Ridiculous Christian Websites

"It is not good to have zeal without knowledge," as Proverbs 19:2 tells us (NIV 1984).

There are Christian websites that have not benefited from this advice. Two of my favorite examples are below.

1. This website, which purports to expose C. S. Lewis as a heretic, is cearly motivated by a zeal for good, solid theology; they may even have solid theology, of a conservative, Protestant, evangelical sort. But that's the best I can say for it; this site doesn't have a clue about Lewis.

From this website we can learn not only that "It is not good to have zeal without knowledge." It is also not good to have a zeal for orthodoxy without also having love. (I hope I have done better myself.) It also helps to have a modicum of good scholarship.

2. The unforgettable DemonBuster.com is surely the best of the best when it comes to ridiculous Christian websites. I think it should speak for itself, so I will say no more, except this: You may want to turn down the volume on your computer after a minute or so; the music gets old fast (if you've been before, try going again; now there are words to the music!).

Of course, no website is perfect. Perhaps, from time to time, and to paraphrase Algernon Moncreiff, we here at TTC have been very ridiculous in our own small way. One should never take oneself too seriously. Speaking of C. S. Lewis, I think he said that before I did.

Update: Apparently DemonBuster.com no longer plays its music on a loop. It's safe to leave your volume up.

C. S. Lewis as Theologian and Christian Philosopher

In recent months I have said a lot about C. S. Lewis. Here is a short summary:

First, I recommend reading John Stott's Basic Christianity and N. T. Wright's Simply Christian alongside Lewis' Mere Christianity.

Second, I state two theological disagreements with Lewis.

Third, I tell how I learned that Lewis really does reject the penal substitutionary atonement.

Fourth, I explain why C. S. Lewis is one of the great philosophers.

Fifth, I explain why C. S. Lewis is one of Christianity's great rhetoricians.

Sixth, I defend C. S. Lewis from the charge that he is a universalist heretic.

C. S. Lewis' face again. I'm all out of ideas for captions. (Picture from here)

I think a very, very short summary would be in order. It's coming up soon. But first we need to make a distinction between two things Christian thinkers can do.

First, there is biblical exegesis, the practice of discovering and explaining what the Bible means.

Second, there is everything else Christian philosophers and theologians do: developing a Christian worldview, understanding Church history, discovering a Christian perspective on everything not explicitly mentioned in the Bible, figuring out how Christianity relates to Plato and other non-Christian philosophers, etc. Since these other modes of Christian thought ought to be guided and governed by good biblical exegesis, I think we could call them "theology" in a broad sense. Another good term is "Christian philosophy" since it includes seeking wisdom in the manner of a Christian.

Now here is the very, very short summary. When it comes to biblical exegesis, I think we should approach C. S. Lewis with a degree of caution. (This is probably true of anyone who doesn't know Hebrew; it's certainly true of me!) But when it comes to Christian philosophy, or theology in the broad sense, Lewis is great. He's among the best of these Christian thinkers, and he might be the most helpful one to write in a century or more--or at least the most helpful one to write in English.

C. S. Lewis Is Not a Universalist heretic

Apparently there is a nasty rumor going around that C. S. Lewis is a universalist heretic. This isn't true.

Is this the face of a heretic? Nay, 'tis the face of THE DEVIL HIMSELF! (Picture from here)

For starters, Lewis isn't a universalist. He's an inclusivist.

That should be enough to refute the charge that he's a universalist heretic. But there's more: Inclusivism isn't a heresy.

There are four generic views that need distinguishing:

Exclusivism: This is the view that there is one way to be saved, Jesus Christ, and that only those who follow Christ in this life will be saved.

Inclusivism: This is the view that there is one way to be saved, Jesus Christ, but that some who do not follow Christ in this life will nonetheless be saved through Him.

Pluralism: This is the view that there are many ways to be saved.

Universalism: This is the view that all are saved.

There are, no doubt, different versions of each view and some hybrid views between the generic views. But these are the generic views it is most helpful to remember.

The best instance of Lewis' inclusivism is the story of Emeth, the Calormene in The Last Battle who was accepted by Aslan (who represents Jesus) because his worship of the false god Tash was a true worship. (There is actually an interesting Wikipedia article on Emeth.) The opposites of Emeth were those characters who had a false worship of Aslan and were not accepted by him, such as Shift the ape.

There is also a beautiful description of inclusivism in That Hideous Strength: "This is the courtesy of Deep Heaven: that when you mean well, He always takes you to have meant better than you knew."

Now this view may not be correct. But I don't see any convincing reason to call it a heresy. Of course, this all depends on using the right definition of "heresy." I'm not quite ready to attempt a precise definition of heresy, but I do want to say this: All heresies are theological errors, but not all theological errors are heresies. Heresies are not just theological mistakes, but impermissible ones. (I happen to think Dispensationalism, for example, is mistaken, but it's definitely not a heresy. Arianism, on the other hand, definitely is a heresy.)

The nasty rumor about Lewis comes from an exclusivist perspective. Now inclusivism and exclusivism are not both right, so one of them is wrong. All the same, I don't think we should call either view a heresy.

At any rate, if we do call inclusivism a heresy, we should give a very careful definition of heresy while we're at it. If you think inclusivism is a heresy, I'd love to hear why! I'd also like to hear what definition of heresy you're using.

But we have to look to the Bible to see which view is correct; I'd recommend a very careful reading of the first few chapters of Romans for a start. I also recommend chapter 8 of Michael Wittmer's Don't Stop Believing.

C. S. Lewis and Other Great Christian Rhetoricians

The Christian Church has had some great rhetoricians over the centuries. The ones that come to my mind are Augustine, C. S. Lewis, Ambrose, and Charles Spurgeon.

(Personally, I would like to rank these four as the best, and probably in that order too. But I am unqualified to make that call; at any rate, they are among the best.)

Rhetoric should be understood in classical terms. It's not just about delivering pretty speeches or writing pretty essays. It was the capstone of the education system of the Roman world for a good long while, taught to a student who had learned grammar and dialectic (logic). In other words, a good rhetorician has a good command of language and knows how to put words together (grammar); he knows how to argue for a position (dialectic); and he knows how to weave words and logic together in a pleasing way (rhetoric).

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion; a person who delivers a pretty speech or pens some lovely writing, but fails to persuade anyone, has failed as a rhetorician.

Lewis' rhetoric is superb. He has a masterful command of the English language, an equal ability to reason, and an astounding way of putting it all together. The result is that he often says in a paragraph, one a child can understand, what an average scholar may take many pages to say--if not an entire (and perhaps tedious) book. The same scholar would immediately become mired in a long (and perhaps interminable) academic debate with other scholars over the matter. But for most readers of Lewis the academic debate is rarely necessary. We understand him right off; we understand the case he is making, and we have a working understanding of the position he is articulating without the benefit of much hard study.

My point is not that there's anything wrong with hard study, academic debate, and long books. My point is that a good rhetorician can frequently communicate with most of the advantages of scholarship, but with the added advantage of being able to make a big idea make sense to the rest of us non-experts.

This is another reason Lewis is worth reading. If you haven't read him yet, try reading Mere Christianity and see for yourself. You shouldn't read only Lewis. But for heaven's sake, don't neglect to read Lewis!

C. S. Lewis Is One of the Great Philosophers

I may have disagreed with C. S. Lewis on some theological points (see here, here, and here.). But that doesn't mean I don't think very highly of him.

An expert on Boethius defines a philosopher as "a wise cognitive manager and developer of civilization." By this definition of a philosopher, C. S. Lewis might be the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century.

I think a lot of people know that Lewis is a great Christian worldview writer, by which I mean that if you want to know how to view the world Christianly, you need to read C. S. Lewis. (More good Lewis work: The C. S. Lewis Blog.) Fewer know that he's a very good philosopher, at least by this definition of philosophy (and some others).

One of these things is not like the others! Most of these pictures are of great philosophers. But one isn't. Can you tell which one?
(Pictures from here, here, here, and here.)

I bet no one else managed to summarize Plato's Republic in eight words: "The head rules the belly through the chest" (from The Abolition of Man).

I recently learned, in another book by Lewis, that this illustration wasn't originally his; he borrowed it from some medieval literature. It just goes to show that C. S. Lewis doesn't have a lot of original thoughts. I mean that as a very high compliment.

Original thoughts are overrated. Lewis was wise enough to want good thoughts, not original ones. He understood that, in the span of a single lifetime, we will have more success having good thoughts if we study the thoughts of good thinkers from ages past than if we just try to come up with our own.

Lewis' own thoughts came to him through Scripture, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, and even Confucius. He put these thoughts into new settings, his great books: Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, The Abolition of Man, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Space Trilogy. I would speculate that no one in the twentieth century did more than he to preserve the wisdom of past civilizations: ancient Greece, ancient Rome, medieval Europe, ancient Israel, and even Confucian China.

Some of these people didn't have a lot of original thoughts because their minds were filled with the thoughts of great philosophers and theologians. One of them didn't have a lot of original thoughts because his mind was almost completely empty.
(Pictures from here, here, here, and here.)

It's fitting that Lewis was one of the few great readers of Boethius in our age. Boethius is just such a philosopher. His greatest work, The Consolation of Philosophy, available here, also contains very few ideas that were his own; they were borrowings or developments from earlier thinkers like Plato, the Stoics, and Augustine. (Literary elements are also borrowed from Homer, Greek myths, Augustine's dialogues, and sources I'm not educated enough to recognize.) But Boethius' combination of all these ideas and literary elements was a highly original masterpiece.

Boethius himself wrote in the days of the declining Roman Empire. But his book preserved some of the best things from ancient Greece and Rome, and it helped to create medieval Europe. If modern Western Civilization should fail, don't be surprised if Lewis' books help to create the civilization that replaces it.

Several videos featuring the Boethius expert I mentioned begin here. This video will help introduce you to Boethius' Consolation. (As usual, the book is way better than the movie.)

A nerd and a Friday night's existential crisis

Some years ago I was at Dallas Baptist University taking a class with Dr. William E. Bell. He's second from the left here. I learned about the penal substitutionary atonement, and happened to learn that, according to Dr. Bell, C. S. Lewis denied the doctrine.

No, not that William Bell. (Picture by Gage Skidmore, available here.)

I considered Lewis to be the great Christian thinker that he is. I grew up on Lewis: originally the Narnia books and movies (the old BBC ones, with the bad special effects and the awesome portrayals of the White Witch and Puddleglum), then Screwtape Letters in middle school and Mere Christianity in high school. My family has been reading Lewis for several generations.

My reverence for Dr. Bell was no less. I saw him as the bulwark of orthodoxy and serious biblical teaching that he is.

So my college hero was telling me that my childhood hero was a heretic whose salvation was uncertain as a result of his bad doctrine. This was a big deal. We're talking about a genuine existential crisis here (though I admit I've had worse existential crises in my time).

So, of course, I went to the library and wrote a paper. What else is a little nerd with an existential crisis supposed to do on a Friday night?

In it, as I recall, I tried to make three points.

1. In Mere Christianity Lewis doesn't deny the penal substitutionary atonement. He just admits that the modern mind has trouble understanding the idea, and then suggests an understanding of the atonement that makes sense to the modern mind: the theory that Jesus paid our debts on the cross. (Looking at the relevant passage recently, I had to admit I may have misread it; I think he really does reject the penal substitutionary atonement here, although it wasn't the main point of the passage.)

2. The theory that Jesus paid our debts on the cross is an orthodox theory. Here I cited a passage in the New Testament; it may have been 1 Timothy 2:5-6. I also alluded to the old hymn that says of Jesus, "He paid a debt he did not owe/I owed a debt I could not pay/I needed someone to wash my sins away."

3. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lewis illustrates the penal substitutionary view of the atonement in Aslan's death in place of Edmond.

I shared my paper with Dr. Bell, who read it more than once. He thought it was a valiant effort to defend Lewis, but he wasn't convinced.

Now up to this point I still thought Lewis did not reject the penal substitutionary atonement, but Bell shared with me a story that finally convinced me: that Lewis had personally told J. I. Packer that he did not accept the penal substitutionary atonement. Packer had personally passed this information on to Bell, who now passed it on to me. I now pass it on to you.

The third point from my paper is puzzling in light of this, but I think it may yet be correct. I suspect that in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Lewis wrote a better book than even he intended, and managed to illustrate an extra view of the atonement. (See here for a brief word on the Christus Victor view he intentionally depicted. )

Still the man.
(Picture from here)

C. S. Lewis is still the man. This may suggest a poor memory on my part, but I can only think of about three sentences in all of the fifteen or so books I've read by Lewis with which I disagree. It is largely because of the occasional problem like this that I suggested that Christians read N. T. Wright and John Stott alongside Lewis. But C. S. Lewis is irreplaceable. A solid grounding in ten or twenty of his little books will do any Christian good, and, I might add, will probably do more good than thirty or forty large books in philosophy and theology.

P. S. Todd Kappelman, another of my favorite undergrad teachers, wrote this on the need to read Lewis. I agree.

P. P. S. This sort of allegation that C. S. Lewis is a heretic and the author of "demonic fantasies" is no doubt well-intentioned; but it is incorrect, impolite, unhelpful, poorly researched, and hardly worth the time I've already spent writing this sentence.

Two Disagreements with C. S. Lewis

I took in C. S. Lewis with my mother's milk (and Francis Schaeffer with my father's lectures). I am glad I did. But even Lewis makes mistakes. Here are two of them.

Still Awesome.
(Picture from here)

1. Disbelief in the authority of Scripture. Lewis believes that some things (admittedly few) included in Scripture by its authors are incorrect. Disagreeing with Scripture is not a good idea. I have never actually read him disagreeing with anything in Scripture, so it seems the effects of this mistake are relatively minimal. But a friend I trust told me that it happens in Lewis' commentary on the Psalms, which I happen not to have read.

2. Rejecting the substitutionary atonement. The "atonement" is what Jesus did on the Cross to reconcile sinners to God. There are several views of the atonement, and I happen to think that more than one view can be correct (on which I'd suggest reading chapter 6 of Michael Wittmer's Don't Stop Believing). But I think the basic meaning of the atonement is the idea that Jesus on the Cross received the full punishment for our sins. In the background of this view is the Old Testament idea of the transferrence of guilt to a sacrificial lamb or a scapegoat. This is called the "substitutionary atonement" view because Jesus is our substitute.

Lewis affirms at least two good views of the atonement, that Jesus paid our debts on the Cross and that the Cross and the Resurrection conquered Satan and freed creation from his power. Unfortunately, Lewis also rejects the idea of the substitutionary atonement.

This is one reason why, as I said in an earlier post, N. T. Wright's Simply Christian and John Stott's Basic Christianity are such helpful companions to Mere Christianity. They handle these issues better than Lewis. Stott is especially clear on the substitutionary atonement in light of the Old Testament.

I'll say more about Lewis and the atonement later.

P. S. I should have used the term "penal substitutionary atonement" above rather than just "substitutionary atonement." --MB, 4-10-12

Note to C. S. Lewis fans

I'm sure many readers of Thinking Through Christianity are also readers of C. S. Lewis. So, before I begin, let me state one thing clearly: I love C. S. Lewis.

I write this post to inform C. S. Lewis readers who haven't heard that, in addition to Lewis' Mere Christianity, there are two other books (also by Anglicans) which they would do well to read: John Stott's Basic Christianity and N. T. Wright's Simply Christian.

Athough I haven't read Mere Christianity in a while, I can't think of a single disagreement with its contents. But the book does have one crucial weakness, and that is Lewis' limited understanding of the Old Testament. To its credit, Mere Christianity is enriched by Lewis' familiarity with ancient and medieval philosophy; but philosophy is no substitute for the Old Testament. Stott and Wright have a deeper understanding of the Old Testament and do as good a job communicating Old Testament themes to a modern audience as Lewis does communicating ancient and medieval themes to a modern audience.

Mere Christianity is a wonderful book. Those who have already read it should also read Basic Christianity and Simply Christian, also wonderful books.

Those who haven't read Mere Christianity should read all three. Stott's and Wright's books should accompany Lewis' book, not replace it.

In a later post I hope to explore some other weaknesses of Lewis. Not because I don't love him, but because I do, and because I love what he loved, Christianity.