God in the Dock

by C.S. Lewis

the most deeply compelled action is also the freest action.

Would you say that the aim of Christian writing, including your own writing, is to bring about an encounter of the reader with Jesus Christ? Lewis: That is not my language, yet it is the purpose I have in view.

You can’t lay down any pattern for God. There are many different ways of bringing people into His Kingdom, even some ways that I specially dislike! I have therefore learned to be cautious in my judgment. But we can block it in many ways.

As Christians we are tempted to make unnecessary concessions to those outside the Faith. We give in too much. Now, I don’t mean that we should run the risk of making a nuisance of ourselves by witnessing at improper times, but there comes a time when we must show that we disagree. We must show our Christian colours, if we are to be true to Jesus Christ. We cannot remain silent or concede everything away.

As Charles Williams once said, ‘The altar must often be built in one place so that the fire may come down in another place.’

Mr Wirt: Professor Lewis, your writings have an unusual quality not often found in discussions of Christian themes. You write as though you enjoyed it. Lewis: If I didn’t enjoy writing I wouldn’t continue to do it. Of all my books, there was only one I did not take pleasure in writing. Mr Wirt: Which one? Lewis: The Screwtape Letters. They were dry and gritty going.

Mr Wirt: How would you suggest a young Christian writer go about developing a style? Lewis: The way for a person to develop a style is (a) to know exactly what he wants to say, and (b) to be sure he is saying exactly that.

I do believe that God is the Father of lights—natural lights as well as spiritual lights (James i. 17). That is, God is not interested only in Christian writers as such. He is concerned with all kinds of writing. In the same way a sacred calling is not limited to ecclesiastical functions. The man who is weeding a field of turnips is also serving God.

Mr Wirt: Do you believe that the use of filth and obscenity is necessary in order to establish a realistic atmosphere in contemporary literature? Lewis: I do not. I treat this development as a symptom, a sign of a culture that has lost its faith. Moral collapse follows upon spiritual collapse. I look upon the immediate future with great apprehension.

I believe that there are many accommodating preachers, and too many practitioners in the church who are not believers. Jesus Christ did not say ‘Go into all the world and tell the world that it is quite right.’ The Gospel is something completely different. In fact, it is directly opposed to the world.

It is not easy to be a believer in the face of this surface evidence. It calls for a strong faith in Jesus Christ.

Mr Wirt: What is your view of the daily discipline of the Christian life—the need for taking time to be alone with God? Lewis: We have our New Testament regimental orders upon the subject. I would take it for granted that everyone who becomes a Christian would undertake this practice. It is enjoined upon us by Our Lord; and since they are His commands, I believe in following them. It is always just possible that Jesus Christ meant what He said when He told us to seek the secret place and to close the door.

The world might stop in ten minutes; meanwhile, we are to go on doing our duty. The great thing is to be found at one’s post as a child of God, living each day as though it were our last, but planning as though our world might last a hundred years.

I find it difficult to keep from laughing when I find people worrying about future destruction of some kind or other. Didn’t they know they were going to die anyway? Apparently not.

Mr Wirt: Do you think there will be wide-spread travel in space? Lewis: I look forward with horror to contact with the other inhabited planets, if there are such. We would only transport to them all of our sin and our acquisitiveness, and establish a new colonialism. I can’t bear to think of it.

Usually the way must be made ready for heaven, and then it will come by some other; the sacrifice must be made ready, and the fire will strike on another altar.’ Charles Williams, He Came Down from Heaven

IT IS A DISASTROUS DISCOVERY, AS EMERSON SAYS SOMEWHERE, that we exist. I mean, it is disastrous when instead of merely attending to a rose we are forced to think of ourselves looking at the rose, with a certain type of mind and a certain type of eyes. It is disastrous because, if you are not very careful, the colour of the rose gets attributed to our optic nerves and its scent to our noses, and in the end there is no rose left.

Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is ‘wishful thinking’. You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself.

If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.

In other words, you must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.

you can only find out the rights and wrongs by reasoning—never by being rude about your opponent’s psychology.

The forces discrediting reason, themselves depend on reasoning.

there is justification for holding on to our belief in Reason. But can this be done without theism?

All our knowledge of the universe beyond our immediate experiences depends on inferences from these experiences. If our inferences do not give a genuine insight into reality, then we can know nothing.

Bulverism tries to show that the other man has causes and not reasons and that we have reasons and not causes.

All attempts to treat thought as a natural event involve the fallacy of excluding the thought of the man making the attempt.

thought has no father but thought. It is conditioned, yes, not caused. My knowledge that I have nerves is inferential.

One can reject morality as an illusion, but the man who does so often tacitly excepts his own ethical motive: for instance the duty of freeing morality from superstition and of spreading enlightenment.

Neither Will nor Reason is the product of Nature. Therefore either I am self-existent (a belief which no one can accept) or I am a colony of some Thought and Will that are self-existent.

A society consisting solely of plain men must end in disaster. If we are to survive we must either believe the seers or scale those heights ourselves.

something beyond Nature exists. Man is on the border line between the Natural and the Supernatural. Material events cannot produce spiritual activity, but the latter can be responsible for many of our actions on Nature. Will and Reason cannot depend on anything but themselves, but Nature can depend on Will and Reason, or, in other words, God created Nature.

It is not inconceivable that the universe was created by an Imagination strong enough to impose phenomena on other minds.

it is more reasonable to suppose that Will is the only cause we know, and that therefore Will is the cause of Nature.

All reasoning assumes the hypothesis that inference is valid.

The universe doesn’t claim to be true: it’s just there.

Knowledge by revelation is more like empirical than rational knowledge.

The map drawn by Reason claims to be that true one. I couldn’t get at the universe unless I could trust my reason. If we couldn’t trust inference we could know nothing but our own existence. Physical reality is an inference from sensations.

To sacrifice the greater good for the less and then not to get the lesser good after all—that is the surprising folly.

Until quite modern times—I think, until the time of the Romantics—nobody ever suggested that literature and the arts were an end in themselves. They ‘belonged to the ornamental part of life’, they provided ‘innocent diversion’; or else they ‘refined our manners’ or ‘incited us to virtue’ or glorified the gods.

every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made.

You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first.

Perhaps civilization will never be safe until we care for something else more than we care for it.

‘One converses better when one does not say “Let us converse.” ’

As Dr Johnson said, precept may be very sincere (and, let us add, very profitable) where practice is very imperfect,

Since the Fall no organization or way of life whatever has a natural tendency to go right.

The family, like the nation, can be offered to God, can be converted and redeemed, and will then become the channel of particular blessings and graces. But, like everything else that is human, it needs redemption.

Charity begins at home: so does uncharity.

The greed to be loved is a fearful thing.

The answer is an alarming one. There is nowhere this side of heaven where one can safely lay the reins on the horse’s neck.

It will never be lawful simply to ‘be ourselves’ until ‘ourselves’ have become sons of God.