C.S. Lewis and The Bible Codes

[MKJ]

That's true, but the significance of the similarity between his name and the word for ransom was there all along.

Sure, but Ransom did not know it, and could not have known it. He only discovered that it was meaningful because he was given special knowledge.

That is different from looking for secret divine codes in Scripture or anywhere else. In that case we are doing the looking, we are trying to discern a pattern which, if it existed, would be beyond our ability to discover - so we in the end are imposing our own human perceptions of pattern on Scripture.

It is very much like the difference between using magic to try and turn stones into bread according to our own will, and at Gods command performing actions to turn bread into the Blood of Christ.

Nothing falls outside Gods pattern, even when we act ourselves against his will, because that is taken up into the pattern and used by him. So in that sense, everything is part of the pattern - chance events, random happenings, and all. Some of it may have a much deeper significance than we realize. But from our perspective, most of that information is beyond us. We are rarely able to see those meanings unless we are told by God.

When we look at Scripture though, we are talking about a special revelation to us by God - his attempt to make himself better known to us. It is a deep document and we all fall short of understanding its meanings. But it is meant to be understood, not to obscure understanding - that is a vital part of Christian belief. If it is full of secret information, it totally changes the nature of the document - what does that say about Gods intent in giving us the Scriptures.

As Lewis put it "Before his Mother had borne him, before his ancestors had been called Ransoms, before ransom had been the name for a payment that delivers, before the world was made, all these things had so stood together in eternity that the very significance of the pattern at this point lay in their coming together in just this fashion." (Perelandra, pg. 125.)

And statements like "The whole distinction between things accidental and things designed, like the distinction between fact and myth, was purely terrestrial" would certainly seem to imply that everything has such a hidden significance until it's revealed (however unorthodox that view might be.)

Yes - everything, even our free will, is taken up into Gods providence. That does not mean we are to look for secret messages in it. Some things are not yet clear to us, they are in potentiality, they may never be revealed because we do not need to know them. We do not need to hold the secrets of every grain of sand in our heads as God does.

These kind of attempts to crack the meanings of the patterns of creation can be dangerous, even when well meant. That is why magic and alchemy and looking for secret codes in nature or revelation are not encouraged practices in Christianity. Even science, which we think of as revealing truth, can often fall into that trap as Lewis points out so powerfully in The Abolition of Man.

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[MichaelBurk]

Thank you MKJ,

I did talk to a priest, and for the benefit of anyone else who may have been troubled by my quotes from Lewis, I'd like to post some of his comments here.

Dear Mike,

...Either CSL is wrong, since his mere assertion contradicts good arguments that give contrary conclusions (and which are also consistent with the mainstream Christian tradition!) OR he is making a valid point in imprecise language...

If one were to assume CSL was not saying that "every coincidence that a mind could possibly perceive was a coded message from God" or "every naturally per accidens property-overlap between facts, without exception, is designed to have a specific meaning by God", what might he have meant? Well...in saying that there are no "accidents" and that every "connection" is designed, he could have simply meant that all events, including their property interconnections, are part of God's providential ordering, such that striking "coincidences" that a mind could conceive as divine "signs" can be so legitimately, even if no miracle is involved.

This is not the same as saying that that all "coincidences" are necessarily divine signs, nor is it the same as saying that absolutely all property-overlaps must be, not only intended providentially, but intended per se (as coded messages) rather than per accidens by God. And it certainly does not mean that any connection or interpretation that a human mind can construct based on property-overlaps must be intended by God to be a sign. To put it more concretely, with an example, CSL perceived the confluence of some aspects of pagan myths and symbols with Christian themes and sacraments to be clearly Providential and no accident. He would not have believed that every time any number contains within it the digital series 666 it is a sign to avoid the thing/person associated with that number as evil. His whole approach to Christianity and life shows us this, so exegeting and extrapolating small portions of his writing to say what he would have considered silly is not sensible. He was an Anglican, also, and Anglicans have always valued common-sensical moderation. He would have told you to read his own works in that light.

Pax et bonum

 

[MKJ]

Thank you MKJ,

I did talk to a priest, and for the benefit of anyone else who may have been troubled by my quotes from Lewis, I'd like to post some of his comments here.

Dear Mike,

...Either CSL is wrong, since his mere assertion contradicts good arguments that give contrary conclusions (and which are also consistent with the mainstream Christian tradition!) OR he is making a valid point in imprecise language...

If one were to assume CSL was not saying that "every coincidence that a mind could possibly perceive was a coded message from God" or "every naturally per accidens property-overlap between facts, without exception, is designed to have a specific meaning by God", what might he have meant? Well...in saying that there are no "accidents" and that every "connection" is designed, he could have simply meant that all events, including their property interconnections, are part of God's providential ordering, such that striking "coincidences" that a mind could conceive as divine "signs" can be so legitimately, even if no miracle is involved.

This is not the same as saying that that all "coincidences" are necessarily divine signs, nor is it the same as saying that absolutely all property-overlaps must be, not only intended providentially, but intended per se (as coded messages) rather than per accidens by God. And it certainly does not mean that any connection or interpretation that a human mind can construct based on property-overlaps must be intended by God to be a sign. To put it more concretely, with an example, CSL perceived the confluence of some aspects of pagan myths and symbols with Christian themes and sacraments to be clearly Providential and no accident. He would not have believed that every time any number contains within it the digital series 666 it is a sign to avoid the thing/person associated with that number as evil. His whole approach to Christianity and life shows us this, so exegeting and extrapolating small portions of his writing to say what he would have considered silly is not sensible. He was an Anglican, also, and Anglicans have always valued common-sensical moderation. He would have told you to read his own works in that light.

Pax et bonum

Yes, I think that is indeed what Lewis meant. Remember to that a novel will not usually lay things out like a theological work will.

 

[mark46]

No, the Creator of the Universe does not play at dice. Lewis might have said this, instead of Einstein.

I find it strange that Anglicans would want to play with numerology and codes, and look for literalism in Scripture or in the writings of Lewis. I would not think this an idea that is consistent with our Traditions.

 

[PaladinValer]

No, the Creator of the Universe does not play at dice. Lewis might have said this, instead of Einstein.

I find it strange that Anglicans would want to play with numerology and codes, and look for literalism in Scripture or in the writings of Lewis. I would not think this an idea that is consistent with our Traditions.

It isn't. As I said, it is Gnostic, not Christian. The entire esotericism/secret knowledge stuff is thoroughly anti-Christian and has no place in anyone's theology.

 

[MichaelBurk]

It isn't. As I said, it is Gnostic, not Christian. The entire esotericism/secret knowledge stuff is thoroughly anti-Christian and has no place in anyone's theology.

As I said, it would have been helpful if you could have quoted something from Lewis himself to justify your insistence that he couldn't be saying that everything had some esoteric meaning.

As it turns out, I found a chapter in "Miracles" helpful in putting his Perelandra quotes in a larger context.

It's "A Chapter Not Strictly Necessary" (and it's also helpful that "Miracles" was written after "Perelandra.")

It would have been extremely helpful if you could have quoted a line or two from that chapter, instead of pretending to channel "Saint Clive."

 

[MichaelBurk]

...Wasn't the historically accidental similarity of Ransom's name to the word "ransom" designed with a hidden (esoteric) meaning, and isn't Lewis saying that everything has such a meaning when he says
Gnostic or not, isn't St. Clive saying that everything has some esoteric meaning here?

What else could he be saying?

Did he ever say anything, anywhere that could lead you to believe he meant something else (or place what he said here in some other context)?

...

I don't know how I read over this the first time I read Perelandra, but before he ended the book, Lewis did pen something that would place the quote in the OP in a larger context.

Here it is (from page 186-187.)

There seems no plan because it is all plan:there seems no center because it is all center. Blessed be He. "Yet this seeming is the end and final cause for which He spreads out time so long and heaven so deep; lest if we never met the dark, and the road that leads nowhither, and the question to which no answer is imaginable, we should have in our minds no likeness of the abyss of The Father, into which if a creature drop down his thoughts for ever he shall hear no echo return to him. Blessed, blessed, blessed be He."

Perhaps part of the reason I overlooked this was that I wasn't familiar with the word "nowhither."

I looked it up, and it means "in no definite direction," so this certainly seems to imply that everything doesn't have some decipherable meaning.

 

[Picky Picky]

Dr Lewis's friend Prof Tolkien expressed a similar view of coincidence, also in fiction. Here is Gandalf speaking (in Unfinished Tales): "It might all have gone very differently indeed. [...] We might now only hope to return from the victory here to ruin and ash. But that has been averted — because I met Thorin Oakenshield one evening on the edge of spring not far from Bree. A chance meeting, as we say in Middle Earth."

Coincidences here are not a code for reading, but glimpses of the possibility that there is an underlying rationale, or perhaps just a natural grain to the universe that tends to affect the trajectory of events.