CS Lewis' World View

C. S. Lewis’ Ransom trilogy expresses not only Christian belief but also Lewis’ particular version of it:

Genesis 2 and 3 are essentially accurate history;
Darwinian processes do not occur;
all animals in an un-Fallen world are tame;
un-Fallen human beings do not die;
their population increases to a preordained number;
their first parents are divinely endowed with knowledge that we acquired only by scientific research;
the first male parent of a new race is, not by social convention but by divine intention, a “King” who will “judge” his descendants;
it is pre-ordained that their bodies will cease to be planet-bound.¹

  In addition, Lewis presents fictitious ideas that are consistent with his beliefs:

eldila (angels) formed the planets that they rule;
each planetary eldil has a terrestrial counterpart;
this explains the ancient belief in gods corresponding to the planets;
all newly created rational animals on Venus and elsewhere must now be humaniform because of the Incarnation on Earth;
the King of Perelandra (Venus) is green but otherwise resembles Christ;
the Lady of Perelandra stops addressing Ransom as an equal when she realises that he is not the King of his world. 

Even in fiction, this is hard to take. That Lewis applied the concept of the royalty of the first parents not only to his fictitious Venerian Tor and Tinidril but also to the real terrestrial Adam and Eve is evident in A Preface to Paradise Lost:

“Milton himself gives us a glimpse of our relations to Adam as they would have been if Adam had never fallen. He would still have been alive in Paradise, and to that ‘capital seat’ all generations from ‘all the ends of the Earth’ would have come periodically to do their homage (XI, 342). To you or to me, once in a lifetime perhaps, would have fallen the almost terrifying honour of coming at last, after long journeys and ritual preparations and slow ceremonial approaches, into the very presence of the great Father, Priest, and Emperor of the planet Tellus; a thing to be remembered all our lives…The task of a Christian poet presenting the unfallen first of men is…of drawing someone who, in his solitude and nakedness, shall really be what Solomon and Charlemagne and Haroun-al-Raschid and Louis XIV lamely and unsuccessfully strove to imitate on thrones of ivory between lanes of drawn swords and under jewelled baldachins.” ²

 

(Of course, if history and even prehistory had diverged completely from the beginning, then you and I as the individuals we are would not have been born. Someone else with different parentage, traditions, up-bringing and memories would have been here in our place.)

Lewis’ fantasy makes a good story but, to explain the world that we do inhabit, I find Darwin’s The Origin of Species and Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State more convincing. Even in the Biblical account, Emperors arose after the Fall of Man (Gen. 10.8). Some of us now think that they arose after the transition from ape to man and after the production and appropriation of a store-able and possess-able surplus of wealth but Lewis projects our historically conditioned social divisions onto the structure of the universe.

Although James Blish’s post-Lewis trilogy, After Such Knowledge, addresses common themes, Blish could not have written direct sequels to Lewis’ interplanetary novels. Blish’s solar system is the one revealed by telescopes and space probes, not by a Classical literary imagination. His extraterrestrial “Angels” are energy beings, not, like Lewis’ eldila, both extraterrestrial and supernatural. When Blish’s characters do encounter real demons, they speculate that these also are composed of energy. Blish’s agnosticism enables him not only to consider the death of God but also to imagine its unexpected outcome.

There are at least four points in Lewis’ favour:

he describes other worlds imaginatively;
his juvenile and adult novels cleverly parallel each other – evil magician = evil scientist, magical worlds = other planets, the leonine Aslan = the cosmic Maleldil etc;
remembering his own period of unbelief, he imaginatively enters into other points of view, including those of the unbelieving characters, Weston and MacPhee;
in various works, and particularly in The Great Divorce, he depicts moral choices, for example about personal relationships or intellectual integrity, that everyone faces with or without Lewis’ faith.

1. C. S. Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London: Pan Books, 1990).
2. C. S. Lewis, A Preface To Paradise Lost (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 118.
   C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (London: Fontana, 1982).

Philosophical Disagreements With CS Lewis

C. S. Lewis suggests that, if we dislike his ideas, the fault lies with us:

“Many of those who say that they dislike Milton’s God only mean that they dislike God: infinite sovereignty de jure, combined with infinite power de facto, and love which, by its very nature, includes wrath also – it is not only in poetry that these things offend.” ¹

Thanks for the judgementalism but let’s consider “God”.

(1) The creator before the creation would be a self without other which is like a square without sides. Self is recognised only by contrast with other, thus with external objects of consciousness. Consciousness, a relationship between a subject and its objects, is negated by the negation of the objects. If there were a single being, then it would become self-conscious only by first appearing to itself as other, then realising its identity. The creation of a perceived world of discrete objects separated by apparently empty spaces necessarily preceded self-consciousness, not vice versa.

The complete process would be: reality; appearance; illusion; realisation. Realisation is the ending of illusion, which is appearance mistaken for reality, but reality, even if single, must also be internally dynamic because a static unity would be unable to differentiate itself. Individuals perceive objects; scientists study dynamics; mystics realise unity; theists personify unity.

The problem of self-consciousness before the creation is not solved by suggesting that a timeless creator does not literally pre-exist his creation. He must exist independently of it and this is enough to make him potentially a subject without objects.

(2) God is believed to be bodiless. An embodied subject identifies itself with one of its objects and therefore can think “I perceive my body and other objects” whereas a bodiless subject without an environment would have nothing to think about. It would be a form without content. Mental properties like knowledge, wisdom, goodness etc, require a context. They are applicable to knowable objects and to discernible, i. e., embodied,  other subjects but not to nothing. Goodness is a disposition to act in a particular way towards other beings who therefore necessarily pre-exist it.

(3) God is believed to be self-conscious yet timeless. However, external objects, necessary for self-consciousness, are conceived to be external only when they are re-perceived, recognised and regarded as having continued to exist even while not being perceived. “I saw that before” presupposes that “I” and “that” have continued to exist independently of each other since the remembered perception. This requires memory, thus the experience of having lived through a period of time.

A single moment of consciousness with no past or future would begin and end simultaneously, thus would be indistinguishable from unconsciousness. God is believed not to begin and end simultaneously but to be beginningless and endless. However, this implies infinite, not zero, time. Timeless consciousness, the temporal equivalent of a mathematically flat plane, is an abstraction whereas the Biblical deity is presented as a concrete individual, with specific characteristics, YHWH, not Baal, acting in history.

(4) Persons, self-conscious individuals, exist only in interpersonal relationships. The Trinity doctrine seems to answer this requirement. However, the doctrine was formulated in order to preserve monotheism despite the deification of God’s son and the personification of his spirit, not in order to explain pre-existent personality, and it raises the additional problem of differentiating between persons who are not spatially distinct. (Similarly, patriarchal monotheism precludes female deities so Mary became not a Mother Goddess but the Mother of God, which sounds like the same thing until it is elucidated.)

(5) Lewis thought that divine existence was logically necessary. However, existential propositions, like “God exists”, are contingent, not tautologous. God’s properties can neither include nor entail existence because existence is not a property but the instantiation of properties. If perfection did entail existence, then a perfect example of every kind of thing for which there is a criterion of perfection would necessarily exist. Empirical research would locate the perfect person, poem, potato etc.

(6) The omnipotent creator of all things other than himself would create all the determinants of our choices and us making those choices and therefore could not consistently condemn us for making such choices. If choices are not determined, then they are random, therefore not morally significant, and God does not create all things other than himself. Because interacting dispositions and circumstances determine  behaviour, we are morally accountable to fellow creatures who try to influence our  behaviour, but not to a hypothetical creator of all our dispositions and circumstances. Fellow beings can advocate courage or honesty. Our creator could have made us brave or honest.

A father (or ruler) can either allow or prevent his child’s (or subject’s) freedom of choice because he is a more powerful being sharing a common environment governed by regular laws which neither of them created. However, the infinitely powerful creator of us and our environment has already made us the people we are, making the choices we do. He neither allows nor prevents freedom of choice but determines choices. Many theists are, consistently, predestinationists.

 

People are most predictable when unconstrained. A careful man is one who usually acts carefully. He can act uncharacteristically and unpredictably because we do not know all the factors determining his behaviour. God not only knows but creates them. He need not even predict because:

“…God did not create the universe long ago but creates it at this minute – at every minute.” ²

Thus, he creates us doing whatever we are doing at every moment.

I agree with Lewis that:

divine omniscience would not negate human free will because merely knowing what someone does does not make him do it;

eternal omniscience is not temporal prescience;

even prescience would not make anyone do anything.

If a man does A, then it would have been foreknown that he was going to do A. If he does B, then it would have been foreknown that he was going to do B. Foreknowledge that he was going to do B if he in fact does A is logically impossible as is subsequent knowledge that he did B if he in fact did A. However:

eternal omniscience is timeless consciousness, which I do argue is impossible;

I have also argued that omnipotent creation prevents creatures’ freedom in relation to their creator.

(7) Lewis’ defence of theism is invalid. He argues that merely caused beliefs are true only by accident whereas valid inferences are reasoned, not caused, and that an act of knowing must be determined only by what is known, not by past events. He infers that a beginningless “Reason” frees our inferences and acts of knowing from causation. Natural thoughts are at best associative whereas inferential thought is divinely illumined, thus “supernatural”. ³

Reason preceding language and an environment sounds like a square preceding its sides. If an apparent act of knowing is caused only by a series of events acting directly on a conscious being, then there is not necessarily any external object or state of affairs corresponding to what that being seems to know, but, if the series of events brings the subject and object of knowledge into contact, then it does cause the act of knowing.

Conscious organisms are not, like inanimate objects, mere passive recipients of causal determination. Animals process sensory inputs and act accordingly. When our pre-human ancestors began to manipulate and thus to experiment with their environment, their cerebral capacity increased accordingly. Lewis writes:

“…expectations are not inferences and need not be true. The assumption that things which have been conjoined in the past will always be conjoined in the future is the guiding principle not of rational but of animal behaviour. Reason comes in precisely when you make the inference ‘Since always conjoined, therefore probably connected’ and go on to attempt the discovery of the connection.” ⁴

But an environment-manipulating, data-processing, language-using animal, competitively compelled to learn, possessing greater cerebral capacity than other species and already capable of associative thought would be able to make the qualitative leap from mere expectation to attempted discovery. It would begin to anticipate the outcomes of its actions and to adjust its expectations to experience.

Lewis rightly argues that improved vision is not knowledge of light and that improved curiosity or expectation are not inference but ignores the roles of manipulation, cerebral data-processing and qualitative transformation:

organismic sensitivity quantitatively increased until it was qualitatively transformed into conscious sensation;
processing of immediate sensations quantitatively increased until it was qualitatively transformed into perception of discrete objects;
the transition from passive expectation through active curiosity to experimental manipulation is another such qualitative transformation.

The  brain evolved with the hands, reflection with action, theory with practice, mind with body.

When Lewis criticises his philosophical opponents for being unable to explain how a thought can be both caused by previous events and grounded in another thought, he argues that it is insufficient to suggest that the grounding thought is one of the previous events because no thought causes all the thoughts that can be inferred from it. This is because, when we think a thought, not being mere intellects, we have more to attend to than tracing all its implications. We attend to what concerns or interests us if we are not distracted by more urgent sensory inputs. Once, I was so disturbed by a particular event that it took me two days to realise one of its obvious implications.

Lewis distinguishes sharply between causally determined rationalisations and timelessly valid rationality but surely they are almost inextricably entangled in practice? Many influences prevent most people from reasoning systematically though not from drawing common sense inferences about everyday events. When we do achieve circumstances that enable us to attempt systematic reasoning, then our premises, procedures and probable conclusions are strongly influenced by economics, education etc. A sceptical theologian informs me that, because British University Theology Departments are mainly staffed by people who already accept the tenets of Christianity, they continue to accept evidence for the Resurrection that would not be accepted in History, Sociology, Philosophy or any other academic discipline. Wider recruitment to the study of Biblical texts would change the theological consensus.

A billionaire’s social circumstances and self-interest usually cause him to rationalise capitalism but, in order to do this, he pays experts to analyse relevant evidence and to generate arguments that some regard as valid but others as invalid and that must be considered as arguments, not dismissed as rationalisations. Controversy and experience force the intellectually honest to test and change their ideas and some agreed truths have emerged.

 I know that 1+1=2 not because I have been caused to believe it whether or not it is true but because biological and social causation have produced in me a level of consciousness that can apprehend simple mathematical truths when they are presented to it. Systematic rationality and abstract understanding in logic, mathematics and science have been won in struggle against concrete nature and scriptural authority.

Any process of reasoning is expressed in a set of mutually consistent propositions, at least some of which should be testable against experience. When we want to discredit someone’s reasoning, we try to show that his propositions contradict experience, each other or both. Our wish to discredit him may be irrational. Prejudice may blind us to the truth of his statements. We may respond emotionally to a single word instead of listening carefully to an entire sentence. We may interrupt and simply not hear out a valid argument to its conclusion. We may either not understand an argument or continue to disagree with it even when we do understand it. However, we at least pay lip service to rationality whenever we criticise inconsistency. Consistency between propositions, necessary for communication, is the basis of the “reason” which Lewis argues preceded communication.

Lewis argues that a thought resulting from anything other than an earlier thought has no rational basis. However, my thought that the sun is hot follows only from my experience of the sun and my ability to think. The latter has not always existed. Lewis’ conclusion that its existence depends on an ability to think that has always existed does not follow from his mistaken premise that rational thought must be beginningless first because an ability to think is not a particular thought and secondly because God’s thoughts are not mine. An additional argument is necessary to show how thoughts of mine that do not follow from earlier thoughts of mine can instead follow from earlier thoughts of an invisible being. This is not obvious. My thoughts follow from yours only if you tell me them and I agree with them.

Lewis’ philosophical opponents have not “…given an account of what we thought to be our inferences that suggests that they are not real insights…” or treated reason as a mere phenomenon. ⁵ Intellect was naturally selected because it enhances life by enabling us to understand natural processes. We do not first find that our insights are useful, then have to prove that they are insights. Inferential ability selected for survival can now be used for more dispassionate research just as opposable thumbs selected for grasping branches can now be used to write philosophy.

Lewis is simply wrong to imply that human loves are valueless if they are biological by-products. They remain human loves, whatever their physical basis. An electric bulb is not valueless because its light source is natural. Why would human ideals be illusions if they had not, somehow, pre-existed humanity? ⁶

Lewis approvingly quotes Haldane:

“If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true…and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.” ⁷

Atomic motions in my brain are a scientifically detectable aspect of me as perceived by others. My mental processes are my perceptions of everything else. Of course atomic motions and mental processes differ qualitatively and neither simply causes the other. Dialectical materialists recognise emergent, irreducible levels of being linked by qualitative transformations but Lewis replies only to mechanistic reductionism. (See Zen Marxism) Dialectical materialists say not “Only atoms exist” but “Atoms and reason are two levels of being.”  Lewis mentions the concept of emergent deity but confuses the emergence of new qualities with reduction to previously existing qualities, thus does not really consider “emergence”. ⁸

He concludes that “…the human mind…is set free…” from causation.

“And the preliminary processes which led up to this liberation, if there were any, were designed to do so.” ⁹

There were natural processes that led up to human mentality and they explain it. Any design argument for theism needs to be empirical, not a priori. An evolutionary account of the origin of human reason is no more an absurd or nonsensical proof that there are proofs than is the theistic account. We do not prove that there are proofs but explain how there are beings that can understand them.

If God exists, then he is another rational subject, not objective rationality. The latter comprises facts such as that, whenever there are countable items, then one plus one always equals two. 1 + 1 = 2 need not have been thought before the creation and, even if it had been, that thinking of it would not have been what made it valid.

References

1. C. S. Lewis, A Preface To Paradise Lost (London: Oxford University Press, 1942, 1967), p. 118.
2. C. S. Lewis, Miracles (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1947; London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2002). P. 288.
3. ibid, pp. 17-60.
4. ibid, p. 30.
5. ibid, p. 32-332.
6. ibid, p. 54.
7. ibid, p. 22.
8. ibid, pp. 45-46.
9. ibid, pp. 34-35. 

Faith as Trust

Reflections on faith and action:

Faith is trust in God or life.
Life requires action, not trust.
However, manual/mental action differentiates homo sapiens.
Therefore, trusting human life means remaining active.

Collective action can prevent economic deprivation by ending competitive accumulation.
Trusting life prevents mental suffering by ending unwarranted apprehensions.
Faith addresses personal attitudes, not political action.
However, karma yoga facilitates individual participation in collective action.

Karma yoga is attention to action without attachment to outcomes.
Theists dedicate nonattached action to God.
Krishna is both god and guru of karma yoga.
Buddhist working meditation is nontheistic karma yoga.
 

Atheology

If, as some say, the object of religious experience is neither a being nor even the supreme being but being itself or the ground of being, then it is not a person. It cannot be prayed to and should not be addressed, certainly not as "Father" which implies, if not a biological relationship, then at least a close relationship with another person. Being is the source of life and love but only because it is the source of everything. Maybe Jesus, while alive, was one with being but not uniquely so (and is not still alive in the meaning of being!)

Being becomes conscious by dividing into subjects and objects. Consciousness occurs neither in the unity preceding subjects and objects nor in objects but in subjects. Religious experience is of inner oneness or outer transcendence but consciousness is in the experiencer, not in the oneness or transcendence.

The Biblical deity is "holy". Holiness synthesises awesomeness with moral goodness. Goodness is a personal attribute but awesomeness is not. The Grand Canyon is awesome but not a person. Theists, discerning awesomeness in their object of worship and goodness in at least some of their fellow worshipers, project both attributes onto the personified object.

Natural forces are personified or regarded as God at work but are impersonal. Gravity, electromagnetism and nuclei function unconsciously. Some organisms become conscious. One species becomes self-conscious, then projects self-consciousness or personality onto the heavens. A person is a single subject of consciousness whereas the transcendent-immanent-omnipresent reality (ie, everything) knows itself through every subject, thus is not a single person.

Wrong Actions

I have done something wrong. What can I do about it? Apologise to someone if possible and appropriate. What else?

Apologise to God? No. He doesn't exist and, if he did, he would be responsible.

Confess to a priest or find salvation in Christ? No.

Think about it? Necessary but insufficient.

Avoid past mistakes? Yes but this is easier said than done and doesn't resolve guilt.

Say that the past doesn't matter? I think it does. See that there is a level on which the past doesn't matter? Maybe, but I am not at that level of perception yet.

Meditate? Yes, but that doesn't resolve the issue immediately. What will it be like to resolve it? Past actions either will not recur to memory or will somehow be perceived differently. Zazen moves us towards that different perception but on an uncontrollable time scale. Since the process cannot be hurried, in fact since it requires and involves patience, I cannot think of anything else to be done.

Early Christian Psychology

Spong illuminates probable early Christian psychology. (1) Peter experienced an intolerable contradiction between Jesus' entirely God-centred, God-affirming life and his God-cursed death by execution. This was the theological Problem of Evil and the theme of the Book of Job writ large. Peter must have experienced intensely the problem which Christian theology sometimes poses very abstractly as a contradiction between omnipotence and infinite goodness on the one hand and suffering on the other hand. Peter's solution was, first, to re-interpret the death as expressing the life, as somehow an ultimate expression of unconditional love, and, secondly, as far as possible, to deny the death by affirming a Resurrection that at that stage was spiritual, not physical, and believed to have occurred in Galilee, not in Jerusalem. Jesus was risen in God, not, as described later, walking around in Jerusalem. That makes sense of the texts and of Peter's probable psychological processes.

However, Spong interprets all the accounts of Jesus' ministry as neither history nor biography but "midrash", meaning scripturally-based stories written to proclaim a Messiahship that had not yet been claimed or recognised while Jesus was still alive. Thus, all we know about Jesus is that he made a big impression on Peter and on some others. For Spong, this is enough for us now to proclaim Jesus' Messiahship and spiritual Resurrection. For me, it is not. I do not worship the Hebrew deity and find spiritual meaning in another tradition. Jews, Muslims and Sikhs worship the One God but do not identify Jesus with him. A Spongian creed would contain the unconvincing affirmation: "I believe that it would be fair to say that in that moment Peter felt himself to be resurrected." 

(1) Spong, John Shelby, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? New York, 1994.

An Extended Metaphor

The sun rises above a wide, deep ocean. Facing the sun, we stand on the shore of a still darkened continent. In the darkness behind us and below the horizon, the continent on which we stand joins the ocean that we now confront. Our preconscious ancestors came from the ocean and traversed the continent, their sight growing as the light increased. We explore the ocean and continent, knowing little about either.

The sun: the growing light of consciousness.
The ocean: the water of life; the objective universe that pre-existed our subjectivity.
The darkness behind us: preconscious organismic responses and unconscious mental processes without which we would not be conscious.

Statements about the "darkness", the origins of consciousness, are experiential, evidenced or traditional. Buddhist teaching is mainly experiential although it receives the rebirth idea from tradition, unless, of course, the line between experience and tradition is not drawn where I think it is. By contrast, the religious teaching in which I was indoctrinated was merely traditional and thus, I suggest, perpetuated the darkness. People continued not to understand how they had become conscious. 

Did human consciousness result from increasing organismic sensitivity to environmental alterations or from the infusion of souls into already conscious animal bodies - or indeed into mechanistically unconscious animal bodies, according to Cartesianism? The idea of souls may be remotely derived from the experience of dreaming, thus from the experience of (apparently) leaving the body temporarily in sleep and permanently in death, but it is contradicted by later evidence that dreams result from sleeping brain activity. Buddhist meditation, direct experience of psychological processes, generated a no soul teaching.

Some explorers sail the ocean. Others shine light into the darkness from which we emerged. Our ancestors originated from the environment that now confronts us. Eventually, those exploring in opposite directions will meet.