I have been reading a lot of Lewis the past couple months. I have read Perelandra, Four Loves, the Weight of Glory, some from God in the Dock and Grief Observed, I just finished Surprised By Joy, and I am now reading That Hideous Strength. All I have to say is that Lewis was really an incredible human being.
Surprised By Joy has instantly become one of my favorite books. In it Lewis tells the story of his earlier life. For a man who taught at Oxford and is a classic Christian author, it amazes me how much detail he spends on his childhood and early school experiences (rather than his experience hanging out with J.R.R. tolkien, for instance - although he does briefly). One outstanding instance from his life is when he goes to study with "The Knock," a teacher who incessantly challenged him on the precise meaning of what he said. If this man had not been in Lewis's life, we simply would not have C.S. Lewis today.
His conversion experience was the perfect climax to his story. He describes the event as the most free choice he had ever made, and yet - he says - how could he have possibly not chosen it? The paragraph in which Lewis describes this decision is the best treatment of the paradox of freewill and God's sovereignty I have ever read. I think that what he outlines is quite in sync with what good calvinists have always believed concerning the relationship of human will and sovereignty.
Conversion is free precisely in the constraint of irresistible grace. The answer is somewhere between determinism and arminianism, which is exactly where I believe good, biblical, Edwardian/Owenian, seven-point calvinism lands.
These paradoxes are outlined well in the Great Divorce too. I remember reading the Great Divorce last semester along with Edwards' Freedom of the Will, and noticing that these two authors really did understand something very similar regarding the legitimacy of divine sovereignty and human will.
One last thing to note about Lewis is how transcendent his themes are within his different work. It is a fascinating network of writing between his essays and his novels. For instance, most are familiar with how Lewis describes friendship happening when someone says, "Wait, you like that too? I thought I was the only one!" In Surprised By Joy, this is exactly what happens to him and his friend Arthur. Similarly, That Hideous Strength is practically the narrative outworking of his essay called "The Inner Ring" (although I'm not sure which he wrote first).
Lewis is really great. I would advise anyone reading this to please, please stick close to Lewis. Read him a lot.
"The paragraph in which Lewis describes this decision is the best treatment of the paradox of freewill and God's sovereignty I have ever read. I think that what he outlines is quite in sync with what good calvinists have always believed concerning the relationship of human will and sovereignty."
ReplyDeleteCould you share this paragraph that treats the paradox so well, specifically as it concerns calvinstic human will and sovereignty?
"The odd thing was that before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice. In a sense. I was going up Headington Hill on the top of a bus. Without words and (I think) almost without images, a fact about myself was somehow presented to me. I became aware that I was holding something at bay, or shutting something out. Or, if you like, that I was wearing some stiff clothing, like corsets, or even a suit of armor, as if I were a lobster. I felt myself being, there and then, given a free choice. I could open the door or keep it shut; I could unbuckle the armor or keep it on. Neither choice was presented as a duty; no threat or promise was attache to either, though I knew that to open the door or to take off the corslet meant the incalculable. The choice appeared to be momentous but it was also strangely unemotional. I was moved by no desires or fears. In a sense I was not moved by anything. I chose to open, to unbuckle, to loosen the rein. I say, 'I chose,' yet it did not really seem possible to do the opposite. On the other hand, I was aware of no motives. You could argue that I was not a free agent, but I am more inclined to think that this came nearer to being a perfectly free act than most that I have ever done. Necessity may not be the opposite of freedom, and perhaps a man is most free when, instead of producing motives, he could only say, 'I am what I do.' Then came the repercussion on the imaginative level. I felt as if I were a man of snow at long last beginning to melt. The melting was starting in my back - drip-drip and presently trickle-trickle. I rather disliked the feeling."
ReplyDeleteTwo sentences that I think are extremely profound:
"I was in fact offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice."
"I say, 'I chose,' yet it did not really seem possible to do the opposite."
That is so profound. Thank you for sharing, Jesse.
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