A Well of Wonder. Clyde S. Kilby

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СКАЧАТЬ enclose what, at such short notice, I feel able to say on this question. If it is at all likely to upset anyone, throw it in the waste paper basket. Remember too that it is pretty tentative, much less an attempt to establish a view than a statement of the issue on which, whether rightly or wrongly, I have come to work. To me the curious thing is that neither in my own Bible-reading nor in my religious life as a whole does the question in fact ever assume that importance which it always gets in theological controversy. The difference between reading the story of Ruth and that of Antigone—both first class as literature—is to me unmistakable and even overwhelming. But the question ‘Is Ruth historical?’ (I’ve no reason to suppose it is not) doesn’t really seem to arise till afterwards. It can still act on me as the Word of God if it weren’t, so far as I can see. All Holy Scripture is written for our learning. But learning of what? I should have thought the value of some things (e.g., the Resurrection) depended on whether they really happened, but the value of others (e.g., the fate of Lot’s wife) hardly at all. And the ones whose historicity matters are, as God’s will, those where it is plain.

To Lewis the story of creation in Genesis is mythical, but that does not mean it is untrue. It means rather that it is truer than history itself. The account of Adam and Eve, God and an apple, symbolizes clearly a time long ago when catastrophe fell upon mankind. “For all I can see,” says Lewis, “it might have concerned the literal eating of a fruit, but the question is of no consequence.” Indeed, one might ask whether humanity and history are not actually as mysterious as myth. The great historians are quite agreed that to state the facts of history may be to leave out its essence, since history is made up both of objective, overt actions and also of the joys, agonies, and deep motives of the human soul. Christianity is the Christian creed, but it is also the glorious experience of God in the heart of a believer. We must not think we have a greater thing when we accept the “hypostasized abstract nouns” of a creed as more real than the myth which incorporates them and Reality itself. Melville once remarked that the true places are never down on any map. A myth is indeed to be defined by its very power to convey essence rather than outward fact, reality rather than semblance, the genuine rather than the accidental. It is the difference between the factual announcement of a wedding and the ineluctable joys actually incorporated in the event. Corbin S. Carnell says that for Lewis “the great myths of the Bible as well as of pagan literature refer not to the non-historical but rather to the non-describable. The historical correlative for something like the Genesis account of the creation and fall may be disputed. But the theological validity of the myth rests on its uniqueness as an account of real creation (out of nothing), on its psychological insight into the rebellious will, and on its clear statement that people have a special dignity by virtue of their being made in God’s ‘image.’”⁶ The historical correlative is less significant than the thing it signifies. All facts are misleading in proportion to their divergence from Eternal Fact.

Perhaps Marjorie E. Wright stated it correctly when she says that for Lewis and certain other writers Christianity itself is the great central historical embodiment of myth. “It is the archetypal myth of which all others are more or less distorted images.”⁷ Christ is the great Reality that makes every other reality a jarring note and cracked vessel. The trouble, says Lewis, is that we are so inveterately given to factualizing Christian truth it is practically impossible for us to hear God when he says that one day he will give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendor of the sun.

      Only once did myth ever become fact, and that was when the Word became flesh, when God became man. “This is not ‘a religion,’ nor ‘a philosophy.’ It is the summing up and actuality of them all.”

It would be a bad mistake to infer from what has been said in the last few paragraphs that Lewis regarded the Bible as simply another good book. He repeatedly calls it “Holy Scripture,” assures us that it bears the authority of God, sharply distinguishes even between the canon and the apocrypha, presses the historical reliability of the New Testament in particular, and often assures us that we must “go back to our Bibles,” even to the very words. The biblical account, says he, often turns out to be more accurate than our lengthy theological interpretations of it. It is all right to leave the words of the Bible for a moment to make some point clear. “But you must always go back. Naturally God knows how to describe Himself much better than we know how to describe Him.”⁸

Doctrinally, Lewis accepted the Nicene, Athanasian, and Apostles’ Creeds. He was never failing in his opposition to theological “modernism.” Some of his most acerbic satire is employed against it in both his fiction and his expository works. It is as ridiculous, he declares, to believe that the earth is flat as to believe in the watered-down popular theology of modern England. In The Screwtape Letters a major employment of hell itself is in encouraging theologians to create a new “historical Jesus” in each generation. He repeatedly insists that, contrary to the opinion of many modern theologians, it was less St. Paul than Christ who taught the terrors of hell and other “fierce” doctrines rather than sweetness and vapid love.⁹

Though Lewis denied the doctrine of total depravity on the grounds that if we were totally depraved we should not know it and because we have the idea of good, the denial is more nearly theoretical than actual in his works. Everywhere we find him representing humanity as a horror to God and a “miserable offender.” In “Religion and Rocketry”¹⁰ he says that non-Christians often suppose that the Incarnation implies some special merit in humanity but that it implies “just the reverse: a particular demerit and depravity” because “no creature that deserved Redemption would need to be redeemed. . . . Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for.”

      The most vivid picture of what it means to be saved—and Lewis does not hesitate to use this word—is the transformation of Eustace from a dragon back into a person in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Eustace tells how he remembered that a dragon might be able to cast its skin like a snake and began to work on himself. At first the scales alone came off but as he went deeper he found his whole skin starting to peel off and finally was able to step right out of it altogether. This is the point at which a less orthodox writer might stop, but not Lewis. Eustace started to wash himself, but when he put his foot into the water he saw that it was as hard and rough and scaly as it had been before. So he began again to scratch and finally peeled off another entire dragon skin. But once again he found under it another. At this point Aslan said, “You will have to let me undress you.” Though Eustace was deathly afraid of Aslan's claws, he lay down before him. His fears were justified, for the very first tear made by Aslan was so deep he felt it had gone clear down to his heart. When the skin was at last off, Eustace discovered it “ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been.” Afterward Aslan bathed him and dressed him in new clothes, the symbolism of which is clear enough.

      In respect to the church, Lewis teaches that it has no beauty except that given it by Christ and that its primary purpose is to draw men to him, “the true Cure.” The Christian’s vocation, however, is not mainly to spread Christianity but rather to love Christ. The Christian is not so much to follow rules as to possess a Person and to wait upon the Holy Spirit for guidance. The Christian is not called to religion or even good works but to holiness before God. Christianity is not a “safe” vocation, for Christ is to be followed at all hazards.

      Lewis believed that prayer must include confession and penitence, adoration, and fellowship with God as well as petition. “Prayer,” he says, “is either a sheer illusion or a personal contact between embryonic, incomplete persons (ourselves) and the utterly concrete Person.” He believed that where Christianity and other religions differ, Christianity is correct. He held that conversion is necessary and that heaven and hell are final.

      If in some of his beliefs Lewis stands somewhat to the left of orthodoxy, there are others in which he moves toward the right, at least as orthodoxy is normally practiced by most Christians. For instance, the speaking in tongues at Pentecost is not only accepted by Lewis but also explained in an ingenious manner that is worth describing. The holy phenomenon of talking in tongues bears the same relationship to the СКАЧАТЬ