The Anchor and Compass

The Question of God Part 8 (Lewis Segment, “Defender of the Faith“; Conversation 8, “Moral Law“)

As we near the end of our journey, our focus centers on Lewis and the question of an absolute basis for moral law.  Just as Modernity reached its zenith in the mid-20^th Century, Lewis was emerging as a widely-acclaimed author and an influential apologist for the Christian faith.  The prospect of yet another global war question the progressive optimism of modernity’s most aggressive advocates.  In place of moral uncertainty and existential angst, Lewis offered the security and comfort of Christian principles as the most sensible and rational remedy for these trying times.

Lewis quickly rose to fame in England in the 1940s after the director of religious programming at the BBC asked him to give some broadcast talks about faith during the Second World War. What started as an experimental series of five 15-minute broadcasts grew into a program fueled by popular demand, and later formed the core of the best-selling book Mere Christianity.

Lewis began by pointing to a basic moral law that came from outside human experience and revealed itself through reason (calling it the Tao, or “the way”).  He advocated for an absolute basis for moral law by responding directly to two commonly-expressed modern presuppostions about morality:  it is simply a product of cultural evolution (following after instincts) or a mere reflection of social conventions (following after consensus).  The former proclaims its faith in progress; the latter places its faith in education.  Lewis responds to these presumptions thusly,

• Instinct motivates us more toward self-preservation than toward the well-being of others; what would compel me toward a greater good when it comes at the expense of my own?
• When we face a moral dilemma, we often weigh conflicting choices.  If the only “scale” we have available are consequences, how can we truly know which is the “right” choice to make?
•  Moral choices are often not merely matters of right and wrong in particular circumstances; they also raise questions of ultimate ends that transcend temporal means.  Which is the “better” choice?
• The differences between individual and cultural “conventions” may be great, but they generally apply to matters of minimal moral consequence.  In matters of genuine moral consequence, there are rarely drastic differences between individuals and cultures.
• “Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better. If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilized morality to savage morality”

Of course, Freud differed greatly from Lewis concerning the moral law.  A God who was the basis of the moral law was consequently subject to accusations of infidelity and even wickedness for “allowing” bad things to happen to a people and a world he claims to love.  “In view of these difficulties,” Freud writes in Civilization and its Discontents, “Each of us will be well advised, on some suitable occasion, to make a low bow to the deeply moral nature of mankind.”  Faith in mankind’s “deeply moral nature” also motivated philosophical Pragmatism, whose main advocates, William James and John Dewey, placed the practical value of actions before principle-based assessments that weighed ends and means.

In ultimately connecting Moral Law with the Christian Tradition, Lewis counters another popular philosophy of his day, Existentialism.  Philosophers like Heidegger and Sartre, along with writers like Camus, held that morality and meaning were products of human choices.  To them, choosing defined “being,” and “existence” took priority over “essence.”  Unfortunately, existentialism failed to offer any standard but one’s self for making “good” or “right” choices—leaving an entire generation at the mercy of “existential angst”!

Learn more about the Moral Law & Modern Philosophy—Anthony Campolo, Partly Right (Word Books, 1985); J Budziszewski, What We Can’t Not Know (Ignatius, 2002)

The Question of God, Part 7(Freud segment, “Civilization and Its Discontents”; Conversation 7, “The Human Condition”)

One of the most significant transitions in the Story of Western Civilization is that from a “Pre-Modern” to the “Modern” worldview.  The “God-Centered” order of Medieval Christendom defined human identity and the human condition in terms of unwavering certainties and unquestioned acceptances of Biblically-based precepts (unfortunately mediated in a fallen world by a sometimes fallible Church).   While this worldview did point all things toward the Sovereign Creator God at its center, it also drew firm and controlling boundaries around all areas of human inquiry.  And the only hope it seemed to offer was eternal bliss (with, of course, the corresponding threat of eternal damnation).  This essentially “centrifugal” worldview, with God firmly in the center and all things focused toward Him, was foundational in Lewis’ life.  His apologetic writing aimed at its defense, and a good deal of his creative imagination incarnated the fullness of its hope.

The structural integrity of this “Pre-Modern” worldview was initially tested by the cultural and intellectual enthusiasm of the Renaissance (14^th-15^th C.).  It was further shaken by the spiritual and ecclesiastic challenges of the Reformation (16^th C.).   In these monumental cultural upheavals we see Modernity’s “conception” through their focus on the individual as “point of departure” for understanding the human condition.   Following on this, the Baroque period (primarily the 17^th C.) represents the “birth” of Modernity. Descartes’ “Universal Method” (the basis for modern rationalism) and Bacon’s Scientific Method (the basis for modern empiricism) establish the foundations of an emerging “Modern” worldview that place man at the center of powerful new “centripetal” cultural forces.

In the Enlightenment of the 18^th C., Western Civilization moves into its “adolescence.”  This is a period characterized by opposition to authority, an emphasis on reason, cultural optimism, and a focus on individual liberty and human rights.   The human identity became increasingly defined in “scientific” terms, and the human condition became the focus of social and political reform movements.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a major proponent of this period’s utopian vision of a progressively free and just human civilization.    That which was “bad” in the human condition was no longer a matter of sin and morality; it became a project to be resolved through social and political reforms.  Socialist movements carried the banner of progressive liberalism; more extreme political revolutionaries turned the ideas of Karl Marx into one of most influential ideologies of the 20^th C.   Heading into the the century, Modernity was fully “matured.”

For modern secularists like Freud, the existence of evil was a cultural and philosophical (not a theological) problem sure to be resolved in an increasingly “enlightened” world.  But the virulence of autocratic governments and authoritative structures in 19^th C. Europe, followed by the rise of Fascism and global war in the 20^th C., forced humanity wrestle more deeply with the question of evil.  “In view of these difficulties,” Freud wrote, “each of us will be well advised, on some suitable occasion, to make a low bow to the deeply moral nature of mankind.”  The question for Freud and those like him was now, what was the source of this “deeply moral nature.”  How are “righteousness” and “evil” understood in “modern” terms?  Why does evil prevail in spite of our most rational and “enlightened” human efforts.  What do we make of Modernity’s failure, in so many ways, to deliver on the promises of the “Enlightenment Project”?

Learn more about the development and consequences of “Modernity”—

Ronald Wells, History Through the Eyes of Faith (Christian College Coalition, 1989);

John Paul II, Memory and Identity  (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2005)

The Question of God Part 6 (Freud segment–“Libido”; Lewis segment–“The Four Loves”; Conversation 6–“Love Thy Neighbor”)

In 1905 Freud wrote a series of essays on sexuality which associated sex— or libido — as the driving force of our desires and impulses. More significantly, he claimed this drive formed very early in childhood. Viennese society was scandalized.  “What is more natural than that we should persist in looking for happiness along the path on which we first encountered it?”  Freud wrote.  “Sexual love has given us our most intense experience of an overwhelming sensation of pleasure and has thus furnished us with a pattern for our search for happiness.”

Freud claimed that sexuality began at birth, not puberty. He was accused of violating the innocence of childhood.  But for him, bringing repressed sexual desires into conscious understanding through analysis makes it possible to obtain a mastery over them. “It can be said, Freud wrote, “that analysis sets the neurotic free from the chains of his sexuality.”  Freud’s “liberation” of human sexuality, while scandalous at the time, gave birth to the “sexual revolution” that was a defining part of 20^th century social development.  In the wake of Freud’s ideas came Alfred Kinsey’s infamous reports on human sexuality, the “swinger society” and “free love” counter-culture of the sixties, and GLBT “outing” and social activism that has transformed sexual boundaries from the seventies to the present.

In 1963 Lewis published The Four Loves, a book which identified four ways in which human beings express and experience love.  He identified each with a particular Greek word for love (transliterated into English here)

• Storge  love describes the affection that comes through familiarity, particularly between family members.  It is the most widely diffused and uncoerced of the loves, naturally present as a kind of “built-in” aspect of the human condition.  It is a love that flows regardless of the perceived “value” of loves object, and most able to transcend discrimination.
• Philia  love describes bonds of friendship that form around common experiences, interests, or activites shared by people.  It is the least natural of the loves because it requires the presence of something for friendship to “be about.”  But for Lewis (as well as for the Classical culture he embraced), it was the most admirable of loves because it looked not at the loved, but at the “about,” for its value.
• Eros  is love in the sense of “being in love” emotionally.  Lewis distinguishes eros from pure sexuality (which he identified as “venus”).  Although it does find expression through sexual activity, eros also involves a spiritual dynamic that transcends mere “animal lust.”  Lewis notes that eros is the source of the tragic in history and literature, and he warns against its elevation to godlike status by idolatry.
• Agape (also identified as charis/caris, translated “charity” in many Bibles) is a love directed toward one’s neighbor which does not depend on any “loveable” qualities of either the object or circumstances of the love process.  Lewis recognizes this as the greatest of the loves, and he sees it as a specifically Christian virtue.  All the other “natural” loves, Lewis thought, must be subordinated to the agape love of God and expressed with Christian charity.  God’s love acts on our natural loves as the sun and rain act on a garden; without either the object of our love would cease to be beautiful or worthy.

Only agape love, Lewis believed, allows us to unconditionally “love our neighbors” as the Bible commands. All the other “loves” are contingent upon some “valuing” of the object of love.  Freud says that human beings have always been internally in conflict between insatiable personal desires and the social prohibitions imposed upon us by family and community expectations.  Our inability to properly reconcile these tensions results in psychological, physiological, and social disease and dysfunction.

Learn more about Love, Sexuality and the Human Story—C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves  (originally published in 1963; Harvest ed. 1998); Judith and Jack Balswick , Authentic Human Sexuality (2nd Ed, IVPress, 2008).

The Question of God, Part 5 (Freud Segment, “Human Mythology“; Lewis Segment, “From Spirits to God“; Panel Discussion, “Miracles“)

Freud was determined in his research and writing to demonstrate that religious sentiments could be traced to historical, cultural, and psychological influences that revealed themselves through the sacred stories of religious traditions.  Rather than seeing truth in the midst of the story, he intended to reveal the mythical basis of all things sacred.  The exclusive claims of Christianity, to Freud, derived from its imaginative connections with God’s promises to a Chosen People.  The particular relationship these People enjoyed with God found its expression in the claims of a key historical figure, Moses.  His influence, in turn, stemmed from a mythical tale connected to an archetypal son, the “declared favorite of a dreaded father.”  To Freud, this primordial image of the favored son sacrificed by his brethren was the true basis of the Judeo-Christian worldview.  It was a grand cultural deception which needed to be revealed and discarded.

C.S. Lewis gave the title, The Discarded Image, to the last book he wrote.  After a lifetime of teaching Medieval and Renaissance Literature, he gathered his lecture notes into a comprehensive thesis:  while the “worldview” of this period may suffer from scientific and naturalistic “inaccuracies,” it represents a cohesive and imaginative picture of humanity that is more genuinely “true.”   The Human “Image” that emerges from a pre-modern understanding of history, science, philosophy, and theology informed the most beautiful and influential literature in the Western world for its first two millennia.  Writers of all genres during this period drew from a richer understanding of humanity to tell stories filled with imaginative and enchanted images that have been largely discarded by their modern counterparts.   Most importantly, Ancient, Medieval, even Renaissance writers viewed the world itself and human experience as a cohesive, unified “whole” that found meaning outside of itself.  Modernity has fragmented all things—including humanity—into segments of specialization subject to individual scrutiny and interpretation.

Freud’s effort to “mythologize” humanity’s religious impulse reflects the post-Enlightenment determination to explain and de-mystify every aspect of the human story.  The result has been a world in which scientific analysis and empirical “accuracy” is the basis for truth and “fact.”   One of his primary disciples, Carl Jung, pursued a different course, using psychoanalysis to explore a “collective consciousness” in humanity which mythical imagery reveals meaning.  Jung’s famous “archetypes” provide the deep structure for human motivation and meaning. When we encounter them in art, literature, sacred texts, advertising—or in individuals or groups—they evoke deep feeling within us. These imprints, which are hardwired in our psyches, were projected outward by the ancients onto images of gods and goddesses.  They continue to inform and motivate us in the present.

To Lewis and his fellow “Christian Humanists” (Chesterton, Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers, Evelyn Waugh, and others), modernity had gravely disenchanted the world and left us disconnected from important “essences” that define our true humanity.  As Lewis finally accepts in this segment, Christianity is simply the “True Myth” from which all other stories draw their true meaning.   “Here and here only in all time the myth must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, Man. This is not ‘a religion,’ nor ‘a philosophy.’  It is the summing up and actuality of them all.”

Learn more about Humanism, Modernity, and the Human Story—

C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image (originally published in 1964; Cambridge ed. 1995); Donald Williams, Mere Humanity:  Chesterton, Lewis, Tolkien on the Human Condition (Broadman & Holman, 2008)

The Question of God, Part 4
(C.S. Lewis segment, “A Leap in the Dark”; Panel Discussion, “Why Believe?”)

C. S. Lewis seemed a reluctant atheist, keeping God at bay through intellectual pride and accusations of injustice and infidelity.  Yet the world of Classical and Medieval literature he called home was filled with stories of lost and forbidden love—and longing for redemption and restoration—that kept alive hopes for finding the “joy” of his childhood days.  Modernity increasingly seemed a cheap substitute for a more profound narrative.  He could not escape the nagging idea that he’d given his love to an altogether wrong object of desire.

The book Lewis is reading in this segment is the Greek tragedy Hippolytus by Euripides.  In this story young Hippolytus, the beloved son of Athens’ King Theseus, decides to devote himself in celibate faithfulness to Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt.  His choice offends the Goddess of Love, Aphrodite, who cannot believe such a magnificent figure of manliness could possible resist the call of love.  Aphrodite charms Phaedra, Hippolytus’ step-mother, inspiring in her heart an irresistible love for the handsome youth.  The shame of this forbidden desire drives Phaedra to suicide.  Her husband Theseus wrongly accuses his son of ravaging his wife and exiles him, an action which ultimately leads Hippolytus to a fatal end.  Dying Son and loving Father are reconciled when Aphrodite herself appears and reveals the truth of the matter.

The passage Lewis reads aloud speaks of a longing for a deeper fulfillment in the land of the gods that might transcend the limitations of early love—particularly a love both forbidden and denied.  This longing for eternal bliss in a real world where human hopes are shaped by both glorious aspirations and desperate disappointment plays an important role in Lewis’ transformation.  It also echoes the great spiritual paradox that we humans are simultaneously created in God’s image (including the “divine” impetus toward creation) and cursed by the consequences of the Fall (including the temptation toward our own “divinity”).  Lewis himself is puzzled by the paradox of his own attraction to the “idea of God” when everything in his “real” world not only rejects this idea, but has rendered it intellectually “forbidden.”

The desire for serenity and salvation rooted in religious expression is a recurring theme in the Human Story as well.  The Classical Age of ancient Greece gave way to several centuries in which Greek ideas were spread to cultures conquered first by Alexander the Great and ultimately by Rome.  During this “Hellenistic”Age, Greek thought intermingled with those of other cultures, giving rise a mélange of worldviews in which religion, philosophy, spirituality, and rationalism formed new syncretistic systems.  Cynics were “self-sufficient” skeptics; they found satisfaction in simplicity, valued individuality, and disregarded universal claims to truth.  Epicureans were “self-centered” materialists; they found solace in the pursuit of happiness and avoidance of pain.  Stoics were “self-controlled” fatalists; they sought serenity in accepting life’s vicissitudes and valued perseverance in the face of struggle. (note the role of “self” in all these views!)

Of course, into this world as well was born the Promised One of the Jews, whose coming “in the fullness of time” would transform the world.  Lewis is not yet ready to go that deep in his return to belief in God, but here we see him take important steps in the right direction

.

“I gave in, and admitted that God was God … perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

Learn more about the religious impulse and the Human Story—
G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (originally 1925, Dodd, Mead & Co.; 2008 edition, Wilder); J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (originally published in 1890, many modern printings available)