Again and again we have found that C.S. Lewis articulates a vision of Christian truth which a member of the Orthodox Church can whole heartedly endorse. His starting-point may be that of a Western Christian, but repeatedly his conclusions are Orthodox, with a large as well as a small ‘o’.
-- Bishop Timothy Ware
Bishop Timothy Ware (Kallistos of Diokleia) gave a lecture to the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society on November 29th 1994. The lecture was called ‘C.S. Lewis: an anonymous Orthodox’? The lecture was then published in Sobornost (the flagship magazine for the Society St. Alban and St. Sergius) in 1995. The idea that Lewis might be an anonymous Orthodox was, as Ware mentioned, suggested by a ‘senior Greek bishop from Constantinople’. The fact that Ware flags the pointer with a question mark is a hint and way into this lecture turned published article.
Ware was a young man at Oxford in 1952 when Lewis was in his prime, and Ware was at Magdalen College where Lewis spent many an hour. Ware mentioned that he and Lewis greeted one another almost daily, but the fact Ware was young and Lewis a senior scholar meant they never really stepped beyond polite and cordial greetings-- as Ware mentioned, ‘So near and yet so far’. Ware turned to the Orthodox tradition as he matured, but Lewis had nurtured him on his journey. Ware mentioned in passing a couple of incidences in which Lewis attended the Orthodox liturgy in Oxford and Greece, and Lewis’ comments were positive, but this is no reason to argue that Lewis was an anonymous Orthodox. Are there deeper and more substantive reasons for going down such a trail beyond mere anecdotes and a few positive personal and historic verbal tidbits?
Ware, initially, ponders the relationship between ‘Lewis and the Greek Fathers’, then he suggests there are four crucial reasons why Lewis can be seen as standing within the Orthodox fold: 1) a leaning towards apophatic theology, 2) the Incarnation and the Trinity, 3) the sacramental character of creation and 4) the vocation of the human person. Let us touch on each of the five points and discern whether they are unique to the Orthodox tradition.
First, the fact that the Orthodox tradition is solidly grounded in the Greek Fathers raises this simple question. How well did Lewis know the Greek Fathers, and if he did not extensively quote from them does this mean he did not understand or imbibe the Classical ethos in which the Fathers (and their historic children) lived, moved and had their being? Ware is right to argue that Lewis did not explicitly and continually quote directly from each and all of the Greek Fathers. Ware quotes from Bede Griffiths (a former student of Lewis’ on this topic). Griffiths had this to say about Lewis and the Greek Fathers.
It is remarkable that Lewis showed very little interest in the Fathers of the Church. With his wide classical culture one would have expected him to be naturally attracted to the Greek and Latin Fathers, but apart from mention of St. Augustine’s Confessions I don’t remember his ever referring to one of the Fathers.
Griffiths’ position is somewhat overstated, but there is some truth to it. Lewis certainly did not quote as amply or readily from the Eastern Fathers as do many Orthodox, but he did, as Griffiths rightly noted, dwell within a ‘wide classical culture’. This means that Lewis understood the classical tradition from which the Greek Fathers lived and wrote, and Lewis was thoroughly acquainted, in the West, as a Medieval and Renaissance scholar, with the many theological and philosophical children of the Patristic era. So, the fact that Lewis did not mine the fullness of the Greek Fathers is only part of the story----the classical vision lived within his marrow, soul and bones and he daily conversed with many of the children of the Fathers in the western Medieval and Renaissance eras. Those who have taken the time to read and reread Lewis’ The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition, A Preface to Paradise Lost or English Literature of the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama know of what I speak.
Ware pointed out that Lewis’ theology had a distinctive apophatic tendency. This means, of course, that when the turn is made to theology, concepts and images point the way to God, but the reality and presence of God transcends our ideas and metaphors. In short, we can say positive things about God (cataphatic theology), but the mystery and reality of God (God’s essence) transcends such human attempts to define or logically understand God. God’s essence is, when day is done, beyond human capacity to understand, but his energies are pathways to clearings into the larger Divine landscape. Ware says something interesting at this point in his unfolding essay and paper.
For evidence of Lewis’s implicit Orthodoxy, I shall appeal mainly to his imaginative rather than his apologetic works, for it is primarily in the imaginative writings that his theological vision can be found expressed with the greatest depth and originality.
Ware is doing two interesting things in these few lines. He has suggested that there is in Lewis an ‘implicit Orthodoxy’ and Lewis’ imaginative writings are more helpful in understanding Lewis’ approach to theology than his more rational apologetics. These comments should raise some questions. Is the idea of Lewis being implicitly Orthodox not just another way of suggesting Lewis is an anonymous Orthodox? Is this not a paternalistic way of interpreting Lewis? And, Lewis held together both the intellectual-imaginative in a mature tension in his quest to approach the vast and alluring mystery of God. Should not a mature faith dwell, in a receptive yet active way, in this longing and deeper desire to know God?
There is, though, something more worrisome about Ware’s approach in colonizing Lewis for Orthodox purposes. It is true, of course, that the Orthodox tradition holds together both the cataphatic and apophatic way of knowing, but Lewis’ apophatic way does not mean he is an implicit Orthodox---western theology makes these distinctions as well: the cataphatic way in the west is the via positiva just as the apophatic way is the via negativa. The classical western tradition is as acutely aware of the limitations of knowing and not knowing as is the classical eastern tradition----Lewis dwelt within the grandeur of the classical tradition-----this means he is neither east nor west----he stands for a unity that antedates and transcends the fragmentation between Greek East and Latin West—this is the genius of Lewis---he will not be taken captive by theological or ecclesial ideologues or chief of various and varied clans or tribes.
Ware further argues in his article that Lewis shares with the Orthodox a commitment to the Incarnation and the Trinity. I don’t think this is a particular Orthodox perspective. This is the solid ground that the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church stands on. Lewis was a classical Anglican, he knew his Hooker, Caroline Divines, Metaphysical poets, T.S. Eliot and many others within the English tradition well. Most of these were children of the Fathers and Mothers of the Church. Ware says some rather odd and misguided things about Lewis’ space trilogy and Chronicles of Narnia also---he wonders why Lewis is not more explicit about the Incarnation and Trinity in such books. It seems to me that Ware is asking Lewis to be an allegorist Bunyan style rather than a suggestive writer. Lewis certainly comes clean in these areas in his more philosophical and theological books. But, this is a secondary quibble. I don’t think it can be argued that Lewis is implicitly Orthodox because of his high view of the Incarnation or Trinity---these positions are foundational to classical and historic Christianity west and east.
Ware suggests that Orthodoxy has a sacramental character of creation, Lewis had such a position, therefore Lewis has Orthodox leanings. Again, this is a strange and questionable argument. The Western Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions are ripe with a sacramental character of creation. Lewis might not have read St. Maximus the Confessor and Gregory Palamas, but, as Ware rightly notes, Lewis dipped his bucket deeply in the well of the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More (with his sacramental view of creation) and the Celtic notion of ‘very thin places’ is intrinsic to the west. Lewis knew his Herbert, Donne and Traherne well, and each had a high view of nature as an icon and window between time and eternity. The fact that Lewis was a Medieval and Renaissance scholar, and both Medieval and Renaissance thought, for the most part, had a high view of the created world means that the sacramental character of creation is not necessarily an Orthodox position. All good and informed Anglicans and Roman Catholics are committed to such a position.
Ware’s final point is this: there is a notion of the human person within the Orthodox view that holds high the uniqueness of each person, the fact that our true face (when uncovered) is our only way to see God and others truly, deification and transformation as being one of ‘infinite progress and unending advance’. Ware quotes extensively from Till We Have Faces, Chronicles of Narnia and Lewis’s Space Trilogy to highlight the affinities between Lewis’s perspectives and such Orthodox worthies as Athanasius (who Lewis knew well), Gregory of Nyssa and St. Maximus the Confessor. Again, I think it can be safely argued that these ideas are not particularly Orthodox---they are, in fact, foundational to the classical Christian vision.
Ware ends his article in this manner. ‘Surely he (Lewis) has indeed a strong claim to be considered an ‘anonymous Orthodox’. The question mark that opened the article is now gone. I have suggested in my previous article that such a position could be easily reversed. Lewis was a classical Anglican who was grounded and rooted in the ancient way as it emerged within united Christendom and unfolded and worked itself out over centuries. Lewis knew the spirit and ethos of the Fathers well, and he wrote from such a perspective. It would be inappropriate to suggest that those committed to the Orthodox traduition are anonymous Anglicans or implicit Anglicans. It is just as inappropriate to suggest Lewis and classical Anglicans are implicit or anonymous Orthodox. The fact is, as Ware notes, that Lewis did not read widely or deeply in the Greek Fathers yet he came to many of the same conclusions as they did---this should suggest that both Lewis and the Orthodox draw from the same wide and deep well. It is to this well we should turn rather than suggesting one form of Christianity owns and controls the well from which the pure and refreshing waters of eternity can be drawn.
Ron Dart
A much enlightening and good article. Lewis did draw from the tradition of a Christendom before the schisms.
Posted by: Idrian | January 10, 2012 at 01:49 PM