How men become scoundrels (C.S. Lewis)

The following quote is from an address C.S. Lewis gave at King's College in 1944, published as "The Inner Ring" in The Weight of Glory. It's cited by Dallas Willard in Renovation of the Heart. Here Lewis describes how the desire to be accepted into cliques/groups/circles from which one is excluded leads to corruption.

It would be polite and charitable, and in view of your age, reasonable too, to suppose that none of you is yet a scoundrel. On the other hand, by the mere law of averages (I am saying nothing against free will) it is almost certain that at least two or three of you before you die will have become something very like scoundrels. There must be in this room the makings of at least that number of unscrupulous, treacherous, ruthless egotists. The choice is still before you, and I hope you will not take my hard words about your possible future characters as a token of disrespect to your present characters. And the prophecy I make is this. To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink or a cup of coffee, disguised as a triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which is not quite in accordance with the technical rules of fair play; something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand; something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about, but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.” And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage, and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel. 

[...] Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.

Lewis and Berry

Blogger Jake Meador gives us this insightful and beautifully written piece on the commonalities between C.S. Lewis and Wendell Berry. Read it.

The Farmer and the Don

Wednesday Wendell: confronting abstraction, or, "What are you willing to destroy?"

This piece of polemic poetry from Berry is harder-edged than the poem I posted in the last installment of Wednesday Wendell. Someone posted it at the Wendell Berry Society Facebook page yesterday.



Questionnaire (a poem by Wendell Berry)

1. How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons. 

2. For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred. 

3. What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without. 

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child. 
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

From Leavings (Counterpoint, 2009)


Here's Berry making essentially the same point in a less provocative way, from his magnificent essay The Gift of Good Land.

[. . .] We should remind ourselves that materialism in the sense of the love of material things is not in itself an evil. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, God too loves material things; He invented them. The Devil’s work is abstraction—not the love of material things, but the love of their quantities—which, of course, is why “David’s heart smote him after that he had numbered the people” (II Samuel 24:10). It is not the lover of material things but the abstractionist who defends long-term damage for short-term gain, or who calculates the “acceptability” of industrial damage to ecological or human health, or who counts dead bodies on the battlefield. The true lover of material things does not think in this way, but is answerable instead to the paradox of the lost sheep: that each is more precious than all.

Confessions and Scripture

In the first paper of The Fellowship Theology Project -- which is the doctrinal basis of a burgeoning new Presbyterian denomination (more on that later) -- is a discussion on the role of creeds and confessions in the life of the church. I really like this as an articulation of why I choose to be part of a confessional church and Christian tradition. So I throw this out there for your consideration.

Why should contemporary Christians bother with confessions?

The Reformed understanding of the church’s confessional and theological tradition sees contemporary Christians as participants in an enduring theological and doctrinal conversation that shapes the patterns of the church’s faith and life. Communities of believers from every time and place engage in a continuous discussion about the shape of Christian faith and life, an exchange that is maintained through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Today’s church brings its insights into an ongoing dialogue with those who have lived and died the Faith before us. . . .

Participating in their colloquy frees us from the narrow prison cell of our own time and place by listening to the voices of our brothers and sisters who struggled to be faithful in diverse circumstances. Through their confessions of faith we are privileged to hear their wisdom in the midst of our own struggle to be faithful. We overhear conversations among our forebears that expand and enrich our apprehension of the gospel. Sometimes we simply listen in on their discussion, at other times we pay particular attention to one of their voices, and many times we find ourselves participating actively in lively instruction.

The questions of our parents in the faith may not be identical to ours, but their different approaches enable us to understand our own questions better. . . . Throughout the conversation we are aware that all councils may err, yet because we are not doctrinal progressives we acknowledge the confessions have a particular authority over us: we are answerable to them before they are answerable to us.

What is the relationship between confessions and the Bible?

The confessions are not final authorities; Scripture is the authority that measures all doctrinal, confessional, and theological expression. The Reformed tradition has always understood that while confessional standards are subordinate to the Scriptures, they are, nonetheless, standards. They are not lightly drawn up or subscribed to, nor may they be ignored or dismissed. Being questioned by the confessions is not an exercise in servitude, but liberation from the tyranny of the present that enables us to live freely and faithfully within God’s will.

As subordinate standards, the confessions are not free-standing authorities. They are subject to the authority of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, who is known through Scripture, the word of God. Subordination to the Lord and to Scripture’s witness serves to locate confessional authority, however, not diminish it. The confessions provide reliable guidance to our reading and reception of Scripture, protecting us from self-absorbed interpretation, and opening us to Christ’s way, Christ’s truth, and Christ’s life.

Confessions of the distant and not-so-distant past serve as a guard against what C.S. Lewis called "chronological snobbery, the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited." I eagerly accept the historic creeds and confessions of the church as foundational to my personal understanding of Scripture. Before asking the question 'What do I think this text means?' there is great value in asking 'What have Christians of the past thought this text meant?' In other words: I believe in the communion of saints.

CSL on "using" and "receiving" art

The following excerpts are from one of C.S. Lewis's lesser known books An Experiment in Criticism, and are as quoted by Ken Myers in All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians & Popular Culture, a book I'll be returning to. This is Lewis at his provocative best.

The sure mark of an unliterary man is that he considers "I've read it already" to be a conclusive argument against reading a work. . . . Those who read great works, on the other hand, will read the same work ten, twenty or thirty times during the course of their life." (p. 2)

On the difference between using and receiving art.

A work of (whatever) art can be either "received" or "used." When we "receive" it we exert our senses and imagination and various other powers according to a pattern invented by the artist. When we "use" it we treat it as assistance for our own activities. The one, to use an old-fashioned image, is like being taken for a bicycle ride by a man who may know roads we have never yet explored. The other is like adding one of those little motor attachments to our own bicycle and then going for one of our familiar rides. These rides may in themselves be good, bad, or indifferent. The "uses" which the many make of the arts may or may not be intrinsically vulgar, depraved, or morbid. That's as it may be. "Using" is inferior to "reception" because art, if used rather than received, merely facilitates, brightens, relieves or palliates our life, and does not add to it. (p. 88)

Are we receiving art when it's reduced to instantly-downloadable "content" to be used and then thrown away (or stored on a hard drive)? What happens to us when we begin to see books, music, and movies as mere commodities?

Receiving art is not the same thing as agreeing with it. Here Lewis argues for the value of surrendering to works of art that may contain opinions, attitudes and feelings that we don't agree with.

In good reading there ought to be no "problem of belief." I read Lucretius and Dante at a time when (by and large) I agreed with Lucretius. I have read them since I came (by and large) to agree with Dante. I cannot find that this has much altered my experience, or at all altered my evaluation, of either. A true lover of literature should be in one way like a honest examiner, who is prepared to give the highest marks to the telling, felicitous and well-documented exposition of views he dissents from or even abominates. (p. 85)

Lewis could say those things because he believed that "good" was more than a moral category when it comes to literature. Which raises the question whether that's true of other mediums as well. I'm still thinking through that one.

A million dollar friendship

The ancients prized filial love, or friendship, above all the other types of love. C.S. Lewis picks up on this in The Four Loves, and one senses that for Lewis too filial love belonged in a special category. He points out that unlike the more natural loves -- familial (storge) and romantic (eros) -- friendship isn't a necessary part of human survival. Lewis writes, "It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that gives value to survival."

Freud on the other hand viewed friendship with suspicion, believing it to be merely the repression of homosexual or heterosexual eros. In the Freudian universe there's no such thing as "just friends." Our modern society is deeply influenced by Freud so it's not surprising that Hollywood portrayals of unalloyed filial love, particularly between a man and a woman, are few and far between. If there's the possibility of a sexual subtext you can be sure our hyper-sexualized entertainment culture will exploit it. Which brings me to Million Dollar Baby, the 2004 film written by Paul Haggis and directed by Clint Eastwood.

It tells the story of an unlikely relationship between boxing trainer Frankie Dunn (played by Eastwood) and female boxer Maggie Fitzgerald -- a memorable Oscar-winning performance by Hilary Swank. Morgan Freeman plays Dunn's colleague Eddie Dupris "Scrap Iron", and it's through his eyes and voice-over narration that the story is told. Enough time has passed that I don't think I'm spoiling anything by describing the ending of the film, in which Dunn "pulls the plug" on Maggie at her request -- following an injury in the boxing ring which renders her a quadriplegic. When the film came out it was accused by some of being a tract in favor of assisted suicide. In retrospect that was a silly charge. Frankie ends Maggie's life realizing that by doing so he may be damned to a darkness from which he'll never emerge. He's been warned as much in a conversation with his priest (Frankie's conflicted Catholicism is a prominent subtext of Haggis's script). We're not told what happens to Frankie only that he's in a place "somewhere between nowhere and goodbye."

Million Dollar Baby is a boxing picture, but fundamentally it's a most unconventional love story. Yes, Frankie comes to love Maggie like a daughter, but even more as a friend. The film is refreshing in the way it shows the relationship of teacher/student evolving into one of deep filial love unclouded by even a hint of eros. Well, you might say, he's old enough to be her father. True enough, but that's never stopped Hollywood from presenting a view of male/female relationships in which carnal instinct always prevails in the end.

A few nights ago I watched the movie again for the first time in a long while. It's an example of the kind of elegant uncomplicated filmmaking Eastwood the director has become known for. Swank, Eastwood and Freeman are as superb as I remembered, and the movie holds up well, primarily I think because of the beautiful doomed friendship at its heart. Here's the scene where Frankie finally reluctantly agrees to be Maggie's trainer.

What's the point of beauty?

Jonah Lehrer speculates:

But why does beauty exist? What’s the point of marveling at a Rembrandt self portrait or a Bach fugue? To paraphrase Auden, beauty makes nothing happen. Unlike our more primal indulgences, the pleasure of perceiving beauty doesn’t ensure that we consume calories or procreate. Rather, the only thing beauty guarantees is that we’ll stare for too long at some lovely looking thing. Museums are not exactly adaptive.

Here’s my (extremely speculative) theory: Beauty is a particularly potent and intense form of curiosity. It’s a learning signal urging us to keep on paying attention, an emotional reminder that there’s something here worth figuring out. Art hijacks this ancient instinct: If we’re looking at a Rothko, that twinge of beauty in the mOFC is telling us that this painting isn’t just a blob of color; if we’re listening to a Beethoven symphony, the feeling of beauty keeps us fixated on the notes, trying to find the underlying pattern; if we’re reading a poem, a particularly beautiful line slows down our reading, so that we might pause and figure out what the line actually means. Put another way, beauty is a motivational force that helps modulate conscious awareness. The problem beauty solves is the problem of trying to figure out which sensations are worth making sense of and which ones can be easily ignored.

. . . .

I see beauty as a form of curiosity that exists in response to sensation, and not just information. It’s what happens when we see something and, even though we can’t explain why, want to see more. But here’s the interesting bit: the hook of beauty, like the hook of curiosity, is a response to an incompleteness. It’s what happens when we sense something missing, when there’s a unresolved gap, when a pattern is almost there, but not quite. I’m thinking here of that wise Leonard Cohen line: “There’s a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in.” Well, a beautiful thing has been cracked in just the right way.

Lehrer, always worth reading, is on to something. His musings lead me to ask: What is the missing 'something'? Where is the resolution? Where does completeness lie? And jumping off from Leonard Cohen -- Where does that light come from? All this gives me an excuse to quote C.S. Lewis (and I don't need much of an excuse to do that!).

"The books or music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited." (Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life)

So. What then is the point of beauty?

Is Rob Bell's Love Wins saying the same things as C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce?

Pastor Doug Wilson answers. . .




Speaking of The Great Divorce -- an interview with N.D. Wilson who is writing a film adaptation of the Lewis classic (N.D. is the son of Doug).

God is love, but love isn't God (C.S. Lewis)

From the introduction to this edition of The Four Loves.

St. John's saying that God is love has long been balanced in my mind against the remark of a modern author (M. Denis de Rougemont) that "love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be a god"; which of course can be re-stated in the form "begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god." This balance seems to me an indispensable safeguard. If we ignore it the truth that God is love may slyly come to mean for us the converse, that love is God. (pp. 6-7)

We may give our human loves the unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God. Then they become gods: then they become demons. Then they will destroy us, and also destroy themselves. For natural loves that are allowed to become gods do not remain loves. They are still called so, but can become in fact complicated forms of hatred. (p. 8)

Good words on this day devoted to love from the wisest book I've ever read on the subject. It's worth noting that Lewis isn't denigrating human loves. Romantic love, love of family, friendship, and love of country are all examples of love to be celebrated. They all reflect aspects of the divine love. It's when these loves become the ultimate thing, the highest good, that they carry within themselves seeds of poison.

The Perfect Penitent

Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person—and he would not need it.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (p. 49 of this edition)

The virtue of reading old books (esp. theology)

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. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?"—lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H.G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes.

For my own part I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that "nothing happens" when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.

No doubt some of you immediately recognized the above quotes as coming from C.S. Lewis's introduction to Athanasius' On the Incarnation. CSL's wise and witty endorsement is a wonderful bonus to what I know will be a rewarding book—one which I'm about to tackle. Though not with a pipe in my teeth.

Marriage in its entirety (C.S. Lewis)

In addition to being a snapshot of one man's fear and doubting A Grief Observed contains some wonderful musings on marriage at its best, as God intended it. I especially like this bit . . .

For we did learn and achieve something. There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them. It is arrogance in us to call frankness, fairness, and chivalry 'masculine' when we see them in a woman; it is arrogance in them, to describe a man's sensitiveness or tact or tenderness as 'feminine.' But also what poor, warped fragments of humanity most mere men and mere women must be to make the implications of that arrogance plausible. Marriage heals this. Jointly the two become fully human. 'In the image of God created He them.' Thus, by a paradox, this carnival of sexuality leads us out beyond our sexes. (p. 62 in the 1989 hardcover edition)

Lewis' phrase "entire marriage" I take to mean a complete or fulfilling marriage. Even though his marriage to Joy was all too short, he considered it "entire" and not truncated.

The test of belief

C.S. Lewis was a picture of contented bachelorhood when he met Joy (Davidman) Gresham. Their romance and marriage—dramatized in the play and film Shadowlands—was about as unlikely a match as one could imagine. Though he was a buttoned-up Englishman and she an outspoken New Yorker, their's was a sublime meeting of minds and hearts. Lewis described the few years they had together before Joy's life was cut short by bone cancer: "we feasted on love. . . . no cranny of heart or body remained unsatisfied." Lewis was delighted to find in his 60's the happiness that eluded him as a young man.

When Joy was taken Lewis experienced a crisis of doubt. It was as if everything he believed had collapsed like a house of cards. As he grieved Lewis jotted down random memories, questions and meditations in some old notebooks he found lying around the house. In modern parlance this is Lewis "venting", some times with barely concealed rage. The diaries were published in 1961 as A Grief Observed. It's a singular book in the Lewis canon. I've been reading and enjoying it again, though it's a gutwrenching read.

Here's Lewis on the true test of belief:

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But supposed you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it? The same with people. For years I would have said that I had perfect confidence in B.R. Then came the moment when I had to decide whether I would or would not trust him with a really important secret. That threw quite a new light on what I called my 'confidence' in him. I discovered that there was no such thing. Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief. (pp. 34-5)

Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand. (p. 37)

I'm thankful "Jack" left us this brutally honest account of his wrestlings with doubt. At the end his questions remain mostly unanswered, but I hear the echo of that prayer: "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!"

The subtlest of snares

'How fantastic!' said I.

'Do ye think so?' said the Teacher with a piercing glance. 'It is nearer to such as you than ye think. There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing about God Himself . . . as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organiser of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all the snares.'

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

Those who've read the book will recall that the "Teacher" is none other than Lewis's hero and muse George MacDonald.

While I'm on the subject of Lewis -- here's N.T. Wright reflecting on CSL's influence.

Wong Kar-wai's cinema of longing

This is a slightly reworked post from 2008. I like it because it includes two subjects I love: Wong Kar-wai and C.S. Lewis.

Three minutes into 2046—the 2004 film from Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai—the screen goes black and the words "all memories are traces of tears" appear. This will be the thread that runs through the film we're about to see. 2046 is a companion piece to Wong's masterpiece (I don't use that word lightly) from four years earlier—In the Mood for Love. He has been called—without hyperbole in my opinion—the world's most romantic filmmaker and lauded for the "visual splendour of his film aesthetic." And music, oh how he uses music! There are few films that made as big an impact on me as In the Mood for Love, which I first watched on the splendid Criterion DVD, and was my introduction to Wong's cinema of longing.

C.S. Lewis described his experience of being in a record shop and hearing Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries for the first time as "like a thunderbolt" because it conjured up "the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing" he felt as a 14-year-old boy. The Germans (a more naturally romantic people) have a great word for this—sehnsucht—which means something like wishfulness or longing. German artists such as Goethe, Beethoven and Brahms richly mined the vein of sehnsucht in their books and music. Wong's films are shot through with this sense of longing—longing for lost loves, lost eras (especially the 1960's Hong Kong of Wong's childhood), lost years, and the music, fashion and art of the past.

Another major obsession is time. 2046 is separated by title cards which announce the day/month/year or sometimes simply "one hour later" or "1000 hours later". It takes the viewer effortlessly between present, past and future exploring how time works on our memories. Chungking Express (1994), another favorite of mine, features a protagonist whose girlfriend dumps him on April 1. He obssessively collects tins of pineapple with the expiration date May 1 (his birthday), reasoning that if they haven't gotten back together by May 1 then their love has expired. A pile of empty tins serve as visual metaphor for his frustration.


2046 was four years in the making, and in my opinion, is a penultimate film in which Wong synthesizes much of what came before. For instance, he brings back characters and musical cues from earlier films, and uses all of his formidable stylistic tools. In the Mood for Love has a fairly unified look and static style (very static to the irritation of some viewers), but in 2046 Wong alternates between the kinetic style of earlier films and the ravishing slowness of In the Mood, even throwing in a dash of future-noirish CGI. Think Blade Runner. It's worth noting too that Wong loves shooting at night, and with rain. But then, so have many of the best visual stylists.

I would have a hard time explaining to you what exactly happens in 2046 or its predecessor. Well I could, but it would sound absurdly prosaic. Asking the question "what's it about?" of these films reminds me of Steve Martin's line about music: "talking about music is like dancing about architecture." So true! One can't do justice to the works of a cinematic genius like WKW by explaining plot details. Snatches of music from a radio down the hall, a tear suspended in air, steam rising from a bowl of noodles, the sound of rain on a sidewalk, a passing glance or searching gaze—these are the more important details that go into creating something ineffable, intangible. An overwhelming sense of loss hangs over the proceedings, yet there are moments of uncontrolled hilarity. We're passing through a vale of tears, but laughter is a frequent and welcome companion.


Wong Kar-wai is in love with beauty, but I see hints in his films that perhaps beauty is his idol in a way that carries within itself the seeds of destruction. C.S. Lewis writes of beauty in the autobiographical Surprised by Joy:

The books or music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

How sad to mistake the beauty for the thing really desired. Yet, beauty of the kind conjured up by Wong Kar-Wai seems (almost) enough.

Sweeter also than honey

The last few days I've been camping out in Psalm 19. Musing on it and memorizing it. I don't know Hebrew, but even in English I can recognize that it's a sublime piece of poetry. I'm in good company. C.S. Lewis, who knew a thing or two about poetry, considered it "the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world." (Reflections on the Psalms)

It's a perfect three part structure. Part one is a hymn to the glory of God in creation, what theologians would come to call "general revelation" -- that beautiful book which reveals to everyone the eternal power and divine nature of God. Part two is a rhapsodic love song to "special revelation" -- the Torah, written down in the language of one particular tribe, rooted in culture and history. Whether the poet designed it that way we can't know. Lewis speculates that he passed effortlessly from meditating on God's creation to meditating on his law. The transitional phrase rendered in the ESV as "there is nothing hidden from its heat" (verse 6) can apply both to the sun and the commandments of Yahweh. The law, like the sun, brings light. Lewis: "It pierces everywhere with its strong, clean ardour."

I think we get the first part of Psalm 19 pretty easily. Just look up at the sky on a clear night in the country or watch the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean. But what of the extravagant language used to describe the law/the precepts/the commandments? Who talks this way about rules? Contemporary Western society celebrates the absence of rules and restrictions. Like Lewis, we may first find it "utterly bewildering." Lewis illustrates the difficulty by using the example of a penniless, hungry man left alone in a bakery with the smell of fresh bread filling the air. In his case "thou shalt not steal" is not a cause of delight. The man may follow the command to not steal bread out of fear or obligation, but it will be anything but pleasant. The law may seem more like "the dentist's forceps or the front line than to anything enjoyable and sweet."

Lewis begins to understand the emotional state of Psalm 19 by seeing that this is the language of a man ravished by God's moral beauty. He looks around at the "filthy" and "cruel" paganisms surrounding Israel and notes the contrast between that and the "beauty" and "sweetness" of the Law. Moreover, the psalmist studies the law as more than mere ethics. Lewis writes that the ancient Jews came to the law "knowing better than they know."

They know that the Lord (not merely obedience to the Lord) is "righteous" and commends "righteousness" because He loves it. He enjoins what is good because it is good, because He is good. Hence His laws have emeth "truth", intrinsic validity, rock-bottom reality, being rooted in His own nature, and are therefore as solid as that Nature which He has created.

This isn't the priggish self-righteousness of Jesus' rabbinical accusers who knew the law backwards and forwards but whose hearts were far from God. The language of Psalm 19 is of a man with "holy affections" (to borrow a phrase from Edwards). The more the psalmist studies and delights in the law the more he's driven to articulate the prayer which is part three of the poem. The closer he gets to God the more he becomes aware of his propensity to "hidden faults" and "presumptuous sins." He asks God to put a guard on his mouth and heart. He feels the law "searching out all the hiding-places of his soul." As it does so it revives the soul, makes wise the simple, rejoices the heart, and enlightens the eyes. And it's sweet. Sweeter even than honey.

. . . or if that metaphor does not suit us who have not such a sweet tooth as all ancient peoples (partly because we have plenty of sugar), let us say like mountain water, like fresh air after a dungeon, like sanity after a nightmare.

If these ways of relating to God's law seem strange, probably one reason is because we aren't spending enough time in the Psalms. Ambrose was right. The Psalter is a "gymnasium for the soul."


Quotes from Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (Chapter VI)

The cosmic D-day

The story of the Incarnation, indeed the story of Christmas, is the story of the beginning of the end. I think it was Chuck Colson who compared it to D-day. He may not have been the first to use the metaphor, but it's a great one. Once the Allies established a beachhead on the continent it was only a matter of time before Nazi Germany was finished. Likewise, now that the Son of God has "landed" it's only a matter of time until the ultimate demise of the dark prince of this world. We live in enemy-occupied territory, but the decisive battle has already been won in the progression from the manger to the cross to the empty tomb.

Here's how C.S. Lewis put it:

Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going.

Vive la résistance!

Quote from Lewis, Mere Christianity (Macmillan, 1952), p. 40

Fathers and sons (and writers)

This hit close to home.

Lewis surrenders

If I had to choose a favorite C.S. Lewis book it would be Surprised by Joy and if I had to choose a favorite paragraph it would be the one describing his conversion to Deism (his belief in the fact that Jesus was the Son of God would come a bit later). It's really the climax of the entire book. The last line of it reminds me of Romans 11:22 where the Apostle Paul speaks of the "kindness" and "severity" of God. It seems that Lewis experienced both on this fateful night.

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation. (C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life)

In the "for what it's worth" department...while Surprised by Joy is my favorite CSL book--the one that gives me the most sheer pleasure--it's far from his best. That honor goes to The Four Loves. It's there that, in my opinion, Lewis's imaginative and analytical gifts come together most perfectly. It's required reading for anyone interested in the subject of love. That would be everyone, right?

The slavery of chronological snobbery

As a counterpoint to my post having some fun at Augustine's expense here's something in the way of chastening from C.S. Lewis. It comes from Reflections on the Psalms which I plan to write more about in this space time permitting. Lately, "bloggable" subjects come faster than opportunities to put fingers to keyboard. As a lover of the Psalter and CSL I can't believe I'm only now getting around to reading this wonderful little book.

In the following passage Lewis cautions his fellow "moderns" (what would he have thought of us post-moderns?) about the narcissistic temptation to judge my age as more enlightened than all others--a temptation he termed elsewhere "chronological snobbery." He's writing here about allegorical ways of reading the Psalms, but I think the principal applies more generally to the way we approach any Scripture, or any text.

What we see when we think we are looking into the depths of Scripture may sometimes be only the reflection of our own silly faces. Many allegorical interpretations which were once popular seem to me, as perhaps to most moderns, to be strained, arbitrary and ridiculous. I think we may be sure that some of them really are; we ought to be much less sure that we know which. What seems strained—a mere triumph of perverse ingenuity—to our age, seems plain and obvious to another, so that our ancestors would often wonder how we could possibly miss what we wonder how they could have been silly-clever enough to find. And between different ages there is no impartial judge on earth, for no one stands outside the historical process; and of course no one is so completely enslaved to it as those who take our own age to be, not one more period, but a final and permanent platform from which we can see all other ages objectively. (C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms)