C.S. Lewis the Theologian
March 9, 2007
by Michael
C.S. Lewis was the first “intellectual” writer I read. From the time I learned to read I did so voraciously, but of course I read mostly children’s books. A friend put me onto the Narnia series when I was eight or so and I thought they were great; I read them many times. As I did with most writers I liked I went in search of other books by him, and lo and behold, I found a bunch of books for adults. That wasn’t going to stop me! I devoured all the ones I found. The chronology is somewhat hazy in my memory, but certain clear milestones make it certain that I had read Mere Christianity by fifth grade and the Space Trilogy by sixth grade.
These books were my first introduction, more or less, to philosophical and theological issues, and the fact that I happened to come upon them when I did ended up determining much of the course of my intellectual life—and, therefore, of my life. I was brought up in vague low-church Pentacostalism-leaning Protestantism in an ignorant and uneducated family, and C.S. Lewis presented a picture of the world, and of Christianity, that was reasoned and reasonable, dealing with issues like the existence of God, the nature of the Trinity, the moral life, the question of evil, the relation of reason and faith, Scripture and Tradition, and so forth. I met the acquaintance of many problems and issues which have occupied me ever since through Lewis’ solutions and reflections.
So, as for many Christians, throughout most of my teen years Lewis was my guide through the sticky intellectual swamps of the modern world. As my reading expanded I found that many of the issues I met with had already been addressed in his books, and I encountered a lot of things forearmed.
In several of his books Lewis made statements that for a long time seemed to me excessively modest or disingenuous. For instance, in the preface to The Problem of Pain he wrote, “If any real theologian reads these pages he will very easily see that they are the work of a layman and an amateur … . Any theologian will see what, and how little, I have read.” These sorts of disclaimers bemused and surprised me because in any debate my books had among themselves Lewis always seemed to be the more reasonable, intelligent, and erudite participant.
For a while.
But then as I got older the tables started to turn strangely. I began encountering Lewis’ arguments in different forms in older books. Often enough these books were much longer and more subtle than his own treatments. I began to see that he dealt with his subjects in a cursory and introductory way, and that there were mountains of possible inquiry lying underneath—just as he’d admitted, of course. But as I finished high school, went into college, went through graduate school, I started becoming a real philosopher and on the way something of a theologian too, and Lewis’ place in the intellectual hierarchy slowly but steadily fell in my mind. I did indeed start to see what, and how little, he had read: some Plato and Aristotle (but so terribly deeply), a few of the Fathers, Boethius, what philosophy seeped into medieval literature (there’s a lot in people like Chaucer and Dante, but I see no evidence that he actually read any medieval theologians themselves), a number of “classical” Anglican divines of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Chesterton. As the years went by I read most of these books too (with the exception of most of the Anglican ones), and began to pile on lists of my own, my interests taking me far beyond what Lewis ever dealt with. After great piles of the Fathers, systematic theologies of various kinds from the twentieth century, historical and dogmatic surveys, but most of all thousands upon thousands of pages of the greats, Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Scotus—at some point, I realized, I had become more of a theologian than C.S. Lewis!
This is always a strange sort of feeling to have. People do grow out of books and authors, but never, at least in my case, without a feeling of regret (I’ll never achieve again the particular wonder and excitement Stephen R. Lawhead’s books gave me, not since I realized that they suck). In this case, though, it’s not a matter of leaving the author behind but of realizing his true worth. Lewis never claimed to be original or especially profound, and said so. I just had a hard time believing him because he was original and profound to me. But he’s still an excellect writer, with a fine and unique prose style, and a way of presenting arguments on the most important subjects both accessibly and substantively. He may be less original (and perhaps even less of a writer) than Chesterton, from whom he took a great deal, or than Boethius. But his books have particular use and value which thiers do not. It’s just that, once one has read the Great Books in a given field, one’s First Books—which seemed so great at the time—often have to take a step or two down into their rightful place.
Comments
On March 9 at 1'27 PM
, Will Vaus wrote:
You might be interested in my evaluation of C. S. Lewis as a theologian: “Mere Theology: A Guide to the Thought of C. S. Lewis”, published by InterVarsity Press.
On March 21 at 6'00 PM
, Rebekah wrote:
“More of a theologian than C.S. Lewis”, eh? I daresay you have also read more works of theology and hold more advanced degrees than St. Augustine or even St. Thomas — would you say you are more of a theologian than they?
On March 21 at 6'52 PM
, Michael Sullivan wrote:
I daresay you have also read more works of theology and hold more advanced degrees than St. Augustine or even St. Thomas — would you say you are more of a theologian than they?
St Augustine wrote nearly as many theology/biblical commentary books as I’ve read. St Thomas not only held the bachelor’s and master’s degrees, but also the doctorate, at a time when the requirements for all these degrees were much more rigorous and demanding than they are today. Also St Thomas had as comprehensive a mastery of the history of Christian and secular thought up to his own day as was possible at the time—he could quote nearly verbatim the Bible, all the Fathers, Aristotle and the Arab philosophers, and contemporary thinkers, off the top of his head. Also both St Augustine and St Thomas were geniuses as well as saints. So, to answer your question, no.
I don’t want to detract from Lewis, I think he’s in the near-classic range, but the mistake I made when I was young, and that many Protestants in certain circles seem to make, was to take him as a kind of modern-day “Doctor of the Church”, or “Doctor of Mere Christianity” anyway, when his position in Christian thought really doesn’t merit that kind of consideration, as he himself insists in his books. As I pointed out, he admits that he’s usually going in over his head and that his qualifications as a theologian are limited. That doesn’t make his books no good, far from it.
On March 22 at 4'33 AM
, Rebekah wrote:
I have to stick by the point I was attempting to make rhetorically: do you think that reading or writing a certain number of books or having a certain number of degrees is what makes one person more of a theologian than another? Could someone who has read fewer books or held fewer degrees than you imaginably have a greater ability to understand, discuss, and analyze theological truths? What if you wrote ten books but someone else wrote one that was far more penetrating than yours? I don’t really mean to pick on you, or to claim that C.S. Lewis was a great theologian, but I have to admit your claim to be “more of” a theologian than he — especially based on the arguments you present in your post— still really rankles. I mean, maybe you really /are/— but it would take more proof, for me, than listing the books you’ve read.
If C.S. Lewis is, according to you, in “near-classic” range, where are you ranking yourself if you’re more of a theologian? And on what basis?
On March 22 at 7'30 AM
, Michael Sullivan wrote:
Rebekah,
I’ve already said that the value of Lewis’ books is in their literary and rhetorical skill and not in their unique thought. Whereas the claim appearing on the backs of some of my old paperback editions—“The Most Original Theologian of the 20th Century”—is simply not true, and is misleading to people that don’t know any better.
I’m not making any special claim for myself. I’m saying that anyone with more than moderate theological training and education is more of a theologian than anyone with a significantly limited knowledge of the subject. This is just like the “philosopher” argument: you want to make the word mean something deeper than the way I’m using it; the way I’m using it makes the claim trivially true.
In any case the post wasn’t trying to prove or argue anything, but to describe my experience of reading Lewis over a period of years. At first I learned a great deal from him, and then eventually began to discern the limitations of his learning. I don’t see why this is controversial; as I’ve pointed out, he himself rejected all claim to be considered a theologian or any kind of authority. It’s an office that was foisted upon him by others even less familiar with the deep waters of the subject than he was.
On March 22 at 9'11 AM
, Nate wrote:
My experience of this sort of thing is rather different. There are, indeed, limitations to C.S. Lewis’s arguments and ideas—even I can see them, from time to time, and I am not so learned as Mr. Lewis in any of the subjects on which he speaks. Similarly, I have rather grown out of my once-favorite author Ray Bradbury, despite the fact that I am not near the writer he is. Though to write his stories required depths of imagination and understanding that I do not possess, that which I do possess has allowed me to see past a bit too much of his work.
What interests me here is that one’s ability to critique extends far beyond one’s ability to create. One need not claim to be more of a theologian than Lewis to be able to see the limits to Lewis’s theology. I, for instance, can detect considerable differences in quality and subtlety between different works of Immanuel Kant, yet I am nowhere near being the philosopher he is; anything that I might try to create would be rather transparent to people far below me in philosophical education.
As to the argument about the term theologian, again, I find it difficult to fathom why you would use such a term in such a narrow and unimportant sense. Being versed in the texts and tools of historical theologians is only an aid—in the best case—to the actual practice of theology, which is the understanding of the divine. I can think of many possible senses in which Lewis could be said to be a great theologian: I would argue, for instance, that he increased the understanding of God for comparatively uneducated Christians enormously. He answered the sort of simple, fundamental questions that had been keeping thousands of people from the faith.
And, most importantly to me, I think he had a grasp of subtleties of the interaction of the divine with mankind that he owed largely to the strength of his fecund imagination that few more scholarly theologians have ever had. (I would argue, in fact, that those in the Roman Catholic faith have unique and lamentable obstacles to a similar understanding due to the requirement, above all, of catholicity.) Lewis’s attraction to Hindu is, in my opinions, one his most important keys into truths about the Christian God that had been opaque to so many before him.
It doesn’t exactly surprise me that, once again, a key disagreement might come down to what makes Roman Catholicism so essentially true in your eyes and what makes Protestantism so important in mine. I’m often reminded of your comment from a while ago:
It represents, so concisely and precisely, what seems to me to be the foundational epistemological error of not only the Roman Catholic church, but of any human institution that purports to stretch above and beyond the true understanding of any of its corporate members. Science is straining under a similar burden right now, as all of its cells labor so vigorously on a multitude of paths ever farther away from the center, the entirety of it so little accountable to any one human mind.
I certainly do not have any great hope of convincing you on any of these issues, Michael, but your continued display of surprise that the things you say should be controversial indicates to me that we can at the very least educate you about the broad spectrum of opinion regarding the subjects near and dear to you.
On March 22 at 9'30 AM
, Michael Sullivan wrote:
Nate,
you said, I find it difficult to fathom why you would use such a term in such a narrow and unimportant sense.
Because this is also the ordinary sense of the term. The Eastern Orthodox only give two or three people the title of “The Theologian” because of concerns like yours. The medievals thought that Aristotle was uniquely “The Philosopher”. But still they called and call other people philosophers and theologians. You have too if you’re going to be intelligible.
See this little example of a “professional philosopher” using that term casually in just the way people object to here:
http://examinelife.blogspot.com/2007/03/i-get-paid-for-doing-this.html
This is the way the word is used in academia. It has meaning. It’s not vague, ambiguous, or unreasonable. There is a higher meaning of the word, which is recognized and aspired to by people that use the word in its more common sense. Not every instance of academics using a word in a certain sense is bad. But I’m getting sick of this issue.
What I find somewhat bitterly amusing is how you can on the one hand castigate me for using terms like “philosopher” or “theologian” in ways you object to, and then turn around and say It represents, so concisely and precisely, what seems to me to be the foundational epistemological error of not only the Roman Catholic church … .
You have every right to judge the oldest and largest institution on the planet, the source and transmitter of a huge portion of the western tradition, and mother and nurturer of many of its greatest thinkers, of having committed a foundational epistemological error. But when you do so you’re setting yourself up as a philosopher and theologian and making for yourself claims of much greater scope than any that I’ve made.
On March 22 at 9'46 AM
, patrick findler wrote:
I had a similar experience to Michael’s, for what it’s worth, although I am not a theologian. I grew up in a Protestant/Episcopal environment where C.S. Lewis was quoted very often, second to scripture. I was given his books to read by my parents and their friends when very young, and they had a large part in shaping my mind: I looked on him as an authority. Later, in high school and at St John’s, I encountered in Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and elsewhere arguments I recognized from his works, and I lost a great deal of respect for him in comparing them. However, that was compensated for amply by the more realistic picture I formed of him later on. His gift for putting arguments simply and sharply, his love of engagement with ideas, is well-taken; without it, I doubt I would have ever become the reader I became.
I don’t think it’s disrespectful to credit someone with being a good popularizer while not necessarily being an expert; such a person can be worth many, many experts whose work never reaches outside a small circle. It’s not something everyone can do, and it’s something that needs to be done. Everyone benefits from other people being well-informed on subjects they can’t take the time to master. Especially when, as with Lewis, the popularization is not dumbed-down or condescending (you can feel he’s challenging himself as he challenges you), and the reader’s wit and perception are sharpened by the experience.
On March 22 at 9'49 AM
, patrick findler wrote:
I posted before having read Nate’s and Michael’s exchange, which I will now do. (Monadology-support: is there a possibility to see new comments when previewing your own?)
On March 22 at 9'57 AM
, Nate wrote:
“You have every right to judge the oldest and largest institution on the planet, the source and transmitter of a huge portion of the western tradition, and mother and nurturer of many of its greatest thinkers, of having committed a foundational epistemological error. But when you do so you’re setting yourself up as a philosopher and theologian and making for yourself claims of much greater scope than any that I’ve made.”
This is exactly the problem with your assumptions, Michael. My earlier comments about the differences between our potential to see and to do should shed some light on why I might find your argument here to be so completely off the mark. You set the Roman Catholic church—and yourself, as its apologist—up as the guy at the front of the room saying, “Oh, yeah? You’re saying you can do better?”
(This is the same rhetorical fallacy the Republican party has used in recent years to such deleterious effect. Constantly accusing the Democrats of not having any better ideas presupposes the idea that full-speed-ahead action is unquestionably superior to anything which might give pause. God grant us some leaders who will be willing and able just to check heedless actions!)
Your last paragraph seems to suggest that an organization cannot have accomplished great things while being wrong in a fundamental sense. It also seems to suggest, as I stated before, that a person must presume himself to be equal or greater to the thing he criticizes to discern something incorrect about it.
These fallacies underscore the claim I made in my preceding comment.
On March 22 at 10'00 AM
, Michael Sullivan wrote:
Mr Findler,
I agree with you. Lewis is a great apologist, and it’s meaningful and worthwhile to distinguish this from being a great theologian. There’s a lot of value in making accessible arguments and concepts which one did not discover and to which one has little to add in the way of content. But we should call it what it is.
On March 22 at 10'01 AM
, Nate wrote:
Patrick: Golly. The only application I know of that updates with any new items during a composition is Gmail, and it’s a feature they just updated in the last year. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a blog that does it.
In theory, it’s certainly do-able. It’d just call for a semi-regular AJAX call to the server to check for new messages, then some code to display some sort of message like “Conversation updated with new post from Michael”. As programming goes, this doesn’t sound tremendously difficult. But as programming goes, I’m not a programmer. If anyone knows of any plug-in that might do something like that, or if Martin considers that a deeeeelightful challenge, I’d love to hear about it!
On March 22 at 10'07 AM
, Michael Sullivan wrote:
Nate,
I’m not making the assumptions or taking the stances that you’re crediting me with. All I’m saying is that in order to claim to discern a fundamental error or fallacy at the root of a vast intellectual and religious world, one is ipso facto making philosophical and theological claims and claiming to have the expertise or faculties necesary to make such a claim. And that in itself is a taller order in important respects than to claim to have studied a lot more of something than someone else, and to have a better overall grasp of the field.
This is not me being an apologist for anything. This is me saying that applying the words “philosopher” and “theologian” to myself in certain narrowly-defined senses is less gradiose than what you’re doing, whatever you want to call it.
On March 22 at 10'18 AM
, patrick findler wrote:
Nate: oh no, nothing so elaborate as that. I should have been more clear. I revised my post a couple of times, using the preview feature. Unfortunately, previewing only shows me my comment, and I lose the original thread. Would there be a way for preview to show the full thread at time of preview?
On March 22 at 10'25 AM
, Nate wrote:
Ahhhhhh. Yeah, that’s definitely (probably) feasible. I’ll try to do it sometime soon.
Well, soonish.
On March 22 at 10'33 AM
, hb wrote:
Some quick, possibly productive questions.
Does making a judgment about matters of philosophy or theology ipso facto make one a philosopher or theologian? That’s a premise of Michael’s argument that we might disagree about.
More importantly, is making any judgment about matters of philosophy or theology necessarily grandiose? In some fashion, yes, but then what do students of these subjects do after day one?
On March 22 at 10'52 AM
, hb wrote:
Never mind that first question. I missed Michael’s move away from that explicit claim in his latest comment.
On March 22 at 10'56 AM
, patrick findler wrote:
Michael - apropos your link, it might be fun to discuss sorites paradoxes here. A few years ago I had a good collection of links to papers on the subject, which I’ve unfortunately lost track of. A friend of mine, a co-alumnus (and your “colleague”, a fellow graduate student in philosophy) has a particular interest in them, and he might be provoked to comment, should you post (I don’t think he reads this blog, but he might start, given that provocation). (He also has an interest in the ontological argument, which I’m not sure if you share?)
On March 22 at 11'21 AM
, Jess wrote:
Nate,
Just to be clear: when you say: “the foundational epistemological error of not only the Roman Catholic church, but of any human institution that purports to stretch above and beyond the true understanding of any of its corporate members,” I read the second “any” as meaning any given member, and hence that all members should have an access, via understanding, to an institution’s truths.
That right?
On March 22 at 2'08 PM
, Joseph Method wrote:
I don’t have a horse in this race, being godless, but it seems like Michael is right about the term theologian. Isn’t it, in the weak formulation, “speechifier on god-things”, and in the strong formulation, “studier of God”? Maybe the second sense makes the phrase seem privileged (how can anyone who isn’t semi-divine deign to *study* God?), but secular or atheistic/agnostic theologians would maintain that it can be done. The term theosophist promises much more than theologian does.
On March 22 at 3'39 PM
, Michael Sullivan wrote:
Mr Findler,
I agree that a conversation about Sorites paradoxes around here would be fun. I’ll see what I can do one of these days.
I’m very interested indeed in the ontological argument. In my sophomore Anselm seminar I was apparently the only one who didn’t think the argument was obviously defective and made a nuisance of myself trying to get the class to wonder whether it worked.
I’ve studied in a pretty good amount of depth the permutations the argument takes through Anselm, Thomas (who of course rejects it), Bonaventure, Scotus, and Descartes, and I’m still wondering about it. It’s perhaps the only thing I can’t talk about with my wife without making her cry.
On March 22 at 3'45 PM
, Michael Sullivan wrote:
hb,
studying an issue and making a judgment on an issue seem to be different types of action, and the latter one the higher or “grandiose” (perhaps that was an unfortunate word).
Studying an entire vast tradition and making a judgment on the coherence of that tradition seem like very disproportionate things. A theologian might spend his life doing the former and not feel ready to pronounce on the latter.
Not to say that I don’t think anyone, or any non-expert, could or should make a judgment on such a matter; but if one does one should be conscious of the weight of the judgment, and not do it lightly. So I think it’s easier in good conscience to call oneself a philosopher than to pronounce “Aristotle makes a foundational metaphysical error”. For example.
On March 22 at 3'55 PM
, Michael Sullivan wrote:
Mr Method,
I agree with your assessment (unsurprisingly). I would define a theologian as someone who studies, and perhaps speechifies on, divine matters.
Now if one wants to insist that no one can be a true or an great theologian without humility, charity, prayer, and ascesis in addition to erudition and intellectual power, fine, I agree—as long as everyone recognizes that this is an extension and modification of the term.
On the other hand, when Nate says I can think of many possible senses in which Lewis could be said to be a great theologian: I would argue, for instance, that he increased the understanding of God for comparatively uneducated Christians enormously. He answered the sort of simple, fundamental questions that had been keeping thousands of people from the faith, he’s indicating things that make a great apologist, not a great theologian. But now I’m just repeating myself.
By the way, Nate, I agree with you about Bradbury.
On March 22 at 3'58 PM
, patrick findler wrote:
Goedel wrote a version of the ontological argument as well - the wikipedia article on it is good. I recently read a (not excellent) book on the ontological argument, published last year, in which I was surprised to learn it is actually a semi-hot topic in analytic philosophy, thanks in part to Charles Harshorne, who apparently had the further peculiarity of being a “process” thinker who did not consider himself a Whiteheadian.