But I welcome the opportunity to plow through a bunch of his writings. This week's assignment was Surprised by Joy and "Weight of Glory." I'm quite convinced that Surprised is somewhere in my garage in a box, but a new copy should arrive tomorrow. So today, it's a sermon Lewis preached in 1942 at St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford. It had previously been published in 1941 in Theology--"Weight of Glory."
1. I am already picking up that Lewis has some affinities with Augustine, especially the notion of "desire" as fundamental to humanity. I also thought of some of the work of Jamie Smith. I'm not real fond of this framework, but I will try to keep an open mind. I'm more of a "choice" oriented person, seeing humans more as mixtures of competing desires.
Lewis begins by saying that the highest of the Christian virtues is not unselfishness (a negative) but love (a positive). He is surely correct about this. Here's a nice quote: "Our Lord finds our desires not to strong, but too weak" (26).
2. He then embarks on an argument that I don't think works. Our longing for heaven shows that heaven exists. For one, have most humans in history believed in an afterlife, let alone heaven or an afterlife of reward? Lewis should know better as a classicist. For most ancient Greeks and Romans, the afterlife was a mindless existence. The dead Teiresias is a mindless shade until he drinks the blood given him by Odysseus. The Old Testament itself has little conception of a meaningful, personal afterlife.
I fear that I am going to find a bit of the Platonic in Lewis, just as in Augustine. Plato/Anselm/Descartes would say that if I can conceive of it clearly and distinctly, it must exist in some way.
Nevertheless, Lewis (I think) rightly critiques those who would say Christians only are trying to be goody goody so they can get an eternal reward. "The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation" (27). As we eat food in keeping with the goal of satisfying hunger, we live in accordance with a life that fits eternity.
He also mentions a third situation, where a person embarks on a discipline that they only later realize fits hand in glove with its trajectory. I might liken the liberal arts to this (he uses Greek as an example). You don't necessarily see the value of them at first but it can show itself after the spark happens and you find yourself a different person.
On a more profound level, Lewis argues that "a transtemporal, transfinite good is our real destiny" (29). Meilaender has already pointed out the parallel between Lewis and Augustine's Confessions--"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you."
So, Lewis argues, "we remain conscious of a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy" (32). So Lewis thinks that "my desire for Paradise... is a pretty good indication that such a thing exists" (33). I think this probably betrays a certain cultural and historical myopia on Lewis' part, as I mentioned above. If you've grown up in a cultures that believe in a blissful afterlife, you probably do have this concept built in. Otherwise, probably not.
3. He interestingly suggests that our specific picture of heaven, including that within the Bible, is symbolic. "Heaven is, by definition, outside our experience, but all intelligible descriptions must be of things within our experience" (33). He argues that we are bound to find biblical pictures of heaven puzzling or repellent, because "it will be precisely the puzzling or the repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know" (34).
I won't deny that possibility. However, we should also keep in mind that biblical imagery is incarnated communication. There may be aspects of revelation's clothing that is ancient clothing and foreign to us for that reason. We don't want to be like those who argued for slavery from the Bible.
Here's another good quote: "He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only" (34).
4. The rest of the sermon talks about glory. He mentions two aspects to the concept of glory. First there is the idea of appreciation by God. Then there is the notion of brightness.
Lewis, as a self-confessed modern (36), wrestles with the idea that God would show us appreciation. "How we think of Him is of no importance except insofar as it is related to how He thinks of us" (38). I resonate with this statement, especially the early Schenck. However, I will be interested to see if I think Lewis has too little a sense of God's love for humanity. He gets there in the sermon, but it almost seems tacked on, like it doesn't entirely fit the rest of the sermon.
The Bible comes from an honor-shame world, though. Glory is a much bigger part of it than in our western tradition. Lewis though translates it somewhat into our worldview--"glory means good report with God" (41). He suggests that, when we appear before God and have no pretense of our own value, we will be able to receive God's appreciation purely (37).
The brightness part of glory Lewis likens to us being united with the beauty we see (42).
5. The sermon ends with a turn to our neighbor. The "weight or burden of my neighbour's glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humanity can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken" (45). Thus the title of the sermon.
"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal" (46). "Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses."
1 comment:
My guess is that nothing by Lewis is more often quoted than his statement on desire being evidence for a better world/existence elsewhere. Thanks for pointing out, among other things, that in the OT world the idea of “heaven” was not part of Jewish faith. I had never connected those dots.
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