More on myth and history from C.S. Lewis

[Vance]

I am currently listening to a lecture series on the writings of C.S. Lewis. The professor is a devout Christian, and asserts that Lewis is the most effective Christian apologist of our age, or possibly any age. He is held up by all Christians, but especially evangelicals, as a paragon of Christian thinking and writing. This, as well as the earlier quotes we have seen from Lewis on the proper reading of Scripture, prompted me to look deeper into this aspect of his beliefs. Here is more from him:

" My present view--which is tentative and liable to any amount of correction--would be that just as, on the factual side, a long preparation culminates in God's becoming incarnate as Man, so, on the documentary side, the truth first appears in mythical form and then by a long process of condensing or focusing finally becomes incarnate as History. This involves the belief that Myth in general is not merely misunderstood history ... nor diabolical illusion ... nor priestly lying ... but, at its best, a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination. The Hebrews, like other people, had mythology: but as they were the chosen people so their mythology was the chosen mythology--the mythology chosen by God to be the vehicle of the earliest sacred truth, the first step in that process which ends in the New Testament where truth has become completely historical. Whether we can say with certainty where, in this process of crystallization, any particular Old Testament story falls, is another matter. I take it that the memoirs of David's court come at one end of the scale and are scarcely less historical than St. Mark or Acts; and that the Book of Jonah is at the opposite end."

C. S. Lewis, Miracles, (1972) New York: Macmillian (footnotes p. 139).

A Lewis Scholar, addressing this point said the following:

But, before we leave the issue of myth in revelation I sense the need to simplify, as best I can, Lewis's definition of myth. I would say that he views myth as a story that could be and might be true, but does not need to be historically or scientifically true because it is meant to communicate something bigger than history or science. Therefore Old Testament stories like Jonah, Esther, Song of Solomon, Job, some of David's Psalms, and even the creation account and fall of man are not necessarily historical events. In fact, in addressing the last point, Lewis writes, "For all I can see, it [the fall] might have concerned the literal eating of a fruit, but it is of no consequence."

[the last was a quote from Lewis: C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, (1958) New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, (p. 64)]

This is from a very interesting article on C.S. Lewis' approach to Scripture found here:

http://www.leaderu.com/marshill/mhr02/lewis1.html#text26

Here is one more quote from Reflections on the Psalms:

The total result is not "The Word of God" in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God; and we (under grace, with attention to tradition and to interpreters wiser than ourselves, and with the use of such intelligence and learning as we may have) receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learnng its overall message. (p. 112)

 

[Vance]

I decided I might as well include the earlier quote from Lewis here, so that we can have his thoughts all in one place:

"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. I have to decide on quite other grounds (if I decide at all) whether a given narrative is historical or not. The Book of Job appears to me unhistorical because it begins about a man quite unconnected with all history or even legend, with no genealogy, living in a country of which the Bible elsewhere has hardly anything to say; because, in fact, the author quite obviously writes as a story-teller not as a chronicler.

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. An no good work is done anywhere without aid from the Father of Lights. When a series of such retellings 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.

Thus something originally merely natural--the kind of myth that is found amongst most nations--will have been raised by God above itself, qualified by Him and compelled by Him to serve purposes which of itself would not have served. Generalising this, I take it that the whole Old Testament consists of the same sort of material as any other literature--chronicle (some of it obviously pretty accurate), poems, moral and political diatribes, romances, and what not; but all taken into the service of Gods word. Not all, I suppose, in the same way. There are prophets who write with the clearest awareness that Divine compulsion is upon them. There are chroniclers whose intention may have been merely to record. There are poets like those in the Song of Songs who probably never dreamed of any but a secular and natural purpose in what they composed. There is (and it is not less important) the work first of the Jewish and then of the Christian Church in preserving and canonising just these books. There is the work of redactors and editors in modifying them. On all of these I suppose a Divine pressure; of which not by any means all need have been conscious.

The human qualities of the raw materials show through. Naivet, error, contradiction, even (as in the cursing Psalms) wickedness are not removed. The total result is not "the Word of God" in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God; and we (under grace, with attention to tradition and to interpreters wiser than ourselves, and with the use of such intelligence and learning as we may have) receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning its overall message.

To a human mind this working-up (in a sense imperfectly), this sublimation (incomplete) of human material, seems, not doubt, an untidy and leaky vehicle. We might have expected, we may think we should have preferred, an unrefracted light giving us ultimate truth in systematic form--something we could have tabulated and memorised and relied on like the multiplication table. One can respect, and at moments envy, both the Fundamentalists view of the Bible and the Roman Catholics view of the Church. But there is one argument which we should beware of using for either position: God must have done what is best, this is best, therefore God has done this. For we are mortals and do not know what is best for us, and it is dangerous to prescribe what God must have done--especially when we cannot, for the life of us, see that He has after all done it.

We may observe that the teaching of Our Lord Himself, in which there is no imperfection, is not given us in that cut-and-dried, fool-proof, systematic fashion we might have expected or desired. He wrote no book. We have only reported sayings, most of them uttered in answer to questions, shaped in some degree by their context. And when we have collected them all we cannot reduce them to a system. He preaches but He does not lecture. He uses paradox, proverb, exaggeration, parable, irony; even (I mean no irreverence) the "wise-crack". He utters maxims which, like popular proverbs, if rigorously taken, may seem to contradict one another. His teaching therefore cannot be grasped by the intellect alone, cannot be "got up" as if it were a "subject". If we try to do that with it, we shall find Him the most elusive of teachers. He hardly ever gave a straight answer to a straight question. He will not be, in the way we want, "pinned down". The attempt is (again, I mean no irreverence) like trying to bottle a sunbeam."

C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1958), 109.

 

[SBG]

I would like to add to this, so each person can have a full view of understanding.


from - http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1996/PSCF3-96Ferngren.html
-----------------

Lewis's early letters to Acworth, which deny that biological evolution is incompatible with Christianity, lend compelling support to this irenic portrait of the Christian apologist.

The later Acworth letters, however, indicate that during the 1950s Lewis became increasingly critical of evolutionism and what he called "the fanatical and twisted attitudes of its defenders." He had much earlier come to feel that evolution was often held for dogmatic rather than for scientific reasons. Thus in "The Funeral of a Great Myth" he quoted D.M.S. Watson's assertion that evolution "is accepted by zoologists not because it has been observed to occur or... can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible."10 Lewis's later writings reveal his belief that evolutionism had become a theological creed, a view that found humorous expression in his poem "Evolutionary Hymn," which concludes with the following verse:

On then! Value means survival-
​

Value. If our progeny
​

Spreads and spawns and licks each rival,
​

That will prove its deity
​

(Far from pleasant, by our present
​

Standards, though it well may be).11
​

Evolution was a creed so pervasive and so deeply held that even to appear to question it was to invite attack. For example, in a vitriolic article the Marxist geneticist J.B.S. Haldane accused Lewis of getting his science wrong and of traducing scientists in his works of science fiction.12 It is probably because evolution formed the basis of theories of philosophical naturalism like Haldane's, which had become the dominant secular world view, that Lewis agreed with Acworth in regarding it "as the central and radical lie in the whole web of falsehood that now governs our lives."

To what extent Lewis came in his later years to reject his earlier belief in theistic evolution is more difficult to ascertain. His Oxford colleague Dame Helen Gardner recalled a conversation with Lewis over dinner in which she suggested that Adam was probably a "Neanderthal ape-like figure," to which Lewis coolly replied, "I see we have a Darwinian in our midst."13 Nothing in his published writings suggests, however, that he gave up his long-held view that biological evolution was compatible with Christianity. Nevertheless, Lewis seems to have been favorably impressed upon reading Acworth's unpublished attack on evolution. "I must confess," he wrote on September 13, 1951, "it has shaken me." Lewis's later correspondence with Acworth suggests that he had begun a gradual shift away from his earlier unquestioning acceptance of evolution, but had stopped short of adopting Acworth's antievolutionist stance.

A few years ago a prominent young-earth creationist lamented Lewis's attempt in the 1940s to reconcile evolution and Scripture. "I like to think," wrote David C.C. Watson, "that, had he lived another 20 years,... Lewis would have acknowledged his... error."14 It is doubtful that Lewis would have felt comfortable espousing the views of present-day creationists. He always carefully indicated that he opposed evolutionism as a philosophy, not evolution as a biological theory. At the same time his correspondence with Bernard Acworth suggests that he had come in his later years to entertain more doubts about the claims made for organic evolution than his published works indicate.

 

[Vance]

First of all, this thread is about his approach to Scripture and literal-historical readings, which is not the same issue as his views on evolution. But I think that it is, indeed, very important to point out that he was a theistic evolutionist. His speculation about whether he would have changed his mind, and whether he had growing doubts, just shows the extent to which the man is so respected. It is very difficult for fundamentalists, who so greatly admire Lewis as a tireless champion for Christianity, to accept that he could also read Scripture non-historically and accept evolution.

But really, I do not place as much value on his belief in theistic evolution as in his approach to Scripture. The man was a literary scholar and theologian, not a scientist. His expertise, therefore, lies dramatically more in the areas of exegesis and doctrine than views the methods of creation. He could have flip-flopped a dozen times on the areas in which he was not as well-read and it would not bother me. His views on Scripture, though, are invaluable for Christians.

 

[Eprom]

I think we need to remember the period of time Lewis wrote, which would have influenced both his literary and evolutionary views. In the last 30 years, we’ve come full circle in our scientific understanding with intellectual concepts like the anthropic principle that support the theistic perspective. Similarly, new archeological and anthropological developments have helped the literary text of the scriptures. Lewis simply didn’t have access to all the information we have, so it’s understandable why some of his convictions may seem liberal.

 

[Vance]

I think we need to remember the period of time Lewis wrote, which would have influenced both his literary and evolutionary views. In the last 30 years, we’ve come full circle in our scientific understanding with intellectual concepts like the anthropic principle that support the theistic perspective. Similarly, new archeological and anthropological developments have helped the literary text of the scriptures. Lewis simply didn’t have access to all the information we have, so it’s understandable why some of his convictions may seem liberal.

I am not quite sure I understand what you are saying. First, Lewis obviously had a theistic perspective, being a devout Christian, and a great man of God. Second, I am not sure what evidence you are talking about which would discount anything Lewis said above.

 

[Vance]

What I find ironic is that my pastor, a firm YEC, quoted Lewis twice in a recent sermon, and in the evangelical book "A Purpose Driven Life" Rick Warren quotes him in almost every chapter. This man is an icon of the evangelical, and even fundamentalist, denominations, and yet he believed that Genesis could be figurative and was a theistic evolutionist.