CS LEWIS THE MOST BELOVED HERETIC, Graeme Fallows
Facts on C.S. Lewis beliefs -- keep in mind brethern that if
anyone would teach, preach, or walk into your church today and speak these
beliefs, those who know the Word-of-God would immediately label them as a
blatant and blasphemous heretic! So please use discernment and watch who you condone,
quote, and admire! It is giving your stamp of approval on a false teacher, of
which God I am sure is not pleased!
C.S. LEWIS: That name rolls off the tongue with buttery
smoothness and emanates a vivaciously ethereal theological preponderance. It makes
billions of people well up with emotion and delight. It is a name more beloved
than any other name in Christian history that is not found in the Bible itself.
The book Mere Christianity is listed as the 3rd most influential book for
Evangelicals. It is listed in just about every list of top Christian books of
“all time.” CS. Lewis is beloved by everyone from Roman Catholics to scores of
Baptists and Pentecostals. He remains one of the most quoted Christian authors
of all time and considered one of the 50 most influential Christians of
history.
I have personally witnessed the most diverse range of people
gleefully quote C.S. Lewis. This includes people who adhere to all manner of
theological and ecclesiological positions, including fundamentalism, cessasionist,
continuationism, calvinism, arminianism, molinism, open theism, the third wave
prophetic movement, the traditional Pentecostal movement, heck every single
movement!
"Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you!
for so did their fathers to the false prophets...." (Luke 6:26)
Are you getting the point? C.S. Lewis is one of the most
influential, beloved, esteemed, revered, and honored Christian authors of all
time. He is claimed by Calvinists like John Piper and the Open Theists like
Greg Boyd. Essentially everyone thinks two things (1) C.S. Lewis is amazing,
and (2) C.S. Lewis is on their team.
Turns out that while the majority of the Christian world
absolutely adores C.S. Lewis “the author” very few people know C.S. Lewis “the
heretic.”
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THE “HERESIES” OF C.S. LEWIS
❃ 1. Evolution is a valid scientific explanation for life
C.S. Lewis openly accepted that evolution was a valid
scientific theory of origins. In fact, his most famous Christian book, “Mere
Christianity” includes the concept of scientific evolution as an example of
spiritual growth in the books grand finale. This was never updated, revised, or
changed, throughout Lewis’ life.
“Thousands of centuries ago huge, very heavily armoured
creatures were evolved. If anyone had at that time been watching the course of
Evolution he would probably have expected that it was going to go on to heavier
and heavier armour. But he would have been wrong. The future had a card up its
sleeve which nothing at that time would have led him to expect. It was going to
spring on him little, naked, unarmoured animals which had better brains: and
with those brains they were going to master the whole planet. They were not
merely going to have more power than the prehistoric monsters, they were going
to have a new kind of power. The next step was not only going to be different,
but different with a new kind of difference. The stream of Evolution was not
going to flow on in the direction in which he saw it flowing: it was in fact
going to take a sharp bend…. Now, if you care to talk in these terms, the
Christian view is precisely that the Next Step has already appeared. And it is
really new. Itis not a change from brainy men to brainier men: it is a change
that goes off in a totally different direction-a change from being creatures of
God to being sons of God. ” (Lewis, Mere Christianity, “The Next Man,” 12)
“For long centuries God perfected the animal form which was
to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of Himself. He gave it hands
whose thumb could be applied to each of the fingers, and jaws and teeth and
throat capable of articulation, and a brain sufficiently complex to execute all
the material motions whereby rational thought is incarnated. The creature may
have existed for ages in this state before it became man: it may even have been
clever enough to make things which a modern archaeologist would accept as proof
of its humanity. But it was only an animal because all its physical and
psychical processes were directed to purely material and natural ends. Then, in
the fullness of time, God caused to descend upon this organism, both on its
psychology and physiology, a new kind of consciousness which could say ‘I’ and
‘me,’ which could look upon itself as an object, which knew God, which could
make judgments of truth, beauty, and goodness, and which was so far above time
that it could perceive time flowing past.” (Lewis, The Problem of Pain 13)
❃ 2. Adam and Eve were not literal people
The prominent pastor Tim Keller, who is an avid student of
C.S. Lewis (14) writes “One of my favorite Christian writers (that’s putting it
mildly), C. S.Lewis, did not believe in a literal Adam and Eve, and I do not
think the lack of such belief means he cannot be saved.” (15)
Lewis himself writes the following (which was never revised,
updated, or changed in new editions of his books): “Then, in the fullness of
time, God caused to descend upon this organism, both on its psychology and
physiology, a new kind of consciousness which could say “I” and “me,” which
could look upon itself as an object, which knew God, which could make judgments
of truth, beauty and goodness, and which was so far above time that it could
perceive time flowing past… “We do not know how many of these creatures God
made, nor how long they continued in the Paradisal state. But sooner or later
they fell. Someone or something whispered that they could become as gods…. They
wanted some corner in this universe of which they could say to God” (C.S.
Lewis, Problem of Pain 16)
❃ 3. The Old Testament is partly legendary and mythical
C.S. Lewis did not believe that the earliest portions of
Genesis were literal historical narrative, but rather that they were mythical
ways of grasping for truth.
The earliest stratum of the Old Testament contains many
truths in a form which I take to be legendary, or even mythical—hanging in the
clouds, but gradually the truth condenses, becomes more and more historical.
From things like Noah’s Ark or the sun standing still upon Ajalon, you come
down to the court memoirs of King David. Finally you reach the New Testament
and history reigns supreme, and the Truth is incarnate. And “incarnate” here is
more than a metaphor. It is not an accidental resemblance that what, from the
point of view of being, is stated in the form “God became Man,” should involve,
from the point of view of human knowledge, the statement “Myth became Fact.”
(Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Essays, (New
York: Harper Collins, 2001), 129)
I have therefore no difficulty in accepting, say, the view
of those scholars who tell us that the account of Creation in Genesis is
derived from earlier Semitic stories which were Pagan and mythical. We must of
course be quite clear what “derived from” means. Stories do not reproduce their
species like mice. They are told by men. each re-teller either repeats exactly
what his predecessor had told him or else changes it. He may change it
unknowingly or deliberately. If he changes it deliberately, his invention, his
sense of form, his ethics, his ideas of what is fit, or edifying, or merely
interesting, all come in. If unknowingly, then his unconscious (which is so
largely responsible for our forgettings) has been at work. Thus at every step
in what is called–a little misleadingly–the “evolution” of a story, a man, all
he is and all his attitudes, are involved. And no good work is done anywhere
without aid from the Father of Lights. When a series of such re-tellings turns
a creation story which at first had almost no religious or metaphysical
significance into a story which achieves the idea of true Creation and of a
transcendent Creator (as Genesis does), then nothing will make me believe that
some of the re-tellers, or some one of them, has not been guided by God.
(Lewis, 17)
“whether a particular passage is rightly translated or is
myth (but of course myth specially chosen by God from among countless myths to
carry a spiritual truth) or history…. But we must not use the Bible (our
fathers too often did) as a sort of Encyclopedia out of which texts…can be
taken for use as weapons.”(C. S. Lewis, Letters of C. S. Lewis, (New York,
Harper and Row, 2001), p. 428.)
The point is that the whole Book of Jonah has to me the air
of being a moral romance, a quite different kind of thing from, say, the
account of King David or the New Testament narratives, not pegged, like them,
into any historical situation. In what sense does the Bible “present” the Jonah
story “as historical”? Of course it doesn’t say, “This is fiction,” but then
neither does our Lord say that the Unjust Judge, Good Samaritan, or Prodigal
Son are fiction (I would put Esther in the same category as Jonah for the same
reason). How does a denial, a doubt, of their historicity lead logically to a
similar denial of New Testament miracles? Supposing (as I think is the case),
that sound critical reading revealed different kinds of narrative in the Bible,
surely it would be illogical to suppose that these different kinds should all
be read in the same way? (Lewis, Letter from C. S. Lewis to Corbin 18)
❃ 4. Substitutionary Atonement is not the Gospel
Most protestants state that what took place on the cross can
be explained with Penal Substitutionary Atonement, the idea that God punished
Jesus as a substitute instead of sinners for their sins. Many modern
evangelicals indeed call substitutionary atonement “The Gospel,” however, C.S.
Lewis did not accept this:
Now before I became a Christian I was under the impression
that the first thing Christians had to believe was one particular theory as to
what the point of this dying was. According to that theory God wanted to punish
men for having deserted and joined the Great Rebel, but Christ volunteered to
be punished instead, and so God let us off. Now I admit that even this theory
does not seem quite so immoral and silly as it used to; but that is not the
point I want to make. What I came to see later on was that neither this theory
nor another is Christianity. The central belief is that Christ’s death has
somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start. Theories as to how it
did this are another matter: A good many different theories have been held as
to how it works; what all Christians are agreed on is that it does work.
(Lewis, Mere Christianity, 19)
❃ 5. People from other religions can be saved
“There are people in other religions who are being led by
God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which
are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without
knowing it. For example a Buddhist of good will may be led to concentrate more
and more on the Buddhist teaching about mercy and to leave in the background (though
he might still say he believed) the Buddhist teaching on certain points. Many
of the good Pagans long before Christ’s birth may have been in this position.“
(Lewis, Mere Christianity p.176, 177, 19).
“I think that every prayer which is sincerely made even to a
false god or to a very imperfectly conceived true God, is accepted by the true
God and that Christ saves many who do not think they know Him. (C. S. Lewis,
Letters of C. S. Lewis, (New York, Harper and Row, 2001), p. 428.)
❃ 6. There is a Purgatory after death
“Of course I pray for the dead. The action is so
spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological
case against it would deter me. And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers
would survive if those for the dead were forbidden. At our age, the majority of
those we love best are dead. What sort of intercourse with God could I have if
what I love best were unmentionable to him? I believe in Purgatory. I assume
that the process of purification will normally involve suffering. Partly from
tradition; partly because most real good that has been done me in this life has
involved it. But I don’t think the suffering is the purpose of the purgation. I
can well believe that people neither much worse nor much better than I will
suffer less than I or more. . . . The treatment given will be the one required,
whether it hurts little or much. My favourite image on this matter comes from
the dentist’s chair. I hope that when the tooth of life is drawn and I am
‘coming round’,’ a voice will say, ‘Rinse your mouth out with this.’ This will
be Purgatory. The rinsing may take longer than I can now imagine. The taste of
this may be more fiery and astringent than my present sensibility could endure.
But . . . it will [not] be disgusting and unhallowed.” (C.S. Lewis, Letters To
Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, chapter 20, paragraphs 7-10, pages 108-109 20)
❃ 7. People are not thrown into a fiery, eternal hell
Firstly, Lewis was a student of the Universalist pastor and
author George MacDonald (21, 22), however Lewis did not fully accept his
mentors universalism. Rather, he became known for proposing a radically
different idea about hell. Lewis did not the hell passages literally, including
their depictions of God as a judge throwing people into a fiery lake, but
rather as symbolically for a hell what was self-imposed.
“The doors of Hell are locked on the inside. I do not mean
that the ghosts may not wish to come out of Hell, in the vague fashion wherein
an envious man ‘wishes’ to be happy: but they certainly do not will even the
first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul
can reach any good. They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded,
and are therefore self-enslaved: just as the blessed, forever submitting to
obedience, become through all eternity more and more free.” (Lewis, The Problem
of Pain, 23)
Even regarding this self-imposed exile, Lewis was unsure
about its eternality, saying the passages on the topic “usually emphasizes the
idea not of duration but of finality, whether this eternal fixity implied
endless duration–or duration at all–we cannot say” (Lewis, The Problem of Pain,
24)
He even postulated that hell might simply be solitary
existence, essentially, being alone in ones brain:Whether [hell] means being
left to a purely mental existence, left with nothing at all but one’s own envy,
prurience, resentment, loneliness & self conceit, or whether there is still
some sort of environment, something you call a world or a reality, I never
pretend to know. But I wouldn’t put the question in the form “do I believe in
an actual Hell.” One’s own mind is actual enough. If it doesn’t seem fully
actual now that is because you can always escape from it a bit into the
physical world – look out of the window, smoke a cigarette, go to sleep. But
when there is nothing for you but your own mind (no body to go to sleep, no
books or landscape, nor sounds, no drugs) it will be as actual as – as – well,
as a coffin is actual to a man buried alive. (Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur
Greeves (13 May 1946) 25)
❃ 8. Belief in Satan not necessary for Christian faith
No reference to the Devil or devils is included in any
Christian Creeds, and it is quite possible to be a Christian without believing
in them. I do believe such beings exist, but that is my own affair. Supposing
there to be such beings, the degree to which humans were conscious of their
presence would presumably vary very much.Third-Reich-3 I mean, the more a man
was in the Devil’s power, the less he would be aware of it, on the principle that
a man is still fairly sober as long as he knows lie’s drunk. It is the people
who are fully awake and trying hard to be good who would be most aware of the
Devil. It is when you start arming against Hitler that you first realize your
country is full of Nazi agents. Of course, they don’t want you to believe in
the Devil. If devils exist, their first aim is to give you an anaesthetic — to
put you off your guard. Only if that fails, do you become aware of them.
(Lewis, “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” God in the Dock (Eerdmans:
1970) 56-57. (26)
