"I think the trouble with me is lack of faith. I have no rational ground for going back on the arguments that convinced me of God's existence: but the irrational deadweight of my old sceptical habits, and the spirit of this age, and the cares of the day, steal away all my lively feeling of the truth, and often when I pray I wonder if I am not posting letters to a non-existant address. Mind you I don't think so--the whole of my reasonable mind is convinced: but I often feel so. However, there is nothing to do but to peg away. One falls so often that it hardly seems worth while picking oneself up and going through the farce of starting over again as if you could ever hope to walk. Still, this seeming absurdity is the only sensible thing I do, so I must continue it."
-----C.S. Lewis, Letter to Arthur Greeves, (24 December 1930)
5 comments:
Good 'ol Jack. Stratt, your blog is rad. -Whity
I like to show sides of Lewis that people don't normally see. He was often so dogmatic and expressed a sort of certitude that puts people off, but yet if you look at things like this it's clear that he's not that way in his honest moments.
Still, I was reading the other day in Colin Duriez's wonderful joint biography of Lewis and Tolkien, that when the Inklings would meet, Lewis nearly always tried to make every issue a moral one, to the general frustration of his friends.
Lewis was a comlex person in that sense. He was a stringently trained positivist/rationalist with a wild appreciation for myth, and its truthfulness. He was also a stern moralist who engaged in lots of drink, baudiness and married a woman who's favorite word was "fuck."
I also think it's interesting that Lewis talks about "rational arguments for the existence of God", as if it was analytic philosophy that convinced him to believe in God. . . .when clearly he came to believe for reasons nearly antithetical to that. He was enticed by myth, and story and joy, and ultimately made a decision based on experience. You can call that rational, but it doesn't have much to do with rational arguments. . .at least as I'm reading it. Maybe I'm reading too much into what he's saying.
Quit playing us, Stratt. Anyone of faith knows it's NEVER all rational. And it shouldn't or couldn't be. You know it. I know it. Lewis certainly knew it, but undoubtedly wrote about what got him to a point of stepping out irrationally in faith... Lewis, just like no one before him, did not come to believe in God, through rational argument. There was just, just enough ration in the irrationality of it all to have to put himself out there, seemingly irrationally, in faith. Not saying anything you don't know, but it's fun to write on this blog....and more, we're all complex like Lewis. We may not know it and most of us don't spend our lives putting ourselves on paper like he did, but, especially supposed intellectuals, always full of contradictions and complexities. Hopefully, some have the courage to face it as Lewis did. Good 'ol Jack!
Sean, thanks for your thoughts. I guess I'm trying to draw a distinction between those who believe there are rational "proofs" for God's existence and those who take it on faith. I don't think "faith" itself is irrational, but yet I ascribe to a belief that itself is not "empirically verifiable". That doesn't make me irrational. I just found it odd that Lewis here talks so much about his mind, and particularly about arguments. But perhaps you're right, he must be talking about arguments in their fullest sense (not just their narrow materialist sense.)
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