A Well of Wonder. Clyde S. Kilby

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СКАЧАТЬ labor of pulling the big folios from the shelves of the Bodleian was all the exercise he needed. Later he told me that apart from the last twenty years of the sixteenth century, there was relatively little of value in the literature of that time. He said also that he felt the Renaissance was not nearly so much of a “rebirth” as some scholars declare it to be. (Since my visit Mr. Lewis has written me giving his exact definition: “an imaginary entity responsible for everything the modern reader likes in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.”) I told him I had the feeling that literary periods are doubtfully described by our neat classifications, and he agreed heartily.

      We talked at some length about Palestine and my recent visit there. He was much interested and spoke of the pleasure it would give him to go to the Holy Land. He talked of a book on Sumerian archaeology in which an ancient expressed his surprise at the antiquities before his own day. Mr. Lewis said that he asked a Jew if it was the intention of the Israeli to set up the biblical temple and sacrifices. The Jew answered that he did not know and that he had no explanation as to why his nation had stopped the ancient sacrifices. I suggested that a Jew lecturing at Wheaton College had laid the blame on St. Paul. Mr. Lewis demonstrated his shrewdness by promptly pointing out the Jewish claim not to have followed Paul and therefore the Jews could not have been led astray by someone they refused to follow.

      One of the main questions I wished to ask Mr. Lewis concerned the relation of Christianity and art. He said the same relation existed between Christianity and art as between Christianity and carpentry, and he suggested that he had discussed the problem to some extent in his essay called “Transposition.” I mentioned Jonathan Blanchard’s assertion that a novel is at best a “well-told lie.” As I expected, he disagreed completely with this claim, saying that one is far more likely to find the truth in a novel than in a newspaper. In fact, he said he had quit reading newspapers because they were so untruthful.

      One of the men I had hoped to see in England was C. E. M. Joad, professor of philosophy at the University of London, but he had died while I was in Palestine. I asked Mr. Lewis his opinion of Joad, and he said that after he had sat up and talked with Joad most of the night on two occasions, he had changed his mind about him, having found him vain, but sincerely and consciously so, and not hiding his vanity under a mask as most of us do while practicing our own brand of self-righteousness. Mr. Lewis had not yet read Joad’s account of his turn from agnosticism to Christianity (The Recovery of Belief). He declared that Joad was definitely not a charlatan, as some people have described him. I asked Mr. Lewis if he knows the critic D. S. Savage. He said he had never heard of him and asked naively, “Should I know him?” I told him something of the Christian viewpoint of that writer.

      I told Mr. Lewis that one of the questions frequently asked in America was when he intended to come over here and lecture. In fact, while I was in Palestine, I had received a letter from a man at the University of Redlands asking me in the name of several California institutions to urge Lewis to come and offering to pay him liberally. He said definitely that he had no intention of coming to America until he retired. When I suggested the possibility of his coming during the summer, he said he had to get some vacation then, and a trip to this country would be anything but a vacation. He expressed sincere gratitude for the invitations and in that connection pointed out that his books sell somewhat better over here than in England. On the day before my visit I had bought a copy of one of his books in order to have him autograph it. When I pulled the book out of my pocket, he readily agreed to my request but added that he “saw no sense in it.” Both from reading his books and talking with him, I get the impression that he is far more fearful than most of us of the subtle sin of pride and tries in every way to escape it: thus his reticence to give an autograph.

      I asked him if I would have an opportunity while in Oxford of hearing him lecture, either in the university or on the outside. He said he had no lectures scheduled and bantered me as a college professor wanting to hear a lecture while on vacation. In fact, in all his talk there is an incipient good humor and genuineness that makes a conversation with him a real pleasure. (I noticed the same genuineness in Chad Walsh when he was at Wheaton.)

      I mentioned his remark in one of his books that the study of the metaphor would be a lifetime affair. I added that as far as I could judge, the secret of literature is bound up in the metaphor. He repeated his idea concerning the significance of metaphor and urged me to undertake the study. When I told him I was too old for that, he laughed and asked if I thought he was any younger than myself.

      He had shown no sign whatever of wishing to get back to his work, but I felt that I had no right to impose upon him and therefore excused myself. He followed me to the door and gave me a warm handshake and greeting as I left.

       Chapter 3

      ON SCRIPTURE, MYTH, AND THEOLOGY

      Summarizing four Lewis titles, Kilby discusses the Oxford professor’s rare ability to encapsulate profound and sometimes complex theological ideas in simple, figurative language. Kilby is very aware that he is introducing Lewis to an American evangelical Christian audience for whom a belief in the divine inspiration of Scripture is foundational. Thus he goes to some pains to defend Lewis’s high view of Scripture, and especially the idea that divine truth can—indeed must—be conveyed in myth, metaphor, and symbol. Thus, like much of Kilby’s writing, this essay is as much a defense of literature as it is of C. S. Lewis’s view of Scripture.

      In what follows I should like to outline some of C. S. Lewis’s theological beliefs, particularly as they are expressed in Reflections on the Psalms, Miracles, Mere Christianity, and Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. It is not correct to say that Lewis has a “theology” if by that term is meant a systematic, all-embracing complex like that of John Calvin or Karl Barth. He repeatedly declared that he was not a theologian. Perhaps his chief aim in attempting to retain amateur status is that he may be “one person talking to another.” Yet anyone who writes a score or more of books on Christian topics inevitably will possess, in some sense, a theology. Perhaps the big difference between Lewis and the “professional” theologian is less abstraction and more particular instance and creativity. I am especially interested here in Lewis’s view of the Scripture itself as the source of theological truth.

      REFLECTIONS ON THE PSALMS

      One of the important ideas in Reflections on the Psalms is that the Bible itself has a creative rather than an abstractive quality. The Psalms are poems rather than doctrinal treatises or even sermons. The Bible is literature. Of course one must not read it merely as literature, thus missing the very thing it is about. On the other hand, unless such parts as the Psalms are read as poetry “we shall miss what is in them and think we see what is not.” The Psalms, Lewis continues, are great poetry—some, such as Psalm 18 and 19, perfect poetry. At the same time the Bible is made up of a great variety of elements, some of which may seem inconsequential, crabbed, practical, or rhapsodic.

      Lewis starts with those elements in the Psalms that trouble him. Most troubling for a modern reader, says Lewis, are the vindictive or cursing Psalms. Occasionally indeed we come upon a verse that is nothing short of devilish, as where the psalmist asks the Lord to slay his enemies or that extreme instance in which a blessing is offered to anyone who will crush a Babylonian baby against the pavement. Such maledictions, declares Lewis, are sinful, and when seen as such rather than minimized in any way, will suggest to the Christian reader similar sins in his or her own life, even if such sins are more cleverly disguised. Nor can Old Testament believers be excused, since they had plenty of Scripture against vengeance and grudges, in fact plenty of teaching very similar to that of Christ’s. The truth is that Christ’s teaching was anticipated by all teachers of truth, some even outside of Judaism. This, Lewis insists, is exactly СКАЧАТЬ