From C. S.
Lewis’s Preface to the MacDonald Anthology:
“It must be more
than thirty years ago that I bought – almost unwillingly, for I had looked at
the volume on that bookstall and rejected it on a dozen previous occasions –
the Everyman edition of Phantastes. A few hours later I knew that I had
crossed a great frontier…Nothing was at the that time further from my thoughts
than Christianity…I was only aware that if this new world was strange, it was
also homely and humble; that if this was a dream, it was a dream in which one
at least felt strangely vigilant; that the whole book had about it a sort of
cool, morning innocence…”
“What it
actually did to me was to convert, even to baptize…my imagination. It did
nothing to my intellect nor (at that time) to my conscience. Their turn came
far later and with the help of many other books and men. But when the process
was complete…I found that I was still with MacDonald and that he had
accompanied me all the way and that I was now at last ready to hear from him
much that he could not have told me at that first meeting.”
“But in a sense,
what he was now telling me was the very same that he had told me from the
beginning.”
What do you see
in Lewis’s words? What do you perhaps see in Lewis? What do you identify with?
Is there anything utterly foreign to you?
Do you have long-term
relationships with authors who have lived before your time? Is there a man or
women, who lived before your time, whose writing has spoken to you in Christ in
a profound way?
I emphasize “lived
before your time”, or perhaps mostly before you time (such in my case C. S.
Lewis), because while contemporary authors have their place (I hope!), those
who have gone before us have stood the challenge of time, their words have been
tested. Often people who lived outside of our own time and immediate culture
have more to say to us of lasting value than we have to say to one another – we
can lack perspective because of our attention on the immediate and its
pressures. Naturally the Bible is the best example of this because the Bible is
transcendent – the Word of God is alive in Christ ever and always.
Lewis’s idea of
crossing a frontier is prominent in his writing and his experience and we will
explore that in the next reflection (the Lord willing), but right now I’d like
us to think about Lewis’s imagination being baptized and converted.
In The
Abolition of Man Lewis wrote of “men without chests.” What does our
imagination do with this image? Do we see men literally without chests? Or do
we see beyond words? Do we see into the words? Do the words “men without
chests” help us to “see” a condition of humanity, especially Western humanity?
Mankind is
abolished when our hearts and souls are stripped from us, when they are
educated and programmed out of us, when notions of righteousness and goodness
and truth and beauty and courage are exterminated within us. Mankind is
abolished when our God-given imaginations are either silenced or perverted.
What do I mean when
I ask, “Do we see men literally without chests?” Of course I mean “physically
without chests.” But what does Lewis mean from a literary point of view? He
certainly doesn’t mean “physically”. Lewis is giving us a literary image that
he wants us to explore using our imaginations in conjunction with our
intellects and consciences.
Prior to his
conversion, Lewis struggled with the tension between materialistic atheism and the
sense that there must be something more than what the eye can see or that can
be proved by scientific experiment. Lewis could not shake the sense that there
are such things as goodness, truth, and beauty – and evil and despair; that
there are things “other” than the material.
Imagination is
seeing beyond what is seen, it is also a bringing into conceptual existence, it
is also visualizing the words we hear and read. Perhaps imagination has more
facets, it certainly does not have less. Perhaps we are the closest to our
Creator when we participate in holy imagination. Does not Paul teach us to look
at the things that are unseen, rather than the things that are seen? (2 Cor.
4:18). Did not Moses “see” Him who is invisible? (Heb. 11: 27).
When Jesus
speaks of His being the Light of the world, the Bread of Life, eating His flesh
and drinking His blood, being the Resurrection, destroying “this temple,” – can
we hear and see and read these words, can we hear His Voice – without
imagination?
Is it really
possible to read Psalm 23 without imagination? Come now, is it really possible?
Did not God create
Man in His image? That is, does not God speak with images? We speak of the
image of God, and yet we do not want to speak of imagination, of
visualizations, of that which is unseen being seen and heard and touched. Jesus
is not the dialectical proposition of God, Jesus is the image of God, the exact
image of God. Certainly the Logos can only be seen and experienced holistically
by the grace of God – He cannot be defined, He is the I AM.
Lewis felt that
had his imagination not be baptized and converted, that he may have “floundered
into its darker and more evil form, slithering down the steep descent” of
Romanticism. [Preface, XXXVII].
There are, I
think, at least two insidious movements in our time with respect to the
imagination. On the one hand we see the perversion of imagination in which we
have pandemonium. On the other hand, we have materialism in many forms,
including in Biblical interpretation. Is it too much to suggest that the church
is also engaged in the abolition of man when it insists on naturalistic
hermeneutics?
After all, the historical
– grammatical method, on its face and at its root, is naturalistic and
materialistic, it does not require grace or the Holy Spirit – it requires
learning and employing a method. We can say that it leaves nothing to the
imagination, or better, to the God-inspired imagination. Of course, learning
and employing the historical – critical method is critical to good grades and
graduation in many seminaries, and professing adherence to it is required for
membership in some academic and ecclesiastical circles. (This requirement would
disqualify the writers of the New Testament and the Church Fathers, including
Augustine. O yes, it would also disqualify Jesus.)
A fair reading
of 1 Corinthians 1:17 – 2:16, and of Jesus’ teaching on the Holy Spirit in the
Upper Room, ought to show us that Divine illumination and revelation are the
essence of Biblical hermeneutics. How can we experience such things without our
imaginations being converted and baptized? If our epistemology is faulty,
then our exegesis and hermeneutics will be faulty and fall short of the glory
of God.
Perhaps we can
simply say that Jesus Christ is our epistemology and hermeneutic (Luke 24:27;
44 – 47).
The New
Testament’s view of the Old Testament is not the product of the historical –
critical method, it is the fruit of the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ living in
the People of God, enlightening men holistically in communion with the
Trinity and the saints and the mysterious Living/Written/Spoken Word from ages
past.
The emperor is
stark naked, we have become Christian men and women without chests – and we do
not think it strange. How can men without chests help other men without chests?
How can dead bones live?
I don’t think we
appreciate Lewis’s statement, regarding MacDonald, that it has not seemed to
him "that those who have received my books kindly take even now sufficient
notice” that MacDonald is Lewis’s master. (Preface, XXXVII). We want to
separate Lewis’s didactic work from his imaginary work, but it cannot be done.
For example, in The Problem of Pain, Lewis lays a foundation of the numinous,
of the “Other,” as he moves into the subject of pain. The numinous remains with
us throughout the book – even though we may want to bring Lewis’s thinking on
pain down to the naturalistic.
The most
beautiful passages in the Chronicles of Narnia are those in which Aslan
appears. Everything in every book, and every book bound together, anticipates Aslan’s
appearance. Every time, and I do mean every time, I reread a book in the
Narniad I read it longing to see Aslan. The joy I have in seeing Him, and in
others seeing Him – both in the story and in daily life – fills my soul with
love and the numinous – the cloud of glory. The Narniad is a high sacrament for
me, a high sacrament indeed.
As I open the
Scriptures daily I do so in anticipation of seeing Jesus – whether I am in
Leviticus or 1 Kings or Obadiah or John – I expect to see Jesus coming to me
and coming to His People – coming to us. It never occurs to me that Jesus might
not be greeting me and meeting me when I open His Book.
How have we
strayed so far from loving Jesus?
Yes, yes, you
are right. It is difficult for professing Christians without chests to love.
Can these dry
bones live?
O holy Father,
baptize, convert, and renew our imaginations in the image of your Son Jesus.
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