 1945) Lewis wrote that at
Bethlehem "God became man."
One of the sad realities is that as a young man, Arthur Greeves had adopted the Christian
view and Lewis the atheistic one. Later Greeves wandered through Unitarianism and
other quagmires. Lewis replied to his letter (December 11, 1949): "Your doctrine, under
its old name of Arianism, was given a…very full run for its money. But it didn’t last."
Lewis asked his friend, "If [Christ] was not God, who or what was He?" He concluded:
"The doctrine of Christ’s divinity seems to me not something stuck on…but something
that peeps out at every point [of the New Testament] so that you have to unravel the
whole web to get rid of it…and if you take away the Godhead of Christ, what is
Christianity all about?" In Mere Christianity Lewis includes his belief in "the Virgin
Birth of Christ."
Lewis also tackled an explanation of what is commonly called "the eternal generation of
the Son." He wrote: "One of the creeds says that Christ is the Son of God ‘begotten, not
created’…[which] has nothing to do with the fact that when Christ was born on the earth
as a man, that man was the son of a virgin." Rather, "what God begets is God." This
negative explanation clarifies somewhat but is not overly helpful. Elsewhere he penned
that "the one begets and the other is begotten. The Father’s relation to the Son is not the
same as the Son’s relation to the Father." Christ as "Son," Lewis observed, "cannot mean
that He stands to God [the Father] in the very same physical and temporal relation which
exists between offspring and male parent in the animal world;" this doctrine involves a
"harmonious relation involving homogeneity." The normally ingenious and down-to-
earth Lewis left his readers in the complicated and heady realms of theological
disquisition on this doctrine, but (let’s face it) who has ever heard a clearly illustrated
exposition of it from a pulpit? In one more attempt Lewis declared: "The Son exists
because the Father exists; but there never was a time before the Father produced the
Son." Lewis would probably have done better to steer clear of this subject altogether.
Two other of Lewis’s Christological opinions are interesting. In speaking of the kenosis
(Philippians 2:7) he stated: "I certainly think that Christ, in the flesh, was not omniscientif only because a human brain could not, presumably be the vehicle of omniscient
consciousness…." In another comment, bearing upon John 3:13, Lewis claimed "Christ’s
divine nature never left [heaven] and never returned to it." For one who never claimed to
be a theologian, Lewis certainly managed to involve himself in some intricate theological
twine. Nevertheless, he was emphatic about retaining the full deity and humanity of
Christ as addressed in the early Christian creeds.
Lewis exquisitely represented Christ in His death and resurrection under the image of the
lion Aslan in the Narnia series. There Aslan is villainously killed, but comes back to life
again. It is a lovely metaphor in fantasy form.
D. Humanity and Sin
On the matter of human will, Lewis wrote: "God willed the free will of men and angels in
spite of His knowledge that it could lead in some cases to sin and thence to suffering: i.e.,
He thought freedom worth creating even at that price." In his radio broadcast Lewis
indicated that God "gave [humans] free will. He gave them free will because a world of
mere automata could never love…"
Lewis once argued: "The infinite value of each human soul is not a Christian doctrine.
God did not die for man because of some value perceived in him. He loved us not
because we are lovable, but because He is love."
On the subject of human sin, Green and Hooper comment that "many find it difficult to
accept Lewis’s belief in a literal…fall of man and his fundamentalist doctrine of original
sin…." While Lewis did hold to a serious doctrine of sin, one wonders if the preceding
two authors have overstated their case by attaching the qualifiers "literal" and
"fundamentalist" to their assessment, since Lewis did regard Genesis 3 mythically. He
wrote: "The Fall consisted in Disobedience"…while the Fall consisted in Disobedience, it
resulted, like Satan’s [fall], from Pride…." As Dr. Ransom, the Christian in Perelandra,
pictorially put it: "We are all a bent race." On a broader canvas Lewis brush-stroked: "A
sound theory of value demands…that good should be the tree and evil the ivy. Evil
has…its parasitic existence."
Concerning the doctrine of "total depravity," Lewis wrote: "I disbelieve that doctrine."
Yet he may have misunderstood the nature of the doctrine due to its nomenclature, for in
the same section he wrote that "we all sin" and are "in some respects a horror to God" and
"vile." Indeed, in his radio broadcasts he told thousands of listeners: "The first step [for
us] is to create, or recover, a sense of guilt."
E. Angels, the Devil, and Demons
Lewis was quite traditional here as he stated: "No reference to the Devil or devils
[demons] is included in any Christian Creeds, and it is possible to be a Christian without
believing in them. [However,] I do believe such beings exist…" Elsewhere Lewis
reported:
I do…believe in devils [or demons]. That is to say, I believe in angels and I believe that
some of them, by abuse of their free will, have become enemies to God and, as a
corollary, to us. These we may call devils. They do not differ in nature [I think the term
"constitution" might be better than "nature"] from good angels, but their nature is
depraved. Satan, the leader or dictator of devils, is the opposite not of God but of
Michael.
In other words, Satan is inferior to God; there is no true dualism.
F. Salvation
1. Substitutionary Atonement
Since JOTGES was conceived in response to a concern over soteriology, we will spend
considerable space here. In commenting upon his friend Charles Williams’s poem, Lewis
offered this commentary: "The Atonement was a Substitution, just as Anselm said: ‘All
salvation, everywhere and at all time,…is vicarious.’" This, however, appears to be
Williams’s view rather than Lewis’s.
In The Allegory of Love Lewis referred to a poem whose "theology turns on a crudely
substitutional view of the Atonement." In Mere Christianity Lewis indicated that he did
not accept the substitutionary view of atonement.
Arthur Greeves’s cousin, Sir Lucius O’Brien, claimed that the atonement was not taught
in the Gospels. Lewis countered that the atonement must have been an integral part of
Christ’s teaching because "the Apostles…did teach this doctrine in His name
immediately after His death."
Unless Lewis altered his opinion in later years, it would appear that he saw some
difference between vicarious and substitutionary atonement, for he wrote: "In the
Incarnation we get…this idea of vicariousness of one person profiting by the earning of
another person. In its highest form that is the very center of Christianity."Lewis’s
apparent devaluing of substitution led Edgar Boss to conclude that Lewis held "the
Example Theory [of the Atonement] with a very important modification. Mr. Lewis is a
supernaturalist, while the Example Theory is usually held by Naturalists." However, I do
not think Lewis would have wished to be so neatly pigeonholed into that single category.
For him this was the bottom line: "Christ’s death redeemed man from sin, but I can make
nothing of the theories as to how!"
2. Justification by Faith
Two analysts of very different stripes articulated one major weakness in the expression of
Lewis’s soteriology. A. N. Wilson asserted: "If the mark of a reborn evangelical is a
devotion to the Epistles of Paul and, in particular, to the doctrine of Justification by Faith,
then there can have been few Christian converts less evangelical than Lewis." In fact, the
Methodist minister who reviewed Mere Christianity claimed that the book "does not
really mention…the central Christian doctrine of Justification by Faith." From the other
end of the theological spectrum, J. I. Packer spoke of Lewis’s "failure ever to mention
justification by faith when speaking of the forgiveness of sins, and his apparent
hospitality to baptismal regeneration…."
3. Salvation by Grace
Readers of this journal will nonetheless rejoice in Lewis’s emphasis on the doctrine of
grace. In Reflections on the Psalms he summarized: "We are all in the same boat. We
must all pin our hopes on the mercy of God and the work of Christ, not on our own
goodness." In another context Lewis declared: "We are saved by grace…In our flesh
dwells no good thing." In his allegory The Great Divorce, Lewis describes a man who
wants only his "rights," and who has "done my best all my life" and now exclaims, "I’m
not asking for anybody’s bleeding charity." A former earthling responds to him: "Then
do. At once. Ask for the Bleeding Charity. Everything is here for the asking and nothing
can be bought." In Studies in Words Lewis referred to "‘we humans in our natural
condition,’ i.e., unless or until touched by [God’s] grace" or "untransformed…human
nature."
In his radio broadcasts Lewis remarked:
I think everyone who has some vague belief in God, until he becomes a Christian, has the
idea of an exam or of a bargain in his mind. The first result of real Christianity is to blow
that idea into bits…God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that
there is no question of earning a passing mark in this exam or putting Him in your debts.
Later Lewis said that such an awakened individual "discovers his bankruptcy" and so
says to God: "You must do this. I can’t." He elaborated: "Christ offers [us] something for
nothing…." In connection with good works he stated: "[You are] not doing these things
in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already."
Probably Lewis’s finest statement on salvation by grace was formulated in the longest
book he ever wrote, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama. He
said:
On the Protestant view one could not, and by God’s mercy, expiate one’s sins. Like an
accepted lover, he feels that he has done nothing, and never could have done anything to
deserve such astonishing happiness. All the initiative has been on God’s side, all has been
free, unbounded grace. His own puny and ridiculous efforts would be as helpless to retain
the joy as they would have been to achieve it in the first place. Bliss is not for sale,
cannot be earned, "Works" have no "merit," though of course faith, inevitably, even
unconsciously, flows out into works of love at once. He is not saved because he does
works of love; he does works of love because he is saved. It is faith alone that has saved
him; faith bestowed by sheer gift.
While the exegete might wish to finesse the preceding statement somewhat (for example,
making it more objective and not so experiential, as in "happiness," "joy," "bliss"),
certainly Lewis’s most lengthy explication of salvation by grace through faith falls
clearly under the rubric of the orthodox Protestant understanding of salvation.
4. Conditions of Salvation
Another strategic question to ask is: What condition or conditions does Lewis prescribe
for receiving the gift of salvation? In his radio broadcast he averred: A Christian "puts all
his trust in Christ." In the lengthy quotation above (footnote 117) Lewis stated: "It is faith
alone that has saved him; faith bestowed by sheer gift."
In an interview with Decision magazine’s Shirwood Wirt, Lewis indicated: "It is not
enough to want to get rid of one’s sins. We also need to believe in the One who saves us
from our sins. Not only do we need to recognize that we are sinners; we need to believe
in a Savior who takes away sins." Wirt then asked Lewis if he "made a decision at the
time of [his] conversion." Lewis answered that at that time he felt he "was the object
rather than the subject."
William Luther White summarized: "Lewis repeatedly made the point that…salvation
comes as a result of faith in God’s grace, not as the product of human moral effort." In a
broadcast Lewis stated: "The business of becoming a son of God…has been done for us.
Humanity is already ‘saved’ in principle. We individuals have to appropriate that
salvation. But the really tough work-the bit we could not have done for ourselves-has
been done for us. We have not got to try to climb up into spiritual life by our own
efforts." Lewis was asked in an open session: "Can’t you lead a good life without
believing in Christianity?" To this he replied that Christianity "will teach you that in fact
you can’t be ‘good’ (not for twenty-four hours) on your own moral efforts…we cannot do
it…"
In another open session on April 18, 1944, a factory worker who apparently thought
Lewis was unclear said, "We don’t qualify for heaven by practice, but salvation is
obtained at the Cross. We do nothing to obtain it…" Lewis rejoined as follows:
The controversy about faith and works is one that has gone on for a very long time, and it
is a highly technical matter. I personally rely on the paradoxical text: "Work out your
own salvation…for it is God that worketh in you." It looks as if in one sense we do
nothing; and in another case we do a damned lot…and you must have [salvation] in you
before you can work it out.
If we had only the preceding statements, subscribers to this journal could probably feel
fairly at ease with Lewis’s soteriology. In other places, however, he mentions other
conditions besides believing, uses different terminology, or is just plain murky. As a
sampling of the murky approach in the April 18, 1944 open session, someone asked him:
"How can I find God?" Instead of replying with something on the order of Acts 16:31,
Lewis answered, "People find God if they consciously seek from Him the right attitude."
Later he added that all people "were created to be in a certain relationship to God" and
"God wants to give you a real and eternal happiness." While Lewis’s answers to the
worker weren’t anti-biblical, they seem unduly vague.
In other contexts Lewis asked readers: "Will you…repent and believe?" (as the narrator
was speaking to an apostate Episcopalian bishop). On the radio he announced:
"Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness." When Lewis’s
fictional, demonized scientist on another planet, Weston (the Un-man), writhes against
another demonic attack upon him, the Christian Dr. Ransom orders him: "Repent your
sins." (In the last two statements there is no mention of believing in Christ for salvation.)
Lewis said that repentance "is not something God demands of you before He will take
you back…; it is simply a description of what going back is like." As Lewis put it so
colorfully, repentance calls us to move "full speed astern." He also depicted repentance as
a self-surrender. In another place Lewis proclaimed: "The guilt is washed out…by
repentance and the blood of Christ."
On one of his radio broadcasts Lewis declared: "There are three things that spread the
Christ life to us: baptism, belief, and…the Lord’s Supper." His meaning and his order of
arrangement of the items are unclear.
Even more baffling is this notation in Lewis’s anthology of quotes from George
MacDonald: "I am sometimes almost terrified at the scope of the demands made upon
me, at the perfection of self-abandonment required of me; yet outside of such
absoluteness can be no salvation." Indeed, if an "absoluteness" of "perfection" is required
of us, who then can be saved? In a literary context Lewis wrote confusingly that Vergil
the pagan poet "cannot have had Christian faith, hope, and charity without which no man
can be saved." These kinds of statements would certainly be mystifying to the biblically
untutored.
On the question of "Can one lose salvation?" Lewis has to be categorized as an Arminian
for his answer would be "yes." Screwtape’s role, say Lewis’s biographers, was "to secure
the damnation of a young man who has just become a Christian." In The Last Battle
Susan is "of her own free will ‘no longer a friend of Narnia’ [that is, a believer]. Lewis is
taking into consideration the fact that many people drift into apostasy." Even Dr.
Ransom, a committed Christian in the trilogy, realizes that "everlasting unrest…might be
my destination." After John (in The Pilgrim’s Regress allegory) is "converted," he is
informed by his Guide: "You all know that security is a mortal’s greatest enemy."
In one article Lewis quoted some from the fourth-century Athanasian Creed: "’Which
Faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish
everlastingly.’" Lewis commented:
The author…is not talking about unbelievers, but about deserters; not about those who
have never heard of Christ, nor even those who have misunderstood and refused to accept
Him; but those who have…really believed, then allowed themselves…to be drawn away
into sub-Christian mode of thought.
Naturally this Arminianism did not yield much "blessed assurance." Even though his
wife-at her death-said, "I am at peace with God," Lewis labored: "they tell me she is at
peace. What makes them so sure of this? Why are they so sure that all anguish ends with
death?"
As an Arminian Lewis espoused an unlimited atonement. In The Great Divorce he
observed: "All may be saved if they so choose" (which included people on the bus ride
from hell). To his old friend Greeves he wrote, "About half of [Beyond Personality] is
taken up with the…doctrine…that all men can become sons of God…."
5. The Fate of Moral Non-Christians
Beyond the parameters of traditional Arminianism, however, Lewis expected that some
non-Christians would be saved. "Though all salvation is through Jesus, we need not
conclude that He cannot save those who have not explicitly accepted Him in this life." On
the radio he announced: "We do know that no [one] can be saved except through Christ;
we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him."
In the children’s Narnia series, the lion Aslan is Lewis’s Christ-figure. In The Last Battle
deceivers say: "[The god] Tash and Aslan are only two different names for You Know
Who." Later they use the hybrid or compound name Tashlan to make their point. At the
end of this last book in the Narnia series one of the outsiders, a Calorman named Emeth
(which is the transliteration of the Hebrew word for "truth"), who has been a life-long
worshiper of Tash, approaches Aslan. To this Tash-server Aslan says, "Son, thou art
welcome." Emeth counters, "I am no son of Thine but a servant of Tash." Aslan rejoins:
"All the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me." This is a clear
indicator that for Lewis the non Christ-worshiper may be received into heaven. Similarly,
in another fictional setting, Jane Studdock, an unbeliever, says to Ransom the Pendragon:
"I know nothing of Maleldil [the Christ-figure]. But I place myself in obedience to you."
To her acknowledgment Ransom replies:
It is enough for the present. This is the courtesy of Deep Heaven that when you mean
well, He always takes you to have meant better than you know. It will not be for always.
He is very jealous. He will have you for no one but Himself in the end. But for tonight, it
is enough.
This issue raises the question of Christianity in relation to other world religions. Lewis
said: "I couldn’t believe that 999 religions were completely false and the remaining one
true." Similarly he stated: "We are not pronouncing all other religions to be totally false,
but rather saying that in Christ whatever is true in all religions is consummated and
perfected." Kathryn Lindskoog wrote: "Lewis expressed hope that many true seekers like
Akhenaton and Plato, who never had a chance to find Christ in this life, will find Him in
the next one."
G. The Church
Lewis was an Anglican Christian who sought to preserve what he considered the
common core of centrist Christianity. His late-in-life secretary (an Anglican-becomeRoman Catholic) recalled: "I remember the first (and only) time I mentioned ‘low’ and
‘high’ churchmanship in [his] presence. He looked at me as though I had offered him
poison. ‘We must never discuss that,’ he said…."
1. Baptism and Communion
J. I. Packer felt that Lewis bordered on espousing baptismal regeneration even though
this is not a prominent strand in his fifty-plus books. Lewis did attach special significance
to Communion in his writings. In answer to a factory worker, Lewis commented: "If
there is anything in the teaching of the New Testament which is in the nature of a
command, it is that you are obligated to take the Sacrament and you can’t do it without
going to Church." In the same vein Lewis preached: "Next to the Blessed Sacrament
itself, your neighbor is the holiest object present to your senses." In regard to the
preceding sentence A. N. Wilson concluded that Lewis "clearly had a full belief in the
Eucharistic Presence" or he wouldn’t have made such an assertion.
When Jack and Warnie were out walking one day, they passed a church sign that declared
that "the Blessed Sacrament…should be treated with ‘special reverence.’" Over lunch the
two brothers argued about this. Warnie said if one was a Roman Catholic, then "the
aumbry contains our Lord and…even prostration is hardly reverence enough." However,
if one is Anglican, then it "contains but a wafer and a little wine, and why in front of that
should one show any greater reverence than in any other part of the church?" Jack sought
to find a middle ground between the two views.
To the less sacramentally minded, Lewis acknowledged that he got "on no better with
those who tell me that the elements are mere bread and mere wine, used symbolically to
remind me of the death of Christ." Rather, he thought: "Here is big medicine and strong
magic." Elsewhere he owned: "My ideas about the sacrament would probably be called
‘magical’ by a good many modern theologians."
2. Confessing Sins to a Priest
Only some years after conversion did Lewis make auricular confession to an Anglican
priest. He wrote (on October 24, 1940) that "the decision was the hardest I have ever
made…" From that time on he made regular confession to a priest.
H. Last Things
Richard Cunningham summarized Lewis’s eschatology by observing that he believed in
"purgatory, heaven, hell, the second coming, the resurrection of the body, and the
judgment." As a young atheist Lewis wrote (on October 18, 1916) that he could do
without "a bogey who is prepared to torture me forever and ever if I should fail in coming
up short to an almost impossible ideal. As to the immortality of the soul, …I neither
believe nor disbelieve…" Early after his conversion experience he thought very little of
an afterlife and rewards.
Praying for the dead and a concept of purgatory pretty well go hand in hand. Lewis
"emphatically believed in praying for the dead." He prayed for his wife after she died. He
thought that John Henry Newman had the right idea-that saved souls before God’s throne
would ask to be thoroughly cleansed. Consequently, this necessitated a purgatory, though
not as in a medieval doctrine of torture. In this way there would exist "Purgatory (for
souls already saved) or…Limbo (for souls already lost)." A television interviewer pointed
out to Lewis that he "believe[d] in Purgatory." To this Lewis returned: "But not the
Romish doctrine." (The Anglican view is found in Article XXII of The Book of Common
Prayer). Lewis likened purgatory to sitting in a dentist’s chair, saying: "I’d rather be
cleaned first." Of course, most evangelicals believe this viewpoint founders upon the
perfect purgation which has already transpired in the crosswork of Christ (Hebrews 1:3;
9:15; 10:2, 10-12, 17-18).
Concerning Lewis on the Second Coming, William Luther White said: "Edgar Boss
attributes to Lewis the belief that ‘Jesus is literally, personally coming again.’
…However, I am unable to find in Lewis anything to support this apparent
fundamentalist position." But the prima facie reading of Lewis certainly makes it sound
as if he champions an orthodox view of Christ’s Second Coming. Kathryn Lindskoog
asserted: "Lewis found it impossible to retain our belief in the divinity of Christ and the
truth of our Christian revelation if we abandon…the promised, and threatened, Return [of
Christ]."
Lewis wrote illuminatingly of the wonders of heaven. He also spoke about hell. In one of
his last published stories (disputed by Kathryn Lindskoog as to its authorship) Lewis had
Dr. Elwin Ransom assert: "A man can’t be taken to hell, or sent to hell; you can only get
there on your own steam." This is in line with Lewis’s Arminian soteriology, as when he
remarked: "The doors of hell are locked on the inside." Yet when Lewis depicted hell
fictionally in The Great Divorce, only one of the bus riders visiting heaven preferred to
stay there; all else preferred their misery.
To Arthur Greeves he wrote:
About Hell. All I have ever said is that the N. T. plainly implies the possibility of some
being finally left in ‘the outer darkness.’ Whether this means…being left to a purely
mental state…or whether there is still some sort of environment, something you could
call a world or a reality, I would never pretend to know.
Also Lewis clarified his opinion when he penned: "Whether this eternal fixity [of hell]
implies endless duration-or duration at all-we cannot say." Therefore, once more Lewis’s
view cannot be labeled typically evangelical.
I. Evaluation and Conclusion
Predictability was not the trademark of C. S. Lewis. Nor was his an assembly-line
theology. The liberal scholars of his day regarded him as a mousely Reepicheep in his
attack upon their "assured results" of biblical criticism. Yet, because of his denial of
biblical inerrancy, conservatives could not regard him as their knightly Dr. Ransom.
When it came to New Testament historicity, Lewis siphoned off of his own expertise in
the field of literary criticism to deny the Bultmannians free reign (or rein). Similarly his
popularity as a BBC speaker and in spiraling book sales (especially children’s fantasies!)
made him unpopular with some scholarly colleagues in the Oxbridge world.
Lewis navigated well within the orbit of orthodoxy when it came to regarding God as a
trinity and Christ as deity. Here he stood in sync with the historic position of Christians
since antiquity. Not only did he embrace the full supernaturalness of the Father and Son
(while commenting only rarely upon the Spirit), but he accepted the bonafide existence of
angels, demons, and Satan as invisible, supernatural personalities.
He refused to confine himself to one stated formulation of an Atonement theory, and he
was Arminian on the extent of the Atonement and the question of whether salvation could
be lost. Ironically, while he believed some Christians could lose their salvation, he
believed some non-Christians could receive their final salvation.
As a member in good standing of the Anglican Church, Lewis accepted an Anglican
position on purgatory and prayers for the dead, as well as practicing auricular confession
of sins. He believed in a substantive reality to heaven and hell but was agnostic about
matters such as the precise dimension and duration of hell.
While Lewis was not known for personal evangelism (for example, many of his students
went through years of tutoring from him without ever learning that he was a Christian),
ironically he became one of the most renowned international defenders of the Christian
faith through his writings. Even when we disagree with some of his theological tenets, we
are better off for his having forced us to grapple with his immense intellect. Like the local
Christian congregation at Corinth, C. S. Lewis came up with some aberrant views and
engaged in some heavy drinking, but he was never dull and the world has never been the
same.
Transcendental Argument: Contours of C.S. Lewis' Apologetic
Tommy Allen
Introduction
As our world spins and continues the orbited path set into motion, the future looks bleak
with optimistic skepticism. A decrepit world, tainted with moral relativism, subjective
truth, and religious autonomy; what can be done? The ambience is set, the world has
come to
. . .'Go on, do me in, you bastard cowards, I don't want to live anyway, not in a stinking
world like this one.' I told Dim to lay off a bit then, because it used to interest me
sometimes to slooshy what some of these starry decreps had to say about life and the
world. I said: `Oh . . . And what's stinking about it?' He cried out: `Its a stinking world
because it lets the young get on to the old like you done, and there's no law nor order no
more . . . What sort of a world is it at all? Men on the moon and men spinning round the
earth like it might be midges round a lamp, and there's not no attention paid to earthly
law nor order no more. So the worst you may do, you filthy cowardly hooligans.' So we
cracked into him lovely, grinning all over our litsos . . .[1]
Since Anthony Burgess wrote Clockwork Orange in 1962, we have succumbed to `no law
nor order no more' on behalf of lewdies'[2] declared independence from God. People
have defined within themselves the value of values. When morals and values are reduced
and accepted as subjective and personal, the `no law nor order no more' has replaced
truth. "Exchanging the truth of God for a lie,"[3] "we remove the organ and demand the
function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We
laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."[4] As society continues,
are we shocked about our current situation of starving children, abortion, drive by
shootings, police corruption, sexual promiscuity and human rights violations? Has society
really succumbed to `no law nor order no more?' I think not! As long as people continue
to ask `why' are things the way they are, there is hope for our decrepit society.
From the time of Moses to C.S. Lewis, men of God have been striking at the heart of
humanity to give up, surrender, deny themselves, and follow God for the sake of society
and their souls. But our present spiritual atmosphere is one of `no law nor order,' and our
society is on the brink of doom. As Christians, we look for prophets, men whose iron
chains are bound to God by their gonads;[5] holy men, righteous men, those men who
seek God's thoughts and take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.[6] One
such man is C.S. Lewis.
No healthy writer ever arises de novo. Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was a Fellow of
Magdalen College and University Lecturer in English, and spent a short time teaching
philosophy. Lewis was for many years the center of a group of friends called `The
Inklings,' which included writer and lay theologian Charles Williams,[7] J.R.R. Tolkien
and a selected few others. `The Inklings' met at a pub called the Eagle and Child "so that
members could read unpublished compositions aloud, and ask for comments and
criticisms."[8]
During the meeting years of `The Inklings' (1939-1962), Lewis wrote many books
including The Screwtape Letters, Abolition of Man, The Great Divorce, and Mere
Christianity. Lewis is considered the best known apologist of this century, and his
popularity continues to benefit Christians in providing reasonable defenses for believing
in the Christian concept of God. His works "are characterized by his command of lucid
and enjoyable English, [and] enough philosophy to make his arguments coherent and
persuasive without becoming technical."[9]
Thesis Statement
The purpose of this study is to expose the reader to the "transcendental argument" which
is available to the Christian because God is the necessary presupposition of all human
activity. C.S. Lewis has implemented this type of argument in many of his apologetic
writings.
This study will explain transcendental arguments and focus upon Lewis' apologetic
methodology and illustrate how he uses the transcendental argument which parallels
Cornelius Van Til's apologetic disposition. It is important to remember that Lewis'
method is independent of Van Til's, however, both are rooted in Kant's "transcendental
argument." Lewis uses Kant's "transcendental argument" in his defense of Christianity.
Lewis wrote in his book entitled Miracles that "Kant was at the root of it."[10] The three
aspects of Lewis' defense which I will address are: epistemology, morals, and myth. It is
important to remember these three aspects of Lewis' defense are rooted in the
transcendental argument of Kant.
Rationale for the Study
"Why study anything?" we may ask ourselves. Do we write and research people and
places because some professor who stands at the head of a classroom gives the order? I
hope not. We study because God has given to man the gift of knowledge (Prov 1.7). And
with the gift of knowledge, there are people who excel, people who are unlike anybody
else in this world of learning. I believe God gives to his people, men and women alike,
the ability to create and shape ideas in such a way that make readers read in awe. Those
who read C.S. Lewis and appreciate his intelligence agree he offers a penetrating insight
into the current state of affairs. Lewis is a postmodernist's nightmare, an answer to
atheism, and an encourager for Christians.
The "transcendental arguments" prove the existence of an omnipotent and sovereign God;
and that God is true and provable. Provable simply means that God is independent of
man's assertion, independent of creation, however, coterminous, and self-attesting. God is
absolute (John 5.26; Acts 17.25). God is sufficient unto Himself. Provable pertains to the
"transcendental argument" although men have composed this proof of His existence by
the Holy Spirit.
The idea that God is ontologically true and ontologically provable is foreign to many
Christians. Many Christian writers and apologist writing today will say God's existence is
probable or preferred. The truth of God's existence has nothing to do with the
psychological makeup of the person arguing. An example of the psychological makeup
would refer to the kinds of people arguing for the existence of God. The truth has nothing
to do with the man arguing. The structure of mathematics will not become probable or
preferred if a mathematician is convicted of rape and murder. The truth of God is separate
from ourselves and is an objective state of affairs. Of course, this separation does not
separate God as a personal God.
There is a difference between proof and persuasion. The truth of God's existence does not
mean we can persuade people to the transforming grace of Jesus Christ. Plato said, "A
man who is convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still." The greatest
argument will never convince a man's heart to turn his eyes upon Jesus. The
"transcendental argument" is not persuasion but proof of God's existence. Without the
truth of God's existence, the "transcendental argument" would not exist.
Many Christian writers and apologist writing today will say God's existence is probable
or preferred. An example of this is in Rebecca Manley Pippert's book Out Of The
Saltshaker and Into The World. Pippert writes: "As Christians we do not have absolute
proof for our belief in Jesus. There is in fact no absolute proof for any ultimate
proposition, whether Christian or Buddhist or atheist or whatever."[11] If the Christian
can no more prove his/her religion to the Buddhist, why do we maintain that there is a
difference between a Christian and a Buddhist? Who is to say the Buddhist may be
correct in their worldview based upon Pippert's claim that nothing is absolutely provable?
The Rev. Joe Brown, minister of the 10,000 member Hickory Grove Baptist Church, told
his congregation: "I cannot prove faith to you any more than I can prove to you that
strawberry ice cream is good."[12] The existence of God and proving that strawberry ice
cream is enjoyable cannot be determined the same way.
The unbeliever will attempt to ask questions in this way because the unbeliever "must
always strengthen itself by drinking deep of the dregs of the evil rancor of its own
malice."[13] Our apologetic defense for the self-existent God, cannot rest upon pedantic
arguments seen in Pippert's and Brown's statements. As warned by Kuyper, the
unbeliever's malice objections to the risen Lord Jesus Christ must be answered by careful
scholarship and not by irrational skepticism.[14] Greg Bahnsen, philosopher and
theologian, said so eloquently in a debate between atheist philosopher Dr. Gordon Stein:
Stein claims the question "Does God Exist?" in the same way we answer all other
questions. I call this the "crackers in the pantry fallacy." Do we answer the question of
God's existence [or our faith] in the same way we answer the question are there crackers
in the pantry? No! of course not. An English professor does not analyze a poem to
determine its beauty the same way a biologist analyzes a frog . . . How then do we
resolve the conflict between the atheist and the Christian Worldview? We can prove the
existence of God from the impossibility of the contrary. The transcendental proof for
God's existence, is that without Him it is impossible to prove anything.[15]
Since the fall of man "the Bible teaches plainly that Adam and Eve's fall into sin was not
just an isolated act of disobedience but an event of catastrophic significance for creation
as a whole."[16] This fall into sin, by all ("we too all . . . by nature children of wrath"
Ephesians 2.3), speaks of the need for a redeemer. This need for a redeemer was brought
upon our own shoulders by our wickedness and sin, however, grace is solely a gift from
God to those He has chosen (Ephesians 1-2). We cannot, by any biblical means, lower the
claims of God upon man. The burden of truth rests solely upon the self-existent and selfattesting God of the Scriptures.
Unfortunately, what Pippert and many Christian writers do when they say things like this
is reduce the Christian experience to: nothing is provable. This type of apologetic method
leads to an epistemological fallacy. In a sense, Pippert is attempting to prove her
statement while at the same time says nothing is objectively provable. Greg Bahnsen
says: This is not Christian thinking.[17] As Christians, we must realize that all thinking
must rest solely upon the self-existent, self-sufficient transcendence´ of God. We must
realize that God is "independent in everything . . . in His virtues, decrees, works, and so
on . . . by which He is free from all limitations"[18] and that man and his thoughts,
limited and derivative since created, come from God (Prov 1.7; Job 28.28; Ps. 111.10).
"God is true being, the source of all being, the creator of all things which exist other than
Himself"[19] whether material or immaterial in nature.
One must note, Lewis at his best uses the "transcendental argument" when writing
apologetics. Lewis saw that when non-believers resist the factual arguments for the
existence of God,[20] as he did before belief, one must think preternatural and realize that
"He is the source from which all . . . reasoning power comes . . . [and that] God designed
the human machine to run on Himself."[21]
Statement of Presuppositions
Before heading out of our house, we must first dress ourselves for the occasion. For a day
of recreation, we may wear shorts and t-shirt, and for a formal dinner a tuxedo would
suffice the occasion. What one wears can raise a certain question. If a person is wearing a
tuxedo, we can suspect the person is not going water skiing. If a person has on a pair of
shorts and running shoes we can say that this person is going to exercise. When we
approach a certain activity or task, we have many different choices of clothing to wear. In
philosophy, what one wears to extrapolate a certain theory will fabricate his/her opinion
on the matter at hand. "Everyone who weighs a theory has certain beliefs as to what
constitutes an acceptable sort of theory on the matter under consideration. We can call
these control beliefs." [22]
The importance of knowing one's own control beliefs or presuppositions will show the
foundation of one's thought and approach toward the task at hand: is one's thinking rooted
in the ontology of God or the autonomy of man? There are two kinds of people, and
regeneration
breaks humanity in two, . . . being begotten anew . . . establishes a radical change in the
being of man, be it only potentially, this change [grace] exercises at the same time an
influence upon his consciousness . . . but one is inwardly different from the other, and
consequently feels a different content rising from his consciousness.[23]
This radical change from apostasy, now fellowship with God, must press upon the heart
of the changed man to conform his thinking to be like the mind of Christ's. Because in
Christ, all the treasures of wisdom is stored (Col. 2.3), and the Christian is called to take
every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10.3-5). One's ultimate
presupposition must be God's word which "is inspired by God and profitable for teaching,
for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be
adequate, equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3.16-17). When study is guided by
the Holy Spirit, Scriptures are always the foundation for one's work and the testing
ground for one's work.
It is with this presupposition that this author will place the Scripture in authority over
self-reason by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. From this inspired Bible, the infallible
document written by holy men of God guided by the Holy Spirit, we must derive our
doctrines. May God be praised and glorified by and through this study. Paul encourages
us to "sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to
everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness
and reverence" (1 Peter 3. 15). Upon His Rock, we shall build His church for the glory of
the Kingdom.
The "transcendental argument" is an apologetic task. It involves much study and devotion
to the word of God. With Christ set apart in one's spirit and mind, the "transcendental
argument" provides proof for the existence of God who is our hope in Christ Jesus.
Christian, rejoice in the now (hope) and in the not yet (victory in Christ)!
Nature of the Transcendental Argument
The term transcendental[24] was first used by the philosopher Immanuel Kant (17241804) who is considered the greatest figure in modern philosophy.[25] Kant was not an
orthodox Christian, but he did believe in some form of the existence of God. Kant was
dismayed with the intellectual propositions of the philosopher David Hume, whose
philosophy, like Kant's, promoted intellectual autonomy apart from any type of
authoritative revelation. However, it was Hume's empiricism (the belief that everything is
reduced to sense experience), skeptical as it was, that could not "prove any propositions
concerning physical causes, moral values, God, human freedom, or the human self."[26]
Kant once stated, "Hume interrupted my dogmatic slumber." He dismissed Hume's'
empiricism[27] and adopted what he called the "transcendental method." By this Kant
means
To isolate the factors that make possible the kind of sense perception we as human beings
are subject to. It is concerned, to put it a little more technically, with the analysis of the
condition (or preconditions) presupposed by knowledge. It is a method of investigation
that starts with some facts about our experience and then asks: What are the conditions
that make this fact possible, that explain this fact?[28]
Kant argued that human thought was incapable of knowing the "real" world-things as
they really are. When we look at an object, such as a table, we will agree that the object
under examination is a table. Kant would say "all knowledge that is concerned, not with
objects, but with the way in which a knowledge of objects may be gained, so far as that is
possible a priori. "[29] In other words, how and why do we call the table a table? The
only way, according to Kant, of achieving a dependable knowledge of our own
experience is by asking the question, "What are the conditions that make thought
possible?" Van Til and Lewis would agree with Kant,[30] however, both Van Til and
Lewis' "dogmas of the faith provide the necessary preconditions of intelligibility and
meaning."[31]
Cornelius Van Til, theologian and philosopher who studied at Princeton University in the
1920s, advocated a type of transcendental method that was strictly Christian. Although
Van Til uses Kant's idea, Van Til's conclusion was radically different because of his
Christ-centered thinking. Van Til saw the transcendental principle as not mere fact, but
an argument for the existence of God based upon presupposing his existence.[32] "The
argument is `transcendental,' even presuppositional in a sense."[33] Van Til and Kant are
both asking: "What are the assumptions necessary for life and knowledge to be
possible?"[34] Presupposing the existence of God, Van Til believes is the only way we
can prove anything at all; he states:
that we argue, therefore, by presupposition. The Christian, as did Tertullian, must contest
the very principles of his opponent's position. The only proof of the Christian position is
that unless its truth is presupposed there is no possibility of proving anything at all. The
actual state of affairs as preached by Christianity is the necessary foundation of proof
itself.[35]
We understand reality through the use of knowledge, and we understand knowledge
because we must posit a transcendent God "from whom we receive a transcendent
standard to judge and understand human temporal experience."[36] The transcendental
argument examines any fact of experience and seeks to determine what the
presuppositions of such a fact are. This process, called transcendental argument
(thinking), finds what makes the fact what it is. "Thus the transcendental argument seeks
to discover what sort of foundations the house of human knowledge must have, in order
to be what it is. It does not seek to find whether the house has a foundation, but
presupposes that it has one."[37]
Why is the "transcendental argument" important to the Christian? With transcendental
reasoning, one's thought will be forced to worldview considerations.
A person's worldview stipulates how the world ought to be in relation to politics,
education, family, arts, environmental concerns, and religion just to name a few.[38] The
"transcendental argument" forces a person's worldview to consider the preconditions for a
particular worldview. A worldview is the way we look at the world, and a person's
worldview (in order to be consistent) must ask tough philosophical questions, as well as,
be prepared and ready to answer tough philosophical questions. How we know what we
know; how we live our lives in conjunction to our experiences, and how we make these
questions intelligibly? "For Christians, the ultimate criterion by which we judge our
worldview is the Bible. It is God's revelation of reality. Paul tells Timothy that the
Scriptures have a purpose; they are to teach, reprove and correct us, and to train us in
righteousness so that we may be equipped for a life of good work (2 Tim 3.17-17) As our
worldview is informed, corrected and shaped by the Scriptures under the guidance of the
[Holy] Spirit, we will receive direction for our way of life."[39] We can see how the
transcendental argument leads to worldview considerations because the existence of God
is true and provable.
First, the unbeliever opposes the Christian faith, not in tiny abstract sediments of thought
nor piecemeal criticisms. The unbeliever attacks the Christian worldview "at its
foundation. The particular criticisms utilized by the unbeliever rest upon basic, key
assumptions which unify and inform his thinking."[40] John Cage, a well known
philosopher, musician,[41] and amateur mushroom-grower, cannot live consistently
within his worldview of chance and randomness.[42] Cage, in order to stay alive, has to
accept some form of order when picking mushrooms to eat from his garden. Mushrooms
can poison you and may cause death. In a chance universe, they would not, because
nothing would exist. Cage cannot live consistently within his worldview without
borrowing from the Christian worldview which proclaims absolute truth. In order for him
not to grow poisonous mushrooms and eat them, he must presuppose the Christian
worldview. C.S. Lewis offers a penetrating insight for the Christian worldview to critique
the chance universe Cage proclaims. Lewis expresses:
It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality;
that, in this particular case, there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of
men's behaviour, and yet quite definitely real-a real law, which none of us made, but
which we find pressing on us . . . a real law which we did not invent and which we know
we ought to obey.[43]
The chance worldview John Cage adheres to will not display order in the universe or
absolute truth, however, in the depth of his heart, conscience tells him something
different. It tells him there is order in the universe and that poisonous mushrooms can kill
you if ingested into the body. Cage simple borrows worldview considerations[44] from
the Christian to justify that he is living in a chance universe which is impossible. The
apostle Paul writes with authority: "For although they knew God, they neither glorified
him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish
hearts were darkened" (Rom 1.21). The only reason Cage can borrow from the Christian
worldview is God has revealed Himself to every man (creational revelation). Man simply
chooses to suppress the transcendent omnipotent God who has revealed Himself against
all the godlessness and wickedness of man (Rom 1.18). It can be clearly shown that a
worldview presupposing a chance universe is allergic to worldview considerations. As
shown, man cannot be homo autonomous nor can he be nomos autos, because "Modern
[Worldly] philosophy is allergic to worldview considerations. Modern philosophy (nonChristian worldviews) is very narrow and transcendental reasoning gives a broad
framework"[45] in refuting the unbeliever's claims against the objectively true and
provable God which the Scriptures reveal.
Secondly, Lewis offers more helpful insight in The Problem Of Pain by using a
transcendental argument. Lewis believes that this awe to explain the Numinous[46] "is
not the result of an inference from the visible universe."[47] In agreement with Paul,
Lewis echoes the words of the apostle in agreeing to: "But a natural man does not accept
the things of the Spirit of God" (1 Cor 2.14). Had Lewis quoted this in such a way that we
can explain the Numinous from the visible universe, this would have been a direct
mischief into the sceptism of Hume's empiricism, therefore contrary to the teachings of
Scripture. In order for the Supernatural to be explained, Lewis says: "Most attempts to
explain the Numinous presuppose the thing to be explained."[48] As in the beauty of
something, Lewis says:
Just as no enumeration of the physical qualities of a beautiful object could ever include
its beauty, or give the faintest hint of what we mean by beauty to a creature without
aesthetic[49] experience, so no factual description of any human environment could
include the uncanny and the Numinous or even hint at them.[50]
Thirdly, just as something that illustrates beauty, a sermon may have the same type of
aesthetic aspect as in a beautiful painting or a beautiful woman. However, just as the
beauty in a painting or a woman may so be determined, this opinion does not come from
the finite temporal mind of man,[51] but is given by God. "A sermon, for example, has an
aesthetic aspect but it must not be primarily evaluated according to norms of aesthetics. It
must be judged primarily by the Holy Scripture, the norm of faith,"[52] which is the
foundation for judging something valid or invalid; beautiful or unattractive.
Van Til was well known for presenting his "two circle diagram" which signifies that the
theist recognizes in his worldview a Creator/creature distinction. Van Til insisted
"Christianity has a `two-circle' worldview, as opposed to secular thought, which has only
`one-circle' thinking."[53] Van Til is showing that reality as a whole consists of the
Creator (the ultimate starting point) and creation (the actual derivative from the starting
point). Lewis as well recognized that the metaphysical makeup of the universe has a
reality which is made up of two levels. Lewis said: "I think Kant is at the root of it." Both
Van Til and Lewis used Kant's transcendental method in which to understand the
universe and its disposition. In an unbelievers' worldview, the one circle of reality is
limited to the material or temporal observation in seeking out the preconditions of any
fact. Lewis states:
We are prepared to believe either in a reality with one floor or in a reality with two floors,
but not in a reality like a skyscraper with several floors. 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.[54]
It is pressing to note that Lewis' concept as stated above is not proving something is
transcendent or that there is something out there, he specifically recognizes that there is
reality with a ground floor (creation) 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 . . . Most certainly, beyond all worlds, unconditioned and unimaginable,
transcending discursive thought, there yawns for ever the ultimate Fact, the fountain of
all other facthood, the burning and undimensioned depth of the Divine Life . . . it is rather
in Him that all places exist.[55]
Another example of how Lewis uses the "transcendental argument" is by the following
example. Lewis says that the whole of Christian theology could be deduced by two facts:
"(a) That men make coarse jokes, and (b) That they feel the dead to be uncanny."[56]
Regarding the coarse joke, men either find these funny or they object to them. Why must
an unbeliever object to a crude joke or find it tickling him or shocking to his insides?
This "shock" and "laughter" cannot be a part of the one floor of reality; this one floor of
reality cannot explain or make intelligible these types of experiences. This "shock" and
"laughter" rings outside the Naturalists (unbelievers) worldview. Using facets of a
transcendental argument, Lewis says:
It is very difficult to imagine such a state of affairs as oringinal-to suppose a creature
which from the very first was halfshocked and half tickled to death at the mere fact of
being the creature it is . . . The explanations which Naturalism gives both of bodily shame
and of our feeling about the dead are not satisfactory. It refers us to primitive taboos and
superstitions-as if these themselves were not obviously results of the thing to be
explained. But once accept the Christian doctrine that man was originally a unity and that
the present division is unnatural, and all the phenomena fall into place.
Summary of the Transcendental Argument
The book of Proverbs instructs us, in defending our faith against the unbeliever.
Christians must "Not answer a fool according to his folly, Lest you also be like him.
Answer a fool as his folly deserves, Lest he be wise in his own eyes" (Proverbs 26.4-5).
An unbeliever, upon his autonomous presuppositions, will deny the existence of God.
Lewis' atheism led him to say, "My argument against God was that the universe seemed
so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust?"[57] The unbeliever's
worldview cannot, according to his own folly, make intelligible choices or sense out of
the universe without borrowing from the Christian worldview. Many unbelievers think
the universe is unjust. Thinking like fools (Ps. 14.1), the unbeliever, upon this
presupposition warrants a valid argument for the non-existence of God. The nonbeliever
cannot see this universe as unjust unless they deny the laws of logic. In order to do so,
one must affirm the laws of logic to deny the laws of logic. This type of thinking is
wishful thinking upon the nonbeliever's worldview.
What has been simply pointed out is the "transcendental argument" does not look away
from objects or facts; it explores the realms of its depths, discerning what lies behind the
fact to make it an interpreted intelligible fact. This argument establishes the very
possibility of anything existing at all. Van Til says:
Therefore the claim must be made that Christianity alone is reasonable for men to hold.
And it is utterly reasonable. It is wholly irrational to hold to any other position than that
of Christianity. Christianity alone does not crucify reason itself . . . The best, the only, the
absolutely certain proof of the truth of Christianity is that unless its truth be presupposed
there is no proof of anything. Christianity is proved as being the very foundation of the
idea of proof itself.[58]
The transcendental argument Lewis uses involves three different facets.[59] Arguments
from epistemology, morality, and mythology are three of Lewis' arguments for the
defense of Christianity which have a "transcendental countenance." The following
chapters will examine these areas.
Transcendental Arguments from Epistemology
Epistemological arguments start with the phenomenon of human rationality and studies
the nature and basis of experience; it asks what we know and how we know it. The only
reason we know anything at all, as Proverbs 1.7 says, "The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of all knowledge." The non-believer uses reasoning skills; that is not in debate,
and the only way the non-believer reasons is he borrows from the Christian worldview.
Since Christians believe that God is the creator of the universe; the only way things can
be known is by presupposing the existence of God. The non-believer cannot give an
account for the preconditions necessary to make use of logic, reason, learning, certainty,
and truth. The Christian worldview demonstrates the foolish rationality of the nonbeliever by showing the non-believers system of thought is arbitrary, inconsistent with
itself and lacking the preconditions for the intelligibility of knowledge. By showing the
non-believer this, the Christian shows how the non-Christian worldview has to assume
the Christian worldview in order to deny it. We have to agree that both the believer and
non-believer are made in the image of God, however, "Metaphysically, both parties have
all things in common, while epistemologically they have nothing in common."[60] What
this means is simply the Christian and the non-Christian have opposing philosophies and
how one comes to know anything is contrary to one another.
Epistemology has a transcendental necessity because how we come into knowing
anything must presuppose the fear of the Lord. The believer does so through obedience to
Christ; the non-believer does so by suppressing the sovereign Lord and borrowing from
the Christian worldview.
C.S. Lewis believes the Naturalist[61] system of thought contradicts itself. In fact, he
devotes a whole chapter in his book Miracles titled, `The Self-Contradiction of the
Naturalist.'
Lewis demands for naturalism to explain every finite thing or event.[62] He defines
Naturalism as "the doctrine that only Nature- the whole interlocked system-exists."[63]
Therefore the Naturalist believes that everything in the universe is one thing with no God
or gods. This type of thinking creates a contradiction in the thinking of the Naturalist.
The Naturalist believes the make-up of the universe to be of irrational causes, however, a
naturalist will ask `why' apart from what `is.' Lewis finds that when a Naturalist is
confronted with an irrational cause, he will choose the rational. He says,
When a sober man tells you that the house is full of rats or snakes, you attend to him: if
you know that his belief in the rats and snakes is due to delirium tremens you do not even
bother to look for them.[64]
But why should the Naturalist think any differently? If the mind is irrational and only a
product of the natural system, how can it be that the Naturalist does not believe the man
suffering from DT's, and yet believes the sober man? The Naturalist contradicts himself
by choosing to believe the sober man, because the sober man's reasoning has values. The
Naturalist believes the universe is irrational, but he knows better than to trust thoughts
produced by alcohol or lunacy. Lewis says: "The Naturalist cannot condemn other
people's thoughts because they have irrational causes and continue to believe his own
which have (if Naturalism is true) equally irrational causes." A Naturalist claims to know
no truth, but undermines his own claim by this very assertion. How can the Naturalist
claim to know anything "truthfully" if there is no truth? Lewis says, "You can argue with
a man who says, `Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man
who says, `Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true.' "[65]
Lewis saw how the Naturalist's arguments fall short in asking questions about the makeup
of the universe. If a Naturalist asks the question, "why"? then he is measuring what "is"
by a standard independent of what "is."[66] In Miracles, Lewis uses the transcendental
argument showing how the Naturalist falls short in answering the question Dr. Greg
Bahnsen was known to ask: "What are the preconditions of the intelligibility of human
experience?"[67] Lewis portrays how the Naturalists neglect the preconditions of using
reason:
All these instances show that the fact which is in one respect the most obvious and
primary fact, and through which alone you have access to all the other facts, may be
precisely the one that is most easily forgotten-forgotten not because it is so remote or
abstruse but because it is so near and so obvious. And that is exactly how the
Supernatural has been forgotten. The Naturalists have been engaged in thinking about
Nature. They have not attended to the fact that they were thinking. The moment one
attends to this it is obvious that one's own thinking cannot be merely a natural event, and
that therefore something other than Nature exists.[68]
Naturalists can think and use reason; this is not in question here. What Lewis is arguing is
`window thinking.' I have coined this term stemming from his analysis of a person
concentrating and identifying a particular object. The object in view for a Naturalist "is to
ignore the fact of your own thinking, and concentrate on the object."[69] Lewis goes on
to say,
In the same way the proper procedure for all limited and particular inquires is to ignore
the fact of your own thinking, and concentrate on the object. It is only when you stand
back from particular inquiries and try to form a complete philosophy that you must take it
into account. For a complete philosophy must get in all the facts. In it you turn away from
specialized or truncated thought to total thought: and one of the facts total thought must
think about is Thinking itself . . . It is therefore not in the least astonishing that they
should have forgotten the evidence for the Supernatural.[70]
Lewis argues that since the Sixteenth Century, when Empiricism came to power, men
have focused on mastering nature in order to know nature. Lewis believes, because of
Empiricism, truncated thought was the master of these men. Truncated thought is the
"scientific" habit of the mind- this would lead a person to Naturalism because this
tendency towards truncated thought was "metaphysically and theologically
uneducated."[71]
The inconsistency of the Naturalist worldview as stated above cannot give an account for
the use of reason, explanation, interpretation, certainty, and the intelligibility of anything
without borrowing from the Christian worldview. The Naturalist will deny borrowing
from the Christian worldview, however, the Scriptures teaches, "All wisdom and
knowledge are hid in Christ" (Col 2.3-8). At this point, the non-believer's choices are
either "to acknowledge the truth revealed by God's word (and repent of his sins, including
intellectual autonomy) or to reject rationality itself." If the Naturalist rejects rationality,
what will he use to reject it? It is obvious that epistemology has a "transcendental" facet
since it seeks to ask, how we know and what we know, beyond the natural world.
Transcendental Argument from Morality
John Frame says: "Moral values, after all, are rather strange. We cannot see them, or feel
them, but we cannot doubt that they exist."[72] We all know morals exist because we all
either help someone in time of need or we acknowledge when harm is done to a certain
group of people or individual. What `is' and what `ought' to be are categorically different
ways to look at morality. For example, a tow truck driver who dents the front of a
customer's car may not say anything to the customer because he believes waking up at
three in the morning to tow this person's car is a favor. However, I'm sure the customer,
whose front end is now dented, would see it differently. The tow truck driver will prosper
if he hides the damage to the vehicle, whereas the customer who has done nothing
morally wrong gets the raw end of the deal. The Psalmist is right when he says the
wicked sometime prosper and the righteous sometimes die penniless. The tow truck
driver is bringing good consequences to the stranded motorist; however, the tow truck
driver has performed an act that is morally not good. He dented the front end of the
stranded motorist and has neglected to tell him.
Some would say that moral values are subjective and therefore left to individuals. To the
Naturalist, values are random and are collisions of subatomic particles. Moral laws must
be either personal or impersonal. The Naturalist assumes they are relative. But where do
these moral principles come from? How can an impersonal moral law make us obligated?
Lewis again offers insight and arguments for a personal God who is responsible for moral
values.
In addition to using logic and making decisions that affect our lives, we also make moral
judgments. What Lewis raises is a fundamental question about morality and why we
choose to make moral decisions. There are two distinct entities which make up morality:
good and evil. We reason about matters of fact; "men also make moral judgments --'I
ought to do this'-- `I ought not to do that.' " Lewis believes that moral decisions are
rationally perceived.[73] Since our epistemology has a transcendental aspect, Lewis is
consistent with his view of morals being rationally perceived. It is somewhat the same as
the trickle down effect in former President Ronald Reagan's idea about economics. There
is a relation between epistemology and morals; because, how we come to know
something has a transcendental foundation and how we make moral decisions is based
upon our epistemology.
If the ought and ought not (morals) can be explained by Naturalism, then the ideas of
ought and ought not are illusions.[74] Lewis argues that these concepts cannot be
explained by irrational and non-moral causes.[75] If morals are simply chemical
conditions and random collisions of protons and neutrons, by what standard can the
Naturalist argue that natural disasters, children dying, victims of cancer, and ten million
Ukrainians slaughtered in World War II are acts of immorality? The Christian can argue
and prove that the way things `ought to be' are because paradise has been lost. Can a
Naturalist live consistently with his premises? No, he cannot. Is the killing of 6 million
Jews in Germany morally wrong? In a Naturalist worldview this act would be part of
chemical conditions and random acts of chance of particles that make up our universe.
The Naturalist cannot live by "To hell with your standard."[76] The Naturalists' therefore
must borrow from the Christian worldview due to their inconsistencies within the whole
system of thought contained in their worldview. Commons grace makes it possible for the
Naturalist to condemn Hitler's Germany and also contribute to the field of science,
writing, and inventing (Matt. 5.45; Acts 17.25-26; 2 Thess. 2.6-7). Van Til says: "Every
man can contribute to the progress of science. Every man must contribute to it. It is his
task to do so. And he cannot help but fulfill his task even if it be against his will . . . [but]
Only on the basis of the work of Christ, then, does the unity of science actually exist and
will it be actually consummated."[77]
As humans, we are subject to certain non-negotiable laws such as the laws of gravitation
and biology. These types of laws we share with animals, but Lewis indicates there are
laws that apply to us and not to other things. Lewis says, "but the law which is peculiar to
his human nature, the law he does not share with animals or vegetables or inorganic
things, is the one he can disobey if he chooses."[78] The tow truck driver mentioned
earlier would have been upset had the customer dented the hood of the tow truck;
however, the tow truck driver could care less about the customer's hood. The conclusion
must be that the tow truck driver does not believe in a real right and wrong until this right
and wrong puts him in the center. Lewis concludes:
Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you
will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to
you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining `Its not fair' before you
can say Jack Robinson. . . . that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea
that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that
they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it.
These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe
we live in.[79]
Morals work both ways, even to those who deny them. This puts the Naturalist in a
position where he, whether he knows it or not,[80] operates by moral choices. Here again,
the Naturalist has been exposed of his foolish thinking about asking `why?' As explained,
the question, "why?" is a powerful witness for the existence of the God dictated in the
infallible Scriptures.[81]
Transcendental Argument from Myth
Before myth[82] became fact for Lewis, he underwent numerous long night talks with
J.R. Tolkien and H.D. Dyson, friends of Lewis' from undergraduate days. He also had in
depth conversations with Owen Barfield who had "shown Lewis that Myth has a central
place in the whole of language and literature."[83] Lewis once referred to myths as "lies
and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver."[84] For Lewis, myth at
this time in his life was simply a mirage and this myth, beautiful as it may be, is just lies.
Until Tolkien convinced Lewis that myths held truth (that, indeed, the Gospel was the
grandest of myths, yet rooted in historical truth) Lewis rejected both gospel and myth.
Lewis understood the power of myth but could not bring himself to believe that myths
held any truth. Tolkien explained to Lewis that myths were not lies. Tolkien proved to
Lewis that man was not ultimately a liar, but that, man perverted his thoughts into lies.
Tolkien believed that man's ultimate ideals come from God because man comes from
God. Tolkien continued to explain to Lewis that not only do our abstract thoughts come
from God "but also our imaginative inventions must originate with God, and must in
consequence reflect something of eternal truth."[85] Tolkien says: "Fantasy remains a
human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made:
and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker."[86] Tolkien
explained to Lewis that fairy stories and myths, although created in our minds, actually
reflected a fragment of true light. Tolkien went on to say that pagan myths "are therefore
never just `lies': there is always something of the truth in them."[87]
Tolkien presented his argument to Lewis compellingly:
`Dear Sir,' I said- `Although now long estranged, Man is not wholly lost nor wholly
changed. Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned, and keeps the rags of lordship once
he owned: Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light through whom is splintered from a
single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from
mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins,
though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed
of dragons-'twas our right (used or misused). That right has not decayed: we make still by
the law in which we're made.[88]
Tolkien continued over a period of time to convince Lewis that myths have truth
contained in them. Lewis was unsure how the death and resurrection of Christ could have
saved the world. Tolkien had been explaining earlier how myths were "God expressing
himself through the minds of poets, and using the images of their `mythopoeia' to express
fragments of his eternal truth."[89] Tolkien proceeded in telling Lewis how Christianity
was a myth but different because God invented it with actual history and the people were
real. Lewis responded: "You mean," asked Lewis, "that the story of Christ is simply a
true myth, a myth that works on us in the same way as the others, but a myth that really
happened? In that case, he said, I begin to understand."[90] Tolkien had explained to
Lewis how there was actually a real dying God with a precise point in history with
historical consequences.[91]
Lewis was fond of myths and never questioned the story behind the Balder and Adonis
myths or any other myth that portrayed a dying God. Tolkien challenged Lewis' position
about myth and drove him back to his presuppositions (Lewis' belief that myth was
`breathed through silver'). While Lewis appreciated myth and the stories portrayed in
them, he had failed to stop and think about his thinking. Lewis assumed that "myths were
lies" but never thought about how they could be true coming from a Naturalist worldview
he once believed.
Twelve days after Lewis had talked with Tolkien concerning Christianity and myth, he
wrote to Arthur Greeves saying: "I have just passed on from believing in God to
definitely believing in Christ-in Christianity. I will try to explain this another time. My
long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it."[92] Lewis
eventually understood Tolkien's argument about myth being true and beyond our
experience. Already fond of myths, Lewis now defended them as conveyers of something
that is true but yet beyond reason. William Van Gemeren says:
Mythology supplies an interpretation of human experience and custom. It is more
comprehensive framework within which individuals and society understand themselves
and in terms of which they explain all that is beyond rational explanation.[93]
Myth has a transcendental facet because myth goes beyond the natural world to explain
truths and reality. By transcendental,
We understand that which-enclosed in cosmic time-is a necessary prerequisite for
temporal existence, to make possible the concrete reality. Transcendental does not itself
belong to concrete things, but it belongs to what is general and what exceeds the variable
individuality of things . . . It refers to what is at the foundation of reality as the necessary
prerequisite of temporal experience.[94]
Lewis said "myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with that
vast continent we really belong to . . . Now as myth transcends thought, Incarnation
transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact."[95] He says in
An Experiment in Criticism, "Myth is always, in one sense of that word, `fantastic.' It
deals with impossibles and preternaturals."[96] Lewis recognizes in order to understand
the Gospel message, one must transcend his thinking and go beyond the natural world for
this Dying God myth to be real.
In The Pilgrim's Regress, Lewis writes about how our imagination can lead to the truth
about God:
But then another voice spoke to him from behind him, saying: `Child, if you will, it is
mythology. It is but truth, not fact: an image, not the very real. But then it is My
mythology. . . This is my Inventing, this is the veil under which I have chosen to appear
even from the first until now. For this end I made your senses and for this end your
imagination, that you might see my face and live.[97]
We see how the use of myths offer glimpses into a less tainted world than the one now
called earth, the fallen and `bent' world. The better world according to Lewis is "Deep
Heaven" and "But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. "[98] Lewis
stresses here that reality is not something of the natural mind, the state of it, but Heaven
is what makes reality. "God the trumpeter, Myth the trumpet, Joy the tune."[99]
We have seen how Lewis has portrayed myth and how it seeks to go beyond our
experiences. On October 24, 1931, Jack wrote a letter to his brother Warnie about the
idea of God. He wrote: "...it is arguable that the `idea of God' in some minds, does
contain, not a mere abstract definition, but a real imaginative perception of goodness and
beauty beyond their own resources."[100] Our faith in God does not rely upon a mere
abstract thought, but we must realize that our faith "is not one of the many functions of
man like feeling, thinking or love, but it lies on a deeper level. Faith belongs to the
transcendent dimension."[101]
Summary
The primary goal of this study has been to examine, understand and develop a cognitive
synthesis of the "transcendental argument" and examples used by C.S. Lewis.
Understanding of this specific type of argument for the existence of God does not come
easy for some and will not come to those without the saving grace and knowledge of
Jesus Christ. First of all, it is logical to conclude that an unbeliever cannot and will not
defend the existence of the Christian God, since it is man's internal nature to resist the
things which are righteous and good (Romans 3.9-20).
The Reformed Christian must understand and bear in mind that the existence of God is
true and provable, because without God nothing could be proven. The ontological being
of God does not rest upon the assumption of man, God exists without man caring to know
or wanting to know. The Christian can prove His existence by presupposing His truth
only by the working of the Holy Spirit; which, presses upon man to repent and come to
the saving grace of Jesus Christ. This is the heart of the transcendental argument.
In order to understand reality, reality must have a transcendental aspect or we cannot
understand anything at all. Lewis said, "But human reason cannot be explained by
rational or naturalistic causes; rather, it must come from a self-existent reason, a
supernatural reality that can be called God."[102] To understand this universe and all that
is contained within it, man must think beyond, into the realms of philosophy and
theology.
What has been the purpose of studying philosophy and theology within the contours of
C.S. Lewis? Do we simply read Lewis because we are required to do the assignments?
No! We read and study for the glory of God. The life of faith is an ongoing sanctification
and learning more about the God we serve is our obedience to him. "Christian Education,
simply defined, is the ministry of bringing the believer to maturity in Jesus Christ."[103]
Paul says the Christian must have his/her mind renewed (Rom. 12.2). By understanding
the transcendental argument and the epistemological, moral, and myth facets Lewis uses
enables Christians' to share with unbelievers a defense of our faith with certainty that an
omnipotent sovereign God exists. Reading and studying Lewis is one way of having our
minds renewed and living out this call to sanctification.
Endnotes
[1]Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (New York: Ballantine Books, 1962), 20-21.
Burgess said this about Lewis: "Lewis is the ideal persuader for the half-convinced, for
the good man who would like to be a Christian but finds his intellect getting in the way."
[2] People
[3] Romans 1:25
[4] C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company,
1947), p. 35.
[5] For an excellent example of this, look at Peter Kreeft, Ecumenical Jihad: Ecumenism
And The Culture War (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), p. 15.
[6] 2 Corinthians 10.5
[7] Williams role in Lewis' life during World War II was like a `spell' according to J.R.R.
Tolkien. He was admitted into the literary circle that surrounded Lewis. Williams' novel
The Place of the Lion influenced Lewis immensely. Lewis' That Hideous Strength, The
Great Divorce, Till We Have Faces, and The Four Loves echoes Williams' influence
upon Lewis.
[8] Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1979), p.
57.
[9] R.L. Sturch, "Clive Staples Lewis," in New Dictionary of Theology , eds. Sinclair B.
Ferguson, David F. Wright, and J.I. Packer. (Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1988), p. 383.
[10]C.S. Lewis, Miracles. (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1978), p. 154.
[11] Rebecca Pippert, Out Of The Saltshaker and Into The World. (Illinois: Intervarsity
Press, 1979), p. 154.
[12] Ken Garfield, "Showing People Heaven," The Charlotte Observer , 14 June 1997,
sec. G, p. 1.
[13] Abraham Kuyper, His Decease at Jerusalem. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1946), p.
36.
[14] What I mean by saying this is by simple restating Pippert's claim that ultimately
there is no proof for any proposition. If that's the case, I do not exist, therefore I ain't
using the word ain't in this sentence nor has anyone else in this world. Yes, ultimately I
declare Pippert as a genuine skeptic in her writings, not her heart which I believe belongs
to Jesus.
[15] "The Great Debate?" The Great Debate: Does God Exist? Greg Bahnsen and Gordon
Stein. Audio cassette. 1985.
[16] Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1985),
p. 44.
[17] "Four Types of Proof." Transcendental Arguments: Nuclear Strength Apologetics.
by Greg Bahnsen. Audio cassette. 1995.
[18] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, rev.4th ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1939/1941), p. 58-59.
[19] William Hasker, Metaphysics: Constructing a Worldview (Illinois: Intervarsity
Press, 1983), p. 105.
[20] Christian theism.
[21] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1952), p. 52, 54.
[22] Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reason within the Bounds of Religion (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans Publishing,1993), p. 67.
[23] Abraham Kuyper, Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology: Its Principles (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1898), pp. 152,154.
[24] That which lies in and behind concrete things.
[25] S. Morris Engel, The Study of Philosophy (San Diego: Collegiate Press, 1990), p.
171.
[26] John Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God (New Jersey: Presbyterian and
Reformed Publishing, 1994), p. 70.
[27] Even Bertrand Russell observes that "Hume's philosophy, whether true or false,
represents the bankruptcy of eighteenth-century reasonableness." Colin M. Brown,
Philosophy and The Christian Faith. (Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1968), p. 70.
[28] Engel, 325-326.
[29] Engel, 326.
[30] Gordon Spykman, Dutch-American Theologian, agrees that Kant was the great
mastermind of the Enlightment and in him, we all walk in his shadow. "Thus in one fell
swoop Kant, while drawing on more than a millennium of Western Christian theology,
radically overthrew it. He exploded the idea of natural theology, of philosophy providing
a rational foundation for theology, of faith supported by reason, and of reasoned
Prolegomena as introduction to dogmatics. In the process Kant swept aside and
thoroughly discredited the classic rational proofs for the existence of God as
philosophical underpinnings for Christian theology." Gordon Spykman, Reformational
Theology: A New Paradigm for Doing Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing,
1992), p. 30.
[31] Greg Bahnsen, Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith (Texarkana:
Covenant Media Foundation, 1996), p. 75.
[32] Frame, 70. Also see John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (New
Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1987), p. 175.
[33] John Frame, Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought (New Jersey:
Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1995), p. 418.
[34] Ibid., p. 418.
[35] E.R. Geehan, eds. Jerusalem and Athens: Critical Discussions On The Philosophy
And Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til (New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1980),
p. 21. See also online http://reformed.org/apologetics/My Credo van til.html
[36] Stanley W. Bamberg, "Why Do We Ask Why," A forth coming article in The
Reformed Apologist On line Journal at www.Reformed .org
[37] Cornelius Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology (New Jersey: Presbyterian
and Reformed Publishing, 1978), p. 11.
[38] J. Richard Middleton and Brian J. Walsh, The Transforming Vision (Illinois:
Intervarsity Press, 1984), p. 32
[39] Ibid., p. 39.
[40] Greg Bahnsen, Always Ready: Directions For Defending The Faith. (Texarkana:
Covenant Media Foundation, 1996), p. 67.
[41] Robert Fripp, founder of the music group King Crimson (he is an excellent guitarist)
in the late 60's and early 70's has attempted to make music which seeks to prove chance
exist through music. Explore the King Crimson Web page and Robert Fripp's philosophy
of "Music from silence."
[42] John Frame, The Doctrine Of The Knowledge Of God. (New Jersey: Presbyterian
and Reformed Publishing, 1987), p. 150. "Rather, he [Cage] presupposes an order, a
world of law."
[43] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1984), p. 30-31.
[44] Considerations in the sense of ethics, morality, logic, and order in this universe that
he has to borrow from the Christian worldview to make rational and coherent judgments.
[45]"Four Types of Proof." Transcendental Arguments: Nuclear Strength Apologetics.
By Greg Bahnsen. Audio cassette. 1995.
[46] The feeling of dread, awe, and fascination which a person feels in the presence of the
Supernatural.
[47] C.S. Lewis, The Problem Of Pain. (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1986), p.19.
[48] Lewis, 20.
[49] This is in regard to an underlying principles which bring forth artistic sensibilities.
[50] Lewis, 20.
[51] Is. 3.18; Ps. 50.2
[52] J.M. Spier, An Introduction To Christian Philosophy. (New Jersey: The Craig Press,
1966), p. 94.
[53] John Frame, Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought (New Jersey:
Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1995), p. 53.
[54] C.S. Lewis, Miracles. (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1978), p. 154.
[55] Lewis, 154-155.
[56] ibid., 127.
[57] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1984), p. 45.
[58] Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and
Reformed Publishing, 1955), p. 396. Note: this is from the first edition.
[59] Lewis never used the term `transcendental argument', but he uses the meaning
behind this argument. Lewis clearly thought beyond the natural world.
[60] Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel (New Jersey: Presbyterian and
Reformed Publishing, 1977), p. 5.
[61] Naturalism: Matter exists and is all there is. God does not exist. The universe
assumes the position of God. Carl Sagan says, "The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or
ever will be." Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980), p. 4.
[62] C.S. Lewis, Miracles ( (New York: The Macmillan company, 1955), p. 23.
[63] Ibid., 23.
[64] Ibid., 27.
[65] Lewis, 31.
[66] Stanley W. Bamberg, "Why Do We Ask Why."
[67] This question is used by Greg Bahnsen in many of his books and debates he has
been involved with. For a stunning and thrilling example of Bahnsen's debating skills and
the use of transcendental arguments, you may purchase for $15 the Bahnsen/Stein debate
from Covenant Media Foundation. Call 1-800-553-3938.
[68] C.S. Lewis, Miracles (New York: The Macmillan company, 1955), p. 51.
[69] Ibid., 52.
[70] Ibid., 52.
[71] Lewis, 52.
[72] John Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God (New Jersey: Presbyterian and
Reformed, 1994), p. 93.
[73] C.S. Lewis, Miracles (New York: The Macmillan company, 1955), p. 43.
[74] Ibid., 44.
[75] C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company,
1947), p. 62.
[76] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1952),
p. 17.
[77] Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of The Faith (New Jersey: Presbyterian and
Reformed Publishing, 967), p. 154-155.
[78] Lewis., 18.
[79] Lewis, Mere Christianity p. 19, 21.
[80] This would refer back to epistemology.
[81]Stanley W. Bamberg, "Why Do We Ask Why."
[82] Lewis' view of myth and Rudolph Bultmann's view of myth are incongruous.
Bultmann wanted to demythologise Christian beliefs. Lewis held the position that in
order for the events in the Bible to be true they must be remythologised. Lewis criticizes
Bultmann's belief and calls it "uneducated" in Christian Reflections. Lewis believes that
Christianity has history and real consequences, Bultmann believes the contrary. "This
involves the belief that Myth in general is not merely misunderstood history (as
Euhemerus thought) nor diabolicalillusion (as some of the Fathers thought) nor priestly
lying (as the philosophers of the Enlightment thought) but, at its best, a real though
unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination. The Hebrews, like other
people, had mythology: but as they were the chosen people so their mythology was the
chosen mythology" (Miracles, p. 134).
[83] Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1979), p.
41.
[84] Ibid., 43.
[85] Ibid., 43.
[86] C.S. Lewis, eds. Essays Presented to Charles Williams (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans
Publishing, 1974), p. 72
[87] Carpenter, 43.
[88] C.S. Lewis,eds. p. 71-72.
[89] Carpenter, p. 44.
[90] Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977), p. 148.
[91] Carpenter, p. 44.
[92] Carpenter, p. 148.
[93] Willem Van Gemeren, Interpreting the Prophetic Word (Grand Rapids: Zondervan
Publishing House, 1990), p. 21.
[94] J.M. Spier, An Introduction To Christian Philosophy Trans. by David Freeman,
(New Jersey: The Craig Press, 1966), p. 58.
[95] C.S. Lewis, God In The Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company,
1970), p. 66.
[96] C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988), p. 44.
[97] C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1996), p.
169.
[98] C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1946),
p. 69.
[99] This is from a revised version of material originally presented on April 10, 1995, to
the class on `the Theology of C.S. Lewis." Lectured on the campus of Reformed
Theological Seminary Jackson, Mississippi. By Dr. Chamblin.
[100] W.H. Lewis, eds. Letters of C.S. Lewis (New York: Harvest Books, 1966), p. 144.
[101] Spier, 268.
[102] George Sayer, Jack: C.S. Lewis And His Times (San Francisco: Harper and Row
Publishers, 1988), p. 186.
[103] Perry G. Downs, Teaching for Spiritual Growth. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan
Publishing House,1994), p. 16.
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Tommy Allen is a graduate of Montreat College currently pursuing a M.Div. at Reformed
Theological Seminary , Jackson.