C.S. Lewis, Genius or Religious Kook?

Great Debates
21

Apparently, “deconstruction” in academic circles is nothing new- From The Screwtape Letters:

“The Historical Point of View, put briefly, means that when a learned man is presented with any statement in an ancient author, the one question he never asks is whether it is true. He asks who influenced the ancient writer, and how far the statement is consistent with what he said in other books, and what phase in the writer’s development, or in the general history of thought, it illustrates, and how it affected later writers, and how often it has been misunderstood (especially by the learned man’s own colleagues) and what the general course of criticism on it has been for the last ten years, and what is the ‘present state of the question.’ To regard the ancient writer as a possible source of knowledge–to anticipate that what he said could possibly modify your thoughts or your behavior–this would be rejected as unutterably simple-minded.”
“…But, thanks to Our Father and the Historical Point of View, great scholars are now as little nourished by the past as the most ignorant mechanic who holds that ‘history is bunk’.”

Heh. I think they should read this out loud at the beginning of every college semester.

22

A very lucid apologist for his view of Christianity. Both readable and thought-provoking.

However, whatever dear feelings we all cherish about his stories, the guy seriously needed an editor to explain that novels should come with climactic actions. He always reels you in with his ability to deliver good narrative, and then, just at the point where the climax should occur, you turn to the next chapter to discover that the climax occurred “off camera” and he will now let one of the secondary characters describe their feelings about that action. (He almost provided a climax in That Hideous Strength and two of the Narnia books actually worked as complete tales, but I am always disappointed that his good prose is marred by that single failing.)

Tom~

23

I’m kind of up-and-down on C.S. Lewis, myself. A really good writer at times, but not most of the time. Able to convey a sense of mystery and wonder about Christ on occasion, but getting too lost in the logic too often.

Surprised by Joy was my first CSL book (at 16/17); still love it. When he’s simply being honest about himself, and the world and his faith as he came to it, he’s far more impressive, IMO, than in his clunky apologetics.

Till We Have Faces is probably his best, IMO. (Lewis himself thought so, according to Inklings biographer Humphrey Carpenter, who concurs in this assessment.) It’s the only place he puts the whole package together. By Lewis standards, it’s a pretty gloomy book, written during a difficult time for him, what with Joy Davidman battling cancer, and seemingly losing the fight before his eyes. But that Lewis, for once, is less than sure he is in command of the answers, lets the true power of his faith in God come through in a way that it does nowhere else, in my judgment.

Screwtape and The Great Divorce: fun books that make some good points.

Narnia: I enjoyed them when I was not yet out of my teens. Now when I read them, I don’t feel any depth or verisimilitude there: there’s nothing behind what you can see. (This is especially a problem when one compares with LOTR, which manages to create the feeling of a bona fide world, of characters, lives, and dramas well beyond the part we actually experience in Tolkien’s opus.)

I’ll skip the space trilogy, Mere Christianity, etc., for now, I think.

BTW, my comment about Lewis getting ‘lost in the logic,’ above, isn’t about any sort of rejection of the use of logic or other intellectual abilities in the exploration of Christianity. I just think Lewis tended to choke out the good stuff when he got logical, but I don’t think that’s a necessary outcome.
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For instance, one writer who combines a high level of both theology and spirituality is (Anglican bishop) Rowan Williams, author or Resurrection, The Wound of Knowledge, and other classics. He also writes wonderfully - not just for a theologian, but by any standard.
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24

Phaedrus - “Couple a facts. Clive Staples Lewis or “Jack” died November 23, 1963. So did “Jack” the President and so did Aldous Huxley (Brave New World).”

Totally off topic. That was the night that Doctor Who premiered in the UK. Also it was the day that Rocky and Bulwinkle were supposed to premier - but it was delayed a week do to JFK’s shooting.

Cooincidence? Conspiracy?

25

I don’t know about Aldous Huxley, but JFK and CSL both died on Friday, November 22, 1963.

The Inklings, ‘Oxford Christians,’ or whatever, included Charles Williams and others, in addition to Lewis and Tolkien, but didn’t include George MacDonald (1824-1905). Wrong timeframe.

26

I knew Paul was dead because I read Phillipians backwards.

27

Wow, conspiracy theory # 128,846,836,462!!!

Thanks Rob, I didn’t know that!

The date? What can I tell you? I’m always a day late and a dollar short! :wink: And yes, Huxley died on the same day as the other two.

28

Tominator2 writes:

> Religious kook. Smullyan nailed his form
> of religion in a passing comment in “This
> Book Needs No Title”.

Can you cite the exact page or at least chapter for this? I’ve got a copy of This Book Needs No Title and I can’t find this.

RTFirefly writes:

> I don’t know about Aldous Huxley, but JFK
> and CSL both died on Friday, November 22,
> 1963.
> The Inklings, ‘Oxford Christians,’ or
> whatever, included Charles Williams and
> others, in addition to Lewis and Tolkien,
> but didn’t include George MacDonald (1824-
> 1905). Wrong timeframe.

Lewis, Kennedy, and Huxley all died on November 22, 1963. Dr. Who premiered the next day. It’s reasonable to call Lewis, Tolkien, and Williams the Inklings, because they called themselves that. Sometimes this term is extended to their predecessors, like McDonald or even G. K. Chesterton, and sometimes to other friends who didn’t attend the meetings of the Inklings, like Dorothy Sayers. That’s perhaps a bit sloppy. It’s more problematical to call the group the Oxford Christians. They weren’t the only Christians in Oxford.

RTFirefly further writes:

> Till We Have Faces is probably his best,
> IMO. (Lewis himself thought so, according
> to Inklings biographer Humphrey Carpenter,
> who concurs in this assessment.) It’s the
> only place he puts the whole package
> together. By Lewis standards, it’s a
> pretty gloomy book, written during a
> difficult time for him, what with Joy
> Davidman battling cancer, and seemingly
> losing the fight before his eyes.

I agree. It is his best piece of fiction. However, when it was written, Joy was not yet battling cancer. They were not yet married, and not yet in love (at least that they were admitting to themselves).

There’s much online about the Inklings. You might start with
http://www.mythsoc.org

the Mythopoeic Society website.

29

Wendell: Wow, thanks for the confirmation and “the rest of the story”. Sounds like you know quite a bit about Lewis.

What is your opinion about Walter Hooper?

30

Wendell - you’re right; I blew it on the timing (fooled by the ©1957 in my copy of Till We Have Faces, but I had Humphrey Carpenter’s The Inklings in open in front of me as well, where I could’ve gotten the straight story). Mea culpa.

31

Phaedrus writes:

> Sounds like you know quite a bit about
> Lewis.
>
> What is your opinion about Walter Hooper?

At best, Walter Hooper hasn’t been very honest. He became “literary executor” of Lewis’s works by exaggerating his contact with Lewis. At worst, he’s faked some manuscripts. He’s done some good scholarship though.

I had a chance in 1994 to read the original manuscript of The Dark Tower at the Bodleian Library at Oxford. If it’s a fake, it’s a pretty good fake. I’ve also had a chance to read some of Lewis’s letters (including those not yet published) at the Wade library at Wheaton College.

32

Thank you Wendell.

If I am lucky I’ll get a chance to see Lewis’ home this summer.

I agree with you about Hooper.

I read Kathyn Lindskoog’s book, “The C.S. Lewis Hoax”. I hope there is a way to get him out of the loop. If she IS right, we got a problem.

Wow, reading that! You are a lucky man!

Ken

33

Couldn’t stand the Narnia books as a kid; saw them as heavy-handed Christian proselytizing. My daughter thinks they’re okay, though. And my wife, surprisingly, LOVED them as a child…surprising because she’s vehemently anti-Christian.

SCREWTAPE and GREAT DIVORCE are…interesting. Certainly fun to read. You can’t say the guy had no sense of humor.

I have a copy of SURPRISED BY JOY which I started and couldn’t get into; I’ll need to have another crack at it.

Speaking of “kooks,” has anyone here read Charles Williams? Another one of the Oxford fantasistes, contemporary of Lewis and Tolkien. Sam Weiser, the occult publisher, had several of his novels in print a while back, I think they’re mostly OP now. These books are TRULY loony…like what happens when the Philosopher’s Stone appears in modern-day London (marketers try to sell it as a transportation device) or what happens when the first deck of Tarot Cards appears in modern-day London (cultists use it to manipulate the elements and destroy their enemies). Williams wasn’t the greatest stylist, either; his plots can be murky and slow-going. But he’s a trip. Check him out.

Uke

34

Ukulele Ike writes:

> Sam Weiser, the occult publisher, had
> several of his novels in print a while
> back, I think they’re mostly OP now.

Are you sure about Sam Weiser ever being the publisher? Eerdmans is the publisher now and has been for quite a while. There’s seven of the novels and they’re all in print, as is several other volumes of Williams’s nonfiction and poetry. I’ve read all the novels. They’re much more of an acquired taste than Tolkien and Lewis’s stuff, but I think people should try them. There’s a certain murkiness to Williams’s prose that’s almost intrinsic to what he’s writing about.

35

I read the Narnia books, but it was so long ago I don’t really remember anything but basic plots points and random details and quotes (like “Once a king, always a king”).
I’ve read parts of Screwtape Letters, and they were thought provoking.
But when I read The Case for Christianity, I was left with very little respect for him. It was presented as a logical argument “proving” Christianity, but it was obviously just rationalizations of his biases. Virtually every single one of his main points was seriously flawed. I counted an average of one major logical fallacy every two pages. If you think today’s Christian fundamentalists are bad, wait until you read that, according to Lewis, all things considered the witch hunts actually were the proper thing to do.

36

The Ryan writes:

> If you think today’s Christian
> fundamentalists are bad, wait until you
> read that, according to Lewis, all things
> considered the witch hunts actually were
> the proper thing to do.

This passage is in the final paragraph of “Some Objections”, which is the second chapter of The Case for Christianity. The Case for Christianity is now mostly available as the first book in the omnibus volume Mere Christianity. If we’re going to be debating Lewis, let’s cite the passages with at least this amount of specificity.

What Lewis is doing there is replying to a certain form of objection to his previous arguments. He had made arguments for the existence of morality independent of what people think during a particular historical period. Someone had asked him about witch-burning. Isn’t this a case where people just a few hundred years ago believed in doing something which was then considered moral but is now considered immoral, and hence doesn’t this prove that our ideas of morality and their ideas of morality are completely incommensurable?

Lewis replied that if you sincerely believed, as most people did just a few hundred years ago, that there really were such things as witches, people who had sold themselves to the devil in order to get supernatural powers and who used these powers to kill or make sick their neighbors or their neighbors’ animals, you would also sincerely believe that these people are traitors to the community and hence deserved to die as traitors. What has changed, Lewis argues, is not morality, but our knowledge of the world. I think Lewis is correct in arguing that the objection given to him doesn’t disprove his previous arguments. Of course, you still need the arguments in the previous section of the book, but this objection doesn’t in itself disprove his overall point.

I think that there’s more to be said. After all, the difference in knowledge in our times versus old times is only part of the reason we no longer burn witches. Why did people burn witches during the Middle Ages (to some extent) and during the Renaissance (to a larger extent)? If you look at the actual cases, many of the times it was because someone in the community was unpopular, so they were accused of being a witch because that was an easy way to get rid of them. Frequently it was because someone who was clearly (to modern eyes) crazy began making accusations against someone else.

What has really changed today? Well, think about cases (more or less) recently in the U.S. that are frequently accused of being “witch hunts”. The two that come to mind quickly for me are the anti-Communism of the late forties and the early fifties and the child abuse trials of the late eighties and early nineties. If I were to move to events outside the U.S., think of the show trials of suspected traitors in the U.S.S.R. in the thirties and the suppression of dissidents in the late eighties through today in China.

What’s different today? At least in the U.S. today we’re not executing people for merely having different opinions. What’s at least helped is our belief in due process. Some of the child abuse accusations happened in small towns. When the cases were appealed to higher courts, sometimes clearer heads prevailed.

Are we really that much better today in getting the facts straight before enforcing our morality?

37

Thank you Wendell for saving me the trouble.

One of the best proofs I have for the Bible as true is found in “God in the Dock”. Lewis states that in the section of the woman at the well Jesus kneels down and starts drawing in the sand. This is a literary technique that is relatively new in writing, the New Testament writers were writing what they saw and THAT is why it is in there that way.

38

Phaedrus - I think you mean the woman caught in adultery.

39

New literary technique==inspired by God/actually happened? Then James Joyce is God! Finnegan’s Wake is a documentary!

40

Oops, hit the ‘send’ button too quickly. Meant to add that your underlying point is well taken. Rather than doing hagiography, the Gospel authors certainly appear to be writing what they saw.

The verisimilitude it gives the accounts, right down to the disciples’ confusion at the sight of the empty tomb, strikes me too as one of the strongest arguments for their genuineness.

If they were making it all up, Jesus’ teachings would lay down the law exactly as the disciples thought it ought to be laid down, rather than having a strong enough element of paradox to make any Zen Buddhist feel at home. And the disciples would come across as wise and perceptive men, rather than as confused, striving, and hindering Jesus as often as helping him.