When Christians constantly talk about their weakness, it seems to outsiders that they are currying favor with a tyrant or uttering conventional phrases, like Chinese formulas of politeness. In fact, we are trying again and again to overcome the natural feeling suggested by nature. Once we understand that the Lord loves us, we are drawn to think that we have done something to deserve His love.
Falling in love does not seek its own, does not seek earthly happiness, and yet it is not Love. In all its greatness and self-denial, it can also lead to evil. We are mistaken in thinking that a spiritless, base feeling leads to sin. It is not transitory lust that leads to cruelty, untruth, suicide and murder, but high, true love, sincere and sacrificial beyond all measure. 2 Jul 2009 | |We don't value friendship because we don't see it. And we don’t see it because it is the least natural of all types of love, instinct does not participate in it, there is very little or simply no biological necessity in it.
I remember Mrs. Sorrow, who died not so long ago. Her family was surprisingly refreshed. The husband does not look haunted and even laughs sometimes. Youngest son turned out to be not so gloomy. The eldest, who only slept at home, now does not go anywhere and works in the garden. Mrs. Sorrow often said that she lived for her family.
“God is love,” says the Evangelist John. When I first tried to write this book, I thought that these words showed me a straight and simple path.
We will not remove the contradiction by explaining that self-love is good up to a certain limit, but beyond that it is bad. The point here is not the degree. The point is that there are two types of self-dislike in the world, very similar at first glance and directly opposite in their fruits
Let's try to move one step further. Does “Love your enemy” mean that we should not punish him? No: after all, the fact that I love myself does not mean that I must in every possible way save myself from a well-deserved punishment, even the death penalty. If you have committed murder, then according to Christian principles you must surrender into the hands of the authorities and drink the cup even to death.
5 Mar 2008 | |
Eat? What does "to be" mean? These great mysteries cannot be approached so crudely. If there was something like that (my dear, why interrupt!), I would, frankly, not be interested. There would be no religious significance to it. For me, God is purely spiritual.
Evil can be corrected, but it cannot be transformed into good. Time doesn't heal him. We must say “yes” or “no,” there is no third option. If we do not want to reject hell or even this world, we will not see heaven. 30 Nov 2007 | |
The sharp line that Christianity draws between love for a sinner and hatred of his sin has existed in us for as long as we can remember. You don’t love what you did, but you love yourself. You may think that hanging you is not enough...
-
Irina Dmitrieva
-
Zhirinovsky 0.72% Zyuganov 31.88% Mironov 4.35% Prokhorov 7.97% Putin 23.19% I'm against everyone! 31.88%
“In God every soul will see its first love, because He is that first love.” - Clive Staples Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis(eng. Clive Staples Lewis; November 29, 1898, Belfast, Northern Ireland - November 22, 1963, Oxford, England) - English and Irish writer, scientist and theologian. Known for his work on medieval literature and Christian apologetics, as well as works of art in the fantasy genre. One of the prominent representatives of the Oxford literary group"Inklings".
Biography
Born on November 29, 1898 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the family of a solicitor, but most of lived his life in England.
After graduating from school in 1917, he entered University College, Oxford, but soon dropped out and was drafted into the British Army as a junior officer. After being wounded in the First World War in 1918, he was demobilized and returned to the university, where he completed his studies.
In 1919, under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton, he published a collection of poems, Spirits in Bondage.
In 1923 he received a bachelor's degree, later a master's degree and became a teacher of philology.
In the period from 1925-1954 - teaches English language and Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford.
In 1926, under the same pseudonym, Clive Hamilton published a collection of poems, Dymer.
In 1931, Lewis, by his own admission, became a Christian. One September evening, Lewis has a long conversation about Christianity with J. R. R. Tolkien (a devout Catholic) and Hugo Deason (the conversation is recounted by Arthur Greaves under the title "They Stood Together"). This evening's discussion was important for the next day's event, which Lewis describes in Overtaken by Joy: “When we (Warnie and Jack) went (by motorbike to Whipsnade Zoo) I did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, but when we came to the zoo, I believed.”
Worked for the BBC's religious broadcasting service during the Second World War. The book “Simply Christianity” was written by him based on materials from his wartime broadcasts.
From 1933 to 1949, a circle of friends gathered around Lewis, which became the basis of the literary discussion group “The Inklings,” whose members included John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Warren Lewis, Hugo Dyson, Charles Williams, Dr. Robert Haward, Owen Barfield, Wevill Coghill and others.
In 1950-1956, the Chronicles of Narnia series was published, which brought Lewis worldwide fame.
In 1954 he moved to Cambridge, where he taught English language and literature at Magdalen College, and in 1955 he became a member of the British Academy.
In 1956, Lewis married American Joy Davidman (1915-1960).
In 1960, Lewis and Joy and their friends travel to Greece, visiting Athens, Mycenae, Rhodes, Heracleion and Knossos. Joy died on July 13, shortly after returning from Greece.
In 1963, Clive Lewis stopped teaching due to heart problems and kidney disease.
He died on November 22 of the same year, a week before his 65th birthday. Until his death he remained in his position at Cambridge and was elected an honorary fellow of Magdalen College. He was buried in the yard of Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry, Oxford.
Bibliography
Fantasy
1. The Roundabout Path, or the Wanderings of a Pilgrim (English: The Pilgrim's Regress, 1933)
2. The Chronicles of Narnia series:
3. The Magician's Nephew (1955)
4. Lion, Witch and wardrobe(eng. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, 1950)
5. The Horse and His Boy (1954)
6. Prince Caspian (eng. Prince Caspian: The return to Narnia, 1951)
7. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, or Voyage to the End of the World (1952)
8. The Silver Chair (1953)
9. The Last Battle The Last Battle, 1956)
Science fiction
1. Out of the Silent Planet, 1938
2. Perelandra (English: Perelandra, 1943)
3. That Hideous Strength (1946)
Religious works
1. “Suffering” (The Problem of Pain, 1940)
2. “The Screwtape Letters” (1942)
3. “Great Divorce” (1945)
4. “Miracle” (Miracles: A Preliminary Study, 1947)
5. Screwtape Proposes a Toast, 1961
6. “Mere Christianity” (1952, based on radio broadcasts of 1941-1944)
7. Till We Have Faces (1956)
8. Reflections on the Psalms (1958)
9. “The Four Loves” (The Four Loves, 1960, about the types of love and its Christian understanding)
10. "Exploring Grief" (A Grief Observed, 1961)
Works in the field of literary history
1. “Preface to Paradise Lost” (A Preface to Paradise Lost, 1942)
2. " English literature sixteenth century" (English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, 1955)
Works in the field of philology
1. “The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition” (1936)
Collections of poetry published under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton
1. "The Oppressed Spirit" (Spirits in Bondage, 1919)
2. "Dymer" (Dymer, 1926)
Quotes
- Every person gets what they want in life. But not everyone is happy after this.
- We are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves. How do we love ourselves? For example, I love myself not because I am, say, the nicest person. I love myself not because I am good, but because I am me, with all my shortcomings. Often I sincerely hate some property of myself. And yet I cannot stop loving myself. In other words, the sharp line that Christianity draws between love for a sinner and hatred of his sin has existed in us for as long as we can remember. You don’t love what you did, but you love yourself. You may think that hanging you is not enough. Perhaps you will even go to the police and voluntarily accept punishment. Love is not an ardent feeling, but a persistent desire for the one we love to achieve the highest good.
- I wrote what I wanted to read. People didn’t write this, I had to do it myself.
- If a children's book is simply the right form for what the author has to say, then those who want to hear him read and reread it at any age. And I am ready to say that a book for children that only children like is a bad book. Good ones are good for everyone. A waltz that only brings joy to the dancers is a bad waltz.
- God speaks to us face to face only when we ourselves have a face.
- At the end of time there will be only two classes of people: those who once said to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God will say, “Thy will be done.”
- I wrote the kind of books that I myself would like to read. This is what always motivated me to take up my pen. Nobody wants to write the books I need, so I have to do it myself...
- “I dreamed of building things with my own hands: ships, houses, engines,” Lewis recalled, “but instead I had to write stories. - (Lewis had congenital poor movement of his thumb, which made manual work difficult.)
- <Радость>- an unsatisfied desire, which in itself is more desirable than the satisfaction of any other desire.
- To create a believable “other world” that is not indifferent to readers, we should use the only “other world” that we know - the world of the spirit.
- In a sense, I've never had to "create" a story... I see pictures. Some of them are similar to each other in some way - maybe by smell - and this unites them. There is no need to disturb them - watch quietly, and they will begin to merge together. If you are very lucky (this has never happened to me), a whole series of paintings will merge so well that you will get a finished story, and the writer will not have to do anything. But more often (this is exactly my case) there are unfilled places. This is where it’s time to think, to determine why such and such a character in such and such a place does such and such. I have no idea if other writers work this way and if this is how one should write in general. But I don’t know any other way. Images are always the first to appear to me.
- Rule: A children's book that only children like is a bad book. Good ones are good for everyone. A waltz that only brings joy to the dancers is a bad waltz. - “Three ways to write for children”
- I write fairy tales because this genre is the best suited for what I need to say;.. - “Three ways to write for children”
- Some people can understand science fiction and fairy tales at any age, while others will never understand them. If the book is a success and has found its reader, he will feel its power. Fairy tales generalize while remaining specific; represent in tangible form not concepts, but entire classes of concepts; they eliminate incongruities. And ideally, a fairy tale can give even more. Thanks to it, we gain new experience, because fairy tales do not “comment on life,” but make it fuller. - “Sometimes it’s better to tell everything in a fairy tale”
- I think I will sin least against the truth if I undertake to assert that the strangeness of little readers lies precisely in the fact that they are completely ordinary. We're the weird ones. New trends appear in literature every now and then; fashions come and go. All these fads can neither improve nor spoil the tastes of children, because children read only for pleasure. Of course, they have a small vocabulary and they don’t know much yet, so some books are incomprehensible to them. But with this exception, a child's tastes are tastes ordinary person, they tend to stupidity when everyone around them is stupid, or to wisdom when everyone around them is wise, and do not depend on fashions, trends and revolutions in literature.
- So now we have two types of “children's writers.” Firstly, those who mistakenly decided that children are “ special people" They carefully "study" the tastes of these strange creatures - like an anthropologist observing the customs of a wild tribe - or even the tastes of individual age groups and the classes into which this “type” of people is divided; and they present the child not with what they themselves love, but with what they think he should love. They are often driven by educational and moral motives, and sometimes by commercial ones.
Other writers know that children and adults have a lot in common. Based on this, they write. They put the label “For Children” on the covers because children today are the only market open to the books that these authors want to write no matter what. - “About the tastes of children”
Pain (1940)
- God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks aloud to our conscience, but He shouts in our pain - this is His megaphone for the deafened world to hear.
- In God, every soul will see its first love, because He is this first love.
The Vile Power (1946)
- - I said that love is equality, a free union...
- Ah, equality! - the owner picked up. - We'll talk about this sometime. Of course, all of us fallen people must be equally protected from the selfishness of our fellow men. In the same way, we all have to cover our nakedness, but our body is waiting for that glorious day when it will not need clothes. Equality is not the most important thing.
“I thought it was the same,” Jane insisted. - After all, people are essentially equal.
“You are mistaken,” he said seriously. - It is in essence that they are not equal. They are equal before the law, and that's good. Equality protects them, but does not create them. This is medicine, not food.
- But in marriage...
“There is no equality,” the owner explained. - When people are in love with each other, they don’t even think about him. They don’t even think about it later. What does marriage have in common with a free union? Those who rejoice at something together, or suffer from something, are allies; those who rejoice in each other and suffer from each other - no. Don't you know how embarrassing friendship is? A friend does not admire his friend, he would be ashamed.
“I thought...” Jane began and stopped.
“I know,” said the owner. - It's not your fault. You were not warned. No one ever told you that obedience and humility are necessary in marital love. It is there that there is no equality.
- “Cooperation between people of different sexes,” said McPhee, “is made difficult mainly by the fact that women do not use nouns.” If men are housekeeping together, one will ask the other: “Put this bowl in another, larger one, which is on the top shelf of the cupboard.” The woman will say, “Put this in that over there.” If you ask where exactly, she will answer: “well, there!” and gets angry.
- We must remember that not a single noble thought was firmly entrenched in his mind. He received neither a classical nor a technical education, but simply a modern one. He was spared both the severity of abstractions and the heights of humanistic traditions; but he could not correct this himself, because he knew neither peasant ingenuity nor aristocratic honor. He understood only what did not require knowledge, and the very first threat to his bodily life defeated him.
- “You see,” he continued, “in any university, city, parish, in any family, anywhere, you can see what used to be... well, more vaguely, the contrasts were not so clearly distinguished.” And then everything will become even clearer, even more accurate. Good becomes better, evil becomes worse; It’s getting more and more difficult to remain neutral, even in appearance... Do you remember, in these verses, where heaven and hell bite into the earth on both sides... how is it?.. “until it’s turu-rum through and through.” Will they eat it? No, the rhythm is not right. “They’ll probably eat it up.” And this is with my memory! Do you remember this line?
- I listen to you and remember the words from scripture that we are winnowed like wheat.
- That's it! Perhaps “the passage of time” means just that. It's not about one thing moral choice, everything is divided more sharply. Evolution consists of species becoming less and less similar to each other. The mind becomes more and more spiritual, the flesh - more and more material. Even poetry and prose are moving further and further away from each other.
Orthodox portal
Clive Staples LEWIS (1898 - 1963) - outstanding writer, scientist and theologian. Known for his work on medieval literature and Christian apologetics, as well as works of fiction: | | | | | .
1. “Smart, courteous, Christian”
In his interesting article on Lewis and Orthodoxy, "Under the Russian Cross," Andrew Walker recalls how, at a dinner party in London, the Greek bishop of Constantinople spoke of Lewis's "anonymous Orthodoxy." Was he right? Dr. Walker notes that Orthodox Christians are very fond of Lewis. There are bookstores that sell only Orthodox books, with one exception: Lewis. There are also strictly confessional priests who teach catechumens from the treatise “Mere Christianity.”
And yet, how close is Lewis to Orthodoxy? What did he himself think about Eastern Christianity? I could have asked him the second question in the fall of 1952, when I entered Oxford, his college (St. Magdalene). I lived in a new building, like him, and saw him every day, usually before breakfast (we both went for a walk). Wishing each other on the go good morning, we separated - that’s all. I was already drawn to Orthodoxy and loved Lewis very much, but out of timidity I did not speak to him, and he, out of delicacy, would not have addressed someone else’s student. Of course, if I had approached, he would not have offended me; but I didn’t approach, didn’t ask, and I don’t know the answer. I can only guess.
Lewis had very little outward connection with the Orthodox Church. He attended the liturgy at least once - in a letter from 1956 he clearly describes what he saw. Orthodox piety surprised him with its freedom and flexibility:
“The model for me is the “Russian Orthodox” service. Some sit, others lie prone, some kneel, some just stand, some walk, and no one pays attention to anyone. Smart, courteous and Christian. “Don’t meddle in other people’s business” - good rule, even in church."
In Letters to Malcolm, published after his death in 1964, Lewis describes probably the same service (although he no longer calls it “Russian” but “Greek”): “I was once in a Greek service, and What I liked most was that, as far as I understood, there were no rules for the flock. Someone was sitting, someone was standing, someone was kneeling, someone was walking around the temple, and one person was simply crawling like a caterpillar. The best thing is that no one was watching each other in the slightest. I wish we Anglicans would adopt this! We have people who are very bothered by the fact that their neighbor is not baptized or is being baptized. It would be better if they didn’t look at all, much less judge someone else’s slave.”
I wish all Orthodox Christians in England were so tolerant! Sadly, in some parishes they watch and judge harshly. Lewis wrote his letter in 1956, when he had not yet been to Greece (he and his wife went there in April 1960). He probably saw an Orthodox service in Oxford, in the Russian church on Marston Street, but it is impossible to prove this.
He also liked the Orthodox Church of Greece. When he returned, he wrote to Chadd Walsh:
“Joy and I almost fell into paganism there. In Attica, in Daphne, it is difficult not to pray to Apollo the Healer, and I did not feel that this should not be done, I prayed to Christ sub specie Apollinis. In Rhodes, in one village, we saw a wonderful Christian rite, almost without feeling that it was in any way different from ours. The priests are very pleasant in appearance, much nicer than most pastors and priests. But the peasants don’t take money for anything.”
As sad as it may be, we admit once again that he idealized the Orthodox. No matter what the “peasants” do, the priests take money and sometimes demand it.
Lewis was quite close friends with two Orthodox Christians, Nikolai and Militsa Zernov. Nikolai Zernov came to Oxford in 1947 to lecture on Orthodox culture. It is not entirely clear when he and Lewis met, but the Zernovs were later proud of a photograph of “Jack” sitting in their living room on a rickety, low chair. A few years before their arrival, during the war, Lewis read a paper at the Oxford branch of the brotherhoods of St. Alban and St. Sergius, which was later published in the magazine “Sobornost”. He also read in the house of St. Gregory and St. Margarita, founded by the Zernov couple. The date could not be determined. The title of the report was very strange: “Toy, icon, picture”, apparently it was not published and was lost somewhere. In the fall of 1952, Nikolai Zernov read a report “Soloviev on Good and Evil” at the Socrates Club. The meeting was moderated by Lewis, and another Russian, Evgeniy Lampert, spoke at it. The Zernoffs attended Lewis's funeral on November 26, 1963. Militsa brought a cross of white flowers, but she was told that there would be no flowers in the church. In the end, they allowed me to put a wreath on the coffin, already at the cemetery. “Who would have thought? — writes Andrew Walker, “Jack Lewis is buried under the Russian cross...”
2. C.S. Lewis and the Greek Church Fathers
That's all, as far as I know, there is nothing more to say about Lewis's personal encounters with Orthodoxy. Let us honestly admit that there are few of them, and let us turn from his life to his works. Perhaps there is evidence of some kind of influence here? Reading it, we will hardly see any direct references to Orthodox theologians. This is not surprising. He has few references to Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, or theoreticians of any denomination in general. Interpreting Christian teaching, he says nothing about confessional characteristics, and not by chance, but consciously, intentionally. In his apologetic writings, he pointedly avoids interfaith polemics, focusing on what unites Christians. In his own words, he wants to state “what almost all Christians have always believed in...”; what Baxter called "just Christianity." Lewis was not interested in either "churchism" or the institutional aspects of religion.
Okay, there are no references, but still, was he influenced by Orthodox theologians? In books like “Suffering” or “Miracle”, I don’t remember any quotes from current, contemporary ones, but in the 40s there were no books of theirs in Oxford. Did he even use the Greek Fathers, who are so influential in Orthodoxy? Sometimes, in general terms, he speaks of patristics; for example, he writes “We defend... what the apostles preached, the martyrs testified, the Creed embodied, the Fathers interpreted.” However, he has very few references to these Fathers, and if he quotes anyone, it is Western ones, most often Augustine.
Judging by his autobiography, the Fathers played no role either in his mental development or in his conversion, although he, incidentally, mentions Augustine twice. In The Discarded Image he talks a little about the works of Pseudo-Dionysius, but only because they are very important for the medieval West. In "The Miracle" there are three references to the Fathers, all within a page, but two are taken second-hand, from modern Western authors. Lewis wrote the foreword to English translation St. Athanasius the Great (“The Incarnation of the Word of God”), but only because he was friends with the translator, Sister Penelope. It has been suggested that the "deep magic" in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe stems from the doctrine of the Atonement as interpreted by St. Gregory of Nyssa. But the correspondences are not so clear; rather Lewis took it from Augustine or from modern theologians.
Therefore, I quite agree with Bede Griffiths, to whom Lewis dedicated the book Overtaken by Joy. Griffiths writes: “It is remarkable that Lewis had very little interest in the Church Fathers. It would seem that for a person of such a classical culture it is natural to love the Latin and Greek Fathers, but, in addition to the reference to the “Confession” of St. Augustine, I don’t remember anything.”
With few exceptions, Lewis's sources are Western, medieval or modern, rather than patristic. In addition to Plato, Augustine and Boethius, his mentors were Dante, Hooker, Spencer, Milton, Johnson, Macdonald, Chesterton, Charles Williams, and at one time Yeats. There is almost everyone here - both Catholics and Protestants, but there are no Orthodox Christians. Yes, Andrew Walker is right: “Lewis is a deeply Western man.”
3. Apophatics, but not liturgics
But that's not all. Although Lewis is almost not connected with Orthodoxy and almost does not refer to the Eastern Fathers, he is often very similar to them, he thinks similar. His premises are Western, but his conclusions are those that an Orthodox Christian could support. This is all the more remarkable because there is no direct influence.
To show this, I will turn not so much to his apologetics as to fairy tales and novels, for it is in them that the theological vision is especially unique and deep. However, first I will say about one property that an Orthodox Christian would hardly like.
In 1962, a year before his death, Lewis wrote to Bede Griffiths: “I just can’t seem to get interested in liturgy.” Griffiths adds that towards the end of his life “Lewis acquired a deep reverence for the mystery of the Eucharist ...; However, he never managed to perceive the Church as a worshiping community, and a cult... - as heaven on earth.” The Orthodox perceive Christianity primarily through the liturgy. Eastern theology primarily understands the Church as a worshiping community, as an orderly and harmonious embodiment of “heaven on earth”, revealed in the liturgy. Here Lewis is very far from Orthodoxy.
However, this is balanced by four important “coincidences”. Lewis acutely senses the hiddenness of God, His inexhaustible mystery. Yes, of course, in his apologetic works, which somehow too trustingly appeal to reason and the moral law, he is closer to cataphatic theology. Dr. Walker writes that "his mentality...was rather cataphatic." But he has something else, just not in his treatises. Relying on reason, he knows, however, that neither human speech nor rational arguments will fully express the transcendental truth. He realized that a logical argument, in general, philosophical thinking can only be hinted at, but not expressed, and recognized that we come closest to God through poetry, myth, and symbol. That is why he expresses the deepest insights in fairy tales and parables.
All this is especially clear in last book as if spiritual will— in Letters to Malcolm. He writes: “When communicating with God, we are dealing with... no, not “completely Other,” that is meaningless, but with an unbearable and unimaginable Other. We must understand (and sometimes we do understand) that we are very close to Him and infinitely far from Him.” Therefore, we must discard any visual image, especially the abstract concept: “And this, and this, and this is not You.” You can’t take images literally, and you certainly can’t take a theological abstraction. “Everything created, from an angel to an atom, is different from God; it is incommensurable with Him. The very word “to be” cannot be applied to Him and to them in the same sense.” Because of this incommensurability, “He continually acts as an iconoclast, crushing every idea we have of Him.”
Such thoughts (especially the iconoclast God) are reminiscent of “On the Life of Moses” by St. Gregory of Nyssa. Every concept, says Gregory, if taken literally, becomes an “idol of God”; when Moses receives the command to smash all the idols (Ex. 20:4), this must be interpreted symbolically.
This apophatic approach leads Lewis to understand faith in an existential rather than a rational way. Of course, in his treatises he appeals to reason, but ultimately he agrees with his friend Williams. We decide to believe and that's it, no one can do more. Faith is not so much that we are convinced by arguments, but that we have made a choice. If someone chooses unbelief, no logical arguments will convince him.
He talks about this again and again in The Chronicles of Narnia. “How can we be sure that you are our friend?” - Edmund asks his daughter Ramanda in The Treader of the Dawn Treader; and she replies: “No way. You may believe me, you may not believe me." Uncle Andrew in The Magician's Nephew, out of stubbornness and stupidity, convinces himself that Aslan does not sing, but growls, and even Aslan himself cannot convince him; so with the dwarves in The Last Battle. Having passed the treasured door, they see only a dark, smelly barn; flowers, luxurious dishes - for them only hay, rotten turnips and dirty water. They cannot see a new, beautiful country because they don’t want to.
This apophatic view is especially characteristic of the book that touches me most - the “retold myth” called by the author “Until We Found Faces.” He himself especially loved her, as did I. The elusiveness of faith is emphasized in the scene when Orual does not see the palace of Psyche (more precisely, he sees them for one moment, a very painful one). “There’s nothing to be done,” Psyche tells her, “I see, you don’t see. Who will judge us? As a matter of fact, the secrecy of the Most High is the leitmotif of the entire novel. This is what Orual complains about: why doesn’t God show his face? She wants a sign - and doesn't get it.
“Then I did what probably few people do: I spoke to the gods - myself, alone, in my own way, not in the temple, without sacrifice. I fell on my face and called out to them with all my soul. I took back everything I had said against them and promised anything if only they would give a sign. They didn't give it. I was left with myself."
God asks us riddles, Orual is indignant in her heart, but there is no answer to her. “Why,” she exclaims, “are sacred places dark?”
However, the novel does not end on a sad, desperate note. Orual learns that the gods do not give us a clear, logical answer, but a personal meeting. We don’t see them, but we meet them, and we know this for sure. “I ended my first book with the words “no answer.” Now I know, Lord, why You don’t answer. Questions die before Your face.” Here you will inevitably remember a text that Lewis almost certainly did not read - the “Gnostic Chapters” of Evagrius of Pontus († 399) by one of the desert fathers. When asked what “bare mind” was, he replied: “This question has no answer now, but in the end there will be no question.”
In a word, Lewis is very close to the apophatic tradition of the Christian East. His Aslan is truly an apophatic lion. “Who is he? - asks Eustace. “Do you know him?” and Edmund replies: “He knows me.” The beaver tells Lucy that this lion is not tame, it is dangerous with him. Our will and our logic are not his orders; he is “unimaginably, unbearably different” - and infinitely close to us.
Let us now turn to other themes of Christian teaching - to the Incarnation of God and His Trinity, to the sacredness of the created world, to the vocation of man - and try to understand how close Lewis is to Orthodoxy here. Where is the Trinity in Narnia?
In the mid-1920s, when Dervez Chitty was studying at Cuddstone, a Russian layman asked him what the first thing Anglicans should learn from the Orthodox was. He answered immediately: “I believe in the Trinity and the Incarnation.” The Russian was a little confused, he was hoping for something more “vital”, but then he completely agreed. Seventy years later, many would agree with Chitti's father. Now that few believe in the Divinity of Christ, and the doctrine of the Trinity seems unnecessary and complicated, Orthodox Christians remain "maximalists": they believe that Christ is fully God and fully man; that God is one in three persons.
Did Lewis believe this? In Mere Christianity, yes. About the Incarnation, he writes: “God landed on the occupied land in the form of a man.” He devotes a large section to the doctrine of the Trinity, especially emphasizing the trinitarian nature of our prayer: by praying, we are “drawn” into “the whole trinitarian life of the three-personal Being.” That's exactly how a Christian would put it Orthodox tradition(although I would hardly have chosen, say, the word “occupied”, reflecting the years in which Lewis wrote it). In fact, the Orthodox love Lewis so much precisely because he firmly defends the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity.
Yes, in treatises; and in novels and fairy tales? They (especially fairy tales) are clearly Christ-centric. But is the doctrine of the Trinity woven into the narrative? In answering this, I will refer to Dr. Paul's essay "Lewis, the Mythmaker."
In the first novel of his trilogy, Lewis speaks of Young Maleldil, Who “dwells with the Old,” but the Old is distant and vague, there is almost no speech about him, and the Holy Spirit is not mentioned at all. True, in “Perelandra” He is there - at the end, when they say that the King learned in the land of Lur “new things about Maleldil and about His Father and the Third.” As far as I remember, there is nothing else about the Trinity, the Father, except for this place, is not mentioned even once, the definition of “Third” is rather vague. We do not know whether Lewis had an extensive doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Dr. Fidds reasonably concludes that: "In these three novels, God is Maleldil... it seems that the Trinity is not there."
This seems to be true for those who read The Chronicles of Narnia. Here, too, there is rather one Christ than a Trinity; the focus is on the Christ-like Aslan. Yes, he is “the Son of the Great King who lives overseas,” but the King does not participate in fairy tales, and again we can ask: “Where is the Holy Spirit?” One can answer that a fairy tale is not a textbook of dogmatic theology. However, the “Christian myth” is unthinkable without the Trinity, and we have the right to expect that this will be at least somehow reflected in the “retelling of the myth” that Lewis offers to both children and adults.
However, there is also a clearly “Trinitarian” place in the Chronicles - in the fairy tale “The Horse and His Boy,” when Shasta asks a strange companion, invisible in the fog, who he is. Lewis explains in one letter that the three answers are “an allusion to the Trinity.” What a pity that there are no more such “hints” in fairy tales and novels!
Before leaving this topic, let us note one omission, which is very distressing for Orthodox Christians. Nowhere, neither in treatises, nor in fairy tales and novels, does Lewis write about the Virgin Mary. Of course he accepts the doctrine immaculate conception, like everything that is said in the Creed, but he has nothing more to say about the Mother of God. Defending himself, he writes in Mere Christianity that he does not want to venture into areas where there is so much controversy, and limits himself to what all Christians agree on. However, Orthodox Christians, for whom the worship of the Most Pure Virgin is not a particularity, but an integral part of everyday piety, will regret that he did not say anything about Her.
4. It’s “very subtle” here
What about the theology of Creation? Are Orthodoxy and Lewis close in this? Evelyn Underhill recalls that a Scottish gardener, meeting a man who had just been to Iona, said: “It’s very thin there.” The interlocutor did not understand, and he explained: “Here is Iona, and here is the Lord.” This is exactly how Orthodoxy perceives the container world. The universe is a mystery, for God is present in it, the world is a huge Bush, permeated with the flame of Glory. St. talks about this all the time. Maximus the Confessor: The Creator infused into all created things His logos, the uncreated principle, thanks to which every thing exists in general and is what it is; Moreover, this beginning draws her upward, towards God. St. looked at the world in exactly the same way. Gregory Palamas: for those who look with the eyes of faith, all created things are alive, for the uncreated energies of God are present and active in them.
Lewis thinks the same way. And for him here in the world it is “very subtle.” One of the themes of the Chronicles of Narnia is precisely this transparency; Narnia seems to be pushing into everyday reality. In the most unexpected way, unnoticed by almost everyone, a door to another world can become common item, a familiar place: a wardrobe under the roof of an old house, a mountain cave. Lewis is fascinated by the interaction of worlds, the interpenetration of the natural and the supernatural, heaven and earth, earth and hell.
The sacredness and sacredness of nature is clear to him. He was attracted by the teachings of Henry More, a 17th-century Cambridge Platonist who, like St. Maxim, considered reason and logos to be the life-giving principle operating in the universe. It is in this regard that Lewis yearns for the old days when trees and grass, streams and rivers were perceived as living beings. It would seem like an outdated myth, but underneath it lies the most important truth: nature is not dead matter, but living energy, trembling with the presence of God. This is what he writes in the preface to D. E. Harding’s book “The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth”: “Man learned the world in a very complex way, but from another point of view, it was very simple. This knowledge goes in one direction. At first the world is simply filled with will, intelligence, life, and many good qualities; every tree is a nymph, every planet is a god, man himself is close to the gods. With the growth of knowledge, the world becomes empty; First the gods disappear, then colors, sounds, smells, and then strength itself.”
In fairy tales and novels, he tries to turn everything “in the other direction,” again asserting that the world is alive, fabulous, sacred. Talking animals and trees are not idle fiction for children, they are theologically significant, and this brings Lewis closer to Orthodox tradition. He does not refer to either Maximus or Palamas, but the created world sees how they do.
5. “He never repeated a single word.”
Finally, does Lewis’s idea of man coincide with Orthodoxy? To begin with, I will tell you about one of my personal opinions, knowing that not all Orthodox Christians (and not all Lewis lovers) will agree with me. It always bothers me that there is so much physical violence in his novels and fairy tales. Of course, he is not a pacifist; he himself explained this with careful reasonableness. The majority of Christians, Western and Eastern, have not been pacifists, at least not since Constantine converted (at the beginning of the 4th century). However, this is not what bothers me now. It confuses me that Lewis talks so much about brute force, fights, blood.
Particularly affected by this is the eerie denouement of The Most Vile Power, a novel which, by the way, is my least favorite. But even in “Perelandra” (I love it as much as “Until We Found Faces”) it still bothers me that the argument between the Queen, Ransom and Weston eventually gives way to a fight between Ransom and Weston: they fight, hit, bite . Undoubtedly, Lewis would answer that evil must be fought not only on the mental level, but also on the physical level; but will this answer satisfy us? Yes, in Narnia we're talking about about the heroic era, and therefore they must fight there. And yet, isn’t there at least a little sadism in the scene when Aslan scratches Aravita’s back?
Let's get back to more pleasant topics. Lewis's views on man's duty and destiny will appeal to the Orthodox at least four times. Firstly, for him, every person is unique, Eldil says in “Perelandra”, when the Great Dance begins: “He never repeated a single word, did not create the same thing.” Lewis, as one can judge, connects this uniqueness with the words of the Apocalypse: “The Spirit says to the churches: ... I will give ... a white stone, and on the stone a new name written, which no one knows except he who receives it” (Rev. 2:17).
“The name is such that “no one knows it except the one who receives it.” Each person is not only connected with God, but is connected with Him especially, in his own way. He is for God, more than anything else, created according to a special standard, and therefore can glorify God like no one else. God answers everyone differently; He has a secret with everyone - the secret of a new name.
Secondly (this is closely related), Lewis is very important to what is called a face. Here I am reminded of modern Orthodox theologians - say, Christos Yannaras or Metropolitan John of Pergamon (Ziziulas), who explain that “personality” (in Greek “prosopon”) is both “face” and “facial expression”, and even more precisely - “facial expression”.
To be a person means to “turn your face to someone,” to turn towards him and enter into some kind of relationship with him. Without communication there is no personality.
The meaning of "face" is main topic the most captivating and mysterious of Lewis’s books, “Till We Found Faces.” When Orual meets Psyche in a mountain valley, her main argument is that her sister’s lover is hiding his face from her. “What kind of god is this,” she says, “who does not dare to show his face?.. The beautiful do not hide their faces.” Later, Orual herself, not at all beautiful, covers her face, and everyone thinks that she has no face. Statue of the dark goddess Ungit - without a face; The statue of Psyche in the forest temple is also seemingly faceless - her face is covered with a scarf.
“And I understood,” says Orual, “why the gods do not speak to us, and it is not for us to answer their questions... How will they meet us face to face before we have found faces?”
In other words, two cannot communicate unless at least one has a face, no personality; and we cannot understand what is connected with God until we have at least to some extent known ourselves, our complexity, our darkness.
The similarities with Orthodox anthropology are not limited to the idea of our uniqueness and insights about “face.” For the Christian East, salvation implies “deification”, “theosis” - we humans are called to become “partakers of the Divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). This is how Lewis understands salvation.
Perhaps he found the idea of theosis from St. Athanasius, when he wrote the preface to The Incarnation of the Word of God. St. Athanasius says about Christ the Logos: “He became man so that man could become god.”
Finally, fourthly, many Greek Fathers - especially St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Maximus the Confessor - they see eternal life (as far as it can be seen) as “epectasis,” an endless movement forward. Heavenly bliss is not static, it is dynamic, it is inexhaustible creativity. St. Gregory of Nyssa subtly notes that the very essence of perfection is that we cannot become perfect, but constantly move “from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:18).
That's exactly what it is eternal life, which Lewis describes at the end of The Last Battle:
“...a world within a world, Narnia within Narnia...like an onion, only each circle is larger than the previous one.”
According to Lewis, there is no end to this onion. We move “higher and deeper” forever, “eon after aeon.”
So, we are often convinced that Lewis sees and expresses Christian truth as an Orthodox Christian could see and express it. He starts from Western premises, but again and again comes to Orthodox conclusions. The apophatic sense of the hiddenness of God, the doctrine of Christ and the Trinity, the view of the created world and personality are expressed in concepts that are close to Eastern Christianity. Therefore, he has every right to the name “anonymous Orthodox.”
Clive Staples Lewis
CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE
If the Kingdom of Heaven is not in you, it does not matter what you chose instead and why you chose it.
William Low
In my youth, I believed that “cultural life” (that is, intellectual and aesthetic activity) is good in itself, at least good for a person. When I converted, in my late thirties, I still believed it, without thinking about whether such a belief was consistent with my new beliefs. I remained in this foggy state until it seemed to me that the champions of culture were exaggerating something. Then I woke up and began to exaggerate in the other direction. I questioned the value of culture. And, naturally, I asked myself: “Why are you spending so much time on her?”
The immoderate worship of "culture for culture's sake" began, it seems to me, with Matthew Arnold; in any case, he was the first to widely use the word “spiritual” in the sense of the German "geistlich". Thus, he equated different levels being. Then Benedetto Croce came into fashion, in whose system aesthetic activity is an autonomous form of “spirit”, in no way inferior to ethics. He was followed by Dr. Richards, a major atheist critic, who gave “good taste” a special, essentially soteriological value. Taste for him is the key to the only Kingdom in which he believes. Finally, such views were supported by a Christian author. In the magazine "Theology" for March 1939, Brother Avery proposed testing theology students by giving them a passage from worldly book and see if they have a subtle literary taste.
When I read this, I was alarmed. I wasn't sure I understood Brother Avery—I still don't know—but I felt that some readers might think that good taste was one of the indispensable qualities of true Christian and people deprived of it are further from salvation than refined connoisseurs. On the spur of the moment, I rushed in the opposite direction. I was happy and proud that my sophistication had diminished. Once upon a time, what kept me from coming to church was the quality of the hymns that were sung there. Now I felt gratitude towards these hymns1. I was glad that I had to leave our precious subtlety of taste on the threshold of the church, glad that I could no longer mix the spiritual and the spiritual.
We are especially proud when we delight in humility. I hope Brother Avery will not think that I am still in this state and understand his words this way. However, the problem remains. It is unlikely that anyone seriously believes that refined taste is the key to salvation. And yet what is its value? How does culture relate to salvation? This question is not new, but it only became urgent for me now.
Of course, I first turned to the New Testament. I saw that the highest natural values are allowed to us only as long as they do not interfere with serving God. If they interfere, you have to sacrifice both the eye, the sensory organ (Matthew 5:29), and the sex (Matthew 19:12). From this I concluded that a life that is truncated and wretched in terms of worldly standards does not in any way hinder salvation; moreover, it leads to it. I was even more influenced by the words about hatred of father and mother (Luke 14:26) and the fact that the Savior clearly does not value even His natural connection with the Mother of God (Matthew 12:48). I considered it beyond doubt that for any normal person it is more important to be a good son than good critic, and that words about natural affection all the more apply to culture. The worst text is from Philippians (3:8-9), where righteousness under Jewish law is called rubbish; and it would seem that it is more important for spiritual life than culture.
In addition, I found many warnings prohibiting us from any kind of superiority. We must become like children (Matt. 18:3), not be called teachers (Matt. 23:8), and be afraid that all people will speak well of us (Luke 6:26). The Apostle reminds us (1 Cor. 1:26) that among those who are called there are not many “wise in this age” (I think they are intellectuals), and says that we must become fools in the eyes of the world before we gain true wisdom ( 1 Cor. 3:18).
I found few texts that can be interpreted in defense of culture. I tried to prove to myself that worldly wisdom was embodied in the Magi; that the talents in the parable also include talents in the usual sense of the word; that the enjoyment of beauty is sanctified by the praise of lilies. Some benefit of science is deduced from the words of the Apostle Paul (Rom. 1:20). However, I seriously doubted whether his exhortation to “Be not children in your mind” (1 Cor. 14:20) applied to what we would call culture.
In general, the New Testament turned out to be, if not hostile, then certainly indifferent to culture. It seems to me that after him we can still consider culture innocent, but I don’t think he will help us consider it important.
And yet it may be important - after all, not everything in the world was included in the New Testament. After thinking about this, I turned to other books. I chose them without a system - not on purpose, but out of ignorance. I began to read those I knew.
Of the great pagans, Aristotle is on the side of culture; Plato denies any culture that does not lead, at least indirectly, to an intelligent comprehension of the good or to social benefit. Joyce and Lawrence would have been expelled from his state. Buddha, apparently, is against culture, but I don’t presume to judge here.
St. Augustine considers it madness (dementia) worldly education does not think that it is better than that the simplest education that is given in early childhood. He is very distrustful of his hobby church music, and considers tragedy a true ulcer: the viewer suffers, but revels in suffering, and this is “pathetic madness” (miserabilis insania).
St. Jerome, interpreting the parable of prodigal son, suggests that the horns that the pigs ate were, perhaps, “the food of demons... poems of poets, worldly wisdom, eloquence of rhetoricians.”
Don't tell me that the Church Fathers had pagan culture in mind. The scale of values has not become much more Christian since then. In Hamlet, everything is questioned except that revenge is a duty. Shakespeare's idea of active good is purely worldly. In a medieval novel highest values- honor and love; V novel XIX centuries - love and well-being; in romantic poetry - enjoyment of nature (from pantheistic mysticism to innocent sensuality) or longing for an otherworldly world in which the poet does not believe. Of course, there are exceptions, but they are few. As Newman said, “all literature is the voice of natural man.” And there is no doubt that the non-Christian values of writers and poets influenced many. I read in a scholarly article the other day that the atrocities of Shakespeare's heroes like Macbeth are somehow redeemed by a quality the author calls "greatness." I do not want to say that the reader will certainly come to such conclusions, but this happens, and often. In a word, if we want to object to the Fathers of the Church, we must remember that literature has remained approximately the same as it was.
At St. I didn’t find anything significant about Thomas Aquinas; but I don’t know him well and I will be glad if you correct me. Thomas a Kempis has a bad attitude towards culture.
In general, I found very few words in defense of culture - perhaps I read the wrong things.
I found the famous words of St. Gregory (at least they are attributed to him). He says that by using worldly culture we become like the Jews who went to the Philistines to sharpen their swords. I really liked this argument, and present life it fits quite well. If we must convert pagans, we must know their culture, beat them with our own weapons. From the point of view of St. Gregory, culture is a weapon, but weapons are not used for their own sake.
Milton's support did not please me. His Areopagitica puzzled me, like Brother Avery's article. For him, apparently, there is no problem. He defends the free comprehension of good and evil, referring to "great souls" and despising ordinary people, and it seems to me that no Christian can bear this.
Finally I picked up Newman's book on university education - and found someone who at least saw both sides of the issue. No one spoke with such eloquence about how beautiful culture is in itself, and no one denounced so harshly the temptations of cultural worship. Newman clearly distinguishes between the spiritual and the spiritual. The cultivation of taste, in his opinion, is “of this world,” it creates “not a Christian, but a gentleman,” it seems like a virtue “only from afar” and “in no way improves us.” However, culture provides “innocent entertainment” in those minutes (or hours) when you are spiritually relaxed “and could indulge in sin”; it “leads the soul away from what is soul-destroying and towards objects worthy of a rational being.” But even then, “it does not raise us above nature and does not help us become pleasing to the Creator.” Cultural and spiritual values can be inversely proportional to each other. A completely soulful essay loses its beauty, “like a face worn out by tears and fasting.” Yet Newman is convinced that free knowledge is valuable in itself; his entire fourth sermon is devoted to this. The antinomy is resolved this way: everything, including the mind, “has its own perfection. Living, inanimate, visible, invisible - good in their own way, and to highest point this good should be strived for. It is necessary to improve the mind, just as it is necessary to improve virtue, although they are absolutely different.”
