C.S. Lewis's Final Days and the Reality of Hope

Note: As I prepare for a course I'm teaching this fall at Bidwell Presbyterian Church in Chico, I've been thinking about C.S. Lewis. This post is adapted from my book, C.S. Lewis and the Crisis of a Christian.

In the classical and medieval tradition—which C.S. Lewis as a medievalist at Oxford University treasured—a good life was defined by knowing one’s death and thus dying well. Memento mori, which means “remember death” in Latin, were artistic depictions of mortality. They are meant to remind us that it's better not to die in one’s sleep or die quickly—as many today long for—but to know we’re dying and therefore to die prepared and peacefully. 

In this light, God did seem to prepare Lewis for his eventual passing. When he almost died in the summer of 1963, he expressed some regret that he was brought back. As he wrote to a fairly regular correspondent, Mary Willis Sherburne, who apparently was dying too:

"Pain is terrible, but surely you need not have fear as well? Can you not see death as the friend and deliverer? It means stripping off that body which is tormenting you: like taking off a hair-shirt or getting out of a dungeon. What is there to be afraid of?" (C.S. Lewis)

Similarly, writing to his long-term friend Arthur Greeves on September 11, 1963, he found it 

"rather a pity I did revive in July. I mean, having been glided so painlessly up to the Gate it seems hard to have it shut in one’s face and know that the whole process must some day be gone thro’ again, and perhaps far less pleasantly! Poor Lazarus! But God knows best." (C.S. Lewis)

But this reprieve also allowed several final, precious weeks with his brother, Warren (or Warnie). When Warnie wrote a memoir about his brother’s life, his final lines express a pathos that still pierces my heart as I recall them. They remind me that death does point toward hope, but only if we also grasp the loss, the crisis of death. 

Warnie remarked on the return to the happiness of their boyhood in the imaginary games they played in the “little end room,” a place for Lewis’s fruitful imagination as well:

"The wheel had come full circle: once again we were together in the little end room at home, shutting out from our talk the ever-present knowledge that the holidays were ending, that a new term fraught with unknown possibilities awaited us both.... We were recapturing the old schoolboy technique of extracting the last drop of juice from our holidays." (Warren Lewis)

I type this as the summer is coming to a close and I am about to return to school, though as a teacher, not a student. 

At any rate, this brief respite from the specter of death was not to last. Just before his sixty-five birthday, the nibbed pen of C. S. Lewis would never dip into the inkwell and scratch out another of his insights. I find the words of his brother poignantly spare and profoundly moving as they relate Lewis’s last day on earth:

"Friday, 22 November 1963, began much as other days: there was breakfast, then letters and the crossword puzzle. . . . Our few words then [at four] were the last: at five-thirty I heard a crash and ran in, to find him lying unconscious at the foot of his bed. He ceased to breathe some three or four minutes later." (Warren Lewis)

Warren could only add, in his brief memoir, “nothing worse than this could ever happen to me in the future.” He too knew the sorrow of losing someone close. Indeed he could not bring himself to attend his beloved brother’s funeral. 

I don't want to end there, however, because for Lewis, death indeed was not the end. Indeed he believed about heaven and thus life after death. If he was right about what he wrote, his place is now secure. And it is also certainly better. 

As he wrote so movingly in some of the final words from The Chronicles of Narnia:

"All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before." (C.S. Lewis)

And so it is with our great hope as followers of Christ.

Beauty is Why I Bring Science to Church

I've often mentioned my father, but it was my mother who gave me a particularly acute sense of beauty. 

Beauty means seeing things as they really are, being stunned by the structure, proportion, and being drawn to learn more. 

This is a profoundly important nexus for faith and science. 

And sometimes scientists and theologians sound strikingly similar. I'll being with the brilliant writer, C.S. Lewis--which is always a good place to start.

Consider next the words of Henri Poincaré, an early 20^th century quantum theorists (whom I've quote before, but it's worth repeating): 

“[The scientist] studies [nature] because he takes pleasure in it; and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing and life would not be worth living….”

As Christian, we know this: 

We see the intricate patterns of the natural world and find beauty. We see in the natural world the beauty of God who is Beauty itself. 

The 18^th century Puritan Jonathan Edwards is a model. In his late teens (1723), he sent a scientific reflection on the spider, in the form of a letter, most likely to the Honorable Paul Dudley, a member of the British Royal Society who contributed often to its Philosophical Transactions. 

“Of all insects, no one is more wonderful than the spider.” 

As I mentioned in the previous post, I found beauty in the banana slug; Edwards found beauty in “flying” spiders common to New England. His observations about nature lead him to nature’s God. 

“For as God is infinitely the greatest being, so he is allowed to be infinitely the most beautiful and excellent: and all the beauty to be found throughout the whole creation is but the reflection of the diffused beams of that Being who hath an infinite fullness of brightness and glory.”

Because both faith and science find a source of inspiration in beauty. Beauty is why I bring science to church. 

And that’s good for our souls.

C.S. Lewis and the Joy of Science

I found this as I was rummaging through some older computer files--some thoughts on C.S. Lewis and Joy (the experience, not his wife). I think it's still relevant because, if anything, I see scientific materialism or naturalism (all that exists is the material world) is on the rise.

As Lewis commented himself in Surprised by Joy, 

“The key to my books is Donne’s maxim, 'The heresies that men leave are hated most.' The things I assert most vigorously are those I resisted long and accepted late.” 

The “heresy” that he left was materialism, or Oxford Realism, for idealism. And then eventually, he turned particularly to Christian faith.

This leads to a famous argument: Human beings seek something that this world cannot satisfy, which points to a God beyond this world. This argument appears in The Problem of Pain and in “The Weight of Glory.” 

      

What is he saying? Is he arguing that this sense of transcendence—or better, this desire for it, which Lewis calls “Joy”—proves God? 

No, at least not as a deductive proof. Instead Lewis is making a suppositional argument here: We do not fully understand the desire for something beyond (or Joy) itself, but it opens to a wider metaphysical conclusion, one that points to God who created us. 

Or more systematically, the form of this suppositional argument from desire proceeds as follows: Suppose God created this world, we can imagine that God would leave a desire for more than this world offers. We experience a longing for more than this world offers. It is reasonable to see this as pointer to God.

Lewis’s argument from Joy or desire brings to mind the question of whether many of Albert Einstein’s words about “God” were really about, well, God, such as when he commented, 

“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe—a Spirit vastly superior to that of man.” Albert Einstein

Richard Dawkins argues (not surprisingly as the arch-atheist) that this stuff in Einstein isn’t really about God, it’s about transcendence. In his Why Science Does Not Disprove God, the science writer and mathematician Amir D. Aczel, contends (as I understand him) that, no, this is really about the Deity, and in fact, believing in God is profoundly compatible with science. 

And my argument here is that Joy—in Lewis's sense—historically and philosophically, leads to science. I'll leave it there for now.

C.S. Lewis and "You Be You"

There's at least one contemporary expression that I don't fully understand. And honestly, I'm also pondering it in light of yesterday's riots and insurrection in our Capital and what was happening psychologically, both for President Trump and his virulent supporters. 

Was that distorted self-love, or is self-love always a distortion?

At any rate, here it is: "You be you." 

What exactly does this imperative mean?

A word from St. Clive

There are times like these when I wish C.S. Lewis were still with us. Because he grasped the inherent problem. If "you be you" is a form of self-love that implies "and don't give a *whiff* [substitute your word] about others," that indeed is a problem. 

It evokes the age old question of whether self-love is a Christian virtue. I, like St. Clive, have some doubts.

The twisted interpretations of "Love your neighbor as yourself"

For my part, "you be you" sounds a bit too much like what I hear smuggled under the banner of "Self Care" and the rank self-indulgence in America. It also causes Blaise Pascal always rings in my ear: To love yourself implies a level of dishonesty and self-deception because there's fairly icky stuff, some rats in the basement, when we peer into our own souls.

In interpreting "Love your neighbor as yourself," I've repeatedly heard "this means we have to love ourselves." But that's not Jesus's main point. There is no direct command for self-love. Instead, his emphasis is this: We know how we'd live to be loved. So, do the same for others. It's really just another form of the Golden Rule.

And yet, a caveat: I don't want to go too far. It is fine ultimately to love ourselves, but not to start there. And Lewis leads us in the proper order.

Back to CSL

For his part, and as I quoted in the last post, C.S. Lewis knew the history the problem of self-love and arrived at an exquisitely concise solution. In "Two Ways of Self," he reminded us that, the Christian tradition, we are loved by God--and thus we can love ourselves. 

"To love his neighbor as himself, he may then be able to love himself as his neighbor; that is, with charity instead of partiality." C.S. Lewis

Or as he phrased it a bit more creatively in The Screwtape Letters, where the devil Screwtape is describing the aims of "the Enemy" (or God):

“The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favor that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbor's talents--or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall.” C.S. Lewis

Would about the scandalous behavior of our President and how it affected his mob? I think it's "you be you" and self-love gone wild. Would these insights help us today in undue the serious defects in American life? I think so. At least, one can hope. 

Transcending Mere Translation (A Musing)

A passage comes to mind when I ponder the nature and value of translation. It shows that there is a point in which we transcend mere translation. 

In his (sort of) autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis describes the experience of being tutored by William Kirkpatrick, the Great Knock, and particularly how Lewis learned to read ancient Greek literature in the original language. For those who have mastered another language, this experience reminds me of suddenly riding a bicycle without needing training wheels. In this case, it was "beginning to think in Greek."

"The great gain was that I very soon became able to understand a great deal

William T. Kirkpatrick (1848-1921)

without (even mentally) translating it; I was beginning to think in Greek. That is the great Rubicon to cross in learning any language. Those in whom the Greek word lives only while they are hunting for it in the lexicon, and who then substitute the English word for it, are not reading the Greek at all; they are only solving a puzzle. 

The very formula, 'Naus means a ship,' is wrong. Naus and ship both mean a thing, they do not mean one another. Behind Naus, as behind navis or naca, we want to have a picture of a dark, slender mass with sail or oars, climbing the ridges, with no officious English word intruding." Oxford University scholar and writer C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (my underlining)

Last week I thought about translation as a way to frame how to bring together mainstream science and mere Christianity. To take the insights of science and translate them into a Christian framework is an art indeed. 

But here we see a higher stage. Translation might be necessary, but it isn't the final step--that is, to transcend translation means to think beyond the separate categories of "science" and "Christian faith" and simply to see them describing one reality and thus to see it all connected. 

This coming week I'll be published a Science for the Church newsletter article on our human drive we toward relationality as a profound and basic truth to which both Scripture and science point. In a word, we are made for relationships. But maybe "Scripture" and "science" aren't addressing different things that need to be translated into one another. As Lewis put it, the Greek word naus doesn't mean ship. They both point to something else. When Scripture tells us how we're created by the will of our Creator and when the relevant sciences essentially agree, translation is a great step, but there's something higher, even transcendent, beyond translating.

It might even be the way God thinks.

Translators

There is an Italian saying I heard quoted in almost every comparative literature class I took as an undergraduate: "translator, traitor"—or, because the Italian sounds better

Traduttorre, traditore

In the quip’s cynicism and brevity lies its power, but we know that translation is not entirely betrayal because it promotes the material translated into a new audience. And sometimes it creates alliances and friendships. Translation can even be an act of courage and even defiance—taking insights in one language and daring to put them in another. But it is demanding, and sometimes translation feels like working on the electricity in a house while the power is still on. 

As I think about it, to bring together science and Christian faith—or any religious commitment, for that matter—means we have to be committed to translation.

This definition of translation found here

As I pondered that that idea, I realized that my life has been about translation. The first time I pursued this task intentionally was in college when I majored in Comparative Literature. And a few years later, I tried to hone this skill through reading biblical studies in their original languages. In the process, I learned about eight languages (and sometimes even got close to mastering one or two). 

This, of course, is a literal form of translation. But, when I extend the term, I realize that, as a first year student at U.C. Berkeley, I was engaging in another form of translation. Having grown up in a religiously non-affiliating household, I became a Christian and found myself translating my Christian convictions into the language of a secular university. And then later, in my PhD, I took a deep dive into religion and science and worked at how these two could speak to one another.

The twentieth century Oxford and Cambridge scholar C. S. Lewis learned this in speaking about the Christian religion to a broad audience during World War II through, among other means, the British Broadcasting Company. (Later these "Broadcast Talks" were published as the widely bestselling Mere Christianity.) As he reflected on this and his various books for the public (meaning not the intellectual elites at Oxford, Cambridge, and the like), Lewis highlighted the theme of translation. 

"My task was therefore simply that of a translator—one turning Christian doctrine, or what he believed to be such, into the vernacular, into language that unscholarly people would attend to and could understand." C.S. Lewis

This change implied simplification that, for scholars, felt at times like betrayal. (It's no secret that his good friend and brilliant philologist J.R.R. Tolkien largely disliked Lewis's books of popular theology.) From Lewis's perspective, translation required less nuance in language and simpler sentence structure. For many academics, it also requires simplifying ideas, even rounding off some edges of scholarly controversy—this is of course contained in the negative connotations of »popularizer."

I mentioned above that bringing together faith and science requires a commitment to translation. Maybe it's partly a temperament, or at least an acquired taste. And I wonder if the opposite inclination is why some are drawn to promote conflict or independence between science and religion (I think of Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould and his non-overlapping magisteria): they just don't believe these two languages are translatable into the other's idioms. They don't accept, or believe in, translation. 

Maybe so. At any rate, it's those of us that promote collaboration between faith and science (or in Ian Barbour's words, dialogue or integration) that force us to translate. Or at least to try. Traduttorre, traditore. I hope it's better than that.

CSL on Praise and thus Gratitude and Generosity

Praise and gratitude are happy twins. They join together with God's grace and our generosity--an appropriate theme since I'm posting this on Giving Tuesday.

All this brings my mind quickly to C.S. Lewis's words from Reflections on the Psalms: 

"The most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or anything—strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless …shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game – praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits, and malcontents praised least...Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible.…I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: 'Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?' The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what we indeed can’t help doing, about everything else we value. 

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed… If it were possible for a created soul fully… to 'appreciate,' that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beatitude… The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is 'to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.' But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him." C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

These are insights worth pondering today and during this season.

Two Hemispheres

I've been meditating on a quotation from C.S. Lewis as he struggled to come to terms with his budding interest in believing in God in Surprised By Joy. Lewis struggled with becoming a believer, finding himself restricted by the influence of a materialist culture around him. 

“The two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest contrast. On the one side a many-islanded sea of poetry and myth; on the other a glib and shallow ‘rationalism.’ Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless.” C. S. Lewis

Partly, this is a science-faith question. It's often where we're left when we take in the natural world that science describes in purely physical terms (which is what it's designed to do) and try to bring that together with our subjective experience, which so often includes non-physical concepts like love and beauty and meaning and, for most people, includes a search for God.

By the way, the quotation was brought to my attention by an Alister McGrath book I'm reviewing on Albert Einstein. McGrath brings together insights from a variety of Einstein's comment like "the eternal mystery of the world its comprehensibility." In other words, why should this world make sense if it is really is just facts and numbers? Einstein's understanding of religion was idiosyncratic, preferring to to hold to Baruch Spinoza's god of the mathematical equations and order in the universe, a deity that certainly didn't engage in human affairs and thus present individual lives' with answers to question of life's meaning.

McGrath then considers the physicist and Anglican priest, John Polkinghorne, who also appreciates science's profound ability to discover the stunning interconnected complexity of the natural world:

"Theology can render this discovery intelligible, through its understanding that the Mind of the Creator is the source of the wonderful order of the world." John Polkinghorne

Does that bring bring together the mind's two hemispheres in a satisfying way? Lewis found his resolution through belief in God. And though not a scientist, he would probably have agreed.

Notes on C.S. Lewis: One Outcome from Suffering

I came across this post this week, which lays down a fairly clear challenge to those who

believe in a good God from a senior editor of Free Inquiry, James Haught:

"Actually, there’s clear proof that an all-loving, all-powerful Father-Creator god doesn’t exist. It’s called 'the problem of evil.' Such a merciful deity wouldn’t have created hideous diseases or natural tragedies, and do nothing to save people from them. And he wouldn’t have designed nature to be a bloodbath of carnivorous slaughter. That clinches it for me. It doesn’t disprove a cruel god, but it wipes out a compassionate one." Atheist James Haught

The undeniable presence of evil and suffering offer a strong counter argument to the existence of a good and all-mighty God. But, is that, as James Haught argues, "clear proof"? Moreover, would it make any difference we can find a purpose for evil and suffering? This is an honest question, not simply a rhetorical one. As I write this post, I'm also working on an entry in our online faith-science newsletter, looking this week at the work of C.S. Lewis on suffering (or more specifically, theodicy), the defense of God's existence in light of evil in the world).

Suffering is never something that human beings look forward to. As Lewis phrased it succinctly in The Problem of Pain, “Pain hurts.” We do not naturally seek it. One key realization for Lewis was that suffering breaks down our idea of the divine that we always want to make in our image. Instead God is the great “iconoclast” who breaks down our overly simplistic images. We want to believe in a God who provides us with constant pleasure, what a friend of mine once called a world of “bubbles and kittens.” 

As Lewis writes after the death of his wife, Joy, in his searingly honest struggle with loss, A Grief Observed:

"My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He

shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins. And most are ‘offended’ by the iconoclasm; and blessed are those who are not." C.S. Lewis

At the end of the day, Lewis realized that God used pain in his life to form him. As he once wrote about the Christ figure, Aslan, in his Chronicles of Narnia, "'Course he isn't safe. But he's good." God's goodness seeks to make us more into the image of Christ, even if pain is part of that process.

Coda: I realize this isn't, for many, an entirely satisfying response (let alone an answer) to evil. As I worked on this piece, I had an interchange with my colleague, Drew, who told me his concerns about such "soul-making" versions of how to respond to the problem of evil. I replied that, yes, there are problems, but I sense that today we've somehow lost our nerve--Christians of the past would often find strength that God offers a why in the midst of a terrible what. But the question lingers: How do you feel about this concept today?

Re-Animated Soul Dialogue, Part 2

As I mentioned last week, my brother Marcus, who is also a novelist, helped me rewrite one of my previously posted Soul Dialogues to make it funnier and more interesting. Since this blog most often takes up themes in religion and science, the topic of the soul fits right in. What is the soul? Is it something science can study? Is it a specifically religious concept? And what am I doing talking to my imaginary friend Dan? Why are we now in Chico's Upper Bidwell Park five miles away from where we started?
Questions to ponder...
I submit to you the part deux. In last week's edition, I'd just stated "it’s also what makes sense in the church."

Dan: So things are good?

GSC: Yes, so far they are. What are you thinking?

Dan: Well, I just have a feeling that you’d want me to do this, so I’m going to get all specific right now.What do you mean by “it”?

GSC: I mean the way that we bring together all we are—body and soul—under the power of the Spirit.

Dan: Got it.And, what about the Bible?

GSC: What about the Bible you ask?

Dan: Yes.

GSC: Well,glad you asked. I have one word for you.

Dan: Yes?

GSC: Philippians.

Dan: Philippians?

GSC: Philippians. It’s just 104 verses, but in it you can find the answer to almost every theological question. 

Dan: In just those 104 verses, everything you want to about God is contained! That’s amazing!

GSC: Thank you, Ed McMahon. (Last-century-Johnny-Carson-Tonight-Show reference.)

Dan: Dan.

GSC: Dan. 

Dan: Please, no applause. Just doing my job.

GSC: At any rate, it’s true—and in Philippians.

Dan: Yeah.  Heard that somewhere. So the Bible agrees?

GSC: It does. I think about chapter four and Paul’s emphasis on the mind, or our attitude: 

“Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Philippians 4

Mindset directs hearts. That’s how God made us.

Dan: Ok, that makes sense.  But that’s not all, is there? We’re not near the lunch place yet.

GSC: There’s more, don’t worry.I think next we need to take on a common misconception about life and happiness.

Dan: I see, a nice small topic before our meal. What are you thinking?

GSC: I’m remembering something I heard the other day in a sermon—“Christian faith isn’t all in your head.” On the one hand, Amen to that! On other, faith isn’t all in your feelings, either!

Dan: Not to be too philosophical, but no, duh.

GSC: I know, right? But people fall for the feelings trap. “If it feels good, it’s right.” To which I say, “Really?” Your feelings change. They’re not a reliable guide. Instead, put your faith in what you know to be true and the feelings will follow.

Dan: So, cart after horse?

GSC: Exactly.

Dan:  But wait, hold on, I am your imaginary friend, but I have to ask, as a friend,what have you got against emotion? Isn’t everything you care about based on emotion?

GSC: Good question! 

Dan: Again, just doing my job.

GSC: I love emotion. And like Jonathan Edwards’s famous 18^thcentury defense of “religious affections,” emotions or “affections” are central to most believers’ understanding of Christian faith and most people’s experience of life.

Dan: Sounds true. Or at least accurate. But is there a difference for Edwards between emotions and affections?

GSC: Yes. “Affections” for Edwards represented something a bit more substantial than ephemeral emotions. Still the point stands—it’s not all cold rationality. 

Dan: That sounds right. And makes sense. You’ve convinced me again. As Plato often comments in his dialogues, “Socrates, you are the wisest man alive.”

GSC: Thanks.

Dan: What are friends like me for? And I know you’re about to expound again, but one more thing.

GSC: Yes?

Dan: Aren’t these affections or emotions a gift to give us motivation?

GSC: God definitely gives us emotions or feelings. At the same time, it’s not feelings that define us. It’s actually walking in God’s way that does. As C.S. Lewis wrote in a letter in 1950, using “obedience,” a word not heard much today, 

“Obedience is the key to all doors: feelings come (or don’t come) and go as God pleases. We can’t produce them at will and mustn’t try.” C.S. Lewis

Dan: No one writes letters like that anymore.

GSC: Or allegorical fantasy, for that matter, either.

Dan: Word!

GSC: Indeed.

Dan: And I get what he’s saying, but what do we do with someone like neuroscientist Antonio Damasio? He’s found that, without emotions, we can’t make moral decisions. 

GSC: Theology and science intersecting and complementing. Nice segue, my friend.

Dan: You’ve taught me well. And, come to think of it, how about Jonathan Haidt? He notes that often we, with our rational deliberation, are simply the rider on the back of the elephant of emotions. 

GSC: Tru dat as well! But the point is that, through taming our emotions, learning how to engage our rationality, and living in a good community, we learn to direct the elephant. I think Haidt is onto something, but takes it too far.

Dan: So both emotions and reason need to work together, but it’s how we actually live that defines our happiness?  Yes?

GSC: Yes, well summarize you, young Padawan.

Dan: Dan.

GSC: Dan. Much learned have you learned today.

Karin Öberg: C. S Lewis is a Voice Worth Listening to

Mainstream science
meets mere Christianity

I want to introduce you to a new-found contributor (at least to me) in the science-faith connection, but first let me say--on a topic related to integrating mainstream science with mere Christianity--that my book, Mere Science and Christian Faith is currently on sale for $4.99 in the Kindle edition. 

Here's a comment from one Amazon reader that offers an introduction:

“I absolutely loved this book. I found it to address most of my concerns involving Christian faith and proven science. The book really takes on so many tough topics that matter in the context of attracting and retaining Christians. This honest reflection truly empowers the church to be more inclusive and inspires 'nones' to see the love of Christ and scientific reason as compatible with one another. Thank you Greg for such a thoughtful book which I am excited to share with others!” Marc, an Amazon reader of Mere Science

Ok, now to Karin Öberg, Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University and leader of the Öberg Astrochemistry Group at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. I encourage you to read her recent interview with BioLogos (the faith-science nonprofit that the head of the National Institutes of Health Francis Collins helped start). 

She was commenting that, after finishing her undergraduate studies at Caltech and beginning her Ph.D. in Leiden, and her path toward Christianity and especially Catholicism. She is a walking rejoinder to those who assert that you must decided between being a top scientist and a Christian. By the way, guess who shows up? C.S. Lewis 

“The next book I ordered was Mere Christianity, which is a dangerous book to read if you are trying to stay agnostic, especially if you’re primed, as I was…. Being well-primed, I got through about half the book before acknowledging that I believed what C.S. Lewis believed.” Karin Öberg, Harvard astronomer

“Believed what C. S. Lewis believed”—let’s let that sink in for a moment...

St. Clive keeps showing up

OK, has that settled? Lewis a non-scientist, has affected scholars of Christians in the sciences to consider faith. Francis Collins, of course, is Exhibit A. (You can find even more about Lewis's influence in this excellent PBS interview with Collins.)

In the interview she was asked about the alleged conflict between faith and science.

Q: Why do you think the idea of a conflict between science and faith persists for many students? 

I don’t think students come into college with an intellectually rigorous reason for why there should be a conflict between science and religion. I think they just pick it up because when they see things about science and religion in media, it’s always a conflict. The Catholic leadership is very clear that there is no conflict between science and religion, yet many Catholic students I talk to think that to be good Catholics, they can’t take seriously some scientific claims. So I think it’s something they’ve subconsciously absorbed through society rather than deeply thought about. Most of the time when I talk to students, we can very quickly remove major barriers. For example, a common one is, how can you accept that there are miracles and at the same time do science? I think this misunderstands both natural laws and miracles." Karin Öberg

I'll close then with one last question on what it means to bring Christian faith to a top-notch secular environment. I find the answer inspiring and don't need additional comment. (Res ipsa loquitur, as the saying goes.)

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add? 

I feel like there are so many stories of Christians that have had a great struggle in academia and for whom living out their faith has been problematic in different ways. While these people do exist and those struggles are real, I want people to know that this is not always the case. I have had a smooth and joyful journey being very open about my faith at the very secular place that Harvard is. And by being open about my faith, I’ve had many meaningful encounters at Harvard and many good discussions with my colleagues. I think it’s important to have both kinds of stories out there—academia is often painted as a very dark environment for Christians, but it doesn’t have to be." Karin Öberg

During the Month of St. Clive

I write this as my community of Chico-Paradise is still feeling the devastation of the Camp Fire. This is also the "Month of St. Clive" (i.e., Clive Staples Lewis). So here's something to honor his memory and to celebrate his gift at speaking in times of crisis because he lived through many himself. 

I've adapted a piece I wrote that appeared in the Wall Street Journal a few years back.

November is a notable month for fans of C.S. Lewis: He was born on this day (29 November) in 1898 and left the world on the 22nd of the same month in 1963. The passing of this major figure in Christian thinking thus became a footnote to the day of President Kennedy’s assassination.

Lewis deserves to be remembered as one of the great lights of English academics for his scholarship on Medieval and Renaissance literature. But he is best known as a spokesman for Christianity. If anything, Lewis’s work is more widely read now than during his lifetime, thanks in part to the Hollywood films based on his landmark fantasy series, “The Chronicles of Narnia.” It appears that a fourth Narnia film is reportedly in the works.

His more theological books—such as The Screwtape Letters, in which devils discuss how to corrupt a well-meaning human—have broad appeal because they defend Christian belief by answering questions that a doubting public might be struggling with. Author Anthony Burgess once wrote that “Lewis is the ideal persuader for the half-convinced, for the good man who would like to be a Christian but finds his intellect getting in the way.”

The crises that Lewis faced were substantial (although to the best of my knowledge, he never faced a literal fire storm)—his mother’s death when he was 9; being sent to a series of boarding schools that he detested shortly thereafter; fighting and being wounded in World War I; living through the Great Depression and World War II; caring for his alcoholic brother; and, finally, the death of his wife, Joy. 

How did he work through those crises? His stepson, Douglas Gresham, comments on Lewis’s response to Joy’s death, 

“He did what he always did under extreme stress. He sat down at his desk, and looking into himself and carefully observing what was happening deep in his mind where we keep our inmost secrets, he picked up his pen and an old exercise book and began to write.” Douglas Gresham about his stepfather, C. S. Lewis

He wrote about the crises he faced with atheism, with the Christian faith and the crises he faced simply because he was human. Lewis tells us that he became an atheist around age 14, but that he sought something more. 

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” C.S. Lewis

In his early 30s he became “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England,” as he put it. He struggled on his way to prominence as a champion of Christian orthodoxy, and that struggle animates his writing.

As he pondered conversion, Lewis grappled with his love of myth, which he called “at its best, a real unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination.” How could he believe in the Bible in light of all the other myths he treasured?

Here his love of literature helped him. “There is nothing in literature which does not, in some degree, percolate into life,” Lewis determined in his 1936 academic study The Allegory of Love.

He believed that the Bible was a book full of narratives and meaningful stories that “carries” the word of God and that derives its authority from Jesus Christ. He was not a fundamentalist, believing every word from scripture contains truth that's best uncovered through a literalist interpretation. Instead of literalism, Lewis interpreted the Bible as a literary text.

With the Bible as a source, Lewis took on crises that no human being can avoid—suffering, death and what one might call “the crisis of feeling.” The latter is that problem everyone faces when emotions simply don’t lead us to contentment. If life is supposed to feel good, what happens when it doesn’t? Feelings—particularly the emotional rush of life—remain for many the final arbiter of truth.

Yet Lewis found his feelings hard to handle when his wife died. Not only had he lost a

CSL (Hopkins) and Joy (Winger) in the film Shadowlands

cherished spouse, but he saw his own life replayed—Joy had two young sons whom she left behind at almost the same age as Lewis and his brother at their mother’s death. His searing honesty remains the most arresting feature of A Grief Observed, the book he wrote after Joy’s death: 

“Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him.” C.S. Lewis in A Grief Observed

But later in the book he resolved that even God does not respond to every inquiry: 

"When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, ‘Peace, child; you don’t understand.'" C. S. Lewis in A Grief Observed

Accepting that not every question receives an answer brought Lewis the resolution and peace that lie beyond human understanding. He put himself into the One who doesn't always give answers, but who is the Answer.