12.2.2016 SUBJECTIVISM 1943 (in the Seeing Eye by C.S.LEWIS)

109  at this point we must remind ourselves that Christian theology does not believe God to be a person. it believes Him to be such that in Him a trinity of persons is consistent with a unity of Deity. in that sense it believes Him to be something very different from a person, just as a cube, in which 6 squares are consistent with unity of the body, is different from a square. (Flatlanders, attempting to imagine a cube, would either imagine the 6 squares coinciding, and thus destroy their distinctness, or else imagine them set out side by side, and thus destroy the unity. our difficulties about the Trinity are of much the same kind. ) it is therefore possible that the duality which seems to force itself upon us when we think, first, of our Father in Heaven, and, secondly, of the self-evident imperatives of the moral law, is not a mere error but a real (though
110  inadequate and creaturely) perception of things that would necessarily be two in any mode of being which enters our experience, but which are not so divided in the absolute being of the superpersonal God. when we attempt to think of a person and a law, we are compelled to think of this person either as obeying the law or as making it. and when we think of Him as making it we are compelled to think of Him either as making it in conformity to some yet more ultimate pattern of goodness (in which case that pattern, and not He, would be supreme) or else as making it arbitrarily by a sic volo, sic jubeo (in which case He would be neither good nor wise). but it is probably just here that our categories betray us. it would be idle, with our merely mortal resources, to attempt a positive correction of our categories -ambulavi in mirabilibus supra me. but it might be permissible to lay down 2 negations: that God neither obeys nor creates the moral law. the good is uncreated; it never could have been  otherwise; it has in it no shadow of contingency; it lies, as Plato said, on the other side of existence. it is the Rita of the Hindus by which the gods themselves are divine, the Tao of the Chinese from which all realities proceed. but we, favoured beyond the wisest pagans, know what lies beyond existence, what admits no contingency, what lends divinity to all else, what is the ground of all existence, is not simply a law but also a begetting love, a love begotten and the love which, being between these two, is also imminent in all those who are caught up to share the unity of their self-caused life. God is not merely good, but goodness; goodness is not merely divine, but God.

these may seem fine-spun speculations:  yet I believe that nothing short of this can save us. a christianity which does not see moral and religious experience converging to

111  meet at infinity, not at a negative infinity, but in the positive infinity of the living yet superpersonal God,has nothing, in the long run, to divide it from devil worship; and a philosophy which does not accept value as eternal and objective can lead us only to ruin.  nor  is the matter of merely speculative importance.  many a popular 'planner' on a democratic platform, many a mild-eyed scientist in a democratic laboratory jeans, in the last resort, just what the Fascist means. he believes that 'good' means whatever men are conditioned to approve. (note - killing defenseless, helpless, voiceless human beings, leading more and more to the sale of the baby's body parts for the murderer's benefit.. so that the person(s) having sex don't have to take responsibility for their actions) he believes that it is the function  of him and his kind to condition men; to create consciences by eugenics, psychological manipulation of infants, state education and mass propaganda.  because he is confused, he does not yet fully realize that those who create conscience cannot be subject to conscience themselves. but he must awake to the logic of his position sooner or later; and when he does, what barrier remains between us and the final division of the race into a few conditioners who stand themselves outside morality and the many conditioned in whom such morality as the experts choose is produced at the experts' pleasure?  if 'good' means only the local ideology, how can those who invent the local ideology be guided by any idea of good themselves?  the very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike. subjectivism about values is eternally incompatible with democracy. (note - no, subjectivism is only incompatible with a republic, 'rule by law', but compatible with democracy, 'rule of people'...for people, each one of them, has a heart that God reveals is 'deceitful above all things and desperately wicked ('sick'), who can know it!! jeremiah 17.9) we and our rulers are of one kind only so long as we are subject to one law. but if there is no Law of Nature, the ETHOS of any society is the creation of its rulers, educators and conditioners; and every creator stands above and outside his own creation.

unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish. if we do, we may live, and
112  such a return might have one minor advantage. if we believed in the absolute reality of elementary moral platitudes, we should value those who solicit our votes by other standards than have recently been in fashion. while we believe that good is something to be invented, we demand of our rulers such qualities as 'vision',  'dynamism', 'creativity', and the like. if we returned to the objective view we should demand qualities much rarer and much more beneficial - virtue, knowledge, diligence and skill. 'vision' is for sale, or claims to be for sale, everywhere. but give me a man who will do a day's work for a day's pay, who will refuse bribes, who will not make up his facts, and who has learned his job.