In Praise of C.S. Lewis

November 22 is the anniversary of the death of C.S. Lewis, and in honour of the day I would like to offer a book review on a book about C.S. Lewis, The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis, edited by Robert MacSwain and Michael Ward and published (as the title indicates) by Cambridge University Press.  It consists of a variety of essays by a variety of authors, and they deal with such varied topics as Lewis the Scholar (examining him as literary critic, literary theorist, intellectual historian), Lewis the Thinker (examining his views on Scripture, theology, gender, power, violence) and Lewis the Writer (examining his various famous literary works, such as the Ransom Trilogy, the Chronicles of Narnia and his poetry).  This list of chapters, culled from the index, is not exhaustive; the book is very thorough and, as one would expect from the University of Cambridge Press, very scholarly.  Nonetheless, some of the reviews of Lewis’ thought reminded me of something Lewis himself wrote regarding a review of Sir Walter Scott’s work—namely that reading the review was “like reading a review by a jackal on a book written by a lion”. 

       In particular I took exception to the comments offered on Lewis’ views on gender and on violence.  The examination of Lewis’ views on gender, written by Ann Loades, made me wonder if her main topic was not Lewis but feminism, since she began with a lengthy recital of the church’s progress towards and a defense of the ordination of women, and it was not until about two pages in that she got around to really looking at Lewis.   It appears that her aim was not so much explaining Lewis’ thought as refuting it, and that her irritation with his views got the better of her.  Her long section on “Lewis on the Ordination of Women” reads like the opposing voice in a debate.  The footnotes to her essay provide a wealth of access to feminist writings, including She Who Is: the Mystery of God in Feminist Discourse.  A riveting read perhaps, but one with little relevance to her assigned topic of C.S. Lewis.

       It was similar with the chapter on Lewis’ views on violence.  The bias of the editors may perhaps be reflected in their choice of reviewer—namely Stanley Hauerwas, a noted pacifistic writer from the Anabaptist tradition.  (One blog describes him as “contemporary theology’s most well-known and provocative voice for pacifism”.)  A section of his review entitled, “Why Lewis Was Not a Pacifist” is followed by another entitled, “Why Lewis Should Have Been a Pacifist”.  Once again, we see not an examination of Lewis’ thought so much as its attempted refutation.  It’s bit thick actually, given that the volume purchased was The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis, and not Cambridge Argues with C.S. Lewis.  I bought the book because I wanted to read about Lewis’ theology, not that of Hauerwas.   It would be as if one bought a book bearing the title The Essential Stanley Hauerwas, and opened it to find that it was filled with arguments as to why Hauerwas should have been an Orthodox admirer of Byzantium. 

       It is, I suppose, one of the drawbacks of mortality that one can no longer write an answer to one’s critics after one is dead.  Too bad, because Ms. Loades and Mr. Hauerwas desperately need answering, and Lewis could have done it with grace, elegance and deadly effectiveness.  But what goes around, comes around.  If the works of Loades and Hauerwas are still read by countless readers half a century after their repose, no doubt someone will write a refutation of their thought, perhaps under the dubious title, The Oxford Companion to Ann Loades and Stanley Hauerwas.  If so, I am sorry that I will not be around to read it.

       My concern here is not to defend the lion from such critics, but to suggest why the works and example of C.S. Lewis still have relevance for us today.  It is true that much of what he wrote and spoke to live audiences is dated.  In his Broadcast Talks, given over the BBC in war-time, and later published as part of Mere Christianity, he addressed the common man of his time.  The common man of wartime England was very different from the common man of the 21^st century England (or North America), and doubtless if Lewis repeated the exercise today, he would make different assumptions about how much the common man knew about Christianity and alter his approach accordingly.  That is the problem with being up to date—it also results in being very quickly dated, and no one knew this better than C.S. Lewis.  But much—I would say most—of his work remains valuable and of enduring validity.

       In particular, I would like to focus on three characteristics of Lewis' apologetics in which he continues to offer us an instructive example and in which he has set the bar very high.

       First, in his apologetics, Lewis concentrated on what all the various Christian traditions had in common—what he called (borrowing the phrase from Baxter) “mere Christianity”, the massive core tradition shared by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Evangelical Protestants and Orthodox.  (We Orthodox were not quite invisible to Lewis at Oxford; he knew and appreciated Orthodoxy through his friendship with Nicholas Zernov.)   It is always tempting to major in minors, and to argue in-house topics before the watching world.  Such arguing may be useful in advancing inter-Christian unity and dialogue, but it makes for questionable apologetics.  The world does not need to be treated to our arguments with the West about the Filioque.  If a worldling comes to believe that Jesus is the Son of God who sends His Spirit upon His people, then we may take him for coffee and talk about the procession of the Spirit from the Father alone.  But not until.  Like Lewis, we should stick to the basic Gospel in our kerygma to those not yet converted.

       Second, Lewis was not shy about telling the common man that he must repent and believe the Gospel and become a part of the Church.  He observed that in past days, everyone assumed that all citizens were Christians, whether they were in fact or not.  Now that hostility to Christianity had become more widespread (in Lewis’ time, and how much more in ours), the fog had lifted from the two opposing camps and real fighting (i.e. argument) could begin.  As he wrote in his essay on Christian Apologetics, “A century ago our task was to edify those who had been brought up in the Faith:  our present task is chiefly to convert and instruct infidels.”  Lewis reminds us that our “present task” is chiefly evangelism.

       Thirdly, Lewis excelled at using reason in his proclamation of the Gospel.  He did not disparage the use of emotional appeal, but he refused to discount the value of reason as well.  Especially today, when the mass of people are trained to react to slogans, and have trouble following any sustained argument longer than can be contained in a news-hour sound bite, the appeal to reason is all the more important. 

       C.S. Lewis is long gone.  His books remain, to be valued by appreciative believers or targeted and pilloried by the unappreciative in turn.  Lewis himself would be the first to insist that he was not the issue.  The issue is not the apologist who now lies in a grave in Oxford, but the Saviour who lives and reigns at the right hand of God.  I would cheerfully praise C.S. Lewis.  And imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery.  Let us praise him by following in the apologetic path he has blazed, not necessarily slavishly following his every conclusion, but boldly proclaiming the Lord whom he loved.

Feast of the Entrance

November 21 commemorates the first time the young girl destined to be the Mother of God entered into the Temple at Jerusalem.  Though now long gone, the Temple must have presented an awe-inspiring sight to the young child, with its white stone glistening in the Judean sun, its vested priests, its blowing trumpets, its smell of incense, the crowds of fervent praying worshippers, and the smoke arising from its altar of sacrifice.  There is no historical record of her thoughts and feelings at that first visit, but if she did ask the question, “What is all this about?”, the Christian answer (later learned after the Annunciation coming about a decade later) would have been, “Actually, it’s all about you.” 

The Temple was a house for God so that He might dwell among His people and that they might enjoy access to His saving presence.  It was also a pledge and a prophecy, a silent promise in stone of the time when God would come and dwell among them in the flesh.  As the great and glorious Temple contained the covenantal presence of the heavenly God, so the flesh of the young and humble adolescent virgin of Nazareth would also contain that presence.  She would become the living temple for the incarnate deity, and He whom the heaven of heavens could not contain (1 Kings 8:27) would dwell in the tiny space of her young womb.  Though she would continue to live in the humble obscurity of her hometown, her womb would become more spacious than the heavens.

            The simple narrative of her entry as a toddler into the Temple has been adorned by Christian writers.  In works such as the Proto-evangelium of James (i.e. a story containing a kind of prequel to the Gospel) Mary is portrayed as someone who was well-known to all Israel.  At the age of three she is escorted into the Temple courts by “the daughters of the Hebrews” each one carrying a lighted lamp so that the child will feel happy entering the Temple as her new home.  “And Mary was in the Temple of the Lord as a dove that is nurtured, and she received food from from the hand of an angel”.  In this story, Zachariah the high-priest leads her into the Holy of Holies, and she remains in the Temple until she turns twelve years old, when she goes to live with Joseph, who was chosen by lot to guard her as her husband.

            Reading the entirety of the Proto-evangelium makes the discerning reader aware of the poetic and legendary nature of much of the writing.  In this wonderful story one encounters devotion and love, not sober history, as is apparent from the fact that Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, was not in fact the high-priest, but simply a priest.  (In the Lukan narrative, he is among those who draw lots to burn incense in the Temple—something the high-priest never did.)  But no matter:  truth comes in many forms, poetry as well as history.  And by telling us that Mary dwelt in the Holy of Holies, the story tells us something fundamental and abidingly true about her.

            The Holy of Holies was the inner heart of the Temple, the place where the Ark of the Covenant once rested (it was lost and destroyed when the Babylonians sacked the Temple centuries earlier; the Temple later built after the return from exile and still later enlarged by Herod remained empty of the Ark.)  As the inner shrine, it was the place where God’s earthly presence resided, the epicenter of divine holiness in the world.  No one was pure and holy enough to enter there—even the high-priest himself could only enter there once a year on the Day of Atonement, and even then he must bring with him the blood of sacrifice (Hebrews 9:7).  But according to the tale, Mary could enter there—the lesson being that Mary, as the one destined to become the Mother of God, was holier than all the other children of men.  God Himself would dwell within her flesh even as He dwelt in the Holy of Holies.  The Holy of Holies, like the rest of the Temple, was all about her.

            Why should all of this matter to us today?  Just this:  her holiness could not only protect her in the Holy of Holies, it now protects us too.  Holiness is what adds power to prayer, and effectiveness to intercession.  God does not listen to sinners, to those who defy and reject Him, but if anyone is a worshipper of God and does His will, God listens to him (John 9:31).  Mary is pre-eminently the best worshipper of God and the one who truly did His will.  Accordingly, God listens to her.  All Christians live within a network of mutual intercession:  you pray for me and I pray for you and we all pray for each other.  This network includes the saints, so that we also ask for the prayers of Saints Peter and Paul and Nicholas and Athanasius and Herman of Alaska.  And standing at the head of this mighty heavenly army of intercessors is the holy Theotokos, she who is more honourable than the cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim.  Her holiness is our shield and buckler, and we can take refuge in her matchless intercession.  She no longer stands within the courts of an earthly Temple, however splendid.  She now stands within the courts of the heavenly Temple, next to the very throne of God, sharing that splendour as our heavenly Sovereign and Queen.  The Feast of the Entrance into the Temple is something more than a mere historical recollection.  It is a call to prayer, and to our confident reliance upon her love and intercession for us and for all the world.

           

Blood that Cries and Capital Punishment

The question was recently put to me whether I could bring myself to pull the switch to execute someone sitting in an electric chair or release the trapdoor to hang someone standing in a hangman’s noose.  The one asking the question did not have anyone particular in mind that he wanted to swiftly dispatch; the question was raised as part of a discussion about the moral legitimacy of capital punishment.  There are many things, I suppose, that I would have trouble doing.  I would have trouble giving someone a needle or taking blood, as lab workers do all the time.  I would have trouble cutting into living flesh, as surgeons routinely do.  I would have trouble shooting someone who was shooting at me or at the public, as policemen sometimes find necessary, or shooting at someone in war, as soldiers do.  None of these things should be regarded as morally repugnant; the problem here lies in the subjective emotions of the person doing them, not in the objective morality of the acts themselves.  And anyway, in the case of taking human life, either as a hangman or as a police officer or as a soldier, it is a moot point, since clergy are canonically forbidden to do it.  All taking of human life is fraught with moral ambiguity, even when required, which is why Christian soldiers may kill the enemy, but are still penanced for the act afterward.  In our fallen world, the act is necessary and so must be done, but the moral ambiguity of it still remains.

            Any sensible discussion of the moral legitimacy of capital punishment must therefore center on the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church, not on one’s subjective feelings.  We have already seen through the canons penancing soldiers that the act of taking human life remains morally ambiguous.  In a perfect world, there would be no killing (and also no crime or invasion or evil to be resisted).  But the world is not perfect, and so the question becomes:  given the moral ambiguity of the act, is it still allowable for Christians?

            The Scriptures are fairly clear and unambiguous in their affirmative answer.  Even before the Law of Moses was given to Israel, we find the principle of lex talionis that “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man” (Genesis 9:6).  Note that the creation of man in the divine image and the value of human life are here cited as the precise reason for the retaliatory shedding of blood, and not (as often today) a reason why the human life may not be taken.  The principle is stated here in poetic form, along with other bits of poetry such as in Genesis 2:23, 3:14-16, 3:17-19, 8:22.  The poetic form in these passages indicates the foundational importance of what is stated in the poetry—thus the lex talionis of Genesis 9:6 does not represent a mere cultural fragment of a more barbaric time, but like the other bits cited, is presented as foundational for human existence:  justice must undergird all societal living.

The principle is reaffirmed in the Law of Moses, which also prescribes the death penalty for murder (e.g. Numbers 35:31:  “You shall not take ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death, but he shall surely be put to death”).  And note here too the reason:  “You shall not pollute the land in which you are, for blood pollutes the land and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it” (v. 33).  Refusal to avenge murder pollutes the land, and brings divine wrath—eventually the land thus polluted will spew its inhabitants from it in the judgment of God (Leviticus 18:24f).  The nation of Israel of course was a theocracy, and so certain acts as well as murder were subject to capital punishment, acts like as deliberately breaking the Sabbath.  America is not a theocracy (whatever its pledge of allegiance might perhaps suggest), and so the Mosaic Law cannot sensibly be included as part of its criminal code.  But the principle found in Genesis 9:6 pre-dates the Mosaic Law, and is clearly intended for all the sons of Noah, not just the later Israelites, so that the prescription of capital punishment in the Law enshrines a universal human value, not just a theocratic Jewish one.  It is the flip side of the Commandment, “You shall not murder”.  

We note here that the argument for the use of capital punishment is rooted in the concept of justice and just retaliation, not in the idea that it is useful as a deterrent.  It may indeed function as a deterrent, if it is administered quickly and publicly enough (which is clearly not the case in today’s society).  But deterrence is not the issue; justice is the issue.  The principle is a transcendent moral one, not merely utilitarian.  It is enshrined in the story of the world’s first homicide, the murder of Abel.  In this story, Cain rises up against his brother Abel and murders him.  God then confronts him saying, “The voice of your brother’s blood cries to Me from the ground” and banishes him the world of men—in that culture, an equivalent of capital punishment (Genesis 4:10).  This tale is not just about two individuals; it is the story of our race, and it reveals that all blood unjustly shed cries for vindication and justice.  All the foundations of the earth are shaken by such injustice (Psalm 82:5); they are only restored when the crying blood is answered by justice and equivalent retaliation is made against the murderer.

This acceptance of capital punishment as a grim element in society is found also in the New Testament.  Paul acknowledged that the authorities which existed were established by God for the preservation of order and the restraint of evil and social chaos (Romans 13:1f).  Paul specifically mentioned that the authority did “not bear the sword in vain, for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath upon the one who practices evil” (v.4).  The use of the Roman sword, of course, included the use of capital punishment upon murderers, and Paul accepted this as part of God’s provision for societal order.  It is true, I would suggest, that the Roman sword came down rather too often and generously, and that capital punishment was sometimes unjustly inflicted upon those guilty of lesser crimes.  The Romans, after all, were the ones who refined crucifixion as a political technique for keeping the locals in line.  And societies later than the Romans would sometimes hang not only murderers, but also those convicted of sheep-stealing.  Not all uses of the sword were equally just.  But the misuse does not invalidate its proper use—nor does it mean that mercy should not triumph over justice in certain circumstances.  Murderers could sometimes be pardoned, without overthrowing the general principle of lex talionis found in Genesis 9:6. 

In fact the granting of mercy presupposes the general principle of justice:  the offender deserves death and fully expects it, but if penitent may sometimes be granted pardon.  The refusal to ever execute a murderer does not represent mercy triumphing over justice, but rather a failure to rise as high as justice.  If justice in this form is never administered, then mercy is no longer true mercy, but injustice.  The heartfelt cry of some that mercy and charity should always be extended to the murderer—even the impenitent murderer—sounds spiritual enough, but it ignores the blood of the slain which also cries out from the ground.  The voice of the slain is never heard in the often rancorous debate, and those who would refuse to avenge their blood never have to look them in the face and deny their plea for justice.  They look at the television cameras instead.

Some people point out that injustice often prevails anyway, with many people sitting on death row for crimes they did not commit, their only real “crime” being that of race or poverty and the inability to find a good lawyer.  That is true, and in my mind constitutes a valid argument against the current use of capital punishment in our society.  But it does not overthrow the general principle that capital punishment itself is just.  It is society that needs to be reformed, not the principle which needs to be jettisoned.  And what about cases such as that of Paul Bernardo, who sexually tortured and murdered two young girls, about which no doubt exists regarding his guilt?  Does the fact that some are punished for crimes they did not commit mean that he should not be justly punished for his?

What then, some others ask, of Christ’s teaching about turning the other cheek?  It is important to recognize exactly what kind of non-resistance to evil Christ is here discussing—not the evil of assault, but of affront.  To strike a person across the cheek in His day did not represent violent assault (that would usually come with a weapon), but public insult.  Christ is not teaching that actual assault or murder should not be judicially punished, but inculcating personal benevolence to all, even to those who publicly violate one’s honour.  He had no problem evidently with someone who murdered being “guilty before the court” (Matthew 5:21).  He was not legislating for society, but deconstructing the individual zeal for vengeance that lurked in the hearts of His potential disciples.  Those who followed Him must not “resist evil” by plotting revenge for insults and persecutions, but must bless everyone indiscriminately as did the sun, which the Father made to shine on both the evil and the good (Matthew 5:39, 44-45).  To apply this teaching as if it were proscribing all judicial punishment of criminal acts is to misunderstand it entirely.  It would also introduce the precise sort of societal chaos that Paul said the sword kept at bay, for then not only would capital punishment be abolished, but all judicial punishment and retribution.  Thieves would no longer be subject to prosecution, fine, or incarceration when caught by the police, but rewarded with a cheque from the government for their crime, on the basis that Christ taught that the one who violently steals a man’s coat should be offered his shirt as well (Luke 6:29).  Christ is not dealing directly here with the outer laws of the land, but with the inner movements of the heart.

But does this mean that Christ’s words have no relevance to the current debate about capital punishment?  Far from it.  For it seems to me that in this debate two groups face off against each other, staring uncomprehendingly and shouting loudly across a great divide.  Some scream for the execution of the offender with hatred and a lust for vengeance in their heart, while others yell that such execution would be no better than the murder it would avenge.  The yelling and the self-righteousness are signs that both groups have become entangled and lost in the heat of the moment.  Justice indeed that demands that a murderer be executed (though mercy may sometimes be granted), just as it demands that violent assault or rape be punished by incarceration.  But the individuals involved in carrying out such sentences as well as the victims of the crimes must take care to keep lust for vengeance far from their hearts.  The person justly punished, either by incarceration or execution, is still loved by God.  Hangmen may justly hang, just as soldiers and police officers sometimes may justly kill.  But they may not delight in it.  We all have seen the statue of Justice holding her scales and wearing a blindfold so that she cannot be subject to partiality or bribery.  That blindfold should obscure her tears as well, for one may well shed tears even when administering just punishment.  All punishment for crime, whether execution or incarceration, represents a defeat for society, and should be administered with sorrow—and for Christians, with prayer for all, perpetrator as well as victim.

"Just the Facts, Ma'am"

I cannot have been the only one to have noticed on Facebook and other public forums an overwhelming use of ad hominem arguments when discussing controversial topics.  Whether the hot-button topic is abortion, the ordination of women, homosexuality, the revival of the office of deaconess, altar girls, transgender washrooms, Russia, the Ecumenical Patriarch, gun control, or the value of ecumenism, (to say nothing of American politics), things very quickly slide from the objective to the subjective.  Rather than dealing with the actual substance of arguments by either disputing the facts or their interpretation, the respondents often respond by pointing out how heartless, misogynistic, arrogant, or generally terrible their opponent is.  This may or may not be true, though it is difficult to see how someone could have such deep insight into the character of strangers, but even if true, it is irrelevant to the argument at hand.  What matters is the reasonableness of the argument presented, not the general likability of the person presenting it.  One sees this too in ad hominem attacks upon the scholarship involved:  sources cited are derided as being too old or (among the Orthodox) too western, when presumably the only thing that really matters is whether or not what the cited source says is true.  Unless the old source has said something which has later been proven by more recent scholarship to be unreliable, the date or provenance of the quote is as irrelevant as the likability of the person citing it.  After wading through post after post of ad hominem responses online, one is tempted to reply with the quote often attributed to Sgt. Joe Friday from the television show Dragnet:  “Just the facts, ma’am.”

            The temptation to avoid dealing with the facts has a long and deep root in our culture.  As early as 1941 C.S. Lewis examined the phenomenon in a slightly tongue-in-cheek essay entitled, ‘Bulverism’ or, The Foundation of 20^th Century Thought.  In it he wrote,

“The modern method is to assume without discussion that [one’s opponent] is wrong and then distract his attention from this by busily explaining how he became so silly.  In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it.  I call it Bulverism.  Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father—who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than the third—‘Oh you say that because you are a man.’  ‘At that moment’, E. Bulver assures us, ‘there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument.  Assume that your opponent is wrong and then explain his error and the world will be at your feet.  Attempt to prove that he is wrong and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.’”

            Lewis was, of course, decrying the comparative absence of reason from popular argument in his day—an absence he detected throughout his culture in arguments about religion, economics, and politics.  The Bulveristic approach is popular, then as now, because it is so easy to use—understanding, analyzing, and dissecting someone’s argument is hard work, especially if the argument is long and nuanced and argues for a position one finds personally repellent.  Ignoring the argument and the facts and simply throwing verbal rocks is much easier.  And it also pays greater immediate dividends, for people respond more quickly and more deeply to emotion than to reason.  Painting one’s opponent in (for example) the glowing colours of a modernist apostate liberal—or perhaps the glowing colours of a fundamentalist fanatical zealot—are both easy enough to do, and very emotionally satisfying.  Listening to their arguments with enough sympathy to try to understand how they might actually have a point somewhere is a lot more difficult.  But if the issue under discussion is to begin to find resolution, this hard work must be undertaken.  We must begin with just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.

            I remember during a presentation at the weekend seminar “Marriage Encounter” how the presenter encouraged couples to hold hands while they argued.  The idea was that the tactile connection of holding each other’s hands would keep the discussion from escalating out of control.  I have never found it necessary to follow the advice in a domestic setting, but I still think it good advice in an ecclesiastical or even a political one.  Not, of course, that one can actually hold the hands of the person one debates with online (or even see their faces).  But we can hold hands metaphorically, and remember that the person with whom we may disagree is more than their online words—that he or she a person for whom Christ died, someone deeply loved by God.  We owe it to them for God’s sake to listen as dispassionately as we can manage, and respond with calmness and charity.  We don’t need ad hominem approaches.  We can hold hands instead, and listen to the facts.