God in the Dock, by C. S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper#

One of the essays is about dogma and naturalism:#

It is a common reproach against Christianity that its dogmas are unchanging, while human knowledge is in continual growth. Hence, to unbelievers, we seem to be always engaged in the hopeless task of trying to force the new knowledge into moulds which it has outgrown. I think this feeling alienates the outsider much more than any particular discrepancies between this or that doctrine and this or that scientific theory. We may, as we say, `get over' dozens of isolated `difficulties', but that does not alter his sense that the endeavour as a whole is doomed to failure and perverse: indeed, the more ingenious, the more perverse. For it seems to him clear that, if our ancestors had known what we know about the universe, Christianity would never have existed at all: and, however we patch and mend, no system of thought which claims to be immutable can, in the long run, adjust itself to our growing knowledge. [p. 38]

Lewis responds to another's opinion which is summarized thus:#

My friend Corineus has advanced the charge that none of us are in fact Christians at all. According to him historic Christianity is something so barbarous that no modern man can really believe it: the moderns who claim to do so are in fact believing a modern system of thought which retains the vocabulary of Christianity and exploits the emotions inherited from it while quietly dropping its essential doctrines. [p. 63]

Note that the purpose of this argument is that therefore it should be abolished, not that historic Christianity should be restored.

Let's consider Lewis's view of Christianity:#

We are to defend Christianity itself---the faith preached by the Apostles, attested by the Martyrs, embodied in the Creeds, expounded by the Fathers. [p. 90]

Notice he does not say the truth or what was testified by Christ, God the Father, or continually by the Holy Ghost.

On old books:#

If one has to chose between reading the new books and reading the old, one must choose the old: not because they are necessarily better but because they contain precisely those truths of which our own age is neglectful. [p. 92]

This mistaken preference for the modern books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology. Wherever you find a little study circle of Christian laity you can be almost certain that they are studying not St Luke or St Paul or St Augustine or Thomas Aquinas [curiously, a Saint at the time] or Hooker or Butler, but M. Berdyaev or M. Maritain or Mr Niebuhr or Miss Sayers or even myself. [p. 201]

Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them. [p. 202]

Quotes:#

All that is not eternal is eternally out of date. [p. 10]

I was a professional literary critic and I thought [...] that the Gospels were certainly not legends (in one sense they're not good enough) [p. 101]

Men fail so often to repent their real sins that the occasional repentance of an imaginary sin might appear almost desirable. [p. 189]

On cause mieux quand on ne dit pas Causons. [p. 280]

The World's Last Night, by C. S. Lewis, is a collection of essays on Christianity.#

In On Obstinacy in Belief, Lewis draws a parallel between belief in God and a child's belief in the seemingly wrong advice of parents and adults that things that hurt or seem bad are actually good for them.#

No one blames us for demanding such faith. No one blames them for giving it. No one says afterwards what an unintelligent dog or child or boy that must have been to trust us. If the young mountaineer were a scientist, it would not be held against him, when he came up for a fellowship, that he had once departed from Clifford's rule of evidence by entertaining a belief with strength greater than the evidence logically obliged him to. [p. 24]

In Lilies That Fester, Lewis discusses the problem of elevating culture and mandating appreciation of art among school children.#

The boy will not get good marks (which means, in the long run, that he will not get into the Managerial Class) unless he produces the kind of response, and the kind of analytic method, which commend themselves to his teacher. This means at best that he is trained to the precocious anticipation of responses, and of a method, inappropriate to his years. At worst it means that he is trained in the (not very difficult) art of simulating the orthodox response. [p. 44]

Good Work and Good Works discusses the importance of work that serves a purpose, and contains this gem:#

As "giving employment" becomes more important than making things men need or like, there is a tendency to regard every trade as something that exist chiefly for the sake of those who practise it. The smith does not work in order that the warriors may fight; the warriors exist and fight in order that the smith may be kept busy. The bard does not exist in order to delight the tribe; the tribe exists in order to appreciated the bard. [p. 79]

Present Concerns, by C. S. Lewis, is yet another collection of essays by my man CSL.#

From Equality:#

I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from te ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserves a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they're not true. And whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure. [...] The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters. [p. 17]

In Modern Man and his Categories of Thought, he says that "in our student population [there is] a lowering of metaphysical energy" (p. 63), because there is too much mixed company of males and females; with the men always showing off and the females uninterested in metaphysics.#

On Living in an Atomic Age is amazing. Stuart Buck has a nice quote.#

Of Other Worlds, by C. S. Lewis, is a collection of essays on fiction writing and a few before unpublished stories.#

A cute quote from On Three Ways of Writing for Children:#

I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children's story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children's story. The good ones last. A waltz which you can like only when you are waltzing is a bad waltz. [p. 24]

A Reply to Professor Haldane is a nice argument against certain aspects of Communism.#

Forms of Things Unknown is a great short story with a fabulous climax. After Ten Years is an amazing beginning of a novel. You're going to have to find them to get the details.#

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold, by C. S. Lewis, is so far my favourite non-parable fiction by Lewis.#

A cute quote:#

"Orual," she said, "you make me think I have learned the Fox's lessons better than you. Have you forgotten what we are to say to ourselves every morning? 'Today I shall meet cruel men, cowards and liars, the envious and the drunken. They will be like that because they do not know what is good from what is bad. This is an evil which has fallen upon them not upon me. They are to be pitied, not---'." She was speaking with a loving mimicry of the Fox's voice; she could do this as well as Batta did it badly.

That Hideous Strength, by C. S. Lewis, is the third part of the Space Trilogy, which Out of the Silent Planet was the first and Perelandra was the second.#

As a story, I thought that this story was the best of the three. As a lesson, I thought that this was much more subtle in its ability to teach. The dynamic between the couple and the types of problems they have and how they resolve them is reminiscent of The Screwtape Letters.#

A Grief Observed, by C. S. Lewis, is the record of Lewis' journal writings after his wife died.#

Some quotes:#

Loss and the attention of God:#

Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquiting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have nosense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an iterruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be---or so it feels---welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silenc. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? it seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very abent a help in time of trouble? [p. 6]

On his wife:#

Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything. [p. 11]

Fear of God:#

What do people mean when they say, "I am not afraid of God because I know He is good"? Have they never even been to a dentist? [p. 43]

Miracle of Love:#

For this is one of the miracles of love; it gives---to both, but perhaps espeically to the woman---a power of seeing through its own enchanments and yet not being disenchanted. [p. 72]

Perelandra, by C. S. Lewis, is the second part of the Space Trilogy, of which Out of the Silent Planet is the first part.#

The book was interesting and it reminded me very much of The Problem of Pain and Miracles. Essentially, it tells the story of The Fall and about Eve's resistent to Satan. The depiction of Satan is amazing.#

Out of the Silent Planet, by C. S. Lewis, is a fiction story for adults about space travel and life on other planets. It is theologically heavy, as an important part of the story is how the mores of aliens differ from fallen Man.#

This is part of a trilogy, and supposedly the second is the best. I'll get there.#

Fern-seed and Elephants, by C. S. Lewis, is yet another collection of Christian essays from Lewis.#

Membership#

This essay is about what it means to be a member of the church as opposed to a member in the modern sense of a nation, company, or club.#

An interesting quote on the relation between governance and the Fall:#

I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world. I believe that authority of parent over child, husband over wife, learned over simple, to have been asm uch a part of the original plan as the authority of man over beast. I beleive that if we had not fallen Filmer would be right, and patriarchial monarchy would be the sole lawful government. But since we have learned sin, we have found, as Lord Acton says, that 'all powers corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' The only remedy has been to take away the powers and substitute a legal fiction of equality. The authority of father and husband has been rightly abolished on the legal plane, not because this authiority is in itself bad (on the contrary, it is, I hold, divine in origin) but because fathers and husbands are bad. Theocracy has been rightly abolished not because it is bad that learned priests should govern ignorant laymen, but because priests are wicked men like the rest of us. [p. 19]

Learning in War-time#

In this essay, Lewis wonders about how scholars can justify themselves in continuing to study and learn during war time. In this pondering, he discusses the reasons why we concern ourselves with war and show how they are inferior to the care we should give to the war that is constantly going on: the war over the destination of our eternal souls.#

The question of how one can study when there are more important things going about leads to the question of how one can do anything but be devout when our salvation hangs on such a thin string. This leads Lewis to explain how a Christian is a man who devotes the entirety of his natural abilities and occupations to the glorification of God, whatever those abilities and occupations may be. It is not noble actions that make Men noble, but noble Men that make actions noble.#

On Forgiveness#

In this essay, Lewis discusses the differences between and the confusion about forgiveness versus excusing. Forgiveness is recognizing the error, not denying it, and assuring that the person in err will be treated as if it never happened. Excusing, on the other, is defending the action and claiming that there was no trespass.#

Lewis remarks that often we ask God to excuse us when we ask for forgiveness, and in doing so ignore the part of actions that is truly without excuse. He then talks about how we must give others forgiveness and not hold grudges after the hearing and honouring excuses.#

Historicism#

This essay is about the problem of trying to read a `greater' meaning to God's story. Lewis discusses the assumptions about history that such a meaning would entail and shows how it is incredibly arrogant and foolish to presume that we can read a meaning from the tiny section of life that we can experience and read about.#

The World's Last Night#

This essay discusses the abrupt end of days that is predicated in Jesus Christ's teachings, and how it is unpredictable. Given that it is unpredictable, we must always be ready and not allow temptation to risk today what cannot be re-earned tomorrow.#

Religion and Rocketry#

A commentary on what meaning alien life would give to gospel and how to interpret the Bible on this subject. Odd, but interesting.#

The Efficacy of Prayer#

A discussion of the obvious topic from the title. Some of the ideas seem reminiscent from the inquiry into Miracles.#

Fern-seed and Elephants#

The title essay, about Biblical criticism and interpretation and how if modern critics cannot understand modern authors, it is unlikely that we can get anything but confused from trying the methodology on ancient texts.#

The Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis, is a set of interesting fairy tales for children in a fantasy style like The Lord of the Rings, but serious in a different manner.#

What I enjoyed most about the stories was the morality. It is not too subtle and not too preachy, but is best called 'appropriate.' When Aslan rebukes the children and the characters it makes sense and the lessons are real lessons; even the heroes of a story are not morally pure.#

While the books are good, it is possible to make too many comparisons between Lewis and Tolkien. Narnia is definitely loosely connected tales with a greater purpose only Aslan understands, whereas The Lord of the Rings is a concise epic that is complete story of its time, although it exists atop a greater world.#

Miracles, by C. S. Lewis, is a study of the likelihood of the Miracles of the Christian tradition.#

The Scope of this Book#

Lewis mentions that it is not sufficient to experience a Miracle to believe in them, and thus it is not sufficient to hear of another's experience.

The question whether miracles occur can never be answered simply by experience. Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our senses, something seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted. And our senses are not infallible. If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been the victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we always shall say. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question. [p. 11]

The Naturalist and the Supernaturalist#

Lewis divides people into two categories: Those who believe Nature is "all there is" and those who believe that there is something more. On this line he makes some interesting comments:

Thus no thoroughgoing Naturalist believes in free will: for free will would mean that human beings have the power of independent action, the power of doing something more or other than what was involved by the total series of events. And any such separate power of originating events is what the Naturalist denies. Spontaneity, originality, action 'on its own', is a privilege reserved for 'the whole show', which he calls Nature. [p. 17]

The difference between Naturalism and Supernaturalism is not exactly the same as the difference between belief in a God and disbelief. Naturalism, without ceasing to be itself, could admit a certain kind of God. The great interlocking event called Nature might be such as to produce at some stage a great cosmic consciousness, an indwelling 'God' arising from the whole process as human mind arises (according to the Naturalists) from human organisms. A Naturalist would not object to that sort of God. [...] What Naturalism cannot accept is the idea of a God who stands outside Nature and made it. [p. 19]

The Self-Contradiction of the Naturalist#

Lewis claims that the Naturalist contradicts himself if he believes in rational thinking and truth in such thoughts:

It follows that no account of the universe can be true unless that account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real insight. A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court. For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be itself demolished. It would have destroyed its own credentials. It would be an argument which proved that no argument was sound--a proof that there are no such things as proofs--which is nonsense. [p. 26]

But Naturalism, as commonly held, is precisely a theory of this sort. The mind, like every other particular thing or event, is supposed to be simply the product of the Total System. It is supposed to be that and nothing more, to have no power whatever of 'going on of its own accord'. And the Total System is not supposed to be rational. All thoughts whatever are therefore the results of irrational causes, and nothing more than that. [p. 28]

Nature and Supernature#

I think this is an interesting warning in controlling the influence of our priors:

Bacon warned us long ago that 'the human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds. And though there be many things which are singular and unmatched, yet it devises for them parallels and conjugates and relatives which do not exist. Hence the fiction that all celestial bodies move in perfect circles' (Novum Organum, I. 45). I think Bacon was right. Science itself has already made reality appear less homogeneous than we expected it to be: Newtonian atomism was much more the sort of thing we expected (and desired) than Quantum physics. [p. 35]

Lewis makes the point that because our rational mind disappear and reappear without action of their own, for example, when we sleep, something else must causes them to do so:

Humans minds, then, are not the only supernatural entities that exist. They do not come from nowhere. Each has come into Nature from Supernature: each has its tap-root in an eternal, self-existent, rational Being, whom we call God. Each is an offshoot, or spearhead, or incursion of that Supernatural reality into Nature. [p. 37]

A Further Difficulty in Naturalism#

Answers to Misgivings#

Lewis talks about the Supernatural as a layer greater than the Natural that adds to our understanding, but is not absolutely necessary:

The various and complex conditions under which Reason and Morality appear are the twists and turns of the frontier between Nature and Supernature. That is why, if you wish, you can always ignore Supernature and treat the phenomena purely from the Natural side; just as a man studying on a map the boundaries of Cornwall and Devonshire can always say, 'What you call a bulge in Devonshire is really a dent in Cornwall'. And in a sense you can't refute him. What we call a bulge in Devonshire always is a dent in Cornwall. What we call rational thought in a man always involves a state of the brain, in the long run a relation of atoms. But Devonshire is none the less something more than 'where Cornwall ends', and Reason is something more than cerebral bio-chemistry. [p. 50]

I am reminded of page 27 of The Problem of Pain.

 

He discusses the possible configurations of moral guidings in a society:

A society where the simple many obey the few seers can live: a society where all were seers could live even more fully. But a society where the mass is still simple and the seers are no longer attended to can achieve only superficiality, baseness, ugliness, and in the end extinction. On or back we must go; to stay here is death. [p. 53]

 

At this point, Lewis states the question of Miracles again:

Our question could, if you liked, be put in the form, 'Does Supernature ever produce particular results in space and time except through the instrumentality of human brains acting on human nerves and muscles'.

I have said 'particular results' because, on our view, Nature as a whole is herself one huge result of the Supernatural: God created her. God pierces her wherever there is a human mind. God presumably maintains her in existence. The question is whether He ever does anything else to her. Does He, besides all this, ever introduce into her events of which it would not be true to say, 'This is simply the working out of the general character which He gave to Nature as a whole in creating her'? Such events are what are popularly called Miracles: and it will be in this sense only that the word Miracle will be used for the rest of the book. [p. 54]

A Chapter of Red Herrings#

One red-herring Lewis mentions is that primitive people who witnessed miracles did not understand the Laws of Nature, and thus cannot be trusted, but:

All records of miracles teach the same thing. In such stories the miracles excite fear and wonder (that is what the very word miracle implies) among the spectators, and are taken as evidence of supernatural power. If they were not known to be contrary to the laws of nature how could they suggest the presence of the supernatural? How could they be surprising unless they were seen to be exceptions to the rules? And how can anything be seen to be an exception till the rules are known? If there ever were men who did not know the laws of nature at all, they would have no idea of a miracle and feel no particular interest in one if it were performed before them. Nothing can seem extraordinary until you have discovered what is ordinary. [p. 57]

Another red-herring is that early Christians did not understand that Man was inconsequential in the universe, as we understand now with modern science. But why should the size of the Earth or its location in the universe matter to God?

If it is maintained that anything so small as the Earth must, in any event, be too unimportant to merit the love of the Creator, we reply that no Christian ever supposed we did merit it. Christ did not die for men because they were intrinsically worth dying for, but because He is intrinsically love, and therefore loves infinitely. And what, after all, does the size of a world or a creature tell us about its 'importance' or value? [p. 63]

Miracles and the Laws of Nature#

The divine art of miracles is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern. [p. 72]

A Chapter Not Strictly Necessary#

In this chapter, Lewis mentions that as an atheist he was depressed about the thought of a planned Nature:

To find that all the woods, and small streams in the middle of the woods, and odd corners of mountain valleys, and the wind and the grass were only a sort of scenery, only backcloths for some kind of play, and that play perhaps one with a moral--what flatness, what an anticlimax, what an unendurable bore! [p. 78]

'Horrid Red Things'#

Lewis builds the following principles for looking at the accounts of Miracles and Miracles in general:

We have now three guiding principles before us. (1) That thought is distinct from the imagination which accompanies it. (2) That thought may be in the main sound even when the false images that accompany it are mistaken by the thinker for true ones. (3) That anyone who talks about things that cannot be seen, or touched, or heard, or the like, must inevitably talk as if they could be seen or touched or heard (e.g. must talk of 'complexes' and 'repressions' as if desires could really be tied up in bundles or shoved back; of 'growth' and 'development' as if institution could really grow like trees or unfold like flowers; of energy being 'released' as if it where an animal let out of a cage). [p. 89]

Christianity and 'Religion'#

On understanding God and his nature:

God is basic Fact or Actuality, the source of all other facthood. At all costs therefore He must not be thought of as a featureless generality. If He exists at all, He is the most concrete thing there is, the most individual, 'organised and minutely articulated.' He is unspeakable not by being indefinite but by being too definite for the unavoidable vagueness of language. The words incorporeal and impersonal are misleading, because they suggest that He lacks some reality which we posses. It would be safer to call Him trans-corporeal, trans-personal. [p. 110-111]

The Propriety of Miracles#

If the ultimate Fact is not an abstraction but the living God, opaque by the very fulness of His blinding actuality, then He might do things. He might work miracles. But would He? Many people of sincere piety feel that He would not. They think it unworthy of Him. It is petty and capricious tyrants who break their own laws: good and wise kinds obey them. Only an incompetent workman will produce work which needs to be interfered with. [...] [I believe this feeling to be] founded on an error. [p. 115]

One reason this is erroneous is that we could be wrong in perceiving the principles of God and judging God based on laws that he never intended to be followed and recognized.

Related to this idea is that Life is a grand story of which God is the author and that Miracles are not exception to the world of the story, but what the story is about, and this may be difficult for us to understand:

To be sure, God might be expected to make a better story than my friend. But it is a very long story, with a complicated plot; and we are not, perhaps, very attentive readers. [p. 120]

On Probability#

In this chapter, Lewis makes a comment about what Science owes to Christian thought:

Men became scientific because they expect Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator. [p. 128]

The Grand Miracle#

Whether the thing really happened is a historical question. But when you turn to history, you will not demand for it that kind and degree which you demand for something which, if accepted, illuminates and orders all other phenomena, explains both our laughter and our logic, our fear of the dead and our knowledge that it is somehow good to die, and which at one stroke covers what multitudes of separate theories will hardly cover for us if this is rejected. [p. 158]

Miracles of the Old Creation#

Miracles of the New Creation#

In this chapter, Lewis discusses Heaven, among other things, and the abstinence in Heaven. I thought this comment was clever:

I think our present outlook might be like that of a small boy who, on being told that the sexual act was the highest bodily pleasure should immediately ask whether you ate chocolates at the same time. On receiving the answer 'No', he might regard absence of chocolates as the chief characteristic of sexuality. In vain would you tell him that the reason why lovers in their carnal raptures don't bother about chocolates is that they have something better to think of. The boy knows chocolate: he does not know the positive thing that excludes it. We are in the same position. We know the sexual life; we do not know, except in glimpses, the other thing which, in Heaven, will leave no room for it. [p. 190-191]

Epilogue#

The Problem of Pain, by C. S. Lewis, is a discussion of the existence of Pain in God's Universe.#

Introductory#

In what context the problem of pain is a problem and how it can be understood:

Christianity is not the conclusion of a philosophical debate on the origins of the universe: it is a catastrophic historical event following on the long spiritual preparation of humanity which I have described. It is not a system into which we have to fit the awkward fact of pain: it is itself one of the awkward facts which have to be fitted into any system we make. In a sense, it creates, rather than solves, the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless, side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteous and loving. [p. 12]

Divine Omnipotence#

Most people, I imagine, have heard someone suggest that if God can do anything, then he could just make pain go away. Lewis has this to say in response:

If you choose to say "God can give a creature free-will and at the same time withhold free-will from it," you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words "God can." [p. 16]

Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself. [p. 22]

Furthermore, even if it were possible for God to make pain go away, sinners define themselves by their opposition to God's aid.

Divine Goodness#

Lewis talks about how we can understand God's goodness seeing as he is omniscient and we are unwise. And, if we cannot understand God's goodness, how can we agree that it is even good?

The Divine "goodness" differs from ours, but it is not sheerly different: it differs from ours not as white from black but as a perfect circle from a child's first attempt to draw a wheel. But when the child has learned to draw, it will know that the circle it then makes is what it was trying to make from the very beginning. [p. 27]

Related to Divine Goodness is Divine Love, which Lewis reminds is not like the currently in-vogue 'kindness':

Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering. As Scripture points out, it is bastards who are spoiled: the legitimate sons, who are to carry on the family tradition, are punished. [p. 29]

Lewis uses a combination of the following analogies to relate what God's Love for Man is like:

[God is] the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. [p. 35]

Human Wickedness#

Lewis reminds that in the time of the Gospels it was taken for granted that people believe Man to be Fallen in some important way, and given that assumption Christianity has a particular answer.

The Christian answer--that we have used our free will to become very bad--is so well known that it hardly needs to be restated. [...] But [this assumption] has changed. Christianity now has to preach the diagnosis--in itself very bad news--before it can win a hearing for the cure. [p. 43]

Some quotes on the tenor of this chapter:

[We] find in ourselves even now a theoretical approval of this behaviour [honor, morality, etc.] which no one practises. Even inside the pocket we do not say that justice, mercy, fortitude, and temperance are of no value, but only that the local custom is as just, brave, temperate and merciful as can reasonably be expected. [p. 51]

Williams Law's question: "if you will here stop and ask yourselves why you are not as pious as the primitive Christian were, your own heart will tell you, that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you have never thoroughly intended it." [p. 54]

I have been trying to make the reader believe that we actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves. [p. 55]

The Fall of Man#

The thesis of this chapter is simply that man, as a species, spoiled himself, and that good, to us in our present state, must therefore mean primarily remedial or corrective good. What part pain actually plays in such remedy or correction, is now to be considered. [p. 76]

Human Pain#

We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved: we are, as Newman said, rebels who must lay down our arms. [p. 79]

 

In a foreshadowing of the treatment of Hell, Lewis writes:

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. A bad man, happy, is a man without the least inkling that his actions do not "answer," that they are not in accord with the laws of the universe. [p. 81]

Evil men are deaf to God's Will because they are disconnected from him; and if they do not repent, then they will be disconnected in eternity in a state known as Hell.

 

Lewis writes an interesting thought about the likelihood of further Fall in different types of men:

If God were a Kantian, who would not have us till we came to Him from the purest and best motives, who could be saved? And this illusion of self-sufficiceny may be at its strongest in some very honest, kindly, and temperate people, and on such people, therefore, misfortune must fall.

[...] Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger. [p. 86]

Human Pain, continued#

In the fallen and partially redeemed universe we may distinguish (1) The simple good descending from God, (2) The simple evil produced by rebellious creatures, and (3) the exploitation of that evil by God for His redemptive purpose, which produces (4) the complex good to which accepted suffering and repented sin contributes. Now the fact that God can make complex good out of simple evil does not excuse--though by mercy it may save--those who do the simple evil. [p. 98-99]

I thought this was very thought-provoking in the relation between Heaven and Earth:

The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home. [p. 103]

Hell#

In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: "What are you asking God to do?" To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does. [p. 116]

Animal Pain#

Heaven#

The Abolition of Man, by C. S. Lewis, originates from a series of lectures on value systems, the common values of Man, and the question of whether this moral code is yet another part of Nature that Man may 'conquer.'#

Lewis starts by discussing how English literature courses of his time, whether wittingly or not, are devoid of teaching literature and teach mediocre philosophy instead. Furthermore, this philosophy is incompatible with the common set of values of all Man that Lewis catholically denotes as 'the Tao.'#

On the writers of instruction books for such courses:

In filling their book with [such philosophy] they have been unjust to the parent or headmaster who buys it and who has got the work of amateur philosophers where he expected the work of professional grammarians. A man would be annoyed if his son returned from the dentist with his teeth untouched and his head crammed with the dentist's obiter dicta on bimetallism or the Baconian theory. [p. 26]

The discussion then moves on to how any proposal in favour of a system incompatible with the Tao is flawed, (and any proposal compatible with the Tao is redundant.) This is because without a preexisting value system, no judgement can be made over which is better. Any attempt to compare results in reliance on the Tao--it is unbeatable.#

Some believe the Tao is flawable because it is not justified by any prior, Lewis explains that it could not be any other way and caps the section with this gem:

If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. Similarly, if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all. [p. 53]

Still, in his discourse Lewis does not insist that the Tao is unchanging. Instead he suggests that it may evolve and be reexamined, but not replaced:

The legitimate reformer endeavours to show that the precept in question conflict with some precept which its defenders allow to be more fundamental, or that it does not really embody the judgment of value it professes to embody. The direct frontal attack "Why?" -- "What good does it do?" -- "Who said so?" is never permissible; not because it is harsh or offensive but because no values at all can justify themselves on that level. If you persist in that kind of trial you will destroy all values, and so destroy the bases of your own criticism as well as the thing criticized. [p. 59-60]

The concluding section answers those who suggest that value systems (necessarily derived from the Tao) are a part of Nature that can be subdued by Man and that in their absence Man will be more powerful. (Note the contradiction.) Lewis discusses this contradiction and remarks on how if the idea were well-founded, it would be misleading, because Man would not conquer Nature, but the reverse.#

Lewis compares magicians and scientists in an interesting way:

The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. [...] There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the "wisdom" of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious--such as digging up and mutilating the dead. [p. 83-84]

Lewis elucidates by analogy with scientific discovery as 'seeing through things' to the err in discovery and 'explaining away' everything:

If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To "see through" all things is the same as not to see. [p. 87]

In the appendix on the Tao, Lewis remarks:#

I am not trying to prove its validity by the argument from common consent. Its validity cannot be deduced. For those who do not perceive its rationality, even universal consent could not prove it. [p. 91]

If you know me a bit, you can probably guess what I think these arguments and ideas would aide in defending and repelling.#

The Great Divorce, by C. S. Lewis, is a moral tale similar in purpose to The Divine Comedy. Not that Lewis is a wandering exile who damns his enemies and raises his friends and role models to the level of saints; but, that Lewis is a witness to attempts to heal sin and learns what the roots of sin are.#

I don't know the chronology of Lewis' writing, but this book represents either a first fictional touch on some of the issues in The Four Loves or an elaboration of the core of those ideas in digestible characters.#

It is a clever, clear, and concise collection of moral parables, and if you can find it in your local library, I recommend it.#

Some notes and quotations:#

In the out-of-character introduction, Lewis writes that it somewhat like a reply to Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

The attempt is based on the belief that reality never presents us with an absolutely unavoidable "either-or"; that, granted skill and patience and (above all) time enough, some way of embracing both alternatives can always be found; that mere development or adjustment or refinement will somehow turn evil into good without our being called on for a final and total rejection of anything we should like to retain. This belief I take to be a disastrous error. [p. v]

 

One of the lost souls in midst of salvation is the soul of a 'Seeker' who was always searching for truth and explanation of God and Purpose. His saviour is trying to convince him to leave behind this questioning manner as he moves to the heavenly sphere. In doing so, he reflects on the real purpose of those questions:

"You have gone far wrong. Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage." [p. 38]

When truth is in sight, there is no reason for questioning.

 

The sentiment in the first quote is brought up continuously in the story: All evil must be purged before goodness is complete. (Recall from Mere Christianity that God will do no less than make you perfect.)

"Milton was right," said my Teacher. "The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words 'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.' There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy--that is, to reality. Ye see it easily enough in a spoiled child that would sooner miss its play and its supper than say it was sorry and be friends. Ye call it the Sulks. But in adult life it has a hundred fine names--Achilles' wrath and Coriolanus' grandeur, Revenge and Injured Merit and Self-Respect and Tragic Greatness and Proper Pride." [p. 66]

Surprised by Joy, by C. S. Lewis, is a partial autobiography.#

The section of his life that is focused upon is his education and the formation of his philosophy and religion at this time. It tells how he went from unenthusiastic Christianity, to Atheism, to Theism, and finally, to Christianity.#

The story is interesting. The things that caught my eye the most were about the intricacies of the British public school system and about his time with his tutor, the Great Knock.#

Some interesting quotes are below.#

On 'fagging' in English public schools:#

You have only to transfer the thing to adult life and you will, apparently, see the full logic of the position. If some neighboring V.I.P. had irresistible authority to call on you for any service he pleased at any hour when you were not in the office--if, when you came home on a summer evening, tried from work and with more work to prepare against the morrow, he could drag you to the links and make you his caddy till the light failed--if at last he dismissed you unthanked with a suitcase full of his clothes to brush and clean and return to him before breakfast, and a hamper full of his foul linen for your wife to wash and mend--and if, under this regime, you were not always perfectly happy and contented; where could the cause lie except in your own vanity? What else, after, could it be? [p. 101-102]

An astute thought about self-consciousness:#

It seemed to me self-evident that one essential property of love, hate, fear, or desire was attention to their object. To cease thinking about or attending to the woman is, so far, to cease loving; to cease thinking about or attending to the dreaded thing is, so far, to cease being afraid. But to attend to your own love or fear is to cease attending to the loved or dreaded object. In other words the enjoyment and the contemplation of our inner activities are incomptabile. You cannot hope and also think about hoping at the same moment; for in hope we look to hope's object and we interrupt this by (so to speak) turning round to look at the hope itself. [p. 211]

The Four Loves, by C. S. Lewis, is a discussion on the varieties of Love that are felt by humans, from the perspective of a Christian.#

Introduction#

A recurring theme in this book is the way that things that are inherently good, such as Love, can become twisted and evil when they are abused and an object of addiction.

Every human love, at its height, has a tendency to claim for itself a divine authority. Its voice tends to sound as if it were the will of God Himself. It tells us not to count the cost, it demands of us a total commitment, it attempts to over-ride all other claims and insinuates that any action which is sincerely done "for love's sake" is thereby lawful and even meritorious. [p. 15]

The basic issue for Love is: Love can be so compelling and important to a person that they may forget their obligations as humans to be moral and just, i.e. the forget God's law.

We may give our human loves the unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God. Then they become gods: then they become demons. Then they will destroy us, and also destroy themselves. For natural loves that are allowed to be come gods do not remain loves. They are still called so, but can become in fact complicated forms of hatred. [p. 17]

The hatred that a corrupt Love is transformed into is often a form of jealousy where the Lover owns the object of affections and is offended at every moment spent apart.

Likings and Loves for the Sub-human#

In this chapter, Lewis makes the initial division of the types of love: Need-love, Gift-love, and Appreciative-love.

Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appreciative-love says: "We give thanks to thee for thy great glory." Need-love says of a woman "I cannot live without her"; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection--if possible, wealth; Appreciative-love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly deject by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all. [p. 26]

(By the way, the description of appreciative-love is terribly romantic.)

He also discusses the proposal of ranking these Loves and makes the following comment of general interest:

The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It wants to make every distinction a distinction of value; hence those fatal critics who can never point out the differing quality of two poets without putting them in an order of preference as if they were candidates for a prize. [p. 21]

Elsewhere in the chapter, he talks about the love for non-living things, such as the State. In this discussion, he talks about the value of a nation's myths, but makes the comment that they should not be confused (as they too often are) with history:

The schoolboy who hears them should dimly feel--though of course he cannot put it into words--that he is hearing saga. Let him be thrilled--preferably "out of school"--by the "Deeds that won the Empire"; but the less we mix this up with his "history lessons" or mistake for a serious analysis--worse still, a justification--of imperial policy, the better. [p. 36]

Affection#

Lewis comments on the rituals of social relations and how these relate to the feelings between families and close company:

On the contrary, Affection at its best practises a courtesy which is incomparably more subtle, sensitive, and deep than the public kind. In public a ritual would do. At home you must have the reality which that ritual represented, or else the deafening triumphs of the greatest egoist present. You must really give no kind of preference to yourself; at a party it is enough to conceal the preference. [p. 55]

Friendship#

The experience of all is enhanced when more join in friendship:

Lovers seek for privacy. Friends find this solitude about them, this barrier between them and the herd, whether they want it or not. They would be glad to reduce it. The first two would be glad to find a third. [p. 78]

The parallels to trade are obvious.

Eros#

Another romantic description of the essence of romantic, not sexual, love:

A man in this state really hasn't leisure to think of sex. He is too busy thinking of a person. The fact that she is a woman is far less important than the fact that she is herself. He is full of desire, but the desire may not be sexually toned. If you asked him what he wanted, the true reply would often be, "To go on thinking of her." He is love's contemplative. [p. 108]

Charity#

Another wise way of pointing out the temptation associated with every instance of Love:

It remains certainly true that all natural loves can be inordinate. Inordinate does not mean "insufficiently cautious". Nor does it mean "too big". It is not a quantitative term. It is probably impossible to love any human being simply "too much". We may love him too much in proportion to our love for God; but it is the smallness of our love for God, not the greatest of our love for the man, that constitutes the inordinacy. [p. 139-140]

And finally, an interesting metaphor for God's relationship to the Love in our lives:

We cannot see light, though by light we can see things. [p. 143]

Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis, is a simple explanation of generic Christianity aimed at the on-the-fence Christian.#

Book I: Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe#

Chapter 1: The Law of Human Nature#

Lewis discusses the common law of decency and morality that all humans seem to recognize. While referencing that violations of this law are always followed by excuses he writes these remarks:

Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. [p. 3]

The point is that they are one more proof of how deeply, whether we like it or not, we believe in the Law of Nature. If we do not believe in decent behaviour, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently? The truth is, we believe in decency so much--we feel the Rule or Law pressing on us so--that we cannot bear to face the fact that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility. [p. 6]

Chapter 2: Some Objections#

There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not believe they are there. You would not call a man human for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house. [p. 12]

I regard this as a defense against hyperbole in discussions about Christianity. If someone has a critic of Christian morals, their argument should be based on the morals in question, not the colorful and horrible past of that moral belief.

Chapter 4: What Lies Behind the Law#

If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe--no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or stair case or fireplace in that house. The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. [p. 19]

Book II: What Christians Believe#

Chapter 2: The Invasion#

What is the problem? A universe that contains much that is obviously bad and apparently meaningless, but containing creatures like ourselves who know that it is bad and meaningless. There are only two views that face all the facts. One is the Christian view that this a good world that has gone wrong, but still retains the memory of what it ought have been. [p. 33]

He goes on to say that the other is Dualism and that it fails because it implies that the evil God is less superior because of its evilness, and thus either created by the good God, or that both were created by a third.

You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. [...] Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. [p. 35]

A common remark in The Divine Comedy.

Chapter 5: The Practical Conclusion#

Every historical statement in the world is believed on authority. None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Armada. None of us could prove them by pure logic as you prove a thing in mathematics. We believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them: in fact, on authority. A man who jibbed at authority in other things as some people do in religion would have to be content to know nothing all his life. [p. 48]

Book III: Christian Behaviour#

Chapter 7: Forgiveness#

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life--namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. [p. 90]

Book IV: Beyond Personality: Or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity#

Chapter 1: Making and Begetting#

Matter is like God in having energy: though, again, of course, physical energy is a different kind of thing from the power of God. The vegetable world is like Him because it is alive, and He is the "living God." [...] The intense activity and fertility of the insects, for example, is a first dim resemblance to the unceasing activity and the creativeness of God. In the higher mammals we get the beginnings of instinctive affection. [...] When we come to man, the highest of the animals, we get the completest resemblance to God which we know of. [...] Man not only lives, but loves and reasons: biological life reaches its highest known level in him. [p. 123]

Chapter 9: Counting the Cost#

I find a good many people have been bothered by what I said in the last chapter about Our Lord's words, "Be ye perfect." Some people seem to think this means "Unless you are perfect, I will not help you"; and as we cannot be perfect, then, if He meant that, our position is hopeless. But I do not think He did mean that. I think He meant "The only help I will give is help to become perfect. You may want something less: but I will give you nothing less." [p. 157]

i just finished "The Screwtape Letters" and I must say that I was very impressed. C. S. Lewis provides a masterful revelation of humanity's moral problems in terms of the demons that try to manipulate them and corrupt us, while also creating a deep and fluid critique of the modern era's cultures and common collapses. And the detailed of how this critique is created is incredibly creative: letters from an elder demon to his younger, unexperienced demon nephew, providing advice on how to tempt and corrupt a young man's spirit.#

One of my favourite parts is near the end when Screwtape is giving a toast to the graduates of the College of Temptors and discussing some great problems his generation was able to create in the hearts of the humans. Specifically, he is talking about the desire to be "normal" and "like everyone else", he says:

All is summed up in the prayer which a young female human is said to have uttered recently: 'Oh God, make me a normal twentieth-century girl!' Thanks to our labours, this will mean increasingly, 'Make me a minx, a moron, and a parasite'. (pg 200)

#

Another common theme of the letters that Screwtape wrote that I thought was interesting was how to create mutual hatred and animosity between two humans who think they are "in love" with each other. He writes that a method perfected in Hell is to get each to commit to "Unselfishness", rather than "Charity", to one another. That is, try to lessen yourself rather than uplift someone else. An excerpt:

In discussing any joint action, it becomes obligatory that A should argue in favour of B's supposed wishes and against his own, while B does the opposite. It is often impossible to find out either party's real wishes; with luck, they end by doing something that neither wants, while each feels a glow of self-righteousness and harbours a secret claim to preferential treatment for the unselfishness shown and a secret grudge against the other for the ease with which the sacrifice has been accepted. (pg 143)

#

While I was reading the book I couldn't help but think of all the things that Lewis mentions as effective means of corruption that I notice myself do and don't enjoy it one bit. It wasn't so much that I didn't like being "attacked", more that I didn't like being reminded of my failure to remedy the situation that had previously made itself apparent to me. Although I don't consider myself a Christian, like Lewis, or a good person, like the ideal of contrasts with, I think that that ideal is ideal regardless of it's religious backing or it's supporters occasional righteous barking.#

One final thing that this book brought to my attention that I found interesting: Lewis consistently mentioned "Aristotle's Question": "Whether 'democratic behaviour' means the behaviour that democracies like or the behaviour that will preserve a democracy. [It may not occur to the inquisitor] that these need not be the same." Which I think is very astute and a hugely interesting debate in and of itself. (pg 197)#