Here we grow again...
I'm sure we won't hang out on this paper as long as the last, but there is certainly plenty in here to keep us going for a while. Post when you get a chance!
I also figured out how to have the posts e-mailed to you whenever a new post is placed. If you would like me to add your e-mail, send me an e-mail with the address you want me to use.
Under the Blood.
Brad
10 comments:
I'd like to kick off our discussion of the next paper, "Learning in War-Time," with an admission, an observation, and a question. The admission and the observation are related, I think, in some way that is not yet entirely clear to me; hence, my question, which I hope you may be able to help me think through.
But first, the admission: Lewis writes, "The intellectual life is not the only road to God, nor the safest, but we find it to be a road, and it may be the appointed road for us. Of course, it will be so only so long as we keep the impulse pure and disinterested" (italics mine). Now my admission is that this passage seems to cast serious doubt on the "pet theory" I articulated in an earlier post, namely, that Lewis's entire corpus (big generalization!) is in some way directed against the idea of disinterestedness. This leaves me with three options: (1) I'm just plain wrong (this certainly wouldn't be the first time); (2) I need to qualify my theory somehow; or (3) Lewis is being inconsistent.
The observation: I find it interesting that Lewis seems to be employing yet again a form of the "teleological argument" he used in "The Weight of Glory," i.e., "that the existence of the impulse and the faculty prove that they must have a proper function in God's scheme." In this case, though, the faculties to which he refers are our drives for knowledge and beauty. I tried to argue previously that Lewis somehow sees all impulses of this sort as shadows of our one great drive for God Himself. Now some of the language Lewis uses in this essay would seem to support that reading. He says, for instance, that the "intellectual life" is a "road to God," and that our pursuit of knowledge and beauty can help us "advanc[e] to the vision of God." At the same time, however, he seems to want to introduce this idea of disinterestedness--the notion that we can, to a certain extent, pursue knowledge and beauty for their own sakes. "I mean the pursuit of knowledge and beauty, in a sense, for their own sake, but in a sense which does not exclude their being for God's sake." I find this to be a curious tension in this paper. Perhaps it is a productive tension, perhaps an unsustainable one. Even more curious, though, is how it is that something can be both an "appetite" and "disinterested" at the same time. Now I'm not suggesting these two are necessarily mutually exclusive, I'm just wondering how one might go about squaring them exactly.
And finally, the question: As I've said, Lewis is using the same kind of argument here as he did in the previous paper--one based on what are presumably God-given appetites. Earlier in the essay, however (p. 50 in my text), Lewis makes what I think is a key point. He is discussing the fact that human beings seem to have an inveterate tendency to pursue culture, knowledge, etc. even when the times are not ideal for doing so. "This is not panache," writes Lewis, "this is our nature." But then he makes a key qualification: "But since we are fallen creatures, the fact that this is now our nature would not, by itself, prove that it is rational or right." Yet a mere six pages later, Lewis is concluding that our "appetites" for knowledge, beauty, etc. are, in fact, rational and right. So here is my question: How precisely does Lewis get from p. 50 to p. 56? I ask this not so much because I think he's incorrect (because I think he is correct), but merely in order to clarify my understanding of his reasoning. Then again, perhaps ultimately my question is not so much about Lewis's own argument as it pertains to this particular issue of knowledge and beauty but about how, when one goes about employing the kind of "argument from desire" that Lewis does, one can be sure that a given appetite is pure rather than sinful.
Thoughts?
I am going to begin commenting, although I reserve the right to change my thoughts after re-reading this paper. Your thoughts certainly don’t allow a simple reading of a book and the reliance on memory to comment.
Could you expound upon what you mean by disinterestedness and how you feel Lewis is using it in this example? I think I know what you are referring to but I figured we had better be on the same page so we are not talking past each other.
I am certain that I am reading Lewis differently than you are when it comes to the discussion of the “intellectual life” being a “road to God”, primarily because it is the path I took to find Him, it was my appointed road. I take him to be meaning that one may use the intellectual life and pursuit of knowledge and beauty as a way to get “to” God, as opposed to using these as a way to get God. All the information in the world can only get you to the threshold of salvation, one must then choose to step in and this is indeed the hardest part of all. Obviously I don’t speak as a Calvinist here, but this is a big reason that I think it to be false. Consider the following analogy; the Israelites followed Moses for a variety of reasons, mostly because they thought their lives would improve for doing so. In following him, they were brought right up to the threshold of the Promised Land. They now had a choice to make, and they didn’t like where that road seemed to lead so they decided to continue chasing after the ever elusive greener grass. Information can lead you to God, but it can also lead you to intellectual idolatry. Beauty can lead you to God, but it can also lead you to chasing after beauty. Love can lead you to God, but it can also lead you to loving love. All of these things can lead you to God, but none of them can give you God Himself, that requires sacrificing all of these things, or at least being willing to sacrifice them, at the threshold. You must be willing to destroy the very vehicle that brought you to God, because otherwise it may also be the vehicle you use to escape. If you want all of Him you must trade all of you. So what of Lewis’ talk of disinterestedness in this context? I think he simply means following the evidence where it leads instead of having what is so popular right now in the scientific community, an a priori position against God. They begin with a conclusion (God does not exists, naturalism is all there is, etc) and then they go down the path of the intellectual life. The impulse we must keep pure (and I remember how hard this was) is the impulse to follow the truth (or goodness, or beauty, or whatever) no matter where it goes, even if you don’t like the conclusion. So, in the search of the Good the True and the Beautiful, we end up at the threshold of God and one must now choose the GTB or the cause of the GTB; the creation or the creator; idolatry or Religion. Handel in writing the Messiah (in about 18 days!) considered it a discover, not an invention, and in it saw the face of God. When I look at Calculus, I see the face of God. When you read a proper sonnet, you probably see the face of God. We come to a place where we realize that if GTB is merely subjective, it is neither good nor true nor beautiful. If it is objective, God must exist.
As to your question, I will beg off for the moment since I want you to see what I have above while it is fresh.
Hmm, what do I mean by disinterestedness? Good question. I mean the idea that some action can be done, some object contemplated, etc. without any reference to self-interest. The concept, as you probably know, has a long history in both ethics and aesthetics dating back to the eighteenth century. To take a specific example, many thinkers have suggested that our goal is to develop a disinterested love of God, that is, we ought to love Him for His own sake rather than because of what He's done for us, what He promises to do for us, and so forth.
Why I find Lewis's use of this term so fascinating in "Learning in War-Time" is because he seems to reject, or at least to de-emphasize, this same notion in "Weight of Glory" in his argument that rewards are not a mercenary affair. Now I think I understand what Lewis is getting at, at least in part, in the present text. He means we need to stay focused on the object of our pursuits (knowledge, beauty, etc.) rather than on what they do for us: "As the author of the Theologia Germanica says, we may come to love knowledge--our knowing--more than the thing known: to delight not in the exercise of our talents but in the fact that they are ours, or even in the reputation they bring us." Or as I would put it, we ought, in a certain sense, to love the object--to approach it charitably. Indeed, I have always remembered this passage precisely because of the challenge it lays down. Any of us which have pretensions to the intellectual life should post this statement on our walls, on our desks, etc. What I find interesting, though, is that Lewis seems to introduce the negative concept here (what I earlier called the "not not-me") rather than the positive concept of loving the object. Moreover, my question is how something can be "disinterested" when it is also an inborn "appetite." Doesn't appetite imply an interest of some kind? This is what I'm trying to sort through.
As for the idea of knowledge, beauty, etc. being a road to God, I'm not sure that we're reading him so differently; or at least, what you ended with in your previous post is pretty close to what I think I had in mind. That is, when you talk about calculus or a sonnet as being a means of seeing the face of God, this is what I take Lewis to be saying to some extent. But it seems to me that by the end of your post you yourself had moved towards a position that you did not begin with. Forgive me if I'm misreading you, but I think you began by talking about the intellect as a road "to" God--as playing some role in bringing one to the brink of faith--but you ended by talking of the intellect as a way to "get God." Now obviously, I think we both agree that the intellect alone without faith will never get us either "to" God or God Himself, but I do believe that a "faith-full" intellect will, in a sense, get us God, just as you (and I think Lewis) contend. Nor do I think that Lewis would disagree with anything you've said about the intellect being a means "to" God (nor would I, for that matter); I do, however, question whether this is what he himself is emphasizing in this particular text. I don't think this paper is as much about studying to believe in God as it is about studying to see God, but as always, I'm open to other readings. And lastly, there is no doubt that Lewis would agree with your crucial point about the danger of idolatry, of pursuing Goodness, Truth, and Beauty themselves rather than the God behind them. But then we're back to the perplexing question of how it is exactly that Lewis wants us to pursue knowledge and beauty for their own sakes, but also in a way that does not exclude it being for God's sake....
Now to try to answer your question; how do we know if our desires are good and from God, or if they are corrupted from the fall? First we must distinguish between our natures and our desires which flow from our nature. In other words, there is a difference (and Lewis seems to suggest this as well) between our wants and whether that want is rooted in our old man or our new man. This is not to suggest that every desire that is rooted in the old man is bad, usually it is just perverted or broken; however the desires which flow from the new man/ new nature in Christ will always be proper even if they are not properly understood by us. A good tree will bear good fruit and a bad tree will bear bad fruit; but let us not forget that the bad tree still produces something very like a good apple, in fact it is mostly good and can usually be recognized as what it ought to be, but it has rotted. So all desire is basically good, but it is often broken or spoiled by our fallen state. So how do we fix this and know what desire is pure and placed in the proper object? Consider these verses:
Proverbs 20:5 (MSG)
5 Knowing what is right is like deep water in the heart; a wise person draws from the well within.
Psalms 37:4-5 (NIV)
4 Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. 5 Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this:
• He will give you: (Naw-theen’ Natin) to ascribe, add, cause, put, place
Proverbs 4:20-27 (NIV)
20 My son, pay attention to what I say; listen closely to my words. 21 Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart; 22 for they are life to those who find them and health to a man's whole body. 23 Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. 24 Put away perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips. 25 Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you. 26 Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm. 27 Do not swerve to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil.
What I see in these three verses is that 1) We ought to live according to the desires of our heart, 2) That God gives us those desires, and 3) We must be careful to guard our heart, the place God places our desires.
If we are finding our ultimate delight in God, if we are living according to the spirit and not the flesh (new man vs. old man), if we commit our ways to Him, He will give us proper desires. Certainly the spirit can overcome the curse of the fall and renew those desires and our understanding of them if we live according to the spirit. If we make Him Lord and establish His Kingdom within us, He will reign over desires. This doesn’t mean that false desires won’t arise, but I suggest that this is why we have the Spirit acting as an advisor to guide us into all wisdom. To develop our ability to know His will and when we are living according to it, we must guard our hearts and develop His character within us, this is why living a disciplined life is so essential to being a disciple, a follower of Christ. If we develop the character or nature of Christ, we will naturally do the right thing.
Lewis seems to be writing to a Christian audience and he is assuming that they are (hopefully) operating out of the new man, not the old. His concern is more “how” not “why”. He is speaking as a pastor, not a theologian at that point.
Now to the concept of indifference, thanks for clarifying by the way…
You said: “Moreover, my question is how something can be "disinterested" when it is also an inborn "appetite.” Doesn't appetite imply an interest of some kind? This is what I'm trying to sort through.”
Perhaps I am oversimplifying, but can’t we have appetites in two different ways? What I mean is that we can have an appetite to consume and an appetite to have. In screwtape letters and four loves, Lewis touches on this if I remember right. Satan desires us (Sin’s desire is for us) to consume us, not because he wants “us”. God desires us, but He certainly isn’t satisfying a need as He has no need. He doesn’t desire us to consume us but rather He desires us for “us”. Screwtape declares that His desire is “… to have His cake and eat it too!” We are a disinterested passion and desire for God, at least in some sense. Perhaps I am off center here, but I rest in the fact that you will help!
PS: I believe a friend of mine will be joining shortly. We will greatly benefit from his wisdom, hopefully he posts soon!
Beautifully put, Brad. In fact, I only have two brief points to add to your points.
Glossing Lewis's argument in "Learning in War-Time" with The Screwtape Letters is a great move, and it helps to make your distinction wonderfully, I think. One thing I know Lewis is against is the notion of "disinterested evil," that is, the idea that the devil and his demons are somehow engaged in the selfless pursuit of something called EVIL. Sounds simple until we realize how often we picture Hell as this well-oiled machine united in the attempt to systematically foil God's plans. Lewis believes no such thing, and I think he's right.
One final point: Perhaps one way to reconcile the idea of appetite and disinterestedness (and to articulate your own point in another way) is to say that what we human beings have is an appetite for the disinterested love of God. Our deepest desire is to love God for His own sake. I'm still not sure how, or whether, this squares with "The Weight of Glory" exactly, but it seems to make sense to me in general.
Hope your friend is able to join us....
OK, my turn now. It is very difficult to comment because I want to just rewrite what Lewis has written, but I do think that some things must be thought of more deeply.
“But to a Christian the true tragedy of Nero must be not that he fiddled while the city was on fire but that he fiddled on the brink of hell.”
I have been in an e-mail discussion with several former students (not followers of Christ) and this idea just blazes in my heart with every conversation that I have. This is my greatest frustration! How do we help people to see the importance of learning about God? If He does exist, it should radically change the way you are living. If He does not exist, it should still radically change the way you are living! Could there be a more important thing to research? I get so frustrated with the “I’m not religious, but I am a spiritual agnostic.” To me this is a cop-out. For most people (probably 99%) saying that you are an agnostic is the culturally acceptable way of saying “I am too lazy to think deeply about the existence of God and which faith has it right.” I would rather debate a passionate atheist, for at least he has beliefs based on something other than sloth and pop culture slogans (though most atheists fall into the same category… so do most “Christians” for that matter). Like I said, this is my greatest frustration and my greatest passion. Hopefully this came across to you in my outline for the book.
“They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never comes…This is not panache; it is our nature.”
We must never forget the incredible importance of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. We need it for the nourishment of our souls which is often more important than our physical nourishment; after all, we are primarily spiritual beings. I am not denying the importance of our physical nature, surely that is part of who we are and it is good, but primarily we are spiritual (soul-ish) in essence. This reminds me of the story of Augustine writing “The city of God” for a culture that was on the brink of destruction (I think I have that story right, feel free to correct me on this).
“Neither conversion nor enlistment in the army is really going to obliterate our human life. Christians and soldiers are still men…”
I feel that we face a very different problem, I don’t think many converts expect much to change when they become a Christian. It is to them just another hat that we wear, and usually only on Sundays. Instead of assimilating into Christ (we are his body and he is the head) we affiliate with other “Christians”. We have joined an organization instead of becoming part of an organism. Let us not forget the call of Christ: He who seeks to save his life (I am defined by who I am) will lose it and he who loses his life for my sake will have eternal life (I am no longer defined by who I am but rather by who I am in Christ.)
Well, enough ranting on my part. I want so badly for Christ to be formed in me and in the world around me. “Let your Kingdom come, let your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Amen!
I appreciate these personal, and rightly passionate, thoughts, Brad. A few things occurred to me as I read them -- not directly related to "Learning in War-Time" per se, but I'll post them nonetheless. Nothing particularly original here, just what's on my mind...
First, a word about post-conversion expectations. I agree with you that there are some people who don't expect much change once they place their faith in Christ. But I think the problem in many cases is that people do experience a certain exhilaration after conversion. They feel a burden lifted; they feel a newfound sense of freedom and peace. The problem, however, is that this rarely lasts. It is then that people become discouraged and settle back into a life that doesn't look much different at all. The Christian life, however, is about somehow reaching the extraordinary through the ordinary. It's about discipline, hard work, and focus -- all things we've lost sight of in our modern American culture. The Christian life is about living in the valleys without losing sight of the mountaintops. Imitation, and what you're calling assimilation, are, as you say, a part of the solution. The great paradox of Christianity is that we are most ourselves when we are least ourselves. But then imitation and assimilation are sometimes painfully inglorious jobs.
I was struck, too, by the dilemma of the agnostic. I've always felt that true agnostics pose the most difficult challenge to Christian apologists. As you suggest, Christians and atheists have more in common than Christians and agnostics (incidentally, G.K. Chesterton's novel, The Ball and the Cross is a fantastic depiction of this truth) since Christians and atheists at least believe that something conclusive can be said about God. Either He exists or He doesn't. And because of this, they believe it's an issue worth arguing about. They care. To the genuine agnostic, however, the truth can't be known, and it's incredibly difficult to try to convince someone they ought to care about something they think they can have no knowledge about.
I'm also struck by the statement, "I'm not religious, but I'm a spiritual agnostic." (How typical!) Interestingly, I think Lewis actually offers a bit of insight on this statement in "Learning in War-Time" when he suggests that it was Matthew Arnold who first used the word "spiritual" in the sense of the German geist. Historically speaking, I'm not sure Lewis is correct here, but his point is important. Spiritual has come to refer to little more than a vague sense of process or connectedness. It is basically synonymous with "feeling," I think. One of the great ironies of history, I believe, is that those of us living in the twenty-first century have taken Marx's scathing critique of religion as an "opiate for the masses" and embraced it as religion's sole positive virtue. As has often been said, we are living in a "therapeutic culture." "Well of course religion has no cognitive value," we say, "but it makes me feel good, and that's what it's all about, isn't it?" For Marx this attitude would have been a source of endless scorn; for us, it's become a sign of "depth" and sophistication. The problem, of course, is that by consigning religion entirely to the domain of feeling, it is no longer subject to argument. Feeling is neither refutable nor irrefutable. This is why, in the end, we must take refuge in the fact that it is only by God's grace that a sinner's eyes are opened...
Ok, you win the award for the single best quote of the series;
"One of the great ironies of history, I believe, is that those of us living in the twenty-first century have taken Marx's scathing critique of religion as an "opiate for the masses" and embraced it as religion's sole positive virtue."
Brilliantly stated!
The strange thing about it is that it is an attack from both sides. First, Religion does not count as knowledge or something that can or ought to be known; it should only be a felt experience. So we have retarded peoples hearts.
Second, Knowledge has also been attacked so that we can only know something through scientific testing and we have been taught to destroy our feelings when it comes to a search for truth. So we have created "Men without chests" as Lewis dubbeed them.
It seems that it is in this vaccuous void that post-modernity found its roots. The way to solve the problem is to say that there is no truth to be known, or at best it can't be known as truth. The advantage of this is that now head and heart are on level playing fields.
That sounds good, but now we are left with neither head nor heart. Instead of elevating the importance of heart, science was stripped of its unrightful throne and brought crashing down. While they are now both on the same playing field, the game has been cancelled (or at best both teams have had all their players put into the penalty box).
I hate to bring up PM, but did that work?
PS: I think it is time to move on to the next chapter...
Very well put, Brad. I think your observation that religion is under attack from two sides--from those who want to relegate it solely to the province of feeling and from those who want to restrict knowledge entirely to the empirically verifiable--is dead on. In fact, I think the first problem is in many ways an attempt to cope with the second. People who have been taught to view knowledge monolithically, but who nevertheless wish to preserve religion in some form, transfer it to the domain of feeling (often out of the best motives, I think) where it becomes unassailable. The unintended effect, however, is that it also becomes basically meaningless beyond the confines of the self. One of the other great ironies of modern "spirituality" is that the individual ego is simultaneously all-powerful (I choose my religion) and totally powerless to commend this religion to another. We have secured our autonomy but lost our influence. Prophecy is dead, while autobiography rules the day.
Anyway, this is a complicated problem, one which would no doubt embroil us in all kinds of tangled webs. So I agree with you... let's move on to the next essay!
Here is an extended quote from "C.S. Lewis's Case For Christ" dealing with the topic of disinterestedness. I felt it fit in well with the conversation so I posted it here...
The Paradox of Rewards
When Lewis first came to faith, he really did not think about eternal life but focused on enjoying God in this life. He paralleled his experience with Old Testament people who did not have a clear understanding of heaven. They recognized that “He [God] and nothing else is their goal and the satisfaction of their needs, and that He has a claim on them simply by being what He is, quite apart from anything He can bestow or deny.” Lewis later said that the years he spent without the focus on heavenly rewards “always seem to me to have been of great value” because they taught him to delight in God above any prospect of reward.
Lewis never disparaged the place of heavenly rewards; later he delighted in them. But he saw that the paradox of reward might be a stumbling block for some. On the one hand, the purest faith in God believes in him for nothing and is disinterested in any benefits to follow. On the other hand, if a reward is received for what is done, the prospect might pander to self-interest and greed. Lewis discusses this paradox in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century:
Tyndale, as regards to the natural condition of humanity, holds by nature we can do no good works without respect of some profit either in this world or in the world to come…. That the profit should be located in another world means, as Tyndale clearly sees, no difference! Theological hedonism is still hedonism. Whether the man is seeking heaven or a hundred pounds, he can still but seek himself, of freedom in the true sense – of spontaneity or disinterestedness – nature knows nothing. And yet by a terrible paradox such disinterestedness is precisely what the moral law demands.
One way to resolve the tension between disinterestedness and rewards is to realize that self-interest is not the same thing as selfishness. Jesus appeals to self-interest as a motive for self-denial. I have been told that Mark 8:35-36 is Lewis’s most quoted passage of Scripture. Here Jesus says, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?”
Unless we have sufficient reason to sacrifice something we love, the cost will always be too great. Jesus gives us sufficient reason to pay the cost. First, if we try to save our lives by seeking our own pleasure in our own way, we will lose not only eternal life but the fullness of life right now. Second, if we “lose our lives” – give them away to Christ and others – we will gain not only eternal life but the fullness of life in the present.
Jesus’ argument here is that self-denial is in our self-interest. If we say no to ourselves and follow him, we will gain everything worth having. Self-interest does not necessarily make our motives impure. Lewis says in The Problem of Pain:
We are afraid that heaven is a bribe and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing a mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man’s love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love for exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love by its very nature seeks to enjoy its object.
When we are lost in the wonder, awe and praise of God, we are the happiest we can become, but also the least self-conscious. When we are focused on God, we are not focused on self. The same dynamic shows up in a close friendship. With people we do not know well, we may feel self-conscious and worry about how they perceive us. But with a good friend we can lose ourselves in conversation, conveying deep feelings with no self-centeredness. Lewis summarizes this unself-conscious experience: “The happiest moments are when we forget our precious selves… but have everything else (God, our fellow humans, the animals, the garden and the sky) instead.” In this experience we are doing that which is in the interest of our own joy but not selfishly. We are joyous but disinterested.
Post a Comment