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[Lewis
had] read Greats, he’d taught philosophy for a while, he was well
acquainted with the philosophical classics, he had the sort of mind which,
had he addressed himself to the questions that engrossed philosophers of the
time, would have made him into a good philosopher by professional
standards. … [He] produced some good searching arguments and clearly had a
feeling for what was philosophically interesting and what wasn’t.
(Basil
Mitchell in Walker 1990: 14)
C.S. Lewis was perhaps the most popular and influential Christian
apologist of the 20th Century, and his work is full of
philosophical themes and arguments. Despite this, the main body of Lewis’
work has received only scant attention from academic philosophers. James
Patrick writes:
While several critical studies
… have been written, the philosophic presuppositions of [Lewis’] arguments
… have remained unexamined. … Lewis is usually considered an apologist and
his relation to philosophy ignored … [this interpretation robs] Lewis of
the philosophic insights that constitute the very texture of his
apologetic. (1985: 165)
Although Lewis’ thought remains largely
unexamined by academic philosophers, he has not gone entirely unnoticed.
Victor Reppert (1989a) notes “Selections from Miracles, The
Problem of Pain, Mere Christianity, The Abolition of Man,
as well as essays like ‘The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,’ have all
found their way into introductory philosophical anthologies.” I suggest
that Lewis’ works have been anthologised because they are clearly written
and therefore suited to the beginner in philosophy. It is more difficult to
explain why Lewis’ work remains largely unexamined. Fortunately, such
explanation is not my task.
Of the books and articles that do examine
Lewis’ work, the majority seem to be utterly uncritical; they swallow
nearly everything whole. A notable exception is John Beversluis’ C.S.
Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion (1985). This book errs in
the opposite direction. Thomas V. Morris, himself no partisan of Lewis, has
this to say:
My main overall philosophical
criticism of this book is that Beversluis seldom comes anywhere near
digging deep enough to really appreciate a line of thought suggested by
Lewis. All too often he gives a facile, fairly superficial reconstruction
of a line of argument, and after subjecting it to some critical
questioning, declares it bankrupt and moves on. What is so disappointing to
the reader who is trained in philosophy is that in most such instances a
few minutes of reflective thought suffice to see that there are very
interesting considerations to be marshalled in the direction Lewis was
heading, considerations altogether neglected by [Beversluis]. (R.L. Purtill
1990: 41)
The publication of Beversluis’ book initially
provoked a handful of replies from a small number of academic philosophers.
However, Beversluis’ book and the articles written in response have left
the situation largely unchanged. We are still without a balanced and
sustained philosophical evaluation of the philosophical themes and
arguments found in the works of C.S. Lewis. It is hoped that this
dissertation goes some way towards changing the situation.
Note how
restricted this aim is. I shall not be addressing all the
philosophical themes to be found in Lewis’ work – there are far too many
for that to be possible – and even on the issues that this dissertation
does address, I do not pretend to have said the final word. We begin, then,
by outlining a few of the philosophical themes that are not
addressed in depth here.
Philosophical Themes from Lewis that are not Addressed in
this Dissertation
A theme that runs through much of Lewis’ work is his rejection of
moral (and conceptual) relativism. His most sophisticated writings on this
topic appear in The Abolition of Man (1943a). Similar arguments
appear in Mere Christianity (1952b) and in various individual
essays, notably “The Poison of Subjectivism” (1943b), “De Futilitate”
(1967a) and “On Ethics” (1967b). I would go so far as to suggest that few
have presented the case against such relativisms more clearly than Lewis
does in The Abolition of Man. That book, based on his Riddell
Memorial Lectures, also contains warnings about the hazards of setting the
(human) sciences free from all ethical considerations.1 Part of
Lewis’ defence of traditional morality was his rejection of ethical egoism.
In a throw away comment that anticipates the strategy of Thomas Nagel’s The
Possibility of Altruism (1970), Lewis wrote, “To prefer my own
happiness to my neighbour’s was like thinking that the nearest telegraph
post was really the largest” (1955b: 180).2
Connected with
this is Lewis’ endorsement of the moral argument for the existence of God.
Lewis’ statement of the moral argument is one of the clearest available in
contemporary literature. It has appeared in several anthologies.3
Another related issue is his discussion of the “Three Parts of Morality”
(1952b). He contends that ethics (or at least ancient ethics) is concerned
with three basic issues: Firstly, it is concerned with the interaction
between individuals. This is social ethics. Secondly, ethics is concerned
with virtues and vices, with the kind of character traits that an
individual is developing. This is individual or virtue ethics. Thirdly,
ethics is concerned with “the general purpose of human life as a whole:
with what [if anything] man was made for” (1952b: 67). This is what has
been called essential ethics. Lewis compares Humanity to a fleet of ships,
and the three parts of morality to the three elements essential to a
successful voyage.
The
voyage will be a success only, in the first place, if the ships do not
collide and get in one another’s way; and, secondly, [only] if each ship is
seaworthy and has her engines in good order … But there is one thing we
have not yet taken into account. We have not asked where the fleet is
trying to get to … however well the fleet sailed, its voyage would be a
failure if it were meant to reach New York and actually arrived at Calcutta.
(1952b:
67)
It is interesting to compare this with Alasdair MacIntyre’s vision
of ethics as presented in After Virtue (1981). MacIntyre also claims
that ancient ethics dealt with three issues: man as he is; man as he would be
if he attained his true end (his telos); and ethics, which is the science
of getting from the first situation to the second. MacIntyre argues that
the modern atheistic worldview has jettisoned the second of these elements
and that without it, morality has ceased to make sense. Drawing on Lewis’
discussion of the three parts of morality, prominent Lewis commentator
Peter Kreeft (1989c: 17-8) has made much the same point.4
Lewis’ The
Problem of Pain (1940a) addresses the age-old problem of evil. His approach,
which draws on both the Augustinian (free will) and Irenean (soul-making)
theodicies, has been compared with the more recent work of Alvin Plantinga
and of John Hick.5 The problem of evil is posed in the following
simple argument: if God were good, He would want to prevent or remove all
suffering and evil, if He were omnipotent He would be able to do what He
wanted, so if there is a God at all, He cannot be both good and omnipotent.
In response, Lewis seeks to clarify our concepts of the omnipotence and
goodness of God. Despite His omnipotence, God cannot guarantee that
His creatures will freely make the right choices. We can attribute
miracles to God, but not nonsense. A meaningless series of words will not
acquire meaning simply by prefacing them with ‘God can’. The outworking of
this is that if the choices of God’s creatures are to be genuinely free,
then God cannot ‘fix’ what those choices will be in advance. This is
simply the Augustinian approach combined with some basic, but brilliantly
clear, thinking about omnipotence. Lewis makes room for Irenean thinking
through his clarification of God’s goodness and of goodness in general.
Moral goodness and the high forms of love are sharply distinguished from
mere kindliness: “Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object
becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering” (1940a: 33).
Goodness is considerably more austere than kindness. Lewis illustrates the
difference by contrasting the goodness of a father with the kindness of a
grandfather. It is the role of the father (or mother) to discipline a
child, but the grandfather (or grandmother) can be pleased so long as the
child is happy.
What would really satisfy us
would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, “What does
it matter so long as they are contented?” We want, in fact, not so much a
Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven – a senile benevolence who, as
they say, “liked to see young people enjoying themselves” and whose plan
for the universe was simply that it might truly be said at the end of each
day, “a good time was had by all”. Not many people, I admit, would
formulate a theology in precisely those terms: but a conception not very
different lurks at the back of many minds. (1940a: 32)
Here we have Lewis bringing his understanding of the divine
attributes of omnipotence and goodness to bear on the problem of evil.
Elsewhere, Lewis explains his view of God’s omniscience and eternity. Here
he shared the view of Boethius, though Lewis expresses it with greater
clarity. According to Lewis, God exists ‘outside of time’. To say that God
is eternal is not to say that His history extends into the past without
beginning and into the future without end. It is rather to say that God
exists beyond time. Lewis compares God’s relation to time with an
author’s relation to the ‘time’ within his novel.
Suppose
I am writing a novel. I write ‘Mary laid down her work; next moment came a
knock at the door!’ For Mary who has to live in the imaginary time of my
story there is no interval between putting down the work and hearing the
knock. But I, who am Mary’s maker, do not live in that imaginary time at
all. Between writing the first half of the sentence and the second, I might
sit down for three hours and think steadily about Mary. I could think about
Mary as if she were the only character in the book and for as long as I
pleased, and the hours I spent in doing so would not appear in Mary’s time
(the time inside the story) at all. … God is not hurried along in the
Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in
the imaginary time of his own novel.
(1952b:
143)
The illustration is imperfect, but helpful nevertheless. Lewis uses
it as a tool to help us think about God having enough ‘time’ to hear (and
answer) a potentially infinite number of prayers being prayed
simultaneously. Lewis also uses this understanding of God’s timelessness to
explain how His omniscience (particularly His knowledge of the future) can
be compatible with human freedom. According to Lewis, it is misleading to
call God’s knowledge of the future ‘foreknowledge’. It is senseless
to say that the author knows the how the story will end before his
characters do, for the author does not inhabit the same time-stream as his
characters. God knows our future in the same way as He knows the present
because, being outside or beyond time, all times are equally ‘present’ to
Him.
He does not ‘foresee’ you
doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though
to-morrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him. You never supposed that
your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you
are doing. Well, He knows your to-morrow’s actions in just the same way –
because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He
does not know your action till you have done it: but then the moment at
which you have done it is already ‘Now’ for Him. (1952b: 145-6)
In a fascinating essay entitled “On Obstinacy in Belief” (1955a),
Lewis addresses the nature of faith. His claim was that religious belief is
governed by different norms from, say, scientific belief. The former are
governed by “the logic of personal relations,” the latter by “the logic of
speculative thought.”
[The existence of God] is a
speculative question as long as it is a question at all. But once it has
been answered in the affirmative, you get quite a new situation. … You are
no longer faced with an argument which demands your assent, but with a
Person who demands your confidence. (1955a: 213-4)
If I find myself with doubts over the status of Big Bang theory, I
might attempt to resolve these doubts by reading what the scientists have
to say about the matter. If I find myself with doubts about my wife’s
fidelity, I might attempt to resolve these doubts by doing a little
detective work (or by hiring a detective). In the first case, the
investigative approach seems right; but in the second case, it seems wrong.
Lewis’ contention is that religious belief is more like my having faith in
my wife than my accepting a scientific theory. If I find myself with doubts
about, say, the goodness of God’s dealings with me, the right response is
not (at least not usually) to attempt to resolve my doubts by doing some
natural theology.
Sticking with
philosophical theology, Lewis also offers his readers some interesting
thoughts on the Trinity (1952b). These thoughts draw on one of Lewis’
favourite books: Edwin Abbot Abbot’s Flatland (1884). Lewis suggests
that perhaps our difficulties in conceiving of the Trinity are similar to
the difficulties that a creature inhabiting a two dimensional world would
have in imagining a cube. If told that a cube consists of six squares
combined in such a way as to create a single regular geometrical figure, a
flatlander would tend to imagine these squares in one of two ways. The
squares would be imagined either laid out next to one another – so failing
to capture the cube’s essential unity – or laid on top of one another – so
failing to capture the distinct nature of the cube’s six faces. In neither
case has the flatlander succeeded in imagining a regular geometrical figure
constructed from six squares. If this does not do the trick, then the
reader should try imagining a tesseract, best described as a regular
four-dimensional figure constructed from eight cubes. The natural way to
understand Lewis here, is as suggesting that our difficulty in
comprehending the Trinity, as with the flatlanders’ difficulty in
conceiving of three-dimensional geometrical figures (and our own with
four-dimensional geometrical figures), is not that such notions violate
our categories and concepts but that they transcend them. The
distinction is a difficult one that deserves attention from philosophers.
Another
distinction to be found in Lewis is that between looking at and looking
along, which he introduces in his essay “Meditation in a Toolshed”
(1945c). He imagines standing in his toolshed and seeing, looking at,
a beam of light as it creeps though the crack in the door. He then imagines
moving into the beam of light, and looking along it, out of the shed
and at the sun. To look at the beam is one thing, along it quite another.
The same distinction appears in much, if not all, of our experience. It is
one thing to enjoy a meal, it is another to examine and analyse the
enjoyment of the meal. The philosopher coming to this distinction will
immediately see that western philosophy and science has given precedence to
looking at, seeing that kind of experience as ‘more objective’. The
problem with this, however, is that whatever we look at, we are
always looking along something else. How can we avoid looking along
our ‘eyes’? It seems to me that this distinction could be of much use in
contemporary philosophy. It yields a quick route to Thomas Nagel’s
conclusion that humans are incapable of a “view from nowhere” (Nagel 1986),
and may offer a useful new tool in the debate over Qualia. After all “what
it is like” to look along something is very different from “what it is
like” to look at it.
One of Lewis’
better-known arguments is his argument against naturalism. This is the
argument whose cogency Lewis debated with Elizabeth Anscombe at the Oxford
Socratic Club, of which Lewis was then the president. Lewis presented
various formulations of this argument, but they each hinge on the
distinction between two different because relations: the cause-effect
because and the ground-consequent because. If naturalism is
true, then all our beliefs are, at bottom, neurological happenings or
states inside our heads, which can be entirely accounted for in terms of
their antecedent causes. This is where the cause-effect because
comes in. But if our beliefs are to count as rational, the ground-consequent
because must also be in play: for a belief to count as rational there
must not merely be grounds for holding that belief, the belief must be held
on those grounds. Now Lewis asks,
But even if grounds do exist,
what exactly have they got to do with the actual occurrence of the belief
as a psychological event? If it is an event it must be caused. It must in
fact be simply one link in a causal chain which stretches back to the
beginning and forward to the end of time. How could such a trifle as lack
of logical grounds prevent the belief’s occurrence or how could the
existence of grounds promote it? (1960a: 20)
If naturalism is incapable of answering this question, then it will
turn out that naturalism is self-defeating. If naturalism cannot
accommodate the thought that our beliefs can be held for reasons
then either naturalism is false, or the belief in naturalism cannot be held
for reasons and so cannot be reasonable. Various other ways of formulating
the argument are suggested by Lewis’ work. One alternative formulation
questions the ability of naturalism to account for the ‘aboutness’ of human
thinking. Another asks whether naturalism is capable of explaining a
widespread and reliable coincidence between the cause-effect system and the
ground-consequent system. In offering his argument(s) against naturalism,
Lewis may be seen as anticipating our current puzzlement concerning such
philosophical conundrums as intentionality and mental causation.6
Few seem to have
commented on Lewis’ reflections on the philosophy of science as they appear
in the epilogue to his The Discarded Image (1964a). Those reflections
bear notable similarities to Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions (1962). Lewis observes that by “endless tinkering” any
scientific model can be made to accommodate the available data but that
“the human mind will not endure such ever-increasing complications if once
it is seen that some simpler conception can ‘save the appearances’” (1964a:
219-20). This sounds as if Lewis thinks the progress of science a fully
rational process. But so far, we only have Lewis’ views on the comparison
of existing theories relative to existing data. On the origin of new
theories, and the acquisition of new data, Lewis writes
We are all, very properly,
familiar with the idea that in every age the human mind is deeply influenced
by the accepted Model of the universe. But there is a two-way traffic; the
Model is also influenced by the prevailing temper of mind. … [A] new Model
will not be set up without evidence, but the evidence will turn up when the
inner need for it becomes sufficiently great. It will be true evidence. But
nature gives most of her evidence in answer to the questions we ask her.
Here, as in the courts, the character of the evidence depends on the shape
of the examination, and a good cross-examiner can do wonders. He will not
elicit falsehoods from an honest witness. But, in relation to the total
truth in the witness’s mind, the structure of the examination is like a
stencil. It determines how much of that total truth will appear and what
pattern it will suggest. (1964a: 222-3)
Kuhn and other philosophers of science may express their positions
with greater sophistication, but once again, the strength of Lewis’
presentation is his clarity. The novice in philosophy of science will find
few better places to begin his reflections.
Although it is not
strictly philosophical, Lewis also has another argument that deserves
mention here. His ‘Trilemma’ contends that one of the common responses to
the claims of Jesus is quite out of court and that the Christian response
is superior to any other. In perhaps the most frequently quoted passage of
his entire works, Lewis writes
I am trying here to prevent
anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him:
‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His
claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was
merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great
moral teacher. He would be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he
is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make
your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman
or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and
kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.
But let us not come up with any patronising nonsense about His being a
great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to
… We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we are talking
about either was (and is) just what He said or else a lunatic, or something
worse. Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a
fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may
seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. (1952b: 52-3)
A similar approach would be to point out that all
humans fall into one of four categories: (i) those who have never claimed
to be God and are not sages, (ii) those who have not claimed to be God and
are sages, (iii) those who have claimed to be God and are not sages, and
(iv) those who have claimed to be God and are sages. The vast majority of
us fall into the first category. Many of the great philosophers, religious
teachers and (perhaps) moral reformers fall into the second category.
Lunatics people the third category. But what of the fourth category?
Plausibly, it contains just one person: Jesus of Nazareth.7
The
argument is a very persuasive one and leads most to either the Christian
conclusion or the alternative conclusion that Jesus never really made these
claims. Given that the New Testament (NT) texts clearly attribute such
claims to Jesus, there have been two basic ways of articulating this
alternative conclusion. The first is to say that the NT is incorrect in
attributing these claims to Jesus. The second is to say that Jesus’ claims
should not have been interpreted literally, and were no claim to divinity
in the Christian sense, but only in some other – normally pantheistic –
sense.8
The
first of these alternatives will clearly run into arguments for the
substantial historicity of the NT documents, as it requires that the NT
texts are legend or myth.9 Another problem is that unless Jesus
made these claims it is difficult to understand why the Jewish authorities
were so opposed to Him, and why they so encouraged the Romans to crucify
Him. It also makes a mystery of how belief in Jesus’ deity arose,
especially in a culture so committed to strict monotheistic Judaism.
Our
second alternative struggles to make sense of the way in which Jesus’
followers understood His claims. If Jesus really was a good teacher, He
would surely have managed to communicate His true meaning to His followers;
something that, if this alternative is correct, He emphatically failed to do.
Further, while this hypothesis may fit Jesus’ claims to divinity, it will
not fit the essential Jewish-ness (and thus non-pantheistic nature)
of so much of His other teaching.10 This expands Lewis’ three
alternatives (mad, bad, God) into five (mad, bad, God, guru, myth).
As G.K. Chesterton
and C.S. Lewis point out in the following passages, of the five basic
options about who (or what) Jesus was, there is at least some reason
to think that the Christian option coheres best with what we know about
Him.
For he
combined exactly the two things that lie at the two extremes of human
variation [i.e. wisdom and the claim to deity] … [But] I really do not see
how these two characteristics could be convincingly combined, except in the
astonishing way in which the creed combines them. (Chesterton 1925: 203-4)
The historical difficulty of giving for the life
of Jesus any explanation that is not harder than the Christian explanation,
is very great. The discrepancy between the depth and sanity and (let me
add) shrewdness of His moral teaching and [whatever psychological
state must] lie behind His theological teaching unless He is indeed God,
has never been satisfactorily got over. (Lewis 1960a: 113)
There is much more to say here, but Lewis has clearly put his finger
on an important issue. Indeed, he may well have uncovered one of the prime
motivations behind the modern rejection of the Gospels as accurate history.11
In addition to all
this, Lewis’ also has much to say about religious language, petitionary prayer,
the justification of punishment, and other philosophical topics besides.12
Philosophical Themes that are addressed in this Dissertation
Having outlined some of the important philosophical themes from C.S.
Lewis that are not addressed in this dissertation it is now time to outline
those that are. The dissertation has five main chapters.
Given his interest
in ethics and the philosophy of religion, it is not surprising to find
Lewis writing on the relationship between morality and religion and in particular
on the Euthyphro dilemma. That dilemma has been the basis of a popular
argument against those who hold that morality is in some way dependent upon
God. Proponents of this argument contend that if ethics really is dependent
upon God, then ethics is in some way objectionably arbitrary and it becomes
impossible to give any content to the goodness of God. In chapter 2, I
claim that a broadly Lewisian variety of theistic ethics, motivated by
broadly Lewisian considerations, is invulnerable to such arguments.
Lewis
had much to say about the philosophical status of miracles, and two
chapters of this dissertation – chapters 3 and 4 – examine this work.
Slightly modifying Lewis’ own definition of miracle, the first
argues that there is a coherent concept of the miraculous. In the process
of arguing for these conclusions, we also explore the topic of ‘The Laws of
Nature’ (another topic about which Lewis has a lot to say). After drawing
from the analysis of laws of nature the conclusion that science cannot (via
its laws) explain the existence of the universe, Lewis offers a little
noticed (and indeed rather tentative) cosmological-type argument for the
inadequacy of a materialistic world-view.
The second chapter
on miracles addresses David Hume’s argument against the miraculous. That
argument contends that there could never (in principle) be enough evidence
to justify belief in a miracle. Lewis offers a response to Hume’s argument.
I argue that this response is, at best, incomplete, but that this
incompleteness can be remedied, in part by appeal to the work of G.K.
Chesterton, one of Lewis’ biggest influences.
Lewis was well
aware of the Freudian critique of religion, and implicit and explicit in
Lewis’ work are several responses to that critique. The Freudian critique
contends that religious belief results from the desire for the protection
of a cosmic father figure. This (alleged) fact is claimed to make such
belief somehow irrational. It has commonly been contended that such
Freudian reasoning commits the genetic fallacy. But it is far from clear
what this fallacy is or whether it is indeed a fallacy. In chapter 5, I
formulate criteria to determine when a ‘genetic argument’ is a good one,
and then argue that the Freudian critique does not meet these criteria and
therefore fails to undermine the rationality of religious belief. If, as
Augustine claimed, God has made us for Himself and our hearts are restless
until they find their rest in Him, then it would seem that the desire for
God might be a legitimate basis for belief in Him. Other Lewisian responses
to the Freudian critique are also examined.
Taking up the
aforementioned claim from Augustine, Lewis produced an argument that has
been dubbed “The Argument from Desire.” The argument’s first premise is
similar to the basic premise of Freud’s reasoning and yet the conclusion is
diametrically opposed. In rough outline this argument runs: We have a
natural desire for God, the world is such that every natural desire can be
satisfied, but this desire cannot be satisfied unless God exists, therefore
… Something similar to this argument can be found in Pascal, among others,
but I have nowhere found it so clearly stated as in Lewis. While the
argument is probably not so convincing as Lewis seemed to think, it is at
least as persuasive as many of the more traditional arguments for the
existence of God and deserves more attention than it has, hitherto,
received. In chapter 6, I offer a careful formulation of the argument and
consider several objections.
The dissertation
also includes two appendices. Appendix A is a short biography of C.S.
Lewis. Appendix B offers a few thoughts on Lewis’ general stance on the
relation between faith and reason.
Last Updated: 15th
March 2003
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