Not able at the moment to cobble together an original post, but also not wanting more time to pass before I post something, I share this brief criticism of an aspect of the theology of Anglican lay theologian and evangelical apologist C. S. Lewis by the Reformed apologist Cornelius Van Til.—AGF
A position similar to that of Romanism [i.e., Roman Catholicism] is frequently maintained by evangelical Protestants. As a recent illustration, we mention the case of C. S. Lewis.[1]
Like Romanism, Lewis, in the first place, confuses things metaphysical and ethical. In his book Beyond Personality he discusses the nature of the divine trinity.
To show the practical significance of the doctrine of the trinity he says:
The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way ‘round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance.[2]
The purpose of Christianity is to lift the Bios or natural life of man up into the Zoe, the uncreated life. In the incarnation there is given one example of how this may be done. In him there is “one man in whom the created life, derived from his mother, allowed itself to be completely and perfectly turned into the begotten life.” Then he adds: “Now what is the difference which he has made to the whole human mass? It is just this; that the business of becoming a son of God, of being turned from a created thing into a begotten thing, of passing over from the temporary biological life into timeless ‘spiritual’ life, has been done for us.”
All this is similar in import to the position of Aquinas which stresses the idea that man is, through grace, to participate in the divine nature.
It is a foregone conclusion that the ethical problem cannot be fairly put on such a basis. Perhaps the most fundamental difference between all forms of non-Christian ethics and Christian ethics lies in the fact that according to the former, it is man’s finitude as such that causes his ethical strife while according to the latter, it is not finitude as such but created man’s disobedience of God that causes all the trouble.
C. S. Lewis cannot signalize this difference clearly. Lewis does not call men back with clarion voice to the obedience of the God of the Bible. He asks men to “dress up as Christ” in order that while they have the Christ ideal before them and see how far they are from realizing it, Christ, who is then at their side, may turn them “into the same kind of thing as Himself,” injecting “His kind of life and thought, His Zoe” into them.
Lewis argues that “a recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity.” Why does he then encourage men to hold that man is embroiled in a metaphysical tension over which not even God has any control?
Lewis says that men are not likely to recover the old sense of sin because they do not penetrate to the motives behind moral actions. But how shall men ever be challenged to look inside themselves and find that all that is not of faith is sin if they are encouraged to think that without the light of Scripture and without the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit they can, at least in the natural sphere, do what is right?
Can men really practice the “cardinal virtues” of prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude in the way that they should, even though they have no faith? No Protestant ought to admit such a possibility.
Lewis seeks for objective standards in ethics, in literature, and in life everywhere. But he holds that objectivity may be found in many places. He speaks of a general objectivity that is common between Christians and non-Christians and argues as though it is mostly or almost exclusively in modern times that men have forsaken it. Speaking of this general objectivity he says:
This conception in all its forms, Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and Oriental alike, I shall henceforth refer to for brevity simply as ‘the Tao.’ Some of the accounts of it which I have quoted will seem, perhaps, to many of you merely quaint or even magical. But what is common to them all is something we cannot neglect. It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.
But surely this general objectivity is common to Christians and non-Christians in a formal sense only. To say that there is or must be an objective standard is not the same as to say what that standard is. And it is what that is all important.
Granted that non-Christians who hold to some sort of something somewhere above men are better than non-Christians who hold to nothing whatsoever above man, it remains true that in the main issue the non-Christian objectivists are no less subjective than are the non-Christian subjectivists.
There is but one alternative that is ultimate; it is that between those who obey God and those who please themselves. Only those who believe in God through Christ seek to obey God; only they have the true principle in ethics.
One can only rejoice in the fact that Lewis is heard the world around, but one can only grieve over the fact that he so largely follows the method of Thomas Aquinas in calling men back to the gospel. The “gospel according to St. Lewis” is too much of a compromise with the ideas of the natural man to constitute a clear challenge in our day.
Notes
[1] The text of this post has been taken from Cornelius Van Til, The Defense
of the Faith, Chapter IV: The Christian Philosophy of Behavior, I: Ethics and the Christian Philosophy of Knowledge, e. Evangelicalism. First published in 1955, this is from the fourth edition prepared by K. Scott Oliphint, Presbyterian and Reformed, 2008, 80-83. I’ve broken up the paragraphs for blog-reader convenience.
[2] C. S. Lewis, Beyond Personality: The Christian Idea of God, 1945. “Based on
a series of 12 short radio talks given by CS Lewis in 1944, this little book is a goldmine of wisdom and understanding, bringing to the surface extraordinary insights into several challenging issues on the nature of God and Christian belief.” From Amazon product page.