The c s lewis collection, p.49
The C. S. Lewis Collection, page 49
Pilate, Pontius, 67, 175
Pilgrim, Mr, 306
Pitt, Eric, 336, 337
Pittenger, W. Norman, 10, 15, 177–83, 338
Plato, 44, 101, 118, 132, 140, 141, 159, 200, 219
Pogo, 222
Prayer Book, The, 96, 97, 101–2, 120–1, 123–5, 205, 238, 243, 255, 339
Presbyter, The, 330
Price, H. H., 9, 14, 129–45, 172–6
Prometheus, 171
Psalms, The, 95, 130, 149
Pseudo-Dionysius, 182
Ptolemy: Almagest, 39, 74, 99
Punch, 16
punishment, 12, 52, 139, 287–300, 338=40
Quick, Oliver C., 327
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 228
Religious of C.S.M.V., A, 15, 200, 206–7
Res Judicatae, 17, 295
Resurrection, The, 33, 34, 46, 82, 87, 159, 232, 241, 336
Revelation, Book of, 25, 47, 87
Ring of the Nibelungs, see R. Wagner
Robinson, J. A. T.: Honest to God, 184–5, 260
Romans, 33, 87, 193
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 202
Round Table, The, 220
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 118
Routley, Erik, 330, 331
Royal Air Force, The, 8, 94, 240, 241, 243, 251, 282, 283
Samuel II, 58
Sandhurst, B. G., 14, 114–5, 118
Satan (the Devil), 24, 56–7, 165, 169, 190, 198, 255, 261, 332, 333
Sartre, Jean Paul, 264
Saturday Evening Post, The, 17
Saunders, T. Bailey, 248
Sayers, Dorothy L., 201, 260
Scale of Perfection, The, see W. Hilton
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 248–9
Schrödinger, Arthur, 35
Second Coming, The, 239, 336
Sennacherib, 28
Sermon on the Mount, The, 181, 182
Shakespeare, William, 24, 79, 105, 135, 184, 194, 227–8, 312
Sharrock, Roger, 294
Shaw, George Bernard, 44, 86, 284
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 171, 194, 294
Sheol, 130
Sidney, Sir Philip: The Arcadia, 204
Siegfried (in Wagner’s Ring), 278
Sisam, Kenneth, 294
Smart, J. J. C., 17, 295–7
Smithfield, 293
Snow, C. P., 311, 312, 313, 315
Socrates, 110, 112, 126, 127, 128, 158
Socratic Club, The, 8, 9, 14, 126–8, 128, 144–5, 172, 275
Socratic Digest, The, 8, 14, 15, 16, 126–8, 129, 144–5, 172, 275
Song of Solomon, The, 264
Song of the Three Holy Children, The, 334
Spectator, The, 13, 21, 61
Spenser, Edmund: The Faerie Queene, 203, 204
spiritualism, 138, 240, 252
Stalin, Joseph, 315
Stevenson, R. L., 279
Stoicism, 86, 102, 130, 149, 299
Student Christian Movement, The, 14, 127
Surrealism, 251
Tacitus, 195
Taylor, Jeremy, 203, 334
Tennyson, Alfred, 171
Textual Criticism, 11, 95, 134, 135, 242
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 219
Theologica Germanica, 204
Theology, 325, 327
Theosophy, 69, 240, 252
Thinkers Library, The, 93, 135
Thomas à Kempis: Imitation of Christ, 204
Thor, 279
Thrasymachus, 307
Three Little Pigs, The, 12
Time and Tide, 16, 17, 238
Traherne, Thomas, 203, 204
Transfiguration, The, 33
Trollope, Anthony, 219
Tupper, Martin, 142
Twentieth Century, 17
Tyburn, 293
Valkyries, Ride of the, see Wagner’s Ring
Vaughan, Henry, 203
Venus, see Aphrodite
Vincent of Lerins, St, 336
Virgil, 92, 99, 118, 219, 252
Virgin Birth, The, 26, 31, 61, 242, 252
Vivisection, 16, 170, 224–8
Voltaire, 65
Vorticists, The, 222
Wagner, Richard: Ring of the Nibelungs, 278
Walton, Izaak, 203
Watts, Isaac, 264
Wells, H. G., 139, 202
Wharey, James Blanton, 294
White Horse Inn (Drogheda), The, 15
Whitehead, Alfred North, 46
Whittaker, Edmund Taylor, 39
Who’s Who, 128
Williams, Charles, 263
Wirt, Sherwood E., 16, 258–67
Wordsworth, William, 35, 190
World Dominion, 14
Wright, Ronald Selby, 15
Xenophon, 206
Yonge, Charlotte M., 284
Zacharias, 328
Zeus, 158, 303
Zion, 182
Zoroastrianism, 21
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CLIVE STAPLES LEWIS (1898–1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a fellow and tutor in English literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over one hundred million copies and been transformed into three major motion pictures.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
ALSO BY C.S. LEWIS
The Allegory of Love
The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3
The Discarded Image
An Experiment in Criticism
Image and Imagination
The Screwtape Letters
Selected Literary Essays
Studied in Medieval and Renaissance
Studied in Words
Christian Reflections
Letters to an American Lady
Pilgrim Regress
COPYRIGHT
First published in the United States by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company in 1970. This text taken from the 1994 edition.
GOD IN THE DOCK. Copyright © 1970 by C. S. Lewis Pte Ltd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
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CHRISTIAN REFLECTIONS
by
C. S. LEWIS
Edited by
WALTER HOOPER
CONTENTS
Preface, by Walter Hooper
Christianity and Literature
Christianity and Culture
Religion: Reality or Substitute?
On Ethics
De Futilitate
The Poison of Subjectivism
The Funeral of a Great Myth
On Church Music
Historicism
The Psalms
The Language of Religion
Petitionary Prayer: A Problem Without an Answer
Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism
The Seeing Eye
About the Author
Also by C.S. Lewis
Copyright
About the Publisher
PREFACE
Shortly after his conversion in 1929, C. S. Lewis wrote to a friend: ‘When all is said (and truly said) about the divisions of Christendom, there remains, by God’s mercy, an enormous common ground.’1 From that time on Lewis thought that the best service he could do for his unbelieving neighbours was to explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times—that ‘enormous common ground’ which he usually referred to as ‘mere’ Christianity.
He was a thoroughgoing supernaturalist, believing in the Creation, the Fall, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Second Coming, and the Four Last Things (death, Judgement, Heaven, Hell). His defence of ‘mere’ Christianity was colourfully varied, depending on which part of the line needed defending; to that part which seemed thinnest he naturally went, adapting his tactics to suit his audience. Such, I think, is evident from this rather heterogeneous collection of Christian ‘Reflections’. These fourteen papers, which I have attempted to arrange chronologically, were composed over the last twenty-odd years of Lewis’s life; some were written specifically for periodicals; others, published here for the first time, were read to societies in and around Oxford and Cambridge. There are passages in some of the earlier papers where readers will find anticipations of his later work; but such overlaps are inevitable.
There is not yet available any such thing as The Complete Works of C. S. Lewis which a person could buy in a set of uniform volumes. But if the Works were obtainable (almost all are easy to secure as separate books) and one were to read from start to finish all the volumes called ‘Religious Writings’ he would, I think, be struck by what I consider the central premise of all Lewis’s theological works—a premise implicit, even, in his books on other subjects. It is that all men are immortal.
I think this deserves singular emphasis; not only because it is such an important ingredient in Lewis’s understanding of ‘mere’ (i.e. ‘pure’) Christianity, but because the fact that men are immortal is news to many people today. And (a point in which Lewis would support me), because most of the modern liberal theologians are so busy being ‘relevant’ (or whatever else is in fashion) that they make no effective presentation of ‘mere’ Christianity—the Everlasting Gospel—to those for whom Christ died.
To illustrate this particular feature of orthodox Christianity which Lewis constantly underlined, one need only refer to the well-known Screwtape Letters. Lewis himself considered the book’s popularity disproportionate to its worth: he liked Perelandra best of all his works and thought it worth twenty Screwtapes. Still though he bore a grudge against the book and chafed at having always to be ‘the author of The Screwtape Letters’ on the dust-jackets of most of his subsequent books, I never heard him say anything that could be taken as a retraction of its contents.
Screwtape’s advice to his nephew, Wormwood, has been read by, and has edified (I expect), millions of readers. But, like many well-known books, it has its debunkers; most of whom debunk it for the same reason. One critic recently wrote: ‘With the concentration camps across the Channel and the blitz at home, Screwtape seems to have been aiming at rather small targets and to have been decidedly lacking in the historical imagination . . . Lewis was a better student of the daily scene than he often realized; but less equipped to venture beyond the flaming ramparts of the world.’2 Another writer, attempting to ‘disentangle what is of permanent value . . . from what is ephemeral’ in Lewis’s works, notes the ‘general moral pettiness’ of The Screwtape Letters, adding that ‘In the age which has produced Auschwitz, it is distasteful to have such slight topics associated with human damnation.’3
I dare say Lewis would have replied that damnation is far more likely to be distasteful than topics associated with it. But can anything which leads to damnation be ‘petty’? Despite the fact that Auschwitz is an almost unparalleled instance of human wickedness and human suffering, it would have been an inappropriate example for Lewis’s purpose. It is in one sense, the wrong kind of thing: its ‘bigness’, so to speak, and uniqueness blunt its usefulness as a universal temptation to sin. Lewis’s answer to such critics—his answer to what Screwtape is about—is writ plain in Screwtape’s caution to the younger devil:
You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness [Auschwitz?]. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.4
Because Lewis emphasized the reality of hell, not only in Screwtape but in The Problem of Pain (specially chapter VIII) and other books, it is often inferred that he was preoccupied with it—simply wanted it to be true. This indeed is to misunderstand not only Lewis but the Faith itself. For him the real problem was: so much mercy, yet still there is hell. Regardless of what we all wish Christianity were, he knew that this terrible doctrine has the support of Scripture (specially of Our Lord’s own words) as well as that of reason: ‘If a game is played, it must be possible to lose it.’5
I remember one very warm day when Lewis and I were reading in his study that I remarked, rather too loudly: ‘Wheew! It’s hot as hell!’—‘How do you know?’ came his answer. ‘Better not say that.’ I knew at once that he referred—more by the tone of his voice than anything else—to hell as the possible destination of some of us. The contemporary preoccupation with ‘individual freedom’ and ‘rights’ has deceived so many of us into imagining that we can make up our own theology, that Lewis’s orthodox belief in a real heaven and hell strikes us as little short of fanatical: ‘As there is one Face above all worlds merely to see which is irrevocable joy, so at the bottom of all worlds that face is waiting whose sight alone is the misery from which none who beholds it can recover. And though there [seem] to be, and indeed [are], a thousand roads by which a man could walk through the world, there [is] not a single one which [does] not lead sooner or later either to the Beatific or the Miserific Vision.’6
It would not be enough to leave the matter here. From everything that I heard Lewis say, certainly from his writings, I know that the ‘Face above all worlds’ was to him the most concrete and desirable of all realities. But he never forgot that every human soul would enjoy ultimately a vision either Beatific or Miserific. In a passage from his sermon ‘The Weight of Glory’, beside which modern liberal theology seems embarrassingly vapid, he strikes at the heart of the matter:
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.7
I trust that I shall not labour the emphasis Lewis placed on the either-or of the Christian faith by recording a couple of snatches from my conversation with him—primarily in order to underline how solid this reality stood for him, not only in the pulpit or in the heat of writing, but in ‘the light of common day’.
We were talking one time about a bore whom we both knew, a man who was generally recognized as being almost unbelievably dull. I told Lewis that the man succeeded in interesting me by the very intensity of his boredom. ‘Yes’ he said, ‘but let us not forget that Our Lord might well have said “As ye have done it unto one of the least of these my bores, ye have done it unto me.” ’ There was a twinkle in his eye as he said it and we both laughed, yet knowing at the same time that it was no joke. On another occasion I mentioned that I knew of a man’s grave, the epitaph on whose tombstone read ‘Here lies an atheist, all dressed up but with nowhere to go.’ Lewis replied: ‘I bet he wishes that were so.’
