Reading Literature through the Eyes of C. S. Lewis, Part 4

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            One of the standards Lewis gives to determine what constitutes good literature is whether a book has stood the test of time. He offers advice in his essay “On the Reading of Old Books.” He recommends that, for every new book one reads, one should read an old book: “It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between” (201-2). He continually emphasizes the superiority of the classics and great books. Additionally, he advises the average reader that, if the need arises to choose between a new or old book, the reader should choose the old because “he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusively temporary diet” (“On the Reading of Old Books” 201). The danger in new books, he explains, is that the book is still “on trial [and must still] be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light” (“On the Reading of Old Books” 201). Thus, the central reason Lewis offers for reading old as opposed to modern books is that older ones have stood the test of time, whereas modern ones have not had adequate time to be judged and deemed worthy to be read.

        Lewis offers further evidence for the value of old books: those that have stood the test of time are valuable because they reveal the mistakes of the era in which they were written. By learning from these past mistakes, readers are better equipped to avoid similar mistakes in their own age.  He explains that, since each age contains a particular dominant view of life, a book from that era is particularly good at both “seeing certain truths and . . . liable to [make] certain mistakes (“On the Reading of Old Books” 202). Everyone needs “books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of [their] own period. And that means the old books” (“On the Reading of Old Books” 202). Old books often contain ideas that run counter to contemporary worldviews or issues and are beneficial for the way that they often reveal the possible flaws behind current ideas. Often writers, though seemingly “as completely opposed as two sides could be were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions (“On the Reading of Old Books” 202). Therefore, reading old books is preferable to new ones because not only can they help readers identify mistakes of past ages but also those same books will also enable them to better understand the problems of their own age.

            In another essay, “On Stories,” Lewis further addresses what constitutes good literature, focusing more particularly on literature as an art form. He argues that the function of art is “to present what the narrow and desperately practical perspectives of real life exclude” (“On Stories” 10). One aspect of stories that Lewis was most fond of was that, “to construct plausible and moving ‘other worlds,’ [writers and readers] must draw on the only real ‘other world’ [they] know, that of the spirit” (12). He explains further, “Good stories often introduce the marvelous or supernatural, and nothing about Story has been so often misunderstood as this” (13). This aspect of literature reveals Lewis’s earlier argument that literature can be a road both to and from heaven. Although he considers one negative possibility of escapism, the encouragement of “happiness under incompatible conditions” (14), Lewis also takes into account the potential benefit of the escape into literature: “[The] whole story, paradoxically enough, strengthens our relish for real life. This excursion into the preposterous sends us back with renewed pleasure to the actual” (15).

            Moreover, Lewis’s essay “On Three Ways of Writing for Children” explores standards for determining the quality of children’s literature. He states, “I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story” (“On Three Ways of Writing for Children” 24). Lewis touches again on the potential problem of escapism by differentiating between two types of longing: “The one is an askesis, a spiritual exercise, and the other is a disease” (30). His argument here is that, if a child “escapes” into literature, it is healthy and even beneficial, if the longing produced by entering into a fictional world is a spiritual longing. However, if the reader wishes to imaginatively live in an alternate world merely to escape the real one, then it can become destructive.

            Additionally, Lewis argues that literature should not be overtly didactic. Its primary purpose is to entertain, and a “moral” should not be incorporated at the expense of entertainment. Lewis argues that, rather than asking what moral theme or principle contemporary children need to hear, a writer ought to ask oneself what moral he or she needs to learn. Lewis advocates, “The only moral that is of any value is that which arises inevitably from the whole cast of the author’s mind,” for “what does not concern us deeply will not deeply interest our readers, whatever their age” (“On Three Ways of Writing to Children” 33). Therefore, the moral must not be something superficially placed in front of the child, but something portrayed in a real sense and driven by the true concerns of the writer.

Reading Literature through the Eyes of C. S. Lewis, Part 3

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            Lewis readily recognized that not all values in literature were Christian, but that they often encouraged a sub- or anti-Christian morality. He acknowledges that “[t]he sub-Christian or anti-Christian values implicit in most literature [do] actually infect many readers” (“Christianity and Culture” 16). For example, Lewis lists some of the most common sub-Christian values in literature: honor, sexual love, material prosperity, pantheistic contemplation of nature, yearning for the past, and liberation of impulses (“Christianity and Culture” 21-2). Although he states that he cannot defend for the values of sexual love or the liberation of the impulses, he can make a case for the other four values, which “are all two-edged” in that they “may symbolize what [he] think[s] of them all by the aphorism ‘Any road out of Jerusalem must also be a road into Jerusalem’” (“Christianity and Culture” 22). Thus, Lewis recognizes that some of these values may lead the reader away from God; at the same time, however, he also recognizes that the opposite is also possible and even likely: such values may lead the reader to a recognition of God and salvation.

            To explain further this idea of sub-Christian values and the way they might lead a person to eventual salvation, Lewis offers an example of how the sub-Christian value of pantheistic contemplation of nature can be “two-edged.” Lewis explains, “There is an easy transition from Theism to Pantheism; but there is also a blessed transition in the other direction. For some souls I believe, for my own I remember, Wordsworthian contemplation can be the first and lowest form of recognition that there is something outside ourselves which demands reverence” (“Christianity and Culture” 22). Though it may ostensibly sound like a risk, considering he concedes that this “road to Jerusalem” goes both ways, the point Lewis makes has special significance for him personally. In fact, it was through the literature of George MacDonald, Christian fantasy writer, and Lewis’s love of myth that Lewis was persuaded to embrace theism as a viable alternative to atheism (Veith 139). For him, literature was a step toward theism, and theism a step toward Christianity.

            Lewis thus finds culture, and literature as one of its primary products, beneficial for both the Christian and the non-Christian reader. He states, “Culture, though not in itself meritorious, [is] innocent and pleasant, might be a vocation for some, [is] helpful in bringing certain souls to Christ, and [can] be pursued to the glory of God” (“Christianity and Culture” 28). Furthermore, Lewis states, “I agree with Brother Every that our leisure, even our play, is a matter of serious concern. There is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counter-claimed by Satan” (“Christianity and Culture” 33). Therefore, Lewis both defends the merit of literature and recognizes the importance responsibility of the reader to protecting both mind and heart when reading.

            Moreover, Lewis clarifies the relative importance the reader must place upon secular literature. He argues, “My whole contention is that in literature, in addition to the spiritual good and evil which it carries, there is also a good and evil of the second class, a properly cultural or literary good and evil, which must not be allowed to masquerade as good and evil of the first class” (33). To demonstrate, Lewis uses the following example: “I enjoyed my breakfast this morning, and I think that was a good thing and do not think it was condemned by God. But I do not think myself a good man for enjoying it. The distinction does not seem to me a very fine one” (36). In other words, literature itself, when it contains sub-Christian values, should not be looked to as a primary, or spiritual, good; rather, it should be considered as a secondary good, given as high a value as possible below a spiritual value.

            In reading literary works, readers are stretching their imagination to experience God’s creation in a novel manner. Literature allows readers to better empathize with others, as it often encourages selflessness and love. Literature also teaches mankind about human life and reality in a way that other disciplines cannot. In stories, abstract ideas are fleshed out in concrete, real terms in a way that provides meaningful understanding for the reader. Most importantly, literature can assist readers in comprehending a variety of worldviews and in becoming more capable witnesses for Christ. Lewis advocated on the behalf of all such arguments for literature’s value.

            Ryken endorses Lewis’s viewpoint when he argues in favor of confronting worldviews embedded in literature. He argues that the encounter with worldviews both “gives us a historical perspective on our own civilization and spares us the naïveté of beginning anew with each generation” (Windows to the World 142). Furthermore, according to Ryken, an understanding of the worldviews

helps us understand people who live by them today . . . [and] gives us a knowledge of the alternatives from which to choose our own world view. C.S. Lewis has written that ‘to judge between one ethos and another, it is necessary to have got inside both, and if literary history does not help us to do so it is a great waste of labor.’ (Windows to the World 142-3)

Therefore, through encountering worldviews in literature, the reader gains not only a deeper understanding of various historical perspectives on life but also an authentic understanding of his or her own worldview.

Lewis notes the significance of examining a worldview from the “inside,” which is made possible through reading stories and observing how various worldviews actually apply to the lives of those characters who adhere to them. Veith expands on this idea:

One of the greatest benefits of literature, as C. S. Lewis points out, is that it provides a way for us to enter into other people’s minds for a while, to allow us to understand what it feels like to live in a certain time or to hold to a certain worldview. Reading works by rationalists or naturalists or Marxists or existentialists can help us to understand these perspectives better from the inside and to identify the human needs they address (and fail to address). Such understanding is necessary whether we are attempting to refute these limiting worldviews or simply to communicate more effectively to the modern mind. (73)

Thus, Lewis reveals an important reason for why Christians should read literature: to step inside others’ worldviews to gain understanding of and connection to them.

Hold Fast to the Good: Fahrenheit 451, the Love of Books, and the Value of People

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The recent HBO adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 attempts to update the classic story of censorship and entertainment run amok in light of new technology and our ubiquitous social media culture. It’s a laudable effort, and Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon put a memorable twist on Guy Montag and Captain John Beatty. I’ve always been a bit skeptical, however, about the wisdom of adapting this particular book to film, given its overt critiques on the logic and deficiencies of a spectacle-driven society. There’s just something odd about using a screen—big or small—to bemoan the decline of the written word’s cultural primacy of place. Even still, Bradbury himself approved of François Truffaut’s 1966 version, and critics have made a compelling case that the film’s visuals pay homage to the book’s role in shaping an inviting and hospitable world, one much more attractive and life-giving than the mechanical world of the firemen charged with burning them.

My reservations about the film versions notwithstanding, I have to admit that one scene, powerful in the book and brilliantly captured by each adaptation, dramatically and memorably depicts the central conflict of the story. It is a scene that has stuck with me from my first encounter with Bradbury’s story and that readily comes to mind when I think of what it means to take one’s commitments seriously. When one has recognized the value of a thing or person, what obligations does that recognition entail? As Bradbury’s story suggests, the greater the value, the higher the price.

Montag’s crew raid a house on an anonymous tip. There they find it overflowing with books—illegal all. As they enter the house, they find one lone woman sitting at a desk; in the recent version she reads John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, unmoved by her unexpected visitors. The firemen search the house, and room after room is overrun with books. They are stacked floor to ceiling in piles that crowd tables, bookshelves, and chairs. This “regular Tower of Babel”—as Beatty calls it—is so jam-packed that the banned materials leave only a small path for the men to walk through.

These books—any books—are an offense to the futuristic America Bradbury has imagined. They require too much time, provoke too much thought, and unsettle easy answers. True-believer Beatty expounds on the dangers inherent in making these writings freely available: “Do you want to know what’s inside all these books? Insanity. . . . One expert screaming down another expert’s throat. . . . Each one says the opposite, and a man comes away lost, feeling more bestial and lonely than before.” This forbidden fruit—Beatty suggests—dazzles with promises to unlock the secrets of the universe but leaves readers more disoriented and confused than before. Happiness, on this worldview, comes from being spoon-fed the knowledge needed to get along: “If you don’t want a person unhappy, you don’t give them two sides of a question.” In fact, you don’t give them a question at all.  

The stronger Beatty makes his case against books, the more intrigued about them Montag becomes; he snags one and tucks it into his coat before the others are doused with kerosene. As the house is readied to burn, Montag tries to get the occupant to leave. But she remains steadfast, defiant in the face of the firemen’s destruction. Montag’s conscience has been pricked: “Are we just going to leave her?” he asks as Beatty says to let her be. Coldly, the captain gives her one last chance to avoid the fate destined for her books: “Look, miss, do what you like, but you know as well as I do that these books are gonna burn.”

And then comes one of the most memorable scenes of the story: the woman stands atop a pile of kerosene-soaked books, opens her jacket to reveal additional books strapped to her waist, pulls out a single match, which she strikes and drops to the floor. She has done the firemen’s job for them, willing to die for the books she cherishes. Bradbury elevates this sacrifice, making it akin to religious devotion, by having her allude to the apocryphal last words of Protestant martyr Hugh Latimer (Oxford, 1563): “Play the man,” she says, a line concluded by Latimer with the hope that his present suffering will one day be rewarded: “We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

What makes this scene so memorable is the deep conviction readers and viewers sense in the woman’s commitment to her books. She values them so highly that, for her, they are worth her very life. Coming after Beatty’s denigration of books as societal troublemakers, responsible for all manner of unrest, the woman’s sacrifice is all the more poignant; clearly she thinks otherwise and hopes her immolation will convince viewers of the raid’s livestream to challenge the status quo, to give books a chance. And of course if someone is willing to give her life for the cause, anything so intuitively significant and sacrificial certainly merits close attention. Even if her strategy doesn’t seal the deal for those watching the fire, it might at least give them pause to reconsider the party line. It does just that for Montag and sets him on a rebellious course.  

But as memorable as the scene is, the question of the source of the value of these books remains unanswered—at least in this latest adaptation of Fahrenheit 451. It’s clear that the filmmakers (and characters like this woman) highly prize the written word, but it’s not clear why—what confers on them their worth? Unmoored from any such anchor, the books take on an almost fetishistic role. In a sharp departure from Bradbury’s original story, director and writer Ramin Bahrani introduces an electronic component to the preservation of literature; while the original story relies on an exiled community to memorialize the words behind the written texts, the HBO film entrusts it to technology—a database called OMNIS encoded in a DNA strand and stored inside a bird. Presumably, no matter what human beings do to each other, this literature will live on; the final scene of the film suggests as much, with the bird soaring high above the embattled city. These precious books have left humanity behind and are no longer subjected to their depraved machinations.

In Bradbury’s version, the opposite is true: the written word itself falls away, and is now imprinted in the memories of the “book people” who have each undertaken to memorize whole books in a throwback to the world of oral culture. The books have been more deeply internalized than before, and community is essential to their survival. While Bradbury never explores any locus of value beyond this human community, he seems to recognize what the filmmakers do not: that these texts cannot stand on their own and absorb any significant amount of devotion without something inherently valuable to underwrite them. For Bradbury, books themselves are primarily a vehicle for human creativity and an extension of the mind of the creator him or herself.

To censor or otherwise destroy them means more than physical annihilation of the material text: it’s to dishonor and degrade the people behind the writings. It’s also to stamp out the good these reflections on the human condition and our world can offer readers now. The figure of Faber, who is notably absent in the newest version, beautifully articulates the connection: “It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. . . . The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. . . . This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion.” Admittedly, Bradbury’s framework needs expanding a bit, undergirding the temporal human community with an eternal source of ultimate value—something that classical theism readily provides I should note, but he at least gestures in that direction.

Reading Literature through the Eyes of C. S. Lewis, Part 2

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            Throughout C. S. Lewis’s academic career, the question of what value literature held, whether Christian or non-Christian, seemed to interest him. He wrote on the topic early in his academic career through essays such as “Christianity and Literature” (written around 1939) and “Christianity and Culture” (1940). Lewis’s seminal work on the question, An Experiment in Criticism, was published in 1961. Another significant work contributing to Lewis’s literary theory, a collection of essays entitled Of Other Worlds, was published posthumously in 1966. Therefore, to more fully appreciate Lewis’s opinion on the validity of literature, it is necessary to begin with an examination of his two primary essays on the issue in order to establish the foundation of the theory on which he built throughout his academic career as teacher and critic.

            In the first essay, “Christianity and Literature,” Lewis develops his view about what constitutes good literature. One of his central arguments regarding the creation of literature is that no literary art is produced in a vacuum; rather, it is contingent upon a prior tradition that intended to reflect eternal truths. He discusses the “theory of genius,” the trend of contemporary literary criticism to place value on being creative, original, and spontaneous (“Christianity and Literature” 5). In response to such theory, Lewis argues:

In the New Testament the art of life itself is an art of imagination: can we, believing this, believe that literature, which must derive from real life, is an aim at being ‘creative’, ‘original’, and ‘spontaneous’[?] ‘Originality’ in the New Testament is quite plainly that prerogative of God alone … The duty and happiness of every other being is placed in being derivative, in reflecting like a mirror. (“Christianity and Literature” 6)

In this passage, Lewis attacks both the contemporary criticism of his time as well as the mindset of authors who were striving for novelty and extemporaneity in their writings. He maintains that the root of all critical theory should be the “maxim that an author should never conceive himself as bringing into existence beauty or wisdom which did not exist before, but simply and solely as trying to embody in terms of his own art some reflection of eternal Beauty and Wisdom” (“Christianity and Literature” 7). Furthermore, Lewis contends that a Christian literary theory and criticism should not only oppose the theory of genius but also the “idea that literature is self-expression” (“Christianity and Literature” 7). Critic Jerry L. Daniel observes Lewis’s integrity in avoiding such self-expression in Lewis’s own imaginative writing: “He wrote to communicate whatever vision was filling his imagination at the moment, not to reveal his inner self” (“A Basis for Literary Criticism” 23). Accordingly, good Christian literature and literary theory are established upon the assumption that all good art reflects the eternal wisdom and beauty of God without attempting to take credit for bringing such similar truths into existence.

            In his second essay, “Christianity and Culture,” Lewis explores the question of what value culture has for the Christian, or even for the non-Christian, by focusing particularly upon literature as a product of culture. He captures the significance of the question as he sets it forth early in the essay: “The glory of God, and, as our only means to glorifying Him, the salvation of human souls, is the real business of life. What, then, is the value of culture? It is, of course, no new question; but as a living question it was new to me” (“Christianity and Culture” 14). This essay analyzes a wide variety of literary critics, both Christian and non-Christian, who stake claim on this living question. Lewis investigates the philosophies or literary criticisms of Matthew Arnold, Croce, I. A. Richards, St. Jerome, John Keats, Thomas a Kempis, Pope Gregory, John Milton, John Henry Newman, Jeremy Bentham, and Sir Philip Sidney, among others. Noting some of their important contributions, he also often points out significant shortcomings or contradictions in their work. By confronting and thoroughly evaluating the theories of numerous critics and philosophers, Lewis enhances his credibility as a critic as he advances his own literary philosophy. In addition to these great thinkers, he looks to Scripture to build a constructive case for considering the relevance of culture and literature.

            As he constructs a case for culture, which encompasses literature, Lewis examines how it has influenced his own life and how it may influence others. He starts by noting that insofar as there is a demand for teaching culture, and since it is good for a man to have a job, teaching literature is good. He then states, “But is culture even harmless? It certainly can be harmful and often is” (“Christianity and Culture” 20). It is with this acknowledgement that he then asks how culture has influenced himself personally, explaining that “it has given [him] quite an enormous amount of pleasure” (“Christianity and Culture” 21). After confessing his own experience of taking pleasure from cultural artifacts, he makes an important analysis of whether pleasure should be considered a good:

I have no doubt at all that pleasure is in itself a good and pain in itself an evil; if not, then the whole Christian tradition about heaven and hell and the passion of our Lord seems to have no meaning. Pleasure, then, is good; a ‘sinful’ pleasure means a good offered, and accepted, under conditions which involve a breach of the moral law. The pleasures of culture are not intrinsically bound up with such conditions—though of course they can very easily be so enjoyed as to involve them. Often, as Newman saw, they are an excellent diversion from guilty pleasures. (“Christianity and Culture” 21)

In this analysis, Lewis shows that pleasure is a “good” insofar as it does not violate God’s law. In fact, he shows, through the influence of Newman, that the pleasure found in literature can even be useful as a diversion from sinful pleasure. He concludes, “We may, therefore, enjoy [the pleasures of literature] ourselves, and lawfully, even charitably, teach others to enjoy them” (“Christianity and Culture” 21).

Now May the God of Hope…. The Biblical Obligation to Hope in Suffering, Part II

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Consequential Nature of Hope in Suffering

Despair and Hope: A Contrast

The word hope itself appears for the first time in the book of Ruth, but it is the absence of hope in suffering that is noted rather than the existence of hope. Having come under horrendous grief, Naomi’s soul is embittered toward God. She has lost her husband and her sons, and with them, she has buried all natural hope for safety and prosperity. As could only be expected, she despairs in sorrow, but her despair is particularly characterized as bitter and hopeless.[1] She proclaims herself to be a victim of God’s cruel treatment (Ruth 1:12-13; 20-21). Having adopted this filter through which she sees reality, Naomi inadvertently positions herself against God and speaks out as a perpetrator of his goodness. Through her story, the Bible attests to the fact that experiences with deep sorrow and tangible evil are powerful enough to serve as blinders to all hope; in fact, in this scenario, Naomi rejects hope as an offensively unrealistic mindset and an intentional, disregarding assault toward her pain. Yet, biblically, hope is neither artificially constructed nor dismissive of suffering, and hope in suffering does not preclude grief. Naomi’s rejection of hope is tied to her fundamental misunderstanding of God’s character in light of his dealings with her (Ruth 1:12-13). Though enduring life-altering and heart-breaking suffering is sufficient to produce hopeless bitterness in any soul, the biblical narrative indicates that in view of God and his mercies, it need not, and it must not.

Hannah, too, “was in bitterness of soul,”[2] (1 Sam. 1:10), but rather than resenting God as the cruel catalyst of her pain, she laces her sorrowful cries with confessions of hope. Hannah not only prays, but she weeps, continually pouring out her soul (1 Sam. 1:15), “an involvement of the whole being.”[3] The sufferings of both Naomi and Hannah affronted the core of their beings, and each woman writhed in anguish. Even so, Hannah was unable to relinquish her hope in God. She unleashed the cry of her anguished soul with the confidence that God would not treat her grief casually, nor would he dismiss it flippantly.[4] Hannah’s heart was weighed with her grief, but as her prayer reveals, it was lined with a hope that properly positioned her to receive a response. To this point, it is interesting that though Eli blessed Hannah according to the formal appellation, “God of Israel” (1 Sam. 1:17), a reflection of his deity and authority over the nation, Hannah prayed to “Lord of Hosts” (1:10-11), referencing the personal, covenantal name of the one who revealed himself as compassionate and loving to her ancestors at Sinai (Ex. 34).[5] She knew the one to whom she prayed, and she boldly appealed to him with hope that he would display his goodness in her situation. Even before Samuel was conceived, Hannah’s grief was turned to joy because she received God’s promise by faith and anticipated it in hope.

Culminating Value of Hope in Suffering

The grief of both Hannah and Naomi was answered through miraculous means of unexpected provision; both women tangibly received the desires of their hearts in this life, which is certainly not promised or universally experienced (John 16:33; 2 Cor. 12:9-10). Ultimately, God will right every wrong, and though justice and vengeance may not abound until this world has been purged of evil (2 Pet. 3:10), he guarantees that he will wipe every tear and renew all that is groaning under the curse of sin (Heb. 6:19). It is the biblical intent to inspire hope.[6]

In light of God’s revelation, there is a biblical obligation to hope, yet the inescapable reality is that each person will suffer and make a choice as to how he suffers. To this end, we are implored to pour out our anguish before the Lord of Hosts, even through tears of bitterness, and emerge as those who, through storm, wind and fire, have been unmoved from the rock that is Christ (1 Cor. 15:58). Yet, just as mankind was free to choose the road of sin that led to suffering, we are free to suffer apart from God and void of hope; we are free to turn from him in hopelessness, embittered by the conclusion that evidently, circumstances have revealed him to be less loving than he promised. In either case, and in any case, God will make all wrongs right (1 Cor. 15:24-28), but a choice has to be made whether the claims of the biblical narrative will be believed and its God trusted by faith. G. K. Chesterson summarized the rejection of God, and the rejection of hope, in these words: “When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from him; but in heaven’s name to what?”[7] It is imperative that we hear the biblical command to hope, for without it, the one suffering will be deceived into constructing a distorted view of a distant and unfeeling God. This misconception is fatal to the soul. In light of the Savior, this must not be the experience of the Christian. The Bible answers the cries of human suffering with a depiction of a God whose nature and ways among men validate humanity’s sorrowful cries while answering them with a proclamation of consoling hope.

Surely, hope trusts in the goodness of God’s character and the reliability of his word, and it submits to the process by which he promises to produce perfection. While bitter grief is laced with anger, resentment and a latent distrust of the one who could allow such seemingly unjust treatment, hopeful grief is paradoxically “sorrowful, yet rejoicing” (2 Cor. 6:10), expectant and confident in God’s goodness. It is essential that the biblical obligation to hope not be mistaken as an attempted means of escaping suffering. God’s love is enduring and perfecting, and it must be distinguished from weaker forms that dilute genuine love with permissive kindness that stiff-arms all sources of discomfort, no matter its value in the end.[8] The biblical narrative witnesses much too loudly to suffering for Christian theology to be distorted according to moralistic therapeutic deism. Though pain and suffering are the unavoidable byproducts of a sinful existence, the character and promises of God, as revealed through the biblical narrative, offer an unshakable source of enduring and eternal hope that is anchored in God’s commitment to create good out of present evil and pain.

Conclusion

Though traces of this transformative goodness can be detected in this life, suffering will finally give way to glory in eternity, and the moral knowledge of God, his character and his promises, obligates hope in the present (Rom. 8:18). Rather than simply commanding the Christian to endure suffering, the biblical narrative implores him to do so with hope because hope distinctly validates the conviction that all is not yet well, while simultaneously appropriating God’s strength to be sustained through suffering. Paul encouraged the church in Thessalonica, “We remember before our God and Father … your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 1:3). His prayer must be appropriated by every generation of Christ-followers.

When suffering threatens to capsize the believer, hope anchors him in the person and promises of God. To Abraham, God “swore by himself” (Heb. 6:13) and established his person as the grounds for Abraham’s hope. His specific promises were filtered through the reliability of God’s person, so hope was sustained through years of silence, and Abraham “against hope in hope believed… according to that which had been spoken” (Rom. 4:18). Regardless of how outlandish the content of the promise sounded to Abraham’s reason, he instead reasoned through eyes of hope, because it was God’s unchanging character that was the backdrop to each of his promises. Having received inspired accounts of God’s faithfulness to reference, and having seen in Jesus the full and perfect revelation of God’s character, we now, with even greater confidence, must flee to God for refuge “to lay hold of the hope set before us” (Heb. 6:18). Hope certainly is the graciously ordained “anchor for the soul” (Heb. 6:19).

[1]  Ruth 1:20: “The Almighty has dealt to me very bitterly” הֵמַ֥ר שַׁדַּ֛י לִ֖י מְאֹֽד.

[2] נָ֑פֶשׁ מָ֣רַת וְהִ֖יא. The same root word found in Ruth 1:13 and 1:20 and is found here: מָר, “bitter.”

[3] David Toshio Tsumura, The First Book of Samuel, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 121.

[4] “Then Elkanah her husband said to her, ‘Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? And why is your heart grieved? Am I not better to you than ten sons?’” (1 Sam. 1:8). Hannah sought consolation that validated her suffering.

[5] Tsumura, The First Book of Samuel, 122.

[6] “For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope” (Rom. 15:4).

[7] Ravi Zacharias, Cries of the Heart, 65.

[8] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, (New York: Macmillan, 1994), 33.

Reading Literature through the Eyes of C. S. Lewis, Part 1

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            A central concern for Christians regarding literature is what value, if any, literature holds for the reader. Although this is not a new consideration, it is one C. S. Lewis referred to as a “living question” for its continued importance for discussion. Literature is often accused of being useless, merely entertainment, irrelevant to life, or immoral (Ryken, Windows to the World 18). Does a biblical Christian worldview allow Christians to enjoy literature, and if so, how should Christians decide what books they should read? In answering these difficult questions, one author in particular should be respected and consulted for answers: C. S. Lewis. This prominent Oxford and Cambridge lecturer and imaginative writer provides a thorough response for how Christians should engage the humanities and culture, particularly in the area of literary art.

            Lewis had the extraordinary privilege of teaching at the two most prestigious universities in the world for the humanities: Oxford and Cambridge. He first taught at Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1954. He then earned the position of Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Magdalene College, Cambridge. In Reading the Classics with C. S. Lewis, Leland Ryken accordingly spells out some of the advantages of studying “with” such a learned scholar. First, Ryken notes that with Lewis’s literary criticism, readers are “in the presence of someone who simply assumed that the world of literature is a self-rewarding world of overwhelming importance” (24). Furthermore, he “had a knack for delineating the features of an author’s world” (24), and a way of attracting readers both to “individual works of authors” as well as immersing them into the “entire world of imaginative literature” (26). The key, according to Ryken, is Lewis’s vast array of reading experience; he states, “I know of no twentieth-century critic who refers to so many works and writers” (26). On a more personal level, Ryken observes, “To read literature with C. S. Lewis is to get to know Lewis himself, and this is part of the appeal of his criticism. Criticism as an impersonal scholarly inquiry did not occur as an option for Lewis. His own tastes and personality come through at nearly every turn” (28). Mark Noll considers the influence and importance of Lewis:

Lewis’s writing has constituted the single most important body of Christian thinking for American evangelicals in the twentieth century. His defense of supernatural Christianity, his ability to exploit learned culture, his example as a writer of fiction, his demonstration that the truths of the faith could be expressed in lively prose—all contributed an unusual measure of intellectual stimulation to evangelicals on this side of the water. (218)

As one of the greatest literary scholars and critics in the twentieth century, Lewis’s views on literature are vital for any Christian seeking answers to the questions of why one should read literature, what constitutes a good book, and how one should approach reading.

The most tragic reality students face in the secular university today is the absence of belief in absolute truth. Literature is typically not studied from the perspective of what the author is trying to communicate; instead, students are encouraged to decipher their own meaning and apply it to the text. In a society entrenched in postmodern ideologies, the understanding of what principles govern the reading of good literature is often lost. With postmodernity came the false presupposition that there are no objective standards to which literature must adhere. The result is “art for art’s sake” and the assumption that the reader, not the author, determines the meaning of the text. As postmodernists disregard absolutes, words, which form the foundation of literature, lose their essential meaning. Thus, words such as “Truth,” “Love,” “Wisdom,” “Beauty,” and “Justice” become mere abstractions which people subjectively understand. The loss of a stable language is detrimental to a student’s entire education. When words lose their function of communicating universal truth and meaning, students lose the ability to come to a meaningful understanding of truth and reality.

            Lewis, noticing the gravitation toward relativism in the contemporary worldview of his time, set forth concrete principles for interpreting literature. He believed in the importance of understanding the worldview of an author, as well as how readers’ worldviews affect the way that they interpret literature.  Yet Lewis argues that readers should not allow their own worldview to frustrate or impede a story; instead, they must “receive” rather than “use” a story (Experiment in Criticism 93). Thus, Lewis strikes a balance between two polarized forms of literary criticism. On one end of the spectrum, readers simplify a literary text to force it into a uniform category to argue that it advocates a particular worldview or universal truth. At the other extreme are those who deny the existence of absolutes and thus force the text to fit whichever meaning they subjectively wish to contend. Lewis’s approach, as a middle ground, encourages readers to interact with a text and to enjoy it for what it is worth, yet not to impose their personal agendas on the text to determine its meaning.

            Fiction is a unique vehicle for explaining and illuminating the reality of human life. Although a fictional story does not necessarily tell a true story, it is an instrument through which the reader can discover truth. Humans are, as beings created in the image of God, creators in their own right. Thus, a person who is crafting literature is creating a world. By entering the world of fiction, according to Lewis, the reader can later re-enter the real world with a refreshed perspective on reality. Emphasis on supernatural reality is one of the most common themes in Lewis’s work, particularly in his fiction. In his essay “On Three Ways of Writing for Children,” Lewis explains that he uses the genre of fantasy as a vehicle to convey his message because other genres attempting to express a moral or principle may inadvertently cause the reader to feel obligation. According to Lewis, “an obligation to feel can freeze things” (37). In other words, when entering the imaginary world, the reader typically does not feel that he or she is being told what to do. Instead, while watching the story unfold, the reader can experience the abstract or concrete ideas evoked by the author in a natural, rather than forced, environment. Such an environment is most effective, for it allows the reader alone to decide how to act upon the underlying message.

Now May the God of Hope…. The Biblical Obligation to Hope in Suffering, Part I

Photo by Hillie Chan on Unsplash

Introduction

One need not search the Bible long before finding honest interaction with the concept of unexplained suffering. The biblical narrative unapologetically attests to the sufferings of mankind. It does not posit a quip response or simplistic answer to humanity’s hardest reality, nor does it suggest that the problem can be diffused, avoided or ignored. Rather, the biblical response is one that dignifies a world that suffers under the weight of sin and the threat of death. The biblical response to suffering is embodied in the suffering Son of Man, who paved the road to eternity by way of the cross. In his paradoxical example, the believer is granted a vision of the divinely extended gift of meaningful, absolute and certain hope in the midst of suffering. Biblical hope is neither wishful thinking nor blind optimism; it is reckoning in the present what is guaranteed in the future. Hope actively and expectantly waits for what is assured but not yet realized. While faith believes in God’s revelation and trusts in his declarations, regarding the past, present or future, hope is exclusively anticipatory. The biblical call to hope, then, is distinct from the call to have faith.[1]

With a compassionate and courageous voice, the biblical narrative affirms the pain of suffering, while in the same breath repeatedly and distinctly beckoning the Christian to hope. The reason is clear: Christian hope is contingent upon the unchanging character of God. Faith in the reliability of God’s nature and the immutability of his word is foundational for Christian existence, and hope for their future realization is the bedrock for fruitful endurance in times of suffering. The Bible presents a God who is essentially loving, and the unflagging, immovable conviction in his goodness produces hope. To hope in suffering is meaningfully and personally to internalize and respond to biblical revelation and directives. If the God of the Bible is to be trusted and his promises believed, hope in suffering is not just an invitation but an obligation; hope is the silver cord that tethers a suffering world to a loving God.

Biblical Reality of Hope in Suffering

Human Examples of Hope in Suffering

The Psalter walks the reader through national and personal journeys of pain, loss, betrayal, joy and victory, and more than any other canonical book, it contains frequent references to hope. The psalmists reflect on the way that blessing and suffering seem to travel along parallel tracks in the lives of the righteous ones, and though confounded by suffering, they attest to an obligation to hope. Interestingly, the Psalms reiterate an enduring hope in God’s promises to the house of David, though the Psalter was arranged after the exile when there was no trace that Israel would ever see another Davidic King. Despite this reality, the Psalter finally concludes in a proclamation of hope and a call to praise, though the Davidic throne sat empty (Ps. 146-150). God is celebrated as Israel’s king, and there is the certain hope that he will, as promised, assume rule over Israel in a tangible way (Ps. 145). In light of Israel’s national suffering and apparent abandonment, hope for a Davidic king should have been forsaken in spiritual disillusionment, and individual Psalms that reminded God of his commitment and celebrated the future realization of these promises should have, at least, been arranged less prominently in the Psalter.[2]

Yet, proclaiming hope in the midst of suffering characterizes the Psalter and emerges as a distinctive marker of those who know God. The psalmists frequently rejoice in God’s promise never to forsake those who hope in him (Ps. 21:7; 22:4-5; 26:1; 31:6, 14; 52:8; 56:4, 11).[3] Their endurance in suffering was fueled by hope that they would again see the outworking of God’s unending, unfailing love. They were persuaded to hope in suffering because of the one whose goodness was unaffected by the forces that threatened them, and their hope was fueled as they constantly rehearsed this truth. They hoped not simply because they had a God, but because they knew precisely what he was like (Ps. 33, 36, 100, 117, 118, 136). The Psalmists, and the community of faith whom they represented, were unable to lose hope (Ps. 43:5).

The ability to express genuine hope in the midst of suffering is not unique to the psalmists; the biblical witness presents it as the paradigmatic experience of God’s people.[4] As he lamented the destruction of Jerusalem and the seeming hopelessness of rebellious Israel’s future, Jeremiah’s despair was turned to joy when he remembered God’s goodness: “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: It is of the Lord’s great love that we are not consumed…‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him,’” (Lam. 3:21-24). When the prophet recalls the steadfast love and faithfulness of God and the commitments that he made to his people, a remarkable transformation occurs and the hopelessness of the previous chapters give birth to hope.[5] Though the circumstances causing his suffering were unchanged and his pain was no less tangible, the shift in his spiritual and emotional disposition is due to a shift in his perspective. The prophet’s bitterness and despair gave way to renewed hope when his vision cleared and he caught sight of the Lord and his “great love.”[6] As Heaven’s spokesman, Jeremiah had faithfully proclaimed God’s love and faithfulness to Israel, but sitting in the midst of deep suffering, he experienced it, and his head that hung in despair was then lifted in hope.

The book of Job famously paints the Bible’s first picture of a righteous, innocent sufferer who all but loses hope. Yet in the midst of Job’s confused and pained lament, the book is second only to the Psalms in its references to hope. Long before a robust hope of resurrection appears in the Bible, there is hope in the person of God (Job. 14:7, 10).[7] Though Job despaired of the brevity of life and the inexplicable depth of human suffering, he found the courage to confess, “Though he slay me,” said Job, “yet I will hope in him” (Job 13:15). God’s face was hidden and his ways looked dark, but Job’s knowledge of God and experience with him prevented total despair from consuming the God-fearing sufferer. Though Job’s friends were incorrect in their estimation that a righteous person is surely shielded from such an unimaginable amount of suffering, their proclamation that “there is hope” (Job 11:18) does attest to the truth that God does not abandon his people. Having given him room to grieve, God finally responds to Job’s cries not by dictating an explanation, but by revealing a vision of the one in whom Job could surely trust (Job 38-41). Before God restores Job’s life, he restores his hope, not by answering his complaints, but by answering the single cry of a heart shattered by pain (Job 42:5). Realizing how suffering had accentuated his mortality and weakness, Job despaired that God “is not a mere mortal like me that I might answer him,” and he cried out for “someone to mediate between us, someone to bring us together” (Job 9:32a, 33); Job’s cry likely sounded pitiful and futile in the moment, but it was not. The Old Testament dynamically paints a picture of a God who is present and responsive in suffering, and though Job certainly never envisioned the astounding extent to which his plea is answered, this picture is ultimately given flesh and breath in Jesus Christ.

Divine Example of Hope in Suffering

Biblical hope in suffering is personified by the divine, innocent and victorious sufferer. Though fallen men try in vain to escape suffering, God actively pursued it. Though it was human freedom that chose, against the will of God,[8] the path of sin and suffering, the cross climaxes the biblical presentation of a God who shares in pain to offer humanity hope, deliver it from sin and rescue it back to himself (Col. 1:13). Though the concentrated echo of humanity’s cries would deafen mortal ears, “there is a place where there is an aggregate of human suffering and questioning. That place is the heart of God.”[9] The creator God is the suffering Savior who wept, grieved and sweated drops of blood in sorrowful dread of the inexplicable pain he would endure. Yet, “for the joy set before him” (Heb. 12:2), he did endure. With assured expectation of his glorious exaltation, Jesus was sustained in suffering with unwavering hope that was born out of his unflinching, perfecting and unrelenting love (Phil. 2:8-11; Is. 53:10-11).

It is of optimum importance that Jesus bore both humanity’s sin and suffering on the cross. As James Stewart of the Church of Scotland reflected, “He did not conquer in spite of the dark mystery of evil. He conquered through it,”[10] and he emerged on the other side as the single source of hope for those still journeying to join him.[11] Though the suffering that men experience is paralyzing at times, “Jesus took away the only kind of suffering that can really destroy you: that is being cast away from God.”[12] The hope of complete reunion with the God of love promises that every cry will be answered with a greater response of glory on the day of reckoning. Jesus bowed under the weight of death in order to defeat it, so that rebellious humanity would only have to walk, for a short time, through its shadow (Ps. 23:4). He now compels his followers to consider his example and endure, with hope, as he did, for those who do so will not be put to shame (Phil. 3:10, 2:5; Rom. 5:3; Rom. 8:18).

It is the character of God, seen most clearly at the cross, that is both the inspiration and actualization of hope. The biblical narrative pays witness to hope that exists in both the objective sense, as that for which we hope, and the subjective sense, as an attitude of hope, and God is both the source and the anticipation of hope in suffering.[13] It is from the foundation of God’s character that hope arises, because hope is effected in the hearts of those who know the love of God (1 John 4:8, 18). God’s supreme love commissions hope to preserve a suffering humanity, and it is to Love himself that hope ultimately returns (Rom. 5:5). Love is both the road that hope travels and the destination it reaches (Ps. 25:3, 7; Ps. 31:24; Ps. 40:1, 11-12; Ps. 103:5-6). The love of God is the very foundation and anchor of hope, which awaits the future realization of glory, the full expression of God’s love.[14] Whereas faith will give way to sight and hope will give way to reality, love will never give way (1 Cor. 13:13).

Since hope is a crucial means of experiencing God’s love in suffering, the biblical narrative treats hope neither as a peripheral byproduct of robust Christianity, nor as the preferred attitude that may soften life’s blows. Rather, to endure with hope is the obligation of those who know “the God of hope,” the one who gave himself at the cross and gives of himself through his Spirit so that his people will attest to the reality of the faith and supernaturally anticipate his promises by “abound(ing) in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 15:13). It is God himself, and the word he speaks, that is the cause for hope, and he obligates himself to answer the hope which he inspires (Ps. 119:49; Ps. 33:4; Num. 23:19).[15] By virtue of his experience, God relates to suffering men, and by virtue of his character, he consoles them with hope.

Notes:

[1] Though faith precedes hope, it does not necessarily guarantee it. For instance, the suffering Christian can simultaneously affirm by faith that “the universe was formed at God’s command” (Heb. 11:3) while despairing in hopelessness.

[2] The opening of the Psalter includes Psalm 2, a celebration of the Davidic King’s special relationship with God and cosmic rule. This Psalm is referenced and quoted at Jesus’ baptism, transfiguration, as well as in Acts and Hebrews.

[3] Willem A. VanGemeren, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs 5, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991), 102.

[4] The book of Micah contains a beautiful example of the proclamation of hope in the midst of suffering. Though he can only see judgment and suffering for Israel (Micah 3-4), Micah had been assured of future salvation, so he proclaims his confidence that God would transform his current suffering: “But as for me, I will look in hope to the Lord, for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me. Do not gloat over me, my enemy! Though I have fallen, I will rise. Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light” (Micah 7:7-8). Though he suffered, he was anchored in God’s promises.

[5] F.B. Huey Jr. Jeremiah, Lamentations NAC 16 (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1993), 473.

[6] Huey, Jeremiah, Lamentations, 473.

[7] Job lments, “At least there is hope תִּ֫קְוָ֥ה for a tree: if it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail…but a man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last and is no more” (Job 14:7, 10).

[8] Genesis 2:17; 2 Peter 3:9.

[9] Ravi Zacharias, Cries of the Heart (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2002), xiii.

[10] Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1994), 174.

[11] “We who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf,” (Heb. 6:18b-20a).

[12] Tim Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering (New York: Penguin Group, 2013), 181.

[13] Ibid., 522.

[14] Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 651.                     

[15] VanGemeren, Psalms, 746.

Fear of Giants, or Faith in God?

John Martin - Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still - Google Art Project

Giants threaten.  How do you respond to them?  With fear?  Or with faith?  In July 1739 John Wesley was just getting untracked in outdoor preaching.  Joining with George Whitefield the two began advancing England’s eighteenth century awakening.  Giants menaced their mission.   Bishop Joseph Butler was aghast at their unauthorized preaching.  He confronted John Wesley. Bishop Butler was no slouch.  He was the Bishop of Bristol and the renowned author of The Analogy, a hallmark defense of orthodoxy.  Their interview was often in my mind as I frequented Bristol City Library just yards away from the once episcopal residence.  The Bishop spoke plainly to John Wesley:  ‘You have no business here; you are not commissioned to preach in this diocese, therefore I advise thee to go hence.’

How John Wesley would respond to the bishop would have historic consequences. Would he respond with fear?  Would he stop offering Jesus Christ to church outsiders?  Would he respond in faith?  Would he trust God for the call on His life? Would he continue to preach salvation in Jesus Christ in the highways and by-ways?  What ‘giants’ threaten you?  What threats would deter you from fulfilling God’s purposes in your life?  Are you responding with fear? Or with faith?

Moses and the children of Israel are in the Sinai desert at the borders of the Promised Land.  Moses sends twelve men into Canaan to assess the land.  They bring back a mixed report.  The report’s positive is the land is great.  It flows ‘with milk and honey’.  The report’s negative is the people are great too!  They are physically strong.   Their towns are fortified.  The people are of ‘great size’.  Literally, they are ‘men of measurement’:  ‘Giants!

The majority of Israel’s spies came to this conclusion:  ‘We are not able to go up against this people, for they are stronger than we.’  In some sense, this was the right conclusion.  They ‘were not able’.  The Canaanites had well-defended towns.  They were more powerful people.  Israel was ‘grasshoppers’ next to these giant Canaanites.

Jesus was talking to his disciples about how hard it is for the rich to be saved.  He told them it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom.  He disciples shot back, ‘Who then can be saved?’  Jesus led them to recognize salvation is not the province of humans, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible’.  We are not able!

King Jehoshaphat had Moabites and Ammonites threatening war.  He stood at the temple with the Israelites assembled together praying to God, ‘For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us’.  We are not able!

The kernel of the Gospel, Martin Luther insisted, included this point:  ‘In fact, we are not sick and in need of healing.  We are dead and in need of resurrecting.’  Luther said if we don’t recognize we need eternal life from the hand of God, we remain in our sins and are eternally dead.  We are not able!

The children of Israel came to the right conclusion but made the wrong response.   They said ‘we are not able’ and responded with fear.  They weighed the strength of the towns.  They noted the size of the inhabitants.  They feared.  Fear supplants God with the threat.  It deifies the threat.  The threat carries more gravitas than God.  The Israelites responded with fear to Canaan saying, ‘We are not able to go up against this people, for they are stronger than we…Why is the Lord bringing us into this land to fall by the sword’?  Let us choose a captain and return to Egypt.

Had not God told them many times what he told the Israelite spies before he sent them out, ‘Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites…’  The Israelites overvalued the threat and undervalued God. 

Remember when disciple Peter got out of the boat and walked on water toward Jesus.  When Peter noticed the strong wind, he became frightened and began to sink.

A second respond to the conclusion ‘we are not able’ is faith.  Both Caleb and Joshua saw the same threat as the other Israelite spies.  They responded to the Canaan giants with faith.  They believed God was able.   Caleb said, ‘Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.’  Joshua joined in with Caleb and said, ‘If the Lord is pleased with us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us.’  Faith puts a threat in God’s perspective.  Yes, we are not able…but God is.

When Bishop Butler said to John Wesley, ‘You have no business here’, John Wesley stood his ground.  He argued that since he was a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, he had a commission to preach the word of God in any part of the Church of England.  Therefore, he did not conceive that in preaching in the brickyards in Bristol that ‘I break any human law’. 

This was John Wesley’s argument not ecclesial policy!  The greater point for John Wesley was if the Bishop’s protestation prevailed, he would effectively not be able to offer Christ outside church walls!  This would annul God’s call on his life.  Giant of a bishop or not, John Wesley told a friend, ‘God being my helper, I will obey Him (Jesus Christ) still, and, if I suffer for it, His will be done.’  John Wesley did not fear Bishop Butler.  He put His faith in Jesus Christ.

The threat of giants can be watershed moments.  Israel’s refusal to go into Canaan was a momentous watershed moment.  The children of Israel listened to their fears. They paid dearly for it.  After this, they wandered in the wilderness for forty years.  Worse yet, they never made it into the Promised Land.  Caleb and Joshua believed God.  They did enter Canaan.  John Wesley believed God rather than fear Bishop Butler.  Consequently, he entered a historic ministry of preaching Jesus Christ to persons who never darkened a sanctuary door.

Is there a ‘giant’ threatening you?  ‘We are not able’…but God is.  Respond not with fear.  Respond with faith.  The way of fear leads to the way of curse.  The way of faith leads to finding your providential way!

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Objective Morality, the Nature of Guilt, and God’s Offer of Divine Forgiveness And Promise of Moral Transformation: A New Look at C. S. Lewis’s Moral Argument (Part 2)

by Stephen S. Jordan

Mankind’s Inability to Keep the Objective Moral Law

            Lewis’s first point acknowledges the existence of an objective moral law; his second point is this: “None of us are really keeping [it].”[1] These two concepts are so deeply ingrained within his version of the moral argument that he claims:

These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.[2]

Much has already been said about the first concept –“they know the Law of Nature [sic]”; the rest of this section will deal with the second – “they break it.” His second point is not a judgmental one that only applies to others; he is “quite willing to admit that he belongs among the moral lawbreakers.”[3] In fact, he admits “. . .that this year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practice ourselves the kind of behaviour [sic] we expect from other people.”[4]

Lewis claims what is obvious to any rational human being: no one perfectly adheres to the objective moral law. In fact, one of the “most natural thing[s] in the world [is] to recognize that human beings are imperfect and fall short of moral ideals.”[5] Lewis observes that moral failure, or “falling short,” elicits a sense of guilt in all humans,[6] moments when,

…all these blasphemies vanish away. Much, we may feel, can be excused to human infirmities: but not this – this incredibly mean and ugly action which none of our friends would have done, which even such a thorough-going little rotter as X would have been ashamed of, which we would not for the world allow to be published. At such a moment we really do know that our character, as revealed in this action, is, and ought to be, hateful to all good men, and, if there are powers above man, to them.[7]

Guilt serves as a trigger that alerts one to his own failure to do what ought to have been done in a particular situation.[8] Psychologists define it as “moral transgression in which people believe that their action (or inaction) contributed to negative outcomes.”[9] Guilt “has long been considered the most essential emotion in the development of the affective and cognitive structures of both conscience and moral behavior.”[10] Even “the atheist feels guilt (accompanied by dread) when he recollects his violation of the moral law. Even he can feel the law’s inexorable demands.”[11]

            If there is an objective moral law and it is clear that all men fail to adhere to its demands, it seems odd that one would experience guilt before such an abstract, impersonal moral code. Rules and principles do not elicit feelings of guilt and shame within individuals; only persons are responsible for this. Does this indicate that there is One behind the objective moral law that is more like a Person than anything else? According to John Henry Newman, “Inanimate things [such as rules and principles] cannot stir our affections; these are correlative with persons. If, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are frightened, at transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies that there is One to whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed, whose claims upon us we fear…”[12] Along the same lines, A. E. Taylor states, “When we feel as we ought to feel about the evil in ourselves, we cannot help recognizing that our position is not so much that of someone who has broken a wise and salutary regulation, as of one who has insulted or proved false to a person of supreme excellence, entitled to wholehearted devotion.”[13] If there is indeed a Person behind the objective moral law, then transgression of this law is ultimately an offense directed against the One to whom all persons are responsible.

            At this point, Lewis notes, “. . . after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power – it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk.”[14] Lewis refers to the One behind the Law as “a Power”; it certainly seems that such a being also has to be “a Person” – considering the guilt and shame that individuals experience when they transgress the objective moral law.

            Mankind’s inability to adhere to the moral law is ultimately transgression against the Person behind the law; this is a frightening position for mankind to find himself in. As Lewis says, “He is our only possibly ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies.”[15] Is there any way out of this predicament? The only way out for man is if the divine Person decides to provide a way of rescue. Guilt can only be alleviated by a person; in this case, it can only be cured if the divine Person, the One who has been wronged, God himself, chooses to forgive.[16] Matter, nature, a divine mind or Power, an impersonal force, or some other conception of the divine, cannot forgive; “Only a Person can forgive.”[17]

Although there may be several theistic religions that set forth the notion of a personal God,[18] Christianity stands alone as being able to provide an adequate ground for such a God. Throughout Scripture, God is active. He makes the decision to create (Gen. 1:1), walks in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:8), experiences emotions (Is. 61:8), converses with human beings (Job 38-41), loves (Jn. 3:16), displays compassion (Mt. 9:36), judges (Jas. 4:12), disciplines (Deut. 8:5), and performs a host of other person-like acts. In addition to these examples, there are two fundamental reasons why Christianity is unique in its conception of God as a Person: 1) the Trinity; and 2) the Incarnation.[19] These two doctrines are unique to Christianity; the former demonstrates that God has always been personal (consider the interrelationships of the three Persons within the Triune Godhead: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), whereas the latter reveals that God is an actual Person (Jesus Christ is God “manifested in the flesh”; 1 Tim. 3:16).

The good news that Christianity offers is that God, the “one lawgiver” (Jas. 4:12) who stands behind the objective moral law, the Person who has been transgressed, has decided to offer divine forgiveness to those who choose to accept it (1 Jn. 1:9).[20] Additionally, Christianity provides hope of moral improvement, and even radical transformation, through the indwelling of the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit (Phil. 1:6).[21] Some think that time cancels sin and will ultimately alleviate guilt, but, as Lewis suggests: “[M]ere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Jesus Christ.”[22] Only when one admits his guilt, repents of his sin, and turns to the Person and Work of Christ can he receive God’s divine forgiveness and experience moral transformation – which are the two things that he most desperately needs in light of his moral predicament.       

Conclusion

            Lewis’s moral argument, in a broad sense, as evidenced in this essay, begins with eight reasons for believing in the existence of objective morality, continues with the obvious fact that mankind is unable to adhere to such a moral standard, and concludes with a discussion of how the Christian God is the only One who is able to account for these realities. The latter half of the essay, an emphasis has been placed on the nature of guilt, which is an objective reality for all who have transgressed the moral law. Because guilt is not elicited by rules and principles, but rather by persons, and since humans experience guilt when failing to adhere to the moral law, the One behind the moral law must be more like a Person than anything else. Finally, the moral predicament that Lewis highlights in his argument – “they know the Law of nature” and “they break it” – is ultimately remedied through God’s offer of divine forgiveness and promise to morally transform all who admit their guilt, repent of their sin, and turn to the Person and Work of Jesus Christ.

Notes: 

[1] Lewis, Mere Christianity, 7.

[2] Ibid., 8.

[3] Baggett, “Pro: The Moral Argument is Convincing,” in C. S. Lewis’s Christian Apologetics: Pro and Con, 124.

[4] Lewis, Mere Christianity, 7.

[5] Baggett, “Pro: The Moral Argument is Convincing,” in C. S. Lewis’s Christian Apologetics: Pro and Con, 127.

[6] Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 11.

[7] Ibid., 51.

[8] What if one does not feel guilty when he really is? Or, what if one feels guilty when he is actually innocent? According to David Baggett, “Guilt it is thought, properly attaches to morality in a way it doesn’t to breaking the laws of logic. We don’t feel guilty, and shouldn’t, for making a logical mistake. Maybe we feel silly or even embarrassed, but not guilty. The feeling of guilt, though it can be absent on occasions when we’re still actually guilty and present on occasions when we’re not (which is enough to show these things aren’t identical), more typically points to a real state of guilt.” David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls, God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016), 176.

[9] David A. Cole, Julia W. Felton, and Carlos Tilghman-Osborne, “Definition and Measurement of Guilt: Implications for Clinical Research and Practice,” Clinical Psychology Review, vol. 30 (July 2010): 536-546.

[10] Francesca Gino, Ata Jami, and Maryam Kouchaki, “The Burden of Guilt: Heavy Backpacks, Light Snacks, and Enhanced Morality,” Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 143, no. 1 (2013): 414-424.

[11] H. P. Owen, The Moral Argument for Christian Theism (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1965), 118.

[12] John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (London: Burns, Oates, & Co., 1874), 109.

[13] A. E. Taylor, The Faith of a Moralist (London, England: MacMillan and Co., 1951), 207.

[14] Lewis, Mere Christianity, 31.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Why the need for divine forgiveness? David and Marybeth Baggett provide a helpful response to this question: “As Newman and others in the history of moral apologetics could see, though, there is a limit to how much human relationships can explain. Sometimes guilt doesn’t seem to be connected to any particular human person. At other times the wronged person is no longer around to confer forgiveness. On yet other occasions the wrong seems to be so grievous that no human being likely has the authority to offer forgiveness. In all of these cases, it becomes more plausible to think that forgiveness by God himself is necessary.” David Baggett and Marybeth Baggett, The  Morals of the Story: Good News About a Good God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2018), 180.

[17] Ibid., 30.

[18] For example, consider the following discussion found in Clement Webb, God and Personality (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1918). Judaism: “But it would be absurd to deny that a religion has a personal God which has ever taken as its ideal the great Lawgiver to whom his God ‘spake face to face as a man speaketh unto his friend’” (86). See also Exodus 33:11. Islam: Anthropomorphic language is used of the God of Islam. “But it would seem that the tendency of that teaching is to reduce the personal relations which can exist between man and God to the lowest terms, to those, namely, which may exist between a slave and a master of absolutely unlimited power. Still this is a personal relation, and on the whole it would seem best to describe the God of Mohammedanism as a personal God” (86-87). Eastern religions: “If we may say that the God of much Indian worship is not what we should usually call a ‘personal God,’ we must take care not to imply by this that the Indian’s religion is not his personal concern, for nothing could be less true. Moreover, the important and widely prevalent type of Indian piety known as bhakti is admitted to be devotional faith in a personal God: while Buddhism, which originally perhaps acknowledged neither God nor soul, has produced in the worship of Amitabha, the ‘Buddha of the Boundless Light,’ the ‘Lord of the Western Paradise,’ a form of piety which has seemed to some scholars too similar to the Christian to have originated except under Christian influence” (88).

[19] Human knowledge of the Trinity and the Incarnation is solely understood by way of divine revelation. Humans know what they know about God because God has revealed himself to them. Divine revelation is made possible through communication, which is a personal task that is carried out by persons. According to Carl Henry, “[D]ivine revelation is Christianity’s basic epistemological axiom, from which all doctrines of the Christian religion are derived…” God’s decision to reveal himself to humanity indicates that he is intrinsically personal, which only further serves to reinforce the argument that Christianity provides the best possible explanation for a personal God. Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority Volume 1: God Who Speaks and Shows: Preliminary Considerations (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1976), 213.

[20] An interesting discussion on forgiveness can be found in C. S. Lewis, “On Forgiveness” in The Weight of Glory (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2001), 177-183. Another discussion on forgiveness is located in Lewis, Mere Christianity, 115-120.

[21] Christianity not only speaks of the possibility of radical transformation, it provides countless examples of it throughout history (e.g., the disciples, the apostle Paul, early church leaders, Augustine, Saint Patrick, and John Newton). See Baggett and Baggett, The Morals of the Story: Good News About a Good God, 193.

[22] Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 55.

Objective Morality, the Nature of Guilt, and God’s Offer of Divine Forgiveness And Promise of Moral Transformation: A New Look at C. S. Lewis’s Moral Argument

by Stephen S. Jordan

Introduction

Countless philosophers and theologians throughout history have postulated arguments in favor of a divine being. There are four kinds of classical arguments that have attempted to establish the existence of God: the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, the ontological argument, and the moral argument. The origins of the cosmological and teleological arguments can be traced to the ancient world, the ontological argument dates to the medieval time period, but the moral argument is a relative newcomer as it has modern ancestry.[1] Although the moral argument emerged onto the philosophical scene largely through the writings of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) in the eighteenth century, it was C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) who popularized the argument more than anyone else in the past two centuries.[2]

Lewis’s moral argument is detailed primarily in Book 1 of Mere Christianity; however, portions of Lewis’s moral argument are found in his other writings as well. Therefore, this essay will pull from a broad Lewisian corpus in an attempt to present a more robust picture of his moral argument, which begins with reasons for believing in the existence of objective morality, continues with mankind’s inability to adhere to such a moral standard, and concludes with the necessity of a divine being (of a particular sort) in order to account for these realities.[3]

The Existence of an Objective Moral Law

            In Book 1 of Mere Christianity, Lewis suggests that the existence of objective morality is obvious (or self-evident) for at least four reasons. First, when two or more individuals quarrel, they assume there is an objective standard of right and wrong of which each person is aware of and one has broken. For example, when one says, “That’s my seat, I was there first!” or “Why should you shove in first?” he is not merely stating that the other man’s behavior does not happen to please him, but rather that there is “some kind of standard of behaviour [sic] which he expects the other man to know about.”[4] At this point, oftentimes the other man will provide reasons for why he did not go against the standard or he will provide excuses for breaking it. Such a response is an acknowledgement that a moral standard exists; an individual would not try to provide reasons or give excuses if he thought no such standard existed. Second, mankind has generally agreed throughout history that “the human idea of decent behaviour [sic] was obvious to every one [sic].”[5] This does not mean “that you might not find an odd individual here and there who did not know it, just as you find a few people who are colour-blind [sic] or have no ear for a tune.”[6] Writing during wartime, Lewis provides an example to drive his point home: “What was the sense in saying the enemy was in the wrong unless Right [sic] is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practiced? If they had had no notion of what we mean by right, then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have blamed them for that than for the colour [sic] of their hair.”[7] Third, mistreatment reveals what an individual really believes about morality. To validate this claim, Lewis states, “Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong [sic], you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining ‘It’s not fair’ before you can say Jack Robinson.”[8] Although some deny the existence of objective morality through their actions, they always affirm it through their reactions. When an individual is mistreated, he will usually react as if an objective standard of proper treatment does, in fact, exist. Fourth, making an excuse for a mistake is providing a sufficient reason (in one’s mind) for breaking a standard of behavior. As Lewis says, “If we do not believe in decent behaviour [sic], why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently?”[9] He continues by adding, “The truth is, we believe in decency so much – we feel the Rule of Law pressing on us so – that we cannot bear to face the fact that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility.”[10]

            Throughout The Abolition of Man, Lewis constructs a case for the existence of objective values such as love, justice, and courage.[11] Lewis states that there are three possible responses for one to consider regarding objective values: 1) reject their existence; 2) replace them; or 3) accept them. One, if objective values are rejected, then all values must be rejected. If values are subjective, then values as a whole become a matter of preference. Furthermore, if objective values are rejected, then rules/laws are no longer possible or binding upon humans because every rule/law has a value behind it.[12] Next, to attempt to refute a value system and replace it with a new one is self-contradictory. According to Lewis, “There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgement of value in the history of the world.”[13] Furthermore, to attempt to replace a value system with another one is to assume that there is something awry with the present system, which can only be realized if an objective standard of judgment exists in the first place.[14] This leaves one viable option: accept the reality of objective moral values.

Lewis indicates in his essay entitled, “Evil and God,” in God in the Dock, that an objective moral standard must exist in order to allow for moral improvement. He claims,

If things can improve, this means that there must be some absolute standard of good above and outside the cosmic process to which that process can approximate. There is no sense in talking of “becoming better” if better means simply “what we are becoming” – it is like congratulating yourself on reaching your destination and defining destination as “the place you have reached.”[15]

According to Lewis, talk of moral improvement is nonsensical if there is no “absolute standard of good” that exists. If no such standard existed, one might change his morality, but he could never improve his morality.

            In Miracles, before actually discussing the possibility of miraculous events, Lewis argues for the existence of God by utilizing the moral argument and the argument from reason.[16] There are times when these two arguments overlap. For example, “Besides reasoning about matters of fact, men also make moral judgements – ‘I ought to do this’ – ‘I ought not do that’ – ‘This is good’ – ‘That is evil.’”[17] When men reason over moral issues, it is assumed that there is an objective standard of right and wrong. If there is no such standard, then moral reasoning is on the same level as one arguing with his friends about the best flavor of ice cream at the local parlor (“I prefer this” and “I don’t prefer that”).[18] Simply stated, if there is no objective moral law, then everything becomes a matter of preference.

            Within the introductory chapter of The Problem of Pain, Lewis presents what he calls the “strands or elements” found within “all developed religion.”[19] The second strand that is noted involves mankind’s sense of a moral code. According to Lewis, “All the human beings that history has heard of acknowledge some kind of morality; that is, they feel towards certain proposed actions the experiences expressed by the words, ‘I ought’ or ‘I ought not.’”[20] The words “ought” and “ought not” imply the existence of an objective moral law that mankind recognizes and is obligated to follow. If such a moral code did not exist, then the words “ought” and “ought not” would mean little more than “I prefer” and “I do not prefer.”

            In sum, Lewis provides at least eight reasons for believing in the existence of objective morality. One, when two or more individuals quarrel, it is assumed that an objective standard of right and wrong exists.[21] Two, mankind has generally agreed throughout history that an objective standard of decent behavior is obvious to all people.[22] Three, mistreatment reveals what one really believes about morality.[23] An individual might deny the existence of an objective standard, but as soon as he is mistreated, he will respond as if such a standard exists (“That’s not fair!”). Four, when a person makes an excuse for a mistake on his part, he essentially provides a sufficient reason (in his mind) for breaking an objective standard of behavior.[24] Five, if objective moral values (such as love, compassion, etc.) are rejected, then all values must be rejected. If this happens, then values become a matter of preference. Additionally, if an individual attempts to replace one value system with another, he must assume that an objective standard of judgment exists to help him determine that one value system is superior to another.[25] Six, an objective moral standard must exist in order to foster the possibility of moral improvement.[26] Seven, when individuals reason over moral issues, the existence of objective morality is assumed.[27] Eight, the words “ought” and “ought not” imply that an objective standard of behavior exists that mankind is obligated to follow.[28]

(Part 2 coming next week) 

Notes: 

[1] The cosmological argument can be traced to Plato and Aristotle. Although traces of the teleological argument appeared in the writings of Socrates (Xenophon’s Memorabilia 1.4.4ff), Plato (Phaedo), and Philo (Works of Philo 3.182, 183.33), it came to fruition later in the middle ages (the last of Aquinas’ “Five Ways”) and modern world (Paley’s Natural Theology). The ontological argument was first formed by Anselm in the medieval time period, although he was not responsible for naming it. Implicit fragments of the moral argument can be found in Plato, Augustine, and Aquinas, but its emergence onto the philosophical scene did not take place until Kant utilized it in the eighteenth century.

[2] To be fair, there are numerous “heavy hitters” in the field of moral apologetics between Kant and Lewis, such as: John Henry Newman (1801-1890), Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900), William Sorley (1855-1935), Hastings Rashdall (1858-1935), Clement Webb (1865-1954), and A. E. Taylor (1869-1945). Lewis “popularized” the moral argument, in the sense that he made it appealing to a wider audience, but he would not have been able to do so without these men who came before him.

[3] Lewis’s argument is not a strict, deductive proof for God’s existence. Rather, Lewis provides an argument that is rationally persuasive in the sense that the existence of a divine being (of a particular sort) is the best explanation for the available evidence. See David Baggett, “Pro: The Moral Argument is Convincing,” in C. S. Lewis’s Christian Apologetics: Pro and Con, ed. Gregory Bassham (Leiden: Brill Rodopi, 2015), 121.

[4] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2001), 3.

[5] Ibid., 5. In the appendix section of The Abolition of Man, Lewis provides a list that illustrates the points of agreement amongst various civilizations throughout history. See C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2001), 83-101.                              

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid., 6.

[9] Ibid., 8.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Values are the “why” behind rules/laws, whereas rules/laws are the “what.” For example, there are laws against murder because human life is intrinsically valuable.

[12] Ibid., 73.

[13] Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 43.

[14] Lewis expounds upon this in Mere Christianity when he suggests the following: “If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilized morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality. In fact, of course, we all do believe that some moralities are better than others...The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality [sic], admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right [sic], independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that Right [sic] than others.” Lewis, Mere Christianity, 13.

[15] C. S. Lewis, “Evil and God,” in God in the Dock, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2014), 3-4.

[16] He does this because if God exists, then miracles are at least possible. In his words, “Human Reason and Morality have been mentioned not as instances of Miracle (at least, not of the kind of Miracle you wanted to hear about) but as proofs of the Supernatural: not in order to show that Nature ever is invaded but that there is a possible invader.” C. S. Lewis, Miracles (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2001), 68.

[17] Lewis, Miracles, 54.

[18] Naturalism largely fails to account for this. Lewis explains: “If we are to continue to make moral judgements (and whatever we say we shall in fact continue) then we must believe that the conscience of man is not a product of Nature. It can be valid only if it is an offshoot of some absolute moral wisdom, a moral wisdom which exists absolutely ‘on its own’ and is not a product of non-moral, non-rational Nature.” Lewis, Miracles, 60.

[19] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2001), 5.

[20] Ibid., 10.

[21] Lewis, Mere Christianity, 3.

[22] Ibid., 5.

[23] Ibid., 6.

[24] Ibid., 8.

[25] Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 43.

[26] Lewis, “Evil and God,” in God in the Dock, 3-4.

[27] Lewis, Miracles, 54.

[28] Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 10.

Insights of C. S. Lewis Concerning Faith, Doubt, Pride, Corrupted Love, And Dying to Oneself in Till We Have Faces (Part 2)

Photo by Igor Goryachev on Unsplash

Pride, Devouring Love, And Dying To Self

Let us turn now to a second major theme in TWHF: pride and corrupted love. There are a number of insights concerning this theme that Lewis offers in his prose that are illustrated well in TWHF. Consider first the nature of pride and the fact that it blocks the knowledge of God. Lewis says that pride is the key sin that is central in Christian ethics. People recognize pride in others but often fail to see it in themselves.[1] Lewis says that pride is what often makes it difficult to convince unbelievers of their sin problem. It leads them to overlook their own sins yet feel that they can judge God for allowing the evils in the world; in short, it leads humans to think we are “on the bench and God in the Dock.”[2] Pride is the pathway to all other vices. It is the “complete anti-God state of mind” and is by nature competitive. We are not proud merely because we are smart or attractive but because we are smarter or more attractive than others.[3] Pride seeks power and puts one’s self forward. It always causes conflict with others and with God.[4] Lewis says, “The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first—wanting to be the centre—wanting to be God, in fact.”[5] Since God is “immeasurably superior” to all people, Lewis stresses that pride prevents one from knowing God. Pride involves “looking down,” but God can only be known by looking up. Prideful people may say they know God, but they cannot.[6] Those who truly know God will have their focus on God and not themselves. We cannot relate to God properly unless we humbly recognize Him as God.[7]

In TWHF, Orual fails to recognize her pride for most of the novel, and this prevents her from knowing the gods and discovering truth. So long as she was elevating herself and only looking down, she could not realize that the gods were above her. She could not know herself or the gods because she was a prisoner of her pride. As the novel opens, she seeks to put the gods in the judgment seat (i.e., in “the dock”) and is angry that they will not answer her.[8] By the end, however, she discovers that the accusations she had wanted to make against the gods for most of her life were indefensible. She realizes that this is why the gods “do not speak to us openly” about our concerns. It is because we do not know as much as we think we do and our pride blinds us to the truth. The gods cannot “meet us face to face till we have faces.”[9] This also illustrates why Lewis says that prayer would be far too dangerous for us if God answered every prayer.[10] Orual had prayed for the gods to reveal things to her, but they were silent. In the end, she knew it was good that they had remained silent and not answered her prayer.

A second insight within this theme is that pride corrupts love into a jealous hate that devours others. In The Four Loves, Lewis says that prideful self-centeredness and jealousy can creep into “every kind of love.” This may involve not wanting the one we love to “become brighter or more beautiful” or not wanting “the old ways to be changed even for the better.”[11] He gives the example of two siblings who share everything and are extremely close throughout life, but one of them experiences a change—a new interest that the other cannot share. Perhaps, he says, the change is that one “undergoes a religious conversion.” The one who did not change is liable to feel that she is losing the bond with the other. She is likely to mock the new love of the changed sibling and call it “nonsense.”[12] This is exactly what Orual experienced when Psyche found a new love that Orual did not share and did not want intruding into her love for Psyche. Orual admits that her hatred of the gods and her true motivation to separate Psyche from them were rooted in her belief that the gods stole Psyche’s love from her. Orual would rather Psyche be killed than have another come between her and Psyche. “Psyche was mine,” she says.[13]

Lewis also notes in The Four Loves that there is sometimes a need to be needed by the one we love, and this can be twisted into something like hate. Lewis gives the example of one who has the need to care for another person in a motherly way such that the other person is smothered by these efforts and does not desire them.[14] Love should express itself in wanting the other person to be self-sufficient and not require one’s support;[15] when it does not, this twisted sort of love “contains a good deal of hatred” and becomes “a god” in one’s life—an idol that “becomes a demon.”[16] This is reflected in The Great Divorce by the female ghost who, even in the afterlife, is obsessed with controlling her husband and desires to continue to rule over him and “make something of him”—a goal she believes she never fully completed in her earthly life.[17] She goes on and on describing how she met all of his needs and how he would be lost without her even though it was evident that he did not desire (or, in her mind, “appreciate”) her efforts. Her preoccupation with her husband needing her prevented her from knowing God and from seeing the destruction that her “love” produced in her own life and in the earthly life of her husband. In the end, this continual need to be needed sucked up her very existence.[18] This type of twisted love is clearly exemplified in Orual’s desire to control and rule over Psyche. Although Psyche assures Orual that her god husband must now be the one to guide her, Orual insists, “You cannot go your own way. You will let me rule and guide you.”[19] Although Psyche neither needed nor desired Orual to rule her, Orual had a need to be needed. She was so desperate to keep Psyche under her “loving” rule that she coerced her by threats. Mirroring what Lewis says in The Four Loves, Psyche tells Orual, “I am not sure I like your kind [of love] better than hatred.”[20] Orual, in revealing her true thoughts at the end of the novel, says she was not jealous of Psyche until the gods started to elevate Psyche and make her the “next thing to a goddess.” Orual wanted the gods to elevate her instead and show her the truth so that she could in turn teach Psyche.[21] She was bent on Psyche needing her as a ruler and teacher. Although Psyche was happy with the gods, Orual took no comfort in this. Her pride and twisted love led her to insist that she must be the only one to give Psyche happiness.[22] The Fox described this attitude as “one part love in your heart, and five parts anger, and seven parts pride.”[23]

Lewis declares that the worst sort of pride involves looking down on others “so much that you do not care what they think of you.”[24] Although Orual no doubt would have preferred for Psyche to think well of her, there is a real sense in which she exemplifies the sort of pride Lewis is describing. Orual wanted to have Psyche’s companionship and love, and she did not care if Psyche knew she was coercing her so long as it meant keeping Psyche in her life and under her control. She was willing to threaten to kill Psyche and herself to keep Psyche under her rule and did not back down when Psyche accused her of using Psyche’s love for her as a weapon.[25] Orual devoured others with her twisted love and was “a craver” even if they thought less of her for it.[26]

Another insight of Lewis concerning pride and love is that one should never be less drawn to God than one is to another human and should never love God less than another human. Lewis says that we cannot love another human too much. We can only love God too little so that our love for that human person is placed higher than our love for God.[27] Lewis also thinks it is not a sin to be proud of another human—so long as that pride is mere admiration and that admiration is less than what one has for God. It is never acceptable to “love and admire anything more than we love and admire God.”[28] Lewis portrays this concept well in The Great Divorce through the character Pam. Pam wants to see her son Michael, who is in heaven, but she needs to desire God to do so. She says she will love God if that is the only way to see her son, but she is told that one must not love God as a means to being united with what ought to be a lesser love. She is “treating God only as a means to Michael.”[29] Indeed, Lewis wrestled with this temptation himself after his wife died. As he was struggling to maintain his trust in God’s goodness, he considered that he may simply be “sidling back to God” because he knew that doing so is the only possible road to seeing his wife again. But he realized that God “can’t be used as a road.” Lewis says, “If you’re approaching Him not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you’re not really approaching Him at all.”[30] So love for God must exceed one’s love for any human; however, throughout nearly all of TWHF, Orual’s relationship with Psyche was clearly far more important to her than Psyche’s relationship with the gods or her own relationship with the gods.[31] Orual was more drawn to Psyche than she was to the gods and desired a love relationship with Psyche that she did not desire to have with the gods. This made Psyche an idol in Orual’s life that led her astray greatly.

Finally, a crucial insight of Lewis related to pride is that one must die to oneself in order to know God and love others properly. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity, “Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it.” He says that if you “look for yourself,” then “you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” We must submit to the death of our “ambitions and favourite wishes every day” if we are to be remade.[32] This dying to self is powerfully illustrated in TWHF, as Orual is told by the gods to “die before you die.”[33] Orual had to be “unmade” and die to herself and her prideful ambitions in order to become her perfected self.[34] In Mere Christianity, Lewis uses a fleet of ships to illustrate how moral growth needs to occur within a human, between humans, and in the interaction between each human and God. To function properly, each ship in the fleet must be seaworthy, each ship must not collide with or damage other ships, and all the ships must be collectively headed toward the proper destination (i.e., God).[35] In TWHF, Orual must die to herself in order to grow morally as an individual. Doing this allowed her to relate better to others and understand the root of pride that infected her relationship with and knowledge of other humans and the gods.

Conclusion

Lewis illustrates powerfully many insights from his prose in TWHF. Concerning faith, he portrays emotional doubt in the lives of Orual and Psyche and the need to use reason to trump such doubt. He reveals through Orual how moral growth requires personal effort as well as drawing upon God’s help. He also reveals much of what he learned in his own struggle with doubting God’s goodness through Orual’s process of discovery. Concerning pride, he shows through Orual’s self-discovery how pride prevents one from knowing God by blocking one from knowing oneself and one’s flaws. He also illustrates in Orual many of his insights concerning the way pride and jealousy can corrupt love into a devouring hate and how one’s love of self and others can wrongly exceed one’s love of God. Finally, Lewis shows in TWHF how dying to oneself is a true prerequisite to overcoming pride and finding one’s true self so that one can relate properly to God and others. Thus TWHF is a masterpiece in which Lewis—via the medium of retelling a myth—portrays many of his theological and moral insights

Notes

37. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 121.

38. C. S. Lewis, “God in the Dock” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970), 268.

39. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 122.

40. Ibid., 123-4.

41. Ibid., 49.

42. Ibid., 124.

43. Ibid., 127.

44. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, 3.

45. Ibid., 294.

46. C. S. Lewis, “Work and Prayer” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970), 107.

47. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (San Diego, CA: Harcourt, 1960), 45.

48. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, 46.

49. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, 290-1. This is much like what Lee Strobel experienced prior to his conversion to Christianity. When his wife became a Christian, he at first resented her love for God out of his own “self-interest.” He worried that he was losing her because her belief that she now had a relationship with God was coming between them. See Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998), 16.

50. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, 48-50.

51. Ibid., 50.

52. Ibid., 56.

53. C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, in The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 516.

54. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 513-6.

55. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, 159.

56. Ibid., 165.

57. Ibid., 291.

58. Ibid., 292.

59. Ibid., 148.

60. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 126.

61. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 165. Orual also used her position as Queen to keep Bardia with her needlessly and selfishly and did not encourage the Fox to leave her and go home to Greece as she knew he wished to do.

62. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, 305.

63. Lewis, The Four Loves, 122-3.

64. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 127.

65. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 518.

66. Lewis, A Grief Observed, 685.

67. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, 72-6.

68. Ibid., 226-7.

69. Ibid., 279.

70. Ibid., 307-8.

71. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 71-2.

Insights of C. S. Lewis Concerning Faith, Doubt, Pride, Corrupted Love, And Dying to Oneself in Till We Have Faces (Part 1)

Photo by João Silas on Unsplash

In Till We Have Faces (henceforth TWHF), C. S. Lewis combines his passion for pagan mythology with his knack for communicating Christian truths via story. Lewis often stresses in his various works his belief that pagan mythology, while not reflecting the complete truth about God, contains various nuggets of the ultimate truth that is found in Christianity. Christianity, he says, is the “true myth” that melds the human need for believing what is true about the world as it actually is with our need for imagination and wonder and delight.[1] It is thus not surprising that, in TWHF, Lewis powerfully illustrates a number of theological and moral positions that are prominent in many of his other writings by retelling the story of the myth of Psyche and Cupid.

This paper will examine two major themes in TWHF that are also emphasized heavily within Lewis’s prose: the theme of faith and doubt and the theme of pride and corrupted love. With regard to the first major theme of faith and doubt, we will examine three key aspects of faith that Lewis stresses throughout his writings that are beautifully illustrated in TWHF. The first aspect of faith involves holding onto what one believes with good reason to be true about God in the face of various emotionally-driven, non-evidential temptations to abandon one’s faith. The second aspect of faith involves humbly drawing upon God’s help as we strive to follow Him and be molded into a person of greater character. The third aspect of faith deals with believing that God is good in the midst of pain and suffering and incomplete information.

The paper will then examine the second major theme of pride and corrupted love. This will begin by examining how Lewis considers pride to be the antithesis of God’s mindset and how it prevents one from knowing God. This truth is at the heart of TWHF. Next, we will consider what Lewis has to say about how pride corrupts love into a sort of jealous hate that devours others and how this is exemplified in the life of Orual in TWHF. We will also see how Lewis’s warning against loving God less than we love others is illustrated in the novel. Finally, we will examine how Lewis’s repeated exhortation to engage in the biblical principle of dying to oneself in order to combat pride and relate properly to God and others is portrayed clearly in TWHF.

Faith and Doubt

Lewis has much to say about faith and doubt in his prose; indeed, two chapters of Mere Christianity are fully devoted to the subject. Let us consider three aspects of faith that Lewis emphasizes in his writings and exemplifies in TWHF, beginning with his recognition that faith requires us to hold onto what reason tells us is true about God and not allow our commitment to God to waver when we are tempted to doubt for various emotionally-driven reasons that are not rooted in evidence or reason. Lewis recognizes that human minds are not “completely ruled by reason.” Despite having good reason to trust one’s surgeon, for example, Lewis himself experienced emotional doubt and anxiety when he had surgery; he allowed his “emotion and imagination” to overrule his reason.[2] A Christian with reasonable faith still experiences times when “his emotions rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief.” Also, in some situations there are moral reasons that it is not “convenient” to think that Christianity is true (e.g., when one is tempted to sin). Faith involves maintaining commitment to what one knows is true about Christianity despite one’s changing moods and circumstances.[3] It is a virtue to “teach your moods where they get off” and control them when they challenge one’s reason. This involves recognizing one’s moods and using reason to remind oneself that one’s faith in Christ is true by engaging in the spiritual disciplines of prayer, Bible reading, and church attendance.[4]

This sort of emotional doubt is seen in both Psyche and Orual in TWHF. Psyche rationally believes—on the basis of her longing for the gods, her recognition of their beauty, and her religious experience—that the “god of the Mountain” is the source of all beauty and has been “wooing” her to come to him.[5] Lewis considers the human longing for God and for that which is beyond this world to be a rational reason to believe in God.[6] Yet, despite having good reason to be confident in the gods, Psyche has moments when her emotions—fear in particular—rise up and cause her to doubt. A fear arises in the back of her mind that the god of the Mountain does not exist and that she will slowly die tied to a tree instead of being united with the god. The thought made her cry, but she quickly began reminding herself of the confidence that she has that the Fox’s skepticism about the gods is wrong and that her sense that the gods exist is correct.[7] As Lewis says in A Grief Observed, “You never know how much you really believe in anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”[8] At such times, it is easier for emotions to get the better of one’s faith, but Psyche reasoned herself away from this doubt in exactly the way Lewis says one should respond to such emotional blitzes.[9]

Orual also experiences emotionally-driven doubts. Unlike Psyche, Orual has no longing for the gods—especially after they take Psyche away. She has hate for them and admits her repulsion to believing that Psyche is living with a god husband in a palace, exclaiming in an angry outburst, “I don’t want [to believe] it!”[10] Although she clearly realizes that the evidence for Psyche’s account of her god husband is enough to believe it is true,[11] she allows her emotions to overrule her reason. Indeed, immediately after realizing that she believes it is true, emotional doubt occurs—what reason told her is true is wiped out by an emotional blitz of “blinding waves of sorrow”.[12] Because she lacks the longing for the gods that Psyche has, Orual does not invoke reason to try to talk herself out of her emotional rejection of the truth. Instead, she convinces herself that she is justified in accepting what is not true despite the fact that factual doubt (i.e., doubt rooted in a lack of evidence) was never the problem.[13] Unless one is determined to rule one’s moods by reason, Lewis says one will remain merely “a creature dithering to and fro” with one’s beliefs “dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.”[14] That is exactly what happens with Orual. Because she is so influenced by her moods and emotions rather than grounding herself in reason, her beliefs seem to swing wildly back and forth. She goes from nearly a “full belief”[15] that the unseen palace exists to moments later “fluttering to and fro between two opinions” and finding it “unbelievable” that Psyche’s palace and god “could be anything but madness.”[16] Then, shortly thereafter, she briefly sees the palace and is so sure that Psyche is married to a god that she plans to go and ask Psyche and the god to forgive her of her doubts, but when the palace disappears she immediately tries to tell herself it may not have been a veridical experience.[17] Then, after hearing Bardia’s opinion and reflecting again on the evidence, she considers it “plain” truth that Psyche was given to the god.[18] In the end, it is made clear that Orual did know that the palace was real all along and that her emotions—especially her jealousy—were the culprits in her convincing herself that the evidence is unclear.[19] Her emotions carried out a blitz on her beliefs. Like Orual, Lewis experienced the temptation to think negatively about God out of anger rather than what he knew to be true. He calls it “hitting back” at God. But Lewis stresses that “the mood is no evidence.”[20] He illustrates this well in Orual.

Consider now a second aspect of faith stressed by Lewis: realizing that one falls short of the mark morally and striving to be good while at the same time recognizing that one must seek God’s help to make this improvement.[21] Lewis says that the first step to developing this aspect of faith is to try hard to be good for even “six weeks,” as nobody realizes “how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.” Doing this convinces us that we lack the resources apart from God to live up to the demands of morality.[22] This is seen in TWHF, as Orual realizes in the end that she is “ugly in soul” and desires to change her “ugly soul into a fair one.” She realizes that she needs the gods’ help to do this, but she sets out to try to be good and take the first step. She finds that she could not be good for even a half hour and was concerned that the gods would not help her.[23] So as soon as she tries hard to be good, she realizes how much divine help is needed. Yet as the novel unfolds, she finds that the gods are helping her to grow morally. They are doing their “surgery” on her by revealing things to her about herself using events in her life (e.g., the process of writing her book) and interactions with other people (e.g., Ansit and Tarin).[24] As Lewis stresses in Mere Christianity, God helps us to grow via many means. He uses nature, books, experiences, and other people—even when we do not realize they are being used.[25]

A third aspect of faith addressed by Lewis involves believing that God is good in the midst of suffering and incomplete information. Lewis knew well the reality of this faith struggle, as he wrestled with doubting God’s goodness after his wife died. Like Orual, who never seriously doubted the existence of the gods but had serious doubts about their goodness, when Lewis lost his wife he reports struggling with thinking “dreadful things” about God. The conclusion he fears most “is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like.’”[26]

As Psyche was preparing to be offered to the god, she talks with Orual about how to interpret the gods’ actions in such a way that they are considered good. Psyche suggests that even if the gods seem to humans to be doing evil, we may simply not know enough to realize that the gods are actually doing what is good; in addition, she suggests that it is possible that the gods are not the cause of the evils we attribute to them. Orual, on the other hand, sees no other way to interpret the gods demanding Psyche as an offering than to declare that it is clearly evil.[27] Like Orual, when Lewis was in the early stages of his grief after his wife died he was tempted to think, “What reason have we, except our own desperate wishes, to believe that God is, by any standard we can conceive, ‘good’?”[28] Yet he quickly realized that it is “too anthropomorphic” to think of God as an evil Being; moreover, there seems to be too much good in the world. An evil Being is not likely to include “love, or laughter, or daffodils, or a frosty sunset” as traps or baits in a ploy to harm us. In response, however, to the question raised by Psyche as to whether we are able to evaluate God’s goodness, Lewis rejects the idea that anything God does must be considered good because we are too limited or fallen to pass judgment on God’s morality. He denies that “we are so depraved that our ideas of goodness count for nothing” and that the goodness of God is beyond our ability to assess. If that were true, Lewis says, we would then lack any reason to obey God or to call God “good,” for that term as it applies to God would be meaningless.[29] Lewis, however, does hold that God’s ways and His knowledge are beyond us so that we do not fully understand God’s reasons for allowing things[30]—a truth borne out in TWHF.

Orual also thinks for most of the novel that the gods are toying with us in “cat-and-mouse play” by giving us something good in our life just to take it away and make things worse.[31] In the same way, Lewis for a time wondered if God was like that when his wife died. His concern was that there is a God who is playing with us like we are “rats in a laboratory.” It seemed to Lewis that “time after time, when [God] seemed most gracious He was really preparing the next torture.”[32] Yet Lewis came to realize that this thought was an emotional “yell rather than a thought” rooted in reason and evidence.[33] Orual, too, comes to see that the gods have not been mistreating her; rather they have been preparing her for moral surgery.[34]

It is also interesting that, when his wife dies, Lewis wonders on what basis he had begun having doubts about God’s goodness. He knew about evil and the fact that spouses die before his own wife died, and it never bothered him before; however, it began to bother him and challenge his confidence in God’s goodness once the suffering happened to him personally.[35] In the same way, Orual says she “never really began to hate” the gods and hold the strong feeling that they are cruel until they affected her personally by taking Psyche away.[36] It is only when suffering impacts our lives personally that this aspect of faith in God’s goodness tends to be doubted.

(Part 2 coming next week)

Notes:

1. C. S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970), 58-60.

2. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity: A Revised and Amplified Edition, with a New Introduction, of the Three Books Broadcast Talks, Christian Behaviour, and Beyond Personality (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 139.

3. Ibid., 140.

4. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 141.

5. C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1956), 74-6.

6. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 135-7.

7. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, 70-1.

8. C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, in The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 665.

9. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 140-1. See also Lewis, Till We Have Faces, 108-9. Psyche’s doubts began to return as she was left at the tree. She felt that her old longings were gone and she could no longer believe in the god and the palace. Yet in her doubt she prayed to the gods. Emotional doubt returned when faced with stress and the possibility that her faith is misplaced, but she turned to the spiritual disciplines in the midst of it.

10. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, 124.

11. Ibid., 120, 123-4.

12. Ibid., 121.

13. Ibid., 290-1.

14. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 141.

15. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, 120.

16. Ibid., 126.

17. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, 133. See also C. S. Lewis, “Is Theism Important?,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970), 191. Related to the brief vision of the palace, Lewis says that religious experience often “comes and goes: especially goes.” Faith involves retaining “what is irresistible and obvious during the moments of special grace. By faith we believe always what we hope hereafter to see always and perfectly and have already seen imperfectly and by flashes.”

18. Ibid., 137.

19. Ibid., 290-1.

20. Lewis, A Grief Observed, 673.

21. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 141-9.

22. Ibid., 141-2.

23. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, 281-2.

24. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, 253-67.

25. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 190.

26. Lewis, A Grief Observed, 658.

27. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, 71-2.

28. Lewis, A Grief Observed, 668.

29. Lewis, A Grief Observed, 669.

30. C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, in The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 568.

31. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, 249.

32. Lewis, A Grief Observed, 668-9.

33. Ibid., 669.

34. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, 253-67.

35. Lewis, A Grief Observed, 671-2.

36. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, 290.

Dead but not Deaf

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

The lord of Saxony Germany, Frederick the Elector, saved Martin Luther from execution.  He protected Luther for a year in his castle.  In the coming years, Frederick died, grieving Luther.  Luther moaned, ‘Death is oh so bitter – not so much to the dying as to the living whom the dead leave behind.’ ( Luther, Metaxas, 340)  Many of us have grieved over the death of a loved one.  We know the pangs of being left behind.  Good Friday and Easter Sunday are just passing in the rear view mirror.  Like me, maybe you have reflected on death and resurrection.  Let me share a Scriptural text that has consoled me in the wee hours of the night on death and life.

Jesus speaks it to you and me as he did to the onlookers at the Pool of Bethsaida.  He just healed a man lame for thirty eight years.  He says, ‘Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.’

Jesus introduces his word saying, ‘Very truly’ or, ‘verily, verily’ as in the King James Version.  In the New Testament text it is literally, ‘amen’, ‘amen’.  A teacher says, ‘Class, y’all listen up’.  Perk up your ears.  Listen carefully.  Trust what I’m going to tell you.  It is the truth. Guaranteed.   You can ‘take it to the bank’.  It will be on the exam.  

‘The hour comes’.  In fact, ‘the hour is now.’  The tense is ‘progressive present’.  The ‘hour’ was present when Jesus spoke.  The ‘hour’ is still present - at this very moment.  It is a special hour, a rare time. It will not always be here.  It is here now.  It is the juncture of circumstances that have been ripening to a purpose - n o w.   It is five minutes to midnight Christmas Eve.  You’ve been preparing for the stroke of midnight for weeks.  You have been anticipating it for months.  It has now arrived!

What hour is it?  The hour ‘when the dead will hear’.  Has not the hour for the dead past?  Why should the ‘dead’ concern us?  Jesus is referring to you and me.  Jesus can use the word ‘dead’ for both the biologically and the ‘spiritually’ dead.  Here Jesus is speaking of the spiritually dead.  It is not applicable to the biologically dead.  Have you ever thought of yourself as ‘dead’?  Every person either was, or, is, dead.  It is the default human state.  The apostle Paul tells the Ephesian Christians to remember ‘you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked’.  We either were, or, are, dead?  Can I own it?

My wife Pam lived in Haiti.  Her Haitian friend Vivi knew a Haitian girl the witchdoctors made a ‘zombie’.  The witchdoctors made this girl a ‘zombie’ by giving her a potion – a powdered drug.  It puts the victim in a paralyzed state, a ‘zombie’ state.  Though she was fully conscious, she was buried alive on top of the ground.  At night the witchdoctor took her out of the grave.  She did not die.  But she was not the same. She lived in a disoriented state.  She was what the Haitians call a’ zombie’ – the walking dead.  You are not a Haitian zombie.  But you were or, are, the walking ‘dead’.

The hour comes ‘when the dead will hear.’  Who can speak to the dead?  Is it not a contradiction in terms?  The dead are dead!  Are they not incapable of either having sounds directed at them or receiving them?  There is One who speaks to them.  He spoke to the possessed woman, Mary Magdalene and to Zacchaeus. What amazes me is He even wants to speak to the dead! Jesus says, ‘I came not to call the righteous but sinners.’

What will the dead hear?  ‘The hour is now when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God.’ The dead will hear the Voice of the Son of God.  Last summer my recent retirement was haunting me.  In the wee hours, retirement felt too much like death.  I was meditating on this phrase ‘the dead will hear’.  I cried to Jesus as a suppliant in the dark, ‘I want to hear your Voice…speak to me…I want to hear…I want to live’.  Hallelujah!  He speaks to the dead!  What is the effect of his speaking to the dead? 

‘The dead will hear …and those who hear will live’.  ‘Will live’ is contingent.  Living is dependent on listening.  The dead will hear with their ears.  Sounds will go in.  They must listen with their hearts.  They must consent to, own, obey, keep, treasure, and actively trust in what is said.  Those who hear say, ‘Yes, I will!’

I will never forget Harry R. Truman.  This is the other Harry Truman.  Harry and his wife operated for forty years the Spirit Lake Mountain Lodge at Mt. Saint Helen’s, Washington.  In 1980 the once dormant volcano began volcanic activity.  Scientists began to caution an explosion was imminent.  Officials warned people to get off the mountain.  ‘This is an extremely dangerous place to be’ said a USGS volcanologist.  Harry Truman was not going to hear of it.  He said, “I don’t have any idea whether it will blow…But I don’t believe it to the point that I’m going to pack up…the mountain ain’t gonna hurt me.’  Law officials were incensed he refused their last warning.  The next morning the entire northern flank blew off.  Harry was never heard of again.

Jesus’ word to mortals is heartening:  ‘those who hear will live’!  They will live now, and into eternity.  Jesus promises, ‘Anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life’.   Be sure of this - you can take it to the bank- those who hear will live! I want to live!  I want to live now!  I want to live into eternal life!  Don’t you?!  Repent, and put all your confidence in Jesus’ word.  Martin Luther’s 13 year old daughter Magdalena lay dead in her coffin.  Luther said, ‘Go ahead and close it! She will rise again on the last day’.  After the coffin was carried away, he said, ‘Do not be sorrowful.  I have sent a saint to heaven.’

Do not be dead - and deaf!

John Hare’s God’s Command, “Summary” (Final Chapter)

Philippe de Champaigne - Moses with the Ten Commandments

Here Hare wants to offer a brief summary of the theory of the book as a whole, an outline of the main points of the theory. The book is designed to defend the thesis that what makes something morally obligatory for us is that God commands it, and what makes something morally wrong for us is that God prohibits it. Hare thinks the fact that divine command is so central to all three Abrahamic traditions, and that so many of the same problems arise in all three about the relation between divine command and human reason, should be taken as confirmation.

God is taken in this book to be the supreme good, manifested in three ways. First, God is the creator of all that exists other than God, and God maintains it and is present to it once created. Second, God gives us revelation, and for the purposes of this book the primary revelation is of the divine will for our willing, which God gives us in command. Finally, God redeems us, by bringing us to that union with God that is our proper end. These three functions (creation, revelation, and redemption) can be expressed in terms of a threefold sovereign role that God has over the created order, by analogy with human sovereignty. God has legislative, executive, and judicial functions. God makes and promulgates the law by command; God runs the universe and sustains its order; and God judges us and punishes and saves us.

Human beings are created as rational animals through the processes of evolution. We have the purpose of a kind of loving union with God that’s available only to rational animals. Each of us has, however, not merely the purpose common to the whole species, but a particular purpose (unique to the individual) of a kind of love of God particular to that individual. Our destination is a realm in which all these individual kinds of love are conjoined. We all have the same basic value because we all have a call from God of this unique kind. We are individual centers of agency, in time, free, and language users, features that put constraints on what we should take to be a divine command. From these constraints, we can deduce a presumption against taking anything to be a divine command that requires breaching these constraints. We’re born with a predisposition to respond to the command, but a propensity to put our own happiness above the command. We are in that way a mixture, but the predisposition is essential to us, and the propensity is not.

Our power to accept or reject the command is made possible only by God’s sustaining power, and God in the second decree brings all things to good. The relation between our freedom and God’s power is that we are like a lake and God’s power is like the flow in that lake from a hidden spring.

Moral obligation can be both universal and particular. It’s universal when it has all human beings in the scope of the subjects who are commanded to act and the scope of the beneficiaries or victims of that action. Commands are a species of prescription, and we can distinguish five types of divine prescriptions: precepts, prohibitions, permissions, counsels, and directly effective commands. God has objective authority over all human beings, whether they recognize it or not, because God’s commands give all human beings rightful reason to comply, given God’s threefold sovereign role already described. The reasons are rightful because God’s commands make obligatory the good things that God prescribes, all of which take us to our proper end by the path God has selected for us, and our obedience is an expression of our love for God, which is good in itself and our end.

There are at least five objections to Hare’s thesis. One is that it produces an infinite regress. But the principle that God is to be loved is known from its terms: we know that if something is God, it’s to be loved, but to love God is to obey God, and so we can know from its terms the principle that God is to be obeyed.

A second objection is that the thesis makes morality arbitrary. Could not just anything be obligatory if God were to command it? The solution to this worry is that there is a distinction between the good and the obligatory. The thesis of Hare’s book is that God’s command makes something obligatory. When a person judges that a thing is good, she expresses an attraction to it and says that it deserves to attract her. There is a prescriptivist or expressivist side to this and a realist side. The prescriptivist side is that the evaluative judgment expresses some state of desire or emotion or will. The realist side is that there is some value property that she claims belongs to the thing, in virtue of which her state of desire or emotion or will is appropriate. The goodness might reside in resemblance to God. It might also reside in the union with God that is the human destination, or what leads to this union, or what manifests God by displaying God’s presence. If God is supremely good, union with God must also be good as an end, and so must the path to this end be good as a means. God commands only what is consistent with this destination, and thus the command is not arbitrary in the contemporary sense, in which what is arbitrary ignores some consideration that is relevant to a decision.

The third objection is this: If God commands only what is good, is God’s command redundant? Hare again makes a distinction: the moral law can’t be deduced from our nature, but it fits our nature exceedingly well. There are two kinds of deduction we should deny. It might be thought that we could fix the reference of ‘good’ by looking at what most people, most of the time, think is good. But this does not fit the fact that we could be, and in fact are, wrong much of the time in our evaluation. An examination of Greek ethics and its stress on the competitive goods illustrates this. The second kind of deduction we should avoid is the deduction of virtue from our human form of life, even though there is a goodness of organisms that can be deduced from their simply being alive. The human form of life does indeed put a constraint on what we should conceive our virtues to be, but a large part of our conception of virtue is constituted by our ideals. And these can’t be deduced from our form of life, unless we have already screened our description of this form of life through our ideals. The central reason for the failure of this deduction is the mixture in both our natural inclinations and our ideals between what deserves to attract us in this way and what does not so deserve. The danger of some kinds of natural law theory is that God disappears into creation, in the sense that, because we think we can get morality from our nature, we think we do not need a personal divine commander. But creation itself, including our created nature, is not yet sufficiently complete for us to deduce from it how we should live. Reason (in the sense of looking at our nature) can be thought of as a junior partner in determining our duties, and it’s indispensable in disputes between traditions. But its results are not sufficiently determinate to tell us how to live, and we need the revelation of divine command in addition.

A fourth objection is that we live in a pluralist society, and appealing to God’s commands is inappropriate for conduct in the public square in such a society. The reply to this objection is twofold. First, it is discriminatory against religious believers to require them to shed their most basic commitments in public dialogue. Second, there is not enough common ground between all the parties to public conversation so that we could get good policy by sticking to the lowest common denominator.

A fifth objection is that, even if God were to give us commands, we are too unreliable as receivers of them to make them the final arbiters of our moral decisions. Too many bad people have appealed to divine commands in justifying their actions. The question here pertains to what sort of access to the commands we have. One way to proceed is to work out a rational ethical decision procedure and then say simply that God commands us to follow it. But the Abrahamic faiths have additional resources in the content of the narratives they give us of God’s dealing with human beings, in the procedures they prescribe for checking with other members of the community, and in the phenomenology they describe as characteristic of the reception of divine command. They can say that direct divine commands present themselves with clarity and distinctness, external origination, familiarity, authority, and providential care.

Finally, we should deny another thesis found in some forms of natural law theory, the thesis of eudaemonism that we should choose everything for the sake of happiness. We need instead a dual structure of motivation, according to which happiness is properly one of our ends, but we are also to be moved by what is good in itself independently of our happiness. The notion of happiness is not just pleasure. It includes an ideal element, so that we would not count a person in a pleasure-machine as “really” happy. But it is self-indexed, in the sense that the agent pursues it as her own good, and this makes eudaemonism unacceptably self-regarding.

Various defenses of eudaemonism should be rejected, like this one: happiness includes sympathetic pleasures. This should be rejected because sympathetic pleasures are limited in a way that morality should want to transcend. A second defense is that reason brings impartiality with it, and so our good as rational beings requires that we follow the moral law. But the notion of reason here simply begs the question. A third defense is to propose that the interests of the whole of creation form a nested hierarchy, so that, if the agent correctly sees this order, she will see that her good is necessarily consistent with the good of the whole. But it’s not hard to think of cases of real conflict, or at least possible conflict, between interests, in which case the question arises of whether any self-indexed good should take the priority. Finally, we can revise the third defense so that the agent perfects herself by identifying with God who is self-transcending. But, if she thereby loses attachment to self-indexed goods, this revision becomes unacceptably self-neglecting. We need a dual structure of motivation. We should hold that happiness and morality are indeed conjoined, but not because of some necessity in the nature of happiness or in the nature of morality, but because of the free benevolence of the supersensible author of nature.

John Hare’s God’s Command, 8.5, “Transcending our Evolutionary Situation with God”

Photo by Mahkeo on Unsplash

The story at the beginning of this chapter was treated as a Kant-like translation from biblical theology into the language of contemporary (non-theological) anthropology, though it is still a story and not science. We can now go back and put God back into the story, and doing so helps make sense of the story. We can do this in three moments: the encounter, the command, and the punishment.

First of all, God meets our ancestors, though they were probably not monotheists. The story described this in terms of awe and joy. When we feel awe, we have a sense of something’s greatness, and this requires some standard of comparison. There are many kinds of greatness. Kant distinguishes, for example, between the mathematical sublime that responds to greatness in amount and the dynamic sublime that responds to greatness in power. Both kinds of greatness can make everything else seem small by comparison. It is probably impossible to specify a kind of greatness that is the object of all kinds of awe. But it’s plausibly something personal early on. We’re looking after all at agency detection. Such awe is something like reverence. It doesn’t go far enough to say one respects the Torah, and “respect” may also not be adequate as a translation of Kant’s Achtung, which is the feeling occasioned by the moral law that we “recognize as God’s command.”

Bringing in an encounter with God at this first moment explains how we might arrive at the silencing or subordinating of self-interest. Suppression is not the same as subordinating. It doesn’t mean that in the presence of what is good in itself we lose the affection for advantage, but its salience can be radically decreased. This produces a double-source account of motivation. The encounter with divinity might have been with something experienced as great, not merely terrifying but deeply attractive (in Otto’s terms of fascinans as well as tremendum).

The second moment at which God enters the story is the command. This command, in the story, is not connected in any intelligible way with nature. We are invited to think that God selects within the divine prerogative (arbitrium) the fruit as a test, and the test is to see whether the humans will try to usurp the divine function of establishing what is good and bad, or what is right and wrong. For present purposes, the significant feature of the command is that it is not deducible from our nature or from any nature, and it can therefore stand in for the whole series of divine commands that are within God’s arbitrium in the same way. The basic command is not about the fruit, but is the command to love God that comes out of the experience of being loved by God. Refraining from the fruit is merely a symbol of that response. But, if we generalize to all the divine commands for which we do not see the whole reason, we get some sense of how introducing God into the picture might help from an explanatory point of view.

The third moment is God’s punishment. In Genesis there is expulsion from the Garden, and the condemnation to wearisome work, pain in childbirth, and distorted sexual relations. Despite the punishment, there’s hope that continues, and an ongoing high moral demand. The theistic version of the story tells us that divine punishment doesn’t exclude divine love, and that God intervenes in our predicament to rescue us. The possibility of that redemption is already implicit in the original encounter, but is made explicit in the form of covenant. God goes on making initiatives towards us, and we go on refusing them. Redemption returns us to the argument from grace in Chapter 1.

It’s not surprising that the story fits the theistic explanation, because the original version had God as a central character. But to the extent that the translated version fits what actually happened to our ancestors, it is significant if a theistic explanation is coherent and helpful. Evolutionary psychology gives us an excellent background against which to see why bringing in God might give us a good explanation. There is a fit between what we need and what God’s presence, guidance, and assistance give to us.

Hare now goes back through the discussions of evolutionary psychology to see how our situation as evolved makes some independent guidance helpful. In terms of Greene, we need something both to include us, so that we can get beyond the tragedy of the commons, and to push us beyond the group, so that we do not end up with mere within-group altruism. The failures in psychological altruism that Kitcher posits as the origin of ethics infect both our intra-group and our inter-group lives, and we can see the preachments of the great religious traditions helping us with both. In Arnhart we see our devotion to the competitive goods such as wealth, power, and honor. We have seen Haidt’s claim that because of our evolutionary background we care more about reputation than about truth or sincerity, and that our reasoning is often better seen as an “inner lawyer” managing this reputation than an “inner scientist” trying to work out what is right to do. We have seen Greene’s claim that from an evolutionary perspective our reasoning systems are designed for selecting rewarding behaviors.

We don’t have to accept all of these claims in order to conclude that even within the group our ability to care for others is fragile. Our list of failures could be expanded to include unrighteous anger, importunate lust, and craven fear. To make such a list is not “Calvinistic Sociobiology,” because it’s consistent with saying that we also have tendencies to the good, “better angels” of our nature, so that we end up a mixture. But we need something other than just an appeal to our nature to get us to follow the parts of the mixture that we should follow and not the parts we should not.

Now consider the preachments of the traditions. God is luminous, severe, disinfectant, exultant, and the law of the Lord is cast in the same terms, giving light and cleansing us, to be rejoiced in, more than gold or honey. The Sermon on the Mount is full of commands that go inside the mind. The Qur’an says to give money to kinsmen, orphans, the needy, etc. In all these ways, the resources of religious traditions have responded to the problems within groups posed by our evolutionary heritage. The same is true of the second class of psychological-altruism failures between groups. For Greene, the tragedy of our between-group hostility can be overcome by utilitarianism, but he cuts this school off from its theological roots and the common ground they provide. A variety of commands takes the adherents of the Abrahamic faiths towards a universal morality. These faiths both include their adherents into a community, and then push them beyond it.

Does the picture of divine command, mixed natural capacity, and divine assistance actually work to produce morally better lives in those who accept it? There is some empirical evidence that the answer is “Yes.” Shared religious life binds people together. More importantly, Robert Putnam and David Campbell compared how religious and non-religious Americans behave in terms of giving money and time to charities and social organizations. The religious Americans gave more money not just to religious organizations but to the American Cancer Society, and they volunteered not just in church and synagogue and mosque but in civic associations across the board. They conclude, “By many different measures religiously observant Americans are better neighbors and better citizens than secular Americans—they are more generous with their time and money, especially in helping the needy, and they are more active in community life.”

When we look at the great movements towards the recognition of human value over the last sixty years, we will often find a religious motivation. Hare is thinking of Martin Luther King and the civil-rights movement, and the Lutherans in East Germany and the fall of the totalitarian state. Why is this? Hare suggests it’s because of the nature of the God they worship. It’s true that belonging to a community is very important, but the God of Abraham not only includes us in community but pushes us out beyond community, to meet the needs of the poor and the marginalized who are the object of God’s care just as much as we are. God commands both the inclusion and the moving-out. And these do not need to be competing goals.

What Needs Explanation

A critic of the moral argument for God’s existence might wish to make much of saying there’s something as unhelpful as unassailable in appealing to God as the explanation of any particular moral phenomenon (or any phenomena, for that matter). By definition “omnipotent,” God (at least in the Anselmian sense) can presumably do anything at all, including, presumably, providing the needed explanation of, say, moral obligations. God can do anything and everything, so God can “explain” morality, invoking his specter bring us no closer to any actual helpful explanation. Though unassailable in that way, such an effort of explanation by appeal to the divine is well-nigh worthless. So some critics argue.

Such critics’ resistance, thus construed, is understandable. In brief, the critics take the import of the moral argument to be exploiting the alleged strength of the explanans—that which is doing the explaining. Since an omnipotent God is the source, there’s no shortage in the presumed strength of such an explanation, but the critic rightly discerns there’s something illegitimate about so tidy an account.

However, we suspect that this critique involves a misunderstanding of at least some of these explanatory arguments. A moral case for God as the best explanation of various moral phenomena need not and should not focus, to begin with, on the explanans—God as explanation—so much as on the explanandum: that which is to be explained. In the case of morality, we offer a four-fold abductive case, starting with the moral facts of objective values and duties (and going on to include moral knowledge and what Kant called moral faith). Let’s zero in on objective moral duties for the moment to see how this works and how the concern of the critic can be addressed.

The case we want to build requires that the first step we take is a careful, attentive look at moral obligations using a variety of analyses. For example, by considering the nature of moral language, the logic of moral discourse, and the phenomenology of moral experience, we can glean insights into the nature of moral obligations. Among the salient features of moral obligations that we can identify is that they are unavoidably prescriptive, not merely descriptive, and, at least sometimes, categorical, not merely instrumental. Violations of moral obligations often, though not always, produce feelings of guilt, which are themselves often assumed (rightly or wrongly) to track an actual condition of moral guilt. Violating moral obligations also often, if detected, can strain relationships, causing estrangement and alienation. Harm can be done by shirking one’s perceived moral duties, and, where estrangement has taken place, offers of forgiveness can often heal the relational rifts.

Although all of these features—and others—tend to be important aspects of moral obligations, some of them don’t always obviously apply. If the neglect of a duty goes undetected, for example, it may not strain relationships; or someone may do something wrong but rationalize it in such a way or so often that it leads to no guilty feelings at all (though objective guilt remains a living possibility). A feature of moral obligations that seems perhaps less a contingent matter is what we’ll call their “authority.” It’s the idea that moral obligations, at least some of them, aren’t optional. They are more than mere suggestions. They possess clout, “oomph,” as Richard Joyce puts it (who himself is skeptical of their existence, but he’s at least conceptually clear on what he’s rejecting). This is much of what C. Stephen Evans is driving at when discussing the “Anscombe intuition” about moral duties. Authority is different from power. Someone or something with power can force or coerce your compliance; rightful authority deserves your obedience and allegiance.

The authority of morality, in particular, is something that cries out for explanation. If it’s taken seriously, as it arguably should be, it requires a robust explanation. To stop short of pursuing this inquiry is to ask at least one too few philosophical questions. If, however, someone were to offer a deflationary and distinctly reductionist account of moral obligations, suddenly the explanandum in question becomes sterile and feckless. The domestication of moral obligations understandably defangs the moral argument, but here a needed distinction is important. That critics might endorse a watered-down, instrumentalist account of moral obligations does indeed mean the moral argument won’t have purchase in their eyes, but this simply doesn’t so much as even suggest that the moral argument fails. For the critics may well be simply wrong to reduce the import of moral obligations in this way, and indeed arguably they are.

At the least it’s worth noting that theirs—the critics’—is the distinct, deliberate departure from the more classical usage of moral language and interpretation of moral experience. Echoes of the distinctive features of moral obligations echo all the way back to the dialogues of Socrates. The newcomer on the scene here is the reductionist, not the proponent of the binding authority of morality. What seems crystal clear is that it’s the reductionists’ account of moral obligations that’s congenitally unable to do justice to the aforementioned features of moral obligations classically construed, particularly their binding authority. This doesn’t mean the deflationary analyses are wrong, but it does at least minimally mean that they are the departure from the typical understanding of moral obligations.

For those who gravitate toward the more historical and classical understanding of moral obligations—replete with their rich moral phenomenology and prescriptive authority—such binding, categorical, and authoritative moral obligations make up the fertile, robust explananda in strong need of adequate, substantive explanation. The focus, at least for our abductive moral argument, doesn’t begin with the power of God as an explanation, but rather with that which is need of explanation. Moral obligations—which most all of us at moments seem able to apprehend—speak to us poignantly, not with a loud trumpet blast but with a quiet, confident, ineradicable authority.

The rights of children not to be abused are one of those perfect correlates (of binding duties) that tug at our hearts and flood our minds with illumination and conviction. Does anyone really think that the prohibition against such acts is merely instrumental? That children ought not be violated just because it will bring about the desired end? There’s nothing remotely contingent or merely instrumental in such obvious and axiomatic truths. The need to respect such rights is most plausibly seen as a categorical fact, an authoritative moral law, a binding duty. And that calls for an explanation adequate to the task. But before the abductive case can even get off the ground and the name of God invoked as a possible or plausible explanation, we need to see the need for the thick realities of morality to be robustly explained, rather than its desiccated caricature blithely explained away.  

The Always Scandalous Cross

The pagan Celsus was the earliest infamous, literary critic of Jesus Christ.  He blistered Jesus for suffering on the cross. He railed against Christians’ affirmation that Jesus is God’s Son – even God himself.  When Jesus was on the cross, why did he receive no assistance from the Father? Further, if Jesus were God, why was he unable to help himself? Underneath Celsus’ criticisms are assumptions humankind has shared across the ages.  If God were God, would He really will his only Son to suffer so ignominiously? Would not God have foreseen such a tragedy and planned to avoid it? Furthermore, would the all-powerful God allow his power to be impugned and subverted by plotting priests, and his supremacy to be bested by Roman power?  These questions and assumptions may be roadblocks for some in considering Jesus’ death. Let me consider them briefly.

The explanatory meaning of the Cross takes Celsus’ assumptions and turns them on their head!  Scrutinizing Celsus’ criticisms gives us a singular portal into God and the cross. First, if God were God, would He really will his only Son to suffer so scandalously?  Yes. The foreordained coming of a suffering servant-champion who would redeem humankind from the ghastly effects of the Fall begins as a thin red line in Genesis chapter three and runs through Isaiah chapter 53.  The suffering and death which Adam and Eve’s sin caused has to be born. God’s coming Servant Prince takes this sin with its suffering upon himself in order to redeem humankind from it. Neither is God’s dignity offended nor is He blindsided by his Son’s cross.  God knows with full intention the Serpent ‘will strike his heel’. ‘He was crushed for our iniquities’ and ‘by his wounds we are healed.’ Celsus says a god knowing this would not rush headlong into it. Oh no? Since when do champions, much less God, shrink from a noble end charged with pain and suffering?  The very confrontation with suffering and victory over it is what gives champions their character. Olympic Half Pipe icon, snowboarder Shaun White, overcame a devastating, face-altering snowboarding accident last fall to win a gold medal in the 2018 Olympics. This made him an even stronger champ. Contrary to weakness and cowardice, Jesus’ conquering of the cross demonstrates the very heroic redemption of suffering and shame.

Take another of Celsus’ criticisms of Jesus. If Jesus were God’s Son, why did he receive no assistance from his Father?  Further, if Jesus were God, why was he unable to help himself? Celsus deliberately echoes the chief priests’ mockery as they looked on the dying Jesus.  ‘He saved others; is he unable to save himself? He is the King of Israel; let him come down from the cross now….’ In my youth, I wondered the same thing.

Power is the ability to get something done.  It may also be the ability to choose not to do something.  Would not the killer by restraining himself from the impulse to gun down seventeen Stoneman Douglas’ students have shown greater power than by pulling the trigger?  Choosing not to save himself on the cross enabled Jesus to demonstrate more power. Power is also the rate at which work gets done. A Corvette ZO6, going from 0-60 miles per hour in 3.3 seconds, gets work done faster than an Aston MartinV12 Vantage that takes 4.1 seconds.  Jesus could have saved himself in three hours by coming down from the cross. In those three hours he would have saved only himself from death. He would have saved only himself from death but not conquered it. However, by waiting some thirty nine hours till Sunday morning to rise from the grave, he conquered death, saved millions, and all creation!  Which is the greater display of power?

Celsus’ attacks perennially play to the lust for a momentary flash of brute muscle.   The prideful lust for superiority and the diabolical wish to cut God down to size are perpetual temptations.  Twenty one centuries later, what Salvation Army founder William Booth said remains true, ‘It is precisely because He would not come down that we believe in Him.’

Matt Dillahunty, David Baggett Discuss an Abductive Moral Argument

On Thursday night, David Baggett and Matt Dillahunty held a live discussion on the abductive version of the moral argument. Many are familiar with the deductive form of the argument:

1. If there are objective moral values and duties, then God exists. 

2. There are objective moral values and duties. 

3. Therefore, God exists. 

The deductive version can be a powerful and effective argument for the existence of God, but Baggett and Walls suggest that there are some contexts where the abductive version has the advantage. In particular, the abductive argument requires substantive interaction with rival accounts of the moral facts. This means that the abductive argument will engage and invite engagement at a different level than the deductive argument. Abductive arguments aim to find the best explanation of certain facts from a range of hypotheses. This search for the "best explanation" encourages the atheist to offer her own explanation of the moral facts which can then be compared with the theistic explanation to determine which theory best fits the facts. This is the kind of moral argument presented in Baggett and Walls' Good God and God and Cosmos. 

In this discussion with Dillahunty and Baggett, a number of topics were covered. But one might divide the debate into two main sections: 1. An Exploration of Abduction and 2. Why Theism Best Explains Moral Obligations.

Thank you to Capturing Christianity for hosting this discussion. 

Wonder Bread

In the eighteenth century, a French lawyer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote a book on the pleasures of cuisine.  He made this memorable argument:  ‘Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.’ The food you eat is directly linked to your physical and mental state.  Yes, tell me what you eat, I’ll tell you what you are:  dead or alive.  Listen to what Jesus tells you: ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  Whoever eats of this bread will live forever…unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.  Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.’ (John 6:51, 53-54)  This is a mouthful.

Jesus equates himself with ‘bread’.  Then, He connects his being bread with His flesh and blood.  Let consider:  First, what does Jesus mean by comparing and contrasting himself to bread?  Second, how do you eat Jesus’ flesh and drink His blood?

What does Jesus mean by saying He is the ‘bread of life’?  He is comparing himself to ‘bread’.  ‘Bread’ had special meaning for a Jew.  Consider this background.  Jesus has just fed the thousands with a few fish and five barley loaves.  This reminded the Jews of how God fed their ancestors in the wilderness after the Exodus.  God gave them bread-like substance ‘manna’.  To the Jew, bread was a staple of life.  Bread and drink were life’s two ‘must – haves’.  Meat and vegetables were mere supplements.

In the wilderness God’s people experienced great hunger and need.  They lacked the ‘must-haves’ (Exodus 16: 3).  They learned God wanted them to trust Him to supply their need.  ‘You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing’ says Psalm 145: 16.  Likewise, as ‘the bread of life’, Jesus wants persons to see their great need.  He also wants us to trust Him to supply our need.

Jesus shows up in the Galilean shoreline hills multiplying bread and fish.  He says, ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven.’  On the one hand, He likens himself to ordinary bread.  On the other hand, He also distinguishes Himself from ordinary bread.  I prayed this morning, ‘Thank you for this bread that keeps us alive today; feed us also with the bread that will keep us alive forever.’

Ordinary ‘bread’ is necessary for natural life.   Jesus is the bread necessary for eternal life.  He is not just another loaf of bread.  He is ‘wonder bread’.  In 1931, the ‘Wonder bread’ Company did a ‘blind promotion’:  they marketed their new bread with an ad campaign that simply said: ‘Wonder is coming May 21’.  Wonder came to the shores of Galilee.  Jesus is distinct from every other bread – even manna.  He is bread from another world.  He says, ‘Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died’ (John 6:48).  In contrast, ‘This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die’.  In fact, ‘Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.’  Do you want to live forever?  Try this wonder bread.  It is of a different origin, of a different essence, and of a different reality.  He is the Bread of heaven!

After Jesus fed the thousands, the Jews searched for him.  They saw in him a perpetual bread machine.  Crank out bread like that and we won’t have to plow, or plant, or reap.  We can have an unlimited supply of loaves of bread!  Yippee!  The woman at the well wanted similar: endless well water.

Jesus called them out.  “You are looking for me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of loaves.’ They wanted endless materiality in this world.  Jesus had something better in mind.  Ordinary bread won’t keep you from dying.  The Bread of life will.  My sixty one year old first cousin Elizabeth Archer lay in ICU in Lewis Gayle Feb 23.  Growing up she wouldn’t eat green beans or vegetables.  On my first visit to her I said, ‘Archer, I brought you some string beans.’  She said, ‘No Brussel sprouts?!’  No food on earth could keep her alive.  In fact, Dr. Haney said there is nothing we can give Archer to keep her alive.  Jesus gives bread that whoever eats won’t die.  Give me this Bread!  You too?

Jesus said, ‘You can believe this.  It is certain, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.’  Jesus transposed ‘bread’ into His ‘flesh and blood’.  His statement is startling.  It’s downright repulsive: ‘those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life’.  Here He doesn’t even try to soften our squeamishness.  His statement is even more graphic than you imagine.  Jesus uses the word for ‘eat’ that suggests the audible sounds of an animal munching and gnawing its food.  Critics slam Christianity for this imagery.  Contemporary atheist Sam Harris says if you take the Bible literally you’d be a cannibal.  An ancient second century church critic already said this.  He told Christians: ‘Nobody likes you…we hear that you are cannibals.’

Jesus tells us to eat his flesh and drink his blood.  What is he telling us to do?  He can’t mean we are to eat his arms and legs raw, baked or fried!  There wasn’t enough of his flesh to go around to his 12 disciples, much more for the world. The word ‘eat’ is used figuratively.  If you ‘swallow’ an insult, you submit to it.  If you ‘eat up’ a novel, you can’t put it down.  In the early American colonies they’d say ‘to eat earth’.  ‘To eat earth’ meant to ‘possess oneself of the land’.   ‘To eat’ can mean ‘to take something into you’, make it all yours.

To ‘eat’ Jesus flesh and drink His blood can mean ‘to take Jesus into you’; to possess Him; and to make all of Him all of yours.  Having said this, Jesus’s command to eat and drink Him is more than just a figure.  It may not be literal, but it is objectively real.  To take into you and possess the flesh and blood Jesus shed physically on the Cross really procures God‘s forgiveness; it really releases you from the law of death; it really makes you friends with God; and it really invests you with eternal life.

To eat His flesh and drink His blood then equals to believe in Him (John 6: 29).  Jesus says, ‘This is the work of God that you believe in Him’.  To eat Him is to believe in him is to take Him into yourself is to own Jesus in all He is and does for you.  It is to possess Him and His flesh and blood given for you on His atoning cross.

When you eat a Porterhouse steak, your body breaks down the steer’s DNA.  Your body then rearranges the animal DNA into human DNA.  The DNA is integrated into your body.  The animal’s protein becomes your energy to power your bodily processes.

If you will eat Jesus’ flesh and drink His blood, you will believe in Him.  You will take Him into you so He becomes identified with your body and you with His.  You become united with His death so that His death is yours.  You become united with Him in His resurrection so His resurrection is yours.  His death releases you from the judgment of death for your sin.  His resurrection invests you with eternal life.

What you eat determines what you are: dead or alive!  Repent of your sin; believe in Jesus Christ and eat to live forever!