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.

Christianity: Why Not Go Down with the Ship?

I just re-read a passage in C. S. Lewis’ novel That Hideous Strength in which the character Mark has a rather different “conversion” experience:

Christianity was a fable. It would be ridiculous to die for a religion one did not believe. This Man [Jesus] himself, on that very cross, had discovered it to be a fable, and had died complaining that the God in which he trusted had forsaken him – had, in fact, found the universe a cheat. But this raised a question that Mark had never thought of before. Was that the moment at which to turn against the Man? If the universe was a cheat, was that a good reason for joining its side? Supposing the Straight was utterly powerless, always and everywhere certain to be mocked, tortured, and finally killed by the Crooked, what then? Why not go down with the ship?

IS EASTER A LIE? Arguments for and against the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Part 3)

IS EASTER A LIE? Arguments for and against the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Part 2)

In this video, I continue to outline the case of Christian apologists for the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ as well as the response of skeptics, attempting to present both sides fairly:

Billy Graham and C. S. Lewis: Two Different Paths to Faith and the Bible (2 of 2)

Billy Graham and C. S. Lewis: Two Different Paths to Faith and the Bible (1 of 2)

Bono Talks to Bill Hybles about Jesus, Christians, and Being Real

Does the Bible Change Lives? A Look at Hebrews 4:12

 

When asked why they believe that the Bible is God’s Word, some Christians quote Hebrews 4:12: “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

Human writings, the argument goes, might sometimes stir us toward good deeds, but only the Bible has the power to convict people in their innermost being: to cut to the secrets of their souls and lay them bare in the holy presence of God. The Bible, it is said, changes lives like no other book. And where there is such power of change, there must be a God.

First of all, let us examine the context of Hebrews 4:12 to see what the verse actually means. It is part of a lesson that the author draws from the history of ancient Israel. His point is that the Israelites had received a message from God (the “word of God”) relating to the conquest of Canaan, but that “the message which they heard did not benefit them, because it did not meet with faith in the hearers.” To put it simply, God had spoken to the Israelites, but His message had failed to produce a change in life because they did not act upon it. Now the author draws his application, saying in effect, “We, too [meaning the Christians in the first century], have heard a message from God. It came to us through the mouth of Jesus and the preaching of His apostles. Let us, then, learn our lesson from the Israelites, “lest anyone fall after the same example of disobedience.” Because once we have heard God’s message, we have a responsibility to act upon it. “There is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.”

Therefore, the statement that “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” implies three things: (1) God is omniscient. We cannot hide from Him. He even knows the intentions of our hearts. (2) Once we have heard God’s message, we have a responsibility to act upon it. (3) It is very much possible not to act upon it, to our own detriment.

What we cannot draw from Hebrews 4 is (1) that the Protestant or Catholic or Orthodox Bible is the Word of God and (2) that, when people read the Bible, the Word of God meets them with an almost irresistible force and changes their lives. In fact, it almost says the opposite of the second point. It says that whenever God speaks to people (in whatever way), they have a choice to act or not to act upon God’s message. And though Hebrews 4 does not contradict the first point, it does not affirm it either. It merely says that the Old Testament contains some stories in which God speaks to people and in which people are disobedient to God’s message. It also says (in effect) that in the first century, the good news of Jesus’ resurrection was likewise a message from God, and that the first-century Christians should do better than the Israelites in responding to that message. There is no implication that either the Old or the New Testament is as such the Word of God, or that verse 12 is a direct reference to the Bible as a whole. If we only had to rely on Hebrews 4, the Bible might be simply a record of what God did in history, not necessarily the Word of God per se; a record that contains messages from God to historical people, but not a record which is itself the Word of God.

 

(Read more about this contentuous issue in The C. S. Lewis Book on the Bible: What the Greatest Christian Writer Thought about the Greatest Book.)

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Hebrews 4:2.

V. 11.

V. 13.

The Problem of a Perfect World (IV): No Death

Being on a business trip in Frankfurt right now, I went to the movies last night to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It is one of the rare cases where the movie is actually better than the book, probably because the book is only a short story.

Since death and the desire for eternity are an important theme in the movie, it reminded me that I should put my last post on “The Problem of a Perfect World” on my blog:

Now what about death? Have we finally found our third arm? Can death just be taken away from the world and everything will be all right again?

The Apostle Paul certainly makes it appear like that. “Sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin,” he informs us in Romans 5:12. In other words, death is abnormal, a freakish third arm that has grown because of wrong behavior. And Christ came to amputate it, to restore life as it was meant to be.

This sounds wonderful, but a little observation will reveal it for the complete nonsense that it is. I’m sorry for these strong words. But how can you expect me to believe in the face of such absurdity? Let me explain.

Death is as necessary an ingredient on our planet as air and water. If death were taken away from our world this instant, life would plunge into complete chaos within a very short time. This earth, this universe, was never meant to be the vehicle for immortality. If there ever was such a world, it must have been completely different than our universe. If Adam and Eve lived in a death-free world that was meant to stay that way, it could not have been this globe of ours.

I mean, look at this universe! Death is the basic building block of life. For all we know, stars have been dying for billions of years, and our own solar system is dying. It is only the slow death of our solar system that has made life on our planet possible. The earth is a dying sphere, a ball of fire that has cooled off sufficiently on the surface to allow life to exist for a (comparatively) brief amount of time. If things progress the way they have up to now, we can expect the earth to be as lifeless as the moon one day. If God made this solar system, then it was He who made it die so that life can be possible for a few years—although, of course, not for eternity.

Next, let’s focus on how life is built on the earth. Here we observe the same pattern. Cells die all the time and get replaced by new ones. Without it, there would be no growth and healing. Without it, there would be chaos. Imagine that all the millions of sperm cells of every male were immortal. Suppose they couldn’t die, because death does not exist. Living sperm cells would be all over the house and every sexually developed female who came to visit would get pregnant. I’m very thankful that sperm cells die. The same goes for bacteria and every other part of the microcosm. An immortal microcosm would be impossible.

We have to admit, therefore, that at least on this very basic level death is the prerequisite for life.

I could go on. Simply observe the seasons. Leaves and fruit die and fall off the trees in order to be food for animals and fertilize the ground, so that new leaves and fruit can grow. Flowers spread their seed and die, so that new flowers can spring up. Mortality. Death. It’s everywhere in nature, and it doesn’t look like an abnormality. Death isn’t evil; it’s good.

Much more abnormal would be immortality. Imagine that no ant, no fly, no spider, no fish, no frog, no bird that ever came into being died. Within a few months, the sky would be black with flying creatures, the ocean would have no place for its water because of the billions of fish in it, and every square inch of land would be occupied with more life than it can handle. And how do all these creatures live? What do they eat, if they cannot eat each other?

No, it’s an absurd notion. Animals that breed and need food cannot be immortal in a world remotely like ours. The world would burst. By necessity, there is mortality and a Struggle for Life. You don’t have an alternative if you put breeding, needy animals in a limited space.

“Perhaps at one point animals didn’t breed,” some die-hard Christians might now say. Perhaps. Perhaps at one point the earth was flat, and the sky green, and water dry. Who knows? But any such ideas are outside the realm of reasonable argument.

So, we are left with the immortality of humans. God might cause the cells in the human body to keep renewing themselves without decrease of quality, and thus keep the human body ever young. He might also cause the healing of wounds to happen much more quickly. It’s harder to imagine Him putting someone together again who has been accidentally smashed by a big rock, for example.

Perhaps God would protect everyone from injury, although in that case the world would be extremely unreliable: Sharp metal might suddenly become like paper, gravity can be suspended any minute, people may find themselves breathing under water. I have a hard time picturing a world being really like that, but with God all things are possible, right?

Well, some things are not possible even for God. For example, He cannot create a pretty small globe, put human beings on it, cause them to live for ever, and tell them to keep breeding. If Adam and Eve and all their descendants had been blessed with eternal youth, and every person produced offspring at the rate of one in ten years (which means one child per couple every five years), the earth would have contained 2048 individuals after a hundred years. That doesn’t sound like much. But after another century, we would already have more than two million humans. And after another century—are you ready to hear this?—there would be more than thirty-five million times the current population of the earth. We’re dealing with a seventeen-digit number here.

That would of course be utterly impossible. The earth could not contain so many people. And with every passing year the impossibility would become more pronounced.

So God would have had to tell us after two-hundred-and-something-years, “OK, guys and girls. Enough fun. No more sex for you. Now I’ll change you into sexless creatures who can’t reproduce.” Why would God create sexual immortals if they were only meant to remain sexual beings for two- or three-hundred years? That’s an awfully short time when you live forever.

No, it doesn’t make sense. This world was clearly not meant to be a harbor of immortality. It is mortal through and through. As of yet, the eternal perfect world is a fantasy.

The Problem of a Perfect World (III): No Discord

Part I
Part II

What was that triple description of the perfect world? No pain, no death, no discord. Well, at least pain we have to leave out of that trio. A perfect world would have pain. But what about death and discord?

Let’s start with the less dramatic of the two. Discord. A perfect world is supposed to be completely harmonious.

At first, this seems easier to picture than a world without pain. Discord does not seem to be as essential an ingredient of this world as pain. Perhaps here we’re at last dealing with an abnormality, a third arm that the surgery of Kingdom Come will remove. And as long as we picture a world of human adults, a perfectly harmonious world might be possible. Almost every adult is loving and considerate sometime. All we have to do is extend this state to a permanent condition.

Voila! You’ve got a harmonious world.

Unfortunately, this world of ours that was supposedly meant to be perfect never consisted only of human adults. It’s crowded with living cells, bacteria, plants, insects, fish, birds, creeping and walking animals. And as soon as you examine this life-filled surface of the earth, you’ll find discord at every level—as well as an overarching harmony achieved through the discord.

This harmony is called the food chain. All the cells, bacteria and countless living organisms are dependant on the (partial) destruction of other cells, bacteria and organisms. Thus life itself depends on discord, on the principle of everyone-against-everyone-else. The Survival of the Fittest.

To claim that this discord came into this world because Adam and Eve took a bite out of a forbidden fruit is simply ridiculous. Because this discord is not (let me repeat) like a third arm that can be amputated; it lies at the very foundation of the overall harmony of this world. It’s essential to life. Discord is bound together with harmony.

But that’s not all. Picturing a perfect adult might be possible. Picturing animals controlled by humans might be possible, too. But have you ever tried to picture a perfect transition from a baby to an adult? What kind of a baby, what kind of a toddler, what kind of a child, what kind of a teenager would we have in a perfect world?

A baby is born without rational powers but with very urgent physical and emotional needs. Those needs don’t have anything to do with Original Sin; they are needs that are good and proper.

Now what kind of behavior does a combination of zero reasoning powers and hundred percent neediness produce? A fussing, crying, completely selfish little thing, right? That’s what babies are, and I can’t for the life of me picture a different baby in a perfect world. What’s such a baby supposed to be like? Not cry when it’s hungry? Not burp and poo after it has eaten? Not act as if it’s the center of the universe? Of course it’ll act like that; it has no reasoning powers to balance its neediness.

I have to suppose, therefore, that in a perfect world babies would cry and fuss and be selfish.

Now the baby grows older. The needs still dominate the little one’s thinking, but its reasoning powers—and with it, the potential of being considerate of other people’s needs—are starting to develop. And now the real problems start. Up to this point, it was OK for the baby to be selfish. Now, however, with every ounce of reason it develops, it is expected to know the boundaries of proper action and to be considerate of others. This is a slow and painful learning process that continues all the way through childhood, the teenage years, into adult life.

As hard as I try, I cannot picture this learning process to be perfectly harmonious. It is by necessity charged with conflict, discord, and pain. The reasoning powers of a child grow by discovering the boundaries of proper conduct. But those can only be discovered by stepping over the boundaries.

In fact, a baby at first lives all the time over the boundary of what is proper for adults. An adult who acted like a baby would be the epitome of sinfulness. He would be the most selfish brute in the world.

When a little person starts to develop reason, it’s not the case that he learns about things he has never done and shouldn’t do. No, he learns about what of the things he has been doing all his life are actually wrong.

Let’s remember: A baby cannot help to be selfish; it lives outside of the realm of morality. It’s an amoral, needy creature. As soon as reason develops in a certain area, it discovers, “Oops! I’m wrong. I’m selfish. I’m sinful. I’m not perfect.”

How does this learning curve from amoral non-reason to moral reason progress in a perfect world? I can perhaps imagine God creating perfectly formed adults, like Adam and Eve, who are so innocent and loving through their God-given reason that they aren’t even aware of sin. But I cannot imagine a selfish baby growing into perfectly charitable adulthood without noticing its own selfishness in between. If it does notice its own selfishness, however, it notices its own imperfection, and hence the world is not perfect.

Conveniently, the Fall took place before any babies were born. I would find the story of the Garden and the supposed destiny of this world as a perfect place a little more believable if Genesis recounted convincingly the birth and upbringing of a perfect child. As it is, I cannot help but regard it as a fantasy.

Some might now point to Jesus and say, “But we did have a perfect child in this world. Look at Christ! There’s the perfection you’re looking for.”

Really? Where? It’s not in the Gospels. They (once again conveniently) skip over Jesus’ childhood, only giving a brief glimpse into his life as a twelve-year old. And what do we have there? Discord. Jesus having a disagreement with his parents. Granted, that was to be expected, since the perfect One lived in an imperfect world. We’ll therefore look in vain if we try to find in Jesus an example of a perfect person living in a perfect world.

But we don’t even see much of a perfect person in an imperfect world when we look at him. As I said, his childhood is conveniently skipped over, and the accounts of his three-and-a-half year ministry are exactly that—accounts of his ministry. We see him teaching, meeting and healing people, disputing with his enemies, instructing his disciples. We see little of him in the nitty-gritty detail of everyday life where imperfection is most clearly shown.

And even such limited information on him as we have is open to the charge of imperfection. Jesus appears at times angry, partial, and rude. If one believes that he was God, his behavior may be excused. Then he was not, after all, simply one man meeting another, but also the sovereign God who’s upholding the universe. Jesus’ behavior might therefore be harmonized with Christian doctrine. It might be the perfection of a God-Man, not simply of a man.

Whether or not the view of Jesus’ moral perfection can be maintained, the point remains the same: We don’t find in him a satisfactory picture of what a perfect human being in a perfect world would look like.

Perhaps most frustrating of all, the New Testament doesn’t breathe a word about Jesus as a perfect teenager and how he handled his sexuality. We’re left to guess how, in a perfect world, the transition from a sexually inactive child to a sexually fulfilled adult would work.

This becomes extremely problematic if we take as the moral standard complete monogamy in thought and deed. In a perfect world, Christians would say, no one has ever felt sexual desire for anyone except their marriage partner. In reply, we may ask how young teenagers are supposed to discover their potential for feeling sexually attracted to other individuals, but never commit the sin of lust? Never be sexually active, even in thought, until the wedding night when they are suddenly supposed to be wonderful, perfect lovers? I cannot picture a world of sexual beings where sexual thought and action are completely confined to the marriage bed. If sexuality grows, then the teenager will notice its growth, and notice it not in a detached state but in an affected manner.

How can perfection exist in a world where something has to grow before it’s allowed to be used? Obviously there will be illegitimate use.

That’s just by-the-way, though. I’m digressing. Before I move on to the aspect of death, let me conclude my thought on the necessity of discord in a world in which things grow.

The necessity of discord and imperfection is not just confined to issues of morality. Whenever things grow and people learn, imperfection is unavoidable. Or how do people learn to play the piano in a perfect world? Do they just sit down and play like Mozart the first time they try? That would mean that everyone can do everything they want. There would be no learning. No growth. Everyone can play the piano perfectly. One just needs to sit down and try. Everyone can play soccer perfectly. The striker shoots the ball so perfectly that every strike is a goal, and the goal keeper defends so perfectly that no strike is a goal.

You see the problem. A world like that cannot exist in reality. In any real world where creatures learn and interact, there will be imperfection. In a real world, when someone sits down and plays the piano for the first time, he will hit many wrong keys. In a real world, there is no perfect striker and no perfect goalie, because their imperfection is what makes the game possible.

That is what a real world looks like. Perfection is a fantasy. (The movie Pleasantville illustrates this pretty well, by the way.)