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The Dulia et Latria Journal, Vol. 3 (2010) 21

The “Full Treatment”: C. S. Lewis on Repentance, the Process of Becoming a “New-Made Man”

By Chris Garrett Oklahoma City University (documentation in author’s style)

The ultimate spiritual goal of most Christians is to go to and live with God after death. According the Christian apologist C. S. Lewis, God desires to prepare us for eternal life by making us into new creatures. Having set the standard of absolute perfection before us and knowing that humanity falls short of that standard, God has prepared a way for man to become perfected. Through the atonement of Jesus Christ and the process of repentance man can be forgiven of sins and become glorified, immortal creatures. This essay explores and examines Lewis’s ideas on this core Christian principle of repentance. Lewis defines repentance as a gradual process of transformation that will not be completed during mortality ( 159-161). It is a process of surrender, in essence killing a part of yourself (44-45). By that Lewis is referring to his belief that man is an amphibian—“half animal and half spirit” (Screwtape Letters 36). When man surrenders to God, he attempts to forsake the natural and carnal man (the animal part) in favor of following his spiritual self.

22 Chris Garrett, “Lewis on Repentance”

An important aspect of repentance is realizing you are on the wrong track and then getting back on the right road (Mere Christianity 44). Lewis describes repentance in terms of progress:

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. (22)

This recognition of sin is essential, says Lewis. Without a “recovery of the old sense of sin” and its accompanying feelings of shame and guilt a man cannot perceive his “badness” (Problem of Pain 51-52). Men need altering because “we have used our free will to become very bad” (49). According to Lewis, God regards the “nasty nature” of man as a “deplorable thing” (Mere Christianity 165). God loves man in spite of his weaknesses ( 84). But God is not content with man’s present condition and desires man to change:

To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labor to make us lovable. (Problem of Pain 43)

How is this transformation to occur? From Lewis’s viewpoint the beginning

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of the repentance process is “only the little germ of desire for God” (Great Divorce 91). That desire opens the door for God to begin His work. “Before we can be cured we must want to be cured. Those who really wish for help will get it,” declares Lewis (Mere Christianity 78). The cure has been provided by a loving God: “Christ was killed for us, His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity” (44). Furthermore, to assist man with the process of repentance, God gave him a conscience, “the sense of right and wrong” (Mere Christianity 39). When a person attempts to repent and change, he follows God’s promptings which urge him to do right and feels uncomfortable when he does wrong (20). The person who is pursuing the right direction will experience not only peace but knowledge. “When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him” (73). Repentance is made possible only through Jesus Christ. According to Lewis, a good life without Christ is unthinkable. Morality can only take us so far. The atonement of Christ is what gives us “wings”:

Morality is a mountain which we cannot climb by our own efforts; and if we could we should only perish in the ice and unbreathable air of the summit, lacking those wings with which the rest of the journey has to be accomplished. For it is from there that the real ascent begins. That ropes and axes are done away and the rest is a matter of flying. (“Man or Rabbit?” 112- 113)

Although we are required to strive for “absolute perfection,” we fall short of

24 Chris Garrett, “Lewis on Repentance” that standard (Mere Christianity 158). Because of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice and intercession, sinful man can be forgiven of his sins. There is a man in Lewis’s The Great Divorce who claims he wants to get what he deserves, but he is told that he does not understand that what he actually deserves is not what he should want. An angel tells the man that he (and all of humanity) needs to ask for Christ’s “Bleeding Charity.” “Everything is here for the asking and nothing can be bought” (Great Divorce 34). Thus, according to Lewis, forgiveness is possible simply by asking for it, and that repentance is possible even after death. Those characters visiting the outskirts of heaven during their bus trip from in The Great Divorce have died and are given the opportunity to change their minds and their eternal destinations. A heavenly existence is presented to them as an option. But it is ultimately their decision as to whether or not to accept it (42). Lewis exhorts readers to choose today to repent and be on “the right side” (Mere Christianity 51). The present choices to be made have eternal consequences. Our choices determine who we are and where are going:

Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge

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and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other. (72)

According to Lewis, what we are matters more than what we do. God is concerned about the type of person we are becoming because we are eternal creatures. To illustrate this idea Lewis explains: “Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse—so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years” (Mere Christianity 59). Thus improvement and heading in the “right direction” is critical (73). The process of transformation will be rigorous, demanding, and painful. There are two fatal dangers that Lewis warns against. The first is to be content with something less than perfection (79). The second is getting depressed and giving up:

No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking up ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels are put out, and the clean clothes airing in the cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of His presence. (Letters of C. S. Lewis 365)

Lewis encourages Christian disciples to endure to the end; this process of repentance depends on the individual persisting in formative development.

26 Chris Garrett, “Lewis on Repentance”

“After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again,” admonishes Lewis. “Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just the power of always trying again” (Mere Christianity 79). An important aspect of repentance is pretending to “put on” or “dress up” as Christ. As an individual puts on Christ, he gets a “good infection.” Jesus is doing things to interfere with the Christian disciple’s life, replacing the “old, natural self” with “the new kind of self He has” (Mere Christianity 149; Problem of Pain 48). The idea is that by pretending to be Christ one’s behavior will improve. “Very often the only way to get a quality,” asserts Lewis, “is to start behaving as if you had it already” (Mere Christianity 147). For Lewis this is where Christian theology becomes practical or “practice- able” (146-147). Hence, it is essential to exercise faith in God; there is work to do and part of it is internal. The work of transformation that needs to be done is achieved by both God and the individual. The balance between what God does and what man does is delicate and difficult to explain. Lewis encourages the believer to “leave it to God,” yet one must still keep trying to do all that God says, doing so in “a less worried way” (Mere Christianity 114). Therefore, the long debate amongst Christian denominations about whether salvation comes by faith or works enters into the discussion. Lewis takes the middle road on the issue: both are essential. It is “like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary” (115). Faith in Christ will lead to “good actions” (115). Mere intellectual acceptance of Jesus is not enough. In examining Philippians 2:12-13 Lewis explains his perspective: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”—

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which looks as if everything depended on us and our good actions: but the second half goes on, “For it is God which worketh in you”—which looks as if God did everything and we nothing. I am afraid that is the sort of thing we come up against in Christianity. I am puzzled, but I am not surprised. You see, we are now trying to understand, and to separate into water- tight compartments, what exactly God does and what man does when God and man are working together. (Mere Christianity 115-116)

Perhaps the most vivid illustration of Lewis’s concept of repentance is found in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, one of his fictional works in series. Because of greed and selfishness a young boy named Eustace becomes a dragon. Eustace attempts to scratch off his scaly, monstrous skin by himself, but it is impossible. Finally, he is “undragoned,” but only through the help of Aslan the Lion, who tears off Eustace’s dragon skin, washes him, and gives him new clothes (Voyage of the Dawn Treader 75, 87-91). Like Eustace man must be saved from the beastly, natural, carnal self. But it is impossible to do so by himself; only through the help of Christ can man be saved and changed into a new creature. Similarly, in The Great Divorce, Lewis describes a ghost who was being tormented by a red lizard on his shoulder. After much deliberation, the ghost finally gives in, admits that he wants the lizard killed, and asks for God’s help. An agonizing transformation takes place: the ghost becomes a “new-made man,” and the lizard (which represents lust) turns into a shining stallion (Great Divorce 98-105). In both of these illustrations a transformation occurs as part of the

28 Chris Garrett, “Lewis on Repentance” process. According to Lewis, so it will be with those who repent. At present we are unaware of the great potential which awaits us in the Divine Life. We are to be re-made. All the rabbit in us is to disappear—the worried, conscientious, ethical rabbit as well as the cowardly and sensual rabbit. We shall bleed and squeal as the handfuls of fur come out; and then surprisingly, we shall find underneath it all a thing we have never yet imagined: a real Man, an ageless god, a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy. (“Man or Rabbit?” 112)

One of Lewis’s favorite topics is describing the type of new creature that comes from this process of transformation. In Mere Christianity he suggests that the world is “a great sculptor’s shop. We are statures and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life” (124). Later he illustrates how Jesus enables men to become sons of God is like turning tin soldiers into real men (139). Lewis declares that the whole purpose of becoming a Christian is to become “a little Christ” (138, 149, 155, 174). God’s “grand enterprise” is to transform carnal creatures into gods (Grief Observed 85). The new, transformed being will be like God, reflecting goodness and joy but still having its own individual uniqueness. Lewis explains:

[God] really does want to fill the universe with a lot of … little replicas of Himself—creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His …

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He wants servants who can finally become sons … [God] wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct. (Screwtape Letters 38)

Mankind is invited to experience the Divine Life and become glorified, immortal creatures like Christ, who was not a prodigy but a pioneer. “[Jesus] is the first of His kind; He will not be the last” ( 178). According to Lewis, the key is allowing God to engage in working this transformation in our lives. But we have a choice to accept or reject His offer. He is willing to cure us. If we accept His invitation, we are in for the “full treatment” (Mere Christianity 154, 158).

Century by century God has guided nature up to the point of producing creatures which can (if they will) be taken right out of nature, turned into ‘gods.’ (Mere Christianity 172, italics added)

Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. If we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always has existed and always will exist. Christ is the Son of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has. (Mere Christianity 137-138, italics added)

The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a

30 Chris Garrett, “Lewis on Repentance”

command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were ‘gods’ and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him—for we can prevent Him, if we choose—He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright and stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what he said. (Mere Christianity 160)

In conclusion, Lewis believed that repentance is a gradual process of transformation that will not be completed in this lifetime. After having a desire to change, the Christian should pretend to be Christ. Through the atonement of Jesus and the intervention of the Great Sculptor, man can be changed into “little Christs”—radiant, immortal creatures. According to Lewis, all this is offered through Christ. God wants to give us the “full treatment,” if we allow him to work this mighty transformation in us.

Works Cited Lewis, C. S. The Great Divorce. New York: Macmillan, 1946. ____. A Grief Observed. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1961. ____. Letters of C. S. Lewis. Ed. W. H. Lewis. Rev. and ed. Walter Hooper. New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1993. ____. “Man or Rabbit?” : Essays on Theology and Ethics. Ed. Walter Hooper. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1970.

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____. Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan, 1952. ____. Miracles: A Preliminary Study. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947. ____. . New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962. ____. Screwtape Letters. New York: Macmillan, 1943. ____. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. New York: Macmillan, 1952.