(20 votes, average: 4.80 out of 5)
Loading...When I became an evangelical Christian in high school, my first introduction to “apologetics” was through the works of C. S. Lewis. Apologetics involves establishing reasoned ways to “defend the faith” against intellectual attack and to “demonstrate” the superiority of the faith, intellectually, for inquiring minds, in order to convince people. C. S. Lewis was many things: a brilliant scholar of early modern English at both Oxford and Cambridge (many people don’t know he wrote serious academic scholarship, e.g., on seventeenth-century English); an author of enormously popular children books (Chronicles of Narnia); and a Christian apologist (e.g., Mere Christianity; The Problem of Pain).
In evangelical circles at the time – and still today, in places – Lewis was/is revered almost as a demi-god, or at least an angel, if not the fourth member of the Trinity. Not so much in other circles. In graduate school, when I told my Oxford-trained philosophy professor (who was also a Christian theologian) that I was interested in C. S. Lewis, he grimaced and said with some considerable force, “He’s a complete amateur.” I thought, “What the hell are *you* talking about???” How can you possibly call him an amateur? He’s one of the greatest thinkers in the modern world! And who are you???
It’s true, this professor was in fact the most astute I knew. And he was professionally trained as a philosopher. I later came to realize that C. S. Lewis was not. And that in fact (well, it’s a fact in my mind), my professor was right.
Lewis was indeed brilliant. He was massively …
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During my Christian years a friend recommended a book by C.S. Lewis to me titled, The Screwtape Letters. I read it and although it was interesting at the time I now realize what was once considered sin is actually human nature.
Exactly! Sin is in our nature.
In an essay he wrote, “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism,” Lewis (admitting that he’s not a Bible scholar) explains that he doesn’t trust scholars’ reconstructions is the origins and different phases of the writing of a biblical text. He explains that whenever literary scholars analyze his texts in the same way, they always guess his process wrong. He further explains that these literary scholars speak the same native language as him, and are immersed in the socio/political context—more than we can say about any Bible scholar. He therefore doubts that the guesses of scholars are correct. This essay really resonated with me, and I was wondering if there is a good reason to trust that scholars generally have reliably reconstructed the different phases in the writing of an ancient text?
*reconstruction of the origins*
All you can do, I suppose, is read the reconstructions and see if they are based on solid evidence and logic. Part of the problem is lumping scholars together and say they are doing it wrong, when scholars interpret texts in a wide range of ways….
Thank you!
Funny how many of the writings I admired when a practicing Christian now seem to me shallow and ineffective in their arguments. Worldview makes a huge difference in how you process information. Unrelated: Nova had a show last night about the Dead Sea Scrolls and the forgeries that have been created to dupe collectors and go for big money. At least the Bible Museum, which I generally wouldn’t trust at all, has admitted some of their documents are forged, and removed them from display. But also there are some high tech processes to reveal what charred and deteriorated scrolls have printed within. Fascinating stuff. Unfortunately, even if the Bible we have is 99.9% accurate compared to ancient documents, it still portrays a deeply flawed god and very strange laws and doctrines, as well as the internal inconsistencies and contradictions you often point out. But still a fascinating book to study.
I relate to what you said about leaving some lines out of your singing or recitation. There are still many old hymns that I love to sing or hum. Have a lot of problems w/ the old words/phrases though. I try and change the words and sometimes it works; other time I just have to hum.
Thanks, Ehrman. You’re good and I’ve sure learned a lot from you.
“Pick up the broken pieces from the ground, on your diminishing returns,
and take a good look at the master plan down here every candle burns.
You are as gentle as the morning dawn, torment can’t wash away your grace,
in search of angels within the Uist skies, so many suns light up your face.
tonight the sky’s are red, so red they fill my eyes,
sundown on barren words that can’t describe, your island paradise,
but I know that all is well with the world, don’t worry anymore,
don’t worry now, another sun will rise”
-‘ In Search of Angels’, Runrig (not a Christian band, but a band with Christians)
You won’t understand it because its in Gaelic but ‘The Highest Apple’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K62sxZw-Qes
My understanding is that this poem was written after the death of his wife who he wed late in life and is addressed to her. He does distinguish between God and “you” in the fourth line. Read that way the final lines are quite poignant.
Interesting. Yes, their relationship was very moving. There was a movie about it: what was that called?
“Shadowlands.”
That’s it!
Shadowlands
That’s it!
Shadowlands.
That’s it!
Shadowlands 🙂 1993 movie, based on 1980s TV script, later a play, & eventually a book “Through the Shadowlands: The Love Story of C. S. Lewis & Joy Davidman.”
That’s it!
Shadowlands.
That’s it!
The movie (and play) was called Shadowlands.
That’s it!
Shadowlands
That’s it!
Yes, I also thought the poem could be read in that way, beautifully expressing how his relationship with Joy (his wife) transformed his understanding of love.
I think the movie was called Shadowlands.
Yup, I’m thinking that really is what hte poem is about, till the final two lines (it doesn’t affect my personal understanding of it so much, but does allow me to related to it better)
Shadowlands – 1993 – Starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger – Directed by Richard Attenborough
That’s it!
Shadowlands. Anthony Hopkins & Debra Winger. Lovely, lovely movie.
That’s it!
Shadowlands. Anthony Hopkins plays Lewis, Debra Winger plays Joy Gresham.
That’s it!
I’m not familiar with this poem but to me it smacks of the self-loathing and anti-humanism so central to Evangelical Christianity.
What reasons did Lewis offer for his opposition to critical biblical scholarship? Given that his “mad, bad or God?” trilemma is dependent on seeing the Gospels as accurate representations of Jesus’ words and actions, I guess it’s not surprising that he would not be its cheerleader!
Ha! There may well be something of that in it! On biblical scholarship, he was a very literary person, obvioulsy, nad he just didn’t trust historians who were dealing with his sacred literary texts, didn’t think they knew how to read texts. Of course, in many instances he was right. But on the whole he was a bit sniffy about it.
Ah yes,Mr.C.S. Lewis is truly revered in churches as a demi-god or close as you mentioned Bart.I think there has been at times more Lewis’s quotes used in the Sunday service of some churches I’ve attended than actually gospel quotes. My guess is that he became very popular (or idolized) in Christianity because,like Paul (hater to lover),converted after some thirty years as an Atheist to believer.These kind of moves are most often revered in churches as concrete undertakings by individuals to validate their belief.In about the sixth paragraph of this blog,you mention about morality,as Lewis claims is from a moral creator,whereas you differ.I was recently listening to philosopher Peter Singer,having a debate with Andy Bannister.Singer sort of surprised me,as an atheist,I admired his candor very much,that he was willing to concede that there are some values that exist outside of our choosing but not a purpose for life.He was prepared to say that but not attribute that to a God.If I may Bart ask you two questions.One,would you agree with this assessment,that some good values may exist outside of our choosing?And two,in your experience as both Pastor and let’s just say non-believer,is it easier to go from non-belief to belief or vice versa?Thanks as always.By the way,that debate is from Nov.2/2018 on,”Unbelievable”,with Justin Brierling.Good debate.
Hi Bart,just curious as to why you chose not to answer my two questions.
Ah, mainly because I was speed reading and didn’t realize you were asking them. A bit much too speed! 1. Absolutely; some of the best things that have happened to me have been outside my choosing, and many of the things I value the most would be seriously compromised if I actually did everything I chose all the time. 2. In my experience it is FAR more common to go from belief to unbelief. I’m not sure how to answer which is easier. In some ways the peace of mind that comes with adopting faith is easier; in some ways jut giving it all up is easier. In some ways moving to faith can have serious social repercussions and so is hard; in some ways the social repercussions make life easier, and it entails far less of an agonizing struggle. For some people.
Just in my personal experience, it is not all that easy to go from belief, especially the one you were raised in, to unbelief. I went through it in several stages, as I dug more and more into the innards, shall we say, of Judaism.
Among other things, belief (or at least the tradition) functions as a kind of comfort food. It’s familiar, it takes you back to childhood. In the absence of belief, we look for something to fill that void. If we are honest with ourselves, we come to realize that we can only fill that void from within. And that may be the hardest work of all.
(I’m still working some of this out – obviously – and didn’t mean to use your blog as a sounding board. But now that I’ve done so, I’d welcome your thoughts on this.)
Thanks for sharing your view.I don’t have a deep tradition as you may have had,so I find my skepticism rooted in questions that have difficult answers or no answers at all.I find it difficult to accept on being told what to believe and how to believe it.Pastors or Priests or Ministers are usually regarded by their congregations as some type of a special seer or prophet who is closer to God than most people.It sounds like an authoritative assumption.It may be, I’m not sure.But yes,as you have mentioned,it is very difficult to overcome.There is an intrinsic good when faith or a belief is applied to our lives.I would think even Prof.Ehrman would agree.I am also not sure where that good value stems from outside of our choosing and whether it is important to know that answer or not.I continue to search wherever it takes me.I love open dialogue about our existence.By no means am I a fundamentalist of any kind.
Thanks for your thoughtful answers.In your view, I am curious very much as you have been influential in my life because of your personal stories and on suffering…..Where do they come from,or what causes, do you believe, those outside of our control choices that sometimes bewilder us?I know you do not believe in a living God,so that is ruled out.(For you)
Thanks for sharing the poem – I’d never read it before. I think what he is saying bears some weight and reflection, however. The question of whether our lives have any purpose ultimately has to be answered by each of us personally, but it is also probably true in the ultimate “Platonic” sense that either everything has a purpose, or nothing does. I have no evidence (and there couldn’t ever be, in the scientific sense) – just a feeling – that the former actually obtains. The deeper we probe into the mechanics of the universe, the more we are led to the profound possibility that the ultimate “stuff” of the universe is information, and one can’t even define what information is apart from the concept of *meaning*. Again, just a personal feeling, but I suspect the ultimate stuff of reality may be closer to thoughts and feelings than to atoms and molecules.
1. My favorite C.S. Lewis book is “A grief Observed” where Lewis movingly writes about his marriage to Joy Gresham and her subsequent death.
2. With regard to the famous trilemma of Lord, Lunatic, or Liar, I would add a fourth “L,” namely a lot Legendary.
3. With regard to your work on the Heaven and Hell book, “The Great Divorce” by Lewis describes residents of Hell taking a bus trip to Heaven and then deciding whether or not they want to stay in heaven.
Yes, it was an influential book on me. And not really about heaven and hell!
Our suffering comes from dancing with the Devil because he is a lousy dancer. When we get sick of suffering and then choose to dance with God the healing begins. This requires repentance in prayer which is the true apologetics and then probably be born again in baptism with a renewed Spirit- the Spirit of wisdom and insight, of counsel and power, of knowledge and piety and the fear of God. It is then that we can produce the good fruit of the Spirit which is peace, love, joy and generosity to name a few.
Professor did you read The Screwtape letters? Related to this, and If not an indiscretion on my part,
may I enquire what your view on the devil is existentially and scholarly?
About ten times. My own views? I don’t believe there is a devil or actual supernatural cosmic forces in the world. I think Lewis’s understanding of evil is completely wrong.
Thank you!
Orthodox Christian that I am, I not only appreciate your thoughtful assessment of Lewis, but fully agree with your criticisms of his theodicy and his grounding of morality. I plan to read your article at our next Lewis Society meeting and get their reactions.
Wow! Thanks for sharing.
Many thanks! I have read and appreciated CS Lewis for many years but did not know this poem.
But who is the ‘Oxford-trained philosophy professor (who was also a Christian theologian)’ ?
Best wishes, Andrew.
Diogenes Allen. Scary smart person.
Yes, and very interesting. I see he was an important interpreter of Simone Weil (described by Camus as ‘the only great spirit of our time’). Did you ever find her interesting?
Yes indeed, she was amazing. He had us read “Intimations of Christianity among the Greeks.” I later learned more about her. As I recall, she placed ahead of Simone de Beauvoir in her class at the Sarbonne. Them’s some significant credentials.
Distinguished Sir,
Have you read Theology for the troubled believer by Diogenes Allen? Any thoughts?
Thank you kindly.
I don’t think I have!
Off topic q: The PA in John tells us Ch7 & 8 take place on consecutive days where Ch7 ends on the last day of the Festival of Tabernacles. Ch8 would therefore take place on 24th of the 7th month. The parallels with Nehemiah 9, which also takes place are 24th are impossible to ignore. Neh “By day you led them with a pillar of cloud, and by night with a pillar of fire to give them light on the way they were to take.” John “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” Neh “They sinned against your ordinances, of which you said, ‘The person who obeys them will live by them.” John “Truly, truly, I say to you, if any one keeps my word, he will never see death” etc etc.
Neh 9:11 “you *threw* their pursuers into the depths, like a *stone* into mighty waters.” John 8:7 “Let him who is without sin *throw* the first *stone*“.
Doesn’t this show that the parallels must be intentional and therefore the PA must have been original to John’s gospel? as without it Ch 8 doesn’t take place on the 24th?
I don’t understand. Why couldn’t someone who inserted the story in the Gospel have created the parallels? Ch. 8 could just happen the next day. As you know, stories in the Gospels are not recounted on a day by day basis.
The parallels to Nehemiah are there throughout Ch8, both in and outside of the PA, and are led up to in Ch7. John 7:37, Neh 9:20
Ch8 is intentionally happening the next day and when the action is intentionally the next day the author tells us : John 1:29, John 1:35, John 1:43, John 12:12, John 18:28
If the PA is added later, this scribe not only wants to add in a story he likes to the gospels, he also takes the opportunity to explicitly state Ch7 and Ch8 are on consecutive days. But this would be a concern of the original writer not a later one (the PA could be placed anywhere).
This scribe has also attempted to seamlessly introduce the PA by including parallels to Nehemiah 9 within it. At the very least it shows the claim that the PA disrupts the narrative flow to be completely wrong.
I don’t see why a later scribe might think this would make good sense as a place to put the story. In any event, the reasons for thinking it’s not original to John are completely overwhelming. I realized this already as a very deeply conservative evangelical who believed in the inerrancy of Scripture. If you don’t know the evidence, there is certainly a ton written on it, by jsut about everyone who writes on John, except King-James-only-fundamentalists.
If the possibility of the PA being removed from John by early christians is accepted then the evidence against it ceases to be overwhelming.
Neh 9 says the Israelites “stood and confessed their sins”; “stood up in their place and read from the book of the law”; “stood upon the stairs of levites”.
In the PA, Jesus “sat down to teach them”; “Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground”; “once more he bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground”.
The point of the festival of tabernacles was so that the “descendants will know that I had the Israelites live in temporary shelters when I brought them out of Egypt”. Neh 8:11 “thou didst divide the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea on dry land; and thou didst cast their pursuers into the depths, as a stone into mighty waters.”
The adulteress is placed in the midst of crowd but her pursuers are unable to cast stones. The KJV makes the same connection at the end of John 8:59 “Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.”
There’s no where else the PA could go, it fits like a glove.
I’d suggest you read the scholarship on it. If you want recommendations, let me know. But in order to counter a view, you need to know the arguments. In this case, I don’t know of a single textual expert who thinks otherwise.
Do you know of anyone who deals with tha parallels to Nehemiah 9?
Not off hand. You might contact Jennifer Knust or Chris Keith, both of whom have written recent books on the passage (not whether it belongs in or not, since no one thinks it does, but on many, many other issues connected with it)
thanks – sorry to keep posting on this but just one last one.
πᾶς ὁ λαός often considered a Lukanism appears 5 times in Nehemiah 8. In Nehemiah all the people gather to hear Ezra teach the law, in PA they gather to hear Jesus teach it.
γραμματεῖς, ὄρος τῶν ἐλαιῶν, γαζοφυλακίῳ, σπέρμα, Αβραμ, all appearing either in PA or John 8 and nowhere else in the gospel but appearing also in Neh 8,9,10
So we would have the vocabulary of both PA and John 8 changing from rest of John to match Nehemiah.
The desire for pain from God stands in contrast to the guest post you recently had where the early martyrs miraculously felt no pain.
Yup. Different theologies!
I’m not sure it’s necessary to edit a poem when reciting it, Bart. (Particularly not such a short one). I think people understand it’s the poet’s view you’re expressing, not yours. This is how Lewis felt, and it’s important to respect that. Pretty clear from context he’s thanking God for the pain he believes has helped him grow as a person, not for global suffering. (Which is, let’s admit, mainly caused by us.) He’s talking about spiritual pain, as you must know, not plagues and earthquakes. (I find it interesting that the humans furthest away from pain are the ones most likely to lose faith in God, while those most afflicted are generally the closest.)
A life without pain isn’t a full life, and nobody who hasn’t suffered ever develops any real self-understanding–or empathy for the suffering of others. Doesn’t mean we have to stand around saying “Thank you sir, may I have another?” Masochism is no virtue, but neither is self-pity. Self-understanding is what Lewis is seeking here. And we place so many obstacles between our minds and our souls. Seeking God is, or ought to be, a way of seeking out the best and truest version of yourself. But it can very easily turn into yet another detour. And it’s in the wreckage of yet another collapsed bridge that we may find the path we seek.
To make my point a little more clear, I long ago memorized Shakespeares Sonnet 73. I’m going to type it from memory now (I swear to God).
That time of year thou may’st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none or few do hang
Upon these boughs that shake against the cold
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang
In me thou sees’t the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west
Which by and by black night doth steal away
Death’s second self that seals up all in rest
In me thou sees’t the glowing of such fire
As on the ashes of his youth doth lie
As the deathbed on which it must expire
Consumed by that which it was nourished by
This though perceives’t, which makes thy love more strong
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.
(Let me check–damn, I always say ‘consumed by’ instead of ‘consumed with.’)
But my point is this–lots of people might say “That’s beautiful, but I don’t believe we need old age and mortality in order to love deeply that which we all know we must someday lose. I’m just going to edit the envoi out if I recite it. Never mind if that makes the sonnet two lines short, and throws the rhythm off.”
Shakespeare did believe that, at least when he wrote these lines, and this is HIS truth. Respect it. And consider the very real possibility he was right. And so might Lewis have been. Poetry isn’t philosophy. It’s about expressing things we can’t access any other way.
I’m happy to recite Lewis’s version to explain Lewis’s views. But if I’m applying the poem to myself, I leave out the last two lines.
Because the last two lines are where he states that his crisis of faith has led to stronger faith. And it didn’t work out that way with you. Understood. (I can only see this through a glass darkly, because I was never that devout to start with).
Has any person of faith–in all history–ever NOT had a crisis of faith? You can see them going on in the Old Testament. Nothing new. What’s new is that we live longer, and have more distractions. Well, some of us.
Another quote of Lewis is “good Christians are sometimes mistaken for great theologians”.
And ain’t that the truth.
I start every day by doing something completely self-centered – I eat breakfast.
Better than eating a plate of nachos!
That is very raw and lovely. I have the same reservations about Lewis and also love him.
What do you think of the theory that Judas Iscariot was cursed by God and became the first vampire? That’s why he’s sensitive to silver (the silver coins), the cross (betraying Jesus), and daylight (the light of God).
Ha! Well…
I think that most of the pain we experience is caused by ourselves. There is also the seemingly unavoidable pain that appears to be a part of our existence which makes me want to question God. It is hard to accept why God could not create life without pain. It seems easier to accept that in an existence not created by God, pain makes more sense. Because pain affects us directly, I tend to think that I should be qualified to judge it as unnecessary and within my very ability to judge. Of course that is probably not true, no more true than my actual ability to judge the validity of the Big Bang Theory. I make do with the belief and hope that pain is ultimately a temporary phenomenon which will accompany the existence of life for preferably not the entire journey. The last two lines of the poem represent to me a kind of submissive humility that recognizes that one who really wants to know only the truth is not purporting the burden of thinking for God or, (additionally for me considering also the possibility that there is no God,) declaring that existence could be possible without pain.
Yes, I’d say a lot of my own harships are self-inflicted. But not the worse ones. And I certainly don’t think most of the pain in the world is like the small-time stuff I ahve to deal with….
I view C.S. Lewis as someone who was so smart in diverse fields that his cursory endeavor in one of those fields was better than most people’s entire lives’ devotions. Again, in my opinion, all his children books don’t stack up against JRR Tolkien’s Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, from which he got ideas (or copied, dare I say?) of his own children books.
I completely agree: Tolkien is amazing (well, after the Hobbit). But I wouldn’t say Lewis got his ideas from him. They were very good friends and working at the same time, no?
He must have written this poem after he met and experienced the pain of losing a loved one (that American widowed woman). That movie with Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger was interesting.
Yes, I thnk that’s wrige.
I’ve maintained an interest in C.S. Lewis as a philosopher since my college graduation with a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in philosophy, and my years as a J.B. Duke Fellow in philosophy at Duke University. His book The Abolition of Man and his essay “The Poison of Subjectivism” are among works that I’ve returned to frequently over the past decades.
Lewis’s triple firsts at Oxford included Greats, the study of philosophy and ancient history. His tutor in philosophy was the distinguished moral philosopher E.F. Carritt. Lewis served as a tutor in philosophy during the 1924 academic year during Carritt’s study leave. So he meets reasonable criteria as a professional philosopher.
More importantly, he encountered a number of major figures in philosophy during his career, many at the Oxford Socratic Club over which he presided for 12 years. He famously debated G.E.M. Anscombe about his thesis that naturalism is self-refuting. Ms. Anscombe seems to have gotten the better of Lewis that night, but her comments afterward show nothing but respect for his abilities as a thinker and debater. There are widely respected professional philosophers today who continue to defend versions of Lewis’s argument against naturalism.
Other philosophers of note whom Lewis debated include A.J. Ayer, Gilbert Ryle, Antony Flew, C.E.M. Joad, and Frederick Copleston.
It’s an unfortunate tendency of our age to regard polymaths and generalists as “amateurs” (in the pejorative sense) in any particular discipline in which they engage. Add to that another unfortunate tendency, a prejudice against any academic who stoops to address a non-academic audience in his or her writing.
Lewis is among the greatest of polymaths, generalists, and popular writers of the 20th century, and he and his work have often suffered diminished academic regard accordingly. I’m sure both that he was aware of the trade-off, and that he accepted it willingly and gracefully.
Thanks. My impression was that he had focused on ancient philosophy — which a number of us have done (Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Lucretius, Epitetus, etc.), without being actually trained in philosophy. So it looks like I’m wrong about that? (I also know lots of philosophers, and have enaged with them — same withe literary theorists; but I’m not trained in the field(s) ). But I’m happy to know better: did he actually study modern philosophy, or was it the ancients?
I think you’re right: Lewis’s training at Oxford was primarily in ancient thought. He engaged in a substantial way with his philosophical contemporaries, including some of the rising generation of logical positivists and analytical philosophers, but he wasn’t one of them. Carritt and the university had enough confidence in his knowledge and abilities to appoint him to fill in as a tutor in philosophy for a year early on, but Lewis’s wide interests took him in other directions.
When I was at Duke, I had to take ancient philosophy as part of the doctoral program. Ed Mahoney, the ancient and medieval guy in the department, certainly thought of himself as a professional philosopher. He used to get on me out of his (misguided!) impression that I had insufficient respect for ancient philosophy as real philosophy. That kind of sensitivity points to divisions in the typical Anglo-American philosophy department of the second half of the 20th century, with ancient philosophy toward one end of the spectrum and contemporary logic, epistemology, and metaphysics at the other end.
I’m just not sure how well the values behind that spectrum hold up. Looking back on some of the endless silliness that took place in our metaphysics and epistemology seminars about finding necessary and sufficient criteria for something to count as something and the quest for the counter-example to knock it all down, I think the weight of the evidence leans heavily toward Plato, Aristotle, and their ancient compadres as the true practitioners of “real” philosophy.
While Lewis’s career did make a brief stop in professional philosophy, it’s fine to call him an amateur in the original sense of the word, someone who engages in an activity out of love for it. But he wasn’t amateurish, as he’s sometimes portrayed. Anyone who stands up to Ms. Anscombe in public debate on a hardcore philosophical question (Is naturalism self-refuting?), whether he prevailed or not, deserves the respect of all philosophers, whether amateur or professional.
I took Allen’s Love class at PTS…scary smart indeed!
Reading through the comments I’m tempted to ask if you’ve seen Shadowlands. . .
(Just a little tongue-and-cheek here, not wanting to sound too judgemental lol)
Yup, loved it. Just couldn’t recall it’s name at the moment.
Pedantic note: “Out of the Silent Planet” was the first of the interplanetary trilogy, then “Perelandra”, then the book to which I think you were actually referring, “That Hideous Strength”. First one goes to Mars, second to Venus, third to the most bizarre world of all, British academia. Oh, and since “Shadowlands” came up, I’m going to mention the original television play with Josh Ackland (who looks more like Lewis, though Hopkins is certainly more handsome) and Claire Bloom. Joy Lewis, I think, was something like the Yoko Ono of the Inklings. Lewis loved her, but the rest found her hard to accept. She once said something like that she was too American, too female, too Jewish, and too smart for them to like her, and she may have been right.
Sorry — I meant That Hideous Strength, of course! Not a pedantic correction at all..
My views on CS Lewis are somewhat of the reverse of yours. As an undergrad I read his work and thought he is not defending any of his conclusions in a rigorous way! But as I got older and read more philosophy I realized his intuitions conclusions were correct and indeed time has looked favorably on them.
You say:
“I think that on most issues of importance to me he is dead wrong, on everything from the question of where “morality” comes from (Hey! You can’t explain it without positing a moral creator who gave it to us! Uh, really???);, or about his opposition to critical biblical scholarship; or about the decline of “objectivity””
He had many views about how belief in God is necessary for consistent belief in objectively real morality. Early on undergrads will hear of the Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma and say he was wrong. And many atheists will try to argue there are “all sorts of ways” to preserve morality without God.
But you seem to put weight in expert opinions so I wonder if you would agree this: If he was correct we should see a statistical correlation between expert philosophers who are atheists and a rejection of objective moral realism as compared with theistic philosophers. Likewise if he was wrong and rejecting God really has no impact on belief in objectively real morality we would not see a difference of views between theists and atheists who are professional philosophers on this issue.
In other words at first glance you may be able to hold on to objective morality without God but as it turns out when you really think this through it ends up being quite difficult for the majority of atheist philosophers. Some try such as Russ Schafer-Landau. But by and large CS Lewis was correct. When you do away with God objective morality is likely going down as well. The data is proving Lewis correct.
Yes, I don’t think there is such a thing as “objective” morality. It is all in how we *relate* to other people and things, so that it is relational and dependent on a huge number of circumstances, not set in stone.
Objective realists can agree that morality is relational and dependent on circumstances. What separates the moral relativist from the objective realist in the philosophical/metaethical sense is that the objective realist would think that for any given action (including all the circumstances surrounding it) that action’s morality is an objective fact which wont change based on the view of a person or a group.
So it is an “objectively real” fact that the earth orbits the sun. The truth of this is not dependent on any person or group’s view of the matter.
Similarly if taking grain from a starving Ukrainian during the holodomor was wrong it was wrong, regardless of whether any person or group thought it was wrong. At least if you are an objective realist about morality.
Relativists don’t think morality has objective facts like that. For them immorality is defined by a certain person’s or group’s view of the matter. In other words we make up what is good and evil it is not an objective fact.
I did a short blog where I try to outline the basic metaethical positions as defined in the field of philosophy.
https://trueandreasonable.co/2014/01/20/what-do-you-mean-im-wrong/
I talk about how relativism /subjectivism is different than just considering the circumstance or mental state of a person here:
https://trueandreasonable.co/2018/11/12/mens-rea-and-moral-realism/
If you would rather be introduced to the basic distinctions by a professional philosopher I highly recommend Russ Shafer-Landau’s “Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?”. This is the most accessible book I know that introduces the field of metaethics. Metaethics touches on many philosophical issues and the terminology is often ambiguous. So even an introductory book like “Metaethics an introduction” by Andrew Fischer may be a slow and unproductive read without a professor to help. But after reading “Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?” the topics should be more familiar and accessible. It can take some time but I think learning about metaethics has been one of the most rewarding and enlightening fields of study I have engaged in.
Yes, I know full well it’s a complicated field. My view in the very hopelessly brief statement is that there are no “objective” criteria that can be used to evaluate every conceivable human action in every conceivable context into the binary of “right” or “wrong.”
It is fairly complicated with quite a few concepts that can be ambiguous. But to understand what CS Lewis is saying you have to clearly understand some of the concepts. The issue is not whether we can take the same criteria and apply them to different situations and contexts. The issue is whether the same exact circumstances and contexts can yield contradictory rulings on morality.
I think a good way to think of objective versus relativist in morality is to compare it to foods. I don’t like cilantro. My wife does. So we can be talking about the same exact leaf of cilantro and she can say it is good.. I would say it is not good. Now as a relativist about tastes in food I would say we can both be making a true statement. If I were an objectivist about taste in food then I would say one of us must be wrong because the exact same leaf of cilantro can’t be good and not good. But I think whether something tastes good or bad is up to the person doing the judging/tasting. Even if it is the exact same piece of food.
But I am not a relativist about morality. So if you take the same exact action with all the surrounding circumstances and context I think the action is either moral or it is not moral.
In taste in food I think you can correctly have different rulings for the exact same food. For morality I don’t think that is correct. Something is not moral/immoral because I believe it is or because I hold a certain view of it. My views of the issue do not define whether it is good or bad as it does with taste in food. Relativists disagree. They essentially think that our views define what is good.
They think the morality of something is dependent on the mind of the person doing the judging.
Losing real morality in this way causes all sorts of problems for common sense views of morality. For example moral progress and real justice become illusory. For me dispensing with notions of real justice did not seem rational. So I held on to the view of real morality.
I was always more of a fan of his book “The Discarded Image” which is non-fiction. I first heard of it when I was reading Christians make comments about how controversial the last two paragraphs are in the epilogue.
I recommend at least searching a pdf of the book and skipping to that if you’re not interested in medieval literature.