C. S. Lewis Spells Liberty

A few years ago, we had a rather disastrous series of spelling reforms in Germany. As an English-German book translator, the reforms have been a source of some minor frustration to me. This made me all the happier to find a comrade in C. S. Lewis when I read this letter by him a few days ago:

Nearly everything I have ever read about spelling reform assumes from the outset that it is necessary for us all to spell alike. Why?

We got on for centuries without an agreed common orthography. Most men of my age remember censoring the letters of soldiers an know that even the wildest idiosyncrasies of spelling hardly ever made them unintelligible. Printing houses will always have, as they have now, their own rules, whether authors like them or not. Scholars, who know the ancestry of the words they use, will generally spell them accordingly.

A few hards words will still have to be learned by everyone. But for the rest, who would be a penny the worse if though and tho, existence and existance, sieze, seize and seeze were all equally tolerated?

If our spelling were either genuinely phonetic or genuinely etymological, or if any reform made it either the one or the other were worth the trouble, it would be another matter. As things are, surely Liberty is the simple and inexpensive “Reform” we need?

This would save children and teachers thousands of hours’ work. It would also force those to whom applications for jobs are made to exercise their critical faculties on the logic and vocabulary of the candidate instead of tossing his letter aside with the words “can’t even spell.”

C. S. Lewis

Important Issues in My Lifetime: The Next 50 Years

I’m thirty now. Supposing I shall be so graced as to witness my eightieth birthday, I wonder about the next half a century. What are going to be some of the most important worldwide issues between now and 2060?

Well, here are some of them:

1. The Environment

We cannot keep acting like Saruman and think we’re safe in our self-constructed tower. Our twisted minions will not keep us from the green revenge of Treebeard & His Many-Leafed Company.

Seriously, though: The environment is simply the name for EVERYTHING on this planet, and EVERYTHING is pretty darn important. We humans are not self-sufficient beings; we are a hundred percent dependent on everything around us. In the next fifty years, we just absolutely have to get a grip on ourselves, send our orks into the fires of doom, and re-plant some trees in Isengard. Otherwise the whole place will come down.

2. Over-Population

Like C. S. Lewis already noted in 1959: “We shall fairly soon hopelessly overpopulate this planet and that population will be as defective in quality as excessive in quantity.”

We cannot keep multiplying indefinitely. We will reach a limit. The only question is how that limit will be reached. Through huge disasters? Or through rational, peaceful population control? I opt for the latter.

3. The Economy

Most thinkers of the past would have been horrified at the foundation of our economic system today, which is usury – money begetting money. It’s a system out of line with reality. Will it be able to last?

Aristotle would have probably said no. As he wrote in the third century BC:

“The most hated sort [of wealth-getting], and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.”

4. Religion

Maybe I put too much emphasis on this, since I’m particularly interested in religion, but it will be very interesting to see how religion is going to develop in the next fifty years. Will Fundamentalism – meaning a narrow worldview that leaves little room for discussion – win the upper hand? Or will Atheism spread and marginalize religion completely? Or will a more mature, balanced, open-minded form of religious practice win the majority?

We’ll see, but I propose it will have a big effect – including on the first three points.

C. S. Lewis: The Sense or Nonsense of the Christian Idea (Part 4)

The two most important points in which C. S. Lewis saw the Christian story to fit reality were (1) its pattern of death and rebirth, and (2) its vicariousness. After I explained the first one in my last post, let me now tackle the second one:

(2) The vicariousness. The idea of vicariousness, particularly of vicarious suffering, stands at the very center of Christianity. It is the idea that one person profits from someone else’s sacrifice; that Christ’s death and resurrection have a profound effect on all humanity; that humanity has been “redeemed” through the death of God.

Does this idea make sense? Does vicariousness fit into the picture? Before C. S. Lewis became a Christian, he could not quite understand why the death of Christ should have the said effect on mankind. But then, on September 19, 1931, he had a conversation with his Christian friends J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson.

In a letter he composed about a month later, Lewis wrote about that night, “Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all; again, that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself […] I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: again, that the idea of the dying and reviving god (Balder, Adonis, Bacher) similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even tho’ I could not say in cold prose ‘what it meant.’ […] Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened.”

From a Pagan perspective, therefore, the Christian chapter of history fits very well. It carries the same theme of vicarious suffering (and the dying God, as discussed above) that we find in other places of humanity. This means that vicariousness is not something foreign to human understanding. Almost all cultures seem to understand that vicarious sacrifice and suffering can have a real effect on the beneficiary.

The only difference between the animal sacrifices in the Pagan-Judaic world and the sacrifice of Christ is that the latter is the perfect sacrifice—the only sacrifice of a completely innocent and completely voluntary victim. Not only did He go to the cross on His own accord; He was even born of His own accord. He chose to live His life among us, though He did not have to, and chose to be killed by us, though He could have ruled over us.

People might still find objections to the validity of Christianity on other grounds. But one thing, Lewis maintained, they cannot do. They cannot accuse it of having a nonsensical idea at its center. Such an argument sets itself against the testimony of humanity.

Lewis also pointed out that vicariousness is a strong characteristic of Nature. We find in Nature a law by which no creature can exist by itself. Everyone and everything is indebted to everyone and everything else. This is the case both in a positive and a negative sense. On the one hand, there are parasites under people’s skin that only live by destroying their bearers. On the other hand, the principle does not always take this negative form. Almost everything good in nature also comes from it. The newborn lives on the mother as much as the parasite; but what revolts us in one case is in the other case “the source of almost every natural goodness in the world.” The goodness or badness of the principle of vicariousness depends on what you do with it.

C. S. Lewis said he could quite easily picture a universe in which vicariousness has been redeemed and is only used in a good way. We do not have to throw out Nature with the bathwater. The Christian message neither merely confirms nor flatly contradicts our experience in nature, but offers a new twist to a recognized principle.

Read more about it in The C. S. Lewis Book on the Bible: What the Greatest Christian Writer Thought about the Greatest Book.

C. S. Lewis: The Sense or Nonsense of the Christian Idea (Part 2)

Of course, before we can decide whether the death and resurrection of Christ might be this missing chapter of world history—this culprit in the detective story—we first have to have a clear picture in our minds as to its content. C. S. Lewis dedicated much of writings to explaining it, and it can be briefly stated thus.

The eternal God becomes Man. This He does by choosing out of all nations one nation, and out of all people in that nation one woman, into whom He enters and begins to develop as a small lump of cells. After nine months He is born as a common baby, grows into boyhood, and finally into manhood. As a man He is rejected and crucified, and through His innocent suffering He works the redemption of humanity.

He crawls down, so to speak, from above like a gold miner descends into some deep and dark shaft, and, through His sweat and toil, retrieves the gold from the worthless dirt and rock. He retrieves humanity from its own sinfulness. Then He rises from the dead, and henceforth humanity is no longer what it used to be. It no longer lies down in the deep, dark shafts; it is being carried up, up into Godhood. The miner returns to the surface, His face still dirty, and in His hands He holds the pure gold. He holds redeemed mankind.

This is the story: God crawling down into the darkness of humanity in order to take it up into the dazzling light of Godhood. And the means by which He does it is His own death and resurrection; His vicarious suffering.

Now does this story make sense? Does it fit into world history? Are there other signs that point to this story being the missing chapter, the culprit in the detective story?

C. S. Lewis answered this question with a resounding Yes. Probably the two most important points in which he saw the Christian story to fit were (1) its pattern of death and rebirth, and (2) its vicariousness. Let me explain in the next post what he meant by these terms.

“The Heck it is!” – Never Exaggerate

Yesterday, I read this amusing (and true) piece of advice C. S. Lewis gave to a pen pal:

The essay on Easter is a promising bit of work; the sentences are clear and taut and don’t sprawl. You’ll be able to write prose alright.

As for what you are saying, I think you are exaggerating a bit at the end. Everything I need is in my soul? The Heck it is! Or if so, it must contain a great many virtues and a great deal of wisdom which neither I nor anyone else could ever find there.

Very little of what I need is at present in my soul. I mean, even things of the soul’s own sort, like humility or truthfulness. And it certainly does not in any obvious sense contain a number of other things which I need at the moment: e.g. a stamp for this letter.

Never exaggerate. Never say more than you really mean.

Is Fantasy Just Wish-Fulfillment?

Is Fantasy just wish-fullfilment? C.S. Lewis had this to say about the question:

A liberal use of the marvellous, the mythical, and the fantastical in a story is, as far as it goes, an argument against the charge of wish-fulfilment.

The Freudian fantasy exists to give us the nearest substitute it can for real gratification; naturally it makes itself as lifelike as possible. It had to be unreal as regards the main issue—for we are not really famous men, millionaires or Don Juans—and to make up for this it will be scrupulously “real” everywhere else.

Does not all experience confirm this? A man who is really hungry does not dream of honey-dew and elfin bread, but of steak and kidney puddings: a man really lustful does not dream of Titania or Helen, but of real, prosaic, flesh and blood. Other things being equal, a story in which the hero meets Titania and is entertained with fairies’ food is much less likely to be a fantasy than “a nice love-story” of which the scene is London, the dialogue idiomatic, and the episodes probable.

On these grounds I wish to emend the Freudian theory of literature into something like this. There are two activities of the imagination, one free, and the other enslaved to the wishes of its owner for whom it has to provide imaginary gratifications. Both may be the starting-point for works of art. The former or “free” activity continues in the works it produces and passes from the status of dream to that of art by a process which may legitimately be called “elaboration”: incoherencies are tidied up, banalities removed, private values and associations replaced, proportion, relief, and temperance are introduced.

But the other, or servile kind is not “elaborated” into a work of art: it is a motive power which starts the activity and is withdrawn when once the engine is running, or a scaffolding which is knocked away when the building is complete. Finally, the characteristic products of free imagination belong to what may be roughly called the fantastic, or mythical, or improbable type of literature: those of fantasy, of the wish-fulfilling imagination, to what may, in a very lose sense be called the realistic type. I say “characteristic products” because the principle doubtless admits of innumerable exceptions.

What would C. S. Lewis Say about Harry Potter? (#10)

C. S. Lewis maintained that one of the prime achievements in every good fiction has nothing to do with truth or philosophy or a Weltanschauung (worldview) at all. And this is especially true of Lewis’s favorite kind of fiction: fantasy.

The primary value he saw in reading fantasy was not that he could learn truths about life but that through it he could be more than himself. He wanted to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with his own. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, was not enough. He wanted to see what others had invented.

He would therefore have delighted to enter into the beliefs of Philip Pullman or J. K. Rowling, even though he would have thought certain aspects of them untrue. His defense for doing this, for occupying his heart with stories of what never happened and entering vicariously into feelings which he tried to avoid having in his own person, was that in reading them he became a thousand men and yet remained himself.

Like thousands of stars looking upon the earth, he saw with a myriad eyes, but it was still he who saw. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, he transcended himself; and was never more himself than when he did. “The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison,” he wrote.

This, however, does not mean that C. S. Lewis thought that imaginative literature could have no positive or negative effects on the reader beyond this experience of self-transcendence. But more about that in my next entry…

New Edition of *The C. S. Lewis Book on the Bible* Now Available!

The other day I said that there was a new edition of The C. S. Lewis Book on the Bible coming out. It is now available.

Here’s a short description of the book:

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was the most influential Christian writer of his day, and the effect of his work has still not abated. Quotes by him can be found in almost every modern work on Christianity. “The C. S. Lewis Book on the Bible” examines his view on the Bible, in which he differed from many of those who quote him. In laying out Lewis’ approach to faith and Scripture, Jacob Schriftman does not only draw on Lewis’ popular apologias such as “Mere Christianity” or “The Problem of Pain,” but on his many letters, essays, fictional writings, and academic works. The result is both informative and a pleasure to read. Schriftman’s admiration for Lewis clearly shines through, but he does not put him on a pedestal. Anyone with a deeper interest in C. S. Lewis or the Bible will not want to miss this volume on their shelves.

What would C. S. Lewis Say about Harry Potter? (#9)

Many people who read Harry Potter, particularly certain Christians, have what C. S. Lewis calls a “problem of belief.” It may not be as violent as described in my last entry, but perhaps they disagree with certain ethical implications or are worried that the books incite dangerous magical practices. Or they point out that God seems to be left out of the picture.

To this, C. S. Lewis would reply that in good reading there ought to be no “problem of belief.” A true lover of literature should be in one way like an honest examiner, who is prepared to give the highest marks to the telling, felicitous and well-documented exposition of views he dissents from or even abominates.

Writes Lewis: “I read Lucretius and Dante at a time when (by and large) I agreed with Lucretius. I have read them since I came (by and large) to agree with Dante. I cannot find that this has much altered my experience, or at all altered my evaluation of, of either.”

C. S. Lewis even warned against what he termed the “Vigilant School of Criticism.” To them (and I am afraid a number of Christians are among them) criticism is a form of social and ethical hygiene. They see all clear thinking, all sense of reality, and all fineness of living, threatened on every side by propaganda, by advertisements, by film and television. The hosts of Midian “prowl and prowl around,” and they prowl very dangerously in the printed word.

Against this the Vigilant School are our watchdogs or detectives. Vigilants, finding in every turn of expression the symptom of attitudes which it is a matter of life and death to accept or resist, do not allow themselves the liberty of “free play.” Nothing is for them a matter of taste. They admit no such realm of experience as the aesthetic. There is for them no specifically literary good. A work, or a single passage, cannot for them be good in any sense unless it is good simply, unless it reveals attitudes which are essential elements in the good life.

C. S. Lewis, even though he was a committed and outspoken Christian, most definitely did not belong to this Vigilant School of Criticism.

What would C. S. Lewis Say about Harry Potter? (#8)

In my last entry in this series I said that C. S. Lewis did not limit his appreciation of books to those with which he agreed. He knew that if he did limit it, he would then only stare at his own reflection on every page instead of getting to know the unique perspective of the author.

Another effect of limiting our literary appreciation to authors we agree with is this. If we meet an author who seems to attack our beliefs, we understandably feel a passionate dislike of his work. What we think thoroughly bad, we hate. If, besides being bad, it enjoys great popularity such as Harry Potter and thereby helps to exclude works that we approve from their “place in the sun,” as Lewis put it, hatred of a somewhat less disinterested sort will creep in. Lower and still lower levels of hatred may open; we may dislike the author personally and launch attacks on her. We may warn friends about Harry Potter or even post passionate warnings on the internet.

The problem with this is that people who hear or read our “reviews” will learn precious little about the books we attack. They will not be able to even think about the books under discussion. We rivet their attention on ourselves, Lewis said. The spectacle of us thus writhing in the mixed hurt and thrill of a fully indulged resentment is, in its way, too big a thing to leave them free for any literary considerations. They are in the presence of tragic-comedy from real life. When they get to the end of our attack they find that we have told them everything about ourselves and nothing about the books.

Lewis’s advice?—“Write your slashing review now and drop it into the wastepaper basket a day or so later. A few re-readings in cold blood will often make this quite easy.”