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 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.)

Xanax and Kierkegaard

I interrupt my remarks on C. S. Lewis to announce that the New York Times has been running a series of articles on anxiety. This one is about Kierkegaard's The Concept of Anxiety. The author notes that in our culture anxiety is conventionally treated with medication. Of Kierkegaard: "Is there any doubt that were he alive today he would be supplied with a refillable prescription for Xanax?"

The same is probably true of Augustine in 386, the year of his conversion to Christ. Many other religious and philosophical figures might, in our day, have been diagnosed and given anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medication. A few who come to my mind are David and some other Psalmists, Jeremiah, Boethius, Nietzsche, and the Buddha (the article actually mentions Buddhism in relation to this topic). You can probably think of your own examples.

"Stop writing Psalms. That won't do you any good. What you need is a prescription."
(Picture originally from here.)

Now I have no problem with seeking medical solutions to anxiety. Sometimes there is a medical condition that calls for a medical response; I disapprove of religiously motivated rejection of medical care for a genuine medical problem.

But I think our culture has gone wrong in not seeking a spiritual solution. (What if David, Jeremiah, Augustine, Boethius, and Kierkegaard had taken these medications?)

"No more philosophy for you, Boethius! What you really need is pills!" (Picture originally from here.)

And I think Christians often go wrong in not applying a spiritual treatment for anxiety and depression. Whether or not there is a medical problem, isn't there always a spiritual problem that calls for a spiritual response?

After all, what does Scripture tell us? What do the Psalmists do with their fears and worries and miseries? And what does the Sermon on the Mount tell us to do with our anxiety? And Philippians 4:6-7? Until we can learn to have the Cross and the Empty Tomb always in mind, until we can learn to pray without ceasing, can we expect any amount of medical care to solve all the problems in our souls?

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.

Science as a Dreamland

Scientists recently observed neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light. Since nothing is supposed to travel faster than the speed of light, this would be a big deal. Charles Krauthammer says:

". . . . there must be some error. Because otherwise everything changes. We shall need a new physics. A new cosmology. New understandings of past and future, of cause and effect. Then shortly and surely, new theologies."

With all due respect to Krauthammer, who happens to be my favorite political commentator, this is not entirely correct. I think G. K. Chesterton's remark is more to the point:

". . . the world of science and evolution is far more nameless and elusive and like a dream than the world of poetry and religion; since in the latter images and ideas remain themselves eternally, while it is the whole idea of evolution that identities melt into each other as they do in a nightmare."

It is not usually religious orthodoxy that is threatened by scientific discovery, but scientific orthodoxy. Of course, I believe the things I have learned from science; I believe in electrons as strongly as the next man. I believe because I have been told.

Protons and electrons: an article of faith.

But the fact is that scientific discovery shapes relatively little of my worldview. Scientific discoveries can come and go and have little effect on the Christian whose worldview is shaped by Christ, Scripture, the teachings of the Church, and the sacred history of God's people from Abraham to Billy Graham.

The Resurrection: an article of faith.

I am talking about one of the differences between science and religion. Usually when we talk about the differences between science and religion we wander into the idea that science is about hard facts and religion about non-factual "values." That idea is incorrect, and it is not what I am talking about. It is a popular idea these days, but it misrepresents the factual claims made by many religions. Christianity, for one, is about quite a few facts. To take only one of the many statements of fact in the Bible, Christianity's crucial claim of the Resurrection is a statement of fact. As a matter of fact, Abraham Lincoln died and was buried and did not return living from the grave on the third day; as a matter of fact, Christianity says, Jesus died and was buried and did return living from the grave on the third day. If the resurrection is not a hard fact, then, as Paul says, Christianity is simply incorrect.

So I am not saying that science is about hard fact and religion about something else. Here is what I am saying. First, science investigates a region of reality that is subject to less constancy than the region of reality with which at least some religions, Christianity among them, is concerned. Second, the beliefs of science change far more frequently than the beliefs of religion, at least the beliefs of the very old religions like Christianity.

This doesn't mean that science is not to be taken seriously. It just means that scientific discovery makes up a relatively minor part of my worldview; those regions of my worldview which are shaped by science are generally the less important regions, not least because they are the regions which I view as more subject to change and in knowing which there is less certitude.

There's No Need To Be Afraid of Philosophy

I occasionally hear things like, "How do manage being both a Christian and a philosopher; aren't they incompatible?" A year or two ago my sister-in-law mentioned me to a Christian acquaintance—someone from her church, I believe. As I remember hearing the story, the person replied: "And he's actually a believer?"

The worry that Christian faith and philosophy are mutually exclusive is nothing new. In a book on Augustine, Carol Harrison explains the different attitudes of the Church Fathers towards philosophy (page 16). Some, such as Minucius Felix, embraced philosophy; but there were also those like Tertullian, famous for asking "What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" Many, including Augustine and Ambrose, took a balanced view, treating philosophy as a thing different from Christian piety but not fundamentally opposed to Christianity: something useful to the Church if studied properly.

The reason for this post is to provide TTC readers with a few loosely connected remarks suggesting that there is no need for Christians to be afraid of philosophy, and that there is even reason for Christians to study it.

We have to define philosophy first. I have nothing against the dictionary definition of philosophy, but my favorite definition of philosophy is the oldest: Philosophy is the love of wisdom. As Socrates explains in Plato's Apology and Symposium, this means the seeking of wisdom.

In other words, the story of philosophy is the story of the human quest for wisdom. So naturally it has everything you would find in the story of beings who were created in the image of God, fell into sin and rebellion against God, and then tried to rediscover the wisdom they had rejected. The story of philosophy involves sin and rebellion against God. It also involves the tragic hubris of noble pagans who reached for divine wisdom using the power of their own intellects, finding great and useful insights, but failed to achieve wisdom in the end.

But the story of philosophy also involves not a few philosophers who were, and are, believers in Jesus Christ. Some of my favorite characters in the history of philosophy are those like Anselm, who believe in Christian orthodoxy and, believing, make an effort to understand what they believe. Faith in Christ and the continuing search for wisdom are a harmony for these philosophers. So there need be no conflict between the practice of philosophy and the Christian faith.

In the past there were other Christians besides Felix, Ambrose, Augustine, and Anselm who practiced or at least studied philosophy. To name a few: Lactantius, Boethius, Aquinas, John Calvin, Oswald Chambers, and C. S. Lewis. Nor are Christians and philosophy strangers in our own day. In the past year I have seen a lecture hall packed for a lecture by atheist philosopher Daniel Dennet; I have also seen a much bigger room packed to hear Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga deliver the keynote address at an annual meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society.

I know "Lactantius" sounds like a breed of dairy cow. But he's actually a Church Father. He wrote this.

It is also significant that those of us who are Christians like to think we have some answers for the world; well, we might as well know what the questions are! There is no better place to explore those questions than the study of philosophy. For example, Socrates wonders about the health of the soul: What is a healthy soul like? How can I have a healthy soul? Is there an expert somewhere who can tell me how to have a healthy soul—is there a doctor for the soul? Christians know the answer is Jesus Christ; why should we be afraid of the questions?

Postmodernism Part 1 - What Postmodernism is NOT

I'm preparing a blog series about postmodernism - but first I wanted to discuss what postmodernism is not. This is only a cursory glance at the subject so I don't want to see any comments like "you didn't mention Kierkegard" or "you missed the most important point..." Save those comments for the upcoming posts where I really get into the subject. (And, in general, don't hold back on the comments because this is a great topic to discuss.)

Postmodernism is not a religion

It is not an amalgamative religion that incorporates all beliefs. That's called Universalism and is extremely old. If you want to get laughed at just approach a philosophy major and tell them your religion is called postmodernism - you will look very silly. Can you imagine Descartes saying, "I worship at the church of modernity?" I hope not. Our religious views are influenced by our approach to understanding - but that approach is not a religion in itself.

Likewise, it does not oppose any religion.

Unless you go to The Church of pre-Socratic Zeus Worship than postmodernism is not a problem for your faith. Naturally, you don't get to say that it is incompatible with someone else's faith and act superior to them because you are a precious postmodernist.

It does not prove anything.

You didn't prove Christianity or socialism wrong through postmodernism. It is a point of view and not a science so it can't be used as evidence in an argument.

It does not mean that "nothing is true."

Postmodernism does not translate into "there are no absolute truths." An old friend of mine had a response for anyone who told him "there are no absolutes" - he would ask, "are you absolutely sure?"

"Well - THAT was embarrassing!
Who knew a home-owners association could ban post-modernism?"

It is not infinitely mysterious

Postmodernism is not "one of those things we will never understand." It is a vast subject but not a terribly difficult one. If you want to read about something complicated then read about quantum physics. Compared to the phenomenon of quantum entanglement postmodernism is just peanuts.

Read about Modernism first.

I struggled to understand these things until a good friend explain modernism to me. Suddenly, everything I had heard about postmodernism made sense! It is easier to study the road to contemporary philosophy rather than to tackle it head on.

It is morally ambigious...

Postmodernism is not a good thing. Postmodernism is not a bad thing. It's an approach that has developed in our minds and it shouldn't be decried nor put on a pedestal.

How do you think Post-modernism is already affecting your view on religion? (There are no wrong answers to this question. Just our own observations.)