The Demonology of Cs Lewis

Home , Giaour, Professor Weston, Surprised by Joy, Warren Lewis

BENT ANGELS: THE DEMONOLOGY OF C.S. LEWIS

DAVID J. HAWKESWORTH B.A. Crandall University, 2008 M.Div. Liberty University, 2011

Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Theology, Acadia Divinity College, in partial fulfilment for the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Theology)

Acadia Divinity College, Acadia University Spring Convocation, 2019

This thesis by David Hawkesworth was defended successfully in an oral examination on 2 April, 2019.

The examining committee for the thesis was:

Dr. Stuart Blythe, Chair

Rev. Dr. Rob Fennell, External Examiner

Dr. Christopher Killacky, Internal Examiner

Dr. Anna Robbins, Supervisor

Dr. R. Glenn Wooden, Director of MA (Th)

This thesis is accepted in its present form by Acadia Divinity College, the

Faculty of Theology of Acadia University, as satisfying the thesis requirements for the degree of Doctor of Ministry.

ii I, David Hawkesworth, hereby grant permission to the University Librarian at Acadia

University to provide copies of my thesis, upon request, on a non-profit basis.

David Hawkesworth Author

Dr. Anna Robbins Supervisor

2 April, 2019 Date

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Committee Signatures……………………………………… ii

Permission to Copy…………………………………………. iii

Abstract……………………………………………………… vi

Acknowledgements……………………………………..…… vii

Dedication……………………………………………………. viii

Approval to Reproduce Copyrighted Materials...………… ix

Chapter 1: An Introduction and Biography ……………… 1

Introduction and Thesis Statement 3 Why Demonology? 3 Why C.S. Lewis? 5 Lewis as a Theologian 7 Primary Sources 13 Methodology 16 Thesis Outline 19 A Biography of Lewis 22 Lewis’s Formative Years (1898-1913) 22 Lewis’s Conflict with His Father 24 Lewis, Kirkpatrick and Oxford (1914-1918) 25 The Great War (1918) 27 Lewis’s Wartime Experiences 27 Lewis and His Father (1919-1929) 29 Lewis’s Spiritual Conflict 30 Lewis’s Life at Oxford and His Christianity (1930-1939) 30 Lewis’s Erotic Conflict 31 Lewis and the Second World War (1939- 1945) 34 Lewis’s Professional Conflicts 36 Lewis and the Supernatural 37 The Post-War Years (1946-1953) 40 Lewis and Joy Gresham (1953-1960) 41 Lewis’s Last Years (1960-1963) 44 Conclusion 46

Chapter 2: Finding Lewis’s Angels …………………………… 49

Introduction 51 The Role of the Supernatural 52 Lewis and the Unheimlich 55 Lewis and Dualism 59 Lewis’ Angelology 62 Angelic Natures 63 Lewis’s Angelic Nomenclature 64 Angelic Hierarchy 66 Gendered Archetypes 74 Conclusion 77

Chapter 3: Finding Lewis’s Demons …………………….…… 79

Introduction 81 Lewis’s View of Satan 81 Lewis and Spiritual Warfare 85 The Pyschomachia 88 The Satanic Image 93 Possessiveness 103 Diminishment 104 The Demonic and Humanity’s Potential 107 The Hierarchy of Hell 109 The Divine Response to the Demonic 111 The Parousia 113 The Theosis of Humanity 113 Conclusion 118

Chapter 4: C.S. Lewis and Modern Spiritual Warfare ……… 119

Introduction 121 Contemporary Theorists 122 Lewis and the Theorists 126 Angels, Demons and Archetypes 126 Demonic Possession and Hierarchy 129 The Psychomachia and the Church 134 Lewis’s Contribution 139 Summarizing Lewis’s Demonology 144 Areas for Further Study 146 Conclusion 147

Bibliography ………………………….……………………….. 149

v ABSTRACT

This thesis examines the demonology of C.S. Lewis as presented in his fiction

(The Ransom Trilogy, The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce) and non-fiction

(The Problem of Pain, Mere Christianity, Miracles, and Preface to Paradise Lost) and explores the relevance of demons in Lewis’s theology. The contention being that Lewis’s demonology is so deeply integrated into the rest of his theology that if profoundly informs his eschatological view of the state unredeemed humanity. This state being the destruction of the imago dei in humanity and its replacement with the imago satanae, being the full realization of the perdition of the soul.

In order to provide this analysis Lewis is first placed in his personal, historical and theological context. His view on supernaturalism is established including his use of the concept of the unheimlich as his angelology is examined which indicates the profound fall the Demonic has experienced in its rebellion from God. Then an examination of

Lewis’s demonology is considered including Lewis’s presentation of spiritual warfare and the Demonic agenda of total demonization towards humanity. This brings us to consider the response of God regarding the existence of the Demonic, namely the

Incarnation and the future destiny of humanity in God’s economy (theosis). Lewis’s demonology is then considered in comparison to four of the leading theologians of the twentieth century regarding spiritual warfare (Powlison, Boyd, Wagner and Wink).

Recommendations for further study are offered based on this research and it is asserted that Lewis’s demonology is one of the more robust and well-integrated of all the twentieth century theologians considered with an innovative presentation of eschatological humanity.

vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to offer my sincere thanks to Dr. Robbin’s help in providing a professional theologian’s eye to this work, and to a great degree its success.

I should also like to extend my thanks to Mrs. Jean Kelly at the Vaughan Library who made sure I got all the books and articles I requested. So many academic works would literally would not exist without such help.

Special thanks to Professor & Mrs. Sheldon and Anne Phaneuf of Moncton, N.B. for their love of Lewis, encouragement and feedback.

I would like to acknowledge the contribution of my wife, Amanda, who has been my help and stay during this whole process. While I wrote about Lewis she is the one who had to ‘put up with him.’ There can be few other tests of devotion than that.

vii DEDICATION

For Isaiah and Benjamin. domus mea et fortitudinem.

For freedom’s battle, once begun, Bequeath’d by bleeding sire to son, Though baffled oft, is ever won. (Byron, “The Giaour,” 123)

viii

Chapter 1

An Introduction and Biography

Chapter 1

An Introduction and Biography

Introduction and Thesis Statement

Clive Staples Lewis not only believed in God, but also in angels and demons. He believed that such beings mattered to humanity, and influenced our everyday lives and ultimately our destiny. Lewis’s belief in angels and demons is dynamic, and integrated into the rest of his theology; a theology that makes a significant contribution to the study of spiritual warfare.

Why Demonology?

There are two natural questions that beg to be asked: why is demonology important; and why do we need to consider Lewis? Before we consider Lewis’s place in demonology the subject as a whole ought to be considered. The question over the legitimacy of demonology as a topic worthy of academic concern is significant. Some might consider the topic a relic of a bygone age, a vestigial notion in a postmodern and more rational world. The subject of demonology among Protestants has been relegated to the margins of theology over the centuries. During the Protestant Reformation John

Calvin was one of the most influential theologians to effect Western theology for generations. Calvin saw demonology and angelology as being overly Platonic in influence and therefore unbiblical. In Calvin’s view, Platonism and its related elements, like the demonic, helped to engender more error and superstition than blessing.1 Another

1 Joad Raymond, Milton’s Angels: The Early-Modern Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 32, 36.

Reformational voice, Martin Luther, according to Joad Raymond, saw angelology and demonology as being non-essential to the faith (adiaphora)2 and as a result, the subject of spiritual warfare theology eventually became minimalized as a general sense of indifference toward the subject developed, making it a mere footnote in theology.3

In today’s context, demonology and its related subjects are finding renewed interest within both academia as well as within Western Culture. 4 Historically, demonology formed a significant part of any theological system at both doctrinal and practical levels. In contemporary circles, demonology is still taught but it has been more recently rebranded in the twentieth-century under the common heading of “spiritual warfare.” Still, it is western Protestant theology itself that, despite renewed interest, considers the subject of angels and demons and its relevance to humans to be a doctrine best suited to the extreme margins. Demonology is perhaps more often regarded as part

2 Ibid., 36: According to Soergel Luther’s angelology initially was robust, typical of medieval angelology. However, by 1530 Soergel notes a gradual shift in Luther’s views to one that marginalized angels, though he notes how Calvin went even further than Luther. cf. M. Luther, Sermon von der Engeln as cited by Philip M. Soergel, “Luther on the Angels” in Angels in the Early Modern World, ed. Peter Marshall and Alexandra Walsham, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, 70-75, 80.

3 Raymond, Milton’s Angels, 36.

4 Clinton Arnold, Three Crucial Questions about Spiritual Warfare, Grand Rapid: Baker Books, 1997, 26, 31; Millard Erickson, Christian Theology, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2013, 407; Clinton Arnold, Powers of Darkness, Downers Grove: IVP, 1992, 154-158; Andrei Orlov, Dark Mirrors: Azazel and Satanael in Early Jewish Demonology, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011, 1; Gabor Klaniczay and Eva Pocs, “Introduction” in Christian Demonology and Popular Mythology, edited by Gabor Klaniczay and Eva Pocs, Budapest: Central European University Press, 2006, 1; Nienka Vos, “Demons and the Devil in Ancient and Medieval Christianity: Introduction, Summary, Reflection” in Demons and the Devil in Ancient and Medieval Christianity, edited by Nienke Vos and Willemein Otto, Leiden: Brill, 2011, 8. cf. Scott Moreau, sv. “Spiritual Warfare” in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2001, 1143-145; E. Janet Warren, Cleansing the Cosmos, Eugene: Pickwick, 2012, 24; Paul Hiebert, Anthropological Reflections, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994, 203-215; Gregory Boyd, God at War, Downers Grove: IVP, 1997.

4 of fringe spiritual practices like exorcisms, which mainstream denominations mostly eschew.5

Yet a cursory examination will find that there is a deep hunger and interest in this subject within Western culture. We may describe this appetite as an interest in the paranormal. According to the PEW Research Center (PEW) sixty-eight percent of the

Americans surveyed in 2007 said that they believed that demons were real and active in the world today.6 Between eighty-eight and eighty-seven percent of those surveyed identified as either Mormon, Evangelical or African-American Christians also affirmed their belief in the demonic with twenty-seven percent of Jews, forty-four percent of

Buddhists and forty-five percent of Hindus saying the same thing.7

In 2006 PEW released the results of a survey of three hundred eighty-eight people which showed that eleven percent of Americans had either witnessed, or been a part of, a modern-day exorcism.8 It should be noted that of those surveyed, some fifty-six percent of participants, identified as either Pentecostal or Charismatic.9 In 2015 it was announced that eighteen percent of over two thousand participants claimed to have seen a ghost and twenty-nine percent said they were in contact with the dead.10 In 2003 a Gallup poll

5 Arnold, Three Crucial Questions, 26.

6 Russell Heimlich, Goblins and Ghosts and Things that Go Bump in the Night, October 27, 2009 http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2009/10/27/goblins-and-ghosts-and-things-that-go-bump-in-the- night/. [accessed August 8, 2018].

7 Ibid.

8 Spirit and Power: A Ten Country Survey of Pentecostals, Pew Research Center, October 5, 2006. [accessed September 12, 2018]. http://www.pewforum.org/2006/10/05/spirit-and-power/.

9 Ibid. For perspective on these numbers, it should be considered that around seventy percent of Americans claim to be Christian, and a quarter of American Christianity is Protestant of which Charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity is a part. Ibid., Religious Landscape Study, www.pewforum.org/religious- landscape-study/. [accessed September 12, 2018].

5 showed that the belief in the Devil was alive and well in both Protestant and Catholic camps and across all age demographics and levels of education.11 According to David

Moore forty-two percent of Americans believe in demonic possession.12 The evidence is clear that interest in the paranormal, including demonology, is entrenched in our zeitgeist.

As such, given this popular interest in the subject and the limited amount of engagement from academic theology, this area of study merits further consideration. Lewis’s theological views are both innovative and helpful, and his understanding of angels and demons deserves consideration.

Why C.S. Lewis?

To address our second question as to why Lewis is worth exploring, we could simply consider his popular appeal today. More than fifty years after his death, he has been commemorated in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey.13 His books and essays, both fiction and non-fiction, religious and literary, continue to be bestsellers among a wide diversity of readers.14 In 2000, Christianity Today ranked Mere Christianity as first

10 Michael Lipka, “Eighteen Percent of Americans say they’ve seen a ghost,” Pew Research Center, October 30, 2015. [accessed September 12, 2018]. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2015/10/30/18-of-americans-say-theyve-seen-a-ghost/.

11 Polling completed in 2001 with 1,012 participants; Jennifer Robinson, The Devil and the Demographic Details, Gallup, February 25, 2003. [accessed September 12, 2018]. https://news.gallup.com/poll/7858/devil-demographic-details.aspx.

12 Polling completed in 2005 with 1,002 participants; David Moore, Three in Four Americans Believe in Paranormal, Gallup, June 16, 2005. [accessed September 12, 2018]. https://news.gallup.com/poll/16915/three-four-americans-believe-paranormal.aspx poll.

13 “C.S. Lewis: Writer, Poet and Novelist,” www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/ commemorations/clive-staples-lewis/. [accessed December 13, 2018].

14 Emma Koonse, “Exploring C.S. Lewis’s Lasting Popularity—52 Years After His Death,” Publishers Weekly October 14, 2015, www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industrynews/religion/article/68356-exploring-c-s-lewis-s-lasting-popularity-52-years-after-his-death.html [accessed October 13, 2017]; Garrett reports that HarperCollins in one year sells two hundred thousand copies of Lewis’ adult works. Mere Christianity alone sold over one hundred fifty thousand copies in 2012 alone. Lynn Garrett, “Events, Books Honor C.S. Lewis 50 Years After His Death,” Publishers Weekly,

6 among the top one hundred books of the twentieth century. Furthermore, Time magazine called Lewis the “hottest” theologian of 2005, some forty-two years after Lewis’s death.15

Lewis is popular and widely read among academics and non-academics alike.16 Lyle

Dorsett argues that this continuing appeal is due, at least in part, to Lewis’s unswerving dedication as an apologist to grapple with the large, complex and daunting questions of life and faith.17 As well, Evelyn Underhill suggests that the fascination with Lewis is also rooted in his reference to a ubiquitous metaphysic of longing, or sehnsucht, common to all humanity.18 Regardless of the reasons for his lasting popularity, Lewis is an important voice in Western Christianity both in the twentieth century as well as the foreseeable future. The irony of titles, such as, “lay-theologian” cannot relate the depth of intellect and breadth of reading Lewis had. Lewis offers a theology that is accessible to other laypeople. Little wonder, then, that Lewis endures as a theological figure. But is he in fact a theologian, and does his work merit theological exploration?

Lewis as a Theologian

This thesis contends that Lewis is a theologian, and that his theological views are indeed worth consideration. Many scholars have noted Lewis’s theological contribution to theology in general, such as the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan

October 30, 2013, www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industrynews/religion/-article/59760-events- books-honor-c-s-lewis-50-years-after-his-death.html [accessed October 13, 2017].

15 Marsden, C.S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity,” par. 2-3.

16 Wesley A. Kort, C.S. Lewis Then and Now, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, 15.

17 C.S. Lewis, The Essential C.S. Lewis, ed. Lyle W. Dorsett, 1988, New York: Scribner, 2017, 16.

18 As cited by Dorsett in The Essential C.S. Lewis, 16.

Williams.19 Others have variously described Lewis’s theological acumen as a traditional, even creedal, theology while others have argued that his is an aesthetic or imaginative theology20 which draws modern readers uniquely into the subject and study of theology and its contemporary practical and cultural implications.21

Gunnar Urang places Lewis among other modern theologians while W.L. White, and others, associate Lewis in the theological company of Tillich, Barth, Moltmann and

Pannenberg.22 Lewis objected to neo-orthodoxy as a theological framework, yet other scholars such as David Williams have noted certain theological parallels between Lewis’s theological approach and that of figures such as Karl Barth, implying that Lewis can indeed stand up to real theological scrutiny.23

19 Alister McGrath, C.S. Lewis: A Life, Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet, Carol Stream: Tyndale House Publishers, 2013, 163, 167.

20 Chad Walsh argues for Lewis’s creedal theology (as cited by White) while Downing holds that Lewis is a traditional theologian. William Luther White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis. 1969, Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2008, 85; David C. Downing, Planets in Peril: A Critical Study of C.S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992, 40; Paul S. Fiddes “On Theology” in The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis, ed. Robert MacSwain, Michael Ward, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010, 99; White cites Robert Reilly’s assessment of Lewis as a Romantic theologian which Duriez also argues for. White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 109; Colin Duriez, “The Romantic Writer: Lewis’s Theology of Fantasy”, The Pilgrim’s Guide: C.S. Lewis and the Art of Witness. Ed. David Mills. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, 109; 98; Philip Tallon, “Evil and the Cosmic Dance: C.S. Lewis and Beauty’s Place in Theodicy” in C.S. Lewis as Philosopher: Truth, Goodness and Beauty. ed. David Baggett, G.R. Habermas, Jerry Walls. Downers Grove, InterVasity Press, 2008, 199; David G. Clark, C.S. Lewis: A Guide to His Theology, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007, 167.

21 Downing, Planets in Peril, 40; Gunnar Urang, Shadows of Heaven: Religion and Fantasy in the Fiction of C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams and J.R.R. Tolkien”, London: SCM Press, 1971, 35; White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 85,86.

22 Urang, Shadows of Heaven:, 35; White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 101; David W. Williams, “Convergence in Joy: A Comparison of the Devotional Practices of C.S. Lewis and That ‘Dreadful Man Karl Barth’” in A Myth Retold: Re-encountering C.S. Lewis as Theologian, ed. Martin Sutherland, Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2014, 1-23; Tallon, “Evil and the Cosmic Dance,” 203; Fiddes “On Theology,” 90.

23 White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 102; David W. Williams, “Convergence in Joy,”, 1-23; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 165; Paul L. Holmer, C.S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1976, 6.

To argue that Lewis ought to be considered as a meaningful twentieth-century theologian is not without controversy. Professional theologians have argued that Lewis is theologically “inept” and “befuddled.”24 Yale theologian Paul Holmer contends that

Lewis did not even operate in a recognizable theological “system.”25 Indeed, as Alistair

McGrath has noted, it was fashionable in the 1970’s at Oxford University to disparage

Lewis as a theologian.26

Some see Lewis’s “traditionalist” position as being derivative, and certainly

Lewis draws deeply on the works of others.27 Parts of Lewis’s theology, such as his hamartiology is essentially Augustinian and his trinitarianism is elementally creedal,28 yet his theological instincts are “excellent” and his theology resists simple categorization.29

While it is true that Lewis was never trained in theology and he admitted to not being a

“professional” theologian, it is also true that he never overtly defined what being a

24 cf. W. Norman Pittenger (1958) and Alistair Cooke (1944) as cited by Richard B. Cunningham, C.S. Lewis: Defender of the Faith, in C.S. Lewis Secondary Studies Series, ed. William Griffin, 1967, Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2008, 15; Judith Wolfe “C.S. Lewis and the Eschatological Church” in C.S Lewis and the Church: Essays in Honour of Walter Hooper. London: Bloomsbury, 2012, 106; Chris Jensen, “Shine as the Sun: Lewis and the Doctrine of Deification.” In Pursuit of Truth. October 31, 2007. www.cslewis.org/journal/shine-as-the-sun-cs-lewis-and-the-doctrine-of-deification/ [accessed December 10, 2018]; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 165.

25 As cited by Alister McGrath in The Intellectual World of C.S. Lewis, Chichester: Wiley- Blackwell, 2014, 168. Ibid, C.S. Lewis, 164, 168. Kilby also notes that Lewis did not have a systematic framework comparable to Calvin or Barth. Clyde S. Kilby, “Chapter 3 On Scripture, Myth, and Theology,” in A Well of Wonder: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and The Inklings, Orleans: Paraclete, 2018 (Kindle Edition); cf. Holmer, C.S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought, 9.

26 McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 164.

27 Tallon, “Evil and the Cosmic Dance,” 199.

28 Kendall Harmon, “Nothingness and Human Destiny: Hell in the Thought of C.S. Lewis”, The Pilgrim’s Guide: C.S. Lewis and the Art of Witness. Ed. David Mills. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, 237; Will Vaus, Mere Theology: A Guide to the Thought of C.S. Lewis. Downers Grove: IVP, 2004, 72; Fiddes “On Theology,” 32.

29 Ibid., 90; White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 84.

9 professional meant.30 David Clark, himself a professional theologian, has noted the temptation of professional theology towards theological specialization and elitism rather than a focus on the heart of theology—the study of God.31

Indeed, Lewis caricatured theological specialization in his writings. In The

Screwtape Letters the titular character advocates and lauds the spread of jargon at the expense of truth and in The Great Divorce Lewis depicts a theologian, who is ironically a damned soul, who has the chance to enter Heaven and instead returns to Hell to expound his latest theological position.32 Likewise, in The Screwtape Letters we are told that the work of a true Christian is to “attend church, serve the poor, take part in civic life, and help in establishing a just society. [One] is to obey God implicitly and in daily trials see

God’s hand. [One] is not to waste time and not to take part in church squabbles.”33 The last admonition seems dual-edged since Lewis saw all too many theological concerns as pointless misdirections.34 When asked to wade into a theological debate Lewis once responded by saying, “a great deal of my utility has depended on my having kept out of dog-fights between professing schools of “Christian” thought.”35 Perhaps this reticence

30 Myk Habets, “Mere Christianity for Mere Gods: Lewis on Theosis” in A Myth Retold: Re- encountering C.S. Lewis as Theologian, ed. Martin Sutherland, Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2014, 110; McGrath cites Barth’s definition of a theology as a field that is not just for professional study, nor is it a private concern but theology, and therefore theologians ought to tempered academically by the pastoral concerns. In essence, theology is meant to serve the Church and her needs. This seems very close to Lewis’s own approach. McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 166.

31 Clark, C.S. Lewis: A Guide to His Theology, 164.

32 Clyde S. Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964, 46; Wayne Martindale, Beyond the Shadowlands: C.S. Lewis on Heaven and Hell. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2005, 79.

33 Clyde S. Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, 42.

34 Ibid.

35 C.S. Lewis, Christian Reflections, ed. Walter Hooper, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967, xiii. Lewis cited by Walter Hooper in the Preface to Christian Reflections; White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 84;

10 on Lewis’s part to engage in academic debates, or his traditionalist views, or his biting caricatures have hit to close to home for some professional theologians to consider Lewis seriously or objectively.

Still, Lewis engages in theological concepts and “smuggles” theology into areas of culture that are often overlooked.36 We are invited to take him seriously as a theologian, even if described as a “lay theologian.”37 In reference to Lewis, Alistair

McGrath has pointed out the importance of lay theologians. By modern standards, men such as Augustine, or Aquinas, would not qualify as “professional theologians” but rather as mere clergy. However, we would have a difficult time imagining the contours of theology today without their important contributions.38 Likewise, Grenz and Olson have argued that all of us in our own way are constantly engaging in theology, we are, in their words, all theologians.39

Lewis, as a theologian, brings a vivid set of masterful images to the field. He engages our imaginations and not just our reason, hence his title as an “aesthetic theologian.”40 Lewis addresses himself to the practical, asking the same kind of questions

C.S. Lewis, Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy, vol. 3, ed. Walter Hooper, San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2009, 1133; Stewart Goetz, Philosophical Walking Tour: Why Did It Not Include Rome?, London: Bloonsbury, 2015, 165.

36 Kilby argues that the value of Lewis, as a theologian, is his conversational style with is able to engage the common person in theological concepts. Clyde S. Kilby, “Chapter 3” and “Chapter 5 His Fate Among Theological Critics,” in A Well of Wonder (Kindle Edition); Holmer, C.S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought, 94; C.S. Lewis, “Letters” in God in the Dock, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970, 379.

37 Duriez, “The Romantic Writer,” 106.

38 McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 168.

39 Stanley J. Grenz, Roger E. Olson, Who Needs Theology?: An Invitation to the Study of God, Downers Grove: InterVasity Press, 1996, 12-21; Downing, Planets in Peril, 36, 44; McGrath likewise observes how all believers are in a sense theologians as part of our priesthood of believers. McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 166.

Bonhoeffer asked of theology, “What is Jesus Christ for us today?”41 An abstract theology that never touches the face of everyday life is, in Lewis’s view, a useless one, and such a view is decidedly appealing.42 In this aesthetic capacity Lewis seeks to help revive and make appealing the theology of former ages bringing us closer to a sense of wonder and awe before God.43

Lewis demonstrates himself as an aesthetic theologian particularly in his fiction.

He acknowledges that he deliberately infused theology into his prose.44 The result is apologetically and theologically-charged literature that sneaks past, as Lewis put it, the sleeping dragons and enlivens our imagination, making the abstract realm of theology seems substantial.45 Most scholars agree that Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and his

Ransom Trilogy are prime examples of this form of theology.46

40 Fiddes “On Theology,” 101; Clark, C.S. Lewis: A Guide to His Theology, 167; Sean Connolly, Inklings of Heaven: C.S. Lewis and Eschatology. Leominster: Gracewing, 2007, 3; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 169.

41 Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 34; McGrath, 165.

42 William Luther White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis. Eugene: Wipf and Stock 1969 (2008), 79; McGrath argues that to refuse to acknowledge Lewis as a theologian is a “petulant” response to a theological hegemony. Alister McGrath, C.S. Lewis: A Life, Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet, Carol Stream: Tyndale House Publishers, 2013, 175-177.

43 Clark, C.S. Lewis: A Guide to His Theology, 167; Tallon goes so far as to call Lewis’s theological skills as a “panoramic vision.” Tallon, “Evil and the Cosmic Dance,” 199.

44 Michael R. Collins, C.S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy: Essays on Genre. Scotts Valley, CreateSpace, 2014, 137.

45 Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 5,9, 28; Downing, Planets in Peril, 41.

46 One opposing voice is that of Patricia Spack, as cited by White, who has argued that Lewis fails in his Ransom Trilogy to use fiction as an “instrument of theology.” Lewis also recognized that the last he was not completely satisfied with the last of the trilogy, That Hideous Strength, and others have also affirmed the same observation. However, it is not due to a lack of theological skill but the awkward blending of genres and his overall structure and flow that have merited critique. White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 81; Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 5,26; Collins, C.S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy, 137.

As Urang observes, it is through the medium of fantasy that we are brought into contact with the supernatural and by extension with the theological.47 It is at this point that we also realize how Lewis resists categorization. Through his use of the aesthetic

Lewis explores eschatological theology as well. Some have argued that the central theme of Lewis’s theology is that of redemption (soteriology), while others have suggested human immortality (theological anthropology).48 However, most scholars agree that

Lewis’s theology is eschatologically driven.49 As Clark has noted Lewis’s emphasis is on our eschatological destiny since we all must one day end up in one of two places, so it is eminently practical.50

Primary Sources

Having established the importance of demonology as a topic worthy of academic study, and the role of Lewis as a theologian, we turn now to the task of presenting and assessing Lewis’s contribution to a theology of demons, and evaluating his contribution to the theological study of spiritual warfare.

Pivotal for Lewis, as a theologian, is his use and understanding of “dark powers,” the demonic and their role in our final destiny, bringing us back to consider more fully the demonology of Lewis-the theologian.51 Lewis himself explored the “dark powers”

47 Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 9.

48 Clark, C.S. Lewis: A Guide to His Theology, 167; Hooper suggests the later, as cited by Habets. Habets, “Mere Christianity for Mere Gods: Lewis on Theosis,” 117; Duriez, Bedeviled, 39, 42.

49 Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 5,14; Connolly, Inklings of Heaven, 3,11; Doris T. Myers, C.S. Lewis in Context, Kent: Kent University Press, 1994, 63; Clark, C.S. Lewis: A Guide to His Theology, 125, 129, 152.

50 Clark, C.S. Lewis: A Guide to His Theology, 125, 129; “Like Albert Camus, Lewis believed death to be the most significant fact in the interpretation of life: yet, unlike Camus, he was convinced that man is primarily made for eternity.” Clyde S. Kilby, “Chapter 4 Everyman’s Theologian,” in A Well of Wonder: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and The Inklings, Orleans: Paraclete, 2018 (Kindle Edition).

13 through a significant number of his most salient works, both his fiction and non-fiction.52

Works such as The Problem of Pain published in 1940 offers Lewis’s theodicy wherein he addresses his genuine belief in the reality of angels and demons and links such entities to Rudolf Otto’s concept of the numinous. One of Lewis’s most well-known works, Mere

Christianity, was first published in 1952, based on his BBC broadcasts during the Second

World War. Salient to our discussion is Lewis’s discussion of Satan as a real and malevolent force in the cosmos as well as God’s response to evil through the work and person of Jesus Christ. In Mere Christianity Lewis also addresses elements of his eschatology, namely Hell and his belief that Hell is an existence which the Damned have chosen, a view also espoused in The Problem of Pain, The Great Divorce, A Preface to

Paradise Lost, and The Screwtape Letters. Another important work of non-fiction from

Lewis will be Miracles which was first published in 1947 and later revised in 1960. As the title implies Lewis’s quest to address and defend the belief in miracles. In Miracles

Lewis draws together the threads of his argument to suggest that the greatest miracle of all is the Incarnation as a response to evil and that this miracle has been prefigured in the human psyche which is an argument he also associates with archetypes. Lewis also asserts in Miracles that through Christ humanity becomes like Christ and ultimately redeems all of creation.

51 Fiddes “On Theology,” 95.

52 For over a decade, between 1936 to 1947, Lewis’ writings address themselves directly or indirectly to the subject of the supernatural which indicates just how seriously Lewis took the subject and many of the same elements also appear in the works of his fellow Inklings, like Charles Williams and J.R.R. Tolkien. Colin Duriez, Bedeviled: Lewis, Tolkien and the Shadow of Evil, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2015, 38; C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 1938; Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 1955, New York: HarperCollins, 2015, 34; Lewis, “Christian Apologetics” in Selected Literary Essays. Edited by Walter Hooper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, 154.

Lewis’s fiction is also full of references to spiritual warfare. The most famous example being The Screwtape Letters published in 1942. 53 This work was first published as a series of articles in a religious periodical and later as a book. The premise being that the titular character, Screwtape is a member of the bureaucracy of Hell and giving advice to his junior “nephew” Wormwood on how to tempt and damn a human soul. In this work

Lewis presents us with a keen insight into the psychology of sin as well as the mentality of Hell which Lewis describes as a kind of spiritual cannibalism. While the work is technically fiction it is also is clear that Lewis takes the existence of the demonic very seriously. Another work that deals with angels and demons is The Great Divorce published in 1945. Lewis, drawing on elements of Dante’s Divine Comedy, offers a series of vignettes where damned souls get to visit the very edge of Heaven. Here they interact with Saints who encourage them to enter Heaven. This work is important in that it offers a depiction of Lewis’s view that the human soul is made to either grow and flourish under

God’s reign, or to wither and diminish in Hell. This is a notion Lewis shares with Milton and one that he traces in his A Preface to Paradise Lost. In that work, published in 1942,

Lewis seeks to explain the theology of John Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost.” Lewis traces the connection between Milton and Augustine and helps his readers to understand the Miltonic Satan as well as the concept of preternaturalism.

Of all Lewis’s fiction it is perhaps his Ransom Trilogy that most directly deals with his spiritual warfare theology. In Out of the Silent Planet, first published in 1938, the

53 Recently Brenton Dickieson shared the first draft of Lewis’ unpublished preface to The Screwtape Letters wherein Lewis originally made Ransom the source and translator of the letters, thereby establishing a linked between these two works. Ultimately Lewis decided against adding this into his final draft of his preface but it helps to establish how interconnected his works are and why in Perelandra the fictional version of Lewis also appears. Brenton D.G. Dickieson, “The Unpublished Preface to C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters,” Notes and Queries, June, 2013, vol 60:2, 296-298.

15 hero Elwin Ransom is kidnapped by two other humans, Professor Weston, a physicist, and Dick Devine an entrepreneur. Weston has discovered the key to interplanetary travel and has built a spaceship. They kidnap Ransom, a philologist and professor, as a human sacrifice since they believe this is necessary to appease the natives who live on Mars, which they have visited before. In the end, Ransom discovers that the Martians, or

Malacandrians, are not hostile and that there are three species who live on the planet in a kind of utopia. Weston and Devine seek to pillage the resources of the planet and ultimately to colonize Mars. Weston and Devine are stopped by the tutelary being of the planet, which bears its name, Malacandra. We are told he is one of the eldila or angels.

Ransom is saved and returned to Earth along with Weston and Devine. In Perelandra, published in 1943, Lewis attempts to present the antithesis of Milton’s Paradise Lost, by having Ransom supernaturally transported to Venus (Perelandra) in order to stop evil eldila (demons) from corrupting the Perelandrian Adam and Eve. Upon arriving Ransom meets the Eve-like Green Lady but they are soon joined by Weston who gives himself over to the evil eldila and becomes the Unman, a demonically possessed creature.

Ransom comes to understand he is there to thwart the Unman both intellectually but also physically. Both figures enter into single combat in the depths of Perelandra wherein

Ransom emerges victorious and witnesses the Green Lady and her Husband ascend to their preternatural thrones. Ransom also encounters the angel of Malacandra and the angel of Perelandra as archetypal entities. In the final book of the trilogy, That Hideous

Strength, we are introduced to Jane and her husband Mark. It is revealed that Jane is a clairvoyant sought after by the demonically controlled N.I.C.E., a pseudo-scientific national institute in Great Britain. The N.I.C.E. believes it has solved the riddle of

16 immortality by reanimating the severed head of a criminal. Mark is drawn into this infernal company while Jane comes into contact and ultimately joins Ransom’s company knowns as St. Anne’s. Both the N.I.C.E. and St. Anne’s are seeking the resting place of the Arthurian Merlin who is in a kind of suspended animation.54 If the N.I.C.E. finds

Merlin he will be the key to unleashing an apocalypse. It is St. Anne’s who find Merlin first and the seven tutelary angels of the planets, including Malacandra and Perelandra willingly possess Merlin and infiltrate the N.I.C.E. unleashing the curse of Babel causing confusion as well an earthquake which destroys the N.I.C.E. members, of which it is revealed that Devine and Weston were members. Within his trilogy Lewis offers us a robust depiction of angels and depicts the demonic as real and dangerous.

Methodology

These works represent the core of Lewis’s spiritual warfare theology and by engaging them we can trace the development of Lewis’s demonology in more detail.

However, it is impossible to overlook the prevalence of Lewis’s fiction which forms the majority of his theological expression. This begs the question of how we should deal with the interplay of Lewis’s fiction and non-fiction when seeking to understand his theology.

It is worth noting that in works such a Mere Christianity Lewis’s aim is not to put forth his personal theology alone but his concept of a common theological bedrock. His more personal theology, including his demonology, is often more implicit and found in his fiction.55 Lewis admitted that his fiction was intentionally filled with theological

54 Throughout this work Lewis seeks to interweave Arthurian legend into his science fiction to mixed success. 55 Ralph Wood, Literature and Theology, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2008, vi-ix; Cath Filmer- Davies, “C.S. Lewis” in The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology, ed. Andrew Hass, David Jasper, Elisabeth Jay, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, 655.

17 concepts, including his belief in angels and demons.56 In his non-fiction he is explicit in his theological beliefs but his fictional writings offer an imaginative, reflexive engagement with theology.57 The link and power between theology and literature is its capacity, through the imagination, to orientate the reader toward epistemological principles, abstraction given incarnation through story.58

The interdisciplinary field of literature and theology is a rewarding and daunting field due to the dichotomy of theology’s desire to limit the meaning of words whereas literature, due to its imaginative quality, seeks to be expansive with meaning.59 On the other hand, scholars have noted the interplay between theology and literature since

Christian theology is rooted in the Scriptures and they, in turn, are chiefly story-based and so share a frontier with literature.60 David Jasper has traced the development of the study of literature and theology arguing that literary critics have anticipated this form of criticism ahead of the theological establishment which only recently has accepted this interplay.61

56 Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 262.

57 Wood, Literature and Theology, vii-ix;

58 David Jasper, “The Study of Literature and Theology” in The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology, ed. Andrew Hass, David Jasper, Elisabeth Jay, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, 15-17; Alana Vincent, “Two (and two, and two) Towers” in in Literature and Theology: New Interdisciplinary Spaces, ed. Heather Walton, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011, 64.

59 David Jasper, “Interdisciplinarity in Impossible Times: Studying Religion through Literature and the Arts” in Literature and Theology: New Interdisciplinary Spaces, ed. Heather Walton, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011, 15-17; Heather Walton, “Introduction” in Literature and Theology: New Interdisciplinary Spaces, ed. Heather Walton, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011, 1-3.

60 Wood, Literature and Theology, vi-vii; Lewis, “On Stories,” in On Stories and Other Essays on English Literature, 1966, London: Harcourt, 1982, 3-20.

61 Jasper, “Interdisciplinarity in Impossible Times” 25.

Approaches toward literature and theology have been, broadly speaking, twofold: reductionistic or holistic.62 A reductionistic approach would take a work like The

Chronicles of Narnia, or the character of Aslan and interpret them as having only a one to one ratio of meaning, as if they were mere parables or allegories.63 Lewis, however, rejected this interpretation, seeing Aslan, for example, as an imaginative expression of

Jesus Christ expressed in a secondary world.64 Lewis argued that literature has secondary meanings.65 This is one reason that Lewis disliked Bultmann’s call for the demythologization of Scripture.66 The holistic approach, which scholars such as Ralph

Wood espouses, is to accept that the text stands independently as a work of literature but that it also bears up under the weight of theological consideration. Theology then becomes a hermeneutical lense for critics but it also becomes a reflection back upon theology.67 At times literature may offer commentary upon theology, at other times it

62 Ibid., 8; An example of reductionistic, or deconstructive criticism can be seen in the work of Christine Hsui-Chin Chou, “The Devil in Disciplines:” The Hermeneutic of Devil-hood in C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters” in Literature and Theology: New Interdisciplinary Spaces, ed. Heather Walton, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011, 188.

63 Heather Walton, “Introduction” in Literature and Theology: New Interdisciplinary Spaces, ed. Heather Walton, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011,1; Tolkien wrote in 1956, “I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author… [A myth is] a story out of which every varying of meanings will grow.” J.R.R. Tolkien, “Forward to the Second Edition” in The Fellowship of the Rings, London: HarperCollins, 2003, xxviii; Tolkien., The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter, London: HarperCollins, 145, 192; Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 1958, London: Fount, 1998, 115-126, 141-162.

64 Lewis wrote, “What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has in ours? This is not allegory at all…” Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 3, 1244-1245; Lewis, “It All Began with a Picture…” in On Stories and Other Essays on English Literature, 1966, London: Harcourt, 1982, 53-54.

65 Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories,” 109-161.

66 Lewis, “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism,” in Christian Reflections, ed. Walter Hooper, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967, 191-192.

67 Wood, Literature and Theology, iv-vii.

19 imaginatively explores and expands theological conceptions engaging us, slipping past, as Lewis said, the “sleeping dragons” and accessing something deeply rooted in the human condition and the pursuit of truth.68 This holistic approach is Lewis’s position and one which must be embraced in order to discern his theology.

As such our methodology shall be to utilize a direct and holistic reading of both

Lewis’s fiction and non-fiction through a theological lense so as to develop a nuanced reading of Lewis’s demonology. This methodology makes the most sense since it is the intention Lewis espoused and since no scholarship has sought to develop Lewis’s demonology before now or to relate it to a wider theological conversation.

Thesis Outline

Within this work we shall address the demonology of C.S. Lewis, as well as his relationship to other scholars, both modern and ancient with respect to angels and demons. This work, however, will not be an exhaustive treatment in that we shall not be exploring the relationship between Lewis and his fellow Inklings, nor shall we be comparing and contrasting Lewis’s spiritual warfare theology to historical or biblical theologies. We shall also be limiting ourselves to the Western theological tradition, especially since Lewis was an Anglican, though his relationship to Eastern Orthodoxy has some degree of bearing on the present work.69

68 Lewis, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to be Said” in On Stories and Other Essays on English Literature, 1966, London: Harcourt, 1982, 47.

69 Kallistos Ware, “C.S. Lewis, an ‘Anonymous Orthodox’?” in C.S. Lewis and the Church: Essays in Honour of Walter Hooper. Ed. Judith E. Wolfe, Brendan N. Wolfe, (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 135- 153; Ware, “God of the Fathers: C.S. Lewis and Eastern Christianity”, The Pilgrim’s Guide: C.S. Lewis and the Art of Witness. Ed. David Mills. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, 68, 67; cf. George M. Marsden, C.S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity”: A Biography, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), Kindle Edition. ch. 6; The Eastern Orthodox view of Spiritual Warfare is, at its core, the same as Western Christianity in that Satan is a spiritual being subordinate and inferior to God and is in rebellion to God of his own freewill. Satan and his fellow evil spirits then are responsible for physical and psychological

As we have already shown in this first chapter Lewis is an important figure in our zeitgeist and ought to be considered as a legitimate theological figure. Additionally, the subject of demonology and the supernatural is one that our world is still deeply interested in, and considering how much Lewis wrote about the subject it is odd that it is so underrepresented in the literature. In the rest of this chapter we shall seek to outline a biography of Lewis in relation to his spiritual warfare theology offering examples of conflict within his own life that helped him to develop his theological framework.

In the second chapter we shall explore the role of the supernatural and Lewis’s relationship to that subject. In particular we shall develop Lewis’s understanding and use of the concept of the uncanny, or unheimlich, which Lewis associates with his understanding of the numinous.70 Along with this we shall review Lewis’s use of dualism and how these ideas are connected to his understanding of angels and demons. We then shall seek to develop Lewis’s angelology, in terms of angelic natures, his view on hierarchy as well as his distinctive nomenclature for angels. This shall lead us to examine

Lewis’s distinctive view of angels as gendered archetypes and their relationship to myth and imagination.

Having established Lewis’s understanding of angels, we then turn to explore

Lewis’s fallen angels–demons. In chapter three, a discussion of Lewis’s presentation of

Satan, as well as the reality and shape of Lewis’s spiritual warfare is offered, developing into a discussion of the concept of the psychomachia in his writings. We shall also

ailments as well as possessions. cf. Charles Stewart, Demons and the Devil: Moral Imagination in the Modern Greek Culture, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 146-148, 216, 220-221; Ware also associates Lewis with figures such as Evagrius Pontus, Gregory of Palamas, Maximus of Constantinople and Athanasius citing from De Incarnatione 54.3, all of whom are well known in Eastern Orthodoxy.

70 For a more detailed discussion of the unheimlich see chapter 2.

21 consider the demonic teleology in regards to humanity which, according to Lewis, goes beyond dehumanization to destroy the imago dei within humanity converting humanity into the imago satanae, the satanic image or nature. We then shall consider how Lewis understands the response of God to such a theodicean aim through the Incarnation and the future theosis of humanity.

In the fourth chapter, we shall seek to establish Lewis’s contribution to spiritual warfare theology, arguing that Lewis’s theology intersects in distinct ways with other theologians regarding the real existence of demons and the nature of archetypes as well as

Lewis’s use of the psychomachia and the role of the Church in spiritual warfare. We shall then offer concluding statements and consider areas for further study.

A Biography of C.S. Lewis

A great temptation in studying Lewis is to mythologize him as a giant among other giants, a titanic figure who lived a charmed and magical life rubbing shoulders with now legendary figures. The truth is far from this illusionary image. The shape of Lewis’s theology was inevitably coloured by his personal experience which in turn would help inform his spiritual warfare theology: a theology that is both combative and dualistic, not unlike Lewis himself.

Lewis’s Formative Years (1898-1913)

Lewis was born on November 29th, 1898, in Belfast, Northern Ireland to Albert

James Lewis and Florence Augusta “Flora,” née Hamilton.71 Albert was a solicitor and

Flora was a graduate from Queen’s College in mathematics and logic and Lewis spoke

71 Clive and Staples were maternal family names. Walter Hooper, C.S. Lewis: A Complete Guide to His Life and Works, New York: HarperOne, 1998, 3-4.

22 very lovingly of his mother in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy.72 By the time Lewis was four, he decided on being called “Jacksie”; this was reduced to just “Jack,” and the name stuck thereafter.73 It was during these early years that Lewis was tutored at home by his governess. Lewis also saw his older brother Warren shipped off to Wynyard School in

Herefordshire, a place Lewis would later come to loathe, due to its cruel headmaster,

Rev. Robert Capron (or “Oldy” as he called him in Surprised by Joy).74 It was during these formative years that Lewis first encountered what he would later call “Joy”, a longing for something beyond himself, sehnsucht as the Germans call it.75

In February of 1908 Flora was diagnosed with cancer and died on August 23rd,

1908, and with her all of Lewis’s settled peace. In the same year Albert also lost his father and brother and as Walter Hooper has pointed out Albert was unable to emotionally come to grips with this degree of loss. 76 As was the custom in Edwardian society Albert sent Lewis and his older brother Warren away to boarding school.77

However, as A.N. Wilson has pointed out this decision would end up proving a serious misstep and the start of an emotional wedge between Albert and his children.78

72 C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 1955, New York: HarperCollins, 2015, 9-23; Hooper, Guide, 4; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 7-9; A.N. Wilson, C.S. Lewis: A Biography, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990, 5-7.

73 Hooper, Guide, 4. McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 9; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 8.

74 Ibid. 4, 6; Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 26. McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 27-28; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 22-25.

75 Hooper, C.S. Lewis: A Complete Guide to His Life and Works, 5; Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 12, 20.

76 Armand Nicholi, “The Question of God,” PBS Television, www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/- transcript/ spirits.html, [accessed 1-30-2008], hereafter cited as Nicholi, PBS; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 20-24; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 20-21.

77 Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 21-25; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 23.

78 Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 25, 31-32, 58, 66, 128.

Lewis’s Conflict with His Father

Albert’s choice to send away his sons ended up dividing himself from them for most of their lives.79 Lewis came to resent his father, but also needed him financially which complicated things. A telling episode was when Lewis was convalescing in

London after being wounded in the Great War. The mother of his dear friend Paddy

Moore came to visit him while Albert did not.80 Additionally, even though Lewis was confirmed in the Church of Ireland it was not a genuine act since Lewis was an avowed atheist. The Church of Ireland was the faith of Albert not Lewis.81 It is possible that part of Lewis’s atheism was fueled, not just by his mother’s death, but also by his resentment towards his father. Lewis admits to praying as a child and having those prayers go unanswered, helping in his atheism. It is easy to recognize how Lewis would have seen

God in the same terms as his absentee father. While Lewis and Albert did find a degree of reconciliation near the end of Albert’s life Lewis still expressed feelings of guilt and shame about his behavior.82 The alienation between Lewis and Albert is one of several themes of conflict present in Lewis’s life. These conflicts and tensions appear to have helped add to Lewis’s rather dualistic worldview which permeates his writings.83

The school Lewis and Warren found themselves attending in 1908, after the loss of both their mother and the emotional absence of their father, was less than ideal. Lewis

79 Armand Nicholi, The Question of God, New York: Free Press, 2003, 49; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 52- 59, 67-75, 114.

80 Ibid., C.S. Lewis, 54-56.

81 Nicholi, The Question of God, 49-50; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 41-42.

82 Ibid., 111-114.

83 See chapter 2.

24 was a formative ten-year-old boy and in later years he describes his boarding school,

Wynyard School, as a kind of Hell. Wynyard was run by one Rev. Capron who, it later became known, was brutal and cruel, eventually leading into his madness. Capron’s abuses, both verbal and physical towards student, eventually came to light which led to the school’s collapse. By 1910 Albert had moved Lewis to a new school, Cherbourg

House, where Warren had been placed in 1909. Lewis found Cherbourg House better than Wynyard for it was at Cherbourg that he first encountered the Classics as well as

Greek and Latin not to mention his first delights in poetry. While at Cherbourg, he was influenced by the school matron Miss G.E. Cowie who dabbled and waded through

Occultism, Theosophy, Rosicrucianism and the like.84 This was also the same period as when W.B. Yates’s Dublin Hermetic Order began meeting. The air in Great Britain, at that time, was filled with the demons of the otherworld as people sought out the old ways to replace Christianity in the void of their hearts. Cowie was no different and sowed the seeds of doubt in her students, helping Lewis to become an apostate.

Lewis, Kirkpatrick and Oxford (1914-1918)

During the summer of 1914, World War I broke out, but it had not yet touched

Lewis directly. In September of 1914 he was tutored by William Kirkpatrick.85

Kirkpatrick was known as the “Great Knock”, and was a logician who had no time for idle chit-chat. Lewis admired Kirkpatrick immensely, and thought him a very honest man.86 Kirkpatrick was an atheist and by 1916 Lewis wrote his friend, Arthur Greeves,

84 Hooper, C.S. Lewis: A Complete Guide to His Life and Works, 8-9; Will Vaus, Mere Theology: A Guide to the Thought of C.S. Lewis. Downers Grove: InterVasity Press, 2004, 109; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 28.

85 Ibid. 8; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 34-43; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 39.

86 C.S. Lewis, Miracles, 1960. New York: HarperCollins, 2015, 361-362; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 40.

25 that he too was an atheist.87 Lewis’s time with Kirkpatrick helped him to put on

“intellectual muscle” and he flourished.88

In December of 1916 Lewis was at Oxford University reading the Classics;89 this was also the time that Rudyard Kipling was proclaiming that the German “Hun” was at the gate and rousing young men to voluntarily join the army. It is unclear if Lewis was influenced by Kipling or not but by June of that year Lewis had joined the Army and met another Irishman, Edward Francis Courtney Moore, better known as “Paddy.”90 Paddy’s mother, Mrs. Janie Moore, was in Oxford with her daughter, Maureen, who was twelve.

Mrs. Moore, or Minto as Lewis would later call her, was 45 and the daughter of Rev.

William James Askins (Anglican), and separated from her husband Courtney Edward

Moore of Dublin.91 After separating from Courtney, in 1908 she moved to Bristol with her children. Upon meeting the Moores Lewis spent almost all his free time with them

Lewis and Paddy formed a strong bond and, as A.N. Wilson argues, Lewis and Mrs.

Moore may have become romantically involved.92 Lewis and Paddy promised each other

87 Hooper, C.S. Lewis: A Complete Guide to His Life and Works, 9; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 42; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 28-29.

88 Ibid.; Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 111; McGrath, C.S. Lewis: A Life, Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet, Carol Stream: Tyndale House Publishers, 2013, 42.

89 Hooper, Guide, 9; McGrath, C.S. Lewis: A Life, 52-55.

90 Hooper, Guide, 9; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 55-58; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 51-52.

91 Hooper, Guide,10, 14; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 58, 68; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 53.

92 The relationship between Minto and Lewis was questionable according to Albert and Warren. Warren said the relationship had a “freakishness” to it, and Albert wrote that “If Jack were not an impetuous, kind-hearted creature who could be cajoled by any woman who has been through the mill, I should not be uneasy.” Hooper, Guide, 15; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 67, 73-76; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 58; It should be noted that not all Lewis scholars accept Wilson’s biographical interpretation of Lewis. Tom Shippey, “The Lewis Diaries: C. S. Lewis and the English Faculty in the 1920s,” C. S. Lewis and His Circle: Essays and Memoirs from the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society. Ed. Roger White, Judith Wolfe and Brendan N. Wolfe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015 (Kindle Edition).

26 before being shipped out to the front that if one of them did not return from war the other would care of their parents. In the end it was Paddy who never returned from the war. 93

The Great War (1917-1918)

By November of 1917 Lewis was at the front just in time for his nineteenth birthday.94 In February 1917, Lewis fell ill with “trench fever” and was hospitalized for three weeks and then sent back to the front.95 Lewis fought in the Battle of Arras and was wounded on Mount Bernechon on April 15, 1918. By May of the same year, Lewis was in London recuperating with Minto as his constant visitor. After Minto learned that Paddy was dead, she came to blame God and, if she wasn’t before, she soon became an atheist.96

On November 11, 1918 the war ended. While Lewis was recovering, he had been writing poems, and in 1919 he published Spirits in Bondage to poor reception.97

Lewis’s Wartime Experiences

Alistair McGrath has observed how Lewis recounts very little about his wartime experiences. McGrath argues that Lewis compartmentalized areas of his life, most notably those more painful to him, and certainly the horrors of the Great War count as one of those.98 Lewis like so many of his contemporaries witnessed a struggle that denuded the romanticized notions Europe held regarding the nobility of war, and yet

93 Hooper, Guide, 11-12; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 56, 59.

94 Hooper, Guide, 11; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 68; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 54.

95 Hooper, Guide, 11; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 70; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 55.

96 McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 72.

97 Hooper, Guide, 11.; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 76; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 60.

98 McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 61-66.

Lewis was not a pacifist.99 Lewis himself observed in That Hideous Strength how modern humanity has, generally speaking, compartmentalized the physical world from the spiritual. The result being that we see physical combat only as primitive and uncivilized, a denigration of our loftier ideals and the notion of our nobility of spirit.100 This attitude is partly derived from a Platonic sensibility where the material world is to be disdained in favor of the immaterial realm something one would have thought Lewis to have been in favor of. Yet Lewis sees such an attitude as an appeal to our pride and ego. Lewis seeks to redress the argument that physical combat is only ever a materialistic endeavor or motive.101

Lewis retorts that the doctrine of war as a universal evil implies a materialistic worldview where pain and death are the greatest evil to be avoided.102 Lewis, like

Gregory Boyd, regards the subject of war as being capable of supporting Aquinas and

Augustine’s theory of Just War.103 Lewis was not naïve and certainly the Great War deeply affected him just as it did Tolkien and others. While Lewis never wrote about his time in the First World War, we know that he saw the sacrifice of his friends and countrymen as having a profound value. What we do on this earth matters and war, in the best sense, is one that is not fought for gain, prestige or power, but one that opposes

99 Greg Cashman, What Causes War?: An Introduction to Theories of International Conflict, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, 231.

100 Hooper, Guide, 122.

101 C.S. Lewis, Perelandra, 1943, New York: Scribner, 2003, 122.

102 C.S. Lewis, in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. Edited by Walter Hooper. New York: HarperCollins, 2001, 77.

103 See chapter 4.

28 injustice and evil in the name of goodness, of which, our war against the demonic is chief.104

Lewis and His Father (1919-1929)

In the autumn of 1919, Lewis returned to Oxford and where he first met Owen

Barfield, and for the term of 1924-1925 he was deputized by E.F. Caritt to teach philosophy at Oxford while Caritt taught in America.105 In May of 1925 he was elected to a fellowship in English at Magdalen College.106 We also have the first mentioning of

Lewis meeting J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) in 1926. However, by 1927 we learn that

Albert was suffering from rheumatism and bowel cancer and Lewis rushed to see his father.107 As Albert’s health crumbled so too did Lewis’s atheism.108 Lewis had been reading Chesterton and found in his writings a challenge to his denial of God. Tolkien,

Barfield, and Hugo Dyson were also helping Lewis into the light of faith. In 1928, Lewis had begun working on the Allegory of Love and soon came to realize all his favorite authors and friends were Christians. In September of 1929, Albert died, and later that same year Lewis grudgingly “gave in, and admitted that God was God,” as the “most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”109 His journey from atheism to theism was over.

104 Weston’s body could be destroyed; and presumably that body was the Enemy’s only foothold in Perelandra. Lewis, Perelandra, 124.

105 Hooper, Guide, 12-13; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 106; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 85.

106 Hooper, Guide, 13; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 106-112; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 89.

107 Hooper, Guide, 13; Justin B. Dyer and Micah J. Watson, C.S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 118; Kort, C.S. Lewis Then and Now, 133; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 118-122; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 111-113.

108 Ibid., 106-110.

Lewis’s Spiritual Conflict

It is impossible to miss the tension present in Lewis’s conversion to theism. Later in A Grief Observed Lewis describes God as the “Cosmic Sadist, the spiteful imbecile.”110 There is a tension in Lewis’s conversion between his desire for rational independence and his acceptance that reason alone is not enough to answer his existential concerns. This tension is echoed in Mere Christianity when Lewis speaks of humanity as rebels who must lay down their arms. Lewis is speaking as much from personal experience as anything else. When Lewis says that he turned to atheism when his prayers went unanswered, we can see not only the pain Lewis felt but also how Lewis was placing himself in a spiritual conflict against God. Lewis’s atheism in a sense was an attempt to wound the Almighty, not unlike Lewis’s depiction of Satan. These elements along with his interest in the supernatural would later inform Lewis’s view on the demonic.

Lewis’s Life at Oxford and His Christianity (1930-1939)

By October of 1930 Lewis and the Moores had bought a house, The Kilns, in

Oxford, and had invited Warren to come and live with them as well.111 Lewis was something of an orphan, but Minto became what he called his “mother” and he greatly cared for her.112

109 Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 182; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 135-139; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 106-110.

110 C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, 1961, New York: HarperOne, 2015, 30; One cannot help but see a connection between Lewis description of God as a Sadist and Lewis’s own masochism.

111 Hooper, C.S. Lewis: A Complete Guide to His Life and Works, 14.

112 Hooper, Guide, 34.

Lewis’s Erotic Conflict

It is generally accepted today that Lewis and Mrs. Moore’s relationship was less than Platonic and while, over time the romantic element diminished, most certainly after his conversion, the fact that it took place at all is revealing.113 A.N. Wilson notes that the loss of Lewis’s mother and his grieving, absentee father resulted in leaving Lewis an emotional orphan. Lewis was therefore drawn towards surrogate mother-figures, such as

Mrs. Moore and later Joy Gresham.114 However, a psycho-erotic analysis of Lewis’s relationships based on his anxieties around his parents seems one-dimensional. We must keep in mind the physical abuse of Lewis at the hands of Capron, at a time when Lewis was both physiologically and emotionally vulnerable. Additionally, the “fagging” system and homosexuality Lewis would have been exposed to in his boarding schools ought not to be under-estimated. Just as with his wartime experiences we find Lewis writes very little about these aspects of his early life.115 We do, however, know that Lewis, partly due to the aforementioned issues as well as his growing interest in the Gothic-erotic side of

Romantic literature, came to embrace masochism.116

Upon Lewis’s conversion he seems to have foresworn his masochism as well as physical intimacy in general. Did this create a new tension at home with Mrs. Moore? We aren’t told. However, elements of Mrs. Moore seem to be echoed in The Screwtape

113 McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 73-76.

114 Nicholi, The Question of God, 30-34; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 58-59, 67, 121; Jesse J. Thomas, “From Joy to Joy: C.S. Lewis and the Numinous,” Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2000, vol. XII (1- 2), 115.

115 McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 27-36; 61-69; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 12-36.

116 Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 35; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 49-50, 129.

Letters in the character of the Patient’s mother.117 Lewis also wrote a poem entitled

“Dymer” wherein the hero sleeps with a maiden who turns into an old crone. While

Lewis denied he was the hero the parallels are impossible to ignore.118 In Mere

Christianity Lewis articulates a well-developed Christian view of sexuality indicating how deeply he wrestled with the issue.119 The fact that sexuality is one the weapons the demonic Screwtape seeks to use against his victim further indicates how Lewis came to see the more dysfunctional parts of his libido as part of his spiritual warfare theology.120

In September of 1931, Dyson, Tolkien, and Lewis had a long talk about myths and their relation to the Gospels as a kind of protoevangelium. On the 28th of the same month, Lewis and Warren took a trip to the Whipsnade Zoo, and as Lewis said, “When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.”121 Since Lewis had converted to Theism in 1929 he had been struggling to figure out which religion was right. He had found oriental religions like Buddhism and

Hinduism compelling, but had not been able to figure out how Jesus Christ fit into all of it.122 By 1931 Lewis felt that he had a better grasp of Christianity, being mythic in nature but rooted in historical reality and so he therefore affirmed his faith in Christ.

117 Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 93; Duriez, Bedeviled, 53.

118 Ibid., 100-101.

119 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952, New York: HarperOne, 2002, 83-89.

120 Ibid., The Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposed a Toast: Annotated Edition, 1942 and 1961, ed. Paul McCusker. New York: HarperOne, 2013, 120-121.

121 Ibid., Surprised by Joy, 189; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 146-151; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 124-127.

122 Nicholi, PBS; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 155; McGrath has noted that Lewis was imprecise with dates, and as a result Lewis was relaying on memory alone when writing Surprised by Joy. As such the dates around Lewis’s conversion process has been questioned under McGrath’s new schema, that Lewis’s

Minto was quite unhappy over Lewis’s conversion and gave him a difficult time over it.123 Around this time and certainly by 1933, Lewis was meeting with a group of friends who called themselves the Inklings, a club originally established by Edward

Tangye Lean. It was discontinued when Lean left Oxford, but Lewis resurrected it.124 By

1939 the Inklings saw their greatest numbers as they met at the Eagle and Child Pub in

Oxford. The Inklings included, off and on, such scholars and friends as Warren Lewis,

Owen Barfield, J.A.W Bennett, James Dundas-Grant, Hugo Dyson, Adam Fox, Colin

Hardie, Robert “Humphrey” Harvard (Lewis’s physician), Lord David Cecil, Nevill

Coghill, Father Gervase Matthew, R.B. McCallum, C.E. “Tom” Steevens, J.R.R Tolkien,

Christopher Tolkien, John Wain, Charles Williams, and Charles Wrenn.125 During their time together, they debated philosophy, literature, religion, and the goings on of the nation. They also read parts of their work to one another, and Lewis read parts of Out of the Silent Planet, The Problem of Pain, and The Screwtape Letters, and Tolkien read parts of The Lord of the Rings.

In 1933 Lewis’s allegorical work, Pilgrim’s Regress was published followed by his impressive academic work entitled Allegory of Love, published in 1936.126 The

Inkling meetings became something of an imaginative catalyst for Lewis and Tolkien.

Both agreed in 1937 that they ought to write the forms of science fiction that they wanted

theism happened between March to June in 1930 rather than April to June in 1929. McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 142.

123 Hooper, Guide, 15; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 127-128.

124 Hooper, Guide, 17; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 175-182; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 159.

125 Hooper, Guide, 17.

126 Hooper, Guide, 801; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 183-186; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 166-167.

33 to see and which no one seemed to be writing. As a result, Lewis wrote one of his most lauded works, Out of the Silent Planet, published in 1938.127 This book would be the first of a trilogy based around the supernatural.

Lewis and the Second World War (1939-1945)

In summer of 1939 Lewis began writing The Problem of Pain, which would go on to be published it in 1940, but more noteworthy was the outbreak of the Second World

War in that same year. During this time Minto’s health became frailer as she was 69 and

Lewis had to spend more and more time caring for her.128

In the winter of 1941, as Rommel was trouncing the British in North Africa, the

Chaplin-in-Chief of the Royal Airforce (RAF), Maurice Edwards, asked Lewis if he would speak to some RAF Officers.129 Lewis accepted Edwards’s offer, while in May his

Screwtape Letters began appearing in a Christian periodical The Guardian (now defunct) and he visited RAF bases speaking to airmen about the faith. In February of the same year, Dr. James Welch of the BBC asked Lewis to give a talk on Christian matters, and by August he had given the first of his BBC talks and would go on to give three more to popular acclaim.130 Lewis’s talks were an articulation of his understanding of the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith. As they were essentially apologetics and meant

127 McGrath, C.S. Lewi, 233-238; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 154-155.

128 McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 245-246.

129 Hooper, Guide, 29; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 207; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 179.

130 McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 205-213, 218-229; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 179-181.

34 to affirm the faith and for this Lewis drew on his understanding of philosophy and “old books.”131

In December of that same year, Lewis was invited to University College in Wales to give the Ballard Lectures on Milton, which would later be published as Preface to

‘Paradise Lost’ in 1942.132 In that same year the second BBC talk was broadcast and made Lewis’s name common place. In June, Lewis was invited to preach his now famous sermon The Weight of Glory at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin.133 The sermon presented not only a sense of numinous wonder towards God but also an eschatological destiny for humanity in a beatific vision.

By 1943, Perelandra was published and Lewis’s Screwtape Letters were published in the United States. Lewis also traveled to the University of Durham to give the Riddell Memorial Lectures, which were later was published in 1946 as The Abolition of Man, an almost prophetic book most memorable for Lewis’s presentation of natural law which he called the Tao and for his argument that a world without moral absolutes would become a dystopia, which Lewis would later encapsulate in his book, That

Hideous Strength.134 Lewis would go on to finish writing That Hideous Strength in same year and before the start of 1944 Lewis had finished six chapters of the book he would later publish as Miracles (1947).135

131 Lewis, C.S. “On the Reading of Old Books,” in God in the Dock, 1970, ed. Walter Hooper, Cambridge: Eerdmans 2014, 217-255.

132 McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 229-230; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 197-200.

133 Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 7-22.

134 Hooper, Guide, 35; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 23.

135 Hooper, Guide, 37; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 211-213.

In 1944, Lewis also gave the Clark Lectures at Cambridge University which helped him to begin his academic tome, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century

(ELSC) C.E.M. Joad also came to the Socratic Club in Oxford and debated with Lewis. In that same year Lewis gave his fourth and last BBC talk.136

Lewis’s Professional Conflicts

At this point we must pause and note that on the surface it sounds as if Lewis is living a successful and, in some ways, glamorous life, yet this is far from the truth. Lewis was not a theologian by trade, he was an Oxford don of the English faculty. He was expected to write books and papers on literature not theology and he certainly was not supposed to become popular for doing so. Certain elements in Oxford University at this time were decidedly anti-Christian and so by virtue of Lewis’s faith he was something of an outsider. However, Lewis was also resented by his peers, and those in the department of theology at Oxford for his writings and his fame. As a result, Lewis was both snubbed and rejected from furthering his career.137 Harry Blamires, a friend and former student of

Lewis, recalled that Lewis felt this rejection keenly.138 However, it must be noted that

Lewis himself might well have contributed to alienating his fellow dons. A.N. Wilson notes how Lewis was decidedly aggressive and confrontational at times.139 Lewis enjoyed winning arguments, sometimes at any price. Lewis was once caught in a bald-faced lie as

136 Hooper, Guide, 37; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 179-181.

137 Christopher W. Mitchell, “Bearing the Weight of Glory: The Cost of C.S. Lewis’s Witness”, The Pilgrim’s Guide: C.S. Lewis and the Art of Witness. ed. David Mills. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, 7; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 239-240, 243-245; 247-250; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 181, 192, 208; Holmer, C.S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought, 92.

138 Mitchell, “Bearing the Weight of Glory,” 7.

139 Wilson, C.S. Lewis, xii, 130; Shippey argues that Lewis had a “judgmental streak.” Tom Shippey, “The Lewis Diaries,” (Kindle Edition).

36 he attempted to win an argument.140 He would later apologize, yet the event is telling. In his debates with other academics he was almost ruthless. Lewis also had a biting wit which shows itself in his writings such as That Hideous Strength which is a stinging diatribe and portrayal of academics in his day.141 Tom Shippey has noted that both Lewis and Tolkien felt professionally frustrated by their own faculties as well as marginalized.

This may partly explain why Lewis came to eschew all interaction with contemporary developments in English literature and verse. As Shippey argues Lewis and Tolkien simply withdrew and suggests that they were “emotionally challenged” particularly in their professional lives.142

In May of 1945 Lewis’s good friend Charles Williams died unexpectedly, which hit Lewis very hard.143 Then in September of 1945 the War was over. It was during that same year that Lewis published two of his most popular books, The Great Divorce and

That Hideous Strength. These two books, along with the other two works that finish off his space trilogy, are perhaps some the best examples of Lewis’s interest in and articulation of his belief in the supernatural.

Lewis and the Supernatural

In The Screwtape Letters, Lewis warns about having a morbid fascination with the demonic and occult, a fascination that is also connected to the erotic in his fiction.144

140 Ibid.

141 Ibid.; Rowan Williams, “That Hideous Strength: A Reassessment,” C. S. Lewis and His Circle: Essays and Memoirs from the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society. Ed. Roger White, Judith Wolfe and Brendan N. Wolfe, Oxford: OUP, 2015 (Kindle Edition).

142 Tom Shippey, “The Lewis Diaries” (Kindle Edition).

143 Hooper, Guide, 37; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 242; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 204.

Yet Lewis acknowledged he too suffered from this error.145 In Surprised by Joy Lewis notes, “I was already acquainted with the more depraved side of Romanticism”146 and cites Algernon Swinburne’s Anactoria, Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley, authors who ventured into dystheism, cannibalism, sadomasochism as well as homosexuality and the grotesque in their work, works of the unheimlich in many ways.147 Lewis seems drawn to the subject like a moth to the flame. We know the occult was a matter of conversation among the Inklings but Lewis was also exposed to the subject from a young age. Lewis acknowledged Mrs. Cowie to be a practitioner in the occult while he was at Cherbourg

School, as well as his aforementioned literary exposure. We know from Lewis that he also read occultic and mystic texts as part of his studies of Milton.148 While reading at

Oxford Lewis had the opportunity to meet the poet W.B. Yeats, a well-known occultist, in 1921. A.N. Wilson remarks that the meeting had a deep impression on Lewis and,

It amazed Lewis the rationalist that intelligent people could be sitting about in a circle in Oxford and talking about the supernatural as if it were soberly true.… Twenty years later, Lewis himself was to be the center of just such a circle…149

144 Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, xlvii, 120-121; Ibid., That Hideous Strength, 1945, New York: Scribner, 2003, 265; Ibid., Perelandra, 97-104.

145 Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 35; “…the morbid inquisitiveness about such beings which led our ancestors to a pseudo-science of Demonology, is to be sternly discouraged: our attitude should be that of the sensible citizen in wartime who believes that there are enemy spies in our midst but disbelieves nearly every particular spy story. Lewis, Miracles, 410.

146 Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 176.

147 Beardsley once remarked, "I have one aim—the grotesque. If I am not grotesque, I am nothing." Arthur Lawrence, “Mr. Aubrey Beardsley and His Work,” The Idler, XI 1897, 198. Beardsley was also an artist and it perhaps his prints as well as Hieronymus Bosch’s work when in That Hideous Strength Mark notes the art in the Objectivity Room. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 295.

148 Vaus, Mere Theology, 109; Lewis, Preface to Paradise Lost, 83-91.

149 Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 70-71; Vaus, Mere Theology, 109; cf. Connolly, Inklings of Heaven, 34; White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 124; Clark, C.S. Lewis: A Guide to His Theology, 99.

In his book Surprised by Joy Lewis speaks of the impact of witnessing the madness and death of a certain friend.150 This friend was Minto’s brother Dr. Askins who also had dabbled in the occult and who bears a striking similarity to the demon possessed

Weston near the end of Perelandra.151 Another of Lewis’s friends who had a history with the occult was his fellow Inkling, Charles Williams.152 William’s influence on Lewis was significant, enough for him to alter the pattern of his Ransom trilogy to include a strong

Arthurian element derived from Williams.153 Roma King Jr. has noted the connection between the occult and esoterica and the bizarre, or what we would call the unheimlich in

Williams.154

150 Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 163; Vaus, Mere Theology, 109.

151 Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 81-82; Tom Shippey, “The Lewis Diaries” (Kindle Edition).

152 Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 71, 170; Alan Jacobs, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis, New York: HarperOne, 2008, 196-198; Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Their Friends, 1979, London: HarperCollins, 2006, 80-84; Williams was, for a time, a member of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, established by A.E. Waite (1857-1942) in 1915. The Fellowship was mystical rather than magical, an amalgam of pagan, Jewish and Christian symbolism which sought mystical union with Christ. cf. Roma A. King Jr. “The Occult and Rhetoric in the Poetry of Charles Williams,” The Rhetoric of Vision: Essays on Charles Williams. ed. Charles A. Huttar, Peter J. Schakel, Cranbury: Associated University Press, 1996, 165; Waite wrote the following passage in 1913, and would have been a familiar text to Williams: "Beyond these fields and this borderland there lies the legendary wonder-world of theurgy, so called, of Magic and Sorcery, a world of fascination or terror.... There all paradoxes seem to obtain actually, contradictions coexist logically, the effect is greater than the cause and the shadow more than the substance. Therein the visible melts into the unseen, the invisible is manifested openly, motion from place to place is accomplished without traversing the intervening distance, matter passes through matter. There...space has a fourth dimension, and untrodden fields beyond it; without metaphor and without evasion, the circle is mathematically squared. There life is prolonged, youth renewed, physical immortality secured. There earth becomes gold, and gold earth. There words and wishes possess creative power, thoughts are things, desire realises its object. There, also, the dead live and the hierarchies of extra- mundane intelligence are within easy communication, and become ministers or tormentors, guides or destroyers of man. There the Law of Continuity is suspended by the interference of the higher Law of Fantasia.” A.E. Waite, The Book of Ceremonial Magic. Mineola: Dover Publications, 2017 (1913), 3-4.

153 Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 148, 189-190; Rowan Williams observes that the St. Anne’s company in That Hideous Strength has something more than just a sense of comradery but also a distinct note of the esoteric allure. Williams, “That Hideous Strength: A Reassessment,” (Kindle Edition).

154 As cited by Roma A. King Jr. “The Occult and Rhetoric in the Poetry of Charles Williams,” 165.

Thus, the supernatural had a marked influence on Lewis both from his own personal disposition and through his acquaintances. Lewis would go on to explore the concept of the supernatural through his writings, a process of eleven years, as he came to grips with its allure as well as its role in faith.

The Post-War Years (1946-1953)

During this time of exploration, in 1946 Lewis, was given an honourary Doctorate of Divinity by St. Andrew’s University.155 By 1947 his book Miracles was published in

England and in the United States.156 In March of that year Minto was ill with pneumonia and Lewis describes himself as being “tethered” to The Kilns and her. In September,

Lewis was featured on the cover of Time magazine and things were looking up. However, in 1948, G.E.M. Anscombe (1919-2001) gave a “Reply” to Lewis’s Miracles at the

Socratic Club, and gave him a run for his money.157 Some have argued that Lewis was crushed by his defeat at the hands of Anscombe and gave up on apologetics.158 It is true that Lewis was deflated, but as McGrath argues it seems more likely that Lewis took on a new approach to his apologetic work by turning to imaginative fiction.159 It was during this time that he began writing the books that would later become The Chronicles of

Narnia, a set of books that have captured imaginations of all ages and is perhaps some of his best prose.

155 Hooper, Guide, 20,43, 59; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 215, 218.

156 Hooper, Guide, 47, 52-53; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 1990, 211-213.

157 Hooper, Guide, 124; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 2013, 250-257; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 210-214, 225- 226.

158 Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 212-215.

159 McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 250-259.

In the summer of 1948 the American, Chad Walsh (1914-1991) came to Oxford to interview Lewis for a book he was writing, and discovered that Lewis was in the midst of writing what would come to be Surprised by Joy and The Lion, the Witch and the

Wardrobe.160 In 1949 Lewis was overworked and exhausted and suffered a brief collapse and hospitalization, and had come to the belief that he was at the end of his productive years. However, he was just on the brink of having his first Narnia book published.161

In 1950 Minto had been semi-paralyzed for some time and in April she had also been falling out of bed at night. She was too ill for Lewis to care for, and therefore he placed her in a nursing home not far from The Kilns.162 The first of The Chronicles of

Narnia, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was published in 1950 as the world witnessed the start of the Korean War. In 1951 Minto passed away, and Warren wrote in his diary that Lewis’s “mysterious self-imposed slavery in which [he lived] for at least thirty years” was over.163 By 1952 Mere Christianity was published based on his BBC

Talks and Lewis attempted to write a book on prayer, which would elude him until near the end of his life and be posthumously published as Letters to Malcolm (1964).164

Lewis and Joy Gresham (1953-1960)

In October of 1953, the American woman Joy Gresham sailed for England from the United States, and according to her sons, David (1944-present) and Douglas, (1945-

160 Hooper, Guide, 47; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 365.

161 Hooper, Guide, 52; Jacobs, The Narnian, 248; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 272; Wilson, C.S. Lewi, 220-221.

162 Hooper, Guide, 52; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 223-225.

163 Hooper, Guide, 56; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 2013, 310; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 1990, 224.

164 Hooper, Guide, 114; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 290-291.

41 present) she went there expressly to meet Lewis.165 Joy ended up spending Christmas at

The Kilns and on January 3rd she returned to America.166 However, Joy and her sons sailed for England in November to resettle in the United Kingdom, after Joy and her husband separated and by December she had introduced her sons to Lewis.167

By 1954, Tolkien published The Fellowship of the Ring, which became a quick success. In January, Cambridge University’s Senate stated their need for a professor of

Medieval and Renaissance Literature in English and by March 31 they announced the

Chair vacant. The Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge came, offering the Chair to Lewis, and

Tolkien argued Lewis ought to take the position. On June 4th Lewis accepted the Chair at

Cambridge University and by August, Joy agreed to divorce William Gresham.168 On his birthday, Lewis gave his inaugural lecture at Cambridge, which was well received. In the spring of that year Joy visited The Kilns and helped brainstorm a new book idea with

Lewis which later became Till We have Faces (1956).169

In August, Joy and her sons moved to Oxford but in 1956 the Home Office told

Joy she would not be allowed to remain in England. Lewis then decided to extend his citizenship to Joy through a legal marriage.170 It is interesting to note that upon meeting

165 Hooper, Guide, 62; A.N. Wilson, C.S. Lewis: A Biography, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990, 236-241.

166 Hooper, Guide, 61.

167 Hooper, Guide, 61; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 324-325.

168 Hooper, Guide, 66, 70; Wilson, C.S. Lewis: A Biography, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990, 225.

169 Hooper, Guide, 77; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 328.

170 It must be made clear that at this point Lewis did not see his marriage as romantic, but merely a legal agreement. McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 320, 329-330, 339; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 258-260.

Joy a number of Lewis’s friends had thought that she would make an ideal wife for him.171 However, for Lewis, true and binding marriage was a matter of the Church and not the State.172 So on April 23rd Joy became the legal spouse of Lewis and she was able to remain in the country. However, six months later Joy’s femur snapped due to cancer and during the next month, she went through three operations and Lewis came to realize the degree to which he cared for Joy and decided to marry her in a religious ceremony.

He approached his friend Bishop Harry Carpenter (1901-1993), but was told that because of his celebrity status and because Joy was a divorcee, the Anglican Church could not perform the ceremony. There was no anxiety on the Bishop’s part; he simply could not see a way round the stance of the Church.173 In March of 1957 Lewis asked a former pupil, Rev. Peter Bide (1912-2003), to pray and lay healing hands on Joy. Lewis took

Bide aside and asked if he would marry them. Bide thought about what Christ would have done, and so married Lewis and Joy, on March 20th.174 By autumn of that year Joy’s cancer was in remission and Joy had stabilized enough to be moved to The Kilns. 175

During the summer Joy and Lewis flew to Ireland as a belated honeymoon and met much of Lewis’s family.

One other thing must be noted here; there was a cooling of Lewis and Tolkien’s friendship, since Lewis failed to notify Tolkien of his marriage to Joy in March, and it

171 Hooper, Guide, 65, 78.

172 Hooper, Guide, 80; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 330; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 260, 271-272.

173 Hooper, Guide, 80.; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 335-336; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 272-274.

174 Hooper, Guide, 79; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 334-337; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 263.

175 Hooper, Guide, 85; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 338-339; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 261-263.

43 was only after the fact that he found out. Possibly Lewis did not want to hear Tolkien’s objections to marrying a divorcee or he just forgot; regardless, Tolkien was quite wounded by the oversight.176

By December (1957) Lewis finished working on Reflections on the Psalms and in

1958 he gave a lecture series that would later become a posthumously published book,

Studies in Words.177 Yet Joy’s cancer would not stay in remission and by October of 1957 the doctors confirmed as much. Sensing the end was nigh they took a tour of Greece, one of Joy’s life-long dreams.178 In December of 1959, Screwtape Proposes a Toast appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, which augmented his previous letters.179 In April of 1960,

Lewis and Joy left for Greece with Roger and June Green (1918-1987) and spent ten days there and returned to Oxford. By June Joy was rushed to the hospital where she rapidly declined. Lewis and Joy spent their last moments together as she passed away July 13,

1960, she was fifty-five.180

Lewis’s Last Years (1960-1963)

Joy was cremated July 18th leaving David, Douglas, and Lewis to grieve her loss.

Part of this grieving was a diary of the process which he later published under a pseudonym as A Grief Observed (1961). Lewis found writing cathartic.181

176 Hooper, Guide, 84; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 337; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 260, 271-273; Thomas, “From Joy to Joy: C.S. Lewis and the Numinous,” 115; Jeffrey D. Schultz and John West Jr. The C.S. Lewis Reader’s Encyclopedia. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998, 60.

177 Hooper, Guide, 91; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 328; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 274.

178 Hooper, Guide, 95; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 339-340; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 280-281.

179 Hooper, Guide, 103.

180 Ibid., 99; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 281.

181 Hooper, Guide, 102; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 342-347; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 285.

In July of 1961, Arthur Greeves came to Oxford to holiday with Lewis and found him looking ill. On the 27th, he was diagnosed with an enlarged prostate and it was ultimately decided it was too dangerous to operate.182 By April of 1962, Lewis returned to Cambridge and by July he finished writing The Discarded Image.

Lewis returned to Cambridge October 8th, but this was to be the last series of lectures he would give. In April of 1963 he finally wrote his book on prayer, Letters to

Malcolm and on June 7th he welcomed a young Walter Hooper (1931-present) into his home. Hooper would later become Lewis’s literary executor and driving force in helping to keep Lewis’s works in print. Hooper and Lewis became friends during his time in

Oxford. Lewis had been having some trouble with his heart over the past few years and on July 15 just as he was going to go on holiday, his condition flared up again and he ended up in the hospital to have it checked out.183 There he suffered a heart attack and slipped into a coma but later revived from the ordeal and by August 6 Lewis returned to

The Kilns.184 By the 14th Lewis knew he would never return to teaching and sent Hooper and Douglas to clear out his office at Cambridge.185

Lewis’s end was quiet and unnoticed, and somehow one thinks he would have preferred it that way. Lewis had said, according to Warren, that “I have done all I wanted to do, and I’m ready to go.”186 On Friday November 22 in 1963, Lewis had fallen asleep

182 Hooper, Guide, 109; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 348; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 295-297.

183 Hooper, Guide, 116; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 195.

184 Hooper, Guide, 116-117; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 355; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 295-297.

185 Hooper, Guide, 117; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 356-357; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 293.

186 Hooper, Guide, 119; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 358-360; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 298.

45 in his chair and Warren suggested that he go and get some sleep in his bed, and Lewis agreed. By four o’clock Warren took Lewis his tea and found him “drowsy but comfortable.” A bit later Warren recounted that, “I heard a crash and ran in, to find him lying unconscious at the foot of his bed. He ceased to breathe some three or four minutes later.”187 He was sixty-four. His death was announced in the papers but was overshadowed by the assassination of President Kennedy, who died the same day as

Lewis.188

Conclusion

An examination of Lewis’s life demonstrates a life filled with troubles and pain, and begs the question of why Lewis experienced such sorrows and how he rationalized these turmoils. Life itself seems to have encouraged Lewis to see himself caught on one side of a conflict or another. Coupled with his natural confrontational qualities it is reasonable to see how Lewis would have been drawn to demonology with its spiritual warfare as a meaningful metaphor for life and spirituality. These experiences helped to form the background that eventually developed into his demonology.

The fact that Lewis’s role as a theologian is still debated and the fact that spiritual warfare and the belief in demons continues to persist despite our supposedly scientific and rational age only seems to validate Lewis’s position and use of demonology in his writings and interpretation of life. In our next chapter we shall seek to understand

187 Hooper, Guide, 119.; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 298.

188 Hooper, Guide, 119.; Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 299.

Lewis’s use of the supernatural and his dualistic view of the supernatural as well as his angelology as the basis for his demonology.

Chapter 2

Finding Lewis’s Angels

Chapter 2

Finding Lewis’s Angels

Introduction

This chapter addresses Lewis’s use of the supernatural in his work as part of his demonology. Part of Lewis’s supernaturalism involves both his use of Rudolf Otto’s concept of the numinous, and a subset of that experience – the uncanny, or unheimlich, as it relates to both angels and demons. This concept is explored before developing Lewis’s angelology based on his fictional and non-fictional works, then tracing Lewis’s use of hierarchy as well as his interpretation of angelic forms and natures which includes

Lewis’s blending the symbolic and the real in his angelology. Lewis’s angelology is a necessary prerequisite to developing a wider understanding of his demonology.

Lewis’s demonology is distinct from other such models in the twentieth century and is deeply integrated into the rest of his theology. What is most surprising is that he presents his demonology primarily in his fiction. Of the sixty reviews of his first science- fiction book, Out of the Silent Planet (1938) a mere three percent, or two out of the sixty reviews, noticed any religious or theological elements.1 W.L. White argues that Lewis said very little about angels and demons in his work and relegates Lewis’s fiction to the realm of art cloistered away from theology.2 This seems overly simplistic since Lewis

1 Downing, “Rehabilitating H.G. Wells: C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet” in C.S. Lewis: Fantasist, Mythmaker and Poet, C.S Lewis Life, Works, and Legacy vol. 2. ed. Bruce Edwards, Westport: Praeger, 2007, 14. In 1937 Lewis started writing his Trilogy while Tolkien began what would become The Lord of the Rings. Carpenter, The Inklings, 156; C.S. Lewis, On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature, New York: HarperOne, 2017, xvii.

2 White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 80,84.

51 admitted to intentionally smuggling theology into his fiction and Lewis’s demonology is thoroughly supernatural. It would also be misplaced to ignore the role art has played in expressing and even informing theology over the centuries, especially in regards to our imaginative faculties. While his positive theology is derived from his non-fiction writings, it is in his fiction that we find his theological commitments vividly illustrated.

The Role of the Supernatural

For Lewis the demonic is an essential element of his view of theodicy.3 As he notes in Miracles, “the Christian story does is not to instate on the Divine level a cruelty and wastefulness which have already disgusted us on the Natural, but to show us in God’s act, working neither cruelly nor wastefully.”4 Yet there is cruelty and waste, and for

Lewis this suggested a “principle” which he acknowledged might initially seem

“meaningless” but upon reflection it would have to be “derived from a principle which is good and fair (which is to say God),” but is the antithesis of God, “a depraved and blurred copy of it—the pathological form which it would take in a spoiled Nature.”5 This pathological principle is what we may call the demonic, and is more than a mental projection, or a symbolic mode of thinking. For Lewis the demonic is real and personal.6

3 Jerry Root has argued that Lewis’s theodicy lacks a fuller development, in part, due to his reliance on the belief in demons. Jerry Root, “Chapter 2 The Problem of Pain” in C. S. Lewis and a Problem of Evil, (Kindle Edition).

4 Lewis, Miracles, 406.

5 Ibid.

6 “We must limit ourselves to the general statement that beings in a different, and higher, ‘Nature’ which is partially interlocked with ours have, like men, fallen and have tampered with things inside our frontier.” Ibid., 410; Jerry Root, “Chapter 2 The Problem of Pain” in C. S. Lewis and a Problem of Evil, Kindle edition); Duriez, Bedeviled, 50.

Lewis traces evil to more than just human origins but to “superhuman powers” which the New Testament speaks of.7 Lewis sees the existence of the demonic as implicit in the revelation of God through nature and reason and explicit in the special revelation of Scripture, as he says, “Both God and Satan exist but people seem oblivious to this reality.”8 Just as there is a principle of goodness so too is there a principle of evil and if the principle of goodness is, as Lewis notes, not responsible for waste or cruelty then such evil is either derived from humanity or some opposing source.9

At this point two accusations could be levied at Lewis: dualism and supernaturalism. Regarding supernaturalism, Lewis is careful throughout his writings to defend human agency. Some of the evil we experience is created by ourselves,10 but this does not solve the equation of evil, part of it must be superhuman, which is to say supernatural. Lewis embraces the supernatural and sees reductionistic attempts to explain it away as a watering down, and weakening, of Christianity.11 He warns against this saying,

7 C.S. Lewis., “Evil and God” in C.S. Lewis Essay Collection: Faith Christianity and the Church, New York: HarperCollins, 2002, 95; Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 1940. New York: HarperOne, 2001, 86- 87.

8 Lewis in Anselmian tones uses the ontological argument to show that Satan cannot be God. “But since the two powers are judged by this standard, then this standard, or the Being who made this standard, is farther back and higher up than either of them, and He will be the real God.” Lewis, Mere Christianity, 55; Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 21.

9 Ibid., “Religion without Dogma?” in C.S. Lewis Essay Collection: Faith Christianity and the Church, New York: HarperCollins, 2002, 165.

10 “I am wondering how far we can ascribe to the work of the Devil those very legitimate desires that we indulge in. Some people have a very sensitive conception of the presence of the Devil. Others haven’t. Is the Devil as real as we think he is? That doesn’t trouble some people, since they have no desire to be good, but others are continually harassed by the Old Man himself.” Ibid., “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” in C.S. Lewis Essay Collection: Faith Christianity and the Church, New York: Harper- Collins, 2002, 323.

There must be no pretense that you can have it with the Supernatural left out. So far as I can see Christianity is precisely the one religion from which the miraculous cannot be separated. You must frankly argue for supernaturalism from the very outset.12

The supernatural then is part of Lewis’s apologetic and is intrinsic to the faith as air is to breathing. Hence Lewis’s work on miracles is, at its core, a work beyond natural agency. Still, in advocating for the supernatural, Lewis recognizes that he must also address both the divine and the diabolical.13 Regarding why there should be a denial of the supernatural, particularly the demonic, Lewis observes that,

…the more a man was in the Devil’s power, the less he would be aware of it.… It is the people who are fully awake and trying hard to be good who would be most aware of the Devil. It is when you start arming against Hitler that you first realize your country is full of Nazi agents. Of course, they don’t want you to know they are there. In the same way, the Devil doesn’t want you to believe in the Devil. If devils exist, their first aim is to give you an antiesthetic — to put you off your guard. Only if that fails, do you become aware of them.14

This echoes what we may call the “Lewisian Admonition”, which is most famously presented in The Screwtape Letters where Lewis warns his readers that,

there are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors…15

11 “I know someone will ask me, ‘Do you really mean, at this time of day, to re-introduce our old friend the devil—hoofs and horns and all?’ Well, what the time of day has to do with it I do not know. And I am not particular about the hoofs and horns. But in other respects, my answer is ‘Yes, I do.’ I do not claim to know anything about his personal appearance. If anybody really wants to know him better, I would say to that person, ‘Don’t worry. If you really want to, you will. Whether you’ll like it when you do is another question.’” Ibid., Mere Christianity, 59-60.

12 Ibid., “Christian Apologetics,” in C.S. Lewis Essay Collection: Faith Christianity and the Church, New York: HarperCollins, 2002, 156.

13 Ibid., “Religion without Dogma?” 165; Some at the N.I.C.E. are unaware of the Demonic forces at the helm. Ibid., That Hideous Strength, 198.

14 Ibid., “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” 323-324.

15 Ibid., Screwtape Letters, xlvii; cf. Duriez, 45.

Lewis uses this Admonition, or a variation of it, in Mere Christianity saying the reason why we do not execute witches today is “we do not believe there are such things.”16

If we did—if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather—surely, we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did.17

Since the Western world has opted for the Humean error we have tended to attribute the demonic to the influence of “soils, or air, or etheric tensions.”18 As such, demons act unawares to us as puppet-masters, while we seem to forget that the supernatural exists and has the capacity to affect [our] consciousness… without signs of “externality.”19

Lewis and the Unheimlich

Lewis, like many in the first half of the twentieth century (such as Freud), was fascinated by the unheimlich.20 Usually translated as “uncanny” unheimlich is a sense of being ill at ease, a type of fear and eeriness by what at first seems familiar but ultimately

16 Ibid, Mere Christianity, 18.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., That Hideous Strength, 198.

19 Ibid., The Problem of Pain, 21.

20 Marion Gibson, Imagining the Pagan Past: Gods and Goddesses in Literature and History since the Dark Ages, London: Routledge, 2013, 118; cf. Charles Hefling, “Charles Williams” Words, images and (the) Incarnation.” In C. S. Lewis and Friends: Faith and the Power of Imagination. Edited by David Hein, Edward Henderson. Eugene: Cascade, 2011, 73.

55 is not.21 Demonic possession would be one example, while ghostly hauntings would be another. Indeed, the “unheimlich arts” are none other than the occultic arts.22

Lewis argues that unheimlich is part of any experience of the supernatural, or numinous, a notion he took from reading Rudolf Otto.23 The numinous is our experience of that which is wholly other (the mysterium tremendum), which we generally identify as the supernatural.24 In The Problem of Pain Lewis contrasts two types of fear, one of a tiger and the other of a ghost. The latter fear, which the preternatural evokes in us, is unheimlich, and is at the “fringe of the numinous,” the antithesis of the awe.25 Essentially, unheimlich is our fear response when we encounter something “otherworldly” be it good or evil. Lewis perfectly captures this sense of unheimlich when he writes,

21 Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny” (1919) in Writings on Art in Literature, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997, 199-200; Paul Newland cited in Elizabeth Thiel, The Family of the Family: Nineteenth Century Children’s Literature and the Myth of the Domestic Ideal, London: Routledge, 2008, 178.

22 Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny,” 199-200.

23 Ibid., The Problem of Pain, 6-7; David H. Sick, “The Daimones of C.S. Lewis,” Literature & Theology, Vol. 22:2 June 2008, 152; Duriez, “The Romantic Writer,” 103-104; White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 113; As Doris Meyer observes, for Lewis, in Perelandra, the universe we inhabit is “stranger” and more beautiful than we at first suppose. Myers, C.S. Lewis in Context, 71.

24 Thomas points out that, for Otto, the numinous dealt with reality, meaning that the supernatural was genuinely real. Thomas, “From Joy to Joy: C.S. Lewis and the Numinous,” 109-112, 120; Adam Barkman, “Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy” In C.S. Lewis’s List: Ten Books that Influenced Him Most. edited by David Werther, Susan Werther. New York: Bloomsbury, 2015, 130; Martindale, Beyond the Shadowlands, 68; In That Hideous Strength Lewis uses numinous, even unheimlich language of a “haunting” to describe the dichotomy of Britain and Logres, or physical England and spiritual England. In a similar way Ransom in Perelandra feels haunted when he s on the Perelandrian sea and certainly Lewis evokes a sense of unheimlich through the Demonic, oracular Head of the N.I.C.E. Collins, C.S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy, 159; Sanford Schwartz, C.S. Lewis on the Final Frontier: Science and the Supernatural in the Space Trilogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, 81; Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, 112; Gilbert Meilaender, The Taste for the Other: The Social and Ethical Thought of C.S. Lewis. 1978, Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1998, 103.

25 Ibid., 7; White argues that Lewis’s sehnsucht being Augustinian in nature is further developed through Otto’s numinous as the awareness of God and our longing for the numinous. White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 113.

It is always shocking to meet life where we thought we were alone. ‘Look out!’ we cry, ‘it’s alive’. And therefore, this is the very point at which so many draw back.… God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband.26

Lewis’s angels are unheimlich as when Ransom first encounters them, as compared to Lewis’s presentation of Aslan who evokes as sense of heimlich and awe.27

In That Hideous Strength a character named Ivy observes that the angels who met with

Ransom are “eerie” and quite alien (unheimlich).28 Lewis admits that his angels are not the same as our more traditional notion of guardian angels they more powerful and otherworldly.29 Gunnar Urang notes, as does Lewis, this is not generally how we feel about God, especially Christ. The great difference for Lewis is that the Incarnation bridged the gulf between unheimlich and heimlich, the numinous and the mundane.30

However, our sense of unheimlich tends not to be associated with divine awe but terror, though Lewis acknowledges that coming face to face with God would inevitably have that effect also.31 We normally associate such fear, and particularly that kind evoked

26 Lewis, Miracles, 383-384. We encounter a similar experience when Jane first meets Ransom in That Hideous Strength or when the Pevensie children first meet Aslan. Ibid., The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, 1950, New York: HarperTrophy, 1978, 125-130; Meilaender, The Taste for the Other, 158; Holmer in a similar line argues that humanity needs to recover a child-like or youthful joie de vivre, which interestingly includes for him the child-like fear of hobgoblins (unhelimlich). Holmer, C.S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought, 85. Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 29, 37; Barkman, “Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy,” 130-131.

27 Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 1938, New York: Scribner, 2003, 115ff; Ibid., The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, 78-80, 126; Heimlich meaning familiar and welcome.

28 Ibid., That Hideous Strength, 256.

29 Ibid.

30 Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 33, cf. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 259.

31 Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 6-15; Martindale observes how Ransom’s encounter with the eldils provoke fear since they are “unalloyed goodness” Martindale, Beyond the Shadowlands, 68. Lewis describes Ransom’s first encounter with the oyarsa as a “tingling in his blood” something G. Urang argues is numinous through we would argue that it verges on the unheimlich. Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 15.

57 through the preternatural, as something dark and sinister—the demonic. Lewis describes this sensibility in his fiction as,

The infinite attraction of this dark thing sucked all other passions into itself: the rest of the world appeared blanched, etiolated, insipid, a world of white marriages and white masses, dishes without salt, gambling for counters. He could not now think of Jane except in terms of appetite…32

We generally identify this element in Romantic literature as Gothic yet Lewis is describing a phenomenon more precise than just a genre or the unheimlich itself at this point. It is the allure of the Gothic. Let us call this gravitational pull towards the Gothic and macabre as verführen,33 the snare of the Gothic. Lewis associates the verführen with the demonic, indeed he admits to feeling its allure and one of the reasons why he writes the Ransom Trilogy.34 When the hapless Mark is imprisoned by human villains, he comes under a demonic attack which Lewis describes thusly,

[Mark] did not doubt now that [the demons] were locally present with him in the cell —breathed death on the human race and on all joy. Not despite this but because of this, the terrible gravitation sucked and tugged and fascinated him towards them. Never before had he known the frightful strength of the movement opposite to nature.35

This is Lewis’s objection to delving too deeply into the mind of the Enemy which theorists such as Peter Wagner, with his spiritual mapping, perhaps engages in.36 Lewis revealed that The Screwtape Letters, were the least enjoyable of all his books to write,

32 Ibid., That Hideous Strength, 265.

33 Verführen meaning to ensnare, mislead, entrap, seduce, or to debauch.

34 Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 34.

35 Ibid., That Hideous Strength, 266; A similar attack happens to Ransom. Ibid., Perelandra, 120- 122.

36 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, 1954, New York: HarperCollins, 1995, 251, 258; For further discussion on Wagner’s spiritual mapping see chapter 4, footnote16.

58 even though they made his name in the United States.37 Having to put oneself in the mindset of the demonic was, for Lewis, unpleasant, depressing and spiritually dangerous.38

Lewis uses the numinous and the unheimlich in his writing, particularly in his fiction, not just as a means of smuggling theological concepts but also to help us access the mythic and transcendent elements which point outside of themselves to a higher reality. In this way Lewis’s fiction becomes a kind of apologetic aimed at getting his readers to open themselves up to the possibility of the supernatural.39

Lewis and Dualism

The other accusation that one might place to Lewis’s account is that of dualism.

Lewis, himself, expertly describes this third century heresy as,

…the belief that there are two equal and independent powers at the back of everything, one of them good and the other bad, and that this universe is the battlefield in which they fight out an endless war.40

He goes on to note that in dualism,

The two powers, or spirits, or gods — the good one and the bad one — are supposed to be quite independent. They both existed from all eternity. Neither of them made the other, neither of them has any righter than the other to call itself God. Each presumably thinks it is good and thinks the

37 Stephanie L. Derrick, The Fame of C.S. Lewis: A Controversialist’s Reception in Britain and America, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, 85-88.

38 Lewis, “Cross-Examination,” in God in the Dock, 263; “My own planetary romances have been not so much the gratification of that fierce curiosity but its exorcism” Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 34.

39 Sick, “The Daimones of C.S. Lewis,”152; Downing, Planets in Peril, 42, 44; Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 38; Philip Tallon. argues that Lewis is influenced in this regard by Augustine’s neo-platonic doctrine of plenitude, wherein we see the cosmos being full of life. The central aim then is to also discern the value in this plenitude in order to personally develop and grow. Meyer also notes how Lewis uses plenitude to elicit in his readers an awareness of the diversity in the cosmos, something that is now considered a staple in science fiction. Tallon, “Evil and the Cosmic Dance,” 206; Myers, C.S. Lewis in Context,” 44.

40 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 54.

other bad. One of them likes hatred and cruelty, the other likes love and mercy, and each backs its own view.41

Indeed, Lewis acknowledges how close he is to dualism and even argues that Christianity

“goes much nearer to Dualism than people think.”42 Yet Lewis affirms his orthodoxy by noting “The difference is that Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong.”43 Satan is not co-eternal or an independent power equal to God, rather Satan and his kingdom are subordinate preternatural created beings. If dualism were true “the bad Power must be a being who likes badness for its own sake.”44 Yet Lewis, echoing Augustine notes that,

To be bad, he must exist and have intelligence and will. But existence, intelligence and will are in themselves good. Therefore, he must be getting them from the Good Power: even to be bad he must borrow or steal from his opponent. And do you now begin to see why Christianity has always said that the devil is a fallen angel?45

While God can, in the Anselmian sense be pure goodness, Satan cannot be pure evil for evil’s sake. As Lewis understands Augustine to argue, the parasitic nature of evil means that we cannot truly speak of “pure evil’ in the same way that we can of goodness.46

Despite this Lewis does think that the West has adopted a rationalized form of dualism.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid., 59, cf. 54, Ibid., “Evil and God” 95; “Evil in fact is an invasion into a good universe. There are only two views, argues Lewis, which square up to the facts. (1) The view that we live in a good world that has gone wrong. (2) The view that there are two equal and independent powers battling in the universe, one good and one evil, and the battle will never end.” Duriez, Bedeviled, 96.

43 Ibid., Mere Christianity, 59-60; Vaus, Mere Theology, 109; Paradise Lost 5.837-843; Raymond, Milton’s Angels, 264; Ellen Muhlberger, Angels in Late Ancient Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, 44; cf. Augustine, Ench. 9.28; Aquinas, ST Ia.63.2; IIb.163.1.

44 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 55, 57-60; cf. Duriez, Bedeviled, 36.

45 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 57-59; Augustine, ep. 105.4; Jo.ev.tr. 3.7.

46 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 59.

In Perelandra the antagonist Weston shares with Ransom his worldview, a form of reductionism where God and Satan form a pantheistic dualism. For Weston everything in the universe is made up of “breeding pairs of opposites” such a Heaven and Hell, God and Satan. For Weston these seemingly polar opposites are really just manifestations of

“cosmic energy” or the “life-force” of the cosmos. Thus, God and Satan end up being the same thing. For Lewis this syncretism marks part of the demonic program of heretically turning humanity into a “Materialist Magician the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls ‘Forces’ while denying the existence of ‘spirits.’”47 In evolutionary terms, Satan represents the past stages of development, while God depicts the future development of humanity, a future that Lewis presents in That Hideous

Strength. 48 In that work Lewis engages with concepts that would later in the twentieth century coalesce into contemporary Transhumanist rhetoric around the abolishment of death, self-directed evolution, human augmentation and singularianism.49 This, for Lewis, is the ironic dualism of our age, a dualism of Hell which he rejects.

47 Ibid., The Screwtape Letters, 56; Lewis also refutes the materialist, epicurean worldview of avoidance of all pain and suffering, including death, at all costs. Ibid., “Why I Am Not a Pacifist,” 77.

48 Ibid., Perelandra, 80-81.

49 Lewis wrote That Hideous Strength in 1945 but the term “transhumanism” was popularized by Julian Huxley in 1957 (1887-1975, cf. “Transhumanism” in New Bottles for New Wine, London: Chatto & Windus, 1957, 13-17) but coined in 1940 by the Canadian philosophy W.D. Lighthall (1857-1954). (Harrison, Peter & Wolyniak, Joseph (2015). "The History of 'Transhumanism.'" Notes and Queries 62 (2015), 465–467; Notion espoused by I.J Good (1916-2009) in 1965 where the technology advances to such a degree that it cybernetically fuses into one, singularity. Notable contemporary futurists such as Raymond Kurzweil (1948-present) are adherents to this theory. Downing argues that scientism rather than science itself and its desire to defeat death has always been a rival to Christianity, we are reminded of Arthur C. Clark’s words that any sufficiently advance technology will always appear as magic. Downing, Planets in Peril, 37; Myers, C.S. Lewis in Context, 86.

Lewis’s Angelology

Angels, for Lewis, are “supernatural,” existing “outside [our Natural world] and have powers and a mode of existence which [our Natural world] could not provide.”50

Lewis depicts part of this mode of existence in Perelandra through the differing forms the angels take thus dispelling the Victorian imagery of angels as wingéd, effeminate creatures.51 However, Lewis, influenced by Aquinas, recognizes a quality which both angels and humanity share—reason.52

Lewis adopts a very traditional view of the demonic speaking of “a Dark Power in the universe—a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death and disease, and sin.”53 Again this Power is neither psychic nor nebulous but is sentient and malevolent, it stands as the force exacerbating all the worst passions of our nature including our cruelty and wastefulness.54 Lewis however is not dogmatic, noting that

50 Ibid.; When Lewis speaks of Nature it is in two ways: (1.) the Demonic perspective and (2.) the metaphysical perspective. The former view is one of distain wherein Nature, or the world of matter is a blight upon the dignity and nobility of the spiritual. The second view is Lewis assertion that the natural and the supernatural form a continuum. He argues that the demons have meddled in our world because they are to some degree part of nature, or a higher extension of it. Lewis also challenges out traditional notions of Nature when he argues that Nature is anything but “natural.” One way Lewis conveys this transcendent element where Nature is “lit up by a light from beyond” is when the angels in his trilogy are the planetary influences embodied. The eldila are more than just stereotypical beings but the powers behind the forces of Nature. A notion he associates with his understanding of archetype and one that echoes the angelology of Enochian literature. Ibid, That Hideous Strength, 199; Ibid., Miracles,409; Ibid., “The Weight of Glory,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, ed. Walter Hooper. New York: HarperCollins, 2001, 43; Ibid., Miracles, 453.

51 Ibid., Screwtape Letters, viii-ix; Downing, Planets in Peril, 42-43.

52 Aquinas, ST, Ia.57.5; 58.3; QDM, 16.6; Lewis, Miracles, 453; Other scholars such as Urang, Lee and Harmon note parallels between Lewis and Aquinas in regards to their angelology and theology in general. Harmon, “Nothingness and Human Destiny,” 238; Matthew Lee, “To Reign in Heaven or to Serve in Hell: C.S. Lewis on the Problem of Hell and the Enjoyment of the Good” in C.S. Lewis as Philosopher: Truth, Goodness and Beauty. ed. David Baggett, G.R. Habermas, Jerry Walls. Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press, 2008, 159; Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 14.

53 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 59-60.

54 Ibid.; Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 198.

62 none of the Creeds make reference to the Devil and some Christians may exist without necessarily involving the Devil in their faith, though Lewis cannot.55 For Lewis, the demonic is very real and stands as a rival power to that of God, which he depicts as a

“civil war, a rebellion.”56 In his fiction, Lewis describes this rebellion not as having drawn all of the universe into strife, rather “we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel. Enemy-occupied territory — that is what this world is.”57 This articulates Lewis’s premise in his Ransom Trilogy. In that work, the hero, Ransom, discovers that there is life on Mars and perhaps in other parts of the cosmos. Our world is a small part of creation and the rest of the universe is in harmony with Maleldil, or Christ.

The strife and struggle, the civil war is one that rages only on earth as a besieged world.58

Angelic Natures

To appreciate the true nature of the demonic beings who besiege us, and who are themselves besieged, one must attempt to grasp the heights from which they have fallen.

Lewis says that he believes in demons because he believes in angels.59 Lewis has epithets for angels, calling them “Light Ones,” as well as “the Powers” though he is referring to the fact that they have power and not necessarily using that term as contemporary academia tends to.60 They are powers because they are “high creatures” something unlike

55 Lewis, “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” 323-324.

56 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 59.

57 Ibid., 59-60 (emphasis added).

58 Ibid., Out of the Silent Planet, 122.

59 Ibid., The Screwtape Letters, xxxi-xxxii; Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, 43.

60 Lewis, Perelandra, 167, 101-103; Ibid., That Hideous Strength, 314.

63 us.61 Lewis speaks of angels as “high intelligences and “unsleeping minds” a clear allusion to Thomistic theology.62

Lewis’s Angelic Nomenclature

One of Lewis’s most innovative contributions to angelology is his invention of the terms “oyarsa” (or “oyéresu”) and “eldila” in his Trilogy.63 In his first book Ransom is abducted and taken to Malacandra, or Mars. There he meets a number of species which are governed, or rather shepherded, by the Oyarsa of Malacandra. Lewis takes this pastoral notion from Milton who, according to Raymond took it from Joseph Glanvill who argues that guardian angels were really shepherds of humanity.64

Ransom is a philologist, like J.R.R. Tolkien, which is how Lewis overcomes the proverbial language barrier between humanity and other forms of alien life. As such,

Ransom discovers that outside of Earth (Thulcandra) there is a universal language, Old

Solar, which is essentially the language first spoken in Heaven and by Adam and Eve.65

Thus, the term “eldila” in Old Solar is the term for angels and oyarsa refers to a tutelary

61 Ibid., 199; A significant body of academic work uses the term “the Powers” to describe the relationship of the demonic to society and the state rather than just as Lewis does regarding real malevolent beings cf. Hendrik Berkhof, Christ and the Powers, 1953, trans. John Howard Yoder, Scottdale: Herald Press, 1977; G.B. Caird, Principalities and Powers: A Study in Pauline Theology, 1954, Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2003; Albert van den Heuvel, These Rebellious Powers, London: SCM Press, 1966; Oscar Cullmann, The State in the New Testament, New York: Scribner, 1956; Markus Barth, Ephesians 4-6, The Anchor Bible, New York: Doubleday, 1960; Arnold, Powers of Darkness; Walter Wink, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1984 (Kindle Edition).

62 Lewis, Perelandra, 313-314, 259. Aquinas, ST 50; Stephen Bemrose, Dante’s Angelic Intelligences: Their Importance in the Cosmos and in Pre-Christian Religion, Rome: Edizioni di Storia Letteratura, 1983, 45; David Keck, Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, 86, 113.

63 Ibid., 188, 313-314.

64 Raymond, Milton’s Angels, 51, 232, 259.

65 Lewis, Perelandra, 22-23.

64 spirit, in this case something rather like an archangel charged with the care of a world and all the life therein. Satan, prior to his fall, was, in this framework, supposed to be the

Oyarsa of Thulcandra.66 However, he drew Humanity into sin and became the rebel

“Prince of this World” making the earth both his “headquarters” and his “stronghold.”

Thus, Lewis speaks of the “siege of Thulcandra,” a siege to keep God out.67

While it might seem as though Lewis has whimsically invented these terms, we know that he drew inspiration from his readings and his peers. For example, he derived the term “Oyarsa” from the Greek word ουσιαρχης (ousiarches) meaning the source of existence or a ruling essence.68 Meyer argues that the Oyarsa are essentially neo-platonic ideas, especially as Lewis depicts them in That Hideous Strength where they have wraith- like forms.69 Still others, like Clark argue that Lewis’s angels, though clearly different from biblical angels are still a mixture of philosophy, logic, and biblical imagery.70

Lewis uses the term oyarsa in Out of the Silent Planet to convey more than just static translation. When Ransom and Weston are brought before the Oyarsa the archangel speaks to Weston saying,

66 The literal name for this language is Hlab-Eribol-ef-Cordi meaning the language (hlab) of the fields (cordi) of Arbol (Eribol, meaning sun). Ibid., 22; Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 119-120.

67 Ibid., Mere Christianity, 61; Ibid., Out of the Silent Planet Silent Planet, 119-120, 142; Ibid., That Hideous Strength, 189; This is why Lewis calls demons “terrestrial eldils” and says that unlike the other eldila “the ones on our planet are hostile” Ibid., 189.

68 sv. “ουσιαρχης” Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon, http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/lsj [accessed August 13, 2018]; Lewis found the word in the Neoplatonist work of Bernardus Silvestris (d. 1178). Downing, “Rehabilitating H.G. Wells: C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet,” 21.

69 Myers, C.S. Lewis in Context, 88.

70 Clark, C.S. Lewis: A Guide to His Theology, 98, cf. Downing, Planets in Peril, 44; Vaus has even gone so far as to assert that Lewis’s angels are biblically-based, though this is difficult maintain considering Lewis’s amalgam of myth and philosophy into his angelology. Vaus, Mere Theology, 109.

I see now how the lord of the silent world has bent you.… He has taught you to break all [of the natural laws] except this one [survival] which is not one of the greatest laws; this one he has bent till it becomes folly and has set it up, this bent, to be a little, blind Oyarsa in your brain.71

Essentially, Lewis uses the term oyarsa to speak of something as more than just an essence or soul but of something that is a “lord” or a god, in this case a false god.72 The term eldila is probably a word Lewis borrowed from Tolkien since it bears a striking similarity to the Quenya word, eldar meaning “of the stars” and is the term the Elves call themselves.73 This celestial motif also recurs in The Chronicles of Narnia where we find that the stars of Narnia are actual people and they are similar to angels in that they are present at Narnia’s creation and at its final judgment.74

Angelic Hierarchy

Lewis’s angels follow the traditional view of having a hierarchy. Part of this hierarchy helped explain for Lewis what he calls “Neutrals,” heavenly beings beyond the

71 Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 138.

72 Clark, C.S. Lewis: A Guide to His Theology, 54.

73 J.R.R. Tolkien, Silmarillion, 1977, ed. Christopher Tolkien, New York: HarperCollins, 1999, 46; Ibid., War of the Jewels, ed. Christopher Tolkien, London: HarperCollins, 2010, 362; Letter # 211, October 14, 1958, Ibid., The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 1981, ed. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien, London: Harper Collins, 2006, 277-284. The term Maleldil is also similar to Meneldil, the son of Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings, and Earëndil, a hero and evening star on Tolkien’s mythos as well as Manwë the leader of the Valar who are essentially the angels of Middle Earth; cf. Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 155; Raymond also notes that the Miltonic angels have wings, symbolizing their speed, but they also have hair and crowns and clothing. They appear to be male, as well as youthful, fair and sempiternal rather like Tolkien’s Elves. cf. Paradise Lost, 1.768; 3. 352, 361, 626, 638, 10.893. Consider as well the physical form of Satan suffers diminishment and scarring (4.845; 1.601; 2.401) while the angels do not, a feature also expressed in Tolkien’s Melkor (Tolkien, Silmarillion, 112-113, 178-179). Raymond, Milton’s Angels, 269- 269; “Milton’s angels sing, watch 4.779-780, play games and exercise, eat 5.496, 632-635, sleep and make love (vs. Satan 4.508-511 R282), bear messages, interpret, bear witness, move the universe and above all, talk.” They also make mistakes. Ibid., 281, 272.

74 Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew, 1955, New York: HarperTrophy, 1983, 107; Ibid., Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 1952, New York: HarperTrophy, 1980, 204-210; Ibid., The Last Battle, 1956, New York: HarperTrophy, 1984, 171-181; cf. Job 38.7.

66 revelation of Scripture, of which the oyarseu, or planetary guardians, are one example.75

Lewis groups mythical beings such as “the gods, elves, dwarfs, water-people, the fates and longaevi” under the category of Neutrals.76

Lewis refers to “great eldila” and “great spirits” as well as lesser angels who serve these greater beings in their “spiritual ranks.”77 As Kilby observes, the angels organize themselves into hierarchies because they are good and “goodness is hierarchical,” a notion akin to the Platonic chain of being.78 Ransom refers to the oyarseu as his

“authorities.”79 The oyarsa of Malacandra has the power of life and death on his world and he speaks of having a “duty to my world.”80 The mere fact that they are authorities and guardians implies a level of hierarchy as Lewis notes “an archangel is “better” than an angel.”81 Lewis anticipates our modern objection to hierarchies in favour of egalitarian images of Heaven when Jane remarks, “‘I thought it was in their souls that people were equal’. ‘You were mistaken,’ said he [Ransom] gravely; ‘that is the last place where they are equal. Equality before the law, equality of incomes—that is very well. Equality guards life; it doesn’t make it.’”82

75 They are neutral not in their allegiance in the Cosmic War but in that they have limited or no interaction with humanity. Ibid., That Hideous Strength, 281-282; cf. Chapter 1; The oyarseu are similar but still distinct from our more common notion of guardian angels Ibid., 282.

76 Ibid.

77 Ibid., 289, 147; Ibid., Out of the Silent Planet, 118-119, 130; Aquinas goes so far as to argue that there are different classes of angels, a notion Lewis seems to avoid (cf. Aquinas ST Ia.108).

78 Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, 82.

79 Lewis, that Hideous Strength, 146, 314, 189.

80 Ibid., Out of the Silent Planet, 133, 137-138, 121; The angels also have the power to protect Ransom from Weston on his journey back to earth. Ibid., 141.

81 Ibid., 141, 121.

Lewis is not just referring to the difference in nature between angels and humanity which places them higher than humans in the chain of being, but he is also thinking of the differences between individuals.83 In this way Lewis is indebted to

Aquinas’s teaching that each angel is distinct, a nation unto itself.84 While Lewis does not fully embrace this idea, he does utilize it up to a point. In the same way Paul speaks of stars differing in their individual glory (1Cor. 15:41) so too do individual angels differ in their glory or ranking. Lewis does not limit this concept to angels only but also to the saints of God. In The Great Divorce, one is struck by how many seemingly insignificant people come to greet the ghosts from Hell. While the saints were quite mundane on

Earth, they are nevertheless resplendent and glorious, like a host of gods and goddesses.85

On Earth they were all equal before Christ, all in need of salvation but it was their individual approach to the ens realisumum that made them greater or lesser before God.

One way in which Lewis’s angels are unlike Aquinas’s pure intelligences and more like Milton’s spirits is that he presents them with a distinct form or image.86 Lewis lamented the “waterishly feminine” depictions of angels in modern times.87 On this point

82 Ibid., That Hideous Strength, 145.

83 Ps. 8:5-9; Heb. 2:7.

84 Aquinas, ST. Ia.50.4.

85 C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 1945, in C.S. Lewis Selected Books. New York: HarperCollins, 2002, 528; Ibid., “The Weight of Glory,” 46; Martindale, Beyond the Shadowlands, 2005, 81.

86 [August 7, 1957] “The view that angels have no bodies of any kind has not always been held among Christians. The old idea (early Middle Ages) was that they have bodies of aether as we have bodies of gross matter. The opposite view… was that of the great scholastics—Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, etc. …Of course, I just took, for the purposes of a story, the one that seemed most imaginable. I have no scruples about this because, religiously, the question seems to me of no importance. And any way what do we mean by ‘matter’? C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children, edited by Lyle W. Dorsett and Marjorie Lamp Mead, New York: Touchstone, 1985, 73; cf. Augustine, ep. 95.8; 102.20; en.Ps. 145.3; Gn.Litt. 6.19,24; Trederich Van Fleteren, sv. “Angels” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999, 21.

David Downing has observed that Lewis was even critical of Milton’s angels as too

Homeric with “too much anatomy and too much armour” and that he delighted in Dante’s

“unrivalled imagery” of angels.88 Lewis’s angels are what he calls “hypersomatic” referring to their complete “otherness,” (or numinosity) a form of embodiment that is more akin to that of the resurrected Christ who walked through walls, or the transfigured

Christ ineffable and glorious.89

As in the Scriptures, Lewis’s angels are technically sexless but not necessarily genderless, something we shall come back to.90 They are also immortal and since they are preternatural they do not need to breath, or reproduce, and are described as “sinless organisms of everlasting light.”91 Lewis goes to great pains to describe their ethereal qualities. They have real voices which is unlike Aquinas’s view, yet their voices are

“inhuman” and alien “bloodless” and “light-filled,” sweet, unshaking and remote like the chime of distant bells.92 This etherealness is only the faintest rending of the veil between worlds, just enough for the angels to speak to Ransom.93 When Ransom asks, “‘But do I see you as you really are?’” We are told that, “‘Only Maleldil sees any creature as it

87 C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, 1964, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, 75; Downing, “Rehabilitating H.G. Wells: C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet,” 22.; Ibid., Planets in Peril, 42; cf. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, viii-ix; Ibid., Perelandra, 169-172.

88 Downing, “Rehabilitating H.G. Wells: C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet,” 22; Vaus, Mere Theology, 116.

89 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 188.

90 Matt. 22:30; Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 188.

91 Ibid.; Ibid., Perelandra, 121.

92 Ibid., Out of the Silent Planet, 118-119; Ibid., Perelandra, 18, 167.

93 Ibid., 169-173.

69 really is.’” Lewis argues that how spiritual beings see, or comprehend each other is beyond human experience since we only ever comprehend something in part and never in its wholeness of time, scale and its experience.94 Tolkien comes close to this idea when

Treebeard explains that Entish names for things are really like stories or histories of the thing itself, hence the reason for their long, and unhasty language.95

The angels, according to Lewis, have bodies but their manifestation to humanity is through “manipulating the relevant parts of our brain.”96 This is why in Perelandra the eldila manifest themselves to Ransom in three different ways. The first manifestation is in Cherub fashion, cyclonic, bestial, and panoptic as well as a figure of infinite tesseracting geometric forms.97 The second manifestation is in hayyothic fashion of immense, perpetually moving concentric wheels, and then thirdly a humanoid manifestation. 98 Lewis is drawing on hekhalot imagery where there are seemingly different encounters with heavenly beings. Rather than argue that each of the differing encounters represent distinct creatures or species Lewis argues that they are all the

94 Ibid., 173.

95 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers, 1954, London: HarperCollins, 1995, 450-476; Tolkien patterned Treebeard on Lewis. Diane Pavlac Gyler, “Lewis in Disguise: Portraits of Jack in the Fiction of His Friends,” in C.S. Lewis and the Inklings: Discovering Hidden Truth, ed. Salwa Khoddam, Mark Hill, Jason Fisher, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012, 41.

96 Lewis, Perelandra, 169-172. Augustine argued that angels had some kind of spiritual matter but never defined what that meant while Aquinas famously saw angels as being incorporeal, something that both Milton and Lewis rejected. PL 6.350; Aquinas, ST Ia.52.3.; Lewis, Preface to Paradise Lost, 77, 109.

97 Ibid., Perelandra, 169.

98 The term hayyoth (or hashmillim) is part of Jewish angelology which refers to the creatures who carry the throne of God (merkabah) in hekhalot literature. They are generally called either cherubim, “living creatures,” or tetramorphs (Eze 1; Dan 7:7-13) in the Scriptures and Christianity. Ludwig Blau and Kaufmann Kohler, sv. “Angelology” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, www.jewishencyclopedia.com [accessed Dec 1, 2017]; Gustav Davidson, Dictionary of Angels, New York: The Free Press, 1967, 136; Lewis, Perelandra, 169-170.

70 same—they are all angels. 99 The reason why cherubim and seraphim appear to be different is because angels can manifest in vastly different ways, each being but a facet of their true nature. Lewis also seems to be influenced by Milton’s meritocratic view of hierarchy.100

The humanoid manifestations of angels is by no means a Victorian one in that they are nude, a motif Lewis uses throughout his depictions of Heaven.101 Their nudity is nonsexual and they are semi-transparent.102 Lewis seems to be drawing on Aquinas when he describes the faces of the angels as lacking “the hint of undeveloped possibilities.”103

They lack possibilities because they are fully realized as Aquinas argues, and so they are unchanging.104 Hence their expression is also “changeless” but their changelessness is a

99 Hekhalot literature is a genre of Jewish religious literature based on prophetic visions in the Scriptures which depict the presence of God and the denizens of Heaven. This form of literature also helps to form a type of Jewish mysticism known as merkavah mysticism. Blau and Kohler, sv. “Angelology.”; Lewis differs from Aquinas on this point since in Thomistic theology angels are not a race or species, or even several species, for the quality of being part of a species is derived from matter. ST. Ia.50.4.

100 For Milton, angelic ranks are not divisions of heavenly beings but rather titles or functions. These titles are not inherited but honorifically given by to God the angels. Milton’s hierarchy develops this functionary view by making such ranks meritocratic a notion antithetical to Thomistic theology. Raymond, Milton’s Angels, 262-265).

101 Lewis, The Great Divorce, 528.

102 Ibid., Perelandra, 169-172.

103 Ibid.

104 Both Aquinas and Augustine marked part of this difference in angelic epistemology. According to both, angels possess an intuitive form of knowledge and memory, when an angel knows a thing it knows it completely. If one were to say that an angel came to ‘know’ of the planet Jupiter it would comprehend all of what Jupiter is known comprehensively and immediately. Angelic memory, according to Augustine, is a faculty rather than an aspect of their essence. Contrast this to how human beings understand things in moments and through bursts of knowledge and insight, piece by piece. Additionally, for Aquinas angelic understanding is not the same as their existence and this is due to his view that understanding, which is an activity, is distinct from existence, which is true for all creatures. Aquinas goes on to unpack his concept of angelic knowledge by arguing that Angels know not only the created order intuitively but they also know themselves in the same way. There is no search for self-discovery or any quest to understand their psyche or nature, it is already grasped. Van Fleteren, 21; Raymond, Milton’s Angels, 30; Aquinas, ST 54.2,3; Ia.53.1-2; 56.2, 62.1; Mart Raukas, “St. Thomas Aquinas on the Speech of the Angels.” Freiburger Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und Theologie. 40. no. 1 (1996), 33.

71 kind of perfection which hurts and dazzles Ransom as a similitude of God’s perfection.

Like God their expression is that of perfect charity, rather like the archaic smile, but it is charity in its almost purest form, a numinous expression. Lewis describes it thusly,

…we always see either blossoming out of, or hastening to descend into, natural affection. Here there was no affection at all: no least lingering memory of it even at ten million years’ distance, no germ from which it could spring in any future, however remote. Pure, spiritual, intellectual love shot from their faces like barbed lightning. It was so unlike the love we experience that its expression could easily be mistaken for ferocity.105

Another part of the angelic form is that of immensity. All of the manifestations for Ransom are staggeringly gigantic. At one point they are thirty feet tall and their verticality is a defining feature looming straight up before the hero.106 The angels in The

Great Divorce are also gigantic figures who are “like emeralds.” 107 Lewis certainly has in mind Dante’s Purgatorio (VIII.28-30) and perhaps Henry Payne’s unfinished sketch,

The Valley of Vision (c. 1910) based on the same passage.108

Along with their size is their luminosity. Not only are they beings of light they are

“burning white like white-hot iron.”109 This luminal quality also pulses with aural colours which “began at about the shoulders and streamed up the necks and flickered over face and head and stood out around the head like plumage or a halo.”110 They also have long

105 Lewis, Perelandra, 169-172.

106 Ibid.; Ibid., That Hideous Strength, 147, 188.

107 Ibid., The Great Divorce, 477, 522, 528.

108 Kilby also suggests that Lewis’s “terrible surrealism” regarding the art of Hell may be an allusion to the works of the Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516). Kilby, “Chapter 11 Between Heaven and Hell,” in A Well of Wonder, (Kindle Edition).

109 Lewis, Perelandra, 169-172; Ibid., The Great Divorce, 522, 524-525.

110 Ibid., Perelandra, 169-172.

72 hair which sparkles, rather like the Stars of Narnia, and which seems to be in motion, blowing backwards as if they are in two dimensions at once or as if they are in perpetual motion at great speed.111 Indeed, the oyarsa of Malacandra says to Ransom, “I am not here in the same way that you are here.’ It was borne in upon him that the creatures were really moving, though not moving in relation to him. This planet which inevitably seemed to him while he was in it an unmoving world—the world, in fact—was to them a thing moving through the heavens.”112

The iridescences of Mars and Venus are distinct, the former being like metal

“cold and morning colours” while the later was warm, suggesting vegetative life.113

Throughout Lewis’s description of the eldila is the reference to them being in motion.

Lewis specifically speaks of them being in a state of pyric and aqueous undulation as if they were living waterfalls.114

Lewis moves from describing the angelic image into describing the nature of angels. As with their halo one notices how they are both uniform yet distinct as individuals. Lewis associates Malacandra with martial rhythm and Perelandra with melody, indeed there are moments where Lewis’s description in not unlike Tolkien’s

Galadriel.115

111 Ibid.; Ibid., The Last Battle, 173.

112 Ibid; Ibid., Out of the Silent Planet, 119; This is rather like Aquinas’s argument that angels compared to us are immaterial but in contrast to God they would seem to be very material. Aquinas, ST. Ia.50.1.

113 Ibid., Perelandra, 169-172.

114 Ibid.

115 Ibid.; Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, 345.

Gendered Archetypes

It is telling then that Lewis specifically associates his depiction of angels to that of the Aegina kouroi, those superb pieces of Archaic Greek sculpture with their almost elemental and primitive, martial presentation as if they were otherworldly. This elemental quality is part of the gendered nature of the angels. For Lewis the angels are sexless lacking genitalia and yet they possess gender, or to be more exact they are gender, masculinity and femininity itself. 116 As we have noted earlier Lewis uses archetypes throughout his work but he also sees archetypes as having a source. According Lewis gender is an archetype—a “heavenly archetype” descended.117 Sex is an “adaptation of organic life,” as such, our understanding of sexuality and gender is blurred and imperfect.118 The eternal and more true part of who and what we are is our genderedness.

It is something primordially rooted in us which is transcends psycho-analytical reductions or mere biology. Gender is something that the angels have and so it is something that we share in common with them as well as our rationality.119 Neither, angels nor humanity are the true source of gender—rather God is. It is impossible to ignore the Platonic influences here in Lewis for the angels take on the role of Plato’s ideas yet sentient and alive.120 As

Lewis writes,

116 Ibid., Perelandra, 169-172.

117 Ibid, That Hideous Strength, 314.

118 Ibid., Perelandra, 169-172.

119 Lewis also argues that worship is an act which humanity shares in common with spiritual beings. The worship of God is one of the few areas of life where “spirit and flesh, delight and labour, skill and worship, the natural and the supernatural, all fused into that unity they would have had before the Fall.” Ibid. “On Church Music,” in C.S. Lewis Essay Collection: Faith Christianity and the Church, New York: HarperCollins, 2002, 407.

There is no Oyarsa in Heaven who has not got his representative on Earth. And there is no world where you could not meet a little unfallen partner of our own black Archon, a kind of other self.121

In Perelandra and That Hideous Strength Lewis, rather like Charles Williams’s The

Place of the Lion (1931), attempts to imagine what such Platonic forms would be like if we encountered them.122 One but glimpses in Perelandra, but is given full payment in

That Hideous Strength where Lewis’s archetypes and Plato’s ideas are present in the oyarseu.123 In some ways this is the full realization of what a tutelary spirit would be and it certainly is the culmination of Lewis’s archetypal theory.

For Lewis ancient humanity’s pantheons of gods and goddesses, along with their mythologies were intuited from a sense of the numinous, glimpses of real angels, heavenly archetypes.124 This is also part of our unheimlich response rooted in duality of the familiar, such as the image of Zeus or Mars contrasted by the reality of the actual spirit.125 Where Augustine saw only idolatry and perversion Lewis saw elements of

120 Ibid., That Hideous Strength, 313-314; Judith Wolfe goes to far as to argue that Lewis’s whole view of Heaven and its creatures is Platonic. Wolfe “C.S. Lewis and the Eschatological Church,” 103, 106; Janice Brown, “C.S. Lewis and the Truth About Angels,” Journal of Inkling Studies, vol. 3:2, December 2017, 98; cf. Lewis, Discarded Image, 73 (as cited by Brown).

121 Ibid.

122 Downing, “Rehabilitating H.G. Wells: C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet,” 22.

123 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 314, 319-323; “…the cold assurance that Man’s destiny did not depend on his own efforts but on stellar movements which he could never resist or placate: that the little creatures who dreamed of controlling the winds and raising the dead were in reality only the stars’ tennis- ball.” Ibid., English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954, 14; Sick, “The Daimones of C.S. Lewis,” 156.

124 Ibid., That Hideous Strength, 265; According to D.H. Sick Lewis’s eldila are primarily reinventions of the Classical daimones of Apuleius and only tangentially discusses the Christian connection of the eldila as angels and demons. Sick, “The Daimones of C.S. Lewis,” 155-157, 195; “‘If the angels (who I believe to be real beings in the actual universe) have that relation to the pagan gods which they are assumed to have in Perelandra, they might really manifest themselves in real form as they did to Ransom’.” cf. C.S. Lewis, Letters of C.S. Lewis, ed. W.H. Lewis, New York: Harcourt Press, 1988, 479.

125 Gibson, Imagining the Pagan Past, 118; As Williams notes the figure of Merlin in the Ransom Trilogy is a figure “on the edge of Christianity and a deeper paganism” which is also true of what Lewis is

75 wonder and beauty.126 How could the two so co-exist? One of Lewis’s most innovative and celebrated essays Myth Became Fact argues that in ancient pagan religions there were glimpses of truth, good dreams given by God to humanity.127 Certainly, the good dreams became co-opted and corrupted by the demonic yet the pattern was there, as

Lewis writes, “gleams of celestial strength and beauty falling on a jungle of filth and imbecility.”128

This, then is the estate from which the demons fell and to some degree how we are to imagine them. For Lewis, the demons do not stride across the universe, nor do they move and guard worlds but they have imprisoned themselves on earth. They have cut themselves off from God. Hence the title of Satan as “lord of the silent planet.”129 Unlike

doing in much of his writings. Rowan Williams, “That Hideous Strength: A Reassessment,” (Kindle Edition); Lewis in Surprised by Joy describes himself as “converted pagan living among apostate Puritans.” Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 60; Kilby, “Chapter 11 Between Heaven and Hell,” in A Well of Wonder: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and The Inklings, (Kindle Edition).

126 Elizabeth Klein, Augustine’s Theology of Angels, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, 175; Gregory D. Wiebe, “The Politics of Possession: Demonology in the City of God,” Master’s Thesis, McMaster University, 2009, 61; Augustine, CD 2.24, 29; 5.23; 6.1; 8.14-22; 10.32; en.Ps. 47.3; 96.12; 103.2.22; ep.Ps. 102.34.

127 “He sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men.” Lewis, “Myth Became Fact: in God in the Dock, 63-67; This is what Lewis is trying to communicate when Jane and Ransom discuss how Jane cannot escape the cosmic masculine, a notion Williams draws from Milton. Rowan Williams, “That Hideous Strength: A Reassessment,” (Kindle Edition).

128 Lewis, “Myth Became Fact”, 63-67; This is Lewis’s argument for the Incarnation as well as his explanation for mythological patterns of the Incarnation such as Dionysus or Osiris etc. Ibid., Miracles, 400-401; Christopher Scarf, The Ideal of Kingship in the Writings of Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Cambridge: James Clarke and Company, 2013, 78-79; Lewis, Perelandra, 173; Lewis argues that the sense of wonder, awe and the miraculous, the good dreams from God, are what is earlier ages would have been called magia while the corrupting, enslaving occultic power of the Demonic over humanity and its verführen is goetia. Both magia and goetia are Latin terms often translated as magic yet Lewis observes how goetia is darker and more negative, most often associated with occultic practices. Ibid., English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama, 12.

129 Ibid., Out of the Silent Planet, 137; Thulcandra meaning silent world.

76 the rest of the cosmos earth alone does not praise God.130 Unlike Anselm’s argument that the home of Satan is Hell Lewis makes the earth itself and our Moon as his haunting places.131

Conclusion

To summarize, Lewis’s belief in the supernatural is not limited to God but includes the angels, and through them, his demonology emerges. Lewis’s dualism, while being non-heretical, is provocative as he suggests that Christianity and life in general is far closer to this polarity than we wish to admit. Lewis’s use of the concept of the unheimlich is a refreshing approach to describe our reactions towards the supernatural and his suggestion that such reactions are rooted in fact and not just human suggestibility.

Lewis’s angels draw on Miltonic and Thomistic elements as well as Augustinian theology yet his imaginative depictions help provide a deeper sense of the numinous and illustrate the magnitude of the demonic fall. The fact that Lewis also associates angels with the archetypal is compelling and often overlooked in Lewisian studies. His angels are figures that truly embody a sense of the unheimlich, beings that restore our sense of otherness and richness to theology. Having thus established Lewis’s use of the supernatural and his angelology we will now turn to his demonology and the importance of that doctrine in relation to the rest of his theology.

130 Ibid., Mere Christianity, 61; Ibid., Out of the Silent Planet, 142; Ibid., That Hideous Strength, 189.

131 Ibid., Out of the Silent Planet, 112, 119-120, 174; Satan is called the “lord of your world.”; Van Fleteren, 21; Sick, “The Daimones of C.S. Lewis,” 158.

Chapter 3

Finding Lewis’s Demons

Chapter 3

Finding Lewis’s Demons

Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to establish Lewis’s demonology and its importance to his understanding of humanity and salvation-history. Lewis’s demonology is predicated upon his view of angels and the resulting spiritual warfare (psychomachia) as central to his theology. Lewis’s demonology is traced through his understanding of the psychomachia and the role of pride in the demonic agenda. This agenda is further considered through the lies of survivalism and progressivism in Lewis’s works and how behind these lies is the agenda to corrupt humanity from the imago dei into the imago satanae which undergirds the demonic desire for possession. We then discover how

Lewis interprets this agenda through God’s plan of salvation, firstly through the

Incarnation which then leads into the preternatural theosis of humanity.

Lewis’s View of Satan

While we never directly encounter Satan in the Ransom Trilogy, with the possible exception of the Unman, Lewis does speak a great deal about him.1 Lewis makes no qualms about the real and spiritual existence of Satan holding the traditional position that

Satan is powerful, though created and fallen.2 The fall of Satan, for Lewis, is not unlike

1 Collins argues that the spirit possessing Weston is in fact Satan. Collins, C.S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy, 107.

2 Lewis, Miracles, 409; Ibid., Perelandra, 80-81; Duriez, Bedeviled, 35-36; For Lewis, spiritual beings are not mere mythological symbols but real entities their power is one of agency to intervene either for good or ill in the created order. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 119, 141.

Milton’s position.3 Satan was, next to God, the greatest spiritual being of Heaven.4 The reason for Satan’s fall is clear in Lewis’s mind—pride.5 Lewis aligns himself with

Augustine’s view that Satan transgressed in his self-determination and self-sufficiency rejecting God’s proper authority desiring to be his own master.6 Therefore, the fall of

Satan was a corruptio optimi pessima.7 Lewis repeatedly uses the metaphor of rebellion with Satan.8 Lewis, drawing from Milton, uses the oyarseu as guardians and shepherds of worlds,9 the difference being that Satan moved from being a protector to a mutineer. He

3 Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost, 100-107; Lewis, Perelandra, 80-81; Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, xlvii; Ibid., Mere Christianity, 59; cf. PL I.98 “injur’d merit” as compared to Lewis use of preternaturalism, or Satan as hierarchical head (V.798) and how Lewis retains Satan as the Demonic Head over the eschatological dystopia of Hell (V.688-689); Lewis uses the motif of Satanic degradation and diminishment, cf. Books IX and X. These elements are subsequently discussed further in this chapter.

4 Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 119-120; Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, xxxii.

5 Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 138; Lewis is using the Augustinian model of Satan’s fall. Vaus, Mere Theology, 72; White notes how Lewis uses Milton’s Paradise Lost which is essentially Augustinian in its view of lapsarianism. White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 122; Lewis, Mere Christianity, 63-64, 162; Lewis calls pride a “spiritual cancer” which consumes even the possibility for “love, or contentment, or even common sense.” Pride also lies at the heart of the psychomachia since, like Augustine, Lewis sees the psychomachia chiefly appeals to our sense pride. cf. Ibid., Mere Christianity, 167. Lewis also notes the irony of pride where, “Pride can often be used to beat down the simpler vices” and “…the devil loves “curing” a small fault by giving you a great one.” Ibid., 167; 170.

6 Augustine, Confessions 10.36.95; cf. Aquinas ST Ia.63.2, 8; Peter Fiore, Milton and Augustine: Patterns of Augustinian Thought in Paradise Lost, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981, 16, 19.

7 Latin proverb: Corruption of the best is the worst. Fiore argues that the reason why Satan’s Kingdom has endured and will till the eschaton is due to the near similitude of Satan kingdom and God’s, something he argues is linked to Satan being the greatest angel of Heaven before his fall. Fiore, Milton and Augustine, 17; Lewis, Mere Christianity, 284.

8 Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 138; Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 130; Lewis, Miracles, 415-417; Lewis, Mere Christianity, 59-60, 74; Lewis, “Evil and God,” 95; Lewis, Miracles, 415; Lewis, Mere Christianity, 70; White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 124. Lewis affirms that Satan’s fall was due to his freewill. In mythlike and Miltonian tones he says that Satan “…urged the blessed spirits to shake off their fetters, to escape from their imprisonment in happiness, to tear down the mountains with their hands, to seize Heaven ‘for their own’: Hell offered her cooperation. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 509; “The sin, both of men and of angels, was rendered possible by the fact that God gave them free will…” Freewill also bears the weight of humnaity’s fall and it is yet another thing we share in common with spiritual beings. Lewis, Miracles, 410.

9 Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 122.

82 did so by drawing humanity under his control.10 This is why “fallen man” in order to be reconciled to God must recognize that “he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.”11

Once we repent and surrender to God we have to recognize that we are in a real life-and- death struggle.12 We are, as Lewis puts it, in “enemy-occupied territory” during

“wartime” surrounded by “enemy spies” (demons) and the story of the Gospel is one of how God has “landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form.”13

The Foe in this struggle, as with the popular modern images of angels, is not the red, cloven-hoofed imp with a pitchfork.14 Rather, Satan and his demons are real and personal.15 Lewis uses the epithet of the “Hideous Strength” to denote Satan’s power, like some titanic figure. He is hideous in that he is horrific, the menacing unheimlich.

10 Lewis, Miracles, 416-417; “The Enemy persuades Man to rebel against God: Man, by doing so, loses power to control that other rebellion which the Enemy now raises in Man’s organism (both psychical and physical) against Man’s spirit: just as that organism, in its turn, loses power to maintain itself against the rebellion of the inorganic. In that way, Satan produced human Death.” Ibid.

11 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 74; cf. Matt 19:26.

12 Lewis, “Christianity and Culture,” in C.S. Lewis Essay Collection: Faith Christianity and the Church, New York: HarperCollins, 2002, 89.

13 Lewis, 68-69; Lewis also likens our spiritual battle to a chess game. Ibid., The Great Divorce, 141.

14 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 59-60.

15 Lewis calls Satan the “Bent One,” the “black Archon” the Prince over Hell, the Hideous Strength. Lewis invents the term “macrobe’ for the Demonic being the antithesis of the term “microbe” (small or lesser life) The macrobes are “above” animal life, including human life What makes them greater is that they are “more permanent, disposes of more energy, and has greater intelligence.” Lewis’s macrobes highlight Paul Hiebert’s point that Christian spirituality is multi-dimensional, or plenitudinal, rather than the binary God-man relationship. Ibid., “Christian Apologetics,” 154; Ibid., Out of the Silent Planet, 122, 119-120; Ibid., That Hideous Strength, 313-314, 285. The Demonic is part of the traditional Christian metaphor of Darkness. Lewis speaks of the Demonic being “darkened” as a kind of diminishment or lessening from their former state. makros + bios (μακρος+βιος) = larger (greater) + life. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 236, 355-356, 253-254, 256.; Ibid.; Lewis takes the Thomistic angel, being a pure Intelligence and applies it to the Demonic calling it ‘idiotic’ but also offering a Demonic lie that the macrobes (demons), in a rather transhumanistic way, are kept “artificially alive after the organic body has been dispensed with—a miracle of applied biochemistry. They do not need organic food. You understand? They are almost free of Nature, attached to her only by the thinnest, finest cord.” This is, for Lewis, what pure intelligence would be like as the antithesis of angelic intelligence. Ibid., 173.

Like angels, demons are “high creatures” and “unsleeping minds” but they are also “cruel idioc[ies]” just like the Damned.16 Lewis is drawing from Thomistic theology where angels are pure Intellects, so in contrast the demons are idiotic in the sense that they are foolish, since they are unable and unwilling to be restored to the intelligence of true angels.17 The Unman is a prime example of this when he torments Ransom through his “infantile” and incessant repetitions, yet when the Unman seeks to seduce the Green

Lady he is articulate and erudite.18 Ransom realizes that the rational faculty, which humanity and angels share, is used by the demonic only as a tool or “a weapon.”19 Thus,

Satan’s fortitude is dominant at the cost of his intellectual nature.

16 Lewis., Perelandra, 120-122, 154, 167; They are also called “dark eldils.” Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 198,199, 351; Lewis calls the Damned “idiotic ferocity” Lewis, The Great Divorce, 473.

17 Aquinas, ST, Ia.52.3.; Ibid., 80-81; as Urang puts it, the Demonic is both superhuman and also subhuman especially considering Lewis view of preternatural humanity. Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 18.

18 While the Green Lady is being tempted, we as reader a meant to see, through the lense of Screwtape, that she is under Demonic attack. Collins, C.S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy, 104; Harmon, “Nothingness and Human Destiny: Hell in the Thought of C.S. Lewis,” 245; Duriez, Bedeviled, 110; Kilby asserts that Satan of Milton and Goethe is witty and urbane while Lewis’s presentation of Satan is not. We find this argument flawed since the Unman is urbane and articulate and Screwtape is indeed witty, the difference is that such this are mere tools. Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, 50, 95; Myers, C.S. Lewis in Context, 61,69; Martindale, Beyond the Shadowlands, 153. According to Schwartz when the Unman says “nothing” in response to Ransom it implies the emptiness, the nothingness of perdition. Schwartz frames this encounter in Bergsonian terms by interpreting the Unman as a “devolution from a condition of flexible responsiveness and continuous development or a desiccated state of repetition and interminable sameness.” Schwartz, C.S. Lewis on the Final Frontier, 76.

19 Lewis, Perelandra, 110. Raymond notes that in Milton, which Lewis took inspiration from, the cosmic scale of his spiritual warfare became secondary to the idea of the psychomachia so that the civil war between angels also became a rhetorical struggle between Satan and the angels as well as with Adam and Eve. Raymond, Milton’s Angels, 275. The Demonic uses intelligence as a means of attack to assert its will over others rather than as an organ of truth. In other words, the Demonic is hateful and cruel simply because it can be, it is the end result of an antithetical worldview absent of God. Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, 95.

Lewis and Spiritual Warfare

This rebellion rages on even though we may, at times, be oblivious to it.20 We find this idea in the Ransom Trilogy where we are either willing or unwitting servants of

God or Satan.21 Many scholars recognize the theme of spiritual conflict in Lewis’s writings describing it as the “battle between heaven and hell” or the “struggle of angels and demons.”22 Indeed, the universe in Lewis’s theology is “a universe at war” which acts as a dualistic hermeneutic of light and darkness.23 Indeed, Paul Fiddes has gone so far as to say that an understanding of the “Dark powers” is key to comprehending

Lewis’s theology.24

20 Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, 91; Meilaender, The Taste for the Other, 102; Augustine also referred to the inuisibiliter dimicamus or “invisible war” and as Elizabeth Klein notes spiritual warfare lies at the very heart of Augustine’s angelology and by extension his demonology. Augustine, en. Ps. 31.1.4; Klein, Augustine’s Theology of Angels, 151; 176; “Theologian J. I. Packer points out that the idea of the Holy War, drawn from John Bunyan and others, as well as Lewis’s war experience, not only informs The Pilgrim’s Regress but “gives shape and perspective to Lewis’s output as a whole.” Duriez, Bedeviled, 126.

21 White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 152; Klein, Augustine’s Theology of Angels, 155, 175; Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, xlvii; This is similar to Augustine’s position that the Demonic is adept at the art of illusion and misdirection and due to this he argues that it is possible for people, even nations, to be enslaved to Satan without even being aware of it, hence Lewis’s Admonition.

22 In the Ransom Trilogy Lewis vaguely describes the angelmachia (a term coined by Thomas Heywood in 1635) as the “Great War” and the “longest and bitterest of stories” where Satan and his angels are driven out of Heaven back into his “own” world, Thulcandra, and is there besieged.22 Joad Raymond, Milton’s Angels,19; Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 119-120; Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 26, 23; White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 128; cf. Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, 91, 100; Thomas Howard, “The Triumphant Vindication of the Body: The End of Gnosticism in That Hideous Strength.” The Pilgrim’s Guide: C.S. Lewis and the Art of Witness. ed. David Mills. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, 142; Downing, Planets in Peril, 42, 47;

23 Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 34; Downing, Planets in Peril, 59; We see this expressed in the Augustinian concept of the two cities which Lewis adapts into St. Anne (Logres) and Belbury (Britain) referring to the duality innate in our world between the spiritual and physical worlds, the world as it ought to be, perfect and theocentric, and the world as it is, fallen and corrupt. Meilaender, The Taste for the Other, 102-103.

24 Fiddes “On Theology,” 95.

Judith Wolfe helps to develop this hermeneutic further by pointing out that

Lewis’s eschatology has two polemical points: (1) his sehnsucht argument and (2) his volitional argument. It is the human capacity for longing (sehnsucht) that speaks to the more primitive parts of our psyche and which inspires the human imagination (e.g., as in myths).25 The problem with sehnsucht is that it has no ability to tell us how we might achieve satisfaction for our longings. This, then, brings us to role of human volition.

Reason and supernatural acts, such a special revelation, are necessary to help us identify and analyze our longings. Ultimately the role of one’s will is essential into order to achieve the aim of sehnsucht.26

Judith Wolfe argues that Lewis’s use of militaristic imagery and metaphors is his appeal to the will. As has been noted Lewis’s theology is eschatological in aim and focus.

It is towards our ultimate teleological destiny that our longing is aimed and in order to reach that end our will must be employed, not to will ourselves into Heaven but to align ourselves in this life with God and to choose what is right—essentially to be in relationship with God. Wolfe points out that in The Screwtape Letters the present Church is contrasted with the eschatological Church, the Church Triumphant, and it is towards that future Church that our desire is found. In order to achieve that aim Lewis evokes the militaristic will to fight in order to achieve it.27

However, Lewis also uses the concept of spiritual warfare as intrinsic to the subject of demonology. It informs his understanding of humanity as well as his theology

25 Wolfe “C.S. Lewis and the Eschatological Church,” 107.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid., 106, 110-112.

86 of angels and demons. Lewis rejects humanity’s attempt to symbolize the reality of our conflict as mere anthropomorphizations. In Perelandra the conflict is not an abstraction but real. Just as it required the act of God, through the Incarnation, so too does it require real action from Ransom.28 Lewis goes so far as to say that Ransom’s inaction, and abstractions of reality make him culpable to any subsequent evils.29

Ransom however, asks a valid question: “How could he fight the immortal enemy? … It couldn’t be killed, could it?”30 Ransom’s fear echoes our own fear of real power. The term “power” is used to describe spiritual beings because they have capacities that truly dwarf humanity’s.31 In the Scriptures only one angel was needed to decimate human armies, how much more so a fallen angel? While God and His angels have rules and limits, the demonic, by contrast, are unscrupulous and so Ransom fears their torments.32 The reality is that there is no such thing as equal power in Lewis’s

28 Lewis, Perelandra 122-127; “Ransom remembered that the unclean spirits, in the Bible, had a horror of being cast out into the “deep.” And thinking of these things he perceived at last, with a sinking of heart, that if physical action were indeed demanded of him, it was an action, by ordinary standards, neither impossible nor hopeless.” Lewis, 123-124; Maleldil speaks to Ransom saying, “‘It is not for nothing that you are named Ransom… My name also is Ransom,’” Ibid., 126.

29 Ibid., 122-123; Thomas argues that the reason why Lewis holds this position is that to ask God to repeat Himself is to live in a kind of “image or memory” which is actually “fixed and static, a lifeless thing.” Thomas, “From Joy to Joy: C.S. Lewis and the Numinous,” 120; Duriez, Bedeviled, 113; Lewis reminds us of our providential protection as when Weston ends up ironically “chasing” Ransom right into the arms of the oyarsa, the very person who can help him. When the N.I.C.E. think they have Merlin they seemingly overlook Mr. Dimble. Indeed, all the Christians at Logres are “heavily protected.” When MacPhee complains about the seeming inactivity at St. Anne’s Lewis reminds us that God’s ways are not our ways. Our struggle against the Demonic is not rooted in flesh and blood and the seemingly dull practices of life, when given over to God are often the most powerful. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 118- 119; Rowan Williams makes a similar observation regarding the myopathy of the N.IC.E. in identifying who and where their real threat is. Williams, “That Hideous Strength: A Reassessment,” (Kindle Edition); Duriez, Bedeviled, 116; Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 189, 195-196. 225, 235; Lewis, Perelandra, 169; Isa. 55:8-9.

30 Ibid., 124; Myers, C.S. Lewis in Context, 70; Schwartz, C.S. Lewis on the Final Frontier, 77.

31 Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 134; Dan. 10:7; Eze 1:28-2:1; Rev. 1:17.

32 Lewis, Perelandra, 124-125.

87 demonology.33 The point is to recognize to whom Christians have allied themselves with—God.34 What is asked of us is obedience and action by faith patterned for us by

Christ’s victory on the cross.35

The Psychomachia

Within our world Satan and his angels have taken on certain roles, the chiefest being the corruption and depravity of creation.36 To this end Lewis offers us a keen

33 Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, xxxii.

34 Ibid., 122.

35 Rom. 8:31.

36 Lewis, Miracles, 409-410; Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 256, 138-139; Indeed, they have sinister aims and agendas for humanity and this world. An example of this agenda, in That Hideous Strength, is when Mark enters the Objectivity Room, which functions as the inner sanctum or adyton of the temple (naos) for the sinister National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments. In that room he is surprised by the quasi-religious art present. Later, two N.I.C.E. leaders, Deputy Director John Wither and the apostate Anglican priest, Straik force the corpulent scientist Dr. Filostrato into this adyton where the idol, or simulacrum dwells. It Demonically utters, “Adore” whereupon Wither and Straik sacrifice Filostrato while chanting “Ouroborinda! Ouroborindra! Ouroborindra ba-ba-hee!” The idol is the severed head of a criminal which is animated, not by science but by goetia. Elsewhere, Straik’s Demonic creed is revealed, “You will look upon one who was killed and is still alive. The resurrection of Jesus in the Bible was a symbol: tonight, you shall see what it symbolized. This is real Man at last, and it claims all our allegiance.” The point that Lewis is making here is one which echoes Augustine: Demons desire to be worshipped and to heretically pervert true worship, the end being the corruption of humanity. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 174; Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 55; Humphrey notes how Straik’s religious language is not just heretical but bent, just like Satan. Humphrey, “Chapter 7” in Further Up and Further In: (Kindle Edition); Lewis, Allegory of Love, 1936. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, 103, 124; Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 295, 351-352; The chanting is not unlike the ecstatic Bacchanalian rites where the Bacchanal entered as state of ἒνθεος (entheos), or possession by the deity. David E. Aune, Prophecy the Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983, 33-34; Karen Armstrong, The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, New York: Anchor Books, 2007, 222; The word ‘ouroborindra’ seems to be derived from ouroboros, the “bent” incurvatio serpent consuming its own tail. The ouroboros is an ancient religious symbol is present in Egyptian, Greek and Occultic art and has various interpretations. The most common being that the serpent represents the eternal cycle of the cosmos, or eternity itself. It may represent the Demiurge which has been associated with Satan in different traditions. Micah Issitt, Carlyn Main, Hidden Religion: The Greatest Mysteries and Symbols of the World’s Religious Beliefs, Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO LCC, 2014, 80-81; The idol Head is animated not by science but by goetia. Lewis views magic as being either supernatural or preternatural and he uses the Latin terms magia and goeteia to describe two sides to magic. Magic is bound up with Nature, or more specifically the alteration of Nature from its normal course. In this sense the Gospel is “magical” or supernatural story, but one rooted in fact, which is the fundamental argument for his essay Myth Became Fact. In this sense magic or magia is also part of the numinous and something beyond our control. Magic as goeteia is our attempt to control Nature either directly or through some other agency, such as demons, and is both dangerous and foolish. For Lewis, while humanity may have shed superstition it’s Baconian

88 insight into the psychology of sin as the primary ground of our spiritual conflict.37 Lewis admits that demonic activities include causing different forms of sickness, though,

“God’s wrath” and nature itself are also causes of the same.38 For Lewis demonic possession and oppression feature more than demonic illness in his writings.

A central concept of Lewis’s demonology is that of the psychomachia, the inner war of the soul.39 That is not to say that the psychomachia is less real than demonic possession. Lewis is deadly serious when he says, “There is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counter-claimed by Satan.”40 The real estate of the soul undergirds The Screwtape Letters. It is the soul that is most prized because it is what God seeks to redeem since the soul is the only thing of real worth.41

conquest of Nature through science is a form of goeteia. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 283; Lewis, Abolition of Man, 1943, in C.S. Lewis Selected Books. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.726; Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, 1964. In C.S. Lewis Selected Books. New York: HarperCollins, 2002, 290; Meyer notes Lewis’s point about how science has become the twin of magic and how there are two reason why one wishes to study nature (1) the pursuit of truth or (2) the desire to control nature which is essentially the aim of magic. Myers, C.S. Lewis in Context, 86, 109.

37 Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, 38; Martindale, Beyond the Shadowlands, 78.

38 Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 139, 157; Luk. 13:16; I Cor. 5:5; 1 Tim. 1:20.

39 Lewis recounts the term as being taken from the fourth century poet Prudentius who poem by the same name becomes the “favorite theme of the Middle Ages” as “the battle of the virtues and the vices.” Lewis also calls this warfare the “Holy War” or “bellum intestinum” the inner war. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 502; Lewis, Allegory of Love, 69; Rowan Williams describes Lewis’s use of the psychomachia, and in particular Lewis’s understanding of Demonic temptation, as the “phenomenology of evil.” Williams, “That Hideous Strength: A Reassessment,” (Kindle Edition).

40 Lewis, “Christianity and Culture,” 89; Vaus, Mere Theology, 111; Lewis may have in mind Haldane’s words in Daedalus that “there can be no truce between science and religion.” Myers, C.S. Lewis in Context, 41.

41 As Screwtape chillingly advises, “secure his soul, he will then be yours forever—a brim-full living chalice of despair and horror and astonishment which you can raise to your lips as often as you please.” Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 4.

The psychomachia, for Lewis, operates through the Three Foes, the world, the flesh, and the Devil, and Lewis has no problem accepting the teaching of the Three Foes as independent realities.42 The ego for Lewis corresponds to the Flesh, (cardus) but the demonic has the power to tempt and exacerbate the ego. Lewis defines temptation as the

“solicitation of the will”43 which is what he describes in Mere Christianity:

What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’—could set up on their own as if they had created themselves—be their own masters — invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God.44

Note how it is Satan who puts ideas into our heads, how he has the power of suggestion.45

Lewis goes on to say, “What I call ‘My wishes’ become merely the desires thrown up by

42 cf. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 135; Lewis, Allegory of Love, 365; Lewis, “The Inner Ring,” 143; It ought to be noted that Duriez connects Lewis’s contemplation about modern warfare with the more cosmic aspects of spiritual warfare. Duriez, Bedeviled, 24.

43 Lewis, “The Pains of Animals,” in C.S. Lewis Essay Collection: Faith Christianity and the Church, New York: HarperCollins, 2002, 194; Behind every temptation is a demon and all temptations are a derivation on the first and chiefest of sins—pride. Klein, Augustine’s Theology of Angels, 154, 157, 171; Demonic temptation, according to Aquinas, can takes place in two ways, by visible and invisible temptation. The former is a kind of physical Faustian manifestation found in popular culture. The later form of temptation is a more common motif that most often is expressed as psychomachia. By either mode of temptation, one means the subtle art of persuasion via deception and outright lies and confusion making what is false appear true and what is good appear evil. Aquinas, QDM 3.4; Benjamin McCraw, Philosophical Approaches to Demonology, ed. Benjamin W. McCraw and Robert Arp. New York: Routledge, 2017, 31; Vaus, Mere Theology, 111. White notes how the subject of sin, in modern times, fails to be taken seriously in general and also within theology itself. White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 125.

44 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 65.

45A perpetual question is over the ability of demons to read our thoughts. in That Hideous Strength. According to Aquinas angels and demons communicate through a kind of telepathy of will regardless of distance or obstacle. Aquinas resolves the problem by saying they ‘impress’ (impressa) their thoughts and presence on the minds of men which is a something we see also expressed by Lewis. Jane, is sought due to her clairvoyance but once she joins Ransom her mind becomes closed to the demons. Lewis goes no to say that the demons cannot “direct vision into the minds of men.” The key here is to understand that such telepathy is rooted in the will. Jane becomes unreadable or detectable by the demons because she has freely chosen to side with Ransom which means she us also under the protection of God. Similarly, when Weston becomes possessed, he does so through an act of freewill and invites the Demonic into himself. In The Great Divorce Lewis recognizes that we are innately sinful and therefore not all thoughts are Demonically influenced. Additionally, neither Lewis’ angels or demons are omnipotent or omniscient (e.g. Malacandra is unaware of the Incarnation cf. 1Pe 1.12). Lewis, The Great Divorce, 497; cf. Kilby suggests that Weston

90 my physical organism (the flesh) or pumped into me by other men’s thoughts (the world) or even suggested to me by devils (the devil).”46 Humankind is actually demonized far more often than we may first suspect. It is our minds that are constantly under attack and ensnared as the frontline of our struggle.47

The chief lies and temptations of this conflict, for Lewis, are progressivism and survivalism.48 These two lies reoccur in Lewis’s writings often in his Ransom Trilogy.49

is already possessed. Kilby, “Chapter 4 Everyman’s Theologian,” in A Well of Wonder, (Kindle Edition); Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 138, 119-120, 122; Lewis, Perelandra, 169; Lewis, “Scraps,” in C.S. Lewis Essay Collection: Faith Christianity and the Church, New York: HarperCollins, 2002, 346; Clark, C.S. Lewis: A Guide to His Theology, 54; Downing, “Rehabilitating H.G. Wells: C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet,” 21-22; Lewis’s views on spiritual telepathy seem to be influenced by both Augustine and Aquinas. Augustine argued that angels could read one’s thoughts since their bodies were so fine as to enter the body and influence one’s mind. Aquinas argued that demons cannot read our thoughts since they cannot predict freewill and our thoughts are connected to our will. Demon however, can anticipate our behavior. As Pasnau observes, it would be like seeing the whole workings of an engine but not being able to tell which gear the engine was in or would be in. Aquinas, QDM, 16; Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Study of ‘Summa Theologiae’ Ia 75-89, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 357; Therese Scarpelli Cory, “Attention, intentionality, and mind-reading in Aquinas’s De malo q.16, a.8” in Aquinas’s Disputed Questions on Evil: A Critical Guide, ed. M.V. Dougherty, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, 167-173; Augustine, CD 8.21; Divi.daem. 5.9; Van Fleteren, 21; Lewis, “Demons” 267; Raymond, Milton’s Angels 284.

46 This citation offers a clear articulation of the interplay of the World, the Flesh and the Devil. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 296.

47 Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, xxxii; cf. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 295; Lewis, Perelandra, 123; Heresy is essentially a lie and was often associated with the work of Satan in the Patristic period and Lewis shared this notion. Lewis would have also found heresy as one of the seven foes in Prudentius’s Psychomachia. Examples of Lewis’s use of heresy include Screwtape and “the Same Old Thing” (the fear of Monotony/Constancy) as well as Weston’s heretical soliloquy in Perelandra and in Out of the Silent Planet (e.g. oyarsa reveals how Weston’s worldview is false and how it is Satan who has instilled it in him), or with Jadis and her false conception of the Deep Magic. Lewis argues that “like all powerful lies, it is based on a truth” all in the effort to mislead us. Thus Satan, for Lewis, is “God’s Ape,” like Shift in The Last Battle. David W. Bercot, A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs, Peabody: Hendrickson, 1998, 202; Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 91; Lewis, Allegory of Love, 88 n.60; “Discordia dicor, cognomento Heresis…” “I am called Discord, and my other name is Heresy.” Prudentius, Psychomachia, lines 709-710, in LOEB Classics, vol. 387, Prudentius, Preface. Daily Round. Divinity of Christ. Origin of Sin. Fight for Mansoul. Against Symmachus 1., vol. 1, trans. H.J. Thompson, Loeb .87, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949, 328; Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 257; Lewis, Perelandra,80-83; cf. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 120, 122, 134-140; Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew, 174-177; Lewis, Mere Christianity, 134; “As all accomplished liars do, he makes his lies as like the truth as he can…” Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 91. 48 White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 197

49 As when Weston enters Malacandra with the ultimate aim to colonize that world. He holds that humanity has an innate right to cosmic colonial, imperialistic expansion because he falsely believes that

Lewis rejects the notion that by the supposed merits of human technological advancement, humanity’s superiority is proven.50 Life is, in this paradigm, an end in itself.51 Yet Lewis easily demolishes this lie when he notes that those who die, be they

Saints or the Damned, have “‘survived’ already.52” Lewis rejects the moral relativism and the supposed good of survivalism. Instead, he argues, God does not want his creation to live or just limp along surviving but He wants humanity to grow and flourish.53

Instead of God’s kind of progress the analogous Satanic distortion is the lie of technological progress. Technological progress is a means of attaining the survivalist end, when the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.) has supposedly reanimated the head of Francois Alcasan they see it as gift. It is the new direction of human progress.54 Lewis argues that the Head, rather than being the “New Man” is

either there is no other life in the cosmos, or that all alien life is evil. Even when he is confronted by the indigenous life on Mars, he argues that it is “Our right to supersede you, it is the right of the higher over the lower.” We note the blatant and prideful elitism, the cosmic racism here. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 122, 134; Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 14.

50 Ibid., 121-122.

51 Ibid., 135.

52 Lewis, The Great Divorce, 487; [Weston:] “Soon they go on another world.” [Oyarsa:] “But do you not know that all worlds will die?” [Weston:] “Men go jump off each before it dead—on and on, see?” [Oyarsa:] “And when all are dead?” Weston was silent. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 138; In That Hideous Strength, Frost blindly argues that existence is its own justification and all moral concerns are both pedestrian and subordinate. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 292; “Life is greater than any system of morality; her claims are absolute.” Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 135.

53 Ibid., 122, 138; White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 98; John 10:10; Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 138.

54 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 125; This heresy is corrected by Lewis in Reflection on the Psalms when he notes, “Christ has ascended into Heaven. And in due time all things, quite strictly all, will be subjected to Him. It is He who having been made (for a while) ‘lower than the angels,’ will become the conqueror and ruler of all things, including death and (death’s patron) the devil.” Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 108; The NICE is anything but nice in the colloquial sense and Lewis is alluding to the original thirteenth century meaning of the word ‘nice’ (Latin, nescius) meaning ignorant, unknowing or foolish and senseless which is something that Deputy Director Wither is, and which reflects Lewis understanding of the Demonic as “idiotic.”

92 instead a “filthy abomination,” a plagiary of Christ.55 The “New Man” or “new species” spoken of is dangerously close to the rhetoric of present day Transhumanism as a form of selective evolution something Lewis warned of in The Abolition of Man (1943).56

The Satanic Image

The battle for the souls of humankind is a war over whether or not we will be made fit for Heaven (theosis), or fit for Hell.57 We may call this the difference between the Godly Image, or person (imago dei), or the Satanic Image. or person (imago satanae).

In the former God indwells the Christian, as part of theosis culminating in the apotheosis of the soul.58 Lewis describes this as humanity becoming like God in the sense that we become reflections of Him.59 Part of the result of this is the teleological contentment humanity seeks and for which it was made.60

55 1Corinthians 15:20-28; cf. 2Cor. 5:17; Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 193-194; cf. Lewis, Abolition of Man, 726; Lewis, Mere Christianity, 79.

56 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 201; cf. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama, 12; Lewis, Miracles, 401, 414, 454.

57 Perhaps atheosis; Lewis, Mere Christianity, 81; On the point of the Demonic being “madness, horror, idiocy, rage” Lewis is appealing to the Augustinian notion that demons lack any real self-control over their desires and passions.

58 cf. Rudi de Velde, Aquinas on God: The ‘Divine Science’ of the Summa Theologiae, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006, 157. According to Augustine the believer, through sanctification (or perfection), is in the process of becoming new creations akin to angels, something prefigured by preternatural Adam. Augustine, en Ps. 74.1; Klein, Augustine’s Theology of Angels, 167; Clark, C.S. Lewis, 124; Habets objects to the use of the term “apotheosis” on the grounds that it is an erroneous Neoplatonic pagan notion. However, Urang uses the term and considering Lewis use of, and view of myth as well as his Platonism, this term should be considered less objectionable as part of a semantic range of communicating Lewis’s idea of sanctification. Habets, “Mere Christianity for Mere Gods: Lewis on Theosis,” 116; Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 12. 59 Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” 43, 46; Lewis, Perelandra, 123.

60 Lewis writes in The Great Divorce, that human teleology is “‘For infinite happiness,’” and depicts this happiness or contentment in Out of the Silent Planet thusly, “…one thing we left behind us on the harandra [highlands]: fear. And with fear, murder and rebellion. The weakest of my people does not fear death. It is the Bent One, the lord of your world, who wastes your lives and befouls them with flying from what you know will overtake you in the end. If you were subjects of Maleldil you would have peace.” Lewis, The Great Divorce, 499; Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 138-139.

Scholars have noted how Lewis uses the concept of theosis, a notion more common to the Eastern Orthodox Church.61 Lewis encountered this idea in the works of

Athanasius who asserted that Christ became human so they we might become like God.62

Essentially theosis is comparable to Western Christianity’s doctrine of sanctification, the process of becoming more Christ-like, generally understood to start at the point of salvation.63 It is the element of one being in process (in statu viae), of becoming more and more like Christ (perichoresis) which is key.64 It is, as Peter Bouteneff has noted, an infinite process of being in relationship with Christ which points to our eschatological

61 White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 200; Chris Jensen, “Shine as the Sun: Lewis and the Doctrine of Deification.” In Pursuit of Truth. October 31, 2007. www.cslewis.org/journal/shine-as-the-sun- cs-lewis-and-the-doctrine-of-deification/ [accessed December 10, 2018].

62 The term theosis has been variously translated as deification, divinization, even the term apotheosis has been used. Ware, “God of the Fathers: C.S. Lewis and Eastern Christianity,” 67; Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 12; Jensen, “Shine as the Sun,” [accessed December 10, 2018]; Lewis called Athanasius a “master mind.” Athanasius, On the Incarnation: The Treaties De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, ed. and trans. Penelope Lawson, CSMV, 1946, New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1981, xviii; Habets, “Mere Christianity for Mere Gods: Lewis on Theosis,” 114; The Greek phrase being, “Αυτος γαρ ενηνθρωπησεν, ἳνα ήμεις θεοποιηθωμεν” The Greek word (θεοποιηθωμεν, theopoiēthōmen from theopoiēō ) being a compound of theo, god, and poieō, meaning to make or compose, as in a piece of poetry (e.g. Eph 2.10). This term usually appears as theopoiesis in the literature and is a synonym for theosis; Habets, “Mere Christianity for Mere Gods: Lewis on Theosis,” 114; Tallon, “Evil and the Cosmic Dance,” 208.

63 Clark, C.S. Lewis, 125, 151.

64 A trinitarian term applied to sanctification to evoke the notion of being included in, or interwoven into a relationship with God. Another term sometimes used to connote this is epektasis, referring to the infinite process of theosis. Fiddes “On Theology,” 91; Ware, “God of the Fathers: C.S. Lewis and Eastern Christianity,” 68. Lewis describes God as being dynamically active rather like “a kind of dance” (Lewis, Mere Christianity, 143), the heart of the Cosmic Dance and as Habets notes the true end of theosis is in the perichoresis of God. Habets, “Mere Christianity for Mere Gods: Lewis on Theosis,” 121; Jensen, “Shine as the Sun,” [accessed December 10, 2018]. Ware also notes Lewis’s trinitarian view on prayer as being “drawn into the whole three-fold life of the three-personal Being.” He goes on to connect this trinitarian view with the notion that Christ as the Logos created in the universe an “inner logos” that draws or connects us to our Creator. This is essentially Lewis’s view of sehnsucht. Ware, “God of the Fathers: C.S. Lewis and Eastern Christianity,” 60, 63; To be the Godly Man or Human is to be an “everlasting splendor” but to be the Satanic Man or Image is to be an “immortal horror.” Lewis, The Weight of Glory, 46; White remarks that Lewis is concerned by what it means to be human and this concern is reflected in Lewis’s fiction. White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 2008, 123; Tallon, “Evil and the Cosmic Dance: C.S. Lewis and Beauty’s Place in Theodicy,” 206.

94 and beatific destiny, which we share in common with the angels.65 Jensen and Allchin note the importance of this theological concept to our sense of God’s immanence in contrast to our world’s “false supernaturalism.”66

Conversely, what does it mean to become the Satanic Image in the context of Lewis’s demonology? The term imago satanae was first used by Flacius Illyricus (1520-1570), a

Lutheran, who argued that the fall of humanity resulted in a complete loss of the imago dei. Instead a new image was imprinted upon humanity, that of Satan.67 While Lewis did not hold to Flacius’s theory the concept of humanity becoming a restored image of God, or the full realization of Satan’s likeness, did. As Moltmann observed, “[the] human being never ceases to be an imago… the person always reflects what he most fears and what he most loves.”68 In Lewis’s case what humanity most loves is itself (pride) and what we most fears is death, or rather the unknown beyond death. What lies beyond the veil of death is not annihilation and emptiness but life as the Satanic Image.69 The true

65 As cited by Habets, “Mere Christianity for Mere Gods: Lewis on Theosis,” 111, 128; Clark, C.S. Lewis: A Guide to His Theology, 125; Fiddes “On Theology,” 91; White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 123; Holmer, C.S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought, 80, 86.

66 Allchin notes the delinquency of modern theology concerning this teaching and, as Jensen rightly observes, how this is not so with Lewis. As cited by Jensen, “Shine as the Sun: Lewis and the Doctrine of Deification.” [accessed December 10, 2018].

67 Richard Mueller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996, (Kindle Edition).

68 Jurgen Moltmann, God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God, trans. Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993, 234.

69 Connolly argues that Lewis sees Hell as the antithesis of John 10:10 where Christ says that He has come to give humanity abundant life. Hell then is where one received death and that in abundance Connolly, Inklings of Heaven, 12; Clark, C.S. Lewis, 102; Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 127-128; Holmer describes Lewis’s view of humanity as the “drama of becoming a personality” the aim being “not to assert oneself against everybody and everything as much as it lies in becoming self-cognizant and learning to do what one must… we become personalities only be having heart, by developing warmth and compassion, and living in love and hope.” By contrast we may argue that to enter Hell is the drama, or tragedy, of having been a personality, even a flawed and imperfect one which the promise of theosis offers to remedy. Holmer, C.S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought, 82, 85.

95 aim of the demonic is not to just dehumanize humanity, for as Benjamin McCraw notes to be truly possessed means to become demonic; to become the most corrupt version of ourselves, a complete rejection of the imago dei, and this is the very definition of perdition, the destruction of the soul.70

Lewis uses a number of images and metaphors to depict this hellish agenda at the heart of his demonology. He speaks of the “Unman” as well as the “creature of Hell” and the two are intimately linked.71 The term “unman” and the German word unmensch share a similar history in that they both refer to the inhuman brute. Unmensch is also infamous for being used by the Nazis as a dehumanizing term for Jews.72 Considering the racist tone to the N.I.C.E. this similarity is not surprising.73 The language of the N.I.C.E. is one of dehumanization. In That Hideous Strength Mark realizes that far from becoming the hoped for ubermensch, the new race, to submit to the Macrobes (demons) would end up

70 G.R. Evans, Augustine on Evil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, 104; McCraw, “Augustine and Aquinas on the Demonic,” 23-24, 32, 34; Aquinas, ST Ia.48.3; Humphrey observes that Wither in That Hideous Strength “is characterized by a complete loss of personhood and personality, which we discover towards the climax of the novel has been caused by close association with Demonic powers.” Humphrey, “Chapter 7” in Further Up and Further In, (Kindle Edition); Rowan Williams notes how Mrs. Hardcastle is a sadistic lesbian and Wither is hinted at being a homosexual and how Dr. Filostrato emasculates himself, as well as how Lewis struggled with sadomasochism in his private life. Williams argues that Lewis uses these character’s sexuality as an aberrant manifestation of their rejection of God and nature and so their rejection of the imago dei. Williams, “That Hideous Strength: A Reassessment,” (Kindle Edition); Duriez, Bedeviled, 47; “[human beings can] become either a son of God or a devil.” Lewis, Miracles, 454; Lewis, Mere Christianity, 158. White also recognizes that humanity is meant to resemble God. White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 141.

71 Lewis uses the term “ex-man”. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 127-128; Lewis did not invent the word ‘unman,’ it was first used in the sixteenth century to refer to a person lacking in the essential qualities and attributes fundamental for being considered human. Robert Sullivan, A Dictionary of the English Language, Dublin: Alexander Thom, 1857, 325; Abel Boyer, The Royal Dictionary Abridged, London, 1751.

72 Downing notes the parallels. Downing, Planets in Peril, 39.

73 Williams, “That Hideous Strength: A Reassessment,” (Kindle Edition); Duriez also notes how Lewis felt the pull of Hitler’s rhetoric as if it were a kind of spell. Duriez, Bedeviled, 23; cf. C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, vol. 2, ed. Walter Hooper, New York: HarperCollins, 2009, 425.

96 making him their “dehumanised servant.”74 The demonolatry demanded of the N.I.C.E. members is designed to feed the fallen spirits and degrade the worshippers with

“performances of calculated obscenities.”75 The nearer one draws toward the demonic the more ruined (perditious) one becomes, and the more like them. Wither and Screwtape speak of “Unity” with the demonic.76 Their Unity is unlike the unity God offers, there is no compassion or selflessness, no individuality, nor any community. 77 The Unity they seek is like the pragmatic union of a steak to one’s digestive tract, a masticated and homogenous mass.78 This attitude of the demonic is the result of verfüren, the “sucking in,” and absorption of the one at the other’s cost.79 As Wither and Frost discuss,

Any fresh individual brought into that unity would be a source of the most intense satisfaction — to — ah — all concerned. I desire the closest possible bond. I would welcome an interpenetration of personalities so close, so irrevocable, that it almost transcends individuality. You need not doubt that I would open my arms to receive — to absorb — to assimilate this young man.

Notice the language of these two characters who are seated yet,

74 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 297. Downing, Planets in Peril, 39.

75 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 296.

76 Lewis, 209. Humphrey also argues that Wither, particularly in his trances, is Demonically possessed. Humphrey, “Chapter 7” in Further Up and Further In, (Kindle Edition); Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 239-240.

77 “The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love.” Lewis, Mere Christianity, 62; Aquinas ST Ia.12.1-2. Part of angelic unity and community in Heaven is how the greater angels share this knowledge with the lesser and so from God to angels, from the greater to the lesser one can see Heaven as a place of learning not just as a place of rejoicing. Raukas, “St. Thomas Aquinas on the Speech of the Angels.” 33-34; Aquinas, ST Ia.57.5; 58.3.

78 Sutherland, “A Narnian Way to Heaven: Judgment, Universalism and Hell in Lewis’s Vision,” 132; Lewis repeatedly argues that humanity is to become the Demonic ‘food’ and it is possible that in the end we are meant to become through the process of perdition, a creature less than sentient, less aware than even a cow, herded and consumed. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 726; Lewis, Mere Christianity, 15-32.

79 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 266.

…swaying to and fro, locked in an embrace from which each seemed to be struggling to escape. And as they swayed and scrabbled with hand and nail, there arose, shrill and faint at first, but then louder and louder, a cackling noise that seemed in the end rather an animal than a senile parody of laughter.80

Lewis is illustrating the mentality of Hell, what he calls the “madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and [its] eternal loneliness.”81 This is what the Unman is, the waste and remains of humanity, not just being dehumanized but a step further, of having been a human being, a shell or a ghost “an everlasting unrest, a crumbling ruin, an odor of decay,” the state of absolute perdition.82 The absorption, which Wither and Frost speak of, the desire to bite and devour, is really what spiritual attacks are. 83 They lure humanity further down and further into sin—into Hell.84

Lewis presents two variations of attack, one being demonic oppression and the other being demonic possession.85 The former is expressed as unheimlich, the sense of being haunted, as well as moments where Lewis’s protagonists experience inexplicable

“weariness and malaise.”86 Mark realizes that, while in his cell at the N.I.C.E., he had

“sustained some sort of attack, and that he had put up no resistance at all” his only

80 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 240; Duriez, Bedeviled, 48.

81 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 81.

82 Lewis, Perelandra, 111; Lewis, The Great Divorce, 515-516, 530, 535; Duriez, Bedeviled, 133.

83 Gal. 5:15

84 In contrast to the Last Battle’s beatific call to go “further up and further in.” Lewis, The Last Battle, 198-211; Harmon observes that the Demonic desire to absorb or devour another is really a desire to have, to possess, something we have called possessiveness (see below). Harmon, “Nothingness and Human Destiny: Hell in the Thought of C.S. Lewis,” 247; Duriez, Bedeviled, 46-47.

85 Martindale holds that, what we are calling Demonic oppression is only ever under a thin veneer of formality in The Screwtape Letters, a notion Martindale also observes. Martindale, Beyond the Shadowlands, 155.

86 Lewis, Perelandra, 18, 80-81.

98 recourse was to cry out for help, any help.87 The invisible hand of God comes to his aid so that his cell “seemed to be somehow emptied and purged, (or exorcised), as if it, too, were tired after the conflicts it had witnessed.”88

Likewise, Ransom experiences a kind of spiritual attack or temptation which

Lewis describes as a “strange oriental perfume, perilous, seductive, and ambiguous.”

Rather like Christ and His rebuke of Peter, Ransom rebukes this attack, and while Jane is with him he clearly is not speaking to her but to something else.89 Lewis uses a similar device in The Silver Chair when the Green Witch seeks to arrest the heroes’ victory by throwing a green powder into the fire causing a “very sweet and drowsy smell” which grows stronger, clouding the mind and inhibiting clear and rational thought.90 Other forms of demonic possession certainly include Weston’s transformation into the Unman, a figure Urang calls a “archetypal possession” though that is debatable if we compare it to biblical or contemporary accounts.91 The Unman is possibly Satan himself, though this is never made explicit.92 Weston essentially ceases to exist once possessed, he is

87 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 266-267.

88 Ibid., 267.

89 Lewis, 145, 285; Rowan Williams interprets this as essentially erotic attraction, but a similar event occurs between Ransom and Merlin and there are no erotic references present there. Williams, “That Hideous Strength: A Reassessment,” (Kindle Edition).

90 Additionally, the ‘Lewis’ character at the start of Perelandra involves a kind of Demonic oppression where, like Mark, ‘Lewis’ must run a gauntlet of spiritual, psychic attacks from the Demonic to get to Ransom. C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair, 1953, HarperTrophy, 1981, 172-182; Martindale, Beyond the Shadowlands, 167: Sick, “The Daimones of C.S. Lewis,” 157.

91 Schwartz, C.S. Lewis on the Final Frontier, 75; Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, 93,98; Martindale, Beyond the Shadowlands, 153; Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 18.

92 The most significant clue to the demon’s identity is his quotation of Christ cry from the cross. Lewis, Perelandra, 130; Martindale, Beyond the Shadowlands, 71; Vaus argues that Out of the Silent Planet would have been more satisfying if Weston had been exorcised. However, considering that Weston freely invites Satan into himself and Lewis’s view of freewill is one of human culpability Weston’s fate

99 imprisoned within his own body, decaying psychically and only given the briefest moments of expression to confuse and torment Ransom. Both the Unman and the Head are examples of demonic possession, and both are “abomination[s].”93 Figures such as the

Head, or the Unman are manifestations of the unheimlich, a variation on the undead, zombie figure similar to Shelley’s Frankenstein, which in religious terms pre-figure the

Damned.94 The Head, like Weston, lacks agency implying the nature of Hell and stands in stark contrast to the life, freedom and individuality of Logres.95

However, there is no clear distinction with Lewis between oppression and possession. Indeed Lewis shares a kind of Miltonian subtlety on the subject since Milton defined possession as a refined body penetrating a lesser body something akin to the angelic possession of Merlin.96 Mark, in That Hideous Strength, experiences a sense of verfüren as if “a thing that leaped to him across infinite distances with the speed of light, desire… took him by the throat… like a dog shaking a rat.”97 This attack is somewhere in between oppression and possession. It “took him by the throat” as if to possess but there

should been seen as having been ironclad, sealed from within. Vaus, Mere Theology, 116; Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 10; Lewis did not invent the word ‘unman,’ it was first used in the sixteenth century to refer to a person lacking in the essential qualities and attributes fundamental for being considered human. Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, 99.

93 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 196; Kilby argued that the Head was one of the elements of That Hideous Strength which worked least. We, however, are inclined to disagree, seeing it rather as an innovative way of depicting possession and a not as a direct image of the inner death and perdition which the Unman represents. Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, 112.

94 The Head is possessed of demons who use it as a kind of sibylline oracle, or spirit familiar, which is further use of unheimlich in its occultic connotations as well as an innovation on the whole concept of what a familiar is. Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, 112; Howard, “The Triumphant Vindication of the Body,” 140.

95 Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, 105.

96 C.S. Lewis, Preface to Paradise Lost, 1942, New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961, 112; Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 23; Williams, “That Hideous Strength, (Kindle Edition).

97 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 265.

100 is no usurpation of will.98 Weston, by contrast freely invites the demonic powers into himself, making him a shell, much to his own horror.99 As Poggin remarks in The Last

Battle, “‘People shouldn't call for demons unless they really mean what they say.’”100

Lewis also opens a new area of theological consideration when he argues that demonic possession is not the only kind of possession possible. If demons can possess a body, why then not angels? This is the very thing that happens to Merlin in That Hideous

Strength. Like Weston, Merlin freely opens himself to not just one, but multiple oyarsa, who “pass into him.”101

This view of possession is based in what Lewis called “Vicariousness.” For Lewis there are two types of Vicariousness, one of exploitation, the other is cooperation. The cooperative sense of Vicariousness is what Christ did through the Incarnation, “the

Sinless Man suffer[ing] for the sinful…”102 Lewis goes on to note that “everything is

98 “[Straik] wrenched himself free from the rhythm with a frightful effort: claws seemed to be tearing his chest from inside.” Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 351-352; “Whatever it was that dictated his actions then compelled him…” Ibid., 355-356. Lewis approach here is much like Aquinas who argued that demons can only influence a person but they cannot usurp one’s will unless freely surrendered and in this regard he and Augustine agree. Augustine, CD 4.32, 10.22; Aquinas ST Ia.110.3; QDM 16.12; McCraw, Philosophical Approaches to Demonology, 32.

99 Weston speaks of “surrendering” oneself to the Demonic, or “main current” as Weston calls it. When one surrenders to the Demonic one becomes a vessel or “conductor” of the Demonic, “the very finger with which it reaches forward.” Weston acknowledges that the “Main Current” or the “Force” “wants you to do what ordinary people call diabolical.” Weston’s elitism is clear and any morality have pragmatically been jettisoned in favor of amorality since to be part of the Demonic is supposed to make one great and “greatness transcends moralism.” Even though Weston lashes out at Ransom calling him an “idiot” and “mongrel fool” it is his voice that is like a howl. This is similar to Screwtape’s words about the “howl of sharpened famine for that loss re-echoes at this moment through all the levels of the Kingdom of Noise” when the patient escape Wormwood’s grasp and enters Heaven. Lewis, Perelandra, 81-83; Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 275-277

100 Lewis, The Last Battle, 94; Lewis, Miracles, 383-384.

101 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 314.

102 Lewis borrows this idea from Charles Williams. Glen Cavaliero, Charles Williams: Poet of Theology, 1983, Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2007, 136.

101 indebted to everything else, sacrificed to everything else, dependent on everything else” with the one exception being God who alone is truly self-sufficient.103 The antithesis of

Christ’s Vicariousness is spiritual cannibalism (or absorption) which Lewis attributes to the demonic. Just as the cat lives off of the mouse, and the parasite off its host, so too do demons vicariously, or parasitically, use humanity.104 This is what demonic possession is and is how Weston’s body becomes a foothold for smuggling evil into Perelandra.105

Rather than depict demonic possession as a form of embodiment which demons desire and enjoy, which seems to be the case in biblical accounts (e.g. Luke 11:24-26), possession, for Lewis, is a means of exploiting, even the flouting of God’s rule. Such occurrences are strategic maneuvers rather than spiritual epidemics. An example of this is

Frost’s terrifying end.

That tiresome illusion, his consciousness, was screaming in protest: his body, even had he wished, had no power to attend to those screams. Like the clockwork figure he had chosen to be, his stiff body, now terribly cold, walked back into the Objective Room, poured out the petrol and threw a lighted match into the pile. Not till then did his controllers allow him to suspect that death itself might not after all cure the illusion of being a soul… with one supreme effort he flung himself back into the illusion. In that attitude eternity overtook him as sunrise in old tales overtakes trolls and turns them into unchangeable stone.106

103 Lewis, Miracles, 407; Regarding ‘vicariousness’ in Lewis he addresses this in a letter to Rhona Bodle dated October 24, 1949 citing William’s Descent of the Dove, Descent into Hell and The House of the Octopus and directly alludes to Williams’ He Came Down from Heaven in another letter dated June 10, 1952 in Collected Letters, vol 2, 988; Collected Letters, vol. 3, 200; Peter Schakel, “Till We Have Faces,” in The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis, ed. Robert MacSwain, Michael Ward, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 290.

104 Lewis, Miracles, 407; Lewis is using the Augustinian model of evil. Duriez, Bedeviled, 36, 48.

105 Lewis, Perelandra, 123-124.

106 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 355-356.

102

Both Lewis and Tolkien use this image of petrification to picture being forever fixed in a state of damnation and perdition.107 This is the whole point of demonization, not just to torment the demoniac but to move one into a complete state of apostasy, even beyond apostasy into perdition.

Possessiveness

Part of this spectrum of possession is what we might call possessiveness.

Possessiveness is the desire to have a thing, in this case, another person’s soul. When

Mark experiences verfüren he finds that “the rest of the world appeared blanched, etiolated, insipid” and when he thinks of Jane, his wife, it is only in terms of

“appetite.”108 This is similar to the fiendish embrace between Wither and Frost.109 It is a concept that occurs a number of times in The Great Divorce. In one instance the soul of

Robert is asked for by his wife.

Put me in charge of him. He wants firm handling. I know him better than you do. What’s that? No, give him to me, do you hear? Don’t consult him: just give him to me. I’m his wife, aren’t I? I was only beginning. There’s lots, lots, lots of things I still want to do with him. No, listen, Hilda. Please, please! I’m so miserable. I must have someone to — to do things to. [In Hell] I can’t alter them.… Give him back to me. Why should he have everything his own way? It’s not good for him. It isn’t right, it’s not fair. I want Robert. What right have you to keep him from me? I hate you. How can I pay him out if you won’t let me have him?’ The Ghost which had towered up like a dying candle-flame snapped suddenly. A sour, dry smell lingered in the air for a moment and then there was no Ghost to be seen.110

107 “‘The morning! The morning!’ I cried, ‘I am caught by the morning and I am a ghost.’ But it was too late. The light, like solid blocks, intolerable of edge and weight, came thundering upon my head.” Lewis, The Great Divorce, 541.

108 Ibid., 265.

109 Humphrey, “Chapter 7” Further Up and Further In, (Kindle Edition).

110 Lewis, The Great Divorce, 515-516.

103

This passage is very much like when Saruman, in The Return of the King, is murdered by

Gríma and the soul of the once mighty and noble wizard looms up, just as it does when

Sauron is finally destroyed. Both spirits, like a great dark cloud overshadowing the heroes and like Lewis’s possessive wife they are blown away.111 Lewis gives us a glimpse of what possessiveness would be like. A damned soul, named Winifred, has possession of her son Bobby, who is described as a “brat.” Another mother looking to gain possession of her son, Michael, argues that she, unlike Winifred, “wouldn’t quarrel with people for not taking enough notice of him and then be furiously jealous if they did.

I wouldn’t go about whining and complaining that he wasn’t nice to me.”112 One is reminded of how Lewis describes Eustace and his mother’s rather controlling and coddled relationship.113 The mother of Michael goes on demanding her son, “‘I want my boy, and I mean to have him. He is mine, do you understand? Mine, mine, mine, for ever and ever.’ ‘Michael is mine.’”114 The reality is Michael was never really hers but a gift from God to care for.115

Diminishment

Through this possessiveness we also find that the Damned suffer diminishment, a theme also present in Milton. 116 Lewis illustrates this in The Great Divorce through the

111 J.R.R. Tolkien, Return of the King, 1955, New York: HarperCollins, 1995. 928, 996-997.

112 Lewis, The Great Divorce, 519.

113 Ibid., Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 1952, New York: HarperTrophy, 1980, 3-4.

114 Lewis, The Great Divorce, 519-520.

115 Ibid., 520; Possessiveness reflects the desire Screwtape speaks of when he refers to the patient as a chalice or when, at the end of the book, he looks on Wormwood as a “dainty morsel” to grow fat on. Screwtape says he has desired Wormwood just as Wormwood has desired to consume him, “the difference being [Screwtape] is the stronger.” Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 275-277.

104 ghost named Frank who goes from “croaking” to “bleating” and then to “bat-like” squeaking and in the end he “vanishes,” ceasing to be human, becoming something even less than even a shadow of a soul.117 As Lewis writes, “The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly Nothing.”118 This

“Nothing” is similar to Barth’s nichtige and is only out done by the immensity of God and His Kingdom. 119 As Screwtape complains, Heaven is not a place where individuality and distinctness are subsumed as compared to demonic possession.120 Lewis argues that tyrants, of which Satan certainly is one, are monotonous while God is “dynamic, pulsating activity” and His saints are “gloriously different.”121 The reason for this is that

116 Lewis, Problem of Pain, 102, 106; Collins, C.S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy, 105; Lewis depicts this lessening as becoming a ghost. In our world angels appear to Ransom as faint lights but, in the afterlife, they are the real, strong and gigantic. The Damned are “smudgy and imperfectly opaque” like “stains on the brightness of the air.” Lewis, The Great Divorce, 477; This is contrast to the Demonic view that humanity is an organic stain. Lewis leverages the medieval concept of the ens realisimum wherein God is the source of all reality and being and the closer one comes into union with Him the more real one becomes. The inverse is likewise true, the more one distances himself from God the less real one becomes, hence a ghost. Fiddes “On Theology,” 89; Humphrey, “Chapter 8” Further Up and Further In, (Kindle Edition); “…we are not “real” enough to manage in God’s own realm, and we require help in order to survive in it… [and that] God frequently works through the help of other human beings [in order to help us survive.”; Connolly, Inklings of Heaven, 36; Humphrey, “Chapter 7” Further Up and Further In, (Kindle Edition).

117 Lewis, the Great Divorce, 530, 535. This negation, this figment, comes close to annihilationism, but not quite. The soul, or what remains of the soul, is still something be it a “ghost” or “ashes.” Lewis observes of the Damned “first will not, and in the end they cannot.”117 The dividing line between will and passions degrades. Lewis, 488, 499. Holmer notes how Mark lacks true identity while with the N.I.C.E. and how, in the end, “our [present] lives grow so blurred and shapeless that we have lost more than we gained.” Holmer, C.S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought, 79-80.

118 Lewis, The Great Divorce, 507, 537 (emphasis added); Duriez, Bedeviled, 110.

119 cf. Church Dogmatics, III:3.50; Styers notes similarities between Tolkien and Barth’s nichtige as well. Norman Styers, “Music in the Making of the World: The Creation of the World, Middle-earth and Narnia” in C.S. Lewis and the Inklings: Discovering Hidden Truth. ed. Salwa Khoddam, Mark Hall, Jason Fisher, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012, 128.

120 Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 47; Lewis, The Great Divorce, 535; Habets, “Mere Christianity for Mere Gods: Lewis on Theosis,” 116.

121 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 297; Even though Satan is a powerful creature, he is still a finite being that has chosen the closed itself off from the supreme Good, as such Milton’s Satan is evil but also banal, a creature of “blank uninterestingness,” forever fixing in one boring position compare the Creator who is the “same yesterday today and forever” but who also makes “all things new.” Lewis, The Problem of Pain,

105 tyrants are monomaniacs and so the only thing that truly interests them is themselves.

The problem being that tyrants are finite creatures, including Satan, and so there ends up being a prideful inward focus or bent which makes such people one-dimensional and diminished.122 This inward bent is drawn from the Augustinian and Lutheran theological concept of the incurvatio in seipsum.123 It holds that just as one cannot save oneself, so too a person cannot extinguish or truly be separated from God. However, one can distance and withdraw from God and others, and so one can curve back into oneself.124

For Lewis, the Satanic Image is our fate as a reflection of Satan turned so inwards as to be a spiritual black hole.125

102; Heb. 13.8; Rev. 21.5; Jensen, “Shine as the Sun: Lewis and the Doctrine of Deification.” [accessed December 10, 2018]; Schwartz reminds us of Lewis’s reference to God being like a wave which never repeats Himself. Connolly, Inklings of Heaven, 76; cf. Fiddes, “Charles Williams and the Problem of Evil,” “Charles Williams and the Problem of Evil,” in C.S. Lewis and His Circle of Friends: Essays and Memoirs from the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society, ed. Judith Wolfe, Brennan Wolfe, Roger White, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, 65-90; Swafford argues that Satan wishes to depict God as the master or tyrant and this may be due to how Satan sees God or how he sees himself. Andrew Dean Swafford, Spiritual Survival in the Modern World: Insights from C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2016, 83. 122 The loss of the self, or individuality, and diminishment is part of the banality of evil which Hannah Arendt wrote of and the aim of temptation and its ultimate perdition of the soul. Vaus, Mere Theology, 117; cf. Williams, “That Hideous Strength: A Reassessment,” (Kindle Edition); Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost, 102.

123 Augustine uses the phrase “curvatio” In Psalmum 37 www.augustinus.it/latino/- esposizioni_salmi/ esposizione_salmo_ 052_testo.htm [accessed January 18, 2018]; Martin Luther, “Romans Lectures” in D. Martin Luthers Werke, vol. 56, Weimar: Böhlau, , 304, 365; Martin Luther, “Lectures on Romans” in Luther’s Works, vol. 25, ed. Jacob Preus, Minneapolis: Fortress, Press, 291; 345; Guido Bausenhart, Stolz—Geschwellte Brust auf schmächtigen Beinen, in Die Sieben Todsünden: Zwischen Reiz and Reue, ed. Peter Nickl, Munster: Lit Verlag, 2009, 83 cf. L’Ubomir Batka, “Luther’s Teaching on Sin and Evil” in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther ‘s Theology, ed. Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, L’Ubomir Batka, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, 238; Matt Jenson, The Gravity of Sin: Augustine, Luther and Barth on homo incurvatus in se, London: T&T Clark, 2006.

124 Versions of the term such as ‘incurvatus in se’ or ‘curvatio in seipsum’ have also been used in Augustine’s work as well as Luther’s. Johannes Slenczka, “Luther’s Theology of Creation” in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, ed. Robert Kolb, Irene Dingle, Lubomir Batka, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 207; cf. Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke. Weimar: Bohlau, 1883-1993. 3.212, 236; Luther’s Works, St. Louis: Fortress Press, 1958-1986, 25.304, 345; Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 14; Duriez, Bedeviled, 135; Humphrey, “Chapter 7” in Further Up and Further In, (Kindle Edition).Ancient theologians would describe such people as “turned in on themselves” (curvatons in se) Edith M. Humphrey, “Chapter 8” in Further Up and Further In: Orthodox Conversations with C. S. Lewis on Scripture and Theology. Yonkers: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2018, (Kindle Edition).

106

The Demonic and Humanity’s Potential

A key question is why the demonic should even care about humanity at all? Lewis never directly addresses this point but he alludes to it through his use of preternaturalism.126 prelapsarian Adam, according to Augustine, qualified as a preternatural creature. For Augustine unfallen Adam was not just immortal, but also possessed great knowledge, integrity and divine grace and therefore a higher level of perfection more akin to angels.127

125 Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 127-128 (emphasis added); Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 266; Connolly, Inklings of Heaven, 12; Lewis, Mere Christianity, 162, 167.

126 Preternaturalism has become a synonym for supernaturalism. Theologically preternaturalism denotes the realm of activity between the miraculous (the supernatural) and the mundane. The miraculous was considered by Aquinas to be the purview of God while the preternatural involve the activity of angels and demons including their ability to work wonders. Such works were quasi-miraculous but within the natural order. This form of activity within nature, is part of the unheimlich, and is the ground upon which Lewis argues that “what we call Nature is nothing ‘natural.’” Lewis can say this since he sees angels as the forces divinely appointed to participate in and undergird the cosmos. Lorraine Daston, "Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence in Early Modern Europe", in Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in Early Modern Culture, ed. Peter G. Platt, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999, 76–105; Robert Bartlett, The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, 27; Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 3.100; Raymond, Milton’s Angels, 323; Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 199; Lewis, Miracles, 409.

127 Fiore, Milton and Augustine, 23; We see a similar motif in Merlin as a preternatural figure or Ransom through the eyes of Jane or the elder Digory admixture of maturity and youth in The Last Battle or MacDonald in The Great Divorce; Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, 106; Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 31; Hence the Psalmist’s line of humanity being made a little lower than the angels (Ps 8:5). Preternatural humans were how humanity was intended to be, a view that Milton adopted (cf. PL 8.155- 161). Lewis also argues that the Incarnation was the first act of restoration so that humanity could regain his preternatural estate. Preternatural Adam was thought to be conditionally immortal in his bod as well as possessing integrity. By integrity it was meant that he was free from concupiscence and was in a state of harmony between his body and spirit including his reason and passions. It was also thought that Adam possessed infused knowledge as a gift of God. It was not a supernatural knowledge for it was within his natural capacity which gave immediate awareness of God, morality and creation; Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 19; “The perfect manhood which Adam lost is there matured in conflict with Satan; in that sense Eden, or Paradise, the state of perfection, is ‘regained.’ Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 130; Lewis, Miracles, 414; Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 108. Ibid., 27; Fiore, Milton and Augustine, 23-24; “The spirit was once not a garrison, maintaining its post with difficulty in a hostile Nature, but was fully ‘at home’ with its organism, like a king in his own country.” Lewis, Miracles, 414; Habets, “Mere Christianity for Mere Gods: Lewis on Theosis,” 120-123.

107

For both Augustine and Lewis, unfallen Humanity’s purpose was to replace the fallen Lucifer as God’s light-bearer. Lewis uses this concept in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when the Pevensie children enter Narnia to replace the White Witch, the false Queen of Narnia. Thus, the reason for demonic animosity towards humanity and the desire for humanity’s perdition is over humanity’s potential which threatens the demonic order. We see this expressed in Perelandra where the Green Lady is invested as the eschatological Queen, a pre-figuring of humanity’s restoration through Christ.128

While Lewis has a “Swiftian” distaste for our current condition he nevertheless has a high eschatological view of humanity.129 The seed of humanity’s potential informs the modus operandi of the demonic drive to sanitize humanity through perdition.130 This is the imagery in That Hideous Strength, the Macrobial view where organic life is genocidally purged away like “cleaning tarnished silver.”131 In Lewis’s mind what is repugnant about organic life is its physicality and limitations.132 These things are, in

128 Ware observes that in theosis we are being drawn into relationship with Christ, the Logos who is drawn all creation unto Himself (sehnsucht) an idea also found in The Last Battle where the phrase “further up and further in” conveys this sensibility. However, through the act of being drawn to God and the subsequent theosis we are also being drawn back toward our longing to be preternatural. Ware, “God of the Fathers,” 63,68; Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 20.

129 White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 85, 120; Habets, “Mere Christianity for Mere Gods: Lewis on Theosis,” 116; Harmon, “Nothingness and Human Destiny: Hell in the Thought of C.S. Lewis,” 252; Holmer, C.S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought, 81.

130 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 173, 182.

131 Ibid., 173.

132 The whole brutish nature of “sweat, spittle [and] excretions” the demands of “birth and breeding and death.” Ibid., 170, 199, 195; Lewis, Perelandra, 168-169; Lewis take this concept from Aquinas who contended that there are three types of beings: (1) pure spiritual beings, (2) pure corporeal beings and then (3) a mixed kind of being that is partly corporeal and partly spiritual, humanity is this last form of being while angels are the first. Aquinas, ST Ia.50.1-2; 55.1; Raukas, “St. Thomas Aquinas on the Speech of the Angels.” 33.

108

Lewis’s mind, the assault against the “dignity” of pure spirits.133 If Adam was meant to replace Satan then imagine the indignity to the Bent One’s pride at being supplanted by a

“lower” form of life.134 This is why Filostrato emasculates himself, and why the sadistic and hoydenish Miss Hardcastle refers to the Head, not as “he” but as “it,” ungendered, even though the Head came from a male.135 It is part of the demonic agenda of purification and homogeneity for the cosmos.136

The Hierarchy of Hell

As there is a hierarchy with the angels so too there is a hierarchy with the demonic in Lewis’s theology. In aping God, Satan also desires to rule and control everything, and indeed everyone. The incurvatio and pride of Satan is such that all things must curve back not just upon themselves but also back towards him, rather like how

Tolkien depicts the wounded Frodo slowly becoming a creature like the Nazgul, only less powerful just as the Ringwraiths are less powerful than Sauron.137

The demonic has a head—Satan and the demons are in his imago as well. Even though the N.I.C.E. is atheistic, they argue that with the advent of their Head, “[just]

133 Lewis is drawing from Milton who presents Satan as objecting to Christ’s lordship as an assault on his dignity. cf. Paradise Lost 4.655, 5:860; Lewis, Preface to Paradise Lost, 66-67. 134 Lewis depicts the exaltation and investiture of such a lower lifeform in Perelandra when the Green Lady and her preternatural husband are made King of Queen, an eschatological image of humanity’s loss and Christ’s promise of restoration. Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 16; Myers, C.S. Lewis in Context, 71.

135 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 159.

136 It is the process of life and birth and death which draws humanity outside of itself and into community, and ultimately back to God. Lewis, The Four Loves, 1960, New York: HarperCollins, 2002, 147-148. 137 Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, 216; Milton argues Satan was the closest in likeness to God Himself and therefore the greatest in power. Satan therefore uses his power to tyrannically control not just humanity but also his fellow demons. Raymond, Milton’s Angels, 262, 264 (cf. Paradise Lost, 2.310-313; 5.772-776); Fiore, Milton and Augustine17; Satan is repeatedly presented as an archangel (1.243, 593; 5.659-660; 6.257) even though Uriel also calls him a “seraph” (3.648).

109 because there was no God in the past [does not mean] there will be no God also in the future[.]”138 The N.I.C.E. fails to realize how unredeemed and finite humanity, in such an existence, would be Hell incarnate.139

Bad men, while still in the body, still crawling on this little globe, would enter that state which, heretofore, they had entered only after death, would have the diuturnity and power of evil spirits.140

Far from some lofty egalitarian society of everlasting life “extended to all men” the new

N.I.C.E. society is a very old one, a deeply hierarchical one. As Filostrato remarks, “‘No,

I mean it will then be reduced to one man.… All that talk about the power of Man over

Nature… means the power of some men over other men with Nature as the instrument…”141 It is Ransom who is nearer the mark in describing the position of such humanity. Since, “all the creatures that you and I call human are mere candidates for admission to the new species or else its slaves — perhaps its food.”142 Far from abolishing the supposed tyranny of God the Satanic Image erects a new one, a fallen one.143 The structure of Hell is one of “lunacy, agony and hatred” Lewis reminds us that hatred is not just extreme ill-will but it is “to set one’s face against, to make no

138 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 176.

139 Lewis, 201.

140 Ibid.

141 Ibid., 175.

142 Ibid., 194.

143 Rowan Williams, remarking on the totalitarianism in That Hideous Strength, observes along with Hannah Arendt that political totalitarianism is not a problem solely of the political left or right but, in Williams’s words is, “a deeper problem… a spiritual problem.” As Duriez observes, “The appliance of science in technology can have a totalitarian rule; true science is distorted into technocracy. In the process, new demons take possession. They are in fact the old demons using a new strategy.” Williams, “That Hideous Strength: A Reassessment,” (Kindle Edition); Duriez, Bedeviled, 115.

110 concession to the Beloved.”144 In other words it is to be completely give over to one allegiance, in this case to the demonic. This is why Lewis describes the demonic as verfüren and why the metaphor of absorption features in Lewis’s work.145 Far from the unity and community of Heaven, the demonic is a selfish tug-of-war for survival and primacy. In such a society only the most powerful would rule. This rule would drain away all self and distinction into it. It would consume, partaking of the souls of others, to make it bigger, stronger, and to keep it at the apex of the heap which we can only envision as a writhing, seething mass, “where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.”146 The hierarchy of the demonic is one of biting and devouring all in service and resentment to “our Father here Below.”147

The Divine Response to the Demonic

We have noted how God has responded to the demonic through the Incarnation.

Lewis reminds us that the birth of Christ, first meant something very militant as the hero who was to fight and beat death, hell and the devils…”148 The Incarnation, or “Grand

Miracle” is the prime event in the cosmic drama. The pivotal strategy in the cosmic war is nothing less than an invasion of the Silent Planet.149 When Ransom shares the Gospel story on Malacandra the oyarsa calls it a “strange war.”150 It is strange in that God

144 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 193; Lewis, The Four Loves, 147.

145 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 265, 295.

146 Mar. 9:44-48, KJV.

147 Martindale, 166; Vaus, Mere Theology, 199; Swafford, Spiritual Survival in the Modern World, 74.

148 Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 10-11.

149 Lewis, Miracles, 398, 412-413.

111

Himself redeems creation. Ransom remarks that “I am not allowed to be too prudent. I am not allowed to use desperate remedies until desperate diseases are really apparent.”151

Certainly, the Gospel is nothing less than a desperate remedy against a desperate enemy—Satan. This Incarnation is the strange war because of how Christ won—through weakness. As Augustine remarks,

The devil was conquered by his own trophy of victory. The devil jumped for joy, when he seduced the first man and cast him down to death. By seducing the first man, he slew him; by slaying the last man, he lost the first from his snare.152

Unlike demonic pride and introversion, Christ wins not through power but through weakness. He surrenders Himself and finds Himself in the surrender, just as

Aslan does with the White Witch.153 He allows the jaws of death to close about Him and to be tormented by His foes. When Lewis writes, “To become new men means losing what we now call ‘ourselves,’” he is not just referring to us but to Christ’s victory. 154 It is the surrender of the Self that the demons rebelled against, according to Aquinas.155

Screwtape cannot truly grasp God’s motives because he does not truly know God. The

Gospel is, to him, a perversion and a lie with some ulterior motive.

150 Ibid., 389; Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 121.

151 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 142.

152 Sermo 261 as cited by Duriez. Duriez, Bedeviled, 197.

153 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 294.

154 Ibid.

155 Aquinas, ST Ia.6.4; 63.2,8; Fiore, Milton and Augustine, 16, 19; For Lewis, part of this surrender is the embrace of the mundane (or Same Old Thing) and finding that nothing mundane is really just that but rather something glorious. A prime example is Sarah in The Great Divorce, who functions as a kind of Beatrice figure who was both once mundane was well as embraces the mundane and is shown to be anything but. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 529; Heb. 4:15; Duriez, Bedeviled, 52.

112

The Parousia

Lewis further argues that the Incarnation is the first salvo, the first incursion into enemy-occupied territory. The inauguration of the Church established a beachhead, a foothold scenario to rival the demonic foothold of Weston. The full invasion is the eschatological Parousia. Lewis describes the Incarnation as a “moral defeat” with the

“actual defeat” still to come.156 Perhaps one of the greatest failings of The Chronicles of

Narnia is that there is no persistent foe throughout all the books. While The Last Battle represents the eschatology of Narnia, replete with war, and final judgment and a new creation, there is no real antagonist brought to reckoning as we having in the Scripture with the demonic. “God will invade” Lewis writes, and in that final invasion the “whole natural universe is melting away like a dream” and “God without disguise” is revealed either as “irresistible love or irresistible horror.”157 The union of God and humanity

(theosis), which is now partial will be revealed in full.158 The choice that the Thomistic demons rejected will come full circle with humanity’s potential fully bloomed.

The Theosis of Humanity

In this union with God one becomes “members of His body,” branches of the

Vine. This is not a metaphor for Lewis but a spiritual law since, “…the power of the

Higher, just in so far as it is truly Higher, to come down, the power of the greater to include the less.”159 The saints are, in Lewis’s mind, not ghosts but “solid people” people

156 Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 130.

157 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 86-87.

158 Ibid.

159 Ibid., Miracles, 401.

113 that look more divine.160 This solidity, or realness is “what happens to them [and] best described as the opposite of a mirage.”161 Heaven, compared to Hell is the “real world” and not a “state of mind… Heaven is reality itself, all that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.”162 Hell, or the demonic existence, is “grey” and “empty.”163 Hell is the “Valley of the Shadow of Death” meaning the place where the ghosts and the saints meet is the Valley of the Shadow of

Life, the refrigerium, the shadowlands of Heaven.164 These shadowlands are the very edge of reality itself, the last homely house. To be in Heaven, or “Deep Heaven” is to

“journey further and further into the mountains,” to go “further up and further in.”165

Perhaps more important than being washed in immortality is the concept that through one’s union with Christ one becomes one’s true Self.166 In The Great Divorce a lizard sits

160 Ibid., 479, 501, 537,539.

161 Ibid., 504, 478.

162 White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 203; Martindale, Beyond the Shadowlands, 78; Sutherland, “A Narnian Way to Heaven”, 133,140; Vaus, Mere Theology, 212; Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, 50; Lewis, The Great Divorce, 478, 504; Urang, Shadows of Heaven, 504.

163 Lewis, The Great Divorce, 467, 471, 503.

164 Ibid., 503.

165 Ibid., 504; Lewis, The Last Battle, 198-211; As with Dante’s Celestial Rose Paradiso XXXIII; cf. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 474, 525. Lee also sees Lewis view of Heaven as essentially Thomistic or beatific and Wolfe asserts that Aquinas’s beatific vision is a mode of being, a unity with God, rather than just a place. Sutherland, however disagrees with Lee arguing that Lewis’s view of Heaven is one of glory. However, Sutherland’s assessment of glory hinges on the premise that glory is derived from the divine perspective while Aquinas’s beatific is that of the creation’s perspective of God. Matthew Lee, “To Reign in Heaven or to Serve in Hell,” 161; Wolfe “C.S. Lewis and the Eschatological Church,” 104; cf. Martindale, Beyond the Shadowlands, 160; Sutherland, “A Narnian Way to Heaven,” 141; Lewis, The Great Divorce, 501.

166 Ware, “God of the Fathers,” 60,63,68; Fiddes “On Theology,” 89; Tallon, “Evil and the Cosmic Dance,” 208-209; Sutherland, “A Narnian Way to Heaven,” 143; Wolfe “C.S. Lewis and the Eschatological Church,” 103-104,114; Connolly, Inklings of Heaven, 34; Connolly cites Karl Rahner who wrote that death is the dividing point at which humanity becomes their definitive selves. Connolly, Inklings of Heaven, 9; Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 127-128.

114 on a ghost’s shoulder and is killed by an angel and transforms into a stallion. The question is asked, “But does it mean that everything — everything — that is in us can go on to the Mountains [to Heaven]?” Lewis affirms that “Nothing, not even what is lowest and most bestial, will not be raised again if it submits to death.”167 Mortification is not just something that happens in Heaven it occurs in the present. Like Ransom, the

Christian is presently “in the body of Maleldil” and so presently the Christian is part of the act of redeeming the world.

When the Incarnate Christ died and rose again he dragged up “all Nature” because in our species the Lord of Nature is now included.”168 The Church is part of this act of redemption or “re-making” but according to Lewis God “could not stop at Man, or even at this planet.”169 Lewis suggests in The Problem of Pain that part of preternatural humanity’s duty was to also exalt and shepherd the animal kingdom into sentience in much the same way the oyarsa do.170 Lewis speaks of “other species” experiencing the path of redemption through “wholly different acts,” acts of redeemed human agency.171

Just as the torrent of Joy over flows so too will the life we have “in Christ from the Father flows over into them.”172 For Lewis, “Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength.”173

167 Ibid., 526, 535, 519; Lewis, The Four Loves, 144-145.

168 Ibid., 401, 411.

169 Ibid., 409.

170 Ibid.

171 Lewis, Miracles, 412-413.

172 Lewis, The Great Divorce, 528.

173 Ibid., 529.

115

The point of the Incarnation and the conquest over the demonic is the restoration of all creation with its Creator (cf. 1 Cor 15:20–28).174 When every knee bows and all confess Christ as Lord it will be true worship before God, exacted even from the demonic. Music is the language of Heaven for Lewis and it is intrinsic to worship since the heavenly spirits adore God eternally.175 Lewis pictures the saints and angels as being distinctly themselves and yet unified able to become a choir or symphony of harmonious notes.176 When the saints worship God it is “a sound… too large to hear,” when the Solid

People sing, “It was the voice of that earth, those woods and those waters. A strange archaic, inorganic noise, that came from all directions at once.”177 For the medieval

Church the language of Heaven was that of music and so in one sense one can see music as a form of theology.178 Music and hierarchy have shared a long relationship often associated with the Aristotelian “music of the spheres” where the angels help keep the universe in motion and harmony.179 This whole idea of heavenly music is present in The

Screwtape Letters to the point that titular villain expresses his disgust for music which resounds through all creation.180 Undoubtedly Lewis had in mind the complaint of

174 “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Php. 2:10b-11; Isa. 45:23).

175 Rev. 5:11-14.

176 Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 156; “Lewis has the tendency of reserving the images of song, play, and dance for the highest things” Clyde S. Kilby, “Chapter 7 On Music, Worship, and the Spiritual Life,” A Well of Wonder, (Kindle Edition); Holmer, C.S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought, 80.

177 Lewis, The Great Divorce, 525; Augustine’s angels are intimately associated with worship teaching us that vital in our struggle against the Demonic is the practice of true worship. Klein, Augustine’s Theology of Angels, 173ff.

178 Maeve Louise Heaney, Music as Theology: What Music Says About the Word, Eugene: Pickwick, 2012, 196-197.

179 Lewis, 315.

116

Mammon in Paradise Lost when he grumbles that Heaven is full of “warbled hymns” and

“forced alleluias” (PL 2.242-243).181 In Hell, by contrast, they sing a short song but only to dull the loss of Heaven’s bliss (PL 2.547-552).182

Along with the music of Heaven is the heavenly dance choreographed in circles again evoking notions of the music of the spheres as well as angelic perfection.183 It is a motif that Lewis uses in Prince Caspian when all the Narnians erupt into dance.184 Lewis also presents this cosmic dance at the end of Perelandra revealing one’s full union with

God.185 Screwtape describes Heaven as “music and silence,”

…ever since our Father entered Hell… no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise — Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile — Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end.186

180 Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 183; It ought to be noted that the Miltonic angel’s song is not the music of the sphere but the more literal music of the voice. However, Milton does describe the music of the angels during creation as being filled with harmonies (PL 7.558-567, 598-599, cf. 7.633; 3.371). Raymond, Milton’s Angels, 313, 315; cf. Michael Ward, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imaginations of C.S. Lewis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

181 Raymond, Milton’s Angels, 260.

182 Ibid.

183 Ibid., 267; PL 5.163, 619-622; 6.62, 399, 743.

184 C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian, 1951, New York: HarperTrophy, 1979, 81-83, 155-160, 198-204; Lewis, The Silver Chair, 203-207; Schakel observes that the dance motif in Lewis’s writings particularly his Narnia works is representative of Narnian society one of perfectly balanced freedom and order, wildness and structure. Which we can also apply to humanity’s eschatological theosis and something which evokes, for Schakel, a sense of eeriness (unheimlich). Peter J. Schakel, Imagination and the Arts in C.S. Lewis: Journeying to Narnia and Other Worlds. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002, 117.

185 Peter Kreeft, “The Joyful Cosmology: Perelandra’s ‘Great Dance’ as an Alternative Worldview to Modern Reductionism” in C.S. Lewis for the Third Millennium: Six Essays on The Abolition of Man, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994, 169-173; Lewis, Perelandra, 173-175; Lee, “To Reign in Heaven or to Serve in Hell,” 162; Fiddes argues that Lewis in indebted to Williams for the Great Dance. Fiddes, “Charles Williams and the Problem of Evil,” 65-90.

186 Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 132-133.

117

Noise is both the counterfeit of Heaven’s praise and Hell’s distraction, a sonic weapon of chaos to pollute our world and besiege us from God.

Conclusion

In summary, Lewis’s demonology is one that is deeply connected to his eschatological worldview. A worldview that sees life in polar opposites of either Heaven or Hell. Far from demons being abstract they are the earnest of what life without God looks like, a life that all humanity is destined for if not for Christ’s sacrifice. Instead of

Lewis’s demons being impractical figures, abstract and distant they are real and near.

Their existence is practical and pragmatic: to deny God praise and to thwart His will at every turn. The demonic agenda is one that is logically consistent as Lewis presents it.

Lewis draws on the works of Milton, Augustine and others to help construct this theological framework. The demonic agenda to possess or control the destiny of humanity is not new, but Lewis’s depiction of our unredeemed fate as a corruption so complete that it is only mirrored and patterned in the demonic itself is both engaging and thought provoking. Lewis’s demonology acts as the foil to his concept of Heaven and theosis a means of drawing us to further long for God.

118

Chapter 4

C. S. Lewis and Modern Spiritual Warfare

119

120

Chapter 4

C.S. Lewis and Modern Spiritual Warfare Theories

Introduction

In this chapter we shall seek to evaluate Lewis’s place and contribution to contemporary theology regarding the subject of demonology. We may describe Lewis’s demonology by saying that he believes angels and demons are real and they their activity is far more ubiquitous than we tend to recognize. Lewis acknowledges the existence of spiritual warfare as a key lense that helps inform his worldview. This warfare is not just a struggle between God and Satan, nor is it a form of dualism. The primacy of God is assured in Lewis’s theology, yet the power and malice of the demonic is also very real.

Lewis accepts that part of this spiritual conflict involves humanity with a certain demonic agenda. Humanity, under God’s plan, poses a threat to the demonic as its replacement.

Humanity is meant, according to Lewis, to become like God (theosis) and in order to stop this the demonic’s goal is to destroy such a threat by destroying the image of God in humanity and replace it with the perditious image of Satan. It is in this ultimate goal that humanity is place under spiritual attack and made subject to things such as demonic possession, which Lewis depicts as a kind of cannibalism. Lewis also affirms that possession is not the only form of demonization instead arguing that the psychomachia, the inner war over the soul and its temptation towards damnation is the primary field of battle. Lewis answers this demonic agenda through the divine act of the Incarnation which established the victory of Christ over Satan which is continued by the Church as the vehicle of ultimate eschatological redemption for the cosmos.

121

Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century there was a renewed interest, both popular and academic literature regarding demonology and its related fields.1

Demonology is more generally recognized today under the heading of “spiritual warfare.”

Recently, James Beilby and Paul Rhodes Eddy edited an anthology of four leading theologians on the subject of spiritual warfare which Scott Moreau has cited as the best synopsis of spiritual warfare theology to date.2 As such their work is representative, though not exhaustive, of several major positions held regarding spiritual warfare theology, and by extension demonology. These four leading spiritual warfare theologians are David Powlison, Gregory Boyd, Peter Wagner and Walter Wink. Considering that

Lewis’s views (a) predate all of our theologians and their models and since (b) Lewis is part of our zeitgeist, and (c) since Lewis helped popularize the subject in the twentieth century, an examination of Lewis alongside contemporary spiritual warfare models will help to illustrate Lewis’s position within the current theological milieu and establish his contribution to demonology in a wider theological framework.

Contemporary Theorists

A brief word of introduction is needed about the four leading contemporary theologians, Powlison, Boyd, Wagner and Wink. David Powlison (1949-present) comes from a Reformed background and is a leading Christian psychologist, being the senior editor of the Journal of Biblical Counseling and the executive director of the Christian

1 cf. James Michael Collins, Exorcism and Deliverance Ministry in the Twentieth Century: An Analysis of the Practice and Theology of Exorcism in Modern Western Christianity, Colorado Spring: Paternoster, 2009; Arnold, Three Crucial Questions, 28; James K. Beilby and Paul Rhodes Eddy, “Introduction” in Understanding Spiritual Warfare: Four Views, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2012 (Kindle Edition), 2; Warren, Cleansing the Cosmos, 7-8.

2 Beilby and Eddy, “Introduction” in Understanding Spiritual Warfare: Four Views, (Kindle Edition); Moreau, “Discourses on Demonology in North America,” 50.

122

Counseling and Educational Foundation.3 Powlison’s position is the most reserved of the theories in that he accepts the real existence of demons but as a cessationist rejects the use of exorcism for the modern era.4 Powlison acknowledges the reality of spiritual warfare but argues that demonic possessions and therefore exorcisms are erroneous.5

According to Powlison the exorcisms of Christ were a subset of His divine healings and people who claimed to be possessed are really in need of healing, in this case of mental illness.6 Powlison also argues that true spiritual warfare is, and has historically been, the very act of living out the commands of Christ in one’s everyday life, essentially the psychomachic view.7

Gregory Boyd (1957-present) is the minister of Woodland Hills Church in

Minnesota as well as an adjunct professor at Bethel University who has a Pentecostal background, but identifies as Anabaptist.8 Boyd acknowledges the real existence of demons along with their hierarchy and that their fall occurred at some point in prehistory.

Boyd also accepts the need for exorcism as part of contemporary Christian ministry.9 For

3 www.ccef.org/authors/david-powlison. [accessed September 10, 2018].

4 David Powlison, “Chapter 1: The Classical Model” in Understanding Spiritual Warfare: Four Views, ed. James K. Beilby and Paul Rhodes Eddy, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2012 (Kindle Edition)’ R.K. Hughes & J.H. Armstrong, The Coming Evangelical Crisis, Chicago: Moody Press, 1996, 229; Collins, Exorcism and Deliverance Ministry in the Twentieth Century, 4.

5 Moreau, “Discourses on Demonology in North America,” 60; Including deliverance ministries, which he calls “ekballisitic modes of ministry” David Powlison, Power Encounters: Reclaiming Spiritual Warfare, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994, 27-29.

6 Ibid., 60-62.

7 Powlison, “Chapter 1: The Classical Model” in Understanding Spiritual Warfare; Moreau, “Discourses on Demonology in North America,” 60-62.

8 Warren, Cleansing the Cosmos, 12.

9 Boyd, God at War, 271, 101.

123

Boyd spiritual warfare is a cosmic battle which forms the default worldview of the ancient world and so ought to be the default hermeneutic for biblical interpretation.10 As such Boyd argues that all Christians are first and foremost soldiers in this cosmic strife.11

Peter C. Wagner (1930-2016), before his death, taught at Fuller Theological

Seminar and was a leading advocate of church growth research as well as a key and prolific author on spiritual warfare theology. Wagner credits his introduction and mentorship in modern demonology to John Wimber (1934-1997) a controversial figure who taught alongside him at Fuller Theological Seminary for a number of years.12

Wagner, as a Pentecostal, was not a cessationist, indeed he was intimately connected with the Third Wave Movement.13 As such he advocated for extra-biblical revelation and taught se-exorcism.14 For Wagner the praxis of the Kingdom occurred through spiritual warfare. Wagner divided this struggle into three parts or levels: (1) ground-level warfare,

(2) occult-level warfare, and (3) strategic-level warfare.15 Wagner also advocated the practice something he called “spiritual mapping.”16 The premise of this “mapping” is,

10 Boyd, God at War, 18-23. Moreau, “Discourses on Demonology in North America,” 58-60.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid., 55; Collins, Exorcism and Deliverance in the Twentieth Century 101-103; cf. Paul Hiebert, “Healing and the Kingdom” in Wonders and the Word, ed. James R. Coggins and Paul Hiebert, Hillsboro: Kindred Press, 1989, www.deceptioninthechurch.com/hiebert.html. [accessed September 10, 2018]; John Wimber also went on to found the Vineyard Church Movement.

13 C. Peter Wagner, Confronting the Powers: How the New Testament Church Experienced the Power of Strategic-level Spiritual Warfare: Ventura: Regal Books, 1996, 16.

14 Ibid., 59.

15 Wagner, “Chapter 1” in Warfare Prayer: What the Bible Says about Spiritual Warfare, Shippenburg: Destiny Image Publishers, 2001 (Kindle Edition).

16 Wagner, Confronting the Powers, 6; John Hart, “The Gospel and Spiritual Warfare: A Review of Peter Wagner’s Confronting the Powers,” Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society, 10:18, Spring 1997, 55-57 http://faithalone.org/journal/1997i/Hart.html, [accessed September 10, 2018].

124 through special revelation from the Holy Spirit and through prayer, a Christian can supposedly identify, name and bind territorial spirits in order to gain spiritual and evangelistic victory.17

Walter Wink (1935-2012) of Auburn Theological Seminary has offered the most divergent theory in regard to spiritual warfare theology in the twentieth century. Most other theorists accept the real existence – or at least the premise that the Bible accepts the real existence – of demons. Wink does not.18 Wink leverages Jungian psychology as a hermeneutic to explore the demonic. According to Jung humanity shares in a collective unconsciousness and what binds this shared unconsciousness together is archetypes.19

Archetypes are structural psychosomatic patterns, or models.20 Since archetypes are psychosomatic they bridge both body and mind and help provide foundational meaning based on transcendent cultural symbols.21 Wink takes this concept and applies it to a

Scriptural exegesis of spiritual warfare. As such Wink denies the real existence of

17 Wagner uses Christ’s parable of the Strong Man as the key metaphor for the Strategic Level. Hart, “The Gospel and Spiritual Warfare”; Hart, “The Gospel and Spiritual Warfare”; Moreau, “Discourses on Demonology in North America,” 56-57; C. Peter Wagner, Church Growth and the Whole Gospel, Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1981, 36-38; The alternative term for this level of warfare is power evangelism. Hart, “The Gospel and Spiritual Warfare.” The devices a territorial spirit might use could include Demonic geographic linkages, generational curses, forms of idolatry, sexual immorality, and broken covenants (e.g. divorces) all of which offer the Demonic a foothold situation which can then develop into a stronghold. Moreau, “Discourses on Demonology in North America,” 57.

18 cf. Walter Wink, Naming the Powers, (Kindle Edition).

19 sv. “Archetype” in A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis, ed. Andrew Samuels, Bani Shorter, Fred Plaut, New York: Routledge, 1984, 24.

20 Ibid.; sv. “Archetype,” in the Oxford English Dictionary, www.oed.com [accessed January 16, 2018].

21 Ibid.

125 demons and therefore traditional notions of exorcism.22 Instead the demonic is a manifestation of human evil expressed through cultural institutions. 23

Lewis and the Theorists

The field of spiritual warfare is broad and we cannot give a detailed examination of each position of these four theologians. Still, there are points at which their theological frameworks intersect with Lewis. Considering Lewis’s demonology as we understand it thus far, we may place these points of intersection under three basic headings: (1) angels, demons and the use of archetypes, (2) the use of demonic possession and hierarchy, and

(3) the concept of the psychomachia and the role of the Church within spiritual conflict.

Angels, Demons and Archetypes

One of the more interesting elements of Lewis’s demonology is how he links angels with archetypes. In this regard Lewis and Wink are similar. However, Wink essentially uses Jungian archetypes to deconstruct the demonic, arguing that the demonic, including the person of Satan, are really archetypes, which negates their real existence.

Rather they are psychic manifestations of humanity’s innate evil.24 The human and demonic are actually the same thing, two sides of the same coin—the human mind.25

Wink further expands this concept of evil to argue that the demonic is manifested in

22 Walter Wink, “Chapter 1” in Engaging the Powers, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992 (Kindle Edition).

23 Ibid.

24 Moreau “Discourses on Demonology in North America,” 52-53.

25 Ibid.; Walter Wink, Collected Readings, ed. Henry French, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013, 116-118. “…the great archetypal powers of the soul have always behaved Demonically whenever they were not channeled and propitiated as divinities.” cf. chapter 4-5.

126 society and culture through its institutions. Wink further extends this view of the demonic to argue that such institutions can develop into gestalts or corporate spirits.26

Lewis, as well as his fellow Inkling, Owen Barfield, appreciated Jung’s theories but argued that it did not go far enough—asking instead where archetypes come from.27

For Lewis, Jung’s etiology of archetypes was circular, employing myths to explain myths.28 Archetypes, as primal symbols, are transcendent, they stand outside of us. Lewis points out in Meditations in a Toolshed that we can, as Jung does, look at a thing, or we can, as Lewis suggests, look along the thing itself.29 Just as we can look at a ray of light we can also look along the ray and in so doing we find its source—the sun. All symbols have a source and some symbols, such as archetypes, point beyond themselves, beyond us, and beyond the “walls of the world” to something higher and greater, just as in

Lewis’s experience of sehnsucht, or the numinous. 30 Lewis sees primitive humanity as

26 Wink, “Chapter 5” in Naming the Powers; By gestalt Wink is drawing on the theological concept of von Balthasar and Ehrenfels who define gestalt as “complex wholes which simply cannot be reduced to their constituent components.” Alister E. McGrath, A Scientific Theology: Theory, vol. 3, London: T&T Clark, 2003, 99.

27 “Owen Barfield praises Jung for understanding the spiritual nature of consciousness and its evolution: the Jungian "collective unconscious" and appeal to myth are much-needed antidotes to twentieth century materialism which threatens to make an object of man himself.” Patrick Grant, “Tolkien: Archetype and Word” in Understanding The Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism. Edited by Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D. Isaacs, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004; cf. Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry. London: Faber, 1957. 133-34.

28 C.S. Lewis, “Psychoanalysis and Literary Criticism,” in Selected Literary Essays, ed. Walter Hooper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, 299.

29 Lewis, “Meditations in a Toolshed,” in Selected Literary Essays. ed Walter Hooper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, 212-215; David J. Hawkesworth, “A ‘Short’ Theology of Narnia: The Deep and Deeper Magic” in Both Sides of the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis, Theological Imagination, and Everyday Discipleship, ed. Rob Fennell, Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2015, 12.

30 Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” 45; cf. J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories” in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, 1983, ed. Christopher Tolkien, London: HarperCollins, 2006, 109-161. cf. David J. Hawkesworth, Narnia Awake: A Theology of the Chronicles of Narnia, Baccalaureate Honours Thesis. Moncton: Crandall University, 2008, chapter 1.

127 having become aware of something, or someone pressing its existence upon the human consciousness from without.31 By the same token the antithesis of the numinous, or unheimlich, has imprinted itself upon our collective unconsciousness.32 In other words, both the divine and the demonic, God and Satan, angels and demons, are imprinted upon us. As Barfield argues “Spiritual Hierarchies have withdrawn from the world, and exist, interiorized, within the individual will and too much cut off from the extramental world.”33 Lewis, in his Ransom Trilogy, presents us with the idea of angelic archetypes as when Jane experiences the Flaming Woman, or when the oyarseu descend upon

Merlin.34

Lewis does not explicitly associate the demonic with archetypes per se yet it seems impossible to ignore the archetypal position that Lewis’s demons play.35 Again,

Lewis and Wink would agree that the demonic operates within the dark side of the human psyche but Lewis is an expansionist where Wink is seemingly reductionistic. Due to this framework Wink essentially deconstructs the Three Foes of the world, the flesh and the devil and rearranges them as the flesh and the world-powers. The flesh in Wink’s paradigm is actually part of a spectrum since it represents individual evil which helps to form the societal world-powers. For Lewis, Wink’s use of archetype and his subsequent

31 Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 6-16.

32 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 138-139.

33 Indicating how he disagrees with a reductionistic view, such as Wink’s, regarding the spiritual realm. Owen Barfield, Romanticism Comes of Age. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1944, 193, 202; Patrick Grant, “Tolkien: Archetype and Word,” 163-182.

34 Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 320-324, cf. 281-282, 312.

35 Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, xxxii.

128 denial of the real existence of the demonic beyond human institutions and corporate evil is misplaced. Evil itself is larger than just humanity. Lewis notes how civilizations act like an engine. They develop and grow only to fail and falter in the end. This is partly due to using the wrong “fuel” but it is also due to the additional factor or some other force that seeks to work against humanity.36 As Lewis observes if we deny that the Devil is real it is then that he is pleased.37 To undermine the existence of the demonic is to undermine the same arguments for the supernatural in general, and by extension for God.

Demonic Possession and Hierarchy

Lewis, like Wagner, believes in a demonic hierarchy. For Wagner, this demonic structure is important and relates to his third level of spiritual warfare—strategic warfare.38 Wagner’s territorial demons represent the upper echelons of the demonic infrastructure and the goal of the Church is to oppose such beings. This is where his spiritual mapping comes into play, for by this mapping one is able to discern the name of the spirit and thereby assert control over the demon to enable the unimpeded proclamation of the Gospel.39

Lewis was aware of occultic figures and texts relating to the demonic such as

John Dee, or the Zohar, as well as the hierarchical system of Pseudo-Dionysius, to name

36 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 51.

37 Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, xlvii.

38 Wagner, “Chapter 1” in Warfare Prayer: What the Bible Says about Spiritual Warfare, Shippenburg: Destiny Image Publishers, 2001 (Kindle Edition).

39 cf. Wagner, Breaking Spiritual Strongholds in Your City, Shippenburg: Destiny Image Publishers, 2015; Ludwig Blau and Kaufmann Kohler, sv. “Angelology,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, www.jewishencyclopedia.com [accessed Dec 1, 2017].

129 just a few.40 Lewis would have recognized the competing hierarchical systems of these authors and texts as well as the plethora of angelic and demonic epithets as well as the conspicuous absence of angelic and demonic names or of a clear hierarchical framework in Scripture. It is telling that Lewis never explicitly names any of the demons in his

Ransom Trilogy. He invents the name Tash for the god of Calormen in the Chronicles of

Narnia and he names a number of his devils in The Screwtape Letters. However, names like “Wormwood” and “Screwtape” are hardly akin to the invocational names of the occult. The name “Slugtrimpet” is more Dickensian than anything else. Their names are onomatopoeic, meant to help us understand their character rather than be magical names.

Considering that Christ’s exorcisms often did not include discerning the name of a demon the whole aim in mapping and naming demons is simply not a priority for Lewis.41

Additionally, the theme of demonic possession features heavily in spiritual warfare theology. Lewis certainly accepts that possession happens while Powlison simply rejects both possession and exorcism base on his cessationism. Powlison argues that

Christ’s ministry of exorcism has ceased for today and that such a ministry was actually

40 Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, xlvii; Lewis, chapter 2.1 in The Allegory of Love; Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost, 83-91; Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, 8-12.

41 Guelich, “Spiritual Warfare: Jesus, Paul and Peretti,” 40-41; Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, 38; occult practice in naming demons to control them: Lewis does not include a detailed hierarchical framework either. Lewis, Preface of Paradise Lost, 108-115; cf. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters; Lewis would have shown interest in would have been Wink’s analysis of the Pauline nomenclature. Lewis himself has done similar work, broadly speaking when he wrote Studies in Words. Wink argues that Paul’s terms for spiritual beings is non-systemic nomenclature opening the way for him to categorize the Demonic as human evil. Marva Dawn (1949-present), has assessed Wink’s work and argued that Wink is not exhaustive in his treatment and that he ultimately fails to follow his own counsel about reading such passages contextually. Marva Dawn, Powers, Weakness and the Tabernacling of God: The 2000 Schaff Lectures, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001, 1-34.

130 part of Christ’s healing ministry, in this case a spiritual and mental healing.42 Wagner, by contrast, readily accepts possessions and exorcisms for today.

Lewis was by no means a cessationist arguing for a number of charismata including divine healings, glossolalia as well as demonic possession. When his wife was sick with cancer Lewis invited Reverend Bide to lay hands on Joy since Bide had a reputation for being a healer. Lewis also prayed that the terrible pain Joy was experiencing would somehow be transferred to him. Not only did Joy’s cancer go into remission but her bones started to regrow while Lewis started to experience osteoporosis and for Lewis this constituted a divine healing.43 In a sermon entitled “Transposition,” delivered in 1944 (revised in 1961), Lewis addressed the phenomena of glossolalia.44

While Lewis avoided the Pentecostal arguments regarding glossolalia as evidence of the

Holy Spirit he acknowledged its legitimate practice.45 This shows Lewis’s openness to certain practices common to Charismatic Christianity, including cheirotonia, intercessory prayer, as well as divine healing.

It is also very possible Lewis would have been sympathetic with Wagner’s identificational repentance as a form of intercession, or what he would have called

42 Powlison, Power Encounters: Reclaiming Spiritual Warfare, 60-62.

43 Hooper, Guide, 79-86; McGrath, C.S. Lewis, 335-339; Will Vaus, “Lewis in Cambridge: The Professorial Years (1954-1963)” in C.S. Lewis Life, Works and Legacy: An Examined Life, vol. 1, ed. Bruce L. Edwards, Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2007, 202.

44 C.S. Lewis, “Transposition” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, ed. Walter Hooper. New York: HarperCollins, 2001, 91-115; Kathryn Ann Lindskoog, Surprised by C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald and Dante: An Array of Original Discoveries, Macon: Mercer University Press, 2001, 129- 131.

45 Lewis also recognized that the phenomena of tongues was not limited to Christianity alone; Lewis, “Transposition,” Lewis, “Transposition,” in the Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, 1976, New York: HarperOne, 1980, 91-115.

131

“substitution.”46 Lewis borrowed this idea from Charles Williams who argued that it is possible for us to take on the burdens and pains of our fellow human beings as an emulation of Christ’s substitutionary atonement.47 Thus, Lewis’s position, and that of

Wagner’s, is not diametrically opposed but it is Lewis who argues that possession requires a volitional aspect and that the demoniac becomes psychically diminished by that act. Contemporary views on possession tend to accept that a person can be possessed but not diminished and there even exists a debate over the question over whether a

Christian can be possessed and Lewis never addresses that question.48 Wagner’s second level of warfare may come closest to Lewis’s volitional position since it is arguable that those who engage in occult behavior do so intentionally.49 In the end however, Lewis’s possession is an act of absorption and perdition rather than the more contemporary view of control and violation.

Wink, while denying the reality of the demonic does speak of humanity beings as

“possessed.” He argues that “Our society is possessed, Christians as much as anyone. We are possessed by violence, possessed by sex, possessed by money, possessed by drugs.”50

Both Wink and Wagner share similar ground here since Wagner’s concept of warfare

46 Letter to Sheldon Vanauken, dated November 27, 1957, Lewis spoke about his osteoporosis and Joy’s bone growth as a “Charles Williams” in Collected Letters, vol. 3, 907.

47 Ibid.

48 B.J. Oropeza, 99 Answers to Questions About Angels and Demons and Spiritual Warfare, Downers Grove: InterVasity Press, 1997, 50-78; cf. Merrill F. Unger, What Demons Can Do to Saints, Chicago: Moody Publishers, 1977; Ibid., Biblical Demonology: A Study of Spiritual Forces at Work Today, Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1994.

49 Moreau, “Discourses on Demonology in North America,” 55-57.

50 Ibid., 313.

132 includes these societal elements as well. Lewis’s own theological conception of the psychomachia certainly is similar to Wink since, in The Screwtape Letters, he notes the place that sex and wealth play in our temptation and perdition. The fundamental difference between Lewis and Wink’s conception of possession is how Wink argues that

“by attempting to fight the demons ‘in the air,’ evangelicals and charismatics will continue largely to ignore the institutional sources of the demonic.”51 The “sources” of the demonic according to Wink’s paradigm are derived from one source—humanity.

Thus, he advocates for “forms of collective exorcism” as a new apotaxis.52

Wink is partly right about a lack of awareness regarding institutional evil and it is an argument that could be levied against Lewis. Lewis is certainly not as critical of institutional evil in his writings as we would like.53 Lewis’s theological anthropology moved him to primarily address the individual first.54 While, Lewis’s writings are non- partisan, upon closer inspection, one sees that there are many socio-political comments made, such as his views on public education, or on the role of the State and what he calls scientocracy to name just a few.55 Lewis’s conception of possession as part of a spectrum of activity, along with his traditional acceptance of the view of the Three Foes means that the World, in his paradigm, is demonized. Lewis intentionally places a dichotomy

51 Ibid., 314.

52 Ibid.

53 It should be noted how Lewis, at times, seems to be overly influenced by extra-biblical sources such as Milton or Dante as he seeks to answer questions about the nature of angels and the like which the Scriptures are vague on or simply do not address.

54 White notes how Lewis changes this in Screwtape Proposes a Toast to be more socially minded. White, The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, 85.

55 Lewis makes comments to this end in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Last Battle as well as his first two chapters in The Abolition of Man; Dyer and Watson, C.S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law, 12, 90-91, 98-103.

133 between the fallen Britain and the spiritual Logres. Much like Augustine’s two cities the worldly and fallen Britain is the demonically possessed and being shaped into the imago satanae.56

The Psychomachia and the Church

In regards to the concept of the psychomachia we find that it is under-utilized by most of our four theologians outside of Lewis. Powlison, like Lewis, advocates for a more traditional view of spiritual warfare as an inner struggle rather than a one- dimensional emphasis on exorcism.57 Like Lewis, Boyd accepts the demonic as real and that our spiritual conflict must be seen as serious and genuine, in much the same way that

Lewis argues that we are in “enemy-occupied territory.”58

Wink and Boyd direct their attentions to the role of the Church in the present while Lewis’s approach is firmly eschatological.59 Lewis and Boyd both advocate for a spiritual warfare that includes demonic possession as well as the psychomachia yet

Boyd’s emphasis is to admonish the Church to enact a resurgence against the demonic which includes addressing issues of social justice. Both Boyd and Wink end up making very similar conclusions around the demonic and social justice, yet their arguments are

56 Meilaender, The Taste for the Other,102-103.

57 cf. Lewis, Pilgrim’s Regress, New York: HarperCollins, 2013.

58 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 59-60; Boyd’s hyperbolic claim regarding the warfare worldview as the primary hermeneutic seems overreaching. Lewis, as with Robert Guelich, would have noted that such claims of primacy, especially in regards to biblical interpretation, are difficult to maintain especially since other hermeneutics (e.g. covenant theology as one example) can be used to understand and unify the fabric of Scripture, not just its warfare worldview. Robert Guelich, “Spiritual Warfare: Jesus, Paul and Peretti”, Pneuma, 13:1 Sp. (1991), 40-41; Warren, Cleansing the Cosmos, 14; Boyd, God at War, 269-290.

59 Lewis, “Letters” in God in the Dock, 337; Holmer, C.S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought, 94.

134 far from congruent. Based on Wink’s Jungian interpretation he sees humanity as the demonic and so to combat the demonic is to combat societal evil. Lewis would have agreed that there is a corollary between the Demonic and humanity that would have argued that such a corollary is not, in itself proof, of Wink’s position. Indeed, it seems that Lewis’s position that both human evil and Demonic evil exist and help inform our archetypes of evil is not only more balanced but also nearer a direct reading of Scripture.

It also seems plausible that Wink may be liable to the fallacy of “intellectual snobbery.”60

It would be tempting to argue that such concerns, for Lewis, are irrelevant, yet this is not the case. As Dyer and Watson have observed Lewis did care about many issues we generally place under the heading of social justice. In essays and private correspondence Lewis expressed concern over social and political equality as well as human rights. He took a keen interest in politics while seeking to eschew any sign of partisanship.61 Lewis would also have recognized how the calls of social justice which once echoed from within the Church in the nineteenth century had been co-opted by secular British society, a society which became ever more de-Christianized. People had come to realize that one could care about the poor but they did not have to be religious in order to do so. Indeed, one could address the needs of social justice from the soapbox of politics rather than the pulpit. He also sought to live out his Christian principles around

60 Lewis’ “intellectual snobbery” is the concept that one generation’s views of a previous one as somehow benighted and less advanced, which Lewis points out in Out of the Silent Planet is false. For all the technology of Weston he fails to have the peace and contentment of the Malacandrians. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 166-169; Ibid, An Experiment in Criticism, 1961, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, 73; Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 138-139.

61 Considering these realities Lewis, who avoided the politics, and wished to avoid any accusation of political patronage, practiced his social justice on a private, individualistic level. Dyer and Watson, C.S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law, 1-17; cf. Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularism, 1800-2000, Abingdon: Routledge: 2009; Holmer, C.S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought, 93.

135 these issues, as with his Agape Fund setup to help people in poverty.62 Much of this was done privately and it seems regrettable that he did not write more overtly about these issues. Still, the point is that he did care about social justice.63

Wink advocates that the battle over social justice, as spiritual warfare, can only be enacted through radical pacifism. Lewis is decidedly militant in his rhetoric and conception of spiritual warfare.64 Lewis, as a veteran of the Great War, turned to his fellow Britons during the Second World War and was anything but a pacifist or conscientious objector. Lewis was invited by the Oxford Pacifist Society to deliver a paper, Why I Am Not a Pacifist in 1940. Lewis there argues that in the face of a clear and present danger war is both lawful and a moral imperative.65 He goes so far as to argue that some forms of peace can even be considered sinful, and rejects inaction as inexcusable. 66 Lewis points us towards Aquinas’s Just War theory by saying that “the world echoes with the praise of righteous war.”67 He points out that Christ did not admonish the Roman Centurion to resign his commission, nor was Christ’s command to turn the other cheek an anti-war reference. In Mere Christianity Lewis notes the semantic

62 William Griffin, C.S. Lewis: Spirituality for Mere Christians, Eugene, Wipf and Stock, 2007, 171.

63 Lewis is The Abolition of Man as well as That Hideous Strength is cautious about the concept of social engineering which so often going along with arguments of social justice. This attitude is partly due to Lewis’ Swiftian attitude towards of current human condition.

64 C.S. Lewis, “Conditions for a Just War,” in Selected Literary Essays. Edited by Walter Hooper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, 412; Lewis, “Why I am Not a Pacifist,” 78.

65 “I can refer them to the ruling of Thomas Aquinas that ‘even as princes lawfully defend their land by the sword against disturbance from within, so it belongs to them to defend it by the sword from enemies without’.” Ibid., 83.

66 Lewis, “Conditions for a Just War,” 412.

67 Lewis, “Why I am Not a Pacifist,” 81.

136 distinction between killing and murder (cf. Mat 19:18).68 In Perelandra he argues against our inclination to rationalize spiritual warfare into a purely non-physical category, or to stereotype combat as primitive and savage.69 Considering the evils and horrors of Nazism we must recognize, retrospectively, the value of Lewis’s militant stance. The line between physical warfare and spiritual warfare, the natural and the supernatural become blurred with Lewis. Lewis goes beyond Wink by arguing that our mundane conflicts are also part of our spiritual struggles and both need to be seriously fought. Lewis makes this argument because he understands that the Incarnation was a real and physical experience just as much as it was a spiritual struggle.

Lewis would probably have objected to Wink’s concept of a gestalt. Lewis would have acknowledged that societies do form gestalts but to speak of the “spirit of the age” or the “spirit” of an institution as being demonic would have seemed a blind leap for him.

Wink’s conception of the demonic as a non-personal, societal “force,” a term Lewis repeatedly uses with distain, would have been both psychologically and biblically unconvincing.70 Lewis, as a logician advocated for common sense, so to look at a gestalt as our antagonist is essentially to make humanity its own enemy. Wink argues that the victim of racism as well as the racist are both victimized by the demonic, which is to say

68 Ibid., Mere Christianity, 158-159; Ibid., “Why I Am Not a Pacifist,” 86-87; φονεύω (phoneuō) meaning to murder; “…no such crude, materialistic struggle could possibly be what Maleldil really intended. Any suggestion to the contrary must be only his own morbid fancy. It would degrade the spiritual warfare to the condition of mere mythology.” Lewis, Perelandra, 122.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid., 80-83; Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 7; Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 9.

137 humanity. Since the victim of racism is part of humanity then, by extension, that victim has paradoxically been party to victimizing the racist.71

Additionally, Wink’s demonic as an impersonal foe fails to be truly evil. For example, when people speak of “acts of God” such as earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters we refer to them as natural forms of evil, but they lack any true sense of agency and malevolence. Nature and its phenomena are not innately malevolent, they end up being evil only from our perspective. Nature as a kind of gestalt lacks sentience and therefore agency and those two elements are always needed for true evil. Imagine that one were to argue that the State had victimized individuals we can only speak of the State as victimizing others in so much as individual members of the State they represent are sentient and possess agency. Within all gestalts there is a degree of order so that there can be control, but control by whom? Bureaucrats? Certainly not, for they are bound by the norms of the gestalt and so their capacity is limited. Our gestalts end up implying a degree of hierarchy but that hierarchy always requires a leader.72 The leader is where the proverbial “buck” stops. He or she is the incarnation of the gestalt. The leader will inevitably have key subordinates in order to enact that person’s will and direction. A head of State, even in a democracy, directs the State according to its internal laws and his or her interpretation of those laws.

We find then that gestalts have de facto heads and so to claim that Satan is a mythological chimera ends up being unsatisfactory and antithetical to the human

71 Walter Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003, 309.

72 Humphrey, “Chapter 8” in Further Up and Further In, (Kindle edition).

138 experience. An impersonal antagonist cuts across the grain of our moral sensibilities and our common experiences. Lewis articulates this when he says,

Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him, he will be complaining "It's not fair" before you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter, but then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong— in other words, if there is no Law of Nature—what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one?73

The cry, “It’s not fair” shows how our common, everyday experiences trumps the argument of moral relativism. If we extend this line of thought we must also recognize that human experience revolts against such an impersonal foe as those who Wink offers us. Lewis further points out that morality requires a true absolute to validate its existence, something or someone that is the true measure of goodness (e.g. God). In the same manner we require a true absolute, a source, an incarnate foe of sentience and will, rather than a faceless foe, this is the very ground of morality.74 This forms the groundwork for

Lewis’s Satan as the incarnate unheimlich.

Lewis’s Contribution

Lewis’s contributions to the field of demonology and spiritual warfare is chiefly in those areas that few other theologians have engaged in. Lewis not only helped to popularize the concept of spiritual warfare but he also helped to make the subject relevant. A doctrine that once was so salient to thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas fell on hard times in the modern period. With figures such as Luther and Calvin this

73 Ibid, Mere Christianity, 17-18.

74 cf. Ibid. I.2.

139 subject of angels and demons was relegate to the shadows. Demonology became synonymous, over time, with notions of the occult and esoterica. With the dawn of the twentieth century and the emergence of psychology, along with Enlightenment attitudes towards the supernatural and religion, demons became the symptom of diseased minds.

Lewis’s overall apologetics helped to bring a seriousness to Christianity even a respectability. Lewis’s apologetics were not overly new, but in many cases very old ideas, long held by the Church that had been marginalized as less fashionable.75

However, Lewis identified himself as a modern human being who felt more at ease with ancient minds.76 It should not be surprising that the unpopular study of angels and demons also found a new lease on life with Lewis.

Lewis not only takes the supernatural to be real, but also seeks to answer the question why the demonic matters. Lewis, in answering this question, helps to make the demonic relevant for today. Lewis integrates the demonic into the rest of his theology.

His view of the angelic informs his understanding of demons. Through the angelic we come to understand something of who God is as well as who we are to be come in

Christ.77 Lewis makes the angelic potent and palpable through this archetypal framework.

In doing this Lewis also brings into Christianity a renewed sense of wonder and awe. We

75 This secular view of the supernatural appears in Out of the Silent Planet and helps to explain how reviewers missed the theological themes and why Lewis offers his Admonition in The Screwtape Letters. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 130-140; Mortimer J. Adler, Angels and Us, New York: Touchstone, 1993, 26; E.J. Clery, The Rise of Supernatural Fiction: 1762-1800, 1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 7; James C. Livingstone, sv. “Horace Bushnell,” in Modern Christian Thought: The Enlightenment and the Nineteenth Century, vol. 1, 1997, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006, 109-110; cf. Michael D. Bailey, Magic and Superstition in Europe: A Concise History from Antiquity to the Present, Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007.

76 Lewis, “De Descriptione Temporum,” in Selected Literary Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967, 13-14; Dyer and Watson, C.S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law, 10; Colin Duriez, C.S. Lewis: A Biography of Friendship, Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2013, 207.

77 Aquinas, ST, Ia.50.

140 also gain as sense of the plenitude of God, that we are not alone is the cosmos and that

God’s sense of creativity is limitless, a notion that Lewis and Tolkien also saw expressed in humanity as sub-creators.78

Additionally, the use of the unheimlich has been overlooked in both theology and psychology. Wink comes close to this subject through his Jungian archetypes but ultimately focuses on another direction. While Lewis uses this concept to great effect it has been poorly understood in Lewis Studies both in his writings and its theological implications. The interplay of the unheimlich and the demonic help us to understand why the demonic elicits fear and terror and why such emotional responses can also be attributed to God. It is even more provocative that Lewis genuinely believed in the existence of the demonic and that they are essentially monsters meaning that our world is not only filled with wonders but also real horrors. Lewis’s use of archetype, of which the unheimlich plays a part, is one that sees meaning and reality beyond the Humean model, one that is medieval in the best possible sense of the word. In this sense Lewis firmly re- mythologizes Christianity where Bultmann sought to demythologize.79 Undoubtedly, part of this re-mythologization stems from Lewis’s view on intellectual snobbery, that old ideas endure because they have value and point towards Truth, which is how he sees

78 Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories,” 153-161.

79 Lewis disagrees with Bultmann’s theological frame work. cf. Lewis, “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism,” 191-192; Myer, C.S. Lewis in \Context, 184-189. David Ferguson points out that, like Lewis, Bultmann recognize the danger of fusing religion with the political for in so doing allegiances are strained and tested. Bultmann placed this tension between the Church and State, Lewis recognized it in the Establishment of his age and personally sought to avoid such testing. Dyer and Watson C.S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law, 4-17; David Ferguson, Church State and Civil Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 10.

141 archetypes.80 Lewis goes to great pains in The Abolition of Man, to argue that there is such a thing as Truth (the Tao) and that without real truth claims we ultimately end up as part of the demonic.81

Additionally, Lewis makes demonology a relevant form of theology through his psychology of sin. Lewis follows a long line of such Christian writers, from Evagrius and his seven deadly sins to Prudentius and his Psychomachia. Lewis is part of a chain that helps Christians understand why and how sin operates upon the human soul.82 This is one of the most appealing parts of The Screwtape Letters, and why it is an enduring classic.83

It has been argued that Christianity is not an abstract idea but a concrete one with concrete implications.84 This is an element that our four theologians ultimately fail to fully accomplish. It is true that Wink and Boyd seek to make relevant applications to society however, what seems to be missing is any appeal or theological framework for the individual. This is important because the foundation of any larger and meaningful societal change must first start with the individual.85

80Archetypes point to the spiritual or supernatural and to the degree they do so they point to Truth. The irony is that in our present age we have tended to see the spiritual as unreal and false when in fact it is to be seen as more real than we are which is why the Damned are ghosts and the Saints are solid in The Great Divorce.

81 Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 705-717.

82 Gerard Reed, C.S. Lewis Explores Vice and Virtue, Kansas City: Beacon Hill, 2001, 1-10; Shawn R. Tucker, the Virtues and Vices in the Arts: A Sourcebook, Eugene: Cascade Books, 2015, 1-10, 76-178.

83 Vaus, Mere Theology, 199.

84 Richard McBrien, “No Shortcuts to Good Theology,” The National Catholic Report, www.ncronline.org, November 15, 2010 [accessed December 18, 2018]; Conway Morel, “Dialogue V” in Authority and Conscience: A Free Debate on the Tendency of Dogmatic Theology and on Characteristic of Faith, London: Longmans Green and Co., 1871, 245.

85 cf. Jochen Brandtstädter, “Chapter 9: Individual Development in Social Action Contexts: Problems of Explanation” in Individual Development and Social Change: Explanatory Analysis, ed. John R. Nesselroade and Alexander von Eye, Orlando: Academic Press, 1985; Nevitt Sanford, Self and Society:

142

One of the most relevant elements of Lewis’s demonology is how he connects the demonic, not just with the present but primarily with the future. Lewis’s eschatological lense is important because, as Wolfe has argued, it is the future wherein change is possible and so it is the future that we wish to attain.86 The negative view Lewis has of the human condition is balanced by the preternatural promise inherent in Christianity. An instrumental part of this eschatological vision is Lewis’s use of theosis. The concept of theosis is itself significant since it signifies the end result of God’s salvific plan. What is interesting is that this plan does not summarily end with theosis, it goes on, much like

Lewis’s last line in the Chronicles where they begin “…Chapter One of the Great Story… which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”87 Lewis resonates with this doctrine because it is present in the most influential ancient theologians that he read. The idea that, prior to the Fall, Adam in his preternatural state had even more potential and even more awaiting him in God’s plan is highly engaging.

This is why Lewis argues that “redeemed humanity is still young it has hardly come to its full strength.”88 This notion also would have reverberated with Lewis’s view of myths being “gleams of truth.”89 All those stories about us “getting in” will come true. All those tales where there is so much to become will be realized.90 Such stories such as the

Social Change and Individual Development, 1967, Abingdon: Routledge, 2017; J. Stewart Black, It Starts with One: Changing Individuals, Changing Organizations, New Jeresy: Pearson Education Inc., 2014.

86 Wolfe, “C.S. Lewis and the Eschatological Church,” 110-112.

87 Lewis, The Last Battle, 211.

88 Lewis, The Great Divorce, 12.

89 Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” 43.

90 Ibid.

143 apotheosis of mortal Hercules, or Dionysius prefigure not just the Messianic resurrection but also humanity’s eschatological destiny. Beyond all this Lewis makes the connection that if theosis is true then the opposite is also accurate. The “atheosis” of humanity must also exist and what the existence would look like is informed by the demonic just as much as the angelic speaks to us of theosis.91

The notion of the Satanic Image is also theologically significant because it takes the reality of the demonic so seriously as to propose that humanity will become monsters and horrors of such a degree that it will dwarf our present understanding of dehumanization. It will be a fate worse than death, the unheimlich which we shudder at.

Once such a fate is understood it has the power to thrust us back upon Christ and the cross making our present spiritual conflict stand out in sharp relief. Every piece of ground really is claimed and counter-claimed, there is no safe harbour except surrender to Christ.

Not only is such a concept generally missing in the literature, but it is also a missed apologetic and evangelistic opportunity. Far from being an archaic doctrine demonology can deeply engage our culture with its fascination over the supernatural and be pointed to the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”92

Summarizing Lewis’s Demonology

Lewis is innovative and draws out interesting ideas. For example, Lewis describes in the Ransom Trilogy the siege of Thulcandra and the original shepherding of Lucifer of our planet. While there is no evidence for angelic possession Lewis entertains the notion which also opens up the idea of the angels invading this world in spiritual combat similar

91 Aquinas, ST. Ia.50; Joseph Peter Wawrykow, The Westminster Handbook to Thomas Aquinas, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005, 4.

92 John 1:29; Vaus, Mere Theology, 203.

144 to Christ in the Incarnation.93 While the Scriptures only hints at a demonic hierarchy

Lewis is more overt drawing from Milton and Dante at times but also using the modern bureaucracy as examples of what such a hierarchy might be like.94 Lewis further hints at how this hierarchy would express itself in Hell and what it would mean for the Damned.

Lewis’s way of viewing and relating to the world helps him to embrace a dualistic view of the world. While this view is a qualified form of dualism it is one that Lewis recognized that the Scriptures came close to and one that humanity is drawn towards.

This psychological insight, as well as his theological conviction about the real existence of angels helped Lewis to develop a robust understanding of the demonic. Part of Lewis’s appeal is his concept of evil as being truly malevolent and possessing real intelligence and agency as compared to Wink’s presentation of the demonic. Evil, for Lewis is real, with real consequences in this life and the next. Lewis’s response to the demonic through the Incarnation and sacrifice of Christ in not new. Yet, Lewis revives the Augustinian preternatural human and the concept of theosis to help make Heaven, rather than Hell appear more attractive to our modern age. All this is evidence of how deeply he thought about the role and work of the demonic and how integrated he understood the demonic to be in theology.

The lasting image and one of the most innovating concepts we can discern from

Lewis’s demonology is that of the imago satanae which stands in stark relief to the attraction of the imago dei an humanity’s theosis. The whole notion that the Damned are

93 Kilby, The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, 106.

94 Clark, C.S. Lewis: A Guide to His Theology, 100.

145 diminished and made unreal, the true meaning of perdition, brings us into the realm of the unheimlich with a real sense of horror and repulsion which one suspects to be part of

Lewis modus operendi in conveying truth as well as the Gospel message.

Areas for Further Study

In this work a narrative of Lewis’s demonology has been constructed and placed in conversation with other theologies of spiritual warfare yet more fully critical accounts are needed now that this initial work has been established. Other key interlocutors such as

Barth’s nichtige, Moltmann’s view on the soul, or Luther’s use of the incurvatio all are important areas for further study. Additionally, it would also be valuable to examine

Lewis in light of a biblical demonology. This would highlight areas where Lewis’s demonology lacks biblicism and have implications for evangelical and fundamentalist interpretations.

Additionally, it also clear that Lewis’s demonology has some bearing on his view of technology and human teleology (e.g. The Abolition of Man). With the rise of

Transhumanism in this century a more direct examination and comparison of Lewis with that school of thought would be of value. Figures such as Raymond Kurzweil (1948- present), and Aubrey de Grey (1963-present) are two voices in that camp which could debate Lewis and his claims.95 While there has been some works in this area in recent years it is still an academically rich subject with deep theological overtones.

95 Works of these two figures include: Raymond Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, New York: Viking Press, 2005; Aubrey de Grey, End of Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs that Could reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008; cf. Zoltan Istvan, the 2016 United States Presidential candidate for the Transhumanist Party might well be another figure to consider. Zoltan Istvan, The Transhumanist Wager, Reno: Futurity Imagine Media, 2013.

146

While the concept of the unheimlich is not new, it is not well understood in relation to Lewis and his work. In some small way we have explored some of that subject but not in any exhaustive way. It is a subject that deserves deeper research especially in relation to Lewis’s peer group, the Inklings. This is also true of Lewis’s demonology. We have only alluded to the influence of Williams and Tolkien in this work, but a deliberate study of Lewis and these figures, including Barfield would help to provide a deeper and more well-rounded understanding of Lewis’s demonology.96

Conclusion

In conclusion, we can say that Lewis’s place among modern theorist has gone under recognized and that his is a distinct voice that, in part, agrees with elements of our other theologians but also offers a distinct perspective. Lewis’s demonology has been underappreciated and overlooked even as his present influence persists and grows.

Lewis’s voice is one that helped to reassert the importance of demonology and to some degree helped pave the way for our contemporary theological discussion.

Lewis’s lasting contribution is in showing how the marginalized doctrine of demons can, and ought, to be renewed not as a historical piece of adiaphora but as a key and central concept in modern theology. Lewis’s demonology directly impacts his understanding of spiritual formation, eschatology as well as soteriology to name just three relevant areas. The fact that so many of Lewis’s key works have this strong spiritualistic theme is testament to how important his belief in angels and demons was to him. It seems inexplicable that so little ink has been devoted to understanding Lewis’s

96 Colin Duriez’s work, Bedeviled, is one work which seeks to make connections principally between Lewis and Tolkien but the subject as a whole invites further study.

147 demonology and its larger theological interconnections as compared to other elements of his writings and life. Considering the renewed interest in this field, in popular culture, as well as academia in general, it is more than likely that modern theology will, like Lewis, have to address itself again to the subject of angels and demons in a serious manner.

Considering Lewis’s aesthetic approach to this subject, as well as his enduring place in our zeitgeist, and his integrative theological approach to the demonic people will undoubtedly continue to grapple with Lewis as a compelling theological figure among others. Lewis bring us near to the demonic, and in so doing he holds up a mirror to humanity while never diminishing the reality of the demonic. The demonic, for Lewis, is not an end in itself, but a doctrine that helps to bring the salvific work of God into sharp contrast. In the final account Lewis’s demonology points us to Christ as Saviour and our future hope.

148

Bibliography

149

150

Bibliography

Primary Sources: Essays

Lewis, C.S. “Answers to Question on Christianity,” in C.S. Lewis Essay Collection: Faith Christianity and the Church, New York: HarperCollins, 2002, 323.

_____. “Christian Apologetics” in Selected Literary Essays. Edited by Walter Hooper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

_____. “Christianity and Culture,” in C.S. Lewis Essay Collection: Faith Christianity and the Church, New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

_____. “Conditions for a Just War,” in Selected Literary Essays. Edited by Walter Hooper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

_____. “Cross-Examination,” in God in the Dock. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970.

_____. “Evil and God,” in C.S. Lewis Essay Collection: Faith Christianity and the Church. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

_____, “It All Began with a Picture…” in On Stories and Other Essays on English Literature. 1966. London: Harcourt, 1982.

_____. “Meditations in a Toolshed,” in Selected Literary Essays. ed Walter Hooper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

_____. “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism.” in Christian Reflections. Edited by Walter Hooper, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967.

_____. “Myth Became Fact: in God in the Dock. Edited by Walter Hooper. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970.

_____. “On Church Music,” in C.S. Lewis Essay Collection: Faith Christianity and the Church. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

_____. “On Reading Old Books” in God in the Dock, 1970. Edited by Walter Hooper. Cambridge: Eerdmans 2014.

_____, “On Stories” in On Stories and Other Essays on English Literature. 1966. London: Harcourt, 1982.

_____. “Pains of Animals, The.” in C.S. Lewis Essay Collection: Faith Christianity and the Church. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

151

_____. “Psychoanalysis and Literary Criticism,” in Selected Literary Essays, Edited by Walter Hooper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

_____. “Religion without Dogma?” in C.S. Lewis Essay Collection: Faith Christianity and the Church. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

_____. “Scraps,” in C.S. Lewis Essay Collection: Faith Christianity and the Church. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

_____, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to be Said” in On Stories and Other Essays on English Literature. 1966. London: Harcourt, 1982.

_____. “Transposition” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. Edited by Walter Hooper. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

_____. . “Two Ways with the Self,” in C.S. Lewis Essay Collection: Faith Christianity and the Church. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

_____. “Weight of Glory, The.” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. Edited by Walter Hooper. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

_____. “Why I Am not a Pacifist,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. Edited by Walter Hooper. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

Primary Sources: Texts

Lewis, C.S. A Grief Observed. 1961. New York: HarperOne, 2015.

_____. Abolition of Man. 1943. In C.S. Lewis Selected Books. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

_____. Allegory of Love. 1936. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

_____. An Experiment in Criticism. 1961. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

_____. Christian Reflections, ed. Walter Hooper, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967.

_____. Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 2. Edited by Walter Hooper. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.

_____. Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis. Volume 3. Edited by Walter Hooper, San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2009.

_____. Letters of C.S. Lewis, Edited by W.H. Lewis, New York: Harcourt Press, 1988.

152

_____. Letters to Children. Edited by Lyle W. Dorsett and Marjorie Lamp Mead, New York: Touchstone, 1985.

_____. Mere Christianity. 1952. New York: HarperOne, 2002.

_____. Miracles. 1960. New York: HarperCollins, 2015.

_____. On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature, New York: HarperOne, 2017.

_____. Out of the Silent Planet. 1938. New York: Scribner, 2003.

_____. Perelandra. 1943. New York: Scribner, 2003.

_____. Pilgrim’s Regress, New York: HarperCollins, 2013.

_____. Preface of Paradise Lost. 1942. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961.

_____. Prince Caspian. 1951. New York: HarperTrophy, 1979.

_____. Reflections on the Psalms. 1958. London: Fount, 1998.

_____. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. 1966. Edited by Walter Hooper, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

_____. Surprised by Joy. 1955. New York: HarperCollins, 2015.

_____. That Hideous Strength. 1945, New York: Scribner, 2003.

_____. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, 1964, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

_____. The Essential C.S. Lewis. Edited by Lyle W. Dorsett. 1988. New York: Scribner, 2017.

_____. The Four Loves. 1960. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

_____. The Great Divorce. 1945, in C.S. Lewis Selected Books. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

_____. The Last Battle, 1956, New York: HarperTrophy, 1984.

_____. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, 1950, New York: HarperTrophy, 1978.

_____. The Magician’s Nephew. 1955. New York: HarperTrophy, 1983.

_____. The Problem of Pain. 1940. New York: HarperOne, 2001.

153

_____. The Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposed a Toast: Annotated Edition. 1942 and 1961. Edited by Paul McCusker. New York: HarperOne, 2013.

_____. The Silver Chair. 1953. New York: HarperTrophy, 1981.

_____. The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. Edited by Walter Hooper. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

_____. Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 1952, New York: HarperTrophy, 1980.

Secondary Sources

Barfield, Owen. Romanticism Comes of Age. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1944.

_____. Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry. London: Faber, 1957.

Barkman, Adam. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy” In C.S. Lewis’s List: Ten Books that Influenced Him Most. Edited by David Werther, Susan Werther. New York: Bloomsbury, 2015.

Barth, Markus. Ephesians 4-6. The Anchor Bible. New York: Doubleday, 1960.

Batka, L’Ubomir. “Luther’s Teaching on Sin and Evil” in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther ‘s Theology. Edited by Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, L’Ubomir Batka. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Bausenhart, Guido. Stolz—Geschwellte Brust auf schmächtigen Beinen, in Die Sieben Todsünden: Zwischen Reiz and Reue. Edited by Peter Nickl, Munster: Lit Verlag, 2009.

Bercot, David. A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs. 1998. Edited by David Bercot. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2012.

Berkhof, Hendrik. Christ and the Powers.1953. translated by John Howard Yoder. Scottdale: Herald Press, 1977.

Bemrose, Stephen. Dante’s Angelic Intelligences: Their Importance in the Cosmos and in Pre-Christian Religion. Rome: Edizioni di Storia Letteratura, 1983.

Black, J. Stewart. It Starts with One: Changing Individuals, Changing Organizations. New Jeresy: Pearson Education Inc., 2014.

154

Blau, Ludwig., Kohler, Kaufmann. sv. “Angelology.” The Jewish Encyclopedia. 1901. www.jewish.encyclopedia.com. [accessed December 1, 2017].

Brandtstädter, Jochen. “Chapter 9: Individual Development in Social Action Contexts: Problems of Explanation” in Individual Development and Social Change: Explanatory Analysis. Edited by John R. Nesselroade and Alexander von Eye, Orlando: Academic Press, 1985.

Brown, Janice. “C.S. Lewis and the Truth About Angels.” Journal of Inkling Studies. Volume 3:2. December, 2017. 97-110.

Caird, G.B. Principalities and Powers: A Study in Pauline Theology. 1954. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2003.

Chou, Christine Hsui-Chin. “The Devil in Disciplines” The Hermeneutic of Devil-hood in C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters” in Literature and Theology: New Interdisciplinary Spaces. Edited by Heather Walton. Surrey: Ashgate, 2011.

Clery, E.J. The Rise of Supernatural Fiction: 1762-1800. 1995. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Cullmann, Oscar. The State in the New Testament. New York: Scribner, 1956.

Dickieson, Brenton D.G. “The Unpublished Preface to C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters.” Notes and Queries. June, 2013. Volume 60:2. 296-298.

Ferguson, David. Church State and Civil Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Filmer-Davies, Cath. “C.S. Lewis” in The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology. Edited by Andrew Hass, David Jasper, Elisabeth Jay. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Griffin, William. C.S. Lewis: Spirituality for Mere Christians. Eugene, Wipf and Stock, 2007.

Hart, John. “The Gospel and Spiritual Warfare: A Review of Peter Wagner’s Confronting the Powers.” Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society. 10:18. Spring 1997. http://faithalone.org/journal/1997i/Hart.html, [accessed September 10, 2018].

Hawkesworth, David J. “A ‘Short’ Theology of Narnia: The Deep and Deeper Magic” in Both Sides of the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis, Theological Imagination, and Everyday Discipleship. Edited by Rob Fennell. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2015.

Hawkesworth, David J. Narnia Awake: A Theology of the Chronicles of Narnia. Baccalaureate Honours Thesis. Moncton: Crandall University, 2008.

155

Heaney, Maeve Louise. Music as Theology: What Music Says About the Word, Eugene: Pickwick, 2012.

Hefling, Charles. “Charles Williams” Words, images and (the) Incarnation.” In C. S. Lewis and Friends: Faith and the Power of Imagination. Edited by David Hein, Edward Henderson. Eugene: Cascade, 2011.

Holmer, Paul L. C.S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1976.

Jasper, David. “Interdisciplinarity in Impossible Times: Studying Religion through Literature and the Arts” in Literature and Theology: New Interdisciplinary Spaces. Edited by Heather Walton. Surrey: Ashgate, 2011.

_____. “The Study of Literature and Theology” in The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology. Edited by Andrew Hass, David Jasper, Elisabeth Jay. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Jenson, Matt. The Gravity of Sin: Augustine, Luther and Barth on homo incurvatus in se, London: T&T Clark, 2006.

Keck, David. Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Lewis, I.M. Ecstatic Religion: A Study in Shamanism and Spirit Possession. 1971. Abington: Routledge, 2003.

Lindskoog, Kathryn Ann. Surprised by C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald and Dante: An Array of Original Discoveries. Macon: Mercer University Press, 2001.

Livingstone, James C. sv. “Horace Bushnell.” in Modern Christian Thought: The Enlightenment and the Nineteenth Century. volume 1. 1997. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006.

Luther, Martin. “Lectures on Romans” in Luther’s Works. Volume 25. Edited by Jacob Preus. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1976.

_____. “Romans Lectures” in D. Martin Luthers Werke. Volume 56. Weimar: Böhlau, 1886.

Marsden, George M. C.S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity:” A Biography. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. Kindle Edition.

Martindale, Wayne. Beyond the Shadowlands: C.S. Lewis on Heaven and Hell. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2005.

156

McBrien, Richard. “No Shortcuts to Good Theology.” The National Catholic Report. www.ncronline.org. November 15, 2010. [accessed December 18, 2018].

McCraw, Benjamin W. Philosophical Approaches to Demonology. Edited by Benjamin W. McCraw and Robert Arp. New York: Routledge, 2017.

McGrath, Alister. A Scientific Theology: Theory, Volume 3. London: T&T Clark, 2003.

_____. C.S. Lewis—A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet, Carol Stream: Tyndale Publishers, 2013.

_____. The Intellectual World of C.S. Lewis. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014.

Meilaender, Gilbert. The Taste for the Other: The Social and Ethical Thought of C.S. Lewis. 1978, Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1998.

Mitchell, Christopher W. “Bearing the Weight of Glory: The Cost of C.S. Lewis’s Witness.” In The Pilgrim’s Guide: C.S. Lewis and the Art of Witness. Edited by David Mills. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.

Moltmann, Jurgen. God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God. Translated by Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993.

Moore, David. Three in Four Americans Believe in Paranormal. Gallup, June 16, 2005. [accessed September 12, 2018]. https://news.gallup.com/poll/16915/three-four- americans-believe-paranormal.aspx.

Moreau, Scott. “Spiritual Warfare” in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. Edited by Walter A. Elwell. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2001.

_____. Witchcraft, Demons and Deliverance: A Global Conversation on an Intercultural Challenge, Zurich: Lit Verlag, 2015.

Morel, Conway. “Dialogue V” in Authority and Conscience: A Free Debate on the Tendency of Dogmatic Theology and on Characteristic of Faith. London: Longmans Green and Co., 1871.

Mueller, Richard. Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996, Kindle Edition.

Muhlberger, Ellen. Angels in Late Ancient Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Myers, Doris T. C.S. Lewis in Context, Kent: Kent University Press, 1994.

Nicholi, Armand. The Question of God. New York: Free Press. 2002.

157

_____. “The Question of God,” PBS Television. www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/ transcript/spirits.html.

Styers, Norman. “Music in the Making of the World: The Creation of the World, Middle- earth and Narnia” in C.S. Lewis and the Inklings: Discovering Hidden Truth. ed. Salwa Khoddam, Mark Hall, Jason Fisher, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012, 128.

Orlov, Andrei. Dark Mirrors: Azazel and Satanael in Early Jewish Demonology. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011.

Oropeza, B.J. 99 Answers to Questions About Angels, Demons and Spiritual Warfare. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997.

Pasnau, Robert. Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Study of ‘Summa Theologiae’ Ia 75-89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Peters, Thomas C. “War of the Worldviews: H.G. Wells and Scientism versus C.S. Lewis and Christianity.” in The Pilgrim’s Guide: C.S. Lewis and the Art of Witness. Edited by David Mills. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.

Powlison, David. Power Encounters: Reclaiming Spiritual Warfare, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994.

Priest, Robert J., Campbell, Thomas, Mullen, Bradford A. “Missiological Syncretism: The New Animistic Paradigm” in Spiritual Power and Missions: Raising the Issues, Evangelical Missiological Society Series. Volume 3. Edited by Edward Rommen. Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1995. 9-88.

Prudentius. Against Symmachus. Volume 1. Translated by H.J. Thompson. Loeb 87. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949.

Raukas, Mart. “St. Thomas Aquinas on the Speech of the Angels.” Freiburger Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und Theologie. 40. no. 1 (1996), 30-44.

Raymond, Joad. Milton’s Angels: The Early-Modern Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Reed, Gerard. C.S. Lewis Explores Vice and Virtue. Kansas City: Beacon Hill, 2001.

Root, Jerry. C. S. Lewis and a Problem of Evil: An Investigation of a Pervasive Theme. Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2009. Kindle Edition.

Samuels, Andrew. A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis. Edited by Andrew Samuels, Bani Shorter, Fred Plaut, New York: Routledge, 1984.

158

Sanford, Nevitt. Self and Society: Social Change and Individual Development. 1967. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017.

Scarf, Christopher. The Ideal of Kingship in the Writings of Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Cambridge: James Clarke and Co., 2013.

Schakel, Peter J. Imagination and the Arts in C.S. Lewis: Journeying to Narnia and Other Worlds Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002.

_____. The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis, ed. Robert MacSwain, Michael Ward, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 290.

Schultz, Jeffrey D. and West Jr., John. The C.S. Lewis Reader’s Encyclopedia. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998.

Schwartz, Sanford. C.S. Lewis on the Final Frontier: Science and the Supernatural in the Space Trilogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Shippey, Tom. “The Lewis Diaries: C. S. Lewis and the English Faculty in the 1920s.” In C. S. Lewis and His Circle: Essays and Memoirs from the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society. Edited by Roger White, Judith Wolfe and Brendan N. Wolfe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015 (Kindle Edition).

Sick, David H. “The Daimones of C.S. Lewis.” Literature & Theology. Volume 22:2. June 2008, pp. 151-161.

Slenczka, Johannes. The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology. Edited by Robert Kolb, Irene Dingle, Lubomir Batka, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Soergel, Philip M. “Luther on the Angels” in Angels in the Early Modern World. Edited by Peter Marshall and Alexandra Walsham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Stewart, Charles. Demons and the Devil: Moral Imagination in the Modern Greek Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Strelan, Rich. Strange Acts: Studies in the Cultural World of the Acts of the Apostles. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004.

Studer, B. “Demon”, Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity, vol. 1, ed. Angelo Di Berardino, Downers Grove: IVP, 2014, 688; Cole 126;

159

Styers, Norman. C.S. Lewis and the Inklings: Discovering Hidden Truth. Edited by Salwa Khoddam, Mark Hall, Jason Fisher, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012.

Sutherland, Martin. “A Narnian Way to Heaven: Judgment, Universalism and Hell in Lewis’s Vision” In A Myth Retold: Re-encountering C.S. Lewis as Theologian, Edited by Martin Sutherland, Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2014.

Swafford, Andrew Dean. Spiritual Survival in the Modern World: Insights from C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2016.

Tallon, Philip. “Evil and the Cosmic Dance: C.S. Lewis and Beauty’s Place in Theodicy” In C.S. Lewis as Philosopher: Truth, Goodness and Beauty. Edited by David Baggett, G.R. Habermas, Jerry Walls. Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press, 2008.

Thiel, Elizabeth. The Family of the Family: Nineteenth Century Children’s Literature and the Myth of the Domestic Ideal. London: Routledge, 2008.

Thomas, Jesse J. “From Joy to Joy: C.S. Lewis and the Numinous.” Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies. 2000. Volume. XII (1-2). 109-124.

Tolkien, J.R.R. “On Fairy Stories” in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, 1983, Edited by Christopher Tolkien, J.R.R. London: HarperCollins, 2006.

_____. The Fellowship of the Ring. 1954. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

_____. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. 1981. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien, London: HarperCollins, 2006.

_____. The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essay. 1983. Edited by Christopher Tolkien, London: HarperCollins, 2006.

_____. The Return of the King. 1955. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

_____. The Silmarillion. 1977. Edited by Christopher Tolkien, New York: HarperCollins, 1999.

_____. The Two Towers. 1954. London: HarperCollins, 1995.

_____. War of the Jewels. Edited by Christopher Tolkien, London: HarperCollins, 2010.

Tucker, Shawn R. The Virtues and Vices in the Arts: A Sourcebook. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2015.

Unger, Merrill F. Biblical Demonology: A Study of Spiritual Forces at Work Today. Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1994.

160

_____. What Demons Can Do to Saints. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 1977.

Urang, Gunnar. Shadows of Heaven: Religion and Fantasy in the Fiction of C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams and J.R.R. Tolkien.” London: SCM Press, 1971. van den Heuvel, Albert. These Rebellious Powers. London: SCM Press, 1966.

Van Fleteren, Trederich. sv. “Angels” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia. Edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999, 21.

Vaus, Will. C.S. Lewis Life, Works and Legacy: An Examined Life. Volume 1. Edited by Bruce L. Edwards, Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2007.

_____. Mere Theology: A Guide to the Thought of C.S. Lewis. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004.

Vincent, Alana. “Two (and two, and two) Towers” in in Literature and Theology: New Interdisciplinary Spaces, ed. Heather Walton, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011.

Vos, Nienka. Demons and the Devil in Ancient and Medieval Christianity. Edited by Nienke Vos and Willemein Otto. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

Wacker, Grant. The American Quest for the Primitive Church. Edited by Richard T. Hughes, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988.

Wagner, C. Peter. “Territorial Spirits” in Supernatural Forces in Spiritual Warfare. Shippenburg: Destiny Image Publishing, 2012.

_____. Breaking Spiritual Strongholds in Your City. Shippenburg: Destiny Image Publishers, 2015.

_____. Church Growth and the Whole Gospel. Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1981.

_____. Confronting the Powers: How the New Testament Church Experienced the Power of Strategic-level Spiritual Warfare. Ventura: Regal Books, 1996.

_____. Spiritual Warfare Strategy: Confronting Spiritual Powers. Shippenburg: Destiny Image Publishers, 1996. Kindle Edition.

_____. Warfare Prayer: What the Bible Says about Spiritual Warfare, Shippenburg: Destiny Image Publishers, 2001. Kindle Edition.

Walton, Heather. “Introduction” in Literature and Theology: New Interdisciplinary Spaces. Edited by Heather Walton. Surrey: Ashgate, 2011.

161

Ward, Michael. Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imaginations of C.S. Lewis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Ware, Kallistos. “C.S. Lewis, an ‘Anonymous Orthodox’?” in C.S. Lewis and the Church: Essays in Honour of Walter Hooper. Edited by Judith E. Wolfe, Brendan N. Wolfe. London: T&T Clark, 2011.

_____. “God of the Fathers: C.S. Lewis and Eastern Christianity” in The Pilgrim’s Guide: C.S. Lewis and the Art of Witness. Edited by David Mills. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.

Warren, E. Janet. Cleansing the Cosmos. Eugene: Pickwick, 2012.

Wawrykow, Joseph Peter. The Westminster Handbook to Thomas Aquinas. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005.

Weaver, John B. Plots of Epiphany: Prison-Escape in Acts of the Apostles. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004.

_____. “The New Apostolic Reformation” in A History of a Modern Charismatic Movement. Jefferson: McFarland & Co., 2016.

White, William Luther. The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis. 1969. Eugene: Wipf and Stock 2008.

Wiebe, Gregory D. “The Politics of Possession: Demonology in the City of God,” Master’s Thesis, McMaster University, 2009.

Williams, David W. “Convergence in Joy: A Comparison of the Devotional Practices of C.S. Lewis and That ‘Dreadful Man Karl Barth.’” In A Myth Retold: Re- encountering C.S. Lewis as Theologian, Edited by Martin Sutherland. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2014.

Williams, Rowan. “That Hideous Strength: A Reassessment,” In C. S. Lewis and His Circle: Essays and Memoirs from the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society. Edited by Roger White, Judith Wolfe and Brendan N. Wolfe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Kindle Edition.

Wilson, A.N. C.S. Lewis: A Biography. London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990.

Wink, Walter. Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.

_____. Naming the Powers. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1984. Kindle Edition.

_____. Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millennium. New York: Doubleday, 1998.

162

_____. Unmasking the Powers, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1986.

_____. When the Powers Fall: Reconciliation in the Healing of Nations. Minneapolis: Fortress press, 1998.

_____. Engaging the Powers. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992. Kindle Edition.

_____. Collected Readings. Edited by Henry French, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013.

Wolfe, Judith. “C.S. Lewis and the Eschatological Church” in C.S Lewis and the Church: Essays in Honour of Walter Hooper. London: Bloomsbury, 2012.

Wood, Ralph. Literature and Theology. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2008.

Wright, Nigel Goring. A Theology of the Dark Side: Putting the Power of Evil in Its Place, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2010.

163