Religion According C.S. Lewis:

What is Religion?C.S. Lewis said something about religion that is both obvious and profound, meaning in practice that it's almost universally ignored. To paraphrase, "The most important thing about any religion is simply whether it's TRUE or not." (Emphasis mine.) He was pointing out that most people simply practice, whether poorly or well, whichever religion their family or most of their neighbors practice. He was pointing out that most people of every religion don't take it as seriously in their everyday practice as they do theoretically; and in fact most people don't even bother to delve more deeply than they have to into whatever religion they profess.

It's a sad fact that Christianity has degraded from a living faith that let 120 disciples begin turning the world upside down, to a faded, compromised, bastardized pastiche of Biblical ideas and pagan philosophy/practices. And those few souls who do want to go deeper into their faith are still inevitably painted with the same brush as the half-hearted majority, who only want enough "religion" to keep them from going to a hell they only half believe in.

Religion is not about ethnicity. Religion is not about whatever faith your family professed. Religion is not about external clothing and hairstyles and bumper stickers and diets and specialized vocabularies. Religion is not about "fitting in." Religion is about truth, or else it's worthless. And of course, that means that for ANY religion to have any meaning, some genuine truth must actually exist. And if some genuine truth actually exists, then some religions will be "closer" to it and others will be "farther" from it. By definition, two religions that say opposite things about the nature of the universe and life as we know it, can't both be right.

By Pete http://www.geocities.com/maranathapmoore

ound Bites – Definitions of “Religion”

“…a system of symbols, myths, doctrines, ethics, and rituals for the expression of ultimate relevance” Denise L. Carmody and T.L. Brink Ways to the Center

"Recognition on the part of man of some higher unseen power as having control of his destiny, and as being entitled to obedience, and worship." (Oxford English Dictionary 1971)

"The essence of religion consists in a feeling of absolute dependence. . ." (Frederick Schleiermacher, (1768-1834) The Doctrine of Faith)

"Religion is a human response to mystery. . . . not as a deadly emptiness, but somehow as a reality in which lies the meaning of human existence. . . . The response to the mystery as fullness is religion. In general, religion is a way of relating to mystery as a sacred or divine reality rather than as useless or meaningless." Michael H. Barnes, In the Presence of Mystery, 1f.

“Religion is the sign of the oppressed creature… It is the opium of the people… Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.” Karl Marx

“Religion is what an individual does with his solitariness.” Alfred North Whitehead

“Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands.” Immanuel Kant

"A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden - beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a church, all who adhere to them." (Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life)

Religion is "an hypothesis which is supposed to render the Universe comprehensible. . . . Now every theory tacitly asserts two things: first that there is something to be explained; secondly that such and such is the explanation . . . that the existence of the world with all it contains is a mystery ever pressing for interpretation . . . [and] that it is not a mystery passing human comprehension." (Herbert Spencer, (1820-1903) First Principles)

Religion is "a pathological manifestation of the protective function, a sort of deviation of the normal function . . . caused by ignorance of natural causes and of their effects." (G. Sergi, Les Emotions, 404)

"Religious life consists of the belief that there is an unseen order and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto." (William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 53, 1902)

Philosophy of Religion Course Notes --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Evil and the Power of GodC.S. Lewis

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The Problem:If God is Omnipotent, then why does Human suffering occur? Asking the Question: “Why couldn’t God have made the world without it?” Presupposition of the view is that humans have free will.

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Lewis’s approach:Argues that it is possible to affirm both : Divine Omnipotence That it is impossible for God to create a world containing free beings that would also not allow for the possibility of evil. Such a world is intrinsically impossible.

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Conditional and Intrinsic Impossibility:Conditionally impossible: The claim that a thing or act is impossible unless certain other conditions obtain. Intrinsically impossible: The claim that a thing or act is impossible under all conditions and in all worlds for all agents.

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Intrinsic impossiblities:Square Circles Uncaused acts Free Will and an absence of evil?

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The meaning of Omnipotence:“With God all things are possible” Does this mean: God can do anything? (Even the Intrinsically Impossible?) or - God can do that which is not Intrinsically Impossible Is it a limit of Omnipotence to not be able to do that which is not a thing?

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Possible vs. Impossible Worlds:If we can speak of the possible worlds God could have created, we can also talk of the impossible worlds which God could not create. Because they involve a contradiction - something which is intrinsically impossible A World without the possibility of Evil could not contain free beings.

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Evil is necessary if we are to be free:1. Beings with free choice need things to choose from - some of these choices will be better than others, some worse.

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Evil is necessary if we are to be free:2. The environment required for free choice must be one in which actions have predictable consequences. God cannot suspend the natural order for some, or the freedom of all is compromised. If God acted to prevent evil, then our brains would be incapable of thinking of it.

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Evil is necessary if we are to be free:3. In order for humans to relate, we must be physical. If we are physical, we must be capable of being hurt. In order to feel a caress, we must also be capable of being injured. In order to develop morally (a choice), we must have the possibility of Evil.

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Conclusions:God can still be thought of as omnipotent, but as incapable of doing that which is intrinsically impossible.

As to why God would create a world of free beings (or any world at all), we have no way of knowing.

Capturing C. S. Lewis’s “Mere” Christianity:Another Look at ShadowlandsBy Mary Dodson

Summary

[1] In his The Achievement of C. S. Lewis (1980), Thomas Howard reflects that Lewis’s life was “not terribly exciting,” and adds, “[i]t would be hard to make a big box-office film of it.”1 Hard--yes. Impossible--no. Thirteen years after Howard’s statement and thirty years after Lewis’s death, Richard Attenborough brought Lewis’s life to the big screen. Philip Yancey notes that “[s]ome evangelicals complain that the movie distorts Lewis’s life and waters down his Christian message.”2 I contend that even the most fundamental evangelical should have no complaints and that the highly religious film deserves another look.

Article

[2] In Shadowlands (1993), director Richard Attenborough exquisitely uses film techniques to present an ever-so-accurate presentation of Lewis, the man of books, and of his philosophy, his "mere" Christianity.

[3] First, how does Attenborough's film biography portray C. S. Lewis? Linda Seger, author of The Art of Adaptation, advises anyone attempting a biographical film to remember that "it is impossible to tell a 'Womb to tomb' story in two hours."3 Thus, Attenborough's decision to stick with screenwriter Nicholson's portrayal of only a few short years in Lewis's life was a wise one. Basically, the time under consideration is a two-to-three year telescoped period in the early 1950s focusing on Lewis's falling-in-love-with-Joy experience. The telescoped "facts" revealed in the film are on track: Attenborough's C. S. Lewis (Anthony Hopkins) is a late middle-aged professor, a writer of children's stories, and an author of Christian apologetic works. He is a bachelor living with an alcoholic elder brother in an old country home (The Kilns). Three of the most important aspects of C. S. Lewis are foregrounded: the film portrays Lewis as a brilliant debater, as a beloved public figure, and as an emotionally isolated man. Attenborough does, indeed, capture the essence of the man. However, of greater significance to the film's worth is Attenborough's ability to adapt Lewis's philosophy, his Christian theism. Lewis himself defined his "mere" Christianity as "the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times."4 He was not interested in divisive doctrines, describing his The Case for Christianity as "more what might be called philosophy" and defining philosophy as did Plato--not as a subject but as a way.5 However, Attenborough's film illustrates that Lewis's way was less easily traveled than the scholar had--for twenty-five years--proclaimed.

[4] To Attenborough's credit he covers all of the ever-so-big issues Lewis addresses in his writings: death, heaven, hell, pain, faith. The film's question is: Do C. S. Lewis's ready answers suffice? The answer is the film's story of life being driven to a deeper level of experience.

[5] The obvious subject of concern in the film is death--not the Merle Oberon Wuthering Heights mystical, romantic, beautiful death--but the morphined, agonizing, suffering real death of a real person: Joy Gresham Lewis. Joy credits her acceptance of Christianity with sustaining her through years of marriage to a philandering alcoholic husband. Attenborough's Joy's admission to Lewis that her showing up on his doorstep was a "running away" from problems at home was true-to-life. She later said: "I was so much under Bill's influence that I had to run away from him physically and consult one of the clearest thinkers of our time."6 She did consult Lewis, inviting him to the now-famous luncheon portrayed in the film, and the rest, as they say, is history. In the film, shortly after a "technical" marriage, Attenborough shows Joy suddenly falling down in her apartment. Doctors diagnose cancer. Jack faces the truth; he is in love with this sick woman. Joy's cancer goes into remission. A happy period follows, but the shadow of her illness grows ever longer. The cancer, again active, consumes her body. She suffers. She dies.

[6] Jack's grief was intense. His "faith--so ardently championed in his books--was shaken to its very foundation."7 Attenborough's film visually captures this dark period of doubt and bitterness. The suspense builds as the viewer wonders if Lewis can continue to regard death as a simple river-crossing on a bridge built by the great Bridge Builder. Shortly after Joy's death, Jack attends a social gathering. Everyone turns as Jack enters the room, quietly whispering, one by one, "so sorry, Jack," "so very sorry." Harry Harrington (Michael Denison) reminds him that "we see so little here." Faith, he points out, is all that sustains one. "Only God," he says, "knows why these things happen." Jack turns on him with a vengeance, angrily shouting: "We're the creatures in the cosmic laboratory. I have no doubt the experience is for our own good, but it still makes God the villainous vivisectionist!" The film lays out the harsh reality of death.

[7] The reality of heaven, too, is certainly explored and affirmed. Indeed, Attenborough pays great attention to Lewis's belief in the reality of heaven. When Jack voices his anger at Riley's suggestion that the Narnia wardrobe is a Freudian sexual image, insisting instead that it is a symbol of magic, he implies much. The Lewis scholar, Thomas Howard, argues that Lewis's greatest achievement was his attempt to return the modern child to the possibilities of imaginative truth--to embrace fantasy, imagination, and the supernatural and the possibilities of glories and the glorious.8 Lewis was convinced that the myths of all cultures shed some light on the "one myth that really happened."9 Thus, the Narnia wardrobe that the children in the stories must open, enter, and push through in order to magically enter another world is but a metaphor for the courage to leave the land of the material and open the door to the possibilities of the metaphysical.

[8] However, the greatest illustration in the film of Lewis's thoughts regarding heaven is given via the Golden Valley picture. As Joy enters Lewis's masculine study surrounded by books, she stops and stares at a picture on the wall. Jack tells her that when he was a very little boy it hung in his nursery and that he thought it was a picture of heaven. Later, after the "marriage before God and the world" on Joy's hospital sickbed and during her period of remission, Joy suggests taking a holiday and locating the actual valley

portrayed in the picture. When they arrive at the inn and ask the keeper for directions, she informs them that the valley's name was mistranslated. The actual translation from the French should have been "door," not "golden." They drive to the place, get out of the car, and behold--before them lies the door to Narnia! The English countryside has never looked more radiant; golden shafts of sunshine bathe a green, green meadow. A perfect sky smiles down on Joy and Jack as they walk through the pasture, holding hands and laughing over little intimate jokes. It very much is the Golden Valley of the picture; it appears to be as mystical a place as the imagination can conjure. However, rain soon begins to fall, reminding all that "the old Narnia" does sometimes provide a glimpse of heaven but clouds soon appear, shadows soon fall. The "real country"--the new Narnia-- heaven--can only be reached by opening death's door. The film's most blatant address of the issue of heaven occurs after Joy's death. Its poignancy relies on effective understatement. Douglas asks his stepfather: "Do you believe in heaven?" and Lewis firmly responds: "Yes, I do."

[9] Not only heaven but hell, too, is addressed in the film. Joy is in the hospital daily taking cobalt treatments, suffering from her fight with cancer. Jack, too, suffers--intensely. It is this intense suffering that wakens him to the realization of how very much Joy matters to him. He puzzles over his feelings for Joy and says to himself: "How could Joy be my wife? I'd have to love her, wouldn't I? I'd have to care more for her than for anyone else in this world. I'd have to suffering the torments of the damned," and, through sobs and tears, realizes that he is. His state of grief over the possibility of separation from Joy is so intense that he parallels it to his vision of hell--eternal separation from the God of Love. Thus, Attenborough's film makes it increasingly clear that the love that exists between Jack and Joy mirrors the love that Lewis advocates between God and humankind and that Jack's separation from Joy mirrors his hell that is separation from the source of all love.

[10] "Something must drive us out of our nursery into the world--we must grow up!" becomes the film's C. S. Lewis dictum. This statement very much summarizes the plot of Attenborough's story. The "something" that drives Lewis out of his cloistered and safe world--his nursery--into the real world of open spaces full of bright joys and dark shadows is love; the something that forces the man to grow up is intense suffering and tragic loss--pain. Attenborough illustrates this humanizing journey through careful attention to Jack's progressive relationship with Joy, his detached professor to human being relationship with a student, his increasingly intimate relationship with Douglas, and his maturing relationship with God.

[11] Attenborough's attention to Lewis's "faith journey" deserves further comment. For decades Jack Lewis had been voicing and writing words of faith; the film does not neglect this issue. Lewis had habitually addressed even great losses with ready answers. In one of the lectures portrayed in the movie, he waves a newspaper at the audience. And begins:

[12] Yesterday I read a letter that referred to an event that took place almost a year ago. That was the night a number 1 bus drove into a column of young Royal Marine cadets in

Chatham, and killed twenty-four of them. You remember? The letter asks some simple but fundamental questions. Where was God on that December night? Why didn't He stop it? Isn't God supposed to be good? Isn't he supposed to love us? Does God want us to suffer? What if the answer to that question is yes. You see, I'm not sure that God particularly wants us to be happy. He wants us to love and be loved. He wants us to grow up. I suggest to you that it is because God loves us that he makes us the gift of suffering. Or to put it another way, pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

[13] Lewis continues his discussion, reasoning that "we're like blocks of stone, out of which the sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of His chisel, which hurt so much, are what makes us perfect." Attenborough's film suggests that Lewis's God put the man and his philosophical claims to the test. What does a writer do when overcome by any emotion? He writes. Lewis's " Grief Observed," claims Ralph C. Wood, is "darker than anything in Kafka or Sartre."10 Lewis accuses God of being a Cosmic Sadist, an evil tyrant. Lewis later described the book as one "which ends in faith but raises all the blackest doubts en route."11 In the film, a drained Lewis, sitting behind his desk, voices his Grief Observed thesis. He turns to his brother and admits: "I'm so terribly afraid. Of never seeing her again. Of thinking that suffering is just suffering after all. No cause. No purpose. No pattern. No sense. Just pain, in a world of pain."

[14] Some Christian critics negatively assess Attenborough's film's ending, suggesting that it belittles the reality of Lewis's re-established, re-strengthened, "metal toughened by fire," faith. I disagree. The final scene is, once again, Narnia-like in its imagery. A long shot reveals Lewis and Douglas walking through another Golden Valley meadow. Richard Dyer explains: "The romance literally embodies the theology and, as suggested by the last surging (music, camerawork, rolling green valley) shot, [Lewis's] love for God is enriched by his experience of love in the here and now."12 Attenborough leads into this final shot via bleedover. Lewis has previously been "interviewing" a new tutoree. He has been asking the boy probing questions, not delivering his previous pat answers. He asks the new student what he thinks of the notion that we read to know we are not alone. The lad thinks this through and begins voicing his opinion. Lewis goes to the classroom window and looks outside. Attenborough uses voice-over: Lewis queries, "Why love if loving hurts so much? I have no answers; only the life I've lived. Twice I've been given a choice: the boy chose safety; the man chooses suffering." The film in its entirety answers the "Why love" question. It proclaims that it 'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all; indeed, pain and suffering is part of the living experience. As Joy puts it, "it's part of the deal." To further clarify, safety provides only that - safety. Accepting the risk of suffering, however, provides the possibility of experiencing great joy. Furthermore, the film, and specifically Lewis's "I have no answers" concluding statement reiterates the thinking of a previous great intellect: "There lives more faith in honest doubt...than in half the creeds."13 Indeed, faith can only be faith in the absence of certainties.

[15] As he concludes A Grief Observed, Lewis muses: "The best is perhaps what we understand least." 14 Attenborough provides a perfect example of such. In the film, Lewis, who was troubled by the issue of prayer since childhood, continually prays.

When Joy's cancer goes into remission, Reverend Harrington tells Jack, "God is answering your prayers." Jack replies with fervor: "That's not why I pray--I pray because I can't help myself--the need flows out of me. It doesn't change God; it changes me." Thus, the film suggests that prayer, never understood by Jack, was still one of the "best" things. Life, the intellectual Lewis finally learns, is not to be fully understood. Shortly before his death, Lewis concluded an interview with these thoughts:

[16] The world might stop in ten minutes; meanwhile, we are to go on doing our duty. The great thing is to be found at one's post a child of God, living each day as if it were out last, but planning as though our world might last a hundred years.15

[17] Attenborough's final portrayal of Lewis shows him practicing this advice. He is "at his post," taking care of Douglas, enjoying the Narnia that sometimes resembles heaven, contemplating the mysteries of this experience called life. The camera dollies farther and farther back; a long shot reveals Douglas and Lewis, arm-in-arm, walking toward a horizon of blue cloudless skies.

[18] There is yet one aspect of the film that must be addressed. The title. Never, I dare say, has one author used one word quite so consistently throughout his canon. Never, I dare say, has one director managed to use shadows more philosophically. Attenborough opens his film with a long shot of a glorious sunrise; however, the sky is not cloudless--"heaven" is obstructed from clear view. The clouds make shadows on the land below. The clouds become heavier, hanging somewhat ominously over an impressive Oxford skyline. Attenborough then cuts to a shot of shadowy, flickering candles as solemn, Latinate choir music is heard as the Oxford chapel comes into focus. An astute viewer perceives that this is a land clouded by shadows and that the light of knowledge is, at times, dim and uncertain. When Douglas visits the Lewises for the first time, he asks if he might see their wardrobe. Douglas enters the attic; a low-angle shot pans the piece of furniture, and the wardrobe--the gateway to the magical other world described the Narnia stories --casts a long shadow over the child. Thus, Attenborough communicates Lewis's contention that each person must choose whether or not to journey through the shadows of the mind and embrace the possibilities of the imagination--the possibilities that lie beyond scientific reason. After Joy's initial visit with Jack and Warnie, she boards the train leaving Oxford. She looks at the brothers through the window; they appear shadowy. In this scene, Attenborough ever so cleverly manages to use shadows as a foreshadowing: Jack and Warnie are later left behind in the land of shadows as Joy departs on yet another journey--a journey to the shadowless land of heaven.

[19] The final chapter in Lewis's Narnia books is entitled "Farewell to Shadowlands." The children have arrived in the "new Narnia," i.e., heaven. They have left the Shadowlands behind. Lewis's description of this world as a land of shadows accurately describes his final thoughts on Christian theism. This world, he contends, provides rare glimpses of the perfection that awaits the believer in the new, shadowless land. Human comprehension, too, is, at best "shadowy"; Lewis finally concludes that there is much that

lies beyond human reason--"uncertainty," he told Joy shortly before her death, "is what God has given us for a cross." 16

[20] Attenborough's Shadowlands reminds us that all thinkers long to make sense of life, arriving at perfect answers to life's questions, but that even the greatest intellects have met with defeat. The complexities of pain and suffering are perhaps best approached by contemplating Attenborough's Lewis's final words on the subject: "The pain now is part of the happiness then." Attenborough's film reminds all Christians that the pain we confront while living in the shadowlands will--one day--serve to intensify the joy of a shadowless heaven.

Notes

1. Brian Sibley. C. S. Lewis Through the Shadowlands. (Grand Rapids: Revell, 1994) 131.

2. Brian Sibley, 131.

3. Linda Seger. The Art of Adaptation. (New York: Henry Holt, 1992) 52.

4. C. S. Lewis. Mere Christianity. (New York: Macmillan, 1952) 6.

5. C. S. Lewis. The Case for Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1968) Preface.

6. Brian Sibley, 107.

7. Ibid.

8. Howard, 13.

9. Sibley.

10. Ralph Wood. Rev. of Shadowlands in The Christian Century 111, no.6 (February 1994) 203.

11. qtd. in Richard L. Purtill. "Did C. S. Lewis Lose His Faith?" in A Christian for All Christians,

eds. Andrew Walker and James Patrick (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1992) 33.

12. Richard Dyer, "Feeling English" in Sight and Sound 4, no. 3 (March 1994) 17.

13. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses" in A Pocketful of Poems, ed. David Madden (Ft. Worth: Harcourt, 1996) 114-15.

14. C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed. (New YOrk: Walker and Company, 1961) 71.

15. qtd. in Karen Lindskoog. "Farewell to Shadowlands" in Mythcon Proceeedings, (1971) 12.

16. Brian Sibley, 131.

C. S. LEWIS’S THEOLOGY:

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN RANSOM AND REEPICHEEP

JAMES TOWNSEND

Bible Editor

Cook Communications

Elgin, IL

I. INTRODUCTION

Would you like to pretend that you haven’t just read the title above and to try your hand at a trivia quiz? Here goes. Who was the gentleman who:

was converted to Christianity while riding to the zoo in a sidecar of his brother’s motorcycle?

had his Christianity affirmed by Dr. Bob Jones but questioned by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones(!)?

would never have been a professor if the entrance math exam (which he failed to pass twice) hadn’t been conveniently dropped as a requirement?

taught at colleges spelled with one letter’s difference-Magdalen and Magdalene?

smoked at least sixty cigarettes a day-between pipes?

lived in the same house for thirty years with a woman to whom he wasn’t married?

had tiffs with the other leading Anglican literary critic of his time (T. S. Eliot)?

had as his longest lifetime friend a homosexual (Arthur Greeves)?

died the same day as President John F. Kennedy?

This composite trivia quiz does not sound like the personality profile of a candidate for the "evangelical of the year." Then again, modern conservatives probably wouldn’t have picked three murderers (or accomplices to murder), such as Moses, David, and Paul were, to have authored nineteen books of God’s inspired Word! In light of this, it’s rather amusing that C. S. Lewis-so much read by evangelicals-would probably be turned away from many of their churches if he were an aspiring pastoral candidate.

In the subtitle for my article, I placed Lewis: "Somewhere between Ransom and Reepicheep." These two Rs are characters in Lewis’s fiction. The fictional Dr. Elwin Ransom is a Cambridge philologist (as Lewis was) whose first name has the same letters (except the substitution of an "n" for an "s") as Lewis’s last name. Ransom appears in Lewis’s space trilogy as the Christian character whose chosen role is to save the world. Another of Lewis’s fictional characters, Reepicheep, appears in his Narnia series. Reepicheep, an oversized mouse with a needle-like sword, possesses chutzpah disproportionate to his mousely size. Therefore, I raise the question: did Lewis see himself as Ransom or Reepicheep-or a bit of both? Was he the chosen apologist of the age, whose role was to save the planet (like Ransom) or was he merely a minor critter with an oversized sense of the daredevil, taking on all comers (like Reepicheep)?

Lewis’s friend, clergyman Austen Farrer, asserted: "You cannot read Lewis and tell yourself that Christianity has no important moral bearings, that it gives no coherence to the whole picture of existence, that it offers no criteria for the decision of human choices…." Lewis became a Christianized version of movie swordsman Errol Flynn with his apologetics swordplay. Like Robert Louis Stevenson’s swordsman in Kidnapped, Alan Breck Stewart, he was (to borrow Austen Farrer’s image) "a bonny fighter." Lewis’s long-term friend Owen Barfield noted that Lewis’s former student John Lawlor had reported that in Lewis’s presence he felt like he was "wielding a peashooter against a howitzer." John Beversluis called Lewis "the 20th century’s foremost defender of the faith." Lewis’s apologetics was so barbed because his learning was so encyclopedic. William Empson believed Lewis "was the best read man of his generation, one who read everything and remembered everything he read." Lewis was reputedly Oxford’s most popular lecturer for many years. By 1978 Macmillan had "published more than fourteen million copies of Lewis’ books."

Biographical sources are particularly rich for Lewis since many of his friends wrote biographies about him. Lewis’s father left a "mass of diaries, letters, and papers" and Lewis’s brother, Warnie, spent "several years typing the 3,563 pages that make up the eleven volumes of Lewis Papers…which cover the years 1850-1930." In addition, there is the "million-word diary of Warnie Lewis" and Lewis’s extensive correspondence, including close to 300 letters interchanged with lifetime friend Arthur Greeves.

II. A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

Riding in the upper story of the family omnibus of C. S. Lewis’s chromosomes was a paternal great grandfather, Joseph, a Methodist minister, and a maternal great grandfather, Rev. Hugh Hamilton, who had been Bishop of Ossuary in Ireland. Lewis’s maternal grandfather, Rev. Thomas Hamilton, was an Anglican chaplain in Rome and rector of St. Mark’s Anglican Church in Dundela. With all this religious genetic baggage, it is surprising that C. S. Lewis’s own father and mother were rather nominal Anglicans.

Lewis’s mother, who died of cancer when he was only eight years old, had graduated from Queen’s College in Belfast, Ireland with first-class honors in logic and second-class honors in mathematics. Lewis described his father, Albert, as "almost without rival the best raconteur [or storyteller] I have ever heard…" However, as with Fyodr Dostoevsky and Robert Louis Stevenson and their fathers, Jack’s (C. S. Lewis’s lifelong nickname) relationship with his father was always strained. Albert was a Belfast court police lawyer.

After Jack’s mother died, he increasingly bonded with his brother, Warnie. As an adult, Warnie became a noted British major, was a member of the Inklings group, wrote seven books on seventeenth-century France, and, sadly, was subject to alcoholic binges.

Both Lewis and his wife-to-be were precocious learners. Jack "knew both Greek and Latin by the age of six." By ten years old he had read Milton’s Paradise Lost. Similarly, Joy Davidman had "read H. G. Wells’s Outline of History at age eight and promptly announced her atheism." Though Lewis’s childhood home was not especially happy or religious, he was taken to St. John’s Anglican Church twice each Sunday where, he reported, "I here heard the doctrines of Christianity…taught by men who obviously believed them."

Jack attended four different boys’ schools from 1908 to 1914 and presented a bleak picture of them in his autobiography. He became a young atheist and owned up to sexual immorality on one occasion.

From 1914 to 1917 Jack studied privately (to prepare for Oxford) with his father’s former college headmaster, W. T. Kirkpatrick (affectionately known as the "Great Knock"). Young Lewis expected Kirkpatrick to be maudlin like his father, but was jolted upon their initial meeting by the atheist Kirkpatrick’s rigorous grilling in logic over the most mundane matters. Three years of logical dueling left an indelible impression upon the malleable mind of Lewis, the future apologist. During that time Jack "found that he could think in Greek." Little wonder, since practically all Jack did for three years was to translate the Greek and Latin classics under Kirkpatrick’s tutelage. Kirkpatrick reported to Jack’s father (September 16, 1915): "He is the most brilliant translator of Greek plays I have ever met," and (on April 7, 1916): "He has read more classics than any boy I ever had-or indeed I might add than any I ever heard of…"

Also during his younger years, Jack formed a lifelong friendship with Arthur Greeves, due to their mutual interest in "northernness" or Norse mythology. Greeves’s harsh father was of a strict Plymouth Brethren background. Ironically, Lewis and Greeves later crisscrossed in their theological thinking. Whereas Lewis moved from atheism to Christianity, Greeves shifted from conservative Christianity on through Unitarianism, Bahai, and Quakerism.

Jack’s entrance to Oxford University was interrupted by World War 1, in which he was wounded with shrapnel and once (to his relief) found sixty German soldiers emerging from the fog with their hands up surrendering to him. Before entering battle, Jack had compacted with his friend Paddy Moore that if Paddy should die, he would assume

responsibility for Paddy’s mother (and sister). As a result, the forty-five-year-old Mrs. Moore moved in with eighteen-year-old Jack. Her daughter, Maureen, was then eleven. Virtually all Lewis biographers agree that young Jack had a romantic crush on Mrs. Moore-though only the warts-on biographer A. N. Wilson concludes that theirs was an explicitly sexual relationship. For thirty years they occupied the same house, and when senility forced her to enter a nursing home, Jack visited her each day for a year until she died.

Lewis failed the entrance math exam to Oxford twice, but it was then waived for returning soldiers. At University College, the oldest of the thirty Oxford colleges, Lewis graduated with honors in Greek and Latin classics, English literature, and philosophy.

On October 12, 1916, Lewis penned his position in a letter to Arthur Greeves: "I think that I believe in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best. All religions, i.e., all mythologies…are merely man’s own invention-Christ as much as Loki. In every age the educated and thinking [people] have stood outside [religion]."

Slowly Lewis’s view shifted. On June 3, 1918, he again wrote Greeves: "I believe in no God, least of all in one that would punish me for the ‘lusts of the flesh’; but I do believe that I have in me a spirit, a chip, shall we say, of universal spirit…"

In addition to his reading of George MacDonald, Lewis seemed to be surrounded with Christian influence at Oxford. Owen Barfield, a lawyer, would later become an anthroposophist. Nevill Coghill ("clearly the most intelligent and best-informed man in that class…a Christian") was later to become Merton Professor of English at Oxford. Hugo Dyson was an Anglican. J. R. R. Tolkien, a Roman Catholic, taught Anglo-Saxon at Oxford.

From 1925 to 1954 C. S. Lewis was a tutor and lecturer at Magdalen College at Oxford. Lewis lost four different professorships while at Oxford, and so in 1954 he moved to take the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at rival Magdalene College at Cambridge University, where he remained until 1963.

During those middle years, Lewis was to write of his ideological safari: "My own progress had been from ‘popular realism’ [atheism] to Philosophical Idealism; from Idealism to Pantheism; from Pantheism to Theism; and from Theism to Christianity."

On December 21, 1929, Lewis-upon reading John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding-wrote: "I…am still finding more and more the element of truth in the old beliefs [that] I feel I cannot dismiss… There must be something in it; only what?" In this pre-conversion period Lewis wrote: "I felt as if I were a man of snow at long last beginning to melt." As a result, in 1929 Lewis was converted to theism. He journaled of that experience: "I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed; perhaps, that night the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England," but this conversion "was only to Theism. I knew nothing about the Incarnation."

Lewis’s autobiography zeroes in primarily upon his conversion to theism (in 1929) rather than on his conversion to Christ (in 1931). In fact, his Christian conversion almost seems anticlimactic.

That his views had not settled into concrete is apparent from his letter of January 9, 1930 to Arthur Greeves: "In spite of all my recent changes of view, I am…inclined to think that you can only get what you call ‘Christ’ out of the Gospels by…slurring over a great deal." In a letter of January 30, 1930 to Greeves, he "attribute[d] everything to the grace of God…" On March 21, 1930 Lewis wrote to A. K. Hamilton Jenkin that what he held "is not precisely Christianity, though it may turn out that way in the end." During this period Lewis was attending the morning university chapels. By January 10, 1931 his brother "was beginning to think the religious view of things was after all true."

The critical change came in September of 1931. The night of September 19, Lewis walked and talked (until around 4 a.m.) with J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson about myth and Christianity. Hugo Dyson’s "main point was that Christianity works for the believer. The believer is put at peace and freed from his sins."

On September 28, 1931, at age thirty-two, Lewis was "riding to the Whipsnade zoo in the sidecar of Warren’s motorcycle. ‘When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.’" According to 1 John 5:1 and 5, all those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God are "born of God." To Arthur Greeves on October 1, 1931, Lewis wrote: "I have just passed from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ-in Christianity."

From June 1930 to August 1931 he’d been reading Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence of God, Thomas Traherne’s Centuries of Meditation, William Inge’s Personal Religion and the Life of Devotion, Richard Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, and others. In December of that year Lewis began "communicating," that is, taking communion in his local Headington (Anglican) church.

Lewis’s fame as a Christian did not emerge until his BBC radio broadcasts (which later developed into the book Mere Christianity) and his 1942 publication of Screwtape Letters. About the same time students founded the Oxford University Socratic Club for Christians, agnostics, and atheists to have discussions, and Lewis served as president of the club for twenty-two years.

One highly significant Socratic Club debate occurred on February 2, 1948. Lewis had a debate with a woman-Elizabeth Anscombe, a Roman Catholic philosopher who would later be professor of philosophy at Cambridge University. Anscombe’s position was opposed to that of Lewis’s chapter 3 in his book Miracles, namely, that "Naturalism is Self-refuting." "The meeting is said to have been the most exciting and dramatic the Socratic [Club] has ever seen." John Beversluis observed, "Although hardcore [Lewis] loyalists disagree, the unanimous consensus of those actually present was that Anscombe had won hands down…" George Sayer, Lewis’s former student and friend, asserted that

Lewis told him: "I can never write another book of that sort" [as Miracles] "and he never did. He also never wrote another [distinctly] theological book [except Reflections on the Psalms]." Any analyst who is a gender equalitarian can easily point to at least fifty references in Lewis’s fifty-something books where his traditionalist views on gender would be offensive (at best) to an equalitarian; some would think him a misogynist. The blow to Lewis’s ego at being defeated philosophically and publicly by a woman would have proven psychologically very difficult for him.

In light of his known views on the issue of gender, it seems all the more ironic that when Lewis was fifty-eight he married a woman who was ultra-outspoken. Joy Davidman was an intellectual American Jewess (an ex-Communist) with practically a photographic memory. She entered college at age fourteen, graduated at nineteen in 1934, and got her master’s degree from Columbia University in 1935 after three semesters. By age twenty-four she had authored a book of poetry. However, her marriage to Bill Gresham proved disastrous, since he was an alcoholic, physically abusive, and a womanizer. After her divorce, she and her two young sons wound up on the doorstep of C. S. Lewis in Oxford in 1952.

To protect her from being extradited back to America and the abusive Gresham, she and Lewis underwent a civil marriage in 1956. (Later Bill told Joy-despite his profession of Christianity: "I am not a Christian and will probably never be one since I cannot…accept ["the basic doctrines"]…"

In 1957 when it became apparent that Joy had cancer, she and Lewis underwent a religious marriage ceremony and she moved into his home. At that hospital bedside wedding, Reverend Peter Bide prayed for her healing, and her cancer went into remarkable remission for several years. In 1960 Joy "died at peace with God." Lewis himself died in 1963 on the same day as President Kennedy and Aldous Huxley.

III. BOOKS

Lewis penned over fifty books, some of them compiled posthumously. There are seventeen biblical, theological, and philosophically related works, fourteen works of literary criticism, twenty of a more imaginative literary nature (including seven children’s books, four science fiction thrillers, and four books of poetry-two of these penned as a youthful atheist), and three compilations of his letters.

His close friend Walter Hooper claimed that Lewis "was a failed poet," presumably because Lewis’s early ambition was to become a poet and because T. S. Eliot (whose poetry Lewis strongly disliked) proved to be a successful poet. England’s two most famous Christian literary critics of their epoch never hit it off-despite the fact that their mutual friend, writer Charles Williams, got them together for an experimental lunch (which failed).

Lewis’s first two books of atheistical poetry were published under a pseudonym-Clive Hamilton (his first name and his mother’s maiden name). Interestingly, even his first

book written as an unbeliever borrowed a biblical title-Spirits in Bondage (1919), a phrase suggested by 1 Peter 3:19.

Two years after his Christian conversion, Lewis transformed his philosophical and experiential journey into an allegory-The Pilgrim’s Regress (1933). His first intellectual volume, The Allegory of Love (1936) is considered by some to be "his greatest scholarly book." It earned Lewis the Hawthornden Prize and was the catalyst for his most meaningful male friendship with Charles Williams.

From 1938 to 1945 he was engaged in publishing his space fantasy in a trilogy. The first two books land the reader on Mars and Venus (under other names). Regarding the second of the trio Richard Cunningham said: "Perelandra is the most hauntingly beautiful and theologically important of the [space travel] trilogy." The last and bleakest of the trilogy, That Hideous Strength, had its theological counterpart in his 1943 The Abolition of Man. Concerning this last volume Peter Kreeft wrote: "The Abolition of Man contains the most important and enlightening single statement about our civilization that I have ever read…"

The Screwtape Letters (1942) proved Lewis’s most popular seller. The seven-book Narnia series was also perennially popular, though Lewis was hurt by J. R. R. Tolkien’s negative criticism of it. The final book in the series, The Last Battle, won the Carnegie medal in 1956.

Lewis’s most massive volume was English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama (1954). He frequently abbreviated it OHEL since it was one of the multi volume set entitled the "Oxford History of English Literature." A. N. Wilson appropriately appraised the tome by saying that it "must rank as about the most entertaining work of criticism ever written."

Surprised by Joy (no sure relation to his wife’s name) was his autobiography, written eight years prior to his wife’s death. Lewis considered the allegorical Till We Have Faces (1956) his best book. At least fifteen of his books were released after his death. Kathryn Lindskoog questioned the authenticity of The Dark Tower and Other Stories (1977).

IV. THEOLOGICAL SURVEY

Friends accused Lewis of a rumpled dress and a somewhat rumpled theology too. In explanation, Clyde Kilby wrote: "It is not correct to say that Lewis has a ‘theology,’ if by that term is meant a systematic, all-embracing complex like that of John Calvin or Karl Barth." Yet, as Elizabeth Elliot wrote in a 1982 interview for Discipleship Journal, Lewis claimed he was no theologian, "but he was. He covered the whole field of theology in popular, understandable language."

Not only did Lewis dress in a rumpled theology (like the rather unsystematic John Wesley), but he was somewhat like quicksilver in that he was difficult to pin down or classify. In Mere Christianity he professed to be promulgating only the beliefs which all orthodox Christians commonly hold. As a Christian supernaturalist he once observed "how much more one has in common with a real Jew or Muslim than with a wretched liberalizing, occidentalized specimen of the same category."

In two of his books he acknowledged accepting "the Nicene or Athanasian creed." Nevertheless, Lewis appeared as "an unorthodox champion of orthodoxy." Below we will survey Lewis’s treatment of the salient subjects of the traditional theological categories.

A. The Bible

Naturally one who espouses Darwin’s theory of human biology forces a different view of some parts of the Bible than the traditionally accepted evangelical viewpoint. This was the case with Lewis.

On the positive side, Lewis owned: "The Scriptures come before me as a book claiming divine inspiration." Also he wrote that "all Holy Scripture [including even the imprecatory psalms] is in some sense-though not all parts of it in the same sense-the word of God."

The following statement would seem to categorize Lewis as neo-orthodox in his understanding of the Bible: "Naivete, error, contradiction, even (as in the cursing Psalms) wickedness are not removed [from the pages of the Bible]. The total result is not ‘the Word of God’ in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God…"

In his books Lewis amplified on his understanding of the Bible’s inspiration: "The earliest stratum of the Old Testament contains many truths in a form which I take to be legendary, or even mythical…things like Noah’s Ark or the sun standing still upon Ajalon," while in the New Testament "history reigns supreme." Elsewhere he wrote, "The first chapters of Genesis, no doubt, give the story in the form of a folktale…" Referring to the notion that "every sentence of the Old Testament has historical or scientific truth," Lewis admitted: "This I do not hold, any more than St. Jerome did when he said that Moses described Creation ‘after the manner of a popular poet’ (as we should say, mythically) or than Calvin did when he doubted whether the story of Job were history or fiction." Again, Lewis penned: "The Old Testament contains fabulous elements" which would include "Jonah and the Whale, Noah and his Ark,…but the Court history of King David is probably as reliable [historically] as the Court history of Louis XIV."

Lewis appraised the New Testament documents as falling in the realm of authentic history-and so at this point he was anti-Bultmannian. He opined: "As a literary historian, I am perfectly convinced that whatever else the Gospels are, they are not legends." In

another context he reiterated: "I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myths." Elsewhere Lewis stated that finding "a ‘historical Jesus’ totally different from the figure in the Synoptic tradition…I confess is a mode of ‘research’ I heartily distrust."

Not only did Lewis widen his view of inspiration to include Old Testament myths, but he also allowed for the "inspiration" of later extra-biblical material. He once wrote (in a May 7, 1959 letter) to Clyde Kilby: "If every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of lights, then all true and edifying writings, whether in Scripture or not, must be in some sense inspired." With reference to the writing of Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan said: "It came," and Lewis remarked: "It came. I doubt if we shall ever know more of the process called ‘inspiration’ than those two monosyllables tell us."

After researching such preceding material, Edgar Boss concluded: "Lewis does not accept the plenary verbal theory of Inspiration." Similarly, Lewis analyst Richard Cunningham deduced: "Lewis did not believe in the infallibility or the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures." Michael Christensen’s conclusion differs when he says that Lewis’s "example proved that one can be a dedicated evangelical, accept the full authority of Scripture, yet disbelieve in inerrancy." Of course, in order to buy Christensen’s conclusion one would have to present a formulated definition of what constitutes an "evangelical."

B. God and His Work

Because Lewis adhered to the traditional orthodox view of God (though he always managed to derive fresh insights from it), we will pause only briefly on this subject. Though Out of the Silent Planet is fictional, Lewis was representing his own view when he commented: "There was one God [according to the hrossa or inhabitants of the planet Malacandra]…[who] made and still ruled the world." In arguing for monotheism as over against dualism, Lewis affirmed: "You cannot accept two conditioned and mutually independent beings as the self-grounded, self-comprehending Absolute."

Lewis subscribed not only to the unity of God but also to the Trinity. He wrote: "In God’s dimension…you find a being who is three persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube."

On the subject of divine predestination, Lewis’s views come through his fiction in the mouth of Dr. Ransom who held: "Predestination and [human] freedom were apparently identical. He could no longer see any meaning in the many arguments he had heard on this subject." (Later we will see that Lewis would be classified as Arminian.)

In the matter of God’s creation, Lewis had no difficulty in being committed to theistic evolution. Lewis called man "the highest of the animals." He also acknowledged: "If by saying that man rose from brutality you mean simply that man is physically descended

from animals, I have no objection." Elsewhere he said: "What difficulties I have about evolution are not religious…."

Lewis made the following distinction: "Evolutionism is something quite different from Evolution as the biologists understand it." Concerning the former, Lewis stated: "In my opinion the modern concept of Progress or Evolution (as popularly defined) is simply a myth, supported by no evidence whatever." Consequently, while he denied uniformitarian evolution as an inevitable theory of all human development, Lewis declared, "I am assuming that Darwinian biology is correct." Obviously theistic evolution is not considered kosher by many evangelicals, though such Bible scholars as A. T. Robertson, B. B. Warfield, and Augustus Strong either espoused it or did not rule it out as a live possibility.

C. Christ

In Mere Christianity Lewis referred to "Christ, the Man who was God." In The Problem of Pain he spoke of "the Incarnate God" and the Son "co-eternal with the Father." In The Weight of Glory Lewis mentioned "the humanity of Christ" and "His deity." The liberal scholar Norman Pittenger blamed Lewis "for believing that Jesus claimed deity because the fourth Gospel says He did," to which Lewis replied: "I think that Jesus Christ is (in fact) the Son of God." To Arthur Greeves (December 26, 1945) Lewis wrote that at Bethlehem "God became man."

One of the sad realities is that as a young man, Arthur Greeves had adopted the Christian view and Lewis the atheistic one. Later Greeves wandered through Unitarianism and other quagmires. Lewis replied to his letter (December 11, 1949): "Your doctrine, under its old name of Arianism, was given a…very full run for its money. But it didn’t last." Lewis asked his friend, "If [Christ] was not God, who or what was He?" He concluded: "The doctrine of Christ’s divinity seems to me not something stuck on…but something that peeps out at every point [of the New Testament] so that you have to unravel the whole web to get rid of it…and if you take away the Godhead of Christ, what is Christianity all about?" In Mere Christianity Lewis includes his belief in "the Virgin Birth of Christ."

Lewis also tackled an explanation of what is commonly called "the eternal generation of the Son." He wrote: "One of the creeds says that Christ is the Son of God ‘begotten, not created’…[which] has nothing to do with the fact that when Christ was born on the earth as a man, that man was the son of a virgin." Rather, "what God begets is God." This negative explanation clarifies somewhat but is not overly helpful. Elsewhere he penned that "the one begets and the other is begotten. The Father’s relation to the Son is not the same as the Son’s relation to the Father." Christ as "Son," Lewis observed, "cannot mean that He stands to God [the Father] in the very same physical and temporal relation which exists between offspring and male parent in the animal world;" this doctrine involves a "harmonious relation involving homogeneity." The normally ingenious and down-to-

earth Lewis left his readers in the complicated and heady realms of theological disquisition on this doctrine, but (let’s face it) who has ever heard a clearly illustrated exposition of it from a pulpit? In one more attempt Lewis declared: "The Son exists because the Father exists; but there never was a time before the Father produced the Son." Lewis would probably have done better to steer clear of this subject altogether.

Two other of Lewis’s Christological opinions are interesting. In speaking of the kenosis (Philippians 2:7) he stated: "I certainly think that Christ, in the flesh, was not omniscient-if only because a human brain could not, presumably be the vehicle of omniscient consciousness…." In another comment, bearing upon John 3:13, Lewis claimed "Christ’s divine nature never left [heaven] and never returned to it." For one who never claimed to be a theologian, Lewis certainly managed to involve himself in some intricate theological twine. Nevertheless, he was emphatic about retaining the full deity and humanity of Christ as addressed in the early Christian creeds.

Lewis exquisitely represented Christ in His death and resurrection under the image of the lion Aslan in the Narnia series. There Aslan is villainously killed, but comes back to life again. It is a lovely metaphor in fantasy form.

D. Humanity and Sin

On the matter of human will, Lewis wrote: "God willed the free will of men and angels in spite of His knowledge that it could lead in some cases to sin and thence to suffering: i.e., He thought freedom worth creating even at that price." In his radio broadcast Lewis indicated that God "gave [humans] free will. He gave them free will because a world of mere automata could never love…"

Lewis once argued: "The infinite value of each human soul is not a Christian doctrine. God did not die for man because of some value perceived in him. He loved us not because we are lovable, but because He is love."

On the subject of human sin, Green and Hooper comment that "many find it difficult to accept Lewis’s belief in a literal…fall of man and his fundamentalist doctrine of original sin…." While Lewis did hold to a serious doctrine of sin, one wonders if the preceding two authors have overstated their case by attaching the qualifiers "literal" and "fundamentalist" to their assessment, since Lewis did regard Genesis 3 mythically. He wrote: "The Fall consisted in Disobedience"…while the Fall consisted in Disobedience, it resulted, like Satan’s [fall], from Pride…." As Dr. Ransom, the Christian in Perelandra, pictorially put it: "We are all a bent race." On a broader canvas Lewis brush-stroked: "A sound theory of value demands…that good should be the tree and evil the ivy. Evil has…its parasitic existence."

Concerning the doctrine of "total depravity," Lewis wrote: "I disbelieve that doctrine." Yet he may have misunderstood the nature of the doctrine due to its nomenclature, for in

the same section he wrote that "we all sin" and are "in some respects a horror to God" and "vile." Indeed, in his radio broadcasts he told thousands of listeners: "The first step [for us] is to create, or recover, a sense of guilt."

E. Angels, the Devil, and Demons

Lewis was quite traditional here as he stated: "No reference to the Devil or devils [demons] is included in any Christian Creeds, and it is possible to be a Christian without believing in them. [However,] I do believe such beings exist…" Elsewhere Lewis reported:

I do…believe in devils [or demons]. That is to say, I believe in angels and I believe that some of them, by abuse of their free will, have become enemies to God and, as a corollary, to us. These we may call devils. They do not differ in nature [I think the term "constitution" might be better than "nature"] from good angels, but their nature is depraved. Satan, the leader or dictator of devils, is the opposite not of God but of Michael.

In other words, Satan is inferior to God; there is no true dualism.

F. Salvation

1. Substitutionary Atonement

Since JOTGES was conceived in response to a concern over soteriology, we will spend considerable space here. In commenting upon his friend Charles Williams’s poem, Lewis offered this commentary: "The Atonement was a Substitution, just as Anselm said: ‘All salvation, everywhere and at all time,…is vicarious.’" This, however, appears to be Williams’s view rather than Lewis’s.

In The Allegory of Love Lewis referred to a poem whose "theology turns on a crudely substitutional view of the Atonement." In Mere Christianity Lewis indicated that he did not accept the substitutionary view of atonement.

Arthur Greeves’s cousin, Sir Lucius O’Brien, claimed that the atonement was not taught in the Gospels. Lewis countered that the atonement must have been an integral part of Christ’s teaching because "the Apostles…did teach this doctrine in His name immediately after His death."

Unless Lewis altered his opinion in later years, it would appear that he saw some difference between vicarious and substitutionary atonement, for he wrote: "In the Incarnation we get…this idea of vicariousness of one person profiting by the earning of

another person. In its highest form that is the very center of Christianity."Lewis’s apparent devaluing of substitution led Edgar Boss to conclude that Lewis held "the Example Theory [of the Atonement] with a very important modification. Mr. Lewis is a supernaturalist, while the Example Theory is usually held by Naturalists." However, I do not think Lewis would have wished to be so neatly pigeonholed into that single category. For him this was the bottom line: "Christ’s death redeemed man from sin, but I can make nothing of the theories as to how!"

2. Justification by Faith

Two analysts of very different stripes articulated one major weakness in the expression of Lewis’s soteriology. A. N. Wilson asserted: "If the mark of a reborn evangelical is a devotion to the Epistles of Paul and, in particular, to the doctrine of Justification by Faith, then there can have been few Christian converts less evangelical than Lewis." In fact, the Methodist minister who reviewed Mere Christianity claimed that the book "does not really mention…the central Christian doctrine of Justification by Faith." From the other end of the theological spectrum, J. I. Packer spoke of Lewis’s "failure ever to mention justification by faith when speaking of the forgiveness of sins, and his apparent hospitality to baptismal regeneration…."

3. Salvation by Grace

Readers of this journal will nonetheless rejoice in Lewis’s emphasis on the doctrine of grace. In Reflections on the Psalms he summarized: "We are all in the same boat. We must all pin our hopes on the mercy of God and the work of Christ, not on our own goodness." In another context Lewis declared: "We are saved by grace…In our flesh dwells no good thing." In his allegory The Great Divorce, Lewis describes a man who wants only his "rights," and who has "done my best all my life" and now exclaims, "I’m not asking for anybody’s bleeding charity." A former earthling responds to him: "Then do. At once. Ask for the Bleeding Charity. Everything is here for the asking and nothing can be bought." In Studies in Words Lewis referred to "‘we humans in our natural condition,’ i.e., unless or until touched by [God’s] grace" or "untransformed…human nature."

In his radio broadcasts Lewis remarked:

I think everyone who has some vague belief in God, until he becomes a Christian, has the idea of an exam or of a bargain in his mind. The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits…God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a passing mark in this exam or putting Him in your debts.

Later Lewis said that such an awakened individual "discovers his bankruptcy" and so says to God: "You must do this. I can’t." He elaborated: "Christ offers [us] something for nothing…." In connection with good works he stated: "[You are] not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already."

Probably Lewis’s finest statement on salvation by grace was formulated in the longest book he ever wrote, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama. He said:

On the Protestant view one could not, and by God’s mercy, expiate one’s sins. Like an accepted lover, he feels that he has done nothing, and never could have done anything to deserve such astonishing happiness. All the initiative has been on God’s side, all has been free, unbounded grace. His own puny and ridiculous efforts would be as helpless to retain the joy as they would have been to achieve it in the first place. Bliss is not for sale, cannot be earned, "Works" have no "merit," though of course faith, inevitably, even unconsciously, flows out into works of love at once. He is not saved because he does works of love; he does works of love because he is saved. It is faith alone that has saved him; faith bestowed by sheer gift.

While the exegete might wish to finesse the preceding statement somewhat (for example, making it more objective and not so experiential, as in "happiness," "joy," "bliss"), certainly Lewis’s most lengthy explication of salvation by grace through faith falls clearly under the rubric of the orthodox Protestant understanding of salvation.

4. Conditions of Salvation

Another strategic question to ask is: What condition or conditions does Lewis prescribe for receiving the gift of salvation? In his radio broadcast he averred: A Christian "puts all his trust in Christ." In the lengthy quotation above (footnote 117) Lewis stated: "It is faith alone that has saved him; faith bestowed by sheer gift."

In an interview with Decision magazine’s Shirwood Wirt, Lewis indicated: "It is not enough to want to get rid of one’s sins. We also need to believe in the One who saves us from our sins. Not only do we need to recognize that we are sinners; we need to believe in a Savior who takes away sins." Wirt then asked Lewis if he "made a decision at the time of [his] conversion." Lewis answered that at that time he felt he "was the object rather than the subject."

William Luther White summarized: "Lewis repeatedly made the point that…salvation comes as a result of faith in God’s grace, not as the product of human moral effort." In a broadcast Lewis stated: "The business of becoming a son of God…has been done for us. Humanity is already ‘saved’ in principle. We individuals have to appropriate that salvation. But the really tough work-the bit we could not have done for ourselves-has been done for us. We have not got to try to climb up into spiritual life by our own efforts." Lewis was asked in an open session: "Can’t you lead a good life without believing in Christianity?" To this he replied that Christianity "will teach you that in fact you can’t be ‘good’ (not for twenty-four hours) on your own moral efforts…we cannot do it…"

In another open session on April 18, 1944, a factory worker who apparently thought Lewis was unclear said, "We don’t qualify for heaven by practice, but salvation is obtained at the Cross. We do nothing to obtain it…" Lewis rejoined as follows:

The controversy about faith and works is one that has gone on for a very long time, and it is a highly technical matter. I personally rely on the paradoxical text: "Work out your own salvation…for it is God that worketh in you." It looks as if in one sense we do nothing; and in another case we do a damned lot…and you must have [salvation] in you before you can work it out.

If we had only the preceding statements, subscribers to this journal could probably feel fairly at ease with Lewis’s soteriology. In other places, however, he mentions other conditions besides believing, uses different terminology, or is just plain murky. As a sampling of the murky approach in the April 18, 1944 open session, someone asked him: "How can I find God?" Instead of replying with something on the order of Acts 16:31, Lewis answered, "People find God if they consciously seek from Him the right attitude." Later he added that all people "were created to be in a certain relationship to God" and "God wants to give you a real and eternal happiness." While Lewis’s answers to the worker weren’t anti-biblical, they seem unduly vague.

In other contexts Lewis asked readers: "Will you…repent and believe?" (as the narrator was speaking to an apostate Episcopalian bishop). On the radio he announced: "Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness." When Lewis’s fictional, demonized scientist on another planet, Weston (the Un-man), writhes against another demonic attack upon him, the Christian Dr. Ransom orders him: "Repent your sins." (In the last two statements there is no mention of believing in Christ for salvation.)

Lewis said that repentance "is not something God demands of you before He will take you back…; it is simply a description of what going back is like." As Lewis put it so colorfully, repentance calls us to move "full speed astern." He also depicted repentance as a self-surrender. In another place Lewis proclaimed: "The guilt is washed out…by repentance and the blood of Christ."

On one of his radio broadcasts Lewis declared: "There are three things that spread the Christ life to us: baptism, belief, and…the Lord’s Supper." His meaning and his order of arrangement of the items are unclear.

Even more baffling is this notation in Lewis’s anthology of quotes from George MacDonald: "I am sometimes almost terrified at the scope of the demands made upon me, at the perfection of self-abandonment required of me; yet outside of such absoluteness can be no salvation." Indeed, if an "absoluteness" of "perfection" is required of us, who then can be saved? In a literary context Lewis wrote confusingly that Vergil the pagan poet "cannot have had Christian faith, hope, and charity without which no man can be saved." These kinds of statements would certainly be mystifying to the biblically untutored.

On the question of "Can one lose salvation?" Lewis has to be categorized as an Arminian for his answer would be "yes." Screwtape’s role, say Lewis’s biographers, was "to secure the damnation of a young man who has just become a Christian." In The Last Battle Susan is "of her own free will ‘no longer a friend of Narnia’ [that is, a believer]. Lewis is taking into consideration the fact that many people drift into apostasy." Even Dr. Ransom, a committed Christian in the trilogy, realizes that "everlasting unrest…might be my destination." After John (in The Pilgrim’s Regress allegory) is "converted," he is informed by his Guide: "You all know that security is a mortal’s greatest enemy."

In one article Lewis quoted some from the fourth-century Athanasian Creed: "’Which Faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.’" Lewis commented:

The author…is not talking about unbelievers, but about deserters; not about those who have never heard of Christ, nor even those who have misunderstood and refused to accept Him; but those who have…really believed, then allowed themselves…to be drawn away into sub-Christian mode of thought.

Naturally this Arminianism did not yield much "blessed assurance." Even though his wife-at her death-said, "I am at peace with God," Lewis labored: "they tell me she is at peace. What makes them so sure of this? Why are they so sure that all anguish ends with death?"

As an Arminian Lewis espoused an unlimited atonement. In The Great Divorce he observed: "All may be saved if they so choose" (which included people on the bus ride from hell). To his old friend Greeves he wrote, "About half of [Beyond Personality] is taken up with the…doctrine…that all men can become sons of God…."

5. The Fate of Moral Non-Christians

Beyond the parameters of traditional Arminianism, however, Lewis expected that some non-Christians would be saved. "Though all salvation is through Jesus, we need not conclude that He cannot save those who have not explicitly accepted Him in this life." On the radio he announced: "We do know that no [one] can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him."

In the children’s Narnia series, the lion Aslan is Lewis’s Christ-figure. In The Last Battle deceivers say: "[The god] Tash and Aslan are only two different names for You Know Who." Later they use the hybrid or compound name Tashlan to make their point. At the end of this last book in the Narnia series one of the outsiders, a Calorman named Emeth (which is the transliteration of the Hebrew word for "truth"), who has been a life-long worshiper of Tash, approaches Aslan. To this Tash-server Aslan says, "Son, thou art welcome." Emeth counters, "I am no son of Thine but a servant of Tash." Aslan rejoins: "All the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me." This is a clear indicator that for Lewis the non Christ-worshiper may be received into heaven. Similarly, in another fictional setting, Jane Studdock, an unbeliever, says to Ransom the Pendragon:

"I know nothing of Maleldil [the Christ-figure]. But I place myself in obedience to you." To her acknowledgment Ransom replies:

It is enough for the present. This is the courtesy of Deep Heaven that when you mean well, He always takes you to have meant better than you know. It will not be for always. He is very jealous. He will have you for no one but Himself in the end. But for tonight, it is enough.

This issue raises the question of Christianity in relation to other world religions. Lewis said: "I couldn’t believe that 999 religions were completely false and the remaining one true." Similarly he stated: "We are not pronouncing all other religions to be totally false, but rather saying that in Christ whatever is true in all religions is consummated and perfected." Kathryn Lindskoog wrote: "Lewis expressed hope that many true seekers like Akhenaton and Plato, who never had a chance to find Christ in this life, will find Him in the next one."

G. The Church

Lewis was an Anglican Christian who sought to preserve what he considered the common core of centrist Christianity. His late-in-life secretary (an Anglican-become-Roman Catholic) recalled: "I remember the first (and only) time I mentioned ‘low’ and ‘high’ churchmanship in [his] presence. He looked at me as though I had offered him poison. ‘We must never discuss that,’ he said…."

1. Baptism and Communion

J. I. Packer felt that Lewis bordered on espousing baptismal regeneration even though this is not a prominent strand in his fifty-plus books. Lewis did attach special significance to Communion in his writings. In answer to a factory worker, Lewis commented: "If there is anything in the teaching of the New Testament which is in the nature of a command, it is that you are obligated to take the Sacrament and you can’t do it without going to Church." In the same vein Lewis preached: "Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object present to your senses." In regard to the preceding sentence A. N. Wilson concluded that Lewis "clearly had a full belief in the Eucharistic Presence" or he wouldn’t have made such an assertion.

When Jack and Warnie were out walking one day, they passed a church sign that declared that "the Blessed Sacrament…should be treated with ‘special reverence.’" Over lunch the two brothers argued about this. Warnie said if one was a Roman Catholic, then "the aumbry contains our Lord and…even prostration is hardly reverence enough." However, if one is Anglican, then it "contains but a wafer and a little wine, and why in front of that should one show any greater reverence than in any other part of the church?" Jack sought to find a middle ground between the two views.

To the less sacramentally minded, Lewis acknowledged that he got "on no better with those who tell me that the elements are mere bread and mere wine, used symbolically to remind me of the death of Christ." Rather, he thought: "Here is big medicine and strong magic." Elsewhere he owned: "My ideas about the sacrament would probably be called ‘magical’ by a good many modern theologians."

2. Confessing Sins to a Priest

Only some years after conversion did Lewis make auricular confession to an Anglican priest. He wrote (on October 24, 1940) that "the decision was the hardest I have ever made…" From that time on he made regular confession to a priest.

H. Last Things

Richard Cunningham summarized Lewis’s eschatology by observing that he believed in "purgatory, heaven, hell, the second coming, the resurrection of the body, and the judgment." As a young atheist Lewis wrote (on October 18, 1916) that he could do without "a bogey who is prepared to torture me forever and ever if I should fail in coming up short to an almost impossible ideal. As to the immortality of the soul, …I neither believe nor disbelieve…" Early after his conversion experience he thought very little of an afterlife and rewards.

Praying for the dead and a concept of purgatory pretty well go hand in hand. Lewis "emphatically believed in praying for the dead." He prayed for his wife after she died. He thought that John Henry Newman had the right idea-that saved souls before God’s throne would ask to be thoroughly cleansed. Consequently, this necessitated a purgatory, though not as in a medieval doctrine of torture. In this way there would exist "Purgatory (for souls already saved) or…Limbo (for souls already lost)." A television interviewer pointed out to Lewis that he "believe[d] in Purgatory." To this Lewis returned: "But not the Romish doctrine." (The Anglican view is found in Article XXII of The Book of Common Prayer). Lewis likened purgatory to sitting in a dentist’s chair, saying: "I’d rather be cleaned first." Of course, most evangelicals believe this viewpoint founders upon the perfect purgation which has already transpired in the crosswork of Christ (Hebrews 1:3; 9:15; 10:2, 10-12, 17-18).

Concerning Lewis on the Second Coming, William Luther White said: "Edgar Boss attributes to Lewis the belief that ‘Jesus is literally, personally coming again.’ …However, I am unable to find in Lewis anything to support this apparent fundamentalist position." But the prima facie reading of Lewis certainly makes it sound as if he champions an orthodox view of Christ’s Second Coming. Kathryn Lindskoog asserted: "Lewis found it impossible to retain our belief in the divinity of Christ and the truth of our Christian revelation if we abandon…the promised, and threatened, Return [of Christ]."

Lewis wrote illuminatingly of the wonders of heaven. He also spoke about hell. In one of his last published stories (disputed by Kathryn Lindskoog as to its authorship) Lewis had Dr. Elwin Ransom assert: "A man can’t be taken to hell, or sent to hell; you can only get there on your own steam." This is in line with Lewis’s Arminian soteriology, as when he remarked: "The doors of hell are locked on the inside." Yet when Lewis depicted hell fictionally in The Great Divorce, only one of the bus riders visiting heaven preferred to stay there; all else preferred their misery.

To Arthur Greeves he wrote:

About Hell. All I have ever said is that the N. T. plainly implies the possibility of some being finally left in ‘the outer darkness.’ Whether this means…being left to a purely mental state…or whether there is still some sort of environment, something you could call a world or a reality, I would never pretend to know.

Also Lewis clarified his opinion when he penned: "Whether this eternal fixity [of hell] implies endless duration-or duration at all-we cannot say." Therefore, once more Lewis’s view cannot be labeled typically evangelical.

I. Evaluation and Conclusion

Predictability was not the trademark of C. S. Lewis. Nor was his an assembly-line theology. The liberal scholars of his day regarded him as a mousely Reepicheep in his attack upon their "assured results" of biblical criticism. Yet, because of his denial of biblical inerrancy, conservatives could not regard him as their knightly Dr. Ransom. When it came to New Testament historicity, Lewis siphoned off of his own expertise in the field of literary criticism to deny the Bultmannians free reign (or rein). Similarly his popularity as a BBC speaker and in spiraling book sales (especially children’s fantasies!) made him unpopular with some scholarly colleagues in the Oxbridge world.

Lewis navigated well within the orbit of orthodoxy when it came to regarding God as a trinity and Christ as deity. Here he stood in sync with the historic position of Christians since antiquity. Not only did he embrace the full supernaturalness of the Father and Son (while commenting only rarely upon the Spirit), but he accepted the bonafide existence of angels, demons, and Satan as invisible, supernatural personalities.

He refused to confine himself to one stated formulation of an Atonement theory, and he was Arminian on the extent of the Atonement and the question of whether salvation could be lost. Ironically, while he believed some Christians could lose their salvation, he believed some non-Christians could receive their final salvation.

As a member in good standing of the Anglican Church, Lewis accepted an Anglican position on purgatory and prayers for the dead, as well as practicing auricular confession

of sins. He believed in a substantive reality to heaven and hell but was agnostic about matters such as the precise dimension and duration of hell.

While Lewis was not known for personal evangelism (for example, many of his students went through years of tutoring from him without ever learning that he was a Christian), ironically he became one of the most renowned international defenders of the Christian faith through his writings. Even when we disagree with some of his theological tenets, we are better off for his having forced us to grapple with his immense intellect. Like the local Christian congregation at Corinth, C. S. Lewis came up with some aberrant views and engaged in some heavy drinking, but he was never dull and the world has never been the same.

Transcendental Argument: Contours of C.S. Lewis' ApologeticTommy AllenIntroduction

As our world spins and continues the orbited path set into motion, the future looks bleak with optimistic skepticism. A decrepit world, tainted with moral relativism, subjective truth, and religious autonomy; what can be done? The ambience is set, the world has come to

. . .'Go on, do me in, you bastard cowards, I don't want to live anyway, not in a stinking world like this one.' I told Dim to lay off a bit then, because it used to interest me sometimes to slooshy what some of these starry decreps had to say about life and the world. I said: `Oh . . . And what's stinking about it?' He cried out: `Its a stinking world because it lets the young get on to the old like you done, and there's no law nor order no more . . . What sort of a world is it at all? Men on the moon and men spinning round the earth like it might be midges round a lamp, and there's not no attention paid to earthly law nor order no more. So the worst you may do, you filthy cowardly hooligans.' So we cracked into him lovely, grinning all over our litsos . . .[1]

Since Anthony Burgess wrote Clockwork Orange in 1962, we have succumbed to `no law nor order no more' on behalf of lewdies'[2] declared independence from God. People have defined within themselves the value of values. When morals and values are reduced and accepted as subjective and personal, the `no law nor order no more' has replaced truth. "Exchanging the truth of God for a lie,"[3] "we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."[4] As society continues, are we shocked about our current situation of starving children, abortion, drive by shootings, police corruption, sexual promiscuity and human rights violations? Has society really succumbed to `no law nor order no more?' I think not! As long as people continue to ask `why' are things the way they are, there is hope for our decrepit society.

From the time of Moses to C.S. Lewis, men of God have been striking at the heart of humanity to give up, surrender, deny themselves, and follow God for the sake of society and their souls. But our present spiritual atmosphere is one of `no law nor order,' and our society is on the brink of doom. As Christians, we look for prophets, men whose iron chains are bound to God by their gonads;[5] holy men, righteous men, those men who seek God's thoughts and take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.[6] One such man is C.S. Lewis.

No healthy writer ever arises de novo. Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was a Fellow of Magdalen College and University Lecturer in English, and spent a short time teaching philosophy. Lewis was for many years the center of a group of friends called `The

Inklings,' which included writer and lay theologian Charles Williams,[7] J.R.R. Tolkien and a selected few others. `The Inklings' met at a pub called the Eagle and Child "so that members could read unpublished compositions aloud, and ask for comments and criticisms."[8]

During the meeting years of `The Inklings' (1939-1962), Lewis wrote many books including The Screwtape Letters, Abolition of Man, The Great Divorce, and Mere Christianity. Lewis is considered the best known apologist of this century, and his popularity continues to benefit Christians in providing reasonable defenses for believing in the Christian concept of God. His works "are characterized by his command of lucid and enjoyable English, [and] enough philosophy to make his arguments coherent and persuasive without becoming technical."[9]

Thesis Statement

The purpose of this study is to expose the reader to the "transcendental argument" which is available to the Christian because God is the necessary presupposition of all human activity. C.S. Lewis has implemented this type of argument in many of his apologetic writings.

This study will explain transcendental arguments and focus upon Lewis' apologetic methodology and illustrate how he uses the transcendental argument which parallels Cornelius Van Til's apologetic disposition. It is important to remember that Lewis' method is independent of Van Til's, however, both are rooted in Kant's "transcendental argument." Lewis uses Kant's "transcendental argument" in his defense of Christianity. Lewis wrote in his book entitled Miracles that "Kant was at the root of it."[10] The three aspects of Lewis' defense which I will address are: epistemology, morals, and myth. It is important to remember these three aspects of Lewis' defense are rooted in the transcendental argument of Kant.

Rationale for the Study

"Why study anything?" we may ask ourselves. Do we write and research people and places because some professor who stands at the head of a classroom gives the order? I hope not. We study because God has given to man the gift of knowledge (Prov 1.7). And with the gift of knowledge, there are people who excel, people who are unlike anybody else in this world of learning. I believe God gives to his people, men and women alike, the ability to create and shape ideas in such a way that make readers read in awe. Those who read C.S. Lewis and appreciate his intelligence agree he offers a penetrating insight into the current state of affairs. Lewis is a postmodernist's nightmare, an answer to atheism, and an encourager for Christians.

The "transcendental arguments" prove the existence of an omnipotent and sovereign God; and that God is true and provable. Provable simply means that God is independent of man's assertion, independent of creation, however, coterminous, and self-attesting. God is absolute (John 5.26; Acts 17.25). God is sufficient unto Himself. Provable pertains to the "transcendental argument" although men have composed this proof of His existence by the Holy Spirit.

The idea that God is ontologically true and ontologically provable is foreign to many Christians. Many Christian writers and apologist writing today will say God's existence is probable or preferred. The truth of God's existence has nothing to do with the psychological makeup of the person arguing. An example of the psychological makeup would refer to the kinds of people arguing for the existence of God. The truth has nothing to do with the man arguing. The structure of mathematics will not become probable or preferred if a mathematician is convicted of rape and murder. The truth of God is separate from ourselves and is an objective state of affairs. Of course, this separation does not separate God as a personal God.

There is a difference between proof and persuasion. The truth of God's existence does not mean we can persuade people to the transforming grace of Jesus Christ. Plato said, "A man who is convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still." The greatest argument will never convince a man's heart to turn his eyes upon Jesus. The "transcendental argument" is not persuasion but proof of God's existence. Without the truth of God's existence, the "transcendental argument" would not exist.

Many Christian writers and apologist writing today will say God's existence is probable or preferred. An example of this is in Rebecca Manley Pippert's book Out Of The Saltshaker and Into The World. Pippert writes: "As Christians we do not have absolute proof for our belief in Jesus. There is in fact no absolute proof for any ultimate proposition, whether Christian or Buddhist or atheist or whatever."[11] If the Christian can no more prove his/her religion to the Buddhist, why do we maintain that there is a difference between a Christian and a Buddhist? Who is to say the Buddhist may be correct in their worldview based upon Pippert's claim that nothing is absolutely provable? The Rev. Joe Brown, minister of the 10,000 member Hickory Grove Baptist Church, told his congregation: "I cannot prove faith to you any more than I can prove to you that strawberry ice cream is good."[12] The existence of God and proving that strawberry ice cream is enjoyable cannot be determined the same way.

The unbeliever will attempt to ask questions in this way because the unbeliever "must always strengthen itself by drinking deep of the dregs of the evil rancor of its own malice."[13] Our apologetic defense for the self-existent God, cannot rest upon pedantic arguments seen in Pippert's and Brown's statements. As warned by Kuyper, the

unbeliever's malice objections to the risen Lord Jesus Christ must be answered by careful scholarship and not by irrational skepticism.[14] Greg Bahnsen, philosopher and theologian, said so eloquently in a debate between atheist philosopher Dr. Gordon Stein:

Stein claims the question "Does God Exist?" in the same way we answer all other questions. I call this the "crackers in the pantry fallacy." Do we answer the question of God's existence [or our faith] in the same way we answer the question are there crackers in the pantry? No! of course not. An English professor does not analyze a poem to determine its beauty the same way a biologist analyzes a frog . . . How then do we resolve the conflict between the atheist and the Christian Worldview? We can prove the existence of God from the impossibility of the contrary. The transcendental proof for God's existence, is that without Him it is impossible to prove anything.[15]

Since the fall of man "the Bible teaches plainly that Adam and Eve's fall into sin was not just an isolated act of disobedience but an event of catastrophic significance for creation as a whole."[16] This fall into sin, by all ("we too all . . . by nature children of wrath" Ephesians 2.3), speaks of the need for a redeemer. This need for a redeemer was brought upon our own shoulders by our wickedness and sin, however, grace is solely a gift from God to those He has chosen (Ephesians 1-2). We cannot, by any biblical means, lower the claims of God upon man. The burden of truth rests solely upon the self-existent and self-attesting God of the Scriptures.

Unfortunately, what Pippert and many Christian writers do when they say things like this is reduce the Christian experience to: nothing is provable. This type of apologetic method leads to an epistemological fallacy. In a sense, Pippert is attempting to prove her statement while at the same time says nothing is objectively provable. Greg Bahnsen says: This is not Christian thinking.[17] As Christians, we must realize that all thinking must rest solely upon the self-existent, self-sufficient transcendence´ of God. We must realize that God is "independent in everything . . . in His virtues, decrees, works, and so on . . . by which He is free from all limitations"[18] and that man and his thoughts, limited and derivative since created, come from God (Prov 1.7; Job 28.28; Ps. 111.10). "God is true being, the source of all being, the creator of all things which exist other than Himself"[19] whether material or immaterial in nature.

One must note, Lewis at his best uses the "transcendental argument" when writing apologetics. Lewis saw that when non-believers resist the factual arguments for the existence of God,[20] as he did before belief, one must think preternatural and realize that "He is the source from which all . . . reasoning power comes . . . [and that] God designed the human machine to run on Himself."[21]

Statement of Presuppositions

Before heading out of our house, we must first dress ourselves for the occasion. For a day of recreation, we may wear shorts and t-shirt, and for a formal dinner a tuxedo would suffice the occasion. What one wears can raise a certain question. If a person is wearing a tuxedo, we can suspect the person is not going water skiing. If a person has on a pair of shorts and running shoes we can say that this person is going to exercise. When we approach a certain activity or task, we have many different choices of clothing to wear. In philosophy, what one wears to extrapolate a certain theory will fabricate his/her opinion on the matter at hand. "Everyone who weighs a theory has certain beliefs as to what constitutes an acceptable sort of theory on the matter under consideration. We can call these control beliefs." [22]

The importance of knowing one's own control beliefs or presuppositions will show the foundation of one's thought and approach toward the task at hand: is one's thinking rooted in the ontology of God or the autonomy of man? There are two kinds of people, and regeneration

breaks humanity in two, . . . being begotten anew . . . establishes a radical change in the being of man, be it only potentially, this change [grace] exercises at the same time an influence upon his consciousness . . . but one is inwardly different from the other, and consequently feels a different content rising from his consciousness.[23]

This radical change from apostasy, now fellowship with God, must press upon the heart of the changed man to conform his thinking to be like the mind of Christ's. Because in Christ, all the treasures of wisdom is stored (Col. 2.3), and the Christian is called to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10.3-5). One's ultimate presupposition must be God's word which "is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3.16-17). When study is guided by the Holy Spirit, Scriptures are always the foundation for one's work and the testing ground for one's work.

It is with this presupposition that this author will place the Scripture in authority over self-reason by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. From this inspired Bible, the infallible document written by holy men of God guided by the Holy Spirit, we must derive our doctrines. May God be praised and glorified by and through this study. Paul encourages us to "sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence" (1 Peter 3. 15). Upon His Rock, we shall build His church for the glory of the Kingdom.

The "transcendental argument" is an apologetic task. It involves much study and devotion to the word of God. With Christ set apart in one's spirit and mind, the "transcendental argument" provides proof for the existence of God who is our hope in Christ Jesus. Christian, rejoice in the now (hope) and in the not yet (victory in Christ)!

Nature of the Transcendental Argument

The term transcendental[24] was first used by the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) who is considered the greatest figure in modern philosophy.[25] Kant was not an orthodox Christian, but he did believe in some form of the existence of God. Kant was dismayed with the intellectual propositions of the philosopher David Hume, whose philosophy, like Kant's, promoted intellectual autonomy apart from any type of authoritative revelation. However, it was Hume's empiricism (the belief that everything is reduced to sense experience), skeptical as it was, that could not "prove any propositions concerning physical causes, moral values, God, human freedom, or the human self."[26]

Kant once stated, "Hume interrupted my dogmatic slumber." He dismissed Hume's' empiricism[27] and adopted what he called the "transcendental method." By this Kant means

To isolate the factors that make possible the kind of sense perception we as human beings are subject to. It is concerned, to put it a little more technically, with the analysis of the condition (or preconditions) presupposed by knowledge. It is a method of investigation that starts with some facts about our experience and then asks: What are the conditions that make this fact possible, that explain this fact?[28]

Kant argued that human thought was incapable of knowing the "real" world-things as they really are. When we look at an object, such as a table, we will agree that the object under examination is a table. Kant would say "all knowledge that is concerned, not with objects, but with the way in which a knowledge of objects may be gained, so far as that is possible a priori. "[29] In other words, how and why do we call the table a table? The only way, according to Kant, of achieving a dependable knowledge of our own experience is by asking the question, "What are the conditions that make thought possible?" Van Til and Lewis would agree with Kant,[30] however, both Van Til and Lewis' "dogmas of the faith provide the necessary preconditions of intelligibility and meaning."[31]

Cornelius Van Til, theologian and philosopher who studied at Princeton University in the 1920s, advocated a type of transcendental method that was strictly Christian. Although

Van Til uses Kant's idea, Van Til's conclusion was radically different because of his Christ-centered thinking. Van Til saw the transcendental principle as not mere fact, but an argument for the existence of God based upon presupposing his existence.[32] "The argument is `transcendental,' even presuppositional in a sense."[33] Van Til and Kant are both asking: "What are the assumptions necessary for life and knowledge to be possible?"[34] Presupposing the existence of God, Van Til believes is the only way we can prove anything at all; he states:

that we argue, therefore, by presupposition. The Christian, as did Tertullian, must contest the very principles of his opponent's position. The only proof of the Christian position is that unless its truth is presupposed there is no possibility of proving anything at all. The actual state of affairs as preached by Christianity is the necessary foundation of proof itself.[35]

We understand reality through the use of knowledge, and we understand knowledge because we must posit a transcendent God "from whom we receive a transcendent standard to judge and understand human temporal experience."[36] The transcendental argument examines any fact of experience and seeks to determine what the presuppositions of such a fact are. This process, called transcendental argument (thinking), finds what makes the fact what it is. "Thus the transcendental argument seeks to discover what sort of foundations the house of human knowledge must have, in order to be what it is. It does not seek to find whether the house has a foundation, but presupposes that it has one."[37]

Why is the "transcendental argument" important to the Christian? With transcendental reasoning, one's thought will be forced to worldview considerations.

A person's worldview stipulates how the world ought to be in relation to politics, education, family, arts, environmental concerns, and religion just to name a few.[38] The "transcendental argument" forces a person's worldview to consider the preconditions for a particular worldview. A worldview is the way we look at the world, and a person's worldview (in order to be consistent) must ask tough philosophical questions, as well as, be prepared and ready to answer tough philosophical questions. How we know what we know; how we live our lives in conjunction to our experiences, and how we make these questions intelligibly? "For Christians, the ultimate criterion by which we judge our worldview is the Bible. It is God's revelation of reality. Paul tells Timothy that the Scriptures have a purpose; they are to teach, reprove and correct us, and to train us in righteousness so that we may be equipped for a life of good work (2 Tim 3.17-17) As our worldview is informed, corrected and shaped by the Scriptures under the guidance of the [Holy] Spirit, we will receive direction for our way of life."[39] We can see how the transcendental argument leads to worldview considerations because the existence of God is true and provable.

First, the unbeliever opposes the Christian faith, not in tiny abstract sediments of thought nor piecemeal criticisms. The unbeliever attacks the Christian worldview "at its foundation. The particular criticisms utilized by the unbeliever rest upon basic, key assumptions which unify and inform his thinking."[40] John Cage, a well known philosopher, musician,[41] and amateur mushroom-grower, cannot live consistently within his worldview of chance and randomness.[42] Cage, in order to stay alive, has to accept some form of order when picking mushrooms to eat from his garden. Mushrooms can poison you and may cause death. In a chance universe, they would not, because nothing would exist. Cage cannot live consistently within his worldview without borrowing from the Christian worldview which proclaims absolute truth. In order for him not to grow poisonous mushrooms and eat them, he must presuppose the Christian worldview. C.S. Lewis offers a penetrating insight for the Christian worldview to critique the chance universe Cage proclaims. Lewis expresses:

It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality; that, in this particular case, there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men's behaviour, and yet quite definitely real-a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us . . . a real law which we did not invent and which we know we ought to obey.[43]

The chance worldview John Cage adheres to will not display order in the universe or absolute truth, however, in the depth of his heart, conscience tells him something different. It tells him there is order in the universe and that poisonous mushrooms can kill you if ingested into the body. Cage simple borrows worldview considerations[44] from the Christian to justify that he is living in a chance universe which is impossible. The apostle Paul writes with authority: "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened" (Rom 1.21). The only reason Cage can borrow from the Christian worldview is God has revealed Himself to every man (creational revelation). Man simply chooses to suppress the transcendent omnipotent God who has revealed Himself against all the godlessness and wickedness of man (Rom 1.18). It can be clearly shown that a worldview presupposing a chance universe is allergic to worldview considerations. As shown, man cannot be homo autonomous nor can he be nomos autos, because "Modern [Worldly] philosophy is allergic to worldview considerations. Modern philosophy (non-Christian worldviews) is very narrow and transcendental reasoning gives a broad framework"[45] in refuting the unbeliever's claims against the objectively true and provable God which the Scriptures reveal.

Secondly, Lewis offers more helpful insight in The Problem Of Pain by using a transcendental argument. Lewis believes that this awe to explain the Numinous[46] "is not the result of an inference from the visible universe."[47] In agreement with Paul,

Lewis echoes the words of the apostle in agreeing to: "But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God" (1 Cor 2.14). Had Lewis quoted this in such a way that we can explain the Numinous from the visible universe, this would have been a direct mischief into the sceptism of Hume's empiricism, therefore contrary to the teachings of Scripture. In order for the Supernatural to be explained, Lewis says: "Most attempts to explain the Numinous presuppose the thing to be explained."[48] As in the beauty of something, Lewis says:

Just as no enumeration of the physical qualities of a beautiful object could ever include its beauty, or give the faintest hint of what we mean by beauty to a creature without aesthetic[49] experience, so no factual description of any human environment could include the uncanny and the Numinous or even hint at them.[50]

Thirdly, just as something that illustrates beauty, a sermon may have the same type of aesthetic aspect as in a beautiful painting or a beautiful woman. However, just as the beauty in a painting or a woman may so be determined, this opinion does not come from the finite temporal mind of man,[51] but is given by God. "A sermon, for example, has an aesthetic aspect but it must not be primarily evaluated according to norms of aesthetics. It must be judged primarily by the Holy Scripture, the norm of faith,"[52] which is the foundation for judging something valid or invalid; beautiful or unattractive.

Van Til was well known for presenting his "two circle diagram" which signifies that the theist recognizes in his worldview a Creator/creature distinction. Van Til insisted "Christianity has a `two-circle' worldview, as opposed to secular thought, which has only `one-circle' thinking."[53] Van Til is showing that reality as a whole consists of the Creator (the ultimate starting point) and creation (the actual derivative from the starting point). Lewis as well recognized that the metaphysical makeup of the universe has a reality which is made up of two levels. Lewis said: "I think Kant is at the root of it." Both Van Til and Lewis used Kant's transcendental method in which to understand the universe and its disposition. In an unbelievers' worldview, the one circle of reality is limited to the material or temporal observation in seeking out the preconditions of any fact. Lewis states:

We are prepared to believe either in a reality with one floor or in a reality with two floors, but not in a reality like a skyscraper with several floors. We are prepared, on the one hand, for the sort of reality that Naturalists believe in. That is a one-floor reality: this present Nature is all that there is.[54]

It is pressing to note that Lewis' concept as stated above is not proving something is transcendent or that there is something out there, he specifically recognizes that there is reality with a ground floor (creation) and,

then above that one other floor and one only-an eternal, spaceless, timeless, spiritual Something of which we can have no images and which, if it presents itself to human consciousness at all, does so in a mystical experience which shatters all our categories of thought . . . Most certainly, beyond all worlds, unconditioned and unimaginable, transcending discursive thought, there yawns for ever the ultimate Fact, the fountain of all other facthood, the burning and undimensioned depth of the Divine Life . . . it is rather in Him that all places exist.[55]

Another example of how Lewis uses the "transcendental argument" is by the following example. Lewis says that the whole of Christian theology could be deduced by two facts: "(a) That men make coarse jokes, and (b) That they feel the dead to be uncanny."[56]

Regarding the coarse joke, men either find these funny or they object to them. Why must an unbeliever object to a crude joke or find it tickling him or shocking to his insides? This "shock" and "laughter" cannot be a part of the one floor of reality; this one floor of reality cannot explain or make intelligible these types of experiences. This "shock" and "laughter" rings outside the Naturalists (unbelievers) worldview. Using facets of a transcendental argument, Lewis says:

It is very difficult to imagine such a state of affairs as oringinal-to suppose a creature which from the very first was halfshocked and half tickled to death at the mere fact of being the creature it is . . . The explanations which Naturalism gives both of bodily shame and of our feeling about the dead are not satisfactory. It refers us to primitive taboos and superstitions-as if these themselves were not obviously results of the thing to be explained. But once accept the Christian doctrine that man was originally a unity and that the present division is unnatural, and all the phenomena fall into place.

Summary of the Transcendental Argument

The book of Proverbs instructs us, in defending our faith against the unbeliever. Christians must "Not answer a fool according to his folly, Lest you also be like him. Answer a fool as his folly deserves, Lest he be wise in his own eyes" (Proverbs 26.4-5). An unbeliever, upon his autonomous presuppositions, will deny the existence of God. Lewis' atheism led him to say, "My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust?"[57] The unbeliever's worldview cannot, according to his own folly, make intelligible choices or sense out of the universe without borrowing from the Christian worldview. Many unbelievers think the universe is unjust. Thinking like fools (Ps. 14.1), the unbeliever, upon this presupposition warrants a valid argument for the non-existence of God. The nonbeliever

cannot see this universe as unjust unless they deny the laws of logic. In order to do so, one must affirm the laws of logic to deny the laws of logic. This type of thinking is wishful thinking upon the nonbeliever's worldview.

What has been simply pointed out is the "transcendental argument" does not look away from objects or facts; it explores the realms of its depths, discerning what lies behind the fact to make it an interpreted intelligible fact. This argument establishes the very possibility of anything existing at all. Van Til says:

Therefore the claim must be made that Christianity alone is reasonable for men to hold. And it is utterly reasonable. It is wholly irrational to hold to any other position than that of Christianity. Christianity alone does not crucify reason itself . . . The best, the only, the absolutely certain proof of the truth of Christianity is that unless its truth be presupposed there is no proof of anything. Christianity is proved as being the very foundation of the idea of proof itself.[58]

The transcendental argument Lewis uses involves three different facets.[59] Arguments from epistemology, morality, and mythology are three of Lewis' arguments for the defense of Christianity which have a "transcendental countenance." The following chapters will examine these areas.

Transcendental Arguments from Epistemology

Epistemological arguments start with the phenomenon of human rationality and studies the nature and basis of experience; it asks what we know and how we know it. The only reason we know anything at all, as Proverbs 1.7 says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all knowledge." The non-believer uses reasoning skills; that is not in debate, and the only way the non-believer reasons is he borrows from the Christian worldview. Since Christians believe that God is the creator of the universe; the only way things can be known is by presupposing the existence of God. The non-believer cannot give an account for the preconditions necessary to make use of logic, reason, learning, certainty, and truth. The Christian worldview demonstrates the foolish rationality of the non-believer by showing the non-believers system of thought is arbitrary, inconsistent with itself and lacking the preconditions for the intelligibility of knowledge. By showing the non-believer this, the Christian shows how the non-Christian worldview has to assume the Christian worldview in order to deny it. We have to agree that both the believer and non-believer are made in the image of God, however, "Metaphysically, both parties have all things in common, while epistemologically they have nothing in common."[60] What this means is simply the Christian and the non-Christian have opposing philosophies and how one comes to know anything is contrary to one another.

Epistemology has a transcendental necessity because how we come into knowing anything must presuppose the fear of the Lord. The believer does so through obedience to Christ; the non-believer does so by suppressing the sovereign Lord and borrowing from the Christian worldview.

C.S. Lewis believes the Naturalist[61] system of thought contradicts itself. In fact, he devotes a whole chapter in his book Miracles titled, `The Self-Contradiction of the Naturalist.'

Lewis demands for naturalism to explain every finite thing or event.[62] He defines Naturalism as "the doctrine that only Nature- the whole interlocked system-exists."[63] Therefore the Naturalist believes that everything in the universe is one thing with no God or gods. This type of thinking creates a contradiction in the thinking of the Naturalist. The Naturalist believes the make-up of the universe to be of irrational causes, however, a naturalist will ask `why' apart from what `is.' Lewis finds that when a Naturalist is confronted with an irrational cause, he will choose the rational. He says,

When a sober man tells you that the house is full of rats or snakes, you attend to him: if you know that his belief in the rats and snakes is due to delirium tremens you do not even bother to look for them.[64]

But why should the Naturalist think any differently? If the mind is irrational and only a product of the natural system, how can it be that the Naturalist does not believe the man suffering from DT's, and yet believes the sober man? The Naturalist contradicts himself by choosing to believe the sober man, because the sober man's reasoning has values. The Naturalist believes the universe is irrational, but he knows better than to trust thoughts produced by alcohol or lunacy. Lewis says: "The Naturalist cannot condemn other people's thoughts because they have irrational causes and continue to believe his own which have (if Naturalism is true) equally irrational causes." A Naturalist claims to know no truth, but undermines his own claim by this very assertion. How can the Naturalist claim to know anything "truthfully" if there is no truth? Lewis says, "You can argue with a man who says, `Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, `Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true.' "[65]

Lewis saw how the Naturalist's arguments fall short in asking questions about the makeup of the universe. If a Naturalist asks the question, "why"? then he is measuring what "is" by a standard independent of what "is."[66] In Miracles, Lewis uses the transcendental argument showing how the Naturalist falls short in answering the question Dr. Greg Bahnsen was known to ask: "What are the preconditions of the intelligibility of human

experience?"[67] Lewis portrays how the Naturalists neglect the preconditions of using reason:

All these instances show that the fact which is in one respect the most obvious and primary fact, and through which alone you have access to all the other facts, may be precisely the one that is most easily forgotten-forgotten not because it is so remote or abstruse but because it is so near and so obvious. And that is exactly how the Supernatural has been forgotten. The Naturalists have been engaged in thinking about Nature. They have not attended to the fact that they were thinking. The moment one attends to this it is obvious that one's own thinking cannot be merely a natural event, and that therefore something other than Nature exists.[68]

Naturalists can think and use reason; this is not in question here. What Lewis is arguing is `window thinking.' I have coined this term stemming from his analysis of a person concentrating and identifying a particular object. The object in view for a Naturalist "is to ignore the fact of your own thinking, and concentrate on the object."[69] Lewis goes on to say,

In the same way the proper procedure for all limited and particular inquires is to ignore the fact of your own thinking, and concentrate on the object. It is only when you stand back from particular inquiries and try to form a complete philosophy that you must take it into account. For a complete philosophy must get in all the facts. In it you turn away from specialized or truncated thought to total thought: and one of the facts total thought must think about is Thinking itself . . . It is therefore not in the least astonishing that they should have forgotten the evidence for the Supernatural.[70]

Lewis argues that since the Sixteenth Century, when Empiricism came to power, men have focused on mastering nature in order to know nature. Lewis believes, because of Empiricism, truncated thought was the master of these men. Truncated thought is the "scientific" habit of the mind- this would lead a person to Naturalism because this tendency towards truncated thought was "metaphysically and theologically uneducated."[71]

The inconsistency of the Naturalist worldview as stated above cannot give an account for the use of reason, explanation, interpretation, certainty, and the intelligibility of anything without borrowing from the Christian worldview. The Naturalist will deny borrowing from the Christian worldview, however, the Scriptures teaches, "All wisdom and knowledge are hid in Christ" (Col 2.3-8). At this point, the non-believer's choices are either "to acknowledge the truth revealed by God's word (and repent of his sins, including intellectual autonomy) or to reject rationality itself." If the Naturalist rejects rationality,

what will he use to reject it? It is obvious that epistemology has a "transcendental" facet since it seeks to ask, how we know and what we know, beyond the natural world.

Transcendental Argument from Morality

John Frame says: "Moral values, after all, are rather strange. We cannot see them, or feel them, but we cannot doubt that they exist."[72] We all know morals exist because we all either help someone in time of need or we acknowledge when harm is done to a certain group of people or individual. What `is' and what `ought' to be are categorically different ways to look at morality. For example, a tow truck driver who dents the front of a customer's car may not say anything to the customer because he believes waking up at three in the morning to tow this person's car is a favor. However, I'm sure the customer, whose front end is now dented, would see it differently. The tow truck driver will prosper if he hides the damage to the vehicle, whereas the customer who has done nothing morally wrong gets the raw end of the deal. The Psalmist is right when he says the wicked sometime prosper and the righteous sometimes die penniless. The tow truck driver is bringing good consequences to the stranded motorist; however, the tow truck driver has performed an act that is morally not good. He dented the front end of the stranded motorist and has neglected to tell him.

Some would say that moral values are subjective and therefore left to individuals. To the Naturalist, values are random and are collisions of subatomic particles. Moral laws must be either personal or impersonal. The Naturalist assumes they are relative. But where do these moral principles come from? How can an impersonal moral law make us obligated? Lewis again offers insight and arguments for a personal God who is responsible for moral values.

In addition to using logic and making decisions that affect our lives, we also make moral judgments. What Lewis raises is a fundamental question about morality and why we choose to make moral decisions. There are two distinct entities which make up morality: good and evil. We reason about matters of fact; "men also make moral judgments --'I ought to do this'-- `I ought not to do that.' " Lewis believes that moral decisions are rationally perceived.[73] Since our epistemology has a transcendental aspect, Lewis is consistent with his view of morals being rationally perceived. It is somewhat the same as the trickle down effect in former President Ronald Reagan's idea about economics. There is a relation between epistemology and morals; because, how we come to know something has a transcendental foundation and how we make moral decisions is based upon our epistemology.

If the ought and ought not (morals) can be explained by Naturalism, then the ideas of ought and ought not are illusions.[74] Lewis argues that these concepts cannot be

explained by irrational and non-moral causes.[75] If morals are simply chemical conditions and random collisions of protons and neutrons, by what standard can the Naturalist argue that natural disasters, children dying, victims of cancer, and ten million Ukrainians slaughtered in World War II are acts of immorality? The Christian can argue and prove that the way things `ought to be' are because paradise has been lost. Can a Naturalist live consistently with his premises? No, he cannot. Is the killing of 6 million Jews in Germany morally wrong? In a Naturalist worldview this act would be part of chemical conditions and random acts of chance of particles that make up our universe. The Naturalist cannot live by "To hell with your standard."[76] The Naturalists' therefore must borrow from the Christian worldview due to their inconsistencies within the whole system of thought contained in their worldview. Commons grace makes it possible for the Naturalist to condemn Hitler's Germany and also contribute to the field of science, writing, and inventing (Matt. 5.45; Acts 17.25-26; 2 Thess. 2.6-7). Van Til says: "Every man can contribute to the progress of science. Every man must contribute to it. It is his task to do so. And he cannot help but fulfill his task even if it be against his will . . . [but] Only on the basis of the work of Christ, then, does the unity of science actually exist and will it be actually consummated."[77]

As humans, we are subject to certain non-negotiable laws such as the laws of gravitation and biology. These types of laws we share with animals, but Lewis indicates there are laws that apply to us and not to other things. Lewis says, "but the law which is peculiar to his human nature, the law he does not share with animals or vegetables or inorganic things, is the one he can disobey if he chooses."[78] The tow truck driver mentioned earlier would have been upset had the customer dented the hood of the tow truck; however, the tow truck driver could care less about the customer's hood. The conclusion must be that the tow truck driver does not believe in a real right and wrong until this right and wrong puts him in the center. Lewis concludes:

Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining `Its not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson. . . . that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.[79]

Morals work both ways, even to those who deny them. This puts the Naturalist in a position where he, whether he knows it or not,[80] operates by moral choices. Here again, the Naturalist has been exposed of his foolish thinking about asking `why?' As explained, the question, "why?" is a powerful witness for the existence of the God dictated in the infallible Scriptures.[81]

Transcendental Argument from Myth

Before myth[82] became fact for Lewis, he underwent numerous long night talks with J.R. Tolkien and H.D. Dyson, friends of Lewis' from undergraduate days. He also had in depth conversations with Owen Barfield who had "shown Lewis that Myth has a central place in the whole of language and literature."[83] Lewis once referred to myths as "lies and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver."[84] For Lewis, myth at this time in his life was simply a mirage and this myth, beautiful as it may be, is just lies. Until Tolkien convinced Lewis that myths held truth (that, indeed, the Gospel was the grandest of myths, yet rooted in historical truth) Lewis rejected both gospel and myth.

Lewis understood the power of myth but could not bring himself to believe that myths held any truth. Tolkien explained to Lewis that myths were not lies. Tolkien proved to Lewis that man was not ultimately a liar, but that, man perverted his thoughts into lies. Tolkien believed that man's ultimate ideals come from God because man comes from God. Tolkien continued to explain to Lewis that not only do our abstract thoughts come from God "but also our imaginative inventions must originate with God, and must in consequence reflect something of eternal truth."[85] Tolkien says: "Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker."[86] Tolkien explained to Lewis that fairy stories and myths, although created in our minds, actually reflected a fragment of true light. Tolkien went on to say that pagan myths "are therefore never just `lies': there is always something of the truth in them."[87]

Tolkien presented his argument to Lewis compellingly:

`Dear Sir,' I said- `Although now long estranged, Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed. Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned, and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned: Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed of dragons-'twas our right (used or misused). That right has not decayed: we make still by the law in which we're made.[88]

Tolkien continued over a period of time to convince Lewis that myths have truth contained in them. Lewis was unsure how the death and resurrection of Christ could have saved the world. Tolkien had been explaining earlier how myths were "God expressing himself through the minds of poets, and using the images of their `mythopoeia' to express fragments of his eternal truth."[89] Tolkien proceeded in telling Lewis how Christianity

was a myth but different because God invented it with actual history and the people were real. Lewis responded: "You mean," asked Lewis, "that the story of Christ is simply a true myth, a myth that works on us in the same way as the others, but a myth that really happened? In that case, he said, I begin to understand."[90] Tolkien had explained to Lewis how there was actually a real dying God with a precise point in history with historical consequences.[91]

Lewis was fond of myths and never questioned the story behind the Balder and Adonis myths or any other myth that portrayed a dying God. Tolkien challenged Lewis' position about myth and drove him back to his presuppositions (Lewis' belief that myth was `breathed through silver'). While Lewis appreciated myth and the stories portrayed in them, he had failed to stop and think about his thinking. Lewis assumed that "myths were lies" but never thought about how they could be true coming from a Naturalist worldview he once believed.

Twelve days after Lewis had talked with Tolkien concerning Christianity and myth, he wrote to Arthur Greeves saying: "I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ-in Christianity. I will try to explain this another time. My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it."[92] Lewis eventually understood Tolkien's argument about myth being true and beyond our experience. Already fond of myths, Lewis now defended them as conveyers of something that is true but yet beyond reason. William Van Gemeren says:

Mythology supplies an interpretation of human experience and custom. It is more comprehensive framework within which individuals and society understand themselves and in terms of which they explain all that is beyond rational explanation.[93]

Myth has a transcendental facet because myth goes beyond the natural world to explain truths and reality. By transcendental,

We understand that which-enclosed in cosmic time-is a necessary prerequisite for temporal existence, to make possible the concrete reality. Transcendental does not itself belong to concrete things, but it belongs to what is general and what exceeds the variable individuality of things . . . It refers to what is at the foundation of reality as the necessary prerequisite of temporal experience.[94]

Lewis said "myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with that vast continent we really belong to . . . Now as myth transcends thought, Incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact."[95] He says in An Experiment in Criticism, "Myth is always, in one sense of that word, `fantastic.' It

deals with impossibles and preternaturals."[96] Lewis recognizes in order to understand the Gospel message, one must transcend his thinking and go beyond the natural world for this Dying God myth to be real.

In The Pilgrim's Regress, Lewis writes about how our imagination can lead to the truth about God:

But then another voice spoke to him from behind him, saying: `Child, if you will, it is mythology. It is but truth, not fact: an image, not the very real. But then it is My mythology. . . This is my Inventing, this is the veil under which I have chosen to appear even from the first until now. For this end I made your senses and for this end your imagination, that you might see my face and live.[97]

We see how the use of myths offer glimpses into a less tainted world than the one now called earth, the fallen and `bent' world. The better world according to Lewis is "Deep Heaven" and "But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. "[98] Lewis stresses here that reality is not something of the natural mind, the state of it, but Heaven is what makes reality. "God the trumpeter, Myth the trumpet, Joy the tune."[99]

We have seen how Lewis has portrayed myth and how it seeks to go beyond our experiences. On October 24, 1931, Jack wrote a letter to his brother Warnie about the idea of God. He wrote: "...it is arguable that the `idea of God' in some minds, does contain, not a mere abstract definition, but a real imaginative perception of goodness and beauty beyond their own resources."[100] Our faith in God does not rely upon a mere abstract thought, but we must realize that our faith "is not one of the many functions of man like feeling, thinking or love, but it lies on a deeper level. Faith belongs to the transcendent dimension."[101]

Summary

The primary goal of this study has been to examine, understand and develop a cognitive synthesis of the "transcendental argument" and examples used by C.S. Lewis. Understanding of this specific type of argument for the existence of God does not come easy for some and will not come to those without the saving grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. First of all, it is logical to conclude that an unbeliever cannot and will not defend the existence of the Christian God, since it is man's internal nature to resist the things which are righteous and good (Romans 3.9-20).

The Reformed Christian must understand and bear in mind that the existence of God is true and provable, because without God nothing could be proven. The ontological being of God does not rest upon the assumption of man, God exists without man caring to know or wanting to know. The Christian can prove His existence by presupposing His truth only by the working of the Holy Spirit; which, presses upon man to repent and come to the saving grace of Jesus Christ. This is the heart of the transcendental argument.

In order to understand reality, reality must have a transcendental aspect or we cannot understand anything at all. Lewis said, "But human reason cannot be explained by rational or naturalistic causes; rather, it must come from a self-existent reason, a supernatural reality that can be called God."[102] To understand this universe and all that is contained within it, man must think beyond, into the realms of philosophy and theology.

What has been the purpose of studying philosophy and theology within the contours of C.S. Lewis? Do we simply read Lewis because we are required to do the assignments? No! We read and study for the glory of God. The life of faith is an ongoing sanctification and learning more about the God we serve is our obedience to him. "Christian Education, simply defined, is the ministry of bringing the believer to maturity in Jesus Christ."[103] Paul says the Christian must have his/her mind renewed (Rom. 12.2). By understanding the transcendental argument and the epistemological, moral, and myth facets Lewis uses enables Christians' to share with unbelievers a defense of our faith with certainty that an omnipotent sovereign God exists. Reading and studying Lewis is one way of having our minds renewed and living out this call to sanctification.

Endnotes[1]Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (New York: Ballantine Books, 1962), 20-21. Burgess said this about Lewis: "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."[2] People[3] Romans 1:25[4] C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1947), p. 35.[5] For an excellent example of this, look at Peter Kreeft, Ecumenical Jihad: Ecumenism And The Culture War (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), p. 15.[6] 2 Corinthians 10.5[7] Williams role in Lewis' life during World War II was like a `spell' according to J.R.R. Tolkien. He was admitted into the literary circle that surrounded Lewis. Williams' novel The Place of the Lion influenced Lewis immensely. Lewis' That Hideous Strength, The Great Divorce, Till We Have Faces, and The Four Loves echoes Williams' influence upon Lewis.

[8] Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1979), p. 57.[9] R.L. Sturch, "Clive Staples Lewis," in New Dictionary of Theology , eds. Sinclair B. Ferguson, David F. Wright, and J.I. Packer. (Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1988), p. 383.[10]C.S. Lewis, Miracles. (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1978), p. 154. [11] Rebecca Pippert, Out Of The Saltshaker and Into The World. (Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1979), p. 154.[12] Ken Garfield, "Showing People Heaven," The Charlotte Observer , 14 June 1997, sec. G, p. 1.[13] Abraham Kuyper, His Decease at Jerusalem. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1946), p. 36.[14] What I mean by saying this is by simple restating Pippert's claim that ultimately there is no proof for any proposition. If that's the case, I do not exist, therefore I ain't using the word ain't in this sentence nor has anyone else in this world. Yes, ultimately I declare Pippert as a genuine skeptic in her writings, not her heart which I believe belongs to Jesus. [15] "The Great Debate?" The Great Debate: Does God Exist? Greg Bahnsen and Gordon Stein. Audio cassette. 1985. [16] Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1985), p. 44.[17] "Four Types of Proof." Transcendental Arguments: Nuclear Strength Apologetics. by Greg Bahnsen. Audio cassette. 1995.[18] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, rev.4th ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1939/1941), p. 58-59.[19] William Hasker, Metaphysics: Constructing a Worldview (Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1983), p. 105.[20] Christian theism.[21] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1952), p. 52, 54.[22] Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reason within the Bounds of Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing,1993), p. 67.[23] Abraham Kuyper, Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology: Its Principles (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1898), pp. 152,154.[24] That which lies in and behind concrete things. [25] S. Morris Engel, The Study of Philosophy (San Diego: Collegiate Press, 1990), p. 171.[26] John Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God (New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1994), p. 70. [27] Even Bertrand Russell observes that "Hume's philosophy, whether true or false, represents the bankruptcy of eighteenth-century reasonableness." Colin M. Brown, Philosophy and The Christian Faith. (Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1968), p. 70.[28] Engel, 325-326.[29] Engel, 326.[30] Gordon Spykman, Dutch-American Theologian, agrees that Kant was the great mastermind of the Enlightment and in him, we all walk in his shadow. "Thus in one fell swoop Kant, while drawing on more than a millennium of Western Christian theology, radically overthrew it. He exploded the idea of natural theology, of philosophy providing

a rational foundation for theology, of faith supported by reason, and of reasoned Prolegomena as introduction to dogmatics. In the process Kant swept aside and thoroughly discredited the classic rational proofs for the existence of God as philosophical underpinnings for Christian theology." Gordon Spykman, Reformational Theology: A New Paradigm for Doing Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1992), p. 30.[31] Greg Bahnsen, Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith (Texarkana: Covenant Media Foundation, 1996), p. 75.[32] Frame, 70. Also see John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1987), p. 175.[33] John Frame, Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought (New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1995), p. 418. [34] Ibid., p. 418.[35] E.R. Geehan, eds. Jerusalem and Athens: Critical Discussions On The Philosophy And Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til (New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1980), p. 21. See also online http://reformed.org/apologetics/My Credo van til.html[36] Stanley W. Bamberg, "Why Do We Ask Why," A forth coming article in The Reformed Apologist On line Journal at www.Reformed .org[37] Cornelius Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology (New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1978), p. 11.[38] J. Richard Middleton and Brian J. Walsh, The Transforming Vision (Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1984), p. 32[39] Ibid., p. 39. [40] Greg Bahnsen, Always Ready: Directions For Defending The Faith. (Texarkana: Covenant Media Foundation, 1996), p. 67.[41] Robert Fripp, founder of the music group King Crimson (he is an excellent guitarist) in the late 60's and early 70's has attempted to make music which seeks to prove chance exist through music. Explore the King Crimson Web page and Robert Fripp's philosophy of "Music from silence."[42] John Frame, The Doctrine Of The Knowledge Of God. (New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1987), p. 150. "Rather, he [Cage] presupposes an order, a world of law."[43] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1984), p. 30-31.[44] Considerations in the sense of ethics, morality, logic, and order in this universe that he has to borrow from the Christian worldview to make rational and coherent judgments.[45]"Four Types of Proof." Transcendental Arguments: Nuclear Strength Apologetics. By Greg Bahnsen. Audio cassette. 1995. [46] The feeling of dread, awe, and fascination which a person feels in the presence of the Supernatural.[47] C.S. Lewis, The Problem Of Pain. (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1986), p.19.[48] Lewis, 20.[49] This is in regard to an underlying principles which bring forth artistic sensibilities.[50] Lewis, 20.[51] Is. 3.18; Ps. 50.2[52] J.M. Spier, An Introduction To Christian Philosophy. (New Jersey: The Craig Press, 1966), p. 94.

[53] John Frame, Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought (New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1995), p. 53.[54] C.S. Lewis, Miracles. (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1978), p. 154.[55] Lewis, 154-155.[56] ibid., 127.[57] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1984), p. 45.[58] Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1955), p. 396. Note: this is from the first edition.[59] Lewis never used the term `transcendental argument', but he uses the meaning behind this argument. Lewis clearly thought beyond the natural world.[60] Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel (New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1977), p. 5.[61] Naturalism: Matter exists and is all there is. God does not exist. The universe assumes the position of God. Carl Sagan says, "The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be." Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980), p. 4.[62] C.S. Lewis, Miracles ( (New York: The Macmillan company, 1955), p. 23.[63] Ibid., 23.[64] Ibid., 27.[65] Lewis, 31.[66] Stanley W. Bamberg, "Why Do We Ask Why." [67] This question is used by Greg Bahnsen in many of his books and debates he has been involved with. For a stunning and thrilling example of Bahnsen's debating skills and the use of transcendental arguments, you may purchase for $15 the Bahnsen/Stein debate from Covenant Media Foundation. Call 1-800-553-3938.[68] C.S. Lewis, Miracles (New York: The Macmillan company, 1955), p. 51.[69] Ibid., 52.[70] Ibid., 52.[71] Lewis, 52.[72] John Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God (New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1994), p. 93.[73] C.S. Lewis, Miracles (New York: The Macmillan company, 1955), p. 43.[74] Ibid., 44.[75] C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1947), p. 62.[76] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1952), p. 17.[77] Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of The Faith (New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 967), p. 154-155.[78] Lewis., 18.[79] Lewis, Mere Christianity p. 19, 21.[80] This would refer back to epistemology.[81]Stanley W. Bamberg, "Why Do We Ask Why." [82] Lewis' view of myth and Rudolph Bultmann's view of myth are incongruous. Bultmann wanted to demythologise Christian beliefs. Lewis held the position that in order for the events in the Bible to be true they must be remythologised. Lewis criticizes Bultmann's belief and calls it "uneducated" in Christian Reflections. Lewis believes that

Christianity has history and real consequences, Bultmann believes the contrary. "This involves the belief that Myth in general is not merely misunderstood history (as Euhemerus thought) nor diabolicalillusion (as some of the Fathers thought) nor priestly lying (as the philosophers of the Enlightment thought) but, at its best, a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination. The Hebrews, like other people, had mythology: but as they were the chosen people so their mythology was the chosen mythology" (Miracles, p. 134).[83] Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1979), p. 41.[84] Ibid., 43.[85] Ibid., 43.[86] C.S. Lewis, eds. Essays Presented to Charles Williams (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1974), p. 72[87] Carpenter, 43.[88] C.S. Lewis,eds. p. 71-72. [89] Carpenter, p. 44.[90] Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977), p. 148.[91] Carpenter, p. 44.[92] Carpenter, p. 148.[93] Willem Van Gemeren, Interpreting the Prophetic Word (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1990), p. 21.[94] J.M. Spier, An Introduction To Christian Philosophy Trans. by David Freeman, (New Jersey: The Craig Press, 1966), p. 58.[95] C.S. Lewis, God In The Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970), p. 66.[96] C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 44.[97] C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1996), p. 169.[98] C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1946), p. 69.[99] This is from a revised version of material originally presented on April 10, 1995, to the class on `the Theology of C.S. Lewis." Lectured on the campus of Reformed Theological Seminary Jackson, Mississippi. By Dr. Chamblin.[100] W.H. Lewis, eds. Letters of C.S. Lewis (New York: Harvest Books, 1966), p. 144.[101] Spier, 268.[102] George Sayer, Jack: C.S. Lewis And His Times (San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers, 1988), p. 186.[103] Perry G. Downs, Teaching for Spiritual Growth. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House,1994), p. 16.

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Tommy Allen is a graduate of Montreat College currently pursuing a M.Div. at Reformed Theological Seminary , Jackson.