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Inklings Forever Volume 8 A Collection of Essays Presented at the Joint Meeting of The Eighth Frances White Ewbank Article 29 Colloquium on C.S. Lewis & Friends and The C.S. Lewis & The Inklings Society Conference

5-31-2012 A Tryst with the : C.S. Lewis on , , and Goodness Part II: Truth Donald T. Williams Toccoa Falls College

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Recommended Citation Williams, Donald T. (2012) "A Tryst with the Transcendentals: C.S. Lewis on Beauty, Truth, and Goodness Part II: Truth," Inklings Forever: Vol. 8 , Article 29. Available at: https://pillars.taylor.edu/inklings_forever/vol8/iss1/29

This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for the Study of C.S. Lewis & Friends at Pillars at Taylor University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Inklings Forever by an authorized editor of Pillars at Taylor University. For more , please contact [email protected].

INKLINGS FOREVER, Volume VIII A Collection of Essays Presented at the Joint Meeting of

The Eighth FRANCES WHITE EWBANK COLLOQUIUM ON C.S. LEWIS & FRIENDS and

THE C.S. LEWIS AND THE INKLINGS SOCIETY CONFERENCE Taylor University 2012 Upland, Indiana

A Tryst with the Transcendentals: C.S. Lewis on Beauty, Truth, and Goodness Part II: Truth

Donald T. Williams Toccoa Falls College

Williams, Donald T. “A Tryst with the Transcendentals: C.S. Lewis on Beauty, Truth, and Goodness – Part II: Truth.” Inklings Forever 8 (2012) www.taylor.edu/cslewis 1

A Tryst with the Transcendentals: C.S. Lewis on Beauty, Truth, and Goodness Part II: Truth

Donald T. Williams Toccoa Falls College

INTRODUCTION THE OF TRUTH

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is Simply put, C. S. Lewis held to the all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to classical “correspondence theory” of truth: know,” says Keats’ Grecian Urn. If the Truth is a of propositions such that Romantics tended to conflate Truth and their content corresponds to the state of Beauty, the Moderns tended to explain Beauty affairs in and objective external away as a mere subjective emotional world which they assert to be so. So far Lewis response; and now some Post-Moderns seem is not original in his of truth. His to do the same with Truth itself. C. S. Lewis, contribution at this point is helping us to a rooted in the classical Christian world view, fuller and richer understanding of what it sought a more whole vision of the means to hold such a concept. among the Transcendentals than any of these For example, he complains, other approaches can provide. As we If naturalists do not claim to know any summarized that Christian view in part one of , ought they not to have warned this study, truth when we find it in the world us rather earlier of the ? For really is a reflection of ’s , goodness of His from all the books they have written, in character, and beauty of His glory, impressed which the behaviour of the remotest into the very fabric of what He has made (see nebula, the shyest proton, and the most Kreeft 23-5). We started with Beauty in part prehistoric man are described, one one because it was Beauty, coming through would have got the that they were Joy, or , that led Lewis to Truth. But sehnsucht claiming to give us a true account of to Truth he believed he had arrived. What real things. (Miracles 24). was Lewis’s view of Truth? How did he defend it against the Reductionisms prevalent The key words here are “account” and “real in the middle of the Twentieth Century? Can things.” Truth is propositional; it is an that defense still help us to withstand the account. The person holding to these assaults typical of our own ? These are propositions, i.e., making this account, may the questions on which we shall attempt to not be capable of perfect . Indeed, shed some light. In our age of Post- if he is a finite human , he cannot be; but and Post- when his account is an account of objective the very concept of truth is to nonetheless, of real things. And he can in , there are hardly any more theory overcome his subjectivity sufficiently important questions we could address. to verify the truth of his account, if indeed the nebulae, protons, and cavemen behave as his propositions claim they do; if the state of affairs they assert “obtains” in the real world.

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The theoretical possibility of thus The of truth in this sense sufficiently overcoming our subjectivity—and entails the existence of falsehood. Of knowing when we have done so—is then contradictory propositions, only one of them essential to our ability to perceive, know, and can be true, and if that one is true, the other state truth as correspondence. Traditional must perforce be false. “Your Hindus philosophy and nihilistic Post-Modernism certainly sound delightful,” Lewis wrote to actually agree on this point; they part Dom Bede Griffiths, “But what do they deny? company on the question of whether that That’s always been my trouble with Indians— possibility exists. Lewis argues that it has to: to find any proposition they would pronounce false. But truth surely must involve The reason why your idea of New York exclusions?” ( 3:704). A precondition can be truer or less true than mine is Letters of truth then is the validity of the that New York is a real place, existing law of non-contradiction. Two contradictory quite apart from what either of us propositions cannot both be true in the same thinks. If, when each of us said “New way, in the same place, at the same . If York” each meant merely “The town I they could, the claim that either was true am imagining in my own head,” how would be empty. could one of us have truer than In other words, a true the other? There would be no question “reflects,” not just the mind of the thinker, but of truth or falsehood at all. (Mere “universal reality” (“De Futilitate” 60). Christianity 25) “Christianity claims to give you an account of Post-Kantian , before we —to tell you what the real universe is even arrive at Post- and like” (“Man or Rabbit?” 108). One who claims Deconstruction, holds that the real objective anything less is simply not claiming that New York, the New York an sich, is Christianity (or any other account of the state unreachable, and that therefore only the of things) is true. phenomenal New York, the one that exists as The radical nature of this concern for an image constructed in our heads, can be truth was apparent already by the middle of directly known. Common sense would seem the Twentieth Century, as can be seen by to be on the side of Lewis and the older looking at some of the typical academic Tradition, though; for there actually is a real concerns of late Modernism with which Lewis New York, and the simple expedient of contrasts it. visiting it can determine which of two What makes some theological works accounts of it is closer to the reality, so that like sawdust to me is the way the the town being imagined in one head can be authors can go on discussing how far rejected in favor of that being imagined in the certain positions are adjustable to other for and sufficient reason—to wit, contemporary thought, or beneficial in the town existing outside of either head. Is relation to social problems, or “have a Times Square in Manhattan, Brooklyn, future” before them, but never squarely Queens, Staten Island, or the Bronx? Unless ask what grounds we have for the real New York outside our heads both supposing them to be true accounts of exists and is accessible to our heads, the any objective reality. ( 104) question is unanswerable. But the question is Malcolm in fact answerable; therefore, truth must be Screwtape encourages Wormwood to make what Lewis conceived it to be, an account of good use of such an intellectual climate: New York that is theoretically capable of Your man has been accustomed, ever getting what we think closer to the real place since he was a boy, to have a dozen that exists quite apart from what any of us incompatible dancing thinks. about together inside his head. He

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doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily do function, not surprisingly given that “true” or “false,” but as “academic” or Derrida correctly realized that once the very “practical,” “outworn” or possibility of truth has been banished, the “contemporary,” “conventional” or “play of signification” is extended precisely to “ruthless.” Jargon, not argument, is infinity (1207). your best ally in keeping him from the Here is the point: Lewis would want Church. Don’t waste time trying to to ask of the claim that, by the very nature of make him think is true! discourse, questions of truth are endlessly Make him think it is strong or stark or deferred, “Is it true? Does it correspond to courageous—that it is the philosophy the way things actually are in the real world?” of the future. (Screwtape 8) And this is a question that Derrida, for example, would have had to refuse to answer; In the intellectual climate which we it is a question that simply has no in have at last succeeded in producing his system. If we accepted the Deconstructive throughout western Europe, you analysis, we would have to limit ourselves to needn’t bother about that [the fact that questions of race, gender, class, and power earlier writers like had told too, for the truth question would be the truth]. Only the learned read old unaskable. So the question whether a view of books, and we have now so dealt with truth can itself be true (or false) turns out to the learned that they are of all men the be pretty basic. Can we correct the New York least likely to acquire wisdom by doing in our heads by the one in the American so. . . . When a learned man is presented Northeast, or are we rendered unable to do with any statement in an ancient so, trapped inside our heads, whether by author, the one question he never asks Kantian or by the specious is whether it is true. He asks who language games preferred by Post-Modern influenced the ancient writer, and how intellectuals? Putting off for the moment a far the statement is consistent with field trip to the Big Apple, we can realize that what he said in other books, and what there is no question as to which side of that phase in the writer’s development, or in divide Lewis occupied. the general history of thought it Not all people who have held the illustrates, and how it affected later correspondence theory of truth have been writers, and how often it has been theists. But Christian theism if accepted does misunderstood . . . and what the course provide a solid for such a view of of criticism has been on it for the last truth. If we believe in a personal and rational ten years, and what is the “present God who not only acts but speaks, and who state of the question.” (Screwtape 128- has created our finite in His image, 9) then it is easier to conceive of truth as both Now in the Post-Modern world we existing and knowable. There is a stable have added concerns for what racial, class, or reality to which our propositions can gendered interests the ideas in question correspond, and our minds were designed to advance, how they fit into or illustrate the deal with that reality by the same Mind that power-broking structures of society, etc. It is designed it. If God exists and has spoken, not that these questions, or the ones Lewis then He is Himself the ultimate source of noticed (which are still with us), are always truth, and His Word the ultimate criterion of devoid of interest, legitimacy, or relevance. truth. The complaint that there is no “God’s They become problematic when they are eye view of the world” is then simply based used as a substitute for the search for truth, a on a false premise. There is one; God has it; way of endlessly deferring the question of and He has communicated at least some parts truth, which is thought to be unattainable of it to us. All truth then comes from Him, anyway. And that is precisely how they often either directly or indirectly. Lewis of course

4 A Tryst with the Transcendentals · Donald T. Williams lived comfortably in this world: “Whatever verdict on its truth or falsehood. I suspect was true in Akhenaton’s creed came to him, in you would be somewhat handicapped in some mode or other, as all truth comes to all trying to render that verdict by the fact that men, from God” (Reflections 86). you would have no idea what I had said. So far Lewis is solidly in the Before you could even begin to form a mainstream of Christian thinking about truth. judgment on the truth question, you would Augustine and Aquinas, Calvin and Wesley, need to know what a hloisat is, how a blepple Cardinal Newman and Carl F. H. Henry would one differs from a regular one, what it is to all have affirmed these basic points, though flarg, what a bluzzle is, what is the of not perhaps with Lewis’s characteristically krunkness, and how flarging kleply differs deft use of apt analogy. What Lewis adds to from regular flarging. In order to give you the discussion is some careful thinking about that information I would have to render these the relations of truth not only to reason but objects, qualities, and actions in concrete also to imagination. It was his and terms that you could visualize. Your his conviction that “All things, in their way, Imagination would be the faculty that enabled reflect heavenly truth, imagination not least” you to form a picture—an image—of what the (Surprised 167). How exactly does proposition is asserting (or whether it is imagination do so? asserting anything). Then your Reason would Some of Lewis’s interpreters, compare that mental picture to the picture of influenced perhaps by the surface reality it has already tested and come to trust, resemblance in language between Lewis and in order to see if correspondence or the English Romantics, have not paid contradiction resulted. sufficiently careful attention to how Lewis Imagination, in other words, doesn’t answers that question. One reads vague give us truth, contrary to what Tixier implies. statements like “Truth flows into a person Just because we can imagine something does through the imagination” (Uszynski 247) and not make it real. But Imagination combined even more inexact summaries like the with Reason can give us meaningful truth, following: “Lewis, like many Romantics, truth that impacts us on other levels than intuitively trusted the capacity of imagination mere academic intellectual assent. This is to be a ‘faculty of truth’” (Tixier 141). What truth that can appeal to head and heart Lewis actually said was much more carefully together. Lewis was the master of giving it to and rigorously thought out: us, whether in his expository prose or his fiction. The hall and rooms of a house for the We are not talking about truth but church and its denominations; two books meaning: meaning which is the which have always been resting one on the antecedent condition of both truth and other for the eternal generation of the Son; falsehood, whose antithesis is not error the keys of a piano and a tune for the but nonsense. I am a rationalist. For relationship between our instincts and the me, reason is the natural organ of truth; moral law; entrusting oneself to the waves but imagination is the organ of and floating islands of Perelandra rather than meaning. Imagination, producing new sleeping on the fixed land for faith; the Stone metaphors or revivifying old, is not the Table for the Law and Aslan’s death cracking cause of truth, but its condition. it for the Gospel; Reepicheep the Mouse for (“Bluspels” 265). valor, chivalry, and honor: The brilliant Imagination is the faculty or organ not artistic construction of these images does not of truth (directly) but of meaning, which is prove that they are images of truth. But their the “antecedent condition” of truth. What presence in the context of the linear does this mean? Suppose I utter the arguments and narrative trajectories of which proposition, “Blepple hloisats kleply flarg they are a part makes the truths established krunk bluzzles,” and then ask you for a by those lines of development mean

5 A Tryst with the Transcendentals · Donald T. Williams something; it makes their impact, their When one is inside a myth, in other beauty, and their relevance easier to see and words—say, on Perelandra with Ransom— to feel. one the unified reality from Mythology for Lewis was one of the which all three flow. When talking about that most important places where this experience later, one has perforce to use the contribution of imagination to our ability to distinguished language, and Lewis does so grasp the meaning of true (or false) consistently. He was doing so even in his propositions is seen. It is well known that for earliest Christian fiction: “Child, if you will, it Lewis myth was not the opposite of truth, as is mythology. It is but truth, not fact; an it is in popular usage, but rather one way in image, not the very real” (Regress 171). A which truth can be conveyed or embodied. true statement about reality is not reality; not Myth is not necessarily “lies breathed through even a mythical statement is reality; but it silver” (as the pre-conversion Lewis once may be true nonetheless, i.e., it may foolishly said to Tolkien), but can be “a real correspond to that reality in a faithful though unfocused gleam of divine truth manner. Because the meaningful creating falling on human imagination” (Tolkien 54; and sustaining acts of a personal, purposeful, Lewis, Miracles 139n.). Myth may then and rational God are the ultimate source of all convey these truths to the imaginations of reality, there is indeed a real unity between readers, who might then independently verify fact and truth, and between both and myth, them through reason and hence validly accept the most meaningful statement of truth. them as true. Thus George MacDonald’s Wolfe captures it well: “Ransom’s education modern mythic stories helped move Lewis in has led him to see that it is not merely the the direction of Christian faith by giving a idyllic worlds of Malacandra and Perelandra meaning to the concept of holiness, even as which are ‘mythological,’ but that reality Lewis’s own stories have done for countless itself, when perceived truly, is as dense with readers since. The mythical quality of the meaning as myth” (Wolfe 68). And some of story refers in Lewis’s usage to its this meaning may be stated propositionally, meaningfulness rather than its truth or and some of those propositions may be falsehood as such, which must be established confirmed by Reason as true. on other grounds. Hence Lewis could without Lewis then embraces the traditional contradiction refer to the New Testament and standard correspondence theory of truth story of Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection and enriches it by relating truth to as “myth become fact” (67). imagination and myth. Truth is a property of Lewis is careful to use this language accounts or propositions such that their correctly even in his fiction. “Long since on assertions correspond with reality. Mars, and more strongly since he came to Imagination is the organ of meaning, the Perelandra, Ransom had been perceiving that antecedent condition of truth or falsehood, the triple distinction of truth from myth and i.e., of the meaningfulness of those accounts both from fact was purely terrestrial—was claiming to be true or false. Reason, which part and parcel of that unhappy division distinguishes and discerns correspondence or between and body that resulted from the non-correspondence (between those Fall” (Perelandra 143-4, cf. “Myth Became propositions and each other, between them Fact” 66). Fact in this passage is the bit of and reality) and pursues their implications, is reality that truth is about; truth the account the organ of truth. Myth is a story that that corresponds to that reality; myth the enables the imagination to receive and taste story that allows us to taste the particular ways of seeing the world that reason can then tang of that fact (“Myth Became Fact” 66). confirm as true or false. Ransom experiences in Perelandra the pre- This view of truth, traditional and analytical unity that lies behind the standard, was already under attack in Lewis’s distinguished categories.

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own day, and that attack has only intensified therefore no question of a total since. How did he defend it? skepticism about human thought. (“De Futilitate” 60-61) THE DEFENSE OF TRUTH If true statements do not correspond to real Above we raised the question states of affairs in the external world, if they whether a view of truth can itself be true. It is are not “reflections of reality,” then the very time to see how Lewis answered that claim that truth is not a reflection of reality question in the case of the correspondence does not correspond to the way things theory of truth. He gives two basic reasons actually are either, and thus it self-destructs. why we should accept the correspondence This is so whether the reason why we theory of truth as true. First, it cannot be allegedly cannot know that some statements denied without self contradiction. Second, it accurately reflect reality is the physical corresponds to the way in which people do in entailed by (Lewis’s fact come to true knowledge about the world. opponent in Miracles), the of the Lewis advanced the argument from Greek , or the linguistic of self contradiction in many ways and in many Post-Modern Deconstructionists. contexts. The most well known and fully Lewis’s usual foil was naturalism. If developed place is the chapter of Miracles Nature is all that there is, then the of originally titled “The Self Contradiction of the physics—not the laws of —determine Naturalist.” Attempts to answer technical everything. The I am having are objections raised by Elizabeth Anscombe mere chemical reactions taking place in my when the argument was presented at the head, determined solely by the movements of Oxford Socratic Club caused the water in that atoms set in random motion by purposeless chapter to be muddied a bit in later editions, and unintelligent processes ages ago. But, with the title changing to the “Cardinal then, so are the thoughts of the person who Difficulty” of Naturalism. Either way, the disagrees with me. “What we called his argument is that Naturalism must itself be thought was essentially a phenomenon of the false because it participates in the inevitable same sort as his other secretions—the form self-refutation of all views that entail radical which the vast irrational process of nature skepticism. (See Reppert for a fine history was bound to take at a particular point of and evaluation of the Anscombe debate.) space and time” (“Religion without Dogma” A good summation of the argument 136). Who is to decide between these two appears in the essay “De Futilitate”: chemical reactions? A third chemical reaction produced by the same random, purposeless Can we carry through to the end the processes? This takes us nowhere. So Lewis view that human thought is merely quotes J. B. S. Haldane: “If my mental human: that it is simply a zoological processes are determined wholly by the fact about homo sapiens that he thinks motions of atoms in my brain, I have no in a certain way; that it in no way reason to suppose that my beliefs are true . . . reflects . . . universal reality? The and hence I have no reason for supposing my moment we ask this question we brain to be composed of atoms” (Miracles 22). receive a check. We are at this very Lewis agreed. If naturalism were true, it point asking whether a certain view of would be have to be false. For if it is true, human thought is true. And the view in then question is just the view that human thought is not true, not a reflection of All our present thoughts are mere reality. . . . In other words, we are accidents—the accidental by-product of asking, “Is the thought that no thoughts the movement of atoms. And this holds are true, itself true?” If we answer Yes, for the thoughts of the materialists and we contradict ourselves. . . . There is astronomers as well as for anyone

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else’s. But if their thoughts—i.e., of know which picture of the city is more Materialism and Astronomy—are accurate, we can go and look. merely accidental by-products, whey But can we really? Post-Modern should we believe them to be true? I theory argues that we cannot step outside of see no reason for believing that one our to experience the New York accident should be able to give me a an sich because the we receive correct account of all the other through experience is itself mediated through accidents. (“Answers” 52-3) our background, our beliefs, our language, and our situatedness. There is no such thing It follows then that as uninterpreted experience; any experience At least one kind of thought—logical to which we might appeal has already been thought—cannot be subjective and interpreted, so that there is no “God’s eye irrelevant to the real universe: for view” from which our perceptions can be unless thought is valid we have no evaluated and no final conclusion that can be reason to believe in the real universe. . . reached about what reality is in itself outside . I conclude then that logic is a real our perceptions. As Derrida famously put it, insight into the way in which real “There is nothing outside the text.” things have to exist. In other words, Was Lewis then caught in a naïve the laws of thought are the laws of Modernism so that his appeals to reason and things. (“De Futilitate” 63) experience are simply passé? He never had That thought be logical is a necessary the opportunity to respond to thinkers like but not a sufficient condition of truth that is Derrida, of course. But he was confronted by earlier forms of cultural and epistemological known to be truth. A proposition that someone holds may just happen to be true; it relativism, and so we can easily imagine what may be true by luck. But unless it has a his response might have been. Radical skepticism is no less self refuting when it is logical basis, we cannot know it to be true. And a proposition may be logically consistent based on clever theories about language than or coherent without corresponding to when it is based on philosophical or scientific external reality. To maintain a belief in naturalism. It cannot be true without knowable truth, in other words, we must have untruthing itself; therefore, it cannot be true. more than logic but cannot have less. Thus In the case of Post-Modern forms of this we can be certain that “No account of the sophistry, Lewis might have noted the universe can be true unless that account prevalence of reductionistic thinking. The leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real demonstration that we cannot avoid having our thinking by our language, race, insight” (Miracles 20). influenced The correspondence theory of truth gender, class, etc., is mysteriously elevated itself then is not only logically consistent; it is (while no one is looking) into the conclusion logically necessary if there is to be any that our thinking must perforce be knowable truth at all. Furthermore, it determined by those influences. The fact that matches the way people actually come to we normally define language by using other discover and hold truth. How do we actually language is extrapolated into the theory that come to know truth? The additional element language only refers to other language and has no ability to refer to anything outside of that we have to add to logic is experience. There is a real New York that transcends any language. But as Smith points out, of our perceptions of New York (the New Language . . . is the only means we have York “in my own head” that we saw above) of making truth claims. Likewise, it is and is capable of correcting those perceptions the only means we have of debating the and adjudicating between them. If we do not veracity of such claims. Unless we wish to give over the entire business of

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making and challenging claims to truth, THE RELEVANCE OF TRUTH we must accept the referentiality of language, metaphoricity and all. Lewis not only expounds the Otherwise, we must be ready to admit correspondence theory of truth, enriches it by that statements such as “Metaphor is relating it to imagination as well as reason, nonreferential” do not refer to anything and defends it successfully; he also has a lot except themselves. Such would to say about its implications for life and probably be the starting point of any thought. defense Lewis might make of the First, if we are confident in the referentiality of metaphor. (22). existence of truth and the ability of human minds to know it, we are liberated from Can the real New York ever, even chronological snobbery. We are freed from potentially, break through all these influences the provincialism of the biases of our own age to smack us in the face with reality? Our to become citizens of history and receive experience tells us that, whatever the dictates truth from any mind in any time, not just of Theory to the contrary may be, in fact it those who share the perspectives of our own can, if we just step out of the ivory tower into limited “situatedness.” “Space does not stink the street. Lewis’s attitude toward because it has preserved its three dimensions experience, and toward the external world from the beginning. The square of the which provides us with those experiences, is hypotenuse has not gone mouldy by therefore quite refreshing compared to the continuing to equal the square of the other suffocating claustrophobia of much current two sides” (“Poison” 76). Truth becomes thinking: something we can find and hold on to. Only if What I like about experience is that it is it is reduced to perspective does it change such an honest thing. You may take any into something else by the mere passage of number of wrong turnings; but keep time. your eyes open and you will not be Second, it is impossible fully to allowed to go very far before the understand human nature or to seek its warning signs appear. You may have fulfillment without a robust understanding of deceived yourself, but experience is not the nature of truth and confidence in its trying to deceive you. The universe reality. In The Abolition of Man, human rings true wherever you fairly test it. are those creatures who live not by (Surprised 177) instinct but by understanding of the Tao. Lewis agreed with that all men Truth then is a property of naturally desire to know: “One of the things propositions such that they correspond to that distinguishes man from the other real states of affairs in a real world. We hold animals is that he wants to know things, to this view because to deny it is self refuting wants to find out what reality is like, simply and because reality rewards us in the search for the sake of knowing. When that desire is for truth in such terms when we approach it completely quenched in anyone, I think he fairly. One must assume these truths even to has become something less than human” argue against them. And the best response to (“Man or Rabbit?” 108). those theories that seem to compromise or A human being divorced from the deny them is not just counter-theorizing, but quest for truth is less than human because stepping outside of the ivory tower into the human beings were created in the image of street to allow the real New York to do its the God of truth, for fellowship with the God work. of truth, which entails not just the knowledge but also the embracing of truth and the rejection of the lie. This fact makes our

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orientation toward truth a not just of dungeon of his own mind—is, in the end, Hell. fulfillment but of moral obligation. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself” ( 69). The Dwarfs When Professor Price defended Great Divorce in clinging to the stable-litter scientists, speaking of their devotion to The Last Battle, of their minds, are a graphic picture of this truth and their constant following of epistemological captivity. the best light they knew, it seemed to Flowing from all this is a third point: him that he was choosing an attitude in Seeking and finding and embracing the truth obedience to an ideal. He did not feel is not a matter just of intellectual curiosity that he was merely suffering a reaction but of moral and spiritual life and death. The determined by ultimately amoral and importance of truth cannot be overstated in irrational sources, and no more capable this view. And because truth flows from the of rightness or wrongness than a hiccup creative decrees of the spiritual God who or a sneeze. (“Religion without Dogma” created the material world, the true 137) propositions whose embrace is so crucial to Lewis approves of this stance, even though us correspond not just to physical reality but Price may not have realized that his attitude to the unseen , to morals and values, ultimately flows from the relation of the as well. This means that, as in the argument creature to the Creator who is the God of of The Abolition of Man, morals and values are truth. It is the duty of true humanity to feel objective realities, not just subjective feelings this way: “Every free man wants truth as well or perspectives. Therefore, “Unless we return as life: . . . a mere life-addict is no more to the crude and nursery-like belief in respectable than a cocaine addict” (Miracles objective values, we perish” (“Poison” 81). 24). The most critical truth to be Therefore, to acquiesce in the mere embraced or refused is of course the truth freeplay of perspectives rather than pursuing about the God from whom the world of reality the search for truth is to betray the purpose flows. Every person therefore has a moral for which our minds were created. In a obligation to consider the claims of the passage that prophetically anticipates a Post- Christian faith very seriously—whether or Modern buzz word, the liberal bishop in The not he or she sees any immediate pragmatic Great Divorce is warned, “Thirst was made for benefit in holding those beliefs. This above all water; inquiry for truth. What you now call is not a merely academic discussion. the free play of inquiry has neither more nor Christianity claims to give you an less to do with the ends for which account of —to tell you what the was given you than masturbation has to do facts real universe is like. Its account of the with marriage” (44). The of metaphor universe may be true, or it may not, and is not only daring but telling. Truth was once the question is really before you, intended to be experienced not just as an then your natural inquisitiveness must intellectual abstraction but as a participation make you want to know the answer. If in reality that has union with the ultimate Christianity is untrue, then no honest Reality, the Source of all reality, as its end. man will want to believe it, however The rejection of truth is finally a rejection of helpful it might be; if it is true, every that union, a form of spiritual adultery. Every honest man will want to believe it, even philosophy that reduces truth to merely a if it gives him no help at all. (“Man or subjective mind state dehumanizes us and Rabbit?” 108-9) cuts us off not only from God, but from all that is good and real. As the George MacDonald Truth comes before any use we might character in The Great Divorce explains, make of it, and we find it only when we “Every state of mind, left to itself, every recognize that fact. “If you look for truth, you shutting up of the creature within the may find comfort in the end. If you look for

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comfort, you will not get either comfort or If truth is central to what Christianity truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to is, then we have to understand the central begin with, and in the end, despair” (Mere Christian act—belief—in terms of our Christianity 39). Though the search for truth concept of truth. Faith becomes something is a in itself that supersedes any oriented to truth, a stance one takes toward pragmatic benefit that might come from the truth. If this is so, it becomes harder to finding it, there is of course pragmatic benefit think of faith as a primarily emotional to knowing and embracing the truth: comfort, response, or as unrelated to specific perhaps, and more important things besides. propositions about God and the world, or as “If Christianity should happen to be true, then the inclination to affirm as true propositions it is quite impossible that those who know that would otherwise not commend this truth and those who don’t should be themselves as such. Faith is trust in a Person equally well equipped for leading a good life” which causes us, not merely to acknowledge, (“Man or Rabbit?” 109). But there is but to embrace as true, those ideas and facts something even greater at stake than how about that Person which we have come to good a life we might lead: believe (in Lewis’s case, on what he thought were good grounds) that He has revealed to Here is a door, behind which, according us. Faith adds the emotional and personal to some people, the secret of the element of trust and commitment to what universe is waiting for you. Either would otherwise be a merely notional that’s true, or it isn’t. And if it isn’t, relationship to those propositions. That is then what the door really conceals is why Lewis can say, “I define Faith as the simply the greatest fraud, the most power of continuing to believe what we once colossal “sell,” on record. Isn’t it honestly thought to be true until cogent obviously the job of every man (that is reasons for honestly changing our minds are a man and not a rabbit) to try to find brought before us” (“Religion: Reality or out which, and then to devote his full Substitute?” 42). He devotes an entire essay, energies either to serving this “On Obstinacy in Belief,” to explaining this tremendous secret or to exposing and relational element as the reason why the destroying this gigantic humbug? Christian’s belief, once established, does not (“Man or Rabbit?” 112) waver with “every fluctuation of the apparent Lewis devoted his life to “serving this evidence” (29). For one who holds Lewis’s tremendous secret,” to living, explaining, and classical view of truth, then, faith is defending the Christian faith. The fourth something that is more than propositional implication of Lewis’s view of truth as he and evidential, but it can never be less. develops it is what it means for living the Faith then is a stance toward certain Christian life. To believe in truth and take it propositions seen in relation to the Person seriously is to make the quest for truth who is believed to have revealed them, which paramount not only in deciding to become a embraces them as true not as a matter of Christian, but also in those decisions one opinion but of trust and commitment. The makes because one is a Christian—for lack of evidence is not what constitutes this example, the choice of a church or a stance as belief or faith rather than denomination. Applying his analogy of the knowledge. Lewis (and many others) have church as a house with its hall and rooms, thought the evidence quite good. But the fact Lewis advises, “Above all you should be that the particular relationship to which these asking which door is the true one; not which beliefs lead and which they nurture is the pleases you best by its paint and paneling. In rather overwhelming and life-changing one of plain language, the question should never be: creature to Creator, sinner to Savior, and ‘Do I like that kind of service?’ but ‘Are these servant to absolute Sovereign—a relationship doctrines true?’” (Mere Christianity 12). infinitely satisfying to many who embrace it

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but daunting enough in prospect to have (Reflections 7). In his fiction, his poetry, and caused Lewis to describe his conversion as his expository writing, Lewis helps us to do being dragged kicking and screaming into the just that. Kingdom—means that there is a lot more going on than the mere disinterested perusal CONCLUSION of evidence. There are many more sources for doubt than lack of irrefutable evidence. C. S. Lewis’s exposition of truth, its So Lewis can see faith as the support of nature, its grounds, and its implications, is reason as much as the other way around: increasingly a voice crying in a wilderness of radical perspectivalism. Various forms of Religion may win truths; without Faith today conspire to render truth she will retain them just so long as claims nothing more than subjective Satan pleases. . . . If we wish to be responses and cynical power plays. Sadly, so rational, not now and then, but pervasive is this way of thinking, so cloaked constantly, we must pray for the gift of in the robes of academic sophistication and Faith, for the power to go on believing respectability, that even some Christians have not in the teeth of reason but in the inconsistently acquiesced in such views and teeth of lust and terror and jealousy helped to perpetuate them. Lewis can help us and boredom and indifference that see what is at stake as well as provide a which reason, authority, or experience, roadmap back to sanity. or all three, have once delivered to us The materialist reductionism Lewis for truth. (“Religion: Reality or battled is still with us. Reppert, for example, Substitute” 43) critiques thinkers like Patricia Churchland Truth then for the Christian is a who think that evolutionary explanations of serious intellectual matter that can never be the nervous system render the concept of only intellectual. It is at the heart of our truth otiose: “Either truth is our highest created humanity and of its fulfillment in epistemic goal and there is a state of the relationship to its Creator. In a healthy and person called ‘believing truly,’ or else we have whole human being, truth simultaneously no epistemic goal and we can engage in informs the intellect, inspires the emotions, various cognitive projects without being held and energizes the will. Lewis would have to an absolute standard by which those understood Bacon: projects can be judged” (77). To that materialist reductionism have now been The inquiry of truth, which is the added other forms of cultural and linguistic lovemaking or wooing of it, the reductionism with similar or even more knowledge of truth, which is the deadly effects. Edwards notes, presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the Some recent composition theorists sovereign good of human nature. . . . have come to view their task as Certainly it is heaven upon earth to stripping away the illusions that have a man’s mind move in charity, rest language can capture and bear witness in providence, and turn upon the poles to “truth” or “reality.” . . . The purpose of truth. (Bacon 40) of writing instruction under the new literacy regimes is to prepare the It is not just reason and imagination that are writer to recognize and inhabit the unified by Lewis’s holistic view of truth; it is world of “truths” that he himself head and heart, being and doing, and every creates, as opposed to the world of other aspect of our humanity as well. That truths he might discover outside unity is well expressed by Lewis’s final bit of himself. . . . Lewis would regard these advice: “A man can’t always be defending the views as a retreat to a Gnosticism that truth; there must be a time to feed on it” not only does not shield humankind

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