The last two chapters of Book Three deal with the third Theological virtue, Faith. I'll summarize both of these chapters here in one post (in order to stay in the 31-day framework) so forgive me if this one is a little longer than some of the others, but hang in there because it's all worth reading!
Faith: Part One
Lewis says that the virtue of Faith seems to have two senses about it, or two different levels. The first level is merely Belief, accepting or recognizing the doctrines of Christianity as true. But, you may ask, how can simply believing in something be considered a virtue?
Faith: Part One
Lewis says that the virtue of Faith seems to have two senses about it, or two different levels. The first level is merely Belief, accepting or recognizing the doctrines of Christianity as true. But, you may ask, how can simply believing in something be considered a virtue?
"Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad. If he were mistaken about the goodness or badness of the evidence that would not mean he was a bad man, but only that he was not very clever. And if he thought the evidence bad but tried to force himself to believe in spite of it, that would be merely stupid."
So if, generally, we believe a thing because it has been shown to be true, why would we consider Belief anything more than a reasonable response to the evidence provided? Yes, belief is related to reason (because why would we really believe in something if it wasn't reasonable?), but there is another component of the human mind that must be taken into consideration. We are not ruled by reason at all times; we are also under the influence of our emotions and imagination. Lewis gives the example of having to go under anesthesia for a surgery: "My reason is perfectly convinced by good evidence that anesthetics do not smother me and that properly trained surgeons do not start operating until I am unconscious. But that does not alter the fact that when they have me down on the table and clap their horrible mask over my face, a mere childish panic begins inside me. I start thinking I am going to choke, and I am afraid they will start cutting me up before I am properly under. In other words, I lose my faith in anesthetics." So our imaginations and our emotions often battle against our faith and our reason and call into question what we know to be true, what we have believed to be certain.
This is where the virtue of Faith comes in. We will have moods when the Christian faith seems improbable; even as an atheist, Lewis admits that he experienced many occasions where he thought atheism seemed unlikely. Our emotions and our imagination can shift our moods and cause us to doubt, so we must have something stronger than those moods that teaches them how far they are allowed to take us. Otherwise, "you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion."
So how do we strengthen this virtue? How do we train our Faith?
So how do we strengthen this virtue? How do we train our Faith?
- Step One: Acknowledge and be aware that your moods will change. It is part of the human experience and doesn't necessarily prove or disprove anything about a view.
- Step Two: If you are a Christian, commit to be diligent in those practices that strengthen your faith (prayer, reading God's word, attending church, educating yourself about Christianity and how to defend it). In essence, feed your Faith; nourish it, and it will grow.
Approaching the second level of Faith (in chapter twelve), Lewis wants to preface by saying that this higher level or sense of the virtue does not come into play until a man has tried and really done all he could to be a "good man," tried to fix the machine on his own, tried to keep and practice the Christian virtues and found himself failing at all of the above. It is also necessary that the man begins to realize that anything he tries to give to God, anything he might try to do for God is really like a child asking his father for a dollar to buy him a present. The father will probably give the child the money and will probably delight in the gift the child gives him, "but only an idiot would think that the father is [a dollar richer] on the transaction."
So once a man is aware of these two realities, that is when the second level of Faith begins.
So once a man is aware of these two realities, that is when the second level of Faith begins.
Faith: Part Two
Before Lewis begins discussing the next level of Faith, he makes this statement:
Before Lewis begins discussing the next level of Faith, he makes this statement:
"If this chapter means nothing to you, if it seems to be trying to answer questions you never asked, drop it at once. Do not bother about it at all. There are certain things in Christianity that can be understood from the outside, before you have become a Christian. But there are a great many things that cannot be understood until after you have gone a certain distance along the Christian road."
Having said this, he reiterates that before a man can experience or understand this second level of Faith, he must first realize his bankrupt standing before God. We have to get the idea out of our heads that there is some sort of give-and-take relationship we have with God, some sort of exam we only have to pass, or some type of scorecard He keeps on us. This is not a right understanding of ourselves, of God, or of our relationship to Him. "We cannot get into the right relation until [we have] discovered the fact of our bankruptcy." And not 'discovering' in the sense that we merely repeat back what we have been taught, but 'discovering' it by really experiencing it and finding it to be true.
It is only by trying our very hardest to keep the moral law that we realize we really cannot ever succeed in doing so. At this point, or after this gradual process of really seeing our inadequacy, we come to the realization that we need someone who will lend us His perfect obedience and fill up our deficiencies and make us like Himself - which is where Christ comes in. "Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers everything for nothing." We come to a point where we see that all of our own efforts cannot save us, so we stop trying to save ourselves and hand it over to Christ. This handing over of ourselves then leads to our trying to do all that He says, trying to obey:
It is only by trying our very hardest to keep the moral law that we realize we really cannot ever succeed in doing so. At this point, or after this gradual process of really seeing our inadequacy, we come to the realization that we need someone who will lend us His perfect obedience and fill up our deficiencies and make us like Himself - which is where Christ comes in. "Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers everything for nothing." We come to a point where we see that all of our own efforts cannot save us, so we stop trying to save ourselves and hand it over to Christ. This handing over of ourselves then leads to our trying to do all that He says, trying to obey:
This Faith in Christ and our good works go hand in hand. We work out that salvation, for it is God who works in us. The two cannot really be separated or compartmentalized, and we cannot try to break it down into "what exactly God does and what man does when the two are working together." It is likely that, with our human minds, we will never be able to fully understand the relationship between Faith and works or be able to express it with our human language, so Lewis says this is as far as he will go on the topic.
In closing the chapter on Faith and the final chapter of Book Three, he has this to say:
In closing the chapter on Faith and the final chapter of Book Three, he has this to say:
*This post is part of a 31 day series on C.S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity. If this is your first stop along the way, I am so glad you’re here! I would love to interact with you in the comments, or you can email me by clicking on the "Contact Me" tab at the top right of the page. All of the blog posts in this series will be linked together on the intro page if you are interested in reading more. Click here to be taken to the introduction post, and if you want to follow along with the whole series, enter your email address in the box toward the top right corner to subscribe to the blog. Thanks for reading!
RSS Feed
