Dec

19

C. S. Lewis: His Most Controversial Statement?

December 19, 2007 |

Posted by vancemac · Filed Under Christian Philosophy, Bibliology, Apologetics 

   

C. S. Lewis is widely considered one of the most influential Christian thinkers of the last 100 years. While he never claimed to be a theologian, his stature in the Christian pantheon of leading figures is immense. His Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters have become classics and he is quoted in pulpits around the world every Sunday. Evangelicals in particular have nearly adopted him as a patron saint. So, I was surprised a while back to find the following quote which would make his more fundamentalist admirers stare in disbelief, if not outrage! I found it very interesting (as is all of his writing) and well worth reading:

“I have been suspected of being what is called a Fundamentalist. That is because I never regard any narrative as unhistorical simply on the ground that it includes the miraculous. Some people find the miraculous so hard to believe that they cannot imagine any reason for my acceptance of it other than a prior belief that every sentence of the Old Testament has historical or scientific truth. But this I do not hold, any more than St. Jerome did when he said that Moses described Creation “after the manner of a popular poet” (as we should say, mythically) or than Calvin did when he doubted whether the story of Job were history or fiction. The real reason why I can accept as historical a story in which a miracle occurs is that I have never found any philosophical grounds for the universal negative proposition that miracles do not happen.

I have to decide on quite other grounds (if I decide at all) whether a given narrative is historical or not. The Book of Job appears to me unhistorical because it begins about a man quite unconnected with all history or even legend, with no genealogy, living in a country of which the Bible elsewhere has hardly anything to say; because, in fact, the author quite obviously writes as a story-teller not as a chronicler.

I have therefore no difficulty in accepting, say, the view of those scholars who tell us that the account of Creation in Genesis is derived from earlier Semitic stories which were Pagan and mythical. We must of course be quite clear what “derived from” means. Stories do not reproduce their species like mice. They are told by men. Each re-teller either repeats exactly what his predecessor had told him or else changes it. He may change it unknowingly or deliberately. If he changes it deliberately, his invention, his sense of form, his ethics, his ideas of what is fit, or edifying, or merely interesting, all come in. If unknowingly, then his unconscious (which is so largely responsible for our forgettings) has been at work. Thus at every step in what is called–a little misleadingly–the “evolution” of a story, a man, all he is and all his attitudes, are involved. And no good work is done anywhere without aid from the Father of Lights. When a series of such retellings turns a creation story which at first had almost no religious or metaphysical significance into a story which achieves the idea of true Creation and of a transcendent Creator (as Genesis does), then nothing will make me believe that some of the re-tellers, or some one of them, has not been guided by God.

Thus something originally merely natural–the kind of myth that is found amongst most nations–will have been raised by God above itself, qualified by Him and compelled by Him to serve purposes which of itself would not have served. Generalising this, I take it that the whole Old Testament consists of the same sort of material as any other literature–chronicle (some of it obviously pretty accurate), poems, moral and political diatribes, romances, and what not; but all taken into the service of Gods word. Not all, I suppose, in the same way. There are prophets who write with the clearest awareness that Divine compulsion is upon them. There are chroniclers whose intention may have been merely to record. There are poets like those in the Song of Songs who probably never dreamed of any but a secular and natural purpose in what they composed. There is (and it is not less important) the work first of the Jewish and then of the Christian Church in preserving and canonising just these books. There is the work of redactors and editors in modifying them. On all of these I suppose a Divine pressure; of which not by any means all need have been conscious.

The human qualities of the raw materials show through. Naivet, error, contradiction, even (as in the cursing Psalms) wickedness are not removed. The total result is not “the Word of God” in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God; and we (under grace, with attention to tradition and to interpreters wiser than ourselves, and with the use of such intelligence and learning as we may have) receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning its overall message.

To a human mind this working-up (in a sense imperfectly), this sublimation (incomplete) of human material, seems, not doubt, an untidy and leaky vehicle. We might have expected, we may think we should have preferred, an unrefracted light giving us ultimate truth in systematic form–something we could have tabulated and memorised and relied on like the multiplication table. One can respect, and at moments envy, both the Fundamentalists view of the Bible and the Roman Catholics view of the Church. But there is one argument which we should beware of using for either position: God must have done what is best, this is best, therefore God has done this. For we are mortals and do not know what is best for us, and it is dangerous to prescribe what God must have done–especially when we cannot, for the life of us, see that He has after all done it.

We may observe that the teaching of Our Lord Himself, in which there is no imperfection, is not given us in that cut-and-dried, fool-proof, systematic fashion we might have expected or desired. He wrote no book. We have only reported sayings, most of them uttered in answer to questions, shaped in some degree by their context. And when we have collected them all we cannot reduce them to a system. He preaches but He does not lecture. He uses paradox, proverb, exaggeration, parable, irony; even (I mean no irreverence) the “wise-crack”. He utters maxims which, like popular proverbs, if rigorously taken, may seem to contradict one another. His teaching therefore cannot be grasped by the intellect alone, cannot be “got up” as if it were a “subject”. If we try to do that with it, we shall find Him the most elusive of teachers. He hardly ever gave a straight answer to a straight question. He will not be, in the way we want, “pinned down”. The attempt is (again, I mean no irreverence) like trying to bottle a sunbeam.”

C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1958), 109.


Comments

7 Comments so far

  1. C. S. Lewis: His Most Controversial Statement? « Lookin’ Fer Learnin’ on December 19, 2007 6:22 pm

    […] C. S. Lewis is widely considered one of the most influential Christian thinkers of the last 100 years. While he never claimed to be a theologian, his stature in the Christian pantheon of leading figures is immense. His Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters have become classics and he is quoted in pulpits around the world every Sunday. Evangelicals in particular have nearly adopted him as a patron saint. So, I was surprised a while back to find the following quote which would make his more fundamentalist admirers stare in disbelief, and possibly put down unfinished in outrage. I found it very interesting (as is all of his writing) and well worth reading: […]

  2. shannon on December 19, 2007 6:25 pm

    Thanks for pointing us to this piece.

  3. shane magee on December 19, 2007 6:47 pm

    i’ve always wondered when conservative evangelicals cite lewis as one of their favourite influences if they’ve ever acually read a word he wrote outside of the (utterly compelling) narnia chronicles. i don’t think that this is a uniquely non-conservative comment by lewis, though i love it. i do not even think it is his most unorthodox (if it is unorthodox whatsoever). anyone who has read the great divorce, the abolition of man or even closely read the screwtape letters will note that this was a very clever man not afraid of not just thinking outside the box, but climbing wholeheartedly right out of it, scruching it up and burning it to ashes!

  4. vancemac on December 19, 2007 7:08 pm

    Very true, Shane! This particular quote struck me as so dramatic given the current “climate” among conservative evangelicals regarding the creation/evolution debate and how Genesis should be read. Add these thoughts to some of St. Augustine’s here:

    http://submerging.reclaimingthemind.org/blogs/2007/08/28/how-should-we-read-genesis-a-lesson-from-augustine/

    and some of my fellow evangelicals can get pretty annoyed.

  5. G.M. Sweet on December 19, 2007 7:09 pm

    Gotta love C.S.Lewis..if he were still in mortal form I’d be sitting in an easy chair in front of a glowing fireplace,having a smoke and maybe a small sip of cognac, telling him how the seed he planted concerning God being outside of time..a brief chapter in Mere Christianity, bore fruit in my life…making it alot easier for me to believe some of the extraordinary things God began doing with me.

    Have you ever read a book with Lewis’ personal correspondance w/a young man who’s young wife became mortally ill and went on to glory..causing him to seriously reevaluate his own pallid excuse for faith/surrender in Christ? C.S. shares about his own struggle in losing his wife as well(I think it is after Kay’s? death) it is titled
    A Severe Mercy..how would I find the author’s name? ..it is sometimes mentioned as a co-effort of C.S.’s. I have always felt this would be a very valuable book for young men who found themselves to be too lethargic spiritually. What an incredible read!

    I often feel a responsibility to point out many discrepancies that have been shown to me concerning the absolute infallibility of the writers of the bible and are very much like those represented in the article above in how they were presented to me ..I have not had the courage perhaps..or simply that it didn’t seem a priority to advertise this,why alienate people who can be so attached to their belief systems,major on the major points and untill the time comes, if ever, it becomes necessary to point these things out,it makes for great food for thought…and it seems the Holy Spirit continually brings me back to what has been shown and I have listened just as I would if I’d been sitting at the fire..discussing the facts and as they presented themselves with Jesus,my greatest Teacher. I haven’t read anything you have written yet so maybe saying that to you was’nt wise..I cannot worry about such things..I’m too busy marveling in the miracle of The Resusrrection and the Life.

  6. vancemac on December 19, 2007 7:36 pm

    G.M.Sweet, I agree with you entirely, especially on whether to “push” such issues or just be ready to respond to them in a charitable fashion when they arise. I attend a church which has many doctrines I disagree with, but I find I can still worship there and feel no need to raise a ruckus. I definitely do like to get these issues out in forums like this, however, since it designed for contemplation and consideration.

  7. JoanieD on December 21, 2007 8:05 am

    Vance, that is an interesting piece you quote from Lewis. He was a very, very wise man and I have benefitted from reading his books. I did find his book “Miracles” hard to get through, but I did it. I love “Mere Christianity” and I have read “A Severe Mercy,” “The Screwtape Letters,” “Surprised by Joy” and more. I never got around to reading his novels, though I know his Narnia books are very popular. To G.M. Sweet: The “Severe Mercy” book was written by Sheldon Vanauken, but it includes 18 letters from Lewis and I THINK I read that too:
    http://www.amazon.com/Severe-Mercy-Sheldon-Vanauken/dp/0060688246

    Thanks for this quotation from Lewis and Merry Christmas to all of you who post and read here! Thanks to Michael Patton for allowing us to post here.

    Joanie D.

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