Copyright © 1995 Mars Hill Review 2 May 1995 · Issue No. 2: pgs 53-63.
Perhaps, never in the history of Christendom has one man bridged so many levels of understanding to the story of Christianity. As Garry Friesen, friend and former professor says, "C. S. Lewis became all things to all readers."{1} For the child at heart he created the land of Narnia and the untamed lion/savior, Aslan. For science fiction readers he traveled to Perelandra with Ransom. For the philosopher and theologian he reasoned about pain and miracles, as well as debating doctrines of Christianity and the philosophy of men. For the lover of myth, he wrote an adaptation of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. For the pain stricken he observed grief and spoke of prayer. For those enchanted with rhythm and rhyme he wrote poetry. For those concerned with the afterlife he wrote about Heaven and Hell and exposed the mind of Satan. For the weak and questioning he wrote letters of personal encouragement and advice.
Unlike nearly all other influential thinkers and writers within Christian history, C. S. Lewis is not known for his reformation of or separation from the popular religious beliefs. Instead, he is known for defining, defending, and uniting the community of Christendom on what it "merely" (or in his own term "purely") is. This is evidenced by the overwhelming appeal and popularity he has to all sects and denominational backgrounds within Christendom. I am amazed the extreme positions within Christendom that claim Lewis as the champion and defender of their own denominational faith. These extremes are seen on a continuum between the liberals and the fundamentalists; the Roman Catholics and the evangelical Protestants. Even within Protestant Christianity there are the extremes of the most conservative Baptists to the most charismatic Pentecostals claiming Lewis as one of their own. For example, there are John Willis{2} and Christopher Derrick {3}, both Catholic Priests, who claim that if Lewis had lived long enough to see Vatican II, his true colors of Catholicism would have come through. You have a similar claim being made in a Pentecostal magazine in an article by Kathryn Linskoog,{4} who asserts that if Lewis had lived to see the formation and branching out of the Pentecostal movement, he would have jumped on board.
In making the preceding claims, I do not mean to say that Lewis did not separate himself from popular religious views about Christianity, because he did. Lewis, on many occasions, set himself apart from movements and schools of thought within modern and historical Christianity. My purpose then is to identify the areas of Lewis's scriptural view and define how he embraces a liberal view of Scripture and distances himself from a Fundamentalist view of the Bible (defined as the verbal, plenary inspiration of Scripture.). The evaluation of Lewis's view of Scripture begins with his hermeneutic, followed by his specific views of transposition, revelation, inspiration, and authority of scripture, ending with my evaluation of Lewis's view.
It is necessary to begin an understanding of Lewis's hermeneutic with the realization that Lewis brought his rich legacy of literary criticism to all of his reading, including the Bible. As a foremost literary critic and expert in ancient and medieval-Renaissance literature, Lewis was well aware of the problems involved in the writing, translation and interpretation of literature. His hermeneutic, however, is not purely academic. The academic aspects are combined with some presuppositions of Christian faith (namely that there is a God and He has spoken and revealed himself and continues to speak and reveal), that somehow blend together to form a strange hybrid of biblical interpretation that satisfies hardly anybody. Richard Cunningham, in his book C.S. Lewis: Defender of the Faith, expands this point by saying that Lewis's, "...recognition of the absence of a theological system, of the mythological and metaphorical elements, and of error and inconsistency in the Bible causes uneasiness among fundamentalists and conservatives."{5} The marriage of biblical assumptions and literary criticism has created many critics of Lewis's hermeneutic view.
Before looking at some of the specific elements that make up Lewis's hermeneutic, it is important to see the power that Lewis attributed to the story of redemption throughout the scriptures. I can think of no better place to turn than Lewis's book, The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader,"{6} to understand the importance of story and myth for communicating Christian beliefs. In this example, it is possible to assume that the method Lewis uses, of embedding the truths of scripture in a story, is what he has assumed on God's "transposition" of truth in the scriptures. In other words, Lewis is following the example of Jesus by burying truth in story. In the case of this specific example, Lewis embeds his beliefs about the Bible under the auspices of a children's story.
The adventure within The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader" which reveals Lewis's understanding of the Bible occurs when Lucy, Edmund, and Eustace arrive at the island of the Dufflepuds. On the island they encounter strange creatures who are invisible and not particularly intelligent (in fact, they are downright stupid). For them to become visible again, a young girl is needed to go into the magician's house, up to the second floor, to find the Magician's book. Within the book she would find spells, one of which would make the Dufflepuds visible again.
Since the alternative was to fight invisible creatures, Lucy consents to brave the frightening house. When she enters a room, apparently the library, she notices many books of all sizes and shapes, but is instantly drawn to the large one on the reading table. There she finds the Magician's book and begins reading the spells, page after page, in search of the visibility spell. As she reads, however, she eventually comes across a spell "for the refreshment of the spirit." She becomes engrossed in the spell, aware that the spell is "more like a story than a spell. It went on for three or four pages and before she had read to the bottom of the page she had forgotten that she was reading at all."{7} She began living in the story as if it were real, "and all the pictures were real too."{8} After reading that story, she believes it to be the most beautiful story she has ever read and attempts to go back and read it again. But the pages will not turn back and the story begins to fade in her memory. All she can remember is that, "it was about a cup and a sword and a tree and a green hill."{9}
What Lucy could remember as a cup, sword, tree, and green hill appear to be references to the closing scenes of Christ's life. The cup recalls Christ asking God the Father to "remove this cup from me" (Mark 14:36), in the garden of Gethsemane. The sword could refer to Peter's lopping off the ear of the high priest's slave with a sword or the men with swords who accompanied Judas to take Jesus away (Mark 14:43-48). The tree becomes the cross that Christ hung on and died. And the green hill appears to be a portrait of Christ as He appeared and ascended into Heaven.
Lewis clearly depicts the theme in this, as in all his fiction writing, as being a shadow of the great story. I believe one hears Lewis himself speaking through the character of Lucy when she says, "a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician's Book." {10}The forgotten story is what Lewis frequently refers to as the myth that became fact. Here are C. S. Lewis's own words as he is faced with the story of redemption in the gospels:
If ever a myth had become a fact, had been incarnated, it would be just like this. And nothing else in all literature was just like this. Myths were like it in one way. Histories were like it in another. But nothing was simply like it . . . Here and here only in all time the myth must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, man. This is not "a religion," nor "a philosophy." It is the summing up and actuality of them all.{11}
For Lewis, the myths of old, which he was familiar with from his education, contained hints and shadows of God's truth, but these were only understood partially. They are, as Carol Hamilton writes, "unformed forecasts of God's ultimate plan."{12} It is in the Gospel, as no where else, that the great stories of myth find their ultimate fleshing out in historical fact.
This theme of myth becoming fact has been described by Lewis as the "romantic longing" in man. It is the longing for something transcendent, mythical and infinite to enter the finite bodily creature bound in space and time. We are, as Lewis says in The Weight of Glory, always longing and trying to capture something, trying "to get in."{13} Lewis spends much time contemplating this longing and frequently asks the question whether we can find any spell which offers genuine "refreshment of the spirit"--lasting refreshment unaffected by the corrosive and eroding powers of time. Lewis believes this refreshment is possible in myths and stories and believes that is the way they have been revealed to man . . . in the form of myth and story.
In Lewis's sermon "Transposition," he describes what some have called one of his "most important contributions to theological thinking."{14}The concept recurs repeatedly throughout Lewis's writing. It is the idea that the highest does not stand without the lowest. This idea points to his understanding, once again, that God's truth cannot be known without being immersed in both human imagination and human history (myth become fact). The belief of the Incarnation of God in the human form of Christ is an acknowledgment and acceptance of the possibility of the highest (God) and the lowest (human) being united. Transposition is also seen when an author, like Lewis, takes a timeless theme and exposes it in a temporal plot. It is, as Gilbert Meilaender says, "a temporal net to catch what is eternal."{15} It is Lewis's understanding of transposition that defines God as the greatest storyteller of all time, because He wrapped all of eternity's truth in the story of redemption through Christ. We will see how Lewis's view of transposition affects his understanding of inspiration in the section called "Inspiration," but suffice to say now that inspiration is the conversion of human words (the lowest) into the divine Word (the highest).
Lewis assumes that God is ultimately His own revelation of Himself, yet He has revealed Himself in various ways in different places. This explains why Aslan can appear as different animals throughout the Narnia stories. Some of these ways God is revealed can be deducted from Lewis's writings: conscience, dreams, myths, the moral law, the creation of romantic or immortal longings, history, nature, religions, experience, pagan literature, the incarnation of Christ, the Scriptures, and in other ways in which the "divine pressure" has been exerted on the human mind. This may sound like a broad sense of revelation, but Lewis seems to also restrict it by saying that God can only be known by "self-revelation on His part, not by speculation on ours. We, therefore, look for Him where it is claimed that He has revealed Himself by miracle, by inspired teachers, by enjoyed ritual." {16}
Garry Friesen writes about Lewis's view, that the process of revelation, "emphasizes strongly its progressive nature as well as its basic unity. So nature often anticipates the truth revealed in Scripture."{17} This idea of nature's anticipation and revelation of scriptural truth is seen in Lewis's writing when he records,
The corn itself is in its far-off way an imitation of supernatural reality; the thing dying, and coming to life again, descending, and re-ascending beyond all nature. The principle is there in nature because it was first there in God Himself.{18}
In the book The Problem of Pain, Lewis sees three main stages of revelation for all religions and a fourth for Christianity. The first of these stages is "Numinous"{19} (marked by the feeling of awe). The second stage is recognition that some kind of "Moral Law"{20}has been broken. Thirdly, subjects recognize that the source of the moral law is the numinous.{21} This third stage is evidenced by the Jewish understanding of God as the Law giver. The fourth and final stage of revelation is when a man is born and "claims to be the Numinous" and giver of the moral law. This is the picture of Christianity and the incarnation of Christ.
There is, as we will also see in Lewis's view of inspiration, a sense of progression of revelation that has gotten clearer and more specific through time. This progressive revelation is seen in the fact that the Jews were given more revelation than the pagans. The revelation of God to the Jews was also more directive in how to live and gave a clearer and more focused view of Himself to them over the understanding given to the pagans. The focus becomes even clearer when what was "vaguely seen in them [the Jews] all comes into focus in Christianity--just as God Himself comes into focus by becoming a Man."{22} We see in Lewis's theory of progressive revelation a finish line that has not yet been reached. The finish line is the final and complete revelation of God in a face to face communion.
It is important at this point to explore and define another of Lewis's big ideas which recurs throughout his writings, the idea of myth. As I mentioned earlier, Lewis concludes that myth had become fact in the story of redemption through Christ, but Lewis's definition of myth needs more clarification since he believes that much in the Old Testament is myth by nature. (It follows that we should pursue this now since Lewis seems to see myth as "one form of unfocused revelation which was given to the pagans and early Jews."{23}) Revelation comes into focus by a process of "crystallization"{24} in which revelation moves from myth to history. Lewis himself defines his view of Old Testament myth best when he talks about many Old Testament miracles as being mythical. He defines both, what myth is and is not.
A consideration of the Old Testament miracles is beyond the scope of this book and would require many kinds of knowledge which I do not possess. My present view--which is tentative and liable to any amount of correction--would be that just as, on the factual side, a long preparation culminates in God's becoming incarnate as Man, so, on the documentary side, the truth first appears in mythical form and then by a long process of condensing or focusing finally becomes incarnate as History. This involves the belief that Myth in general is not merely misunderstood history ... nor diabolical illusion ... nor priestly lying ... but, at its best, a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination. The Hebrews, like other people, had mythology: but as they were the chosen people so their mythology was the chosen mythology--the mythology chosen by God to be the vehicle of the earliest sacred truth, the first step in that process which ends in the New Testament where truth has become completely historical. Whether we can say with certainty where, in this process of crystallization, any particular Old Testament story falls, is another matter. I take it that the memoirs of David's court come at one end of the scale and are scarcely less historical than St. Mark or Acts; and that the Book of Jonah is at the opposite end.{25}
It is in Lewis's view of myth that we find the bridge from revelation to inspiration. If, in myth, there are extreme points on opposite ends of the continuum of focused and unfocused revelation, then it would follow that the quality and/or focus of inspiration may also be viewed as having extreme points beginning with the least inspired (unfocused truth) to the most inspired (meaning the most complete truth directly from God). But, before we leave the issue of myth in revelation I sense the need to simplify, as best I can, Lewis's definition of myth. I would say that he views myth as a story that could be and might be true, but does not need to be historically or scientifically true because it is meant to communicate something bigger than history or science. Therefore Old Testament stories like Jonah, Esther, Song of Solomon, Job, some of David's Psalms, and even the creation account and fall of man are not necessarily historical events. In fact, in addressing the last point, Lewis writes, "For all I can see, it [the fall] might have concerned the literal eating of a fruit, but it is of no consequence."{26}
It is important to note at the outset of this section that C. S. Lewis would have claimed that all scripture in the Bible is inspired. At the same time he would say that not only the writers were inspired, but that the Jews and the Christians who preserved and canonized the Scriptures were inspired; as well, the redactors and editors who modified them also had a "divine pressure" exerted on them. But the pivotal point of contention is what he does with the word inspiration. I think what Lewis would say in defense of his definition for inspiration is that "not all scripture is inspired for the same purpose or in the same way."{27} Because of his literary criticism background, he would claim that there are errors, contradictions, and even (in his words) "sub-Christian" ideas. Again we are faced with his beliefs that Job, Jonah, and Esther were non-historical and that the early stories of Genesis are mythical. But he would argue that their non-historical elements and mythology say nothing about their spiritual truth. Lewis would continue to argue that the writers were moved, guided, unctioned--whatever word you want--by the "divine pressure" of God.
For Lewis, there are degrees of inspiration outside of Scripture and intrinsic to Scripture. He argues that "all truth and edifying writing, whether in Scripture or not, must be in some sense inspired."{28} Lewis rejects the idea that
inspiration is a single thing in the sense that, if present at all it is always present in the same mode and the same degree; therefore, I think, rules out the view that any one passage taken in isolation can be assumed to be inerrant in exactly the same sense as any other.{29}
Lewis claims to find support for levels of inspiration in 1 Corinthians 7:10-12, Luke 1:1-4, and John 11:49-52.{30}
The idea of transposition returns to influence Lewis's view of inspiration. He believes that "the Scriptures proceed not by conversion of God's word [the highest] into a literature [the lower] but by taking up of a literature [the lower] to be the vehicle of God's word [into the highest]."{31}In other words, he is saying that inspiration is the conversion of human words (literature) into the divine Word. Or to say the opposite would be to say that divine words were not made into human words. Lewis expands this point by arguing for a greater meaning in Scripture by asserting:
If the Old Testament is a literature thus "taken up," made the vehicle of what is more than human, we can of course set no limits to the weight or multiplicity of meanings which may have been laid upon it. If any writer may say more than he knows and mean more than he meant, then these writers will be especially likely to do so. And not by accident.{32}
Lewis's theory of multiplicity of meanings allows him to say in criticism of systematic forms of theology that there is nowhere in scripture an "unrefracted light giving us ultimate truth in systematic form." He continues this argumentation by examples of Jesus and Paul in the New Testament. Even in Jesus' teaching there was nothing systematic to hang one's theological hat on.
In conclusion of Lewis's view of inspiration we can say that he believed in degrees of inspiration. The level of inspiration seems to be directly related to the writers' closeness or relation to God. An ascending order of inspiration can be deduced from the least inspired writings, those being pagan myths, to Jewish writings because "they were closer to God"{33} than their contemporaries. The writings of the apostles and prophets are next in clarity and focus of inspiration because they communicated with God either in dreams, visions or audible words (from either God or Christ). And ultimately, the most inspired words would be in the teachings of Christ himself where "there was no imperfection."{34} Obviously there are some gaps of other writings that would fit in the list, but I think the idea is adequately represented. Ultimately, Lewis defines and defends his position about inspiration best by writing,
The total result is not "the Word of God" in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God and we . . . receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning its over-all message.{35}
It should not be surprising, after examining Lewis's levels of revelation and inspiration, to discover that in religious truth he finds different levels of authority among several authorities. Among these several authorities for the Christian, the highest authority is the Scriptures themselves.{36} In his evaluation of Lewis's view of the authority of Scripture, Clyde Kilby gives a personal perspective around which to frame our thoughts.
It would be a bad mistake to infer . . . that Lewis regarded the Bible as simply another good book. He repeatedly calls it "Holy Scripture," assures us that it bears the authority of God, sharply distinguishes even between the canon and the apocryhpha, presses the historical reliability of the New Testament in particular, and often assures us that we must "go back to our Bibles," even to the very words.{37}
Creeds of the faith are the next level of divine authority. We can see that Lewis assumes the "truth of the creeds,"{38} as an embodiment of the pure doctrines of the faith.{39} Below the Scriptures and the creeds would be the level of "tradition" which include the authority of "Church Fathers, ecclesiastical authorities, great theologians and all good writers."{40}Lewis maintains that he strongly belongs within the defense of the "traditional, dogmatic positions" of Christianity.{41}
By his own admission Lewis saw his view of inspiration as tentative. We can see this clearly in a letter he wrote in his later years to Clyde Kilby, when Lewis wrote explaining his view of inspiration: "Remember too that it is pretty tentative, much less an attempt to establish a view than a statement of the issue on which, rightly or wrongly, I have come to work."{42}
The following concerns with Lewis's view of Scripture are discussed more fully in Garry Friesen's evaluation.{43}I provide a brief discussion and expansion to the main aspects of his concerns.
When Lewis discusses his view of Scripture he does not address Scripture's own claims about itself, which are found in such important passages as 2 Timothy 3:16, 2 Peter 1:21, and Matthew 5:17-18. I see this as one of the weakest points of Lewis's view of Scripture. Lewis has a famous argument concerning Christ's claims of being God, in which he concludes that Christ was either a liar, lunatic, legend or the truth. It appears that Lewis did not transfer this same line of reasoning to his understanding of Scripture. If he had, he would have made a similar argument about Scripture's claims about itself ... that they are either lies, ramblings of crazy religious men and women, myth (that did not become fact), or truly God-inspired words and thoughts through the instruments of people.
A second weakness in Lewis's view of Scripture centers around his idea that some Old Testament passages are myth. Though I understand his intention in definiting myth as being that the story may or may not be historically true, it appears that he uses this argument to avoid having to admit that the creation account and the fall of man were actual historical events. Instead he appears to be protecting his belief in biologic evolution, clearly seen in his own interpretive version of the Adam and Eve story.
For long centuries God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of Himself. He gave it hands whose thumb could be applied to each of the fingers, and jaws and teeth and throat capable of articulating, and a brain sufficiently complex to execute all the material motions whereby rational thought is incarnated. The creature may have existed for ages in this state before it became man: it may even have been clever enough to make things which a modern archaeologist would accept as proof of its humanity. But it was only an animal because all its physical and psychical processes were directed to purely material and natural ends. Then, in the fullness of time, God caused to descend upon this organism, both on its psychology and physiology, a new kind of consciousness which could say "I" and "me," which could look upon itself as an object, which knew God, which could make judgments of truth, beauty, and goodness, and which was so far above time that it could perceive time flowing past. This new consciousness ruled and illuminated the whole organism. . .
I do not doubt that if the Paradisal man could now appear among us, we should regard him as an utter savage, a creature to be exploited or, at best, patronized. Only one or two, and those the holiest among us, would glance a second time at the naked, shaggy-bearded, slow-spoken creature: but they, after a few minutes, would fall at his feet.
We do not know how many of these creatures God made, nor how long they continued in the Paradisal state. But sooner or later they fell. Someone or something whispered that they could become as gods. . .{44}
The difficulty I have with Lewis's position of Old Testament myth is that much of Scripture refers back to Adam and Eve, the fall of man, as well as Noah and the Flood as literal people and historical events (1 Chronicles 1:1; Matthew 19:4-5; 24:37-39; Luke 3:36-38; Hebrews 11:7;1 Timothy 2:13-15).
Myth was also seen by Lewis as unfocused revelation in the Old Testament. This view allowed Lewis to make some good contributions to the Christian's understanding of natural revelation. However, Lewis seems to discount and/or ignore the events of special revelation from God to his people throughout the Old Testament. These were moments of clearly focused and direct revelation in which God spoke directly to individuals such as Moses, Abraham, and the prophets. These moments of direct revelation hardly seem to fit into Lewis's idea of myth and unfocused revelation.
Stemming from Lewis's weakened view of revelation comes a weakened view of inspiration. We are left with an errant Bible in which we are to find absolute truth. Lewis may have tried to compensate for this weakened view of inspiration by introducing the idea of transposition and by heightening the importance of illumination. In his view of illumination, the reader is inspired to the point that human words (the lowest) are transformed into the divine word (the highest).{45}He argues that literature is only the vehicle for God's word, not the word itself. Lewis also argues that at times he reaches the Voice of God "through all the distortions of the human medium."{46} It appears that Lewis views the use of "the human medium" of communicating God's Word as a liability rather than an asset in the process of finding God.
Though variants can be seen in how Lewis differs from the fundamentalist view of scripture, I think it is ultimately important to frame our understanding of his view of Scripture around the context from which he was doing most of his speaking and writing . . . that being the context of the Church of England. Lewis's view of Scripture is, for the most part, in harmony with the Church of England. It was of little debate within his closest circle of friends that there were errors within the literature of the Scriptures. It was only as his popularity grew and influential writings stretched across the ocean to America that the challenges arose to what was important to the American Christian culture. At that point in history, the term "fighting fundies" was gaining popularity in describing the fundamentalist movement in America. Lewis was reluctant to leave his own church history and orthodoxy for an ultra-conservative and constricting movement. In the end, I am grateful for the liberal heritage that Lewis brought to his writings and Christian life. For in that heritage is found the richness of his wide and diverse impact as the writer of all things to all readers as he tells the story of Christian redemption.