Review of Michael D. Aeschliman’s The Restitution of Man: C. S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism

While neither Aeschliman, nor the philosophers he quotes, possess Lewis' happy ability to clothe complex philosophical notions in the lingo of common man, nonetheless his defense of Lewis' concern about scientism is well done. Aeschliman describes scientism as a misuse of science that asserts "what is not in principle observable is not in fact in existence."

This is an excellent book for exposing the inherent contradictions in philosophical materialism. Reducing man to an object of study is fatally contradictory, because, as Aeschliman points out, the realm of scientific theory is limited to objects lower than man. But when man the observer of man the object assumes that one is higher and the other lower, it is but a short distance from there to the idea that the proper end of science is the manipulation of some men by others for the sake of maximum utility. Man becomes a means to an end, rather than the end itself. Brute facts having triumphed over values (the former being seen as objective and real, the latter as merely subjective), there is no longer any wisdom (what Aeschliman terms sapientia) to govern the use of technology--it may be as readily employed in eugenics or nuclear war as it is in delivering water to an African village.

“Modern scientistic doctrine," Aeschliman says, "holds all fact to be objective and all value to be subjective. To call it a ‘doctrine’ is to draw attention to the fact that its characteristic assumption that only factual statements have validity is itself nonfactual, speculative, and dogmatic; it is, in fact, a diabolically ironic article of faith” [74].

Note well: the book is not anti-science; rather it is a call for science to once again be the handmaiden of wisdom: the recognition that there are ultimate values that define right and wrong, anchored in God Himself. Highly recommended.

Book Review: C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock

Reading Lewis is like peering through a freshly washed window into the depths of his soul. A rare communicator among great thinkers and writers, Lewis is able to put deep thoughts on the lower shelf, accessible to the man who has callouses on his hands and dirt under his fingernails.

God in the Dock is a compendium of Lewis’ essays, articles, letters, and a few transcripts of his speeches compiled by editor Walter Hooper, who served briefly as Lewis’ secretary during the illness that took Lewis’ life. Hooper has organized the volume into four parts. The first part contains essays that are “clearly theological,” the second “semi-theological,” and the third “ethics,” and the fourth is comprised of Lewis’ letters answering those who disagree with some point he has made.

If Lewis is a polemicist, he has two arguments to make: his primary argument is against unbelief, and particularly unbelief possessed by those who professed to believe: the liberal clergy and theologians of the post-war Church of England. His other great issue is more subtle: it’s an argument against unclear thought and language that befuddles rather than enlightens. Lewis contends that if a man is not able to translate a passage from an English volume of systematic theology into language that his gardener would understand, he should fail his ordination exam.

Modern conservative evangelicals are conflicted about Lewis. It seems to me that there are two reasons for the uncertainty. First there is a misunderstanding about the way Lewis uses the term myth. As a professor of literature, Lewis used the term to describe the rich stories of cultures such as the Norsemen or the Greeks. Lewis contended that, though historically false, such stories conveyed subtle evidences of transcendence—in other words, evidence of God, the True Joy. But he also used the term to describe Christianity, and that’s what makes modern Bible-believers nervous. It need not.

Unlike modern liberals, when Lewis uses “myth” in connection with Christianity, he is not speaking of something false or unhistorical. Indeed, Lewis was a strong force in his day arguing for the reality of the miracles of Scripture, and against the anti-supernaturalism that wound up destroying much of Anglicanism. Lewis uses the term myth in much the same way that “metanarrative” is used in popular culture: it’s the “big picture,” the “grand narrative,” the unifying story that ties together and explains a culture. For Lewis Christian myth is the true historical story of God’s grand plan of redemption through His Son Jesus Christ. It is the story (the only story) that explains the faith of the apostles and the two thousand years of history since. Theologians use the term “redemptive history” in almost precisely the way Lewis used the word myth to describe Christianity. Myth is not the denial of historicity for Lewis, rather it is the assertion of the grandness and majesty of The Story—the true story.

The second concern about Lewis regards his tendency to Universalism, the idea that all men—even Christ rejecters—will ultimately be redeemed. Lewis argues that we in time cannot now know what eternity bodes for the lost. See for instance the last two chapters of The Great Divorce. I think Lewis himself was conflicted about it—you can observe his conflict in places where he argues strenuously for the need of conversion before one faces God. Conservative evangelicals who are disturbed by this part of Lewis need to go back and read the first four centuries of church history—even Augustine believed things we would disavow today. The same can be said of the Reformers: for instance, they did not clearly separate civil from ecclesiastical authority—it took a couple more centuries for that to finally happen. We will do ourselves no favors judging Lewis by this one matter. Hooper says of him, “Lewis struck me as the most thoroughly converted man I ever met. Christianity was never for him a separate department of life. . . ” [12, emphasis his].

God in the Dock is an edifying and challenging sampler of Lewis’ thought in many different areas of life and theology. I recommend it highly.

C. S. Lewis, the radical

I never realized what a radical C. S. Lewis was until reading his essays in God in the Dock. One of Lewis’s great concerns was the rise of the modern, technocratic welfare state. Lewis warned that the purpose of government is to protect individual liberties, not to transform society or to provide for its citizens. When a population forgets that limited role of government it is headed inevitably for tyranny.

Lewis writes, “. . . classical political theory, with its Stoical, Christian, and juristic key-conceptions (natural law, the value of the individual, the rights of man), has died. The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good—anyway, to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name ‘leaders’ for those who were once ‘rulers’. We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, ‘Mind your own business.’ Our whole lives are their business.” [from the essay, Is Progress Possible? in God in the Dock, 314]

Lewis published this in 1958. Apparently we weren’t listening.

C. S. Lewis and Old Books

I'm reading through a book of C. S. Lewis essays, called "God in the Dock." Today's essay was from Lewis' introduction to a new translation of Athanasius' fourth-century work,  "The Incarnation of the Word of God."

Anyway, Lewis is making a case for reading the old books, the books of the past that history has shown to have weight and heft. One of Lewis' points is that modern authors, even when they disagree with one another, share in common a huge set of assumptions--some of which are bound to be wrong. As moderns reading modern books, we too will be blind to the wrongness of those assumptions--since we ourselves share them. The only way we have to extricate ourselves, Lewis claims, is to read books of the past--not that they are error-free, but that they are operating on a different set of assumptions than those of the modern age. I'll let Lewis speak for himself:

"None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction" [202].