# The Medieval Mind of CS Lewis (Jason Baxter)



## RamistThomist (May 16, 2022)

Baxter, Jason. _The Medieval Mind of CS Lewis_. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsityPress, 2022.

One’s normal reaction to a new book about C.S. Lewis is probably the same as a new book on John Calvin or the Five Points of Calvinism: “Not another one.” Jason Baxter’s book, however, has new material. Beginning with Michael Ward’s book on the planets and Narnia, theologians have realized that Lewis’s understanding of the heavenly spheres was more than just metaphorical. He had the exact same outlook as the medieval writers. We thank Jason Baxter for that insight.

Baxter sees Lewis as “Becoming Boethius.” Like the early medieval figure, Lewis bridged the gap between the Christian medieval world, especially prior to Aquinas, and our own time. But if Lewis is going to be Boethius, and if we are going to see what such a mind looks like, we have to see how the medieval mind viewed the planets. The planets provided man with a “harmony of the spheres.” The world and the planets were arranged in a musical interval. Here Baxter does an extended analysis of scenes in Lewis’s _The Discarded Image_.[1] It looks like this:

God

_Primum Mobile_, which causes the _stellatum_ to move. The stellatum then move Saturn.

Saturn, for Dante at least, is the heaven of contemplatives. More commonly, though, he is Father Time.

Jupiter is the king.

Mars is iron-like.

Sol, or Sun.

Venus

Mercury

In the Christian era, these heavens were associated with angels. However, Lewis points out that the danger to monotheism “clearly came not from a cult of angels but from the cult of the Saints. Men when they prayed were not usually thinking of hierarchies and intelligences.”[2]

This extended detour serves to illustrate a point Baxter makes later. With the current talk about a disenchanted universe, one might be surprised to hear the disenchantment in the heavens. No longer could the heavens be seen as a harmonic prove of Platonic solids. That probably does not bother us like it would earlier ages.

_Breathing Narnian Air_

This was a fun chapter. Why do people resonate with Lewis’s works so much? They do because Lewis enables them to experience what “an idea felt like.” You feel the idea of Goodness. You can probably think back to a book where you had this experience. For me it would have been Spenser’s _Faerie Queene _or the scene with Mr. Valiant-for-Truth in _Pilgrim’s Progress_. In other words, you can “breathe the atmosphere of a story.”

There is a deeper philosophical issue at play as well. For it we again turn to Boethius. Humans normally know something via _ratio_, or discursive judgment. Every now and then, though, when hit with a powerful idea, we know via intellectus, or through actual intelligence. This is more intuitive. This is what Lewis meant in his famous essay about “looking along a beam of light.” When you look alongside a beam of light in a dark shed, your eyes are directed towards the opening and then you see much, much more.

_Conclusion_

I recommend this work to more advanced students of Lewis. Baxter also deals with _Till We Have Faces _and mysticism, both good and bad, so Lewis argues, in _Letters to Malcom_. One also needs to have a working knowledge of some scenes in Dante's _Comedy_, as they open up several key moments in Lewis's fiction.


[1] C. S. Lewis, _The Discarded Image_, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 102ff.
[2] Lewis, Ibid, 120.

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## Timmay (May 16, 2022)

Excellent definitely picking this one up. Although not sure we need Baxter to see that Lewis had the same outlook as the medeival writers.

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## Timmay (May 16, 2022)

What do you think about this view of world sacramentalism? The cosmos is a copy of of a fundamental reality. How does that square with Reformed thought?


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## RamistThomist (May 16, 2022)

Timmay said:


> What do you think about this view of world sacramentalism? The cosmos is a copy of of a fundamental reality. How does that square with Reformed thought?



It doesn't really square. That's where Lewis's Platonism comes through pretty hard. I disagree with him on that.


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## Timmay (May 16, 2022)

RamistThomist said:


> It doesn't really square. That's where Lewis's Platonism comes through pretty hard. I disagree with him on that.


So how would one correct him? Or properly state the view of the cosmos?


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## Taylor (May 16, 2022)

Timmay said:


> So how would one correct him?


It would be difficult given the fact that he died almost sixty years ago.


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## Timmay (May 16, 2022)

Taylor said:


> It would be difficult given the fact that he died almost sixty years ago.


Ya ya


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## RamistThomist (May 16, 2022)

Timmay said:


> So how would one correct him? Or properly state the view of the cosmos?



He held to a chain of being cosmology. The best thing would be to analyze that, why he held to that, and how the Reformed would respond.


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## Timmay (May 16, 2022)

RamistThomist said:


> He held to a chain of being cosmology. The best thing would be to analyze that, why he held to that, and how the Reformed would respond.


Yes I’m asking how would the Reformed respond.


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## Timmay (May 16, 2022)

I tore through this book. Most of it was not new but some was! I did not realize even in his works he was carrying on the tradition of _imatio. _

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## bookslover (May 17, 2022)

I assume that Lewis used the medieval view of the planetary system _for the purposes of his fiction writing._ It's hard to believe that he held to it as being actually factual in real life.


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## RamistThomist (May 17, 2022)

bookslover said:


> I assume that Lewis used the medieval view of the planetary system _for the purposes of his fiction writing._ It's hard to believe that he held to it as being actually factual in real life.



The last chapter deals with that. No, he didn't think it was literally true, but even today in physics what we call science are actually models of science. Not all of them are literally true. The medieval model allowed man to see the universe as a harmony.

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## Tychicus (May 17, 2022)

RamistThomist said:


> It doesn't really square. That's where Lewis's Platonism comes through pretty hard. I disagree with him on that.


I thought that was a good thing? "Pre-modern" Christian Platonism?


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## RamistThomist (May 17, 2022)

Tychicus said:


> I thought that was a good thing? "Pre-modern" Christian Platonism?



Platonism can mean anything from abstract objects to Egyptian mystery cults. The problem with Lewis sometimes is he sees the earth merely as a copy. Yes, heaven is more important but the end point for the Christian is not heaven, but the New Jerusalem coming down to earth. Lewis doesn't really capture that idea.

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## RamistThomist (May 17, 2022)

Most Christians today who promote some form of "Christian Platonism" are using it to mean that materialist reductionism is wrong, and that Platonists like Augustine and Anselm were onto something. I agree with all of that. I've also read everything Plato wrote, so I have some reservations with the term.

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## Tychicus (May 17, 2022)

RamistThomist said:


> Platonism can mean anything from abstract objects to Egyptian mystery cults. The problem with Lewis sometimes is he sees the earth merely as a copy. Yes, heaven is more important but the end point for the Christian is not heaven, but the New Jerusalem coming down to earth. Lewis doesn't really capture that idea.


Thanks for the tip on Lewis. There was some good stuff on Reality in Screwtape Letters, or so I think.

Maybe that's why they want to call it "Christian" Platonism as opposed to the ones you've mentioned?


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## Tychicus (May 17, 2022)

RamistThomist said:


> Most Christians today who promote some form of "Christian Platonism" are using it to mean that materialist reductionism is wrong, and that Platonists like Augustine and Anselm were onto something. I agree with all of that. I've also read everything Plato wrote, so I have some reservations with the term.


But here's the thing, most of the Classical Theists theologians are also up with Christian Platonism. Trueman, Barrett, Carter, Swain, Sanders; to name a few. Sproul said something to the effect that he finds more orthodoxy in Plato than he did in the Theistic Mutualists.

Do you think they're overselling Platonism?


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## RamistThomist (May 17, 2022)

Tychicus said:


> But here's the thing, most of the Classical Theists theologians are also up with Christian Platonism. Trueman, Barrett, Carter, Swain, Sanders; to name a few. Sproul said something to the effect that he finds more orthodoxy in Plato than he did in the Theistic Mutualists.
> 
> Do you think they're overselling Platonism?



Maybe. Sproul is certainly correct that Plato is better than the theistic mutualists. What these guys are calling Platonism is actually Augustinianism.


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## Tychicus (May 17, 2022)

RamistThomist said:


> Maybe. Sproul is certainly correct that Plato is better than the theistic mutualists. What these guys are calling Platonism is actually Augustinianism.


From what I understand, your critique of the whole Christian Platonism going on now is just with the nomenclature? Or are you just being cautious with the whole project?(for lack of better words)


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## RamistThomist (May 17, 2022)

Tychicus said:


> From what I understand, your critique of the whole Christian Platonism going on now is just with the nomenclature? Or are you just being cautious with the whole project?(for lack of better words)



Mainly nomenclature. Plato himself taught many things that are off-limits to Christians. I know what these guys are getting at, so I don't lose too much sleep over it. They are doing excellent work on the Doctrine of God and exposing the false teaching of ESS.


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## Timmay (May 17, 2022)

RamistThomist said:


> Mainly nomenclature. Plato himself taught many things that are off-limits to Christians. I know what these guys are getting at, so I don't lose too much sleep over it. They are doing excellent work on the Doctrine of God and exposing the false teaching of ESS.


It seems if you adapt Plato's view of forms being actualizations of the mind and will of God, you would be safe no? When I look at a tree, "treeness" comes from the mind of God, and not "treeness" in itself. Does Lewis see earth as merely a copy or rather a reflection of the mind of God?


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## RamistThomist (May 17, 2022)

Timmay said:


> It seems if you adapt Plato's view of forms being actualizations of the mind and will of God, you would be safe no? When I look at a tree, "treeness" comes from the mind of God, and not "treeness" in itself. Does Lewis see earth as merely a copy or rather a reflection of the mind of God?



You're correct on the former. Lewis's uses the language of copy, but at times he might mean reflection.


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