By Brandon Knight, PhD, William Carey University
Column Description: Have you ever felt disconnected? What if such moments of disconnect point to a greater reality? A lost memory of unity with creation only hinted through nostalgia. Often even as we experience nature and beauty, or a great fairy tale, we find ourselves at a type of distance—longing for more. Having felt a moment of fulfillment, we find that it is fleeting, only to be stripped away after the moment of insight occurs. As C.S. Lewis notes in The Weight of Glory, “We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure” (p. 43). This column will be an examination of humanity’s spiritual longing and feelings of exile. Even more, we will trace how such experiences are made manifest through the words we speak making evident our longing for home.
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Beautiful Nothings: A Star is More Than a Star
In Lewis’s essay Myth Became Fact he writes, “Now as myth transcends thought, incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the dying god, without ceasing to be a myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history.”[1] What a marvelous statement by the man that J. R. R. Tolkien once labeled as Misomythus, which means Myth-hater in Greek, in a poem called Mythopoeia.
Now, Lewis was not literally a hater of myths. In fact, as we’ve already discussed, fairy tales, myths, and Greek poetry were the most enriching part of his life during his phase of rationalism and, as a result, atheism. Nevertheless, as a rationalist, he was persuaded to see these creative stories and epics as childhood fancy. In fact, he once told Tolkien that myths “are lies breathed through silver,” which is to say they are beautiful nothings.
Tolkien, or Philomythus (Myth-lover) even speaks of Misomythus’ blindness in the poem:
“You look at trees and label them just so,
(for trees are ‘trees’, and growing is ‘to grow’);
you walk the earth and tread with solemn pace
one of the many minor globes of Space:
a star’s a star, some matter in a ball
compelled to courses mathematical
amid the regimented, cold, Inane,
where destined atoms are each moment slain.”[2]
In other words, Lewis was blinded to the beauty of creation. Instead of “looking along,” the spirit of the age required him to “look at” the world in a materialistic way which is to say that “things” simply are and nothing more: “a star’s a star, some matter in a ball…” Significantly, the cold hard fact is that such “things” are all destined to be slain by time.
To the merely rationalistic mind, these facts are neither tragic nor hopeful; they just are.
The Spirit of the Age
Lewis’s experiences with rationalism and other persuasive ideologies are fleshed out in one of his earliest post-conversion works called The Pilgrim’s Regress.
The protagonist, John, has a vision of an Island that enraptures his desires and sets him on a journey. To readers, this should sound a lot like Lewis’s experiences of sehnsucht. His journey takes him to several characters who all view the Island differently. As such, each figure attempts to persuade John to their own perspective which often drags him further away from the main road or, at times, closer to the Island.
He is, in fact, a rhetorical refugee.
Along his journey, John finds himself in unknown territory attempting to cross a great chasm because he believes the Island is to be found in that direction. He is taken captive and escorted by Mr. Sigismund Enlightenment to the territory’s Master. While walking, Mr. Enlightenment tells John to give up hope of ever gaining freedom because, he says, the Island is not real. Even more, he tells John the Island is not real.
How does he do so? By arguing the Island is mere projection and wish-fulfillment.
Mr. Enlightenment asks, “‘Have you never before imagined anything to be true because you greatly wished for it?’ John thought for a little, and then he said ‘Yes’.”[3]
Upon being thrown into prison, John sees the master of the territory—Spirit of the Age—a giant rock-like creature who causes prisoners to become transparent when he sets his gaze on them. Fear comes upon John as fellow inmates transform into demonic images of their innards: skulls, glands, and even cancer overtaking the body of an older man. They are all reduced to physiology.
Losing all hope, John accidentally looks down to see that he too had become the same horror as everyone else. To him, this was an experience of hell. Mr. Enlightenment and the Spirit of the Age imprisoned him and explained away the Island as mere projection.
His being—longings, dreams, emotions—were all completely reduced to the biological and chemical processes at work within his body.
The Spirit of the Age forces us to look at ourselves as nothing more than biology. When we submit to the Giant, we can become like Mr. Enlightenment.
Why does Lewis paint rationalism this way? Does it really matter, if humans are nothing more than a collection of atoms that will one day be done away with by time? Are we nothing more than the chemical processes in our bodies? If so, then are we not products of the same chemical processes?
Maybe Freud and the other reductionists were right! Everything is mere wish fulfillment. If so, then what is real? Or, a better question: is anything real?
Waiting for Reason
As time progresses, John watches as other inmates begin to transform and take on the Spirit of the Age’s doctrine. However, as the door opens, a new prisoner puts up a fight. The prisoner is a woman warrior named Reason. After stumping the giant through three riddles, she ultimately smites him and lets the prisoners go free. However, many believe her heroic acts are wish fulfillment and thus remain in jail. They remain trapped even after the Spirit of the Age was bested.
John, on the other hand, rides away with Reason in search for the Island.
While walking, Reason explains the fault in their logic, when saying:
“‘They indeed will tell you that their researches have proved that if two things are similar, the fair one is always the copy of the foul one. But their only reason to say so is that they have already decided that the fairest things of all—that is the Landlord, and, if you like, the mountains and the Island—are a mere copy of this country. They pretend that their researches lead to that doctrine: but in fact they assume that doctrine first and interpret their researches by it.’’[4]
In other words, the Spirit of the Age entraps people by explaining away beauty, imagination, myths, and religion as mere wish-fulfillment. Thus, the fairest things, like the Island, are borne truly from desires of the natural, physical world—or as Reason says, “‘this country.’”
But, what if that doctrine is wrong? If the physical world consists of foul copies, then our longings for home is an experience of exile. Our aches and nostalgia are not mere wish fulfillment or projection, but a message from a different country?
Reason mentions to John that others posit a different doctrine altogether: “‘Some have thought that all these loves were copies of our love for the Landlord.’”[5] She then insists that their spurious doctrine is borne from a rejection of her sisters: Philosophy and Theology.
Myth Became Fact
Going back to Lewis’s quote from Myth Became Fact, one can see the need to bring together rather than separate science, philosophy, and theology. In fact, it was this reasoning that brought Lewis to believe in the Christian story as myth and fact become one through the incarnation of Christ.
The Transcendent made Immanent. Immanuel. God with us.
Lewis’s reasoning here does not discredit the great myths of history but rather views them as prefiguring truths consummated in the Christian story. Not only that, but the proper function of the myth as revealed, in this perspective, allows people to experience reality in a way that is unobtainable through sole rational observation, placing the two in tension rather than discord.
In this same essay, Lewis posited that experience and observation are never congruent. Instead, studious observation can disconnect one from actual experience. Therefore, myths are less about observation and more so related to encounter: “It is only while receiving the myth as a story that you experience the principle concretely” (Lewis, 1970, p. 41).
Seeing Lewis’s struggle in the chasm of rationalism can aid us in our efforts too. Reality is about more than “looking at,” we must also learn to “look along” to not just see and understand but also to experience and enter-into it.
When looking at the sun, Misomythus is correct: “a star’s a star, some matter in a ball.” However, when we look along its rays, reality begins to take shape.
“’I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”[6]
A star is more than star. A person is more than their physical nature, which also means that our longing for another country—the Island—and even the direction home may be illuminated—at least it was for Lewis.
Notes
[1] C. S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact,” in The Grand Miracle and Other Selected Essays on Theology and Ethics from God In the Dock. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1970) 41.
[2] J. R. R. Tolkien, “Mythopoeia,” in Tree and Leaf: Including Mythopoeia and The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth (London: HarperCollins, 2001).
[3] C. S. Lewis. The Pilgrim’s Regress. (Faded Page: 2015). eBook #20150649. https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20150649. (Original work published 1933). 91.
[4] Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress, 107.
[5] Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress, 108.
[6] C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” in The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 140.