C.S. Lewis's Reflections on the Psalms

I consider this one of Lewis’ lesser works, or minor works, perhaps because it is not on one theme, so it is not as cohesive as other books. Lewis admits, at the beginning, “I write for the unlearned about things on which I am unlearned myself.” He writes as a schoolboy discussing the topic with classmates, not as a teacher who knows so much he doesn’t understand the problem. In other words, it is not so much theology as reader’s reaction.

The problem is how to read the Psalms, how to interpret some of the statements. Lewis starts with the difficult themes, such as expression of hate. For instance, the cursing of Psalm 109, verses 7-11:

When he shall be judge, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin.
Let his days be few; and let another take his office.
Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labor.

Lewis points out, for the contemporary Christian, this is not a justification for hatred. Rather we should recognize the sentiment to repent of, and the harm done – the hatred caused – by injustice. To quote Lewis, “Take from a man his freedom or his goods and you may have taken his innocence, almost his humanity, as well.”

The next chapter, Death, emphasizes a recurring lesson: beware of reading the Psalms from the contemporary Christian perspective, take into account the context in which they were written. This relates to the chapter on death as Christians think of the eternal life that awaits. In the Psalms there is no eternal life after death.

The book is thematic, each chapter on a different theme drawn from various Psalms. In the chapter on connivance Lewis warns of the sin of self-righteousness, which is expressed in several Psalms. Lewis questions how much a Christian should disagree, or voice disagreement, with “very bad” conversation, e.g. cruel talk about someone in their absence. If the Christian is always disagreeable, he will be called a prig. But Lewis also recognizes there are conversations from which to detract, and being called a prig is inevitable and better.

In the chapter, Nature, Lewis points out the Psalmist is a farmer, so it isn’t the romantic view of nature. The landscape is not praised; the weather is. The effect is the deity is removed from nature (as paganism held), but also makes nature a messenger – a testimony – for the divine Creator, as does the Bible as a whole.

The chapter, A Word About Praising, is a digression, which Lewis offers as possible comic relief. Lewis admits, early in his Christianity, he could not understand worship; God demanded praise? “We all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue, intelligence, or delightfulness; we despise still more the crowd of people round every dictator, every millionaire, every celebrity, who gratify that demand.” His perspective changed when he realized one way God demands praise is because He is praiseworthy, in the same way the forces of nature demand man’s respect. More important than this is the kind of praise that is the “spontaneous overflow” (I would add “of emotion,” as Wordsworth used to described poetry) for whatever we love. “It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.”

There are two chapters on Second Meanings, which justify contemporary readings and the Christian perspective. Reading some of the verses as prophetic of Christ is not wrong. For instance, Psalm 45 anticipates the Nativity. But the Psalmist may not have known it was prophecy at the time of writing it. For Lewis it is not surprising that the words would take on more meaning with time as 1) he believes God guided the writers of the scriptures, and 2) he believes in the mythopoeic, a term he uses in other essays to describe the truths expressed in myths, including pagan and other religions. Christ not only fulfills Old Testament scripture, but the pagan by “transcending and abrogating it.”

In the chapter, Scripture, Lewis writes a passage important to reading all of his works:

"I have been suspected of being what is called a Fundamentalist. That is because I never regard any narrative as unhistorical simply on the ground that it includes the miraculous. Some people find the miraculous so hard to believe that they cannot imagine any reason for my acceptance of it other than a prior belief that every sentence of the Old Testament has historical or scientific truth. But 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. The real reason why I can accept as historical a story in which a miracle occurs is that I have never found any philosophical grounds for the universal negative proposition that miracles do not happen."

The Question of Absolute Moral Law

A Review of Peter Kreeft's C.S. Lewis for the Third Millennium

This is a collection of six essays by Peter Kreeft that center especially on C. S. Lewis’s book Abolition of Man. Kreeft considers the book as prophetic in portraying mankind as lacking souls when they deny “natural moral law,” what Lewis called the “Tao.” The Tao is made of absolute morals understood by members of humanity, whatever culture they live in. Kreeft puts this assertion against that of Thomas Aquinas, who said that natural law can never be abolished from the heart of man. The author tends to agree with Lewis, and offers contemporary issues, like abortion, to this point, though he finds he cannot completely refute Aquinas. He also includes Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos as a humorous treatment of Lewis’s point. But Lewis could also be optimistic, as demonstrated in the cosmic dance portrayed in his science fiction novel, Perelandra, in which joyful cosmology replaces the joyless. The proof of which argument is right can only be provided by mankind in the future. Kreeft wants to be optimistic, and so ends “Please be a saint.”

There is some repetition between this book and Kreeft’s Culture War. This book is more of the academic work; the other is more conversational in tone, but also the tone of political rhetoric. This book is stronger on philosophy, lesser on contemporary applications.

Multiple Meanings in Charles Williams' The Place of the Lion

In The Place of the Lion Williams writes an elaborate Revelations kind of prophecy, blending realism with the supernatural and symbolic. The place of the lion is earth; the lion is both a Form for the supernatural beings medievalists called Intelligences, and the symbol for man, as the lion in the story is a hybrid of both. This is the opposite of what Williams’ friend, C.S. Lewis, made of the lion in The Chronicles of Narnia, where it symbolized God. In Williams’ book this is the eagle. The eagle is also the Form the protagonist, Anthony, identifies with, if not interchanges with. Other animals represent multiple meanings too, such as the snake is a literal threat to Anthony, as well as a Form, such as Aristotle called it, for the supernatural force to come into our world, and the symbol for Satan or evil.

The mixture of meanings reflects the theme of the other world opening up into, and destroying, this world. Williams portrays the chaos and confusion this could cause, and the various kinds of reactions by characters. The most substantial characters – Anthony, Damaris, his beloved, and his friend Quentin – all have some knowledge of the supernatural world as depicted in literature and the Bible, but they don’t necessarily believe it until it impinges on their world. For instance, Damaris studies and writes her thesis on medieval literature, specifically Abelard. She is aware of the religious beliefs of the period, but she does not share them. They are only of academic interest. It is only after an encounter in which Abelard comes alive, and becomes death, that she realizes the truth – that Abelard was real, not just an historical figure or concept.

Williams integrates his interest in philosophy and literature without becoming overbearing or too obscure (a criticism made by friends of other works of his). Christianity is the true account to which the story conforms, but it also incorporates Plato’s Ideas, Aristotle’s Forms, and the argument between universals and specifics that Abelard became noted for, at least in his own autobiography.

More importantly, Williams addresses the world of academics he worked in all his life. The portrayal of Damaris reminded me of C. S. Lewis, though this was written before Williams and Lewis became friends. Their friendship started with correspondence when Lewis wrote Williams after reading The Place of the Lion. Lewis, like Damaris, knew the Bible and the Christianity medieval philosophers taught. Lewis taught on medieval literature himself. But he did not believe it until his conversion at age 33, in 1931, the year The Place of the Lion was published. In Williams’ book the intellectuals have potential for salvation by their knowledge, but it must become belief, otherwise they may come to their destruction by refusing to acknowledge the truth was ever more than an idea.

Sexsim in C.S. Lewis's Pilgrim's Regress?

In Pilgrim’s Regress, a modernization of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, C. S. Lewis portrays a few female characters, though not all, as ‘brown girls.’ These girls, portrayed as another species, like the dwarves and giants in the book, pose a problem for the character John, who is on his spiritual journey to reach the island he envisioned in a moment of joy. The first brown girl appeals to him in a way he has not experienced before. They have sex, and for every time they have sex, another brown girl is born. The book is allegorical, like Bunyan’s work. The brown girls come to represent his guilt. The first girl now tries to make him settle down and take care of the family, to ignore his vision of the island. Still he sets out to find it. There are a few more times he is tempted by brown girls, even some he does not recognize as such, always to settle with what they have, because the island isn’t real, and this sensuous experience is. More than once he hears the girl say, “I’m what you’re looking for.”

Lewis’s purpose must be kept in mind. He, or rather his characters, realize that lust, love of the body, imitates love of the spirit. In his book, The Four Loves, Lewis categorizes these two different kinds of love as “Eros” and “Agape,” the first for the opposite sex, the second for God. In Pilgrim’s Regress, the protagonist realizes Eros, (what I prefer to call romantic love), is not the fulfillment of his desire for the heavenly. He finds sex enjoyable, even ecstatic initially, but it is not what he desired.... (Continued in ZEDS e-newsletter.)

The argument he makes that romantic love is the lesser substitute for agape love is important and still relevant. It is not just a medieval concept. It still justifies warning. Lewis notes just how prevalent this idea and practice of idealizing romantic love has become in his book, Allegory of Love. In the commentary on allegorical literature, he notes how influential works like the Romance of the Rose was on medieval thought and thereafter. From the antiquities of Greek and Roman writers until the Middle Ages romantic love was seldom written of, and certainly not central to literature. After the late medieval period, with the works of Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer, literature is preoccupied with romantic love. Few authors in that time conceive of agape love, in comparison. It is true to this day. In the age of Hollywood romantic love is consistently shown as the highest man can experience, and sex is the equivalent to Holy Communion, only it’s become so common it’s more like grabbing a quick bite to eat in the car. And it’s recognized as the false substitute for the soul by real life experience.

C. S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress, (New York: Eerdman’s Publishing Co. 1981).

A Medieval Approach to Modernity

One good book leads to another, and another, and another, like a bus tour, and along the way you note places to come back to. I’ve bought C. S. Lewis’s Allegory of Love, after searching for a copy for less than fifty dollars over the past several years. I was quite anxious to read the out of print book. (Incidentally, I don’t know why it is out of print since it is often referred to by contemporary essayists. In medieval studies the book from 1936 is an important reference.) The book is a history of medieval literature, specifically works on the subject of courtly love in the form of allegory. Within the bibliography Lewis reviews (more than critiques) the central works of The Romance of the Rose, Chaucer’s Troilus and Cressida, and Spenser’s Faery Queene.

Reading this book of literary criticism prompted me to search for many titles of medieval works referred to. I am extremely happy that many of the works, in their entirety, are available online at Luminarium.org, Project Gutenberg, and TEAMS Middle English Texts. I no longer must resort to checking out large anthologies that only offer extracts. I am reading John Lydgate’s poetry (an author hardly known and usually categorized as one of a Chaucerian school, but who produced twice as much as his idol). He models himself after Chaucer, but he lacks his predecessor’s originality and diversity. His work is enjoyable, however, especially for expressing the courtly ideal of love. I am also reading The Romance of the Rose, which, as I read more commentaries, was a very influential book during the medieval period.

I must have a subject to the essay, besides a little criticism. I need to have something of an issue, don’t I? The one that comes to mind first is one of self-analysis, one to answer if I hope to have any success in the blogosphere: why read medieval literature?

While I have said in the past that I am an anachronism, not at all modern in thought or lifestyle, there is the exception of the computer and internet that I use daily. With the spread of technology comes the spread of information, which is more accessible than ever before. With this information we have the wider diversity of cultures to learn from, and we may customize our lifestyles. We are not limited to the culture that is common around us, except for those that choose to prohibit the technology. You are able to study religions you had little access to before the information revolution; you can study other countries and could even plan down to the details of moving there; you can complete college courses at home; you can correspond with people around the world easier than ever.

My point in all this is you can choose your lifestyle, or what I would call your own culture. I have built something of a culture of my own in my home. If I can choose my lifestyle from all the cultures I can learn of, without the limitations of space, (for instance, I can love English culture as much as American without living there), why limit myself in time? The spread of information includes a great treasure of history. With all that history offers, why must I be modern? This is why I am a Conservative. It’s not that I necessarily want to prevent change, but change for change’s sake is not a good reason. The phrase ‘change is good’ can only be proven after it is the past. I think the desire of people, en masse, for something novel is juvenile.

So I study history, so I read literature of past times, for good ideas to build my lifestyle, my own culture. Here are a few ideas I have recently discovered that I want to include.

“Be courteous and approachable, speaking gently and reasonably to high and low alike, and when you go along the streets, be sure to make it your habit to be the first to greet other people. And if someone should greet you first, do not remain dumb, but take care to return the greeting at once, and without delay. Next, be sure never to use rude words or coarse expressions: your mouth should never be opened to pronounce the name of anything base.”
Guillame de Lorris. The Romance of the Rose. (New York: Oxford University Press 1994) 32-33.

It would be foolish of me to dispel wisdom given from the past, or to think it wise only for one culture, one situation, one time. If it was it would have been only a novel thought.