Scott Freeman

Back in college I had the occasion to read several of Lewis’ books. My senior year I even took an independent study that focused on three of his works leading to a paper that attempted to synthesize The Problem of Pain, Miracles and A Grief Observed.

I wish I could find that paper and suspect that I could if I looked hard enough. However, I still have the copy I used 18 years ago with my underlinings, highlights, stars and markings throughout.

In reading this 1940 work I realize that I haven’t really picked it up over the last almost two decades. This is the world’s first exposure to Lewis the theologian. And it would contain an apologetic theme that Lewis would continue to come back to.

The core of this book is an attempt to construct an adequate theodicy, the reconciliation of the existence of a loving God with the existence of evil in this world.

What became immediately clear to me as I began to read this work anew is that I no longer held the affinity for it that I did all of those years ago. It did not quite resonate with me as it had as an undergrad.

It’s not that the book is jejune although it does have its spots of tedium. And it’s not that it is poorly written or too elemental. Lewis’ intellect and scholarship are unquestioned. I even agree with his main premise: that God is good. If I did not believe that, I would not believe.

I think the problem exists in a diverging theological path from the one I was on then. At that time I was much more fond of Christian Evidences, believing whole-heartedly that there was an evidentiary magic bullet that would thrust proof into the undeniable spotlight. But I no longer feel that way. The evidence does not always demand a verdict. I share more a view with Kierkegaard that the more probable the evidence for these tenets of faith appear the more improbable they are to believe.

This apathy toward Christian Evidences does not negate the scope of this work. No, ironically, although I don’t have much truck with CE I do feel that grapplings with Theodicy is a worthy and necessary endeavor. For the greatest wrestlings of faith, to me, are those of “why?”

No, I think the problem I have is not in the conclusion that God it is good. It is Lewis’ evasion of other important questions. I repeatedly found myself saying, “yeah, but what about…” throughout his writings.

In his contention that God knows every event there is no reference, even in passing, to the idea of Open Theism. Regardless of it’s validity it’s important enough of a topic that it has to be broached. In addition, I think Lewis falls into the trap that many of us Arminians tend to when we embrace free will: making man’s choice an idol unto itself.

Another tremendous problem I have with the work is the idea that there is no sum of pain, that pain is the same if there is one person suffering as opposed to a million suffering. I disagree. Pain is exponential. Sure, every person matters. As a proponent of a consistent ethic of human life I believe that. But the temptation is to liken my sadness over life’s injustices with those sufferings in the Holocaust or Rwanda. I’d be interested to know if Lewis ever readdressed that idea.

I don’t think that Lewis would make the claim that his conclusions are satisfactory. Instead they invite more questions. Those questions are more profoundly dealt with in his later work, A Grief Observed. Alas, we have 21 years before Lewis will release that journal that truly deals with the problem of pain.

Again, I agree with Lewis in his conclusion that God is good. What that means for us leads me and Lewis to different conclusions. Nowhere is that more evidenced in his chapter on hell. While I would opt for a more nuanced and fleshed out doctrine of hell, Lewis offers up a much more orthodox take. Here, ultimately, is where we diverge.

The Problem of Pain is a worthwhile read. However, I now deem its benefit as understanding a great thinker’s take on the subject rather than a definitive work. Grade: B-

Now we are getting somewhere. Lewis’ fifth published work is the first novel in his Space Trilogy. Released in 1938 readers would have to wait 6 and 8 years respectively for the final two installments.

In the book, Ransom is on a walking tour through the English landscape. He is abducted and taken to the planet Malacandra (Mars). Escaping from the clutches of his captors, Ransom is able to spend time with the life forms on this planet.

I hesitate to say too much about the content of the book because I encourage all of those who have not read it to pick it up. It is a slight book that can be read easily in an evening.

Suffice it to say that as Ransom spends time on Malacandra he learns much about not only this alien planet but his own as well. He learns that Earth is referred to as Thulcandra or “The Silent Planet.” Earth is silent to the other planets because the lord of Thulcandra had become “bent” or “evil.” The evil lord of Thulcandra then turned his sights on other planets. To protect the other planets the Maleldil had bound him to his own planet. In a hat-tip to the incarnation we are told that Maleldil “dared terrible things, wrestling with the Bent One in Thulcandra.”

One of the major themes of this work is the danger of making Science an idol. Lewis does not attack Science in and of itself. Instead, the danger is allowing the pursuit of Science become an end unto itself. The attempts to propagate the human race despite the cost that it wreaks upon others is an ultimate evil.

In the stunning exchange that brings the novel to its climax we see a chilling reminder of the dangers of expansionism and man’s blood-thirst for supremacy. Penned 70 years ago it would almost seem to be plucked out of some contemporary mouths. It even seems similar to what has been said recently by people in power:

To you I may seem a vulgar robber, but I bear on my shoulders the destiny of the human race. Your tribal life with its stone-age weapons and bee-hive huts, its primitive coracles and elementary social structure, has nothing to compare with our civilization–with our science, medicine and law, our armies, our architecture, our commerce, and our transport system which is rapidly annihilating space and time. Our right to supersede you is the right of the higher over the lower (emphasis added).

All in all, it is a penetrating and engrossing read that has contemporary applications for us. Genocide, war, and wanton destruction of others, regardless of their status, level or location is a hallmark of our “bent-ness.”

It’s interesting that when this book was first released many readers were confused and unsure of what the meaning was. The meaning, to me, is all too clear in this day and age.

Grade: A

Reading through C.S. Lewis chronologically immediately brings some obvious truths to the fore: not all of his works were meant to be read by a general audience. Walter Hooper in his definitive account of the life and works of Lewis does not even include some of these as individual entries. Over the past several days I have endeavored to read three of those books with somewhat mixed results.

The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition

In this 1936 work Lewis sets out to discuss the allegory and its rise beginning in 12th century popular literature. The first two chapters were surprisingly fascinating reads. In chapter one Lewis recounts the appearance of courtly love in literary circles.

This courtly love, according to Lewis, was characterized by four elements: Humility, Courtesy, Adultery and the Religion of Love. His argument, a forceful one, was that courtly love and its emergence on the scene was a revolution in literature that ultimately would dwarf even the Renaissance.

Prior to this advent of courtly love there was *no* romantic passion that was a mark of literature. Patriarchal society would preclude such self-sacrifice. In addition, when passion was viewed as a sin then even the consummation of marital bonds was considered to be evil.

In chapter two he recounts a similar rise in the utilization of allegory. In chapter 3 I was able to hang on as he gives a brilliant synopsis of The Romance of The Rose, his telling likely more riveting than the original poem. I struggled through his take on Chaucer, barely following him as he justified omitting The Canterbury Tales from his discussion.

As he weaved on through the rest of Medieval tradition I about pulled my hair out. Most frustrating of all were his frequent lapses into Greek and Latin without so much as an interpretive footnote.

Again, the first two chapters were highly informative but I was not part of his target audience for this. However, it is an important book in his canon when you consider the large role that allegory plays into his work. If you are into Literary Criticism then you might give it an A. As for me, it ekes out a C.

Lewis’ next work would appear two years later as Out of the Silent Planet. I will discuss that book in a separate entry.

Lewis would release two books in 1939 both considered minor works within his collection. As a result I will give them simply a passing mention.

Rehabilitations and Other Essays is largely a further excursion into literary criticism. The first two essays are a defense of Shelley and William Morris, two Romantic poets. He then moves into two essays defending the curriculum at Oxford. More interesting was his take on low-brow literature in chapter 5 which gave me a bit of comfort for some of my literary tastes. The best passage, however, was in his ninth and final essay on Christianity and Literature and is certainly a prophetic denouncement of the current Christian marketplace:

We are familiar, no doubt, with the expression ‘Christian Art,’ by which people usually mean Art that represents Biblical or hagiological scenes, and there is, in this sense, a fair amount of ‘Christian Literature.’ But I question whether it has any literary qualities peculiar to itself. The rules for writing a good passion play or a good devotional lyric are simply the rules for writing tragedy or lyric in general: success in sacred literature depends on the same qualities of structure, suspense, variety, diction, and the like which secure success in secular literature. And if we enlarge the idea of Christian Literature to include not only literature on sacred themes but all that is written by Christians for Christians to read, then, I think, Christian Literature can exist only in the same sense in which Christian cookery might exist. It would be possible, and it might be edifying, to write a Christian cookery book. Such a book would exclude dishes whose preparation involves unnecessary human labour or animal suffering, and dishes excessively luxurious. But there could be nothing specifically Christian about the actually cooking of the dishes included. Boiling an egg is the same process whether you are a Christian or a Pagan. In the same way, literature written by Christians for Christians would have to avoid mendacity, cruelty, blasphemy, pornography and the like, and it would aim at edification in so far as edification was proper to the kind of work in hand. But whatever it chose to do would have to be done by the means common to all literature; it could succeed or fail only by the same excellences and faults as all literature; and its literary success or failure would never be the same thing as its obedience or disobedience to Christian principles.

The Personal Heresy: A Controversy is a series of essays written back and forth between Lewis and E.M.W. Tillyard over a poet’s state of mind. If that sounds mind-numbingly boring, rest assured that it is. Lewis disagreed with Tillyard’s contention that it is the poet’s state of mind that counts in understanding the heart of poetry. To Lewis, the poet in not within the poem itself. They argue that.

Luckily, the next step in Lewis’ career will continue his prolific period of great works which had begun the previous year with the first entry in his Science Fiction trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet. But that is a different entry.

After his two poem’s Lewis would not have another work published until after his conversion.

The Pilgrim’s Regress would make the literary debut of Lewis as Christian writer and would display his greatest style of writing: allegory.

Written as his own re-visioning of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress this would would follow the protagonist, John, through his journey to faith.

Many have criticized this work as being needlessly obscure but if you have had any background in legalistic religious environments and philosophy then you will find a delightful read. I found out after the fact that some publications of the work have helpful headers that will help the reader to make the necessary allegorical connections. Alas, mine did not. However, I did not struggle too much as many of the names are usually straight-forward.

John is born in the land of Puritania, a strict environment set on following “the rules” instigated by “The Landlord.”

The Steward said, ‘Now I am going to talk to you about the Landlord. The Landlord owns all the country, and it is very, very kind of him to allow us to live on it at all– very, very kind.’ He went on repeating ‘very kind’ in a queer sing-song voice so long that John would have laughed, but that now he was beginning to be frightened again. The Steward then took down from a peg a big card with small print all over it, and said, ‘Here is a list of all the things the Landlord says you must not do. You’d better look at it.’ So John took the card: but half the rules seemed to forbid things he had never heard of, and the other half forbade things he was doing every day and could not imagine not doing: and the number of the rules was so enormous that he felt he could never remember them all. ‘I hope,’ said the Steward, ‘that you have not already broken any of the rules?… Because, you know, if you did break any of them and the Landlord got to know of it, do you know what he’d do to you?’ ‘No, sir,’ said John… ‘He’d take you and shut you up for ever and ever in a black hole full of snakes and scorpions as large as lobsters– for ever and ever. And besides that, he is such a kind, good man, so very, very kind, that I am sure you would never want to displease him.’ ‘No, sir,’ said John. ‘But, please, sir…’ ‘Well,’ said the Steward. ‘Please, sir, supposing I did break one, one little one, just by accident, you know. Could nothing stop the snakes and lobsters?’ ‘Ah!…’ said the Steward; and then he sat down and talked for a long time, but John could not understand a single syllable. However, it all ended with pointing out that the Landlord was quite extraordinarily kind and good to his tenants, and would certainly torture most of them to death the moment he had the slightest pretext. ‘And you can’t blame him,’ said the Steward. ‘For after all, it is his land, and it is so very good of him to let us live here at all– people like us, you know.’

But John dreams of being set free from such a mindless following of inexplicable rules and dreams of an island that is free of such restrictions. At first it is equated with lust but soon he sets off to find all that his heart desires.

Much of Lewis’ work deals with desire and John is intent upon finding fulfillment. But upon the route to find the island he will meet such diverse characters as Enlightenment, Reason, Wisdom, The Spirit of the Age, Mr. Broad, Mr. Sensible and Mother Kirk (The Church).

Without divulging too much of the storyline eventually John will eventually realize his need for something other than himself. Through his journey he will ultimately find a Helping Hand that will make all the difference.

Rather than delve into a fuller synopsis and review let me excerpt a few (of the many) passages that stood out to me.

From Mr. Broad:

…as I grow older I am inclined to set less and less store by mere orthodoxy. So often the orthodox view means the lifeless view, the barren formula. I am coming to look more and more at the language of the heart. Logic and definition divide us: it is those things which draw us together that I now value most–our common affections, our common delight in this slow pageant of the countryside, our common struggle towards the light.”

Upon arriving at Theism and prior to conversion:

…with his first waking thought the full-grown horror leaped upon him. The blue sky above the cliffs was watching him: the cliffs themselves were imprisoning him: the rocks behind were cutting off his retreat: the path ahead was ordering him on. In one night the Landlord–call him by what name you would–had come back to the world, and filled the world, quite full without a cranny. His eyes stared and His hand pointed and His voice commanded in everything that could be heard or seen, even from this place where John sat, to the end of the world: and if you passed the end of the world He would be there too. All things were indeed one–more truly than Mr. Wisdom dreamed–and all things said one word: CAUGHT–Caught into slavery again, to walk warily and on sufferance all his days, never to be along; never the master of his own soul, to have no privacy, no corner whereof you could say to the whole universe: This is my own, here I can do as I please.

And from my favorite chapter of the book, Securus Te Projice (Throw yourself away without care):

‘I have come to give myself up,’ he said.
‘It is well,’ said Mother Kirk. ‘You have come a long way round to reach this place, wither I would have carried you in a few moments. But it is very well.’
‘What must I do?’ said John.
‘You must take off your rags,’ said she, ‘as your friend (Vertue) has done already, and then you must dive into this water.’
‘Alas,’ said he, ‘I never learned to dive.’
‘There is nothing to learn,’ said she. ‘The art of diving is not to do anything new but simply to cease doing something. You have only to let yourself go.’
‘It is only necessary,’ said Vertue, with a smile, ‘to abandon all efforts at self-preservation.’
‘I think,’ said John, ‘that if it is all one, I would rather jump.’
‘It is not all one,’ said Mother Kirk. ‘If you jump, you will be trying to save yourself and you may be hurt. As well, you would not go deep enough. You must dive so that you can go right down to the bottom of the pool: for you are not to come up again on this side. There is a tunnel in this cliff, far beneath the surface of the water and it is through that that you must pass so that you may come up on the far side.’

All in all this is a tremendous read. Do yourself a favor and pick this up for here is where we see the greatness of Lewis’ writings begin to emerge. Grade: A

Next: The Allegory of Love (depending on when it arrives in the mails.)

The first two published works of C.S. Lewis were poems. Spirits in Bondage was published in 1919 when Lewis was 21 years old. Dymer followed 7 years later.

These are the only two works of his before his conversion so they offer somewhat of a different glimpse of the great writer who would emerge in the coming decades.

Reading these works, although both of them were relatively brief, was a chore for me for two reasons:

1) I don’t enjoy poetry. Before you think me a complete and totally uncultured cad you must understand the second reason:

2) I don’t get poetry. The skills required to truly enjoy poetry: reading slowly, savoring each line, focusing on the power of individual phrases over and apart from the whole are lost on me.

So, while I didn’t really enjoy either of these works, I must acknowledge that may be due to my own professed lack of appreciation for the genre. Again, both of these titles are brief and can be read in about an hour. I’ll refrain from giving a grade on both of these.

Spirits in Bondage

Lewis’ first work is the only one that has passed into the Public Domain. You can read it online for free here. I encourage you to read it and share your thoughts.

It is a cycle of lyrical poetry that is divided into three parts: The Prison House, Hesitation, and The Escape.

Lewis’ reaction to his service in WWI and his hatred of the boarding school experiences of his youth obviously color his writing.

In French Nocturne he refers to sacked villages and buzzing planes.

Satan features prominently in The Prison House:

I am the flower and the dewdrop fresh,
I am the lust in your itching flesh.

I am the battle’s filth and strain,
I am the widow’s empty pain.

I am the sea to smother your breath,
I am the bomb, the falling death.

What I see as a constant throughout this work is his own agnosticism. God is distant and uncaring to the young Lewis:

Yet I will not bow down to thee nor love thee,
For looking in my own heart I can prove thee,
And know this frail, bruised being is above thee.

Our love, our hope, our thirsting for the right,
Our mercy and long seeking of the light,
Shall we change these for thy relentless might?

Laugh then and slay. Shatter all things of worth,
Heap torment still on torment for thy mirth–
Thou art not Lord while there are Men on earth.

But, ultimately, I see a searching for Truth in the words of this poem: “Who shall be our prophets then?” But at this stage in his life there is no true answer.

Spirits in Bondage shows the depth of his intellect but doesn’t display the depth of wisdom that would come in later years. Then again wisdom is not a common commodity for a 21 year old.

Dymer

Dymer would come along 7 years later, although it was probably completed some time prior to 1926.

I found it to be overwhelmingly bleak, which might give us insight to the depth of Lewis’ spiritual crisis at this point in his life. It is a tale, in Lewis’ words, “of a man who, on some mysterious bride, begets a monster: which monster, as soon as it has killed its father, becomes a god.”

For those familiar with Plato the narrative will seem familiar. Upon escaping from the totalitarian “perfect world” Dymer is able to see more clearly. However, he will soon find that not only is totalitarianism not an ideal environment, anarchism is equally flawed.

Set free from the restrictive totalitarian state upon killing his teacher, Dymer finds a banquet and feeds his lust. His desires are acknowledged and answered through abundance and sex.
But that is fleeting. And self-love, the Occult, and other avenues of fulfillment come up wanting.

Without spoiling the ending, Dymer realizes that his desires have produced severe consequences. The ending is bleak and devoid of hope and, ultimately, is a mess. We have little inkling here of the writer Lewis would become.

Up Next: The Pilgrim’s Regress

I had originally intended for this summer to be an exercise in reading fiction. Yet the further I went into the process the more I began to long for something a little more specific.

I view life and approach things through series. I read, watch TV and movies, preach and teach systematically and orderly. I like a clear progression. So, I thought I would try to read all the Pulitzer prize winners for Fiction. But, honestly, some of those titles don’t appeal to me in the least. I was more interested in the Booker Prize winners but decided against that one as well.

I decided that I would like to read through an author from beginning to end. To walk with a singular voice through the development of his thought.

So I began to consider just who I should read. I thought of Barth and Yoder. Of Yancey and Tozer. Of Hauerwas and Wright.

But who better to begin a journey like this than C.S. Lewis? His work is as relevant today as it was at the time of publication. By working through Lewis I will get a sampling of fiction and non-fiction, allegory and poetry. And I can walk through the thought progression of a complex individual.

So, I began the process of assembling the works of C.S. Lewis. Some will be harder to track down than others. I will read them in order of publication. I will re-read, in the correct order, the many works of his that I have already consumed. I will read the 37 works that were released prior to his death and the 22 works released posthumously. I will blog about each of these books as I work through them inviting you to come along with me.

I have no time-table for this. It could take a couple of months. It could take a couple of years. The one requirement I have is just to enjoy the writings of this great thinker.

C.S. Lewis was born in 1898 and died exactly one week short of his 65th birthday. The date of his death was overshadowed in America by the assassination of JFK which took place on the same day. Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, died the same day as well.

Later this week, I will talk about Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics and Dymer. These poems were his two first published works and the only ones to be published before he became a Christian.

Question for you: What are your favorite Lewis works? Why?