today found c.s. lewis on scripture by michael christensen. i'm a very lazy typist and have little time so most of the following that are direct quotes from lewis, i will try to indicate by quotations. the rest will be the author's and my words mixed.
..art of whatever kind can either be received or used. the first characteristic of the good reader is his ability to receive a work of art as an end in itself. to receive what great literature offers is to exert one's senses and imagination and various other powers according to a pattern invented by the artist', that is to embrace the imagined reality conveyed by the artist in the way it is intended. to merely use literature is to 'treat it as assistance for our own activities', that is , as a subjective springboard to or substantiation of personal, preconceived philosophies. the good reader absorbs the magic evoked by the richness of style and language. the poor reader perceives only enough of the content to serve his present need, like one who satisfies his lust rather than entering into the full meaning of sexual love...
the human predicament..'five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that i can never examing more than a minority of them - never become even conscious of them all. how much of total reality can such an apparatus let thru?'..
from lewis' 'footnote to all prayers'-
He whom i bow to only knows to whom i bow
when i attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou
and dream of pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
symbols (i know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
and all men in their prying, self-deceived, address
the coinage of their own unquiet thots, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
our arrows, aimed unskillfully, beyond desert;
and all men are idolators, crying unheard
to the deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.
take not, oh Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in Thy great,
unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.
aquinas concluded that human beings can know that God is and that He is His own essence, but we cannot know in any precise, affirmative sense what God's essence is for His attributes cannot be contained in finite language/thot..
myth was, thot lewis, a help...in a conversation with tolkien in 1931 lewis had said that myths were 'lies breathed thru silver. tolkien pointing to the great trees of magdalen grove said, 'you call a tree a tree...and you think nothing more of the word. but it was not a tree until someone gave it that name. you call a star a star and say it is just a ball of matter moving on a mathematical course. but that is merely how you see it. by so naming things and describing them you are only inventing your own terms about them. and just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth'..
lewis came to see myth as God's best way of communicating truth...he roughly outlined the myth of orpheus..'there was a man who sang and played the harp so well that even beasts and trees crowded to hear him. and when his wife died he went down alive into the land of the dead and made music before the king of the dead till even he had compassion and gave him back his wife, on condition that he lead her up out of that land without once looking back to see her until they came out into the light. but when they were nearly out, one moment too soon, the man looked back and she vanished from him forever...the fact that virgil and others have told it in good poetry is irrelevant..if some perfected art of mime or silent film or serial pictures could make it clear with no words at all, it would still affect us in the same way..
in perelandra ransom destroyed the un-man. was this predestined or did he exercise free will? ..you might say, if you liked, that the power of choice had been simply set aside and an inflexible destiny substituted for it. on the other hand, you might say that he had been delivered from the rhetoric of his passions and had emerged into unassailable freedom. ransom could not, for the life of him, see any difference between these two statements. predestination and freedom were apparently identical. he could no longer see any meaning in the many arguments he had heard on this subject'..
'myth is the mountain whence all the different streams arise which become truths down here in the valley; (in this valley of separation). or, if you prefer, myth is the sithmus which connects the peninsular world of thot with that vast continent we really belong to'..
lewis's approach to myth, revelation and scripture presupposes the validity of platonic idealism not that he presumed the geographic necessity of the 'two-story universe'; but rather he perceived, metaphorically, a unified reality where the natural and the supernatural realms co-inhere...if this is true how are the universals from the supernatural transposed into the particulars of the natural?...when a higher dimension descends into a lower one, it is like translating from a language which has a large vocabulary into one that has a small vocabulary. or, to use another analogy, transposition can be compared to the problems involved in drawing. how can aspects of a three-dimensional world be represented on a two-dimensional sheet of paper? obviously something will be lost in the conversion. the relationship between the higher realm and its transposition in the lower is likewise abstract. the correspondence between the universls and particulares is not exact or absolute but rather symbolic or sacramental. the thing signified descends in substance so that the lower partakes of the higher as the higher reproduces itself, imperfectly, in the lower.
an example of transposition is the incarnation. God - the infinite, inscrutable, indescribable, 'wholly other' - transcending the universe, took on human form to reveal Himself to man. in so doing, the creator said in effect, 'My children, I want you to see and experience My eternal essence in the form of a finite particular'. thus Christ became 'the visible likeness of the invisible God'...
there are two basic approaches to transposition..if we interpret the world of universals in terms of the particulars, as aristotle did, we are tempted to conclude that the so-called higher or spiritual realm is derived from the lower or physical realm. if the natural is all that exists, then the supposed supernatural is merely a proJection or imaginary extension of the natural. if that be the case, man's highest values are simply illusions..what freud called 'wish fulfillment'..
..but if we approach transposition from above, we then perceive with plato that the natural is a dim reflection of a supernatural realm. life indeed has meaning and significance, for the values and visions we hold dear are from a spiritual source outside ourselves and the particulars of nature.
although there are always naturalistic explanations for those experiences which faith claims are from above..lewis states..'with whatever sense of unworthiness, with whatever sense of audacity, we must affirm that we know a little of the higher system which is being transposed'..spiritual things are spiritually discerned thru the bible.
plato expresses it this way..whose light would you say it is that makes our eyes see and objects be seen most perfectly?..you mean the sun, of course..apply the analogy to the mind. when the mind's eye is fixed on objects illuminated by truth and reality, it understands and knows them and its possession of intelligence is evident; but when it is fixed on the twilight world of change and decay, it can only form opinions, its vision is confused and its opinions shifting...then what gives the objects of knowledge their truth and the knower's mind the power of knowing is the form of the good'.
if God takes the initiative in transposition, then what are some of the ways He reveals himself to man? in mere christianity, lewis identifies 4 means of divine disclosure: conscience (the universal ought), the chosen people of israel (election), pagan mythology (good dreams), the Christ event (incarnation). in the problem of pain he added immortal longing (sehnsucht) and idea of the holy (experience of the numinous).
..sensing the terrifying presence of the Holy recorded down through history in literature and human experience..from perelandra lewis fictionally seeks to evokes what it is like..'my sensations were, it is true, in some ways very unpleasant. the fact that it was quite obviously not organic - the knowledge that intelligence was somehow located in this homogeneous cylinder of light but not related to it as our consciousness is related to our brains and nerves - was profoundly disturbing. it would not fit into our categories. the response which we ordinarity make to a living creature and that which one makes to an inanimate object were here both equally inappropriate...i felt sure that the creature was what we call 'good', but i wasn't sure whether iliked 'goodness' so much as i had supposed. this is a very terrible experience. as long sas what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue,. but suppose you struggle thru to the good and find that it also is dreadful?...here at last was a bit of that world from beyond the world, which i had always supposed that i loved and desired, breaking thru and appearing to my senses: and i didn't like it, i wanted it to go away. i wanted every possible distance, gulf, curtain, blanket, and barrier to be placed between it and me'..
whenever people quarrel, make excuses for their behavior or blame others, they are assuming an objective, universal value system of fair play or decent behaviour...if true, man is responsible for his behavior..
in mere christianity..'most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want and want acutely something that cannot be had in this world there are all sors of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. the longing which arise in us when we first fall in love or first think of some foreign country or first take up some subject that excites us, are longing which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy...if i find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that i was made for another world. if none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing'.
lewis in mere christianity writes, 'God selected on particular people and spent..centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was...those people were jews and the old testament gives an account of the hammering process'..
..'and what are we to say of those gods in various pagan mythologies who are killed and rise again and who thereby renew or transform the life of their worhippers or of nature?', lewis asks in reflections on the psalms, referring to the corn-kings in the nature religions who personify the annual death and resurrection of corn..'can one believe there was just nothing in that persistent motif of blood, death and resurrection, which runs like a black and scarlet cord thru all the greater myths - thru balder and dionysus and adonis and the grail too?'
as a young, atheistic intellectual, lewis's major stumbling block to accepting christianity was the fact that the christian religion did not seem to offer anything new. his knowledge of the life, death and resurrection theme in other religions convinced him that christianity was anything but unique. but eventually he was able to see that ancient religious myths converged and found their fulfillment in the Christ event..'the question was no longer to find the one simply true religion among a thousand religions simply false. it was rather, 'where has religion reached its true maturity? where, if anywhere, have the hints of all paganism been fulfilled? with the irreligious i was no longer concerned; their view of life was henceforth out of court. as against them, the whole mass of those who had worshiped - all who had danced and sung and sacrificed and trembled and adored - were clearly right.'..
my life is absurd. i am seeking to escape an unendurable reality. i am reading constantly and all kind of things...such as the above parts of the book on c.s. lewis...one after another. what i really want is to do what God wants but i am constantly doing what He doesn't want. the things i hate i do and the things i profess to love i continually fail, by ommission and commission, to live. a person just came and sat at the next computer and put their papers on top of mine. so what do i do...put my papers on top of theirs!
i am a very trying time now. it seems that one thing God is doing is training me to do what i hate to do. i drag my feet thru one day after another. i honestly don't remember the last time i felt thrilled with anything. life has turned into seeming interminable gray/black...there are brief times in which there is a cool and gentle breeze in my spirit where God speaks wordless messages that seem to say little more than 'I am with you..'. there are times He meets me as i am in His house. He is delivering me to a place where i am so empty in many way, where i am increasingly realizing that my life is totally corrupt, where i am realizing the absolute lack of His life within...coming out. as long as i do not have His life in my heart life seems unbearable, interminable torture.
my life with reference to God-
1. child: fear of hell/pray for salvation/no sense of salvation/ turn away
2. college: sexual sin/desire to be free/crisis (romans 6.11)/start reading bible
3. seminary: profess but do not possess, yet i will find God thru great works for Him
4. ministry: great expectations/great pride/great conflict/great self-righteousness
5. leaving ministry: great anger/great confusion/great purposelessness/great escape..emptiness
6. a deposit: great change in perspective- God is just if He saved no one
7. decision to 'return' to God (see 3 end) brings end of marriage
8. awareness of God's fatherly chastening - loss of family, hell in allentown
9. repentance regarding stealing tithe and noninvolvement in church
10. awareness of a relationship with God for first time; increasing awareness of my sinfulness
11. dark night of the soul, spiritual desert
12. no true manifestation of the life of God (current); waiting on and crying out to God
God is my only hope. there are no other options, no other truth. He is the only Truth, the totality of Truth. merely 'believing' in Him and trying to do good and not do evil are no longer enough. He is exposing me constantly for who i am apart from Him. i need to give everything to Him but it's hopeless..i can't. i don't want religion...i want LIFE, i want to know You, Lord.
i wish any amount of difficulty on you if only you come to possess what i now seek. i wish your life a total wreck and ruin, like mine, if only He has mercy on us all and we come to possess His life once for all. to hell with all profession. may God grant possession. love you, dad
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