# The Great Divorce



## Semper Fidelis (Dec 23, 2014)

I went to see a play in DC put on by the Fellowship for Performing Arts.

I have never read The Great Divorce. While the play was entertaining, it left me scratching my head about C.S. Lewis' view of heaven and hell. It seems that Lewis (also seen in the Last Battle) has a platonic bent to reality and his idea of things being *real* in heaven.

More disturbing was a sense that what Christ accomplished was God reaching down into hell to be able to pull people up to heaven to make a choice for God. It doesn't seem, ultimately, that Christ's provides an atoning sacrifice but that He provides a means by which hell-bound people have a chance to turn from service self to serving God. Hell is seen as the completion of man serving his own will and, if he will recognize that serving God is the ultimate good, he can then begin a journey from self-absorption to being a servant of God.

Thoughts?


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## Jerusalem Blade (Dec 23, 2014)

Rich, although he's quotable, I never was attracted to Lewis. I couldn't relate to his style of thinking. Just a few days ago (I can't recall where) I came across a Lewis quote that indicated just as you said, "Hell is seen as the completion of man serving his own will" rather than torment under God's wrath in the lake of fire. It was more the horror of psychological torment than the Biblical description. I know one preacher whose view of Hell has, it seems to me, been molded by Lewis' conception. I haven't come across his saying or implying one can transition out of Hell, but then I have not gotten deeply into his works.


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## Pilgrim (Dec 23, 2014)

I've never read much Lewis beyond "Mere Christianity" and maybe "The Abolition of Man" or "The Screwtape Letters." But frome what I've gathred through the years, "The Great Divorce" is evidently one of the more problematic works for his evangelical fans. If I recall correctly in either this work or another one he affirms purgatory.


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## jwright82 (Dec 23, 2014)

If I remember correctly he qualified that work a bit. I'll check when I get home. But I think he quaiified it as not to be taken as totally accurate of heaven and hell.


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## Philip (Dec 23, 2014)

_The Great Divorce_ is, in many respects, a thought experiment. It is about the difference between those who are being transformed into the image of Christ and those for whom the soul is turned in on itself. Lewis was unsure on purgatory, but didn't intend for this particular book to be anything more than a work of speculative fiction with a theological point, any more than _Screwtape_ should be seen as reflecting Lewis's particular views of, say, the beauracracy of demons.



Semper Fidelis said:


> It doesn't seem, ultimately, that Christ's provides an atoning sacrifice but that He provides a means by which hell-bound people have a chance to turn from service self to serving God. Hell is seen as the completion of man serving his own will and, if he will recognize that serving God is the ultimate good, he can then begin a journey from self-absorption to being a servant of God.



First of all, the two are not mutually exclusive. You are correct, though, that for Lewis, what we are saved for is more important than the mechanism by which salvation occurs.


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## py3ak (Dec 24, 2014)

Semper Fidelis said:


> Thoughts?



I think that reading _The Great Divorce_ to find out a doctrine of Hell would lead you to unfortunate results, but would also be something of a misreading. While it isn't a dogmatic treatise, if it could be placed within one of the theological loci it would be within hamartiology (this is true of a lot of his books). In a series of unforgettable sketches, Lewis shows you: _This is what sin does._ (Or in one case, _this is what the death of sin leads to_.) I find the liberal clergyman and the tragedian particularly solemn warnings; and I love the fact that the tragedian's wife goes on with untroubled joy when he ultimately chooses death.

Even within the imaginative context of the book, it's made clear that the present state isn't final: they are waiting for night to fall. I don't mean to imply that if Lewis had given somewhere a detailed and forthright explanation of hell that he would have emphasized the wrath of God; I rather doubt it. He believed in hell and took it seriously; but his purpose with regard to statements about the doctrine seems to have been more apologetic. If I can speculate as to his motives, I think he wanted to so set it out so as to remove stumbling blocks from people believing the gospel, and help Christians conceive of it in a way that didn't wound their faith. If he was ever successful in that it was probably in _The Pilgrim's Regress_: 
God in his mercy made
The fixèd pains of hell.​
Of course the problem with going beyond removing false conceptions (e.g., of gleeful devils cranking the thermostat) is that you fail to set God's word as the standard. Without a firm belief that we know what God does to be good precisely because God does it, the desire to justify God will always include some pressure to show how what God does _isn't that bad_ according to the human standards of the society being addressed. But that fails to get at the most basic point: if God doesn't meet someone's standard, it is the standard rather than God that stands condemned. God is always the _norma normans_ never _normata_.


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## Semper Fidelis (Dec 26, 2014)

Philip said:


> Semper Fidelis said:
> 
> 
> > It doesn't seem, ultimately, that Christ's provides an atoning sacrifice but that He provides a means by which hell-bound people have a chance to turn from service self to serving God. Hell is seen as the completion of man serving his own will and, if he will recognize that serving God is the ultimate good, he can then begin a journey from self-absorption to being a servant of God.
> ...



The adverb _ultimately_ does make ideas mutually exclusive. I don't disagree that there are conceptions of sin in the presentation that bear resemblance to the truth of what sin is but the issue is the idea that the ultimate sense is NOT atonement but a form of cosmic self-actualization. At one point, the main character is being shown a crack that represents hell and that only the son ever went down there because people in heaven are too big to fit through. 


py3ak said:


> I think that reading The Great Divorce to find out a doctrine of Hell would lead you to unfortunate results, but would also be something of a misreading.


I didn't expect a work of fiction to be a theological treatise but the work carries tremendous theological baggage. In the discussion that ensued after the play when Max McLean took questions it was this conception of hell that people were thinking about. Like it or not, people who would never read Scripture came away conceiving of hell and heaven in the manner Lewis portrayed. Hell is self-absorption to the point of complete isolation from others. People ultimately will move further and further away from one another to avoid any contact. Those who are invited to get out of hell and into heaven are repeatedly told that they only need to stop being absorbed with themselves and accept that they are nothing and, only then, will they begin to realize what is truly real. I think Lewis' thoughts about present reality simply being a continuation of what we will eternally inherit on a certain end but he simply does nothing to ground inheritance in eternal life with the Atonement. 

It got me thinking about how dangerous certain Christian thinkers are. They are beloved. It is almost as if Lewis' celebrity makes it impossible to simply state that many many have been led astray by the theology of his books (whether he intended it or not) and I can't help being disturbed deeply by it. Max McLean made much of Lewis' learning and reading and how he brought so much of that to his work but that seems to be the reason why so many lend such authority to his conception of theological issues. It's sort of a "let's see what Lewis thinks about this" because he is so quotable. He has an authority on matters of eternal life that I don't find are deserved.

Sorry if I'm rambling but I'm trying to think through how dangerous such popular minds are to the eternal souls of their devotees. I don't want to seem mean-spirited but I just don't see Christ preached clearly in his works so as to rejoice even if I disagree on other points. It seems we're so enamored with how he takes apart the spirit of the age to show it wanting that we don't often consider what he offers in its place.


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## Nomos (Dec 26, 2014)

> I think that reading The Great Divorce to find out a doctrine of Hell would lead you to unfortunate results,



I couldn't agree more and it seems Lewis anticipated this when he wrote in his preface:

"I beg the readers to remember that this is a fantasy. It has of course - or I intended it to have - a moral. But the transmortal conditions are solely an imaginative supposal: they are not even a guess or a speculation at what may actually await us. The last thing I wish is to arouse factual curiosity about the details of the after-world."


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## Stephen L Smith (Dec 26, 2014)

Semper Fidelis said:


> It got me thinking about how dangerous certain Christian thinkers are. They are beloved. It is almost as if Lewis' celebrity makes it impossible to simply state that many many have been led astray by the theology of his books (whether he intended it or not) and I can't help being disturbed deeply by it.


I think you have hit the nail on the head Rich. Lewis has helpful things to say but lurking under them is theological danger. I recently read an article by Iain Murray about the theological dangers of Lewis' writings. In Martyn Lloyd-Jones classic lecture "What is an Evangelical" [given in 1971] Lloyd'Jones stated "I find that C.S.Lewis has almost become the patron saint of evangelicals. He was never an evangelical and said so quite plainly himself".


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## whirlingmerc (Dec 26, 2014)

I saw the version of Screwtape Letters that group did and it was fantastic

I would like to see the Great Divorse... I think it probably has it's points but some aspects might dissapoint... I didn't like that CS Lewis had Gearoge MacDonald preach the salvation message in heaven since he had a weak view of the attonement, some say he rejected penal attonement in favor of some sort of example ... but he was somewhat of a mentor for CS Lewis so that's why CS Lewis gave him that place http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_MacDonald some historical figures seem to take the best of their environment and mentors and grow past their problems

There was an interesting Desiring God on Joy where the poster child of joy was CS Lewis and you might like to look it up and listen to a few of the discussions... http://www.desiringgod.org/conference-messages/by-series/2013-national-conference ND Wilson,... Doug Wilson's son had a great talk in it I believe ND Wison (author of Indian in the Cupboard) is writing the screen play for the movie version of Great Divorse which has been planned for a while now


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## whirlingmerc (Dec 26, 2014)

CS Lewis was not a theologian, pastor or evangelist but was a bit of an apologist. He appeals to liberals and conservatives and sits somewhere in the overlap. He gets enough right and does enough right to be worthwhile to read.


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## py3ak (Dec 26, 2014)

Semper Fidelis said:


> py3ak said:
> 
> 
> > I think that reading The Great Divorce to find out a doctrine of Hell would lead you to unfortunate results, but would also be something of a misreading.
> ...



I think C.S. Lewis taught me how to read; for that, I owe him a tremendous debt. If I've learned something from Bavinck or Turretin it's in no small measure because Lewis equipped me to read them. I've always enjoyed him, and found him very profitable. Having grown up with him, it's no surprise that I (re)read at least one of his books every year. Of course, I don't primarily read him for how he takes apart the spirit of the age; I think that's quite likely almost the least valuable part of what he does.

Having laid my cards on the table as one who values him very highly, I hope the caveats I want to make will be evaluated on the basis of their justness. I think C.S. Lewis is often subjected to almost systematic misreading, including by people who count themselves among his biggest fans. So the ways people are mislead are often due more to their misreadings, than to Lewis' actual embrace of a particular error. I think he is an incredibly lucid writer; but no one is immune to misreading. Thus I have an acquaintance who feels that Jonathan Edwards led her to Eastern Orthodoxy. Secondly, I don't believe that Lewis intentionally led anyone astray. I have no hesitation in saying that, for instance, William Barclay was an evil man; in good conscience I can't say the same of Lewis.

So having declared my preference for him and defended him, now I come to agree with you. I wish most people who read him would stop. There are authors who might do as much good and less harm if they were not so popular (e.g., Dietrich Bonhoeffer), and I think Lewis regrettably falls into that category. Many people don't have the right framework to profit from him. And that leads to enthusiasms for him that are just as painful as some of the cringe-worthy attacks that have been leveled at him.

If I may ramble a bit in my turn, when you read Benedict XVI's catecheses about the teachers of the church it becomes clear that _to some extent_ what you get out of an author depends on what you bring to him. Not just in the obvious way of biases and preconceptions, but also in the way of frameworks of understanding and mechanisms of appropriation. Benedict reads some things quite differently from what I am used to; and with regard to some of the authors he discusses, he is in a better position to extract something of value. Not every age, not every person, will be equally capable of reading something on its own terms in a profitable manner. For instance, dispensationalists clearly lack the tools to read the apocalyptic genre as it was meant to be read -- or to rat myself out, I still can't figure out what John Donne was trying to do in his _Essays on Divinity_. Or think about the way some liberals and neo-orthodox read John Calvin, apparently finding some kind of religious inspiration while at the same time missing perhaps 90% of the import of Calvin's words.

So in sum I think that evangelicals by and large should be directed to Luther rather than Lewis. If someone wants to read something by C.S. Lewis, they would usually be better off turning to _The Discarded Image_ in preference to _Mere Christianity_. But for myself I will have no regrets in taking some time every year that could have been spent with a contemporary Reformed author and spending it with C.S. Lewis instead, even while indulging the hope that his works will go out-of-print and become hard to find.


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## DMcFadden (Dec 27, 2014)

My attitude toward Lewis was sharpened by reading McGrath's excellent bio, "C. S. Lewis - A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet." Like Lewis, McGrath is wrongly taken to be an evangelical. And, like Lewis, he would probably do as much good and less harm if he were not so popular (thanks, Ruben for the brilliant insight!).

Lewis and his whole "mere Christianity" campaign promoted much with which we can all agree. However, he was a renaissance English professor, not a biblical scholar or theologian. And, his particular brand of English Christianity included a lot of the nonsense that Anglicanism had added over the centuries. The particulars of his domestic arrangement with Mrs. Moore only serve to highlight what an odd man he was and his oddity extended to some of his theological ruminations. 

As to hell, I have mixed reactions. On the one hand, it is refreshing to have someone of his stature defend the doctrine in ANY form. The annihilationism promulgated by some other Englishmen (e.g., John Stott, Colin Brown, et. al.) seems all the rage these days. However, Lewis treats it in such a psychological way that it will not hold together for many more decades before the intrinsic instability of it all causes a final drift into outright denial.

Bottom line: he is a provocative and most interesting imaginative thinker and writer. However, there are far better places to go for theology than Lewis.


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## Nomos (Dec 27, 2014)

py3ak said:


> So in sum I think that evangelicals by and large should be directed to Luther rather than Lewis.



Lewis has such a better imagination than Luther in my opinion. I enjoy both of them, but for very different reasons.


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## py3ak (Dec 27, 2014)

Nomos said:


> py3ak said:
> 
> 
> > So in sum I think that evangelicals by and large should be directed to Luther rather than Lewis.
> ...



Certainly. They're hardly equivalent. But I don't think most evangelicals are equipped to read imaginative literature or have the necessary framework to profit from Lewis. Luther is probably more understandable, and evangelicalism is weak in many areas in which Luther was strong.

Incidentally, those wanting to learn what C.S. Lewis had to say about hell should turn to _The Problem of Pain_: chapter 8 discusses the matter explicitly. It is still in an apologetic context, but it is a direct treatment of hell by answering objections to it, rather than its employment as imaginative background for something else. There he maintains that hell is a question of retributive punishment and seeks to make his reader feel the old problem of a conflict between justice and mercy. He thinks this punishment is ultimately consistent with a man being allowed "to lie wholly in the self and make the best of what he finds there. And what he finds there is Hell." 
As for exiting from hell, Lewis says that finality must come at some point "and it does not require a very robust faith to believe that omniscience knows when."
With regard to explaining what hell is like, Lewis rejects any explanation that does not include "something unspeakably horrible" and divides the imagery concerning hell into three kinds: punishment, destruction, and privation.
On the basis of the three kinds of imagery he rejects annihilation - the cessation of the soul. He proposes instead that the state of _having been_ a human soul satisfies the conditions of all three kinds of imagery. And that _having been_ involves consisting in "a will utterly centred in its self and its passions utterly uncontrolled by the will." The one who suffers punishment, destruction, and privation is no longer _a sinner_ but "a loose congeries of mutually antagonistic sins," whose state of consciousness it is not possible to imagine. When he says "That the lost soul is eternally fixed in its diabolical attitude we cannot doubt" but proceeds to question whether it has duration, I am not sure what practical difference there is from annihilation and would be happy to know more.
Then he says that the doors of hell are locked from the inside: since God has already given every possible help, and since people will not be forgiven, God leaves them alone. There hell is conceived of as Romans 1 all over again, finally and completely. If Lewis himself would have related this paragraph to the statements made earlier about God witnessing to the truth by means of pain, he might have seen punishment as infliction rather than simply abandonment.
Finally he admonishes the reader that the doctrine should be considered in reference to oneself (consistently with his earlier remark that the purpose of the doctrine, probably, is to "rouse us into action by convincing us of a terrible possibility").
So hell is affirmed, and on the basis of Aquinas held out as better for it to be than not, given the supposition of evil; proclaimed as intolerable; made to be a question of retributive punishment; and deployed for a moral purpose. On those points, we can probably agree with him. Another point of value is that he understands that hell is a very painful doctrine; it's such a common thing to hear someone being told to go to hell that we can sometimes talk about it glibly or even gleefully, which is inappropriate. It's unlikely that we would lay as much stress on free-will as he did. On his view, the fact of creation already implies that omnipotence can be resisted. His defense of hell will necessarily be different than that of a Calvinist. On the whole his answers to the objections are pretty weak: I think he would have done better to start with asking objectors who they are to reply against God. While the categorization of the imagery of hell is useful, I think there are more robust ways to understand punishment and privation, and that those two together fully justify the imagery of destruction (which does not require cessation). The direction of his speculations is not healthy, and he seems to have forgotten that the unrighteous also are raised.
I think Rutherford's view, that God shows love to the damned in the sense of maintaining them in being, is ultimately kinder than C.S. Lewis' view which flinches as far as it can from any appearance of cruelty, even at the cost of asserting divine helplessness and withdrawal. But when God is not held as the measure of all things, errors are inevitable.


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## Semper Fidelis (Dec 27, 2014)

Ruben,

Great thoughts all around.

What is Lewis' view of the Atonement? It seems the ideas of Hell being locked from the inside sort of mitigate against penal substitution.


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## Jerusalem Blade (Dec 27, 2014)

I'm afraid you have hit on another problem with Lewis, Rich -- the atonement. Here is Kevin DeYoung's take on that, with some pertinent quotes.


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## Philip (Dec 27, 2014)

Semper Fidelis said:


> What is Lewis' view of the Atonement? It seems the ideas of Hell being locked from the inside sort of mitigate against penal substitution.



Lewis is ambiguous on this point. He tends toward a _Christus Victor_ model, but nowhere claims exclusivity for it, at least as far as I can remember.


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## whirlingmerc (Dec 27, 2014)

Why Jesus had to die by CS Lewis
Why Did Jesus Have To Die? - C.S. Lewis Explains the Atonement

Looks like the emphasis is on the penal substitution and repentance in his explaination; forgiveness of sins but not so much an emphasis on imparted righteousness. I think this is an improvement over Gordon MacDonald his mentor but could have been better.

"MacDonald rejected the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement as developed by John Calvin, which argues that Christ has taken the place of sinners and is punished by the wrath of God in their place, believing that in turn it raised serious questions about the character and nature of God. Instead, he taught that Christ had come to save people from their sins, and not from a Divine penalty for their sins. The problem was not the need to appease a wrathful God but the disease of cosmic evil itself. George MacDonald frequently described the Atonement in terms similar to the Christus Victor theory. MacDonald posed the rhetorical question, "Did he not foil and slay evil by letting all the waves and billows of its horrid sea break upon him, go over him, and die without rebound—spend their rage, fall defeated, and cease? Verily, he made atonement!" from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_MacDonald


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## py3ak (Dec 28, 2014)

There are diverse statements in Lewis' works about the atonement. As far as I know he wouldn't have materially departed from this statement at any subsequent point:

"The central Christian belief is that Christ's death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start. Theories as to how it did this are another matter." Most of the rest of his remarks in that chapter can be found at the first link in post #20 above. But as he concludes, Lewis again says: "Such is my own way of looking at what Christians call the Atonement. But remember this is only one more picture. Do not mistake it for the thing itself: and if it does not help you, drop it."

In some ways, I'm not quite comfortable answering questions like, "What was C.S. Lewis' view on this theological point." There are a couple reasons for that, if you can bear a bit more ruminating. 

One is that Lewis himself wouldn't have been comfortable with me answering, nor very likely with himself answering in that way. He wants to appreciate the fact and marvel at it. But I think ready explanations would have tended to strike him as coming from someone who is too much at ease in Zion, who might not be properly seized with the gravity and grandeur of these things. I suspect he would have found it one thing for Anselm or Thomas to more or less confidently venture an explanation of how the atonement worked (though even their stature wouldn't guarantee agreement), but a very different thing to speak so boldly himself. I don't necessarily share his view about that, but I find some value in it, because I have found that in rushing to explain I sometimes fail to appreciate. And an explanation given without appreciation of the magnitude of the thing being explained, will be pat and glib, even where technically correct. This is one of the things that distinguishes the great theologians like Augustine and Turretin from the not-so-great: they can offer clear explanations, but it is with a deep sense of the majesty of the thing they are explaining. Lewis is better on the majesty than on the explaining.

A second reason is that it might tend to further misreadings. Lewis is never writing a dogmatic encyclopedia. He didn't think he had the training or the ability for that. What he means to do in popular works is to state what the church teaches and then try to overcome people's reluctance to accept it. Dipping into his works to find his remarks on a particular topic means using them against their genre and without recollecting his continual repetitions that he was not a theologian. One reason people are led astray is reading him to learn doctrine; that isn't his purpose, nor was it his strength. Talented as he was, I think writing either a dictionary or a compendium would have been quite beyond him.

Also, I don't mean to set up as a Lewis expert. My claim to any such thing is really reducible to having loved him for a long time, and having come to him not because he was a Christian or to learn about anything associated with Christianity, but because his books were so good. In other words, though I started to read him much earlier, I read him in exactly the same way as I read Orwell, and not as I read John Calvin.


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## Caroline (Dec 28, 2014)

As another who loves CS Lewis' writings, I agree that most people read him wrong, and many would do well to read him less. But that doesn't mean that the fault is necessarily in Lewis.

It ought to be fairly stated (and has on this thread) that Lewis himself explicitly declared that he was not trying to present a literal vision of heaven and hell to his reader. If some people conceive one anyway, perhaps they ought not to be reading The Great Divorce. But the fact that someone can be misread is different from saying that everyone ought to avoid an author. People can misunderstand just about anything when they are poorly taught and not paying attention. 

Lewis' point in the Great Divorce was more a commentary on the human condition--an answer to the popular notion that people are basically good and would make good choices if they had everything presented clearly. Lewis' conclusion is that God is not dealing with misunderstandings and innocent ignorance in humankind, but rather He is dealing with sin--with destructive rebellious, gross sin. Lewis asks us to consider how we think of ourselves and the excuses we make for our sin. Even our love for one another is often a twisted, selfish thing that ends up harming the person that we claim we love. 

That is the point of the book, and it is an allegory. Anyone who takes it literally may as well complain that John Bunyan leads people to believe that they must follow a literal path and literally walk between lions and fight a scaly monster in the course of the Christian life. I would think that the bus ride to heaven would tip people off to the allegorical nature, but if they overlook that, then I think the waking at the end to realize that it was a dream lends to that conclusion as well, even if one fails to read the introduction in which Lewis says he doesn't mean anyone to suppose heaven and hell to be literally that way.

As others have previously noted, Lewis wasn't--nor did he claim to be--a theologian. On theological matters, he was that day's equivalent of a popular blogger. I don't mean to downplay him at all--he was brilliant and I have benefited greatly from his books, especially in regard to a better understanding of the sinful condition of mankind and the way that it plays itself out in ordinary lives. But I think people are unfair to Lewis when they look for systematic theology in his works. They are looking for something that he never intended to produce. You couldn't find systematic theology in my personal blog either--just explorations of various topics, comments on particular ideas, etc--many of them Christian, but not in any systematic way. I would be horrified if people took my blog as a Sunday school lesson. (I do produce Sunday school curriculum, but not in my blog.)

I don't agree with Lewis on everything, but then, I don't agree with Luther on everything either. The only person I agree with 100% is me, and even then I assume my judgment is fallible in assessing my own correctness. One can acknowledge that someone probably didn't hit the nail on the head 100% of the time without leading that to a conclusion that no one should read or benefit from anything that person says. It is a common thing in Reformed circles to seize upon something perceived as incorrect and declare all the works that person has ever produced off limits. But in fairness, only the Bible is perfect. The rest we ought to read with a somewhat critical eye, prepared to disagree at some points but willing to accept whatever is good and helpful.


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## Semper Fidelis (Dec 28, 2014)

py3ak said:


> One is that Lewis himself wouldn't have been comfortable with me answering, nor very likely with himself answering in that way. He wants to appreciate the fact and marvel at it. But I think ready explanations would have tended to strike him as coming from someone who is too much at ease in Zion, who might not be properly seized with the gravity and grandeur of these things. I suspect he would have found it one thing for Anselm or Thomas to more or less confidently venture an explanation of how the atonement worked (though even their stature wouldn't guarantee agreement), but a very different thing to speak so boldly himself. I don't necessarily share his view about that, but I find some value in it, because I have found that in rushing to explain I sometimes fail to appreciate. And an explanation given without appreciation of the magnitude of the thing being explained, will be pat and glib, even where technically correct. This is one of the things that distinguishes the great theologians like Augustine and Turretin from the not-so-great: they can offer clear explanations, but it is with a deep sense of the majesty of the thing they are explaining. Lewis is better on the majesty than on the explaining.



I'm not trying to pin you down as the Lewis apologist or expert but simply trying to get more thoughts from those who have read him more broadly. I read the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Now, I realize that there are some things in allegory that we don't take literally but let me explain why I find Lewis problematic compared to a Bunyan. Both are allegorizing what cannot be mistaken as the Christian faith. Many try to read into Tolkien some allegory but, at the end of the day, you can't really clearly see any figures in Tolkien that would lead you to some conclusions about theology. All of Bunyan's figures point in an orthodox direction. In contrast, Lewis (in the Last Battle) depicts Aslan as stating that a worshiper of Tash worshiped Aslan as long as he did so sincerely. Something is being communicated there. It's the same with the Great Divorce. I find many depictions about the self-absorption of sin and the just-ness of the bed that men have made for themselves to be quite insightful but then it is the solution that is offered that I find completely problematic.

Your comments about Lewis finding such topics as the atonement to be something requiring some sort of gravitas to speak about are quite maddening to me. I don't mean that I'm mad at you but it causes me to reflect upon what drives me nuts about listening to many guests on the Unbelievable Radio program. I think Lewis would probably be totally mystified by an inerrantist like myself who drew firm conclusions about Scripture. Is it a British thing? With all due respect to those here from Great Britain, it does seem like the mainstream kind of has this sort of approach to theological matters. I was just listening to an Unbelievable today where the former Anglican Bishop of Oxford pretty much told an atheist verbatim that the important thing is the quest for truth and that God would much rather have the atheist confirmed in his skepticism of the Christian faith than to believe something he found implausible. In other words, the "truth" was something external to God and man in some sense.

There is a theological and philosophical milieu that the semi-orthodox inhabit along with the liberals where they pretty much agree on all the major issues of approach. When you listen to William Lane Craig or N.T. Wright there is always a "...this seems to me..." approach to truth where the Christian faith is seen as belonging to most probable evidence and recent scholarship. As I was ruminating yesterday on a run, it seems that when one begins with the notion that Christianity is something that we apprehend by our unaided minds then we must come up with plausible philosophical schemes to convince men that its true because there doesn't seem to be anything fundamentally supernatural about the reason for belief. It just needs more evidence or another way of looking at it that we can take.

Thus, the defense of the faith or its understanding belongs to the super-academician. It requires scholars on the order of Anselm or Aquinas who can come up with a complete metaphysic. It requires a study of the history of western thought. We can't speak boldly about the atonement because the gravity of such things would require a lifetime of work to get a glimpse at and then only a glimpse until we're soon dead.

I don't mean to lay this all at Lewis' feet and I'm rambling but I'm trying to put together what is this appeal to a Christianity rent from its Scriptural moorings (likely because it's just too simple for educated folk).

On the one hand, I find myself sympathetic to the criticisms of childishness in theological approach that some take who make no effort to move from a childish apprehension of things. On the other hand, I'd rather cast my lot with the childish who still have confidence in the Word of God than to embrace a theological method that loses confidence in the idea of the plain teachings of Scripture. I see nothing in Scripture that would indicate that the fundamental issues of salvation are far off and that we need to ascend into heaven to discern them.


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## py3ak (Dec 28, 2014)

Semper Fidelis said:


> I'm not trying to pin you down as the Lewis apologist or expert but simply trying to get more thoughts from those who have read him more broadly. I read the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
> 
> Now, I realize that there are some things in allegory that we don't take literally but let me explain why I find Lewis problematic compared to a Bunyan. Both are allegorizing what cannot be mistaken as the Christian faith. Many try to read into Tolkien some allegory but, at the end of the day, you can't really clearly see any figures in Tolkien that would lead you to some conclusions about theology. All of Bunyan's figures point in an orthodox direction. In contrast, Lewis (in the Last Battle) depicts Aslan as stating that a worshiper of Tash worshiped Aslan as long as he did so sincerely. Something is being communicated there. It's the same with the Great Divorce. I find many depictions about the self-absorption of sin and the just-ness of the bed that men have made for themselves to be quite insightful but then it is the solution that is offered that I find completely problematic.



The difficulty here, Rich, is that Bunyan and Lewis are actually doing something completely different. Bunyan is writing an allegory, and an exceedingly fine one. By all proper criteria, his work belongs to the category of allegory. But the Narnia books do not. Perhaps that seems like quibbling, but let us remember that the Chronicles of Narnia were written by a professional literary critic and historian, whose first professional book dealt extensively with several allegories (and whose essay on Bunyan is very illuminating). He denied strenuously that the Chronicles of Narnia were allegorical. I can't agree with the remark "both are allegorizing what cannot be mistaken as the Christian faith." I am probably not enough of a critic to explain _how to see_ the difference; but just think for a moment about the names. In one you have Faithful, Hopeful, Great-heart; in the other you have Reepicheep, Rilian, Aravis. This is a whole different world of discourse. Reading them in the same way is like reading Revelation the same way you read Romans.

Secondly, certainly something is communicated in such dialogue. But if we take _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_ as setting out Lewis' doctrine of the atonement, you would actually arrive at something far more like precise penal substitution than if you read his works explicitly on the topic. Unlike in a genuine allegory, the story has an existence and logic of its own which demands one thing rather than another. That being said, of course, Lewis' explicit works do reveal that he was far too weak on the knowledge of Christ as essential to salvation. He held that salvation could only be had through Christ, but failed to relate that to an explicit exercise of faith in Christ. On that score, I have no desire to defend him.



Semper Fidelis said:


> Your comments about Lewis finding such topics as the atonement to be something requiring some sort of gravitas to speak about are quite maddening to me. I don't mean that I'm mad at you but it causes me to reflect upon what drives me nuts about listening to many guests on the Unbelievable Radio program. I think Lewis would probably be totally mystified by an inerrantist like myself who drew firm conclusions about Scripture. Is it a British thing? With all due respect to those here from Great Britain, it does seem like the mainstream kind of has this sort of approach to theological matters. I was just listening to an Unbelievable today where the former Anglican Bishop of Oxford pretty much told an atheist verbatim that the important thing is the quest for truth and that God would much rather have the atheist confirmed in his skepticism of the Christian faith than to believe something he found implausible. In other words, the "truth" was something external to God and man in some sense.
> 
> There is a theological and philosophical milieu that the semi-orthodox inhabit along with the liberals where they pretty much agree on all the major issues of approach. When you listen to William Lane Craig or N.T. Wright there is always a "...this seems to me..." approach to truth where the Christian faith is seen as belonging to most probable evidence and recent scholarship. As I was ruminating yesterday on a run, it seems that when one begins with the notion that Christianity is something that we apprehend by our unaided minds then we must come up with plausible philosophical schemes to convince men that its true because there doesn't seem to be anything fundamentally supernatural about the reason for belief. It just needs more evidence or another way of looking at it that we can take.
> 
> ...



On this point, I don't think you're getting at the heart of the matter. Certainly what you describe is true of some. But that's not where Lewis fit. Here I have three things to say. 

One is that I don't think you're appreciating what I actually said. Perhaps I explained what I meant badly, but I think that in our circles there can be an impatience with beholding and wondering because we are rushing to explain or defend. Take one text: "great is the mystery of godliness." I sometimes get the impression that what is involved for some in meditating on such texts is explaining what Paul means by "the mystery of godliness." Once we've identified the referent, our work is done. But that's surely inadequate. The word "great" has a meaning; if our hearts are not in some way assailed with a sense of the greatness of the mystery of godliness, we run the risk of handling holy things lightly and have not thoroughly appropriated the text. I don't think you'll find Augustine making that mistake very often, nor Thomas Goodwin. A man without a chest, to cite _The Abolition of Man_, might give a technically correct explanation and yet has found no _nourishment_ in it. There are some people who defend the walls but never enter the city.

Second, that is not an elitist remark, and it's a significant mischaracterization to put Lewis in any kind of an elitist camp. In Lewis' case it's not Anselm's or Thomas' intellect per se that gives them a right to speak on a certain topic, but their position within the church and most of all their (perceived) saintliness. Lewis was an academic who had picnics with the driver of his hired car and learned about George Whitefield from him. He was often in hot water with the more elitist set because he wouldn't be elitist at all. He understood perfectly well that the faith of the charwoman or the person in elastic side boots might well be far better than his own. It is one of the most engaging things about his character, that his learning and intellect did not lead him to put on airs or consider himself superior to others.

Third, Lewis was familiar with inerrantists, hostile Quakers, and Christians of all sorts. He wouldn't be mystified. But his view of Scripture is appallingly weak. And that weakness shows up, among other things, in a lack of conviction that Scripture has the character of _didache_ (in the Ridderbosian sense). Thus when he reads Thomas Cartwright he is amazed at the slenderness of the Biblical evidence which Cartwright uses to build up a platform of church government. When your doctrine of inspiration is weak (as Lewis' was) one of the casualties is the truth that the implications, presuppositions, and very structure of Scripture also teach. At that point your criticism certainly applies to Lewis among many others. A lack of confidence in good and necessary consequence is almost endemic in the church today, in the US as well as Britain. For some people I think this comes from a love of imprecision: bright boundaries and sharp edges do not please those who want to live in a jello room inside a misty bounce-house. I don't think that was behind Lewis' defect at this point, however. His friend Barfield thought his reasoning far too much like hard, discrete billiard balls. And there are certainly are occasions when Lewis can press the antithesis with the best of them. He's very good at doing that, for instance, with the sin of selfishness in its manifold guises.


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## py3ak (Dec 28, 2014)

Caroline, naturally I agree with you. What I have been gradually and reluctantly convinced of is that in today's climate it is perhaps the majority of people who are not able to read C.S. Lewis without misreading him.

A few years ago, I took a little course on technical writing. It was very helpful to me in more than one way, not least because it provoked some thoughts about technical reading. Many people have an appetite for books who don't enjoy literature. Lewis himself introduces one such character, and no one who has read _The Voyage of the Dawn Treader_ ten times or more (and is there any other way to read it?) can ever forget him:



> There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. ... He liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools.



There are a lot of people who like to read. There are perhaps more people who don't. But of the people who like to read, there are not a few who like to read books of information. Their tastes may be a bit different than Scrubb's, but they are reading for very similar reasons. They want to know what a novel or play or poem _means_, as though it were a syllogism or an argument. 

{Incidentally, to non-Carolines, if that quoted sentence above doesn't fill you with joy then I wouldn't recommend C.S. Lewis. In saying these things I don't mean to devalue either those who read only when necessary nor technical readers. Certain delights are hidden from them, but the delights of Amado Nervo are hidden from everyone who doesn't speak Spanish, and many delights are hidden from me: that's not a moral problem.}

A technical reader naturally tends to read everything as though it were technical writing. Some people do this unconsciously; some people do it perversely. Marilynne Robinson identified a real problem when she said:



> For at least a century we have diverted ourselves with the fact that it is possible to translate whole constellations of ideas into terms inappropriate to them. And when, thus transformed, they seem odd or foolish, we have acted as if we had exposed their true nature — in its essence the alligator was always a handbag. We have alienated ourselves from our history by systematically refusing it the kind of understanding that would make it intelligible to us, until we are no longer capable of understanding. Barth says, about theology, "[W]e need to ask ourselves how it has come about that something that did speak once will no longer speak to us. We certainly should not suppress the historical truth that it did speak once."


 (_The Death of Adam_, "Marguerite de Navarre")

But putting the deliberately miscontextualizing aside as irrelevant here, the technical reader who desires to do so can learn to read in other ways. There are even books written for that purpose. But the present state of Western society has led many people who have a habit and enjoyment of reading to approach most books as though they were parts of an encyclopedia (and I say this as one who has been mocked for reading tracts of encyclopedias and dictionaries). Unless they learn other techniques, what Lewis bent over backwards to make clear won't be clear to them.

Sometimes I think there may be an element of learned ignorance in that kind of thing, because I've found that a simple orientation with a simple person has enabled them to read Lewis with enjoyment, profit, and no being misguided. But of course people who have developed a proficiency in one style may have more trouble switching to another than someone who wasn't proficient. Playing squash ruined me for badminton: I know in my head that a birdie is not a ball, but there's a racket in my hand and unsuitable instincts take over.

My point before is that if someone's appetite and aptitude is for systematics or similar kinds of technical writing, referring them to C.S. Lewis might end badly (whether they like him or not; perhaps especially if they do - no doubt you remember Lewis saying that Barfield had read all the right books and gotten all the wrong things out of them). Perhaps a useful test would be, "Have you ever voluntarily enjoyed a long poem?" If the answer is yes, they'll probably get C.S. Lewis.

The warning about being discerning applies to all authors, as you say. Thus in my document of quotes from Thomas Manton, one of the sanest and most orthodox of authors, there is a section where I keep a record of points where I strongly disagree. If someone asks about Manton, I can enthusiastically recommend him and and also give a precise caveat.

Ultimately, Lewis is not for everybody. As one who enjoys him greatly in every aspect of his varied output, I naturally want people to read him. But I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that one has to be careful about recommending him. One reason is that many people don't have the proper doctrinal grounding. Another reason is that many people won't read him on his own terms - and that turns his wonderful clarity and exactitude into obscurity. So though another author may in many ways be inferior to Lewis, he may actually be more likely to communicate effectively with a particular reader.



Caroline said:


> As another who loves CS Lewis' writings, I agree that most people read him wrong, and many would do well to read him less. But that doesn't mean that the fault is necessarily in Lewis.
> 
> It ought to be fairly stated (and has on this thread) that Lewis himself explicitly declared that he was not trying to present a literal vision of heaven and hell to his reader. If some people conceive one anyway, perhaps they ought not to be reading The Great Divorce. But the fact that someone can be misread is different from saying that everyone ought to avoid an author. People can misunderstand just about anything when they are poorly taught and not paying attention.
> 
> ...


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## Semper Fidelis (Dec 29, 2014)

Thanks for correcting me on Lewis. I'm trying to get my arms around him. Maybe I don't have enough appreciation for literature and tend to read things technically. I do want to address this:


py3ak said:


> One is that I don't think you're appreciating what I actually said. Perhaps I explained what I meant badly, but I think that in our circles there can be an impatience with beholding and wondering because we are rushing to explain or defend. Take one text: "great is the mystery of godliness." I sometimes get the impression that what is involved for them in meditating on such texts is explaining what Paul means by "the mystery of godliness." Once we've identified the referent, our work is done. But that's surely inadequate. The word "great" has a meaning; if our hearts are not in some way assailed with a sense of the greatness of the mystery of godliness, we run the risk of handling holy things lightly and have not thoroughly appropriated the text. I don't think you'll find Augustine making that mistake very often, nor Thomas Goodwin. A man without a chest, to cite The Abolition of Man, might give a technically correct explanation and yet has found no nourishment in it. There are some people who defend the walls but never enter the city.



I think you know that I understand that simply apprehending something in the Scriptures at a certain level is not understanding them fully. I believe there is a growth in wisdom and understanding and am in pursuit of such things.

The problem I have is treating something like the atonement in a category that requires such high apprehension that one feels he cannot speak about it at all because it is too deep to speak about. There is an apprehension at a certain level that permits children to wade into them while the deeper things will keep us busy all the life long. I _want_ my children to be confessing and believing that Christ died for sinners to fully pay the penalty for sin. Is that all there is to say? Of course not but I'm not wating to say something about it because it's too deep to talk about. 

Maybe I misunderstood your point but when I asked what C.S. Lewis believed about the atonement I heard you as saying that he thought that things of this sort were of a deep nature. I find it completely mystifying that a man who many consider to be a Christian apologist (whether he wanted that distinction) cannot be definitively pinned down on what he believed the atonement was about. Forgive me if I'm an uncultured technician but I don't want any part of an approach to Christianity that leaves men and women unable to speak clearly on what the atonement is even if it's at a very basic level. One does not need to be a master chef to appreciate the taste of milk as a babe. It confirms why I would find Lewis dangerous because some devotee with no other training in theology comes away with the idea that certain things that the Scriptures take great pains to make plain to all is now shrouded in the mystery of Lewis writings.

Let me make one other observation. I keep reading from you (and others) that one would have to be of a certain character and skill to really appreciate and read Lewis properly. If that's true then I wonder if Lewis himself would have been aware of this and, if so, the danger of his writings to those who would abuse them. Do you see what I'm driving at. What if I knew that my writing required some skill that 99.9% of people lack and would lead to potential misunderstanding. Should I even be writing on matters that deal with the issue of eternal salvation? I might take some attitude that it's not my problem that a majority of people are uneducated.

The problem is that Lewis wrote popular works that require more than a popular level of understanding. OK, so technically Narnia isn't an allegory. Fine. I'll grant my lack of ability to tell the difference. Am I wrong in concluding that Aslan represents Christ at some level and when he says some things about Aslan that I'm supposed to think that is what Christ is like at some level? Perhaps everyone who reads him should know better. My children and I all need to be trained in how to properly read so we can properly divide such things and not come to the conclusion that Aslan (Jesus?) really thinks that people who worship Tash are not worshipping a false god after all but were worshipping Jesus all along.

If I wrote in such a way that required literary skill then why write popular works on matters dealing with heaven and hell, salvation, etc? To the extent that Lewis wrote works at a popular level then he is responsible for the conclusions that run-of-the-mill people draw from his works and it doesn't do to claim otherwise. If he kept his works technical then I wouldn't quibble. It's when Bart Ehrman writes his popular works that his condemnation is most acute because his scholarly work does not open itself up to the great misunderstandings that untrained people can walk away with. Bart can claim that he never really intended to teach that there are more variants than there are Greek words in the NT and that anybody trained in textual criticism would be able to figure out. The problem is that the people who are reading his works come away with a completely different impression. I think Lewis has to reckon with the same concern and I'm not obliged to give him a pass simply because, if I appreciated literature, I would come away with a better appreciation for it and wouldn't see the things I see.


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## AJ Castellitto (Dec 29, 2014)

I prefer CS the apologist to CS the Christian fiction writer - ever read Pilgrims Regress? What was CS on when he wrote that? LoL


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## Elizabeth (Dec 29, 2014)

I actually love Pilgrim's Regress. Next the space trilogy, it's likely my favorite Lewis. Although I am also very fond of the Great Divorce(with the usual caveats) and Til We Have Faces. But yes, reading him as a theologian is probably not a good idea. Still, he paints with his words a delicious picture of grace and joy, pain and sacrifice.


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## AJ Castellitto (Dec 29, 2014)

He's probably too smart for me (in a literary sense).... for me to truly appreciate his talents - but he's a great name for the Christian cause! We need good apologists as well as good theologians - preferably the whole package


Elizabeth said:


> I actually love Pilgrim's Regress. Next the space trilogy, it's likely my favorite Lewis. Although I am also very fond of the Great Divorce(with the usual caveats) and Til We Have Faces. But yes, reading him as a theologian is probably not a good idea. Still, he paints with his words a delicious picture of grace and joy, pain and sacrifice.


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## py3ak (Dec 29, 2014)

Semper Fidelis said:


> Thanks for correcting me on Lewis. I'm trying to get my arms around him.



Rich, I think this discussion is conflating different things. I'll try to answer you here, but over the next few days I won't have much time to engage.

If you want to wrap your head around Lewis in one book, I would suggest reading _Selected Literary Essays_. Available here: Amazon.com: Selected Literary Essays (Canto Classics) (9781107685383): C. S. Lewis, Walter Hooper: Books If those essays don't give you a taste for more, then I think you should cheerfully conclude that Lewis is not for you and move on. I'd be very surprised if the essay on Bunyan didn't make _Pilgrim's Progress_ seem even more wonderful, at least; you might want to skip the essay "The Fifteenth Century Heroic Line" which is really very technical.



Semper Fidelis said:


> Maybe I don't have enough appreciation for literature and tend to read things technically. I do want to address this:
> 
> 
> py3ak said:
> ...



Certainly: I didn't mean to imply otherwise. You weren't the target of those remarks. I was just highlighting another trend that we also need to oppose. The great theologians unite the monastic and the scholastic tendencies, and whichever one we ignore it is to our detriment (C.S. Lewis is not a great theologian, in part because he didn't deploy the scholastic tendency).



Semper Fidelis said:


> The problem I have is treating something like the atonement in a category that requires such high apprehension that one feels he cannot speak about it at all because it is too deep to speak about. There is an apprehension at a certain level that permits children to wade into them while the deeper things will keep us busy all the life long. I _want_ my children to be confessing and believing that Christ died for sinners to fully pay the penalty for sin. Is that all there is to say? Of course not but I'm not waiting to say something about it because it's too deep to talk about.



Of course the atonement is a doctrine for children. With them also, I imagine that one of the things you want them to grasp is how amazing it is. Just as you explain substitution at a level they can understand, I'm sure you try to help them see that substitution isn't just to be taken for granted. The explanation and the wonder are both held out to them in a way appropriate to their understanding.



Semper Fidelis said:


> Maybe I misunderstood your point but when I asked what C.S. Lewis believed about the atonement I heard you as saying that he thought that things of this sort were of a deep nature. I find it completely mystifying that a man who many consider to be a Christian apologist (whether he wanted that distinction) cannot be definitively pinned down on what he believed the atonement was about. Forgive me if I'm an uncultured technician but I don't want any part of an approach to Christianity that leaves men and women unable to speak clearly on what the atonement is even if it's at a very basic level. One does not need to be a master chef to appreciate the taste of milk as a babe. It confirms why I would find Lewis dangerous because some devotee with no other training in theology comes away with the idea that certain things that the Scriptures take great pains to make plain to all is now shrouded in the mystery of Lewis writings.



I previously quoted Lewis' "pinned-down" position on the atonement as expressed during WWII (in _Mere Christianity_, "The Perfect Penitent"). He went on reading and thinking, so there are some additional expressions at later times; but again I don't know of any reason to think he moved away from this basic position (though I'm happy to have it pointed out if there is one). Here it is again:



> "The central Christian belief is that Christ's death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start. Theories as to how it did this are another matter." Most of the rest of his remarks in that chapter can be found at the first link in post #20 above. But as he concludes, Lewis again says: "Such is my own way of looking at what Christians call the Atonement. But remember this is only one more picture. Do not mistake it for the thing itself: and if it does not help you, drop it."



Further on Lewis says:



> You can say that Christ died for our sins. You may say that the Father has forgiven us because Christ has done what for us what we ought to have done. You may say that we are washed in the blood of the Lamb. You may say that Christ has defeated death. They are all true. If any of them do not appeal to you, leave it alone and get on with the formula that does. And, whatever you do, do not start quarrelling with other people because they use a different formula from yours.


 (_Mere Christianity_, "Good Infection")

What is Lewis' view of the atonement? "Christ's death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start." Elaborations beyond that, in his view, did not belong to the Christian dogma as such, and could therefore be used as more or less helpful ways of conceptualizing that. The advantage of his position is that it enables us to give Anselm, say, credit for conceptualizing the atonement in an intelligible way within a feudal society, without committing us to the view of God as a feudal overlord. The disadvantage of his position is that when Scripture is taken as an equally-inspired whole, comparison of the parts enables us to say a great deal more, such as that the death of Christ was a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice, which propitiated God's wrath, expiated our sins, redeemed us from the curse and bondage of the law, and in this way defeated the powers.

A devotee with no other training in theology is a very disastrous thing. Lewis is no substitute for the catechism, and anyone who recommends him as one is guilty of irresponsibility. That's why the orientation I've given to simple people who are interested in reading C.S. Lewis has been: _Don't read him to learn doctrine._



Semper Fidelis said:


> Let me make one other observation. I keep reading from you (and others) that one would have to be of a certain character and skill to really appreciate and read Lewis properly. If that's true then I wonder if Lewis himself would have been aware of this and, if so, the danger of his writings to those who would abuse them. Do you see what I'm driving at. What if I knew that my writing required some skill that 99.9% of people lack and would lead to potential misunderstanding. Should I even be writing on matters that deal with the issue of eternal salvation? I might take some attitude that it's not my problem that a majority of people are uneducated.



This relates to some of his works, not others. His volume of the _OHEL_ and some of his other work was directed to people who would read _The Times Literary Supplement_, for instance. Some of his apologetic works were pitched to people who listened to the BBC. I'm sure people who loved _Broadcast Talks_ read some fiction who otherwise wouldn't have, and some of them probably misunderstood. But in general when you write fiction, you assume it will be read by people who read fiction. And you write within the conventions and constraints of the various genres of fiction. Lewis didn't expect that his gardener would read the Space Trilogy.



Semper Fidelis said:


> The problem is that Lewis wrote popular works that require more than a popular level of understanding. OK, so technically Narnia isn't an allegory. Fine. I'll grant my lack of ability to tell the difference. Am I wrong in concluding that Aslan represents Christ at some level and when he says some things about Aslan that I'm supposed to think that is what Christ is like at some level? Perhaps everyone who reads him should know better. My children and I all need to be trained in how to properly read so we can properly divide such things and not come to the conclusion that Aslan (Jesus?) really thinks that people who worship Tash are not worshipping a false god after all but were worshipping Jesus all along.



It's quite possible to read Narnia without seeing it as parallel to Christianity. I know that, because that was my own first reading of it as a six-year-old. On that level, you can love it and respond to it. It speaks to children reading naively. Now as you grow older and more skilled you realize that there's a great deal more in it than warning against taking candy from strangers or shutting yourself into a wardrobe (which was useful information, but not my favorite part). But as in Lewis Carroll, the wit doesn't really dawn on you until you're an adult. And the literary allusions that are so rewarding (e.g., "The Parliament of Owls") will remain unnoticed unless one is exploring the background Lewis knew. Like all really good children's books, they can be read by adults and children, and each one gets out of them something different. Lewis' own explanation of the relation of Narnia and Christianity is that given the idea of this other world with its own constitution, how would it look if something similar had happened there to what took place here? What the encounter with Emeth conveys is that certain acts cannot serve Tash. Tash is so different to Aslan that courtesy, love, good-faith and the rest cannot ultimately be directed to him; whereas cruelty cannot be a service to Aslan, no matter if it putatively undertaken in his name or not. I'm not arguing that this doesn't reveal Lewis' weakness on the need for explicit faith in Christ; but what crops up in imaginative fiction can only be taken as confirmatory of an explicit theological position _if that's confirmed in expository writing_. In this case, something similar to that idea is explicitly stated in _Mere Christianity_, "Nice People or New Men".



Semper Fidelis said:


> If I wrote in such a way that required literary skill then why write popular works on matters dealing with heaven and hell, salvation, etc? To the extent that Lewis wrote works at a popular level then he is responsible for the conclusions that run-of-the-mill people draw from his works and it doesn't do to claim otherwise. If he kept his works technical then I wouldn't quibble. It's when Bart Ehrman writes his popular works that his condemnation is most acute because his scholarly work does not open itself up to the great misunderstandings that untrained people can walk away with. Bart can claim that he never really intended to teach that there are more variants than there are Greek words in the NT and that anybody trained in textual criticism would be able to figure out. The problem is that the people who are reading his works come away with a completely different impression. I think Lewis has to reckon with the same concern and I'm not obliged to give him a pass simply because, if I appreciated literature, I would come away with a better appreciation for it and wouldn't see the things I see.



You need to distinguish in popular works. Imaginative fiction is popular in one way; his BBC talks were popular in another. His popular apologetic works don't require literary skill. And Lewis is certainly responsible for what he said, and to some degree for what he didn't say. But he is not responsible for people who read Narnia as an allegory: he told people not to do that, and it isn't one. People who want an allegory can turn to _The Pilgrim's Regress_, which is an excellent example of the genre. People who grow up reading Beatrix Potter, Lewis Carroll, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, _The Crock of Gold_, _The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ and _Till We Have Faces_ probably won't have any trouble. I think it is mostly readers _who have learned to read in a way inappropriate to imaginative fiction_ who have problems with it. Those are the people who tend to come up with things like the One Ring as a symbol of the atom bomb. In our day, they just happen to be a huge portion of the reading population.

I am almost out of time, but just this one note. In Christian schools now a days many young people are being taught to analyze the world view of everything they read or see. There is some good to this, and it's a practical way to develop discernment by exercising the faculties. But where it functions as a way of forcing all authors to answer questions that arise from our frames of reference, it will create barriers to understanding. One person wanted to read The Chronicles of Narnia to her children and then have a discussion group about what they'd learned. I discouraged her strongly from doing that. That's a great way to make sure children either hate imaginative literature or come to read it as though it were an especially cryptic essay. If it's possible to summarize the serious moral purpose of imaginative literature in one way only, I think the best answer is that it serves for the cultivation of good stock responses. Hopefully no one learns from _Treasure Island_ that eavesdropping is a skill to be cultivated; it is to be hoped they will respond to Jim's courage with an appreciation for its nobility.

But Elizabeth has much more concisely expressed the heart of the matter. I like _Till We Have Faces_ best, followed by _Perelandra_ and _The Pilgrim's Regress_.


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## Semper Fidelis (Dec 29, 2014)

Thanks Ruben. You've satisfied my curiosity. I think your point about imaginative literature is important.


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## py3ak (Dec 29, 2014)

If you buy any Lewis books, you might want to use this as your bookplate.





Thanks for an enjoyable conversation. I don't get enough opportunity to talk this kind of thing over these days.


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## Semper Fidelis (Dec 29, 2014)




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## CJW (Dec 29, 2014)

Thank you all very much for this conversation! I have enjoyed and been delighted with Narnia since I was a child, but with some of the negative critics of Lewis' theology that abounds on the internet, I have been fearful that I was partaking of dangerous theological aberrations, and perhaps shouldn't be reading him at all (which saddened me). This conversation has greatly helped me in working through that, and for that I am very grateful! Enjoy and delight in Narnia, just don't read it for doctrine!


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## Stephen L Smith (Dec 30, 2014)

FYI, this article on CS Lewis and evolution just appeared on the CMI website Lewis and evolution A review - creation.com


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