Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963. Walter Hooper

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       1951

       TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

      Magdalen College

      Oxford Jan 5/51

      Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

Whether any individual Christian who attempts Faith Healing is prompted by genuine faith and charity or by spiritual pride is, I take it, a question we cannot decide. That is between God and him. Whether the cure occurs in any given case is clearly a question for the doctors. I am speaking now of healing by some act, such as anointing or laying on of hands. Praying for the sick—i.e. praying simply, without any overt act is unquestionably right and indeed we are commanded to pray for all men.¹ And of course your prayers can do real good.

Needless to say, they don’t do it either as a medicine does or as magic is supposed to do: i.e. automatically. Prayer is Request—like asking your employer for a holiday or asking a girl to marry one. God is free to grant the request or not: and if He does you cannot prove scientifically that the thing wd. not have happened anyway. Just as the boss might (for all you know) have given you a holiday even if you hadn’t asked. (Cynical people of my sex will tell one that if a girl has determined to marry you, married you wd. have been whether you asked her or not!). Thus one can’t establish the efficacy of prayer by statistics as you might establish the connection between pure milk and fewer cases of tuberculosis. It remains a matter of faith and of God’s personal action: it would become a matter of demonstration only if it were impersonal or mechanical.²

      When I say ‘personal’ I do not mean private or individual. All our prayers are united with Christ’s perpetual prayer and are part of the Church’s prayer. (In praying for people one dislikes I find it v. helpful to remember that one is joining in His prayer for them.)

      With all best wishes for the New Year.

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD): ³

      Magdalen College

      Oxford Jan 5/51

      Dear Mr. Van Auken

      We must ask three questions about the probable effect of changing your research subject to something more theological.

      (1.) Wd. it be better for your immediate enjoyment? Answer, probably but not certainly, Yes.

      (2.) Wd. it be better for your academic career? Answer, probably No. You wd. have to make up in haste a lot of knowledge which cd. not be v. easily digested in the time.

      (3.) Wd. it be better for your soul? I don’t know. I think there is a great deal to be said for having one’s deepest spiritual interest distinct from one’s ordinary duty as a student or professional man.

      St Paul’s job was tent-making. When the two coincide I shd. have thought there was a danger lest the natural interest in one’s job and the pleasures of gratified ambition might be mistaken for spiritual progress and spiritual consolation: and I think clergymen sometimes fall into this trap.

Contrariwise, there is the danger that what is boring or repellent in the job may alienate one from the spiritual life. And finally someone has said ‘None are so unholy as those whose hands are cauterised with holy things’:⁴ sacred things may become profane by becoming matters of the job. You now want truth for her own sake: how will it be when the same truth is also needed for an effective footnote in your thesis? In fact, the change might do good or harm. I’ve always been glad myself that Theology is not the thing I earn my living by. On the whole, I’d advise you to get on with your tent-making. The performance of a duty will probably teach you quite as much about God as academic Theology wd. do. Mind, I’m not certain: but that is the view I incline to.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

       TO RUTH PITTER(BOD): TS

      REF.23/51.

      Magdalen College,

      6th January 1951

      Dear Miss Pitter,

      No, don’t! I mean don’t waste a copy on me. Contemporary pictures be blowed! It sounds horrible: the Ugly Duchess with a vengeance.

      Incidentally, what is the point of keeping in touch with the contemporary scene? Why should one read authors one does’nt like because they happen to be alive at the same time as oneself? One might as well read everyone who had the same job or the same coloured hair, or the same income, or the same chest measurements, as far as I can see. I whistle, and plunge into the tunnel of term.

      Yours sincerely,

      C. S. Lewis

TO PAULINE BAYNES (BOD):⁵ TS

      RER20/51.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 8th January 1951.

      Dear Miss Baynes,

My idea was that the map should be more like a medieval map than an Ordnance Survey–mountains and castles drawn—perhaps winds blowing at the corners—and a few heraldic-looking ships, whales and dolphins in the sea.⁶ СКАЧАТЬ