Recovering Vision: C.S. Lewis and Augustine on Pride and Humility Kayla Goetz Religion 410 Dr. Hammerling November 19, 2010 2 “There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one [sic] in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else…And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.”1 Thus C.S. Lewis begins his discussion in Mere Christianity of how and why the sin of pride is the ultimate sin. It is not surprising that pride is one of the most important themes in Lewis’s writings, because it makes sense that such a notable, pervasive sin would naturally emerge in his works, especially since it was an admittedly problematic sin for Lewis himself, as he states in some of his letters.2 As a result, themes regarding pride are found in every fiction work he wrote, whether subtly or in obvious ways, including in each of his seven Narnia stories. Not only is pride displayed in each Narnia tale, but whenever it manifests itself in a character’s personality or actions, there is always a humble foil character paired with the prideful character to provide contrast. Though the prideful characters are typically easy to spot due to their tendency to provide the evil or negative presence in each story, their humble counterparts are not always apparent at first because they are not confined to one specific character type; rather, they cover a range of characters and their humbleness is not something that necessarily stands out on an initial reading. In fact, if it were not for their pairing with prideful characters, one might not even notice their humility at all. The pairing of prideful and humble characters provides the necessary contrast for seeing each character’s respective traits of pride or humility more clearly. Lewis himself acknowledged the contrast between pride and humility in his discussion on pride in Mere Christianity, stating that “the virtue opposite to [pride], in Christian 3 morals, is called Humility.” 1 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1952), 121. 2 See Lewis, Collected Letters: Vol. 1, p. 878; Vol. 2, p. 125; Vol. 3, p. 191, 259. 3 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 121. 3 When analyzing the themes of pride and humility in the Narnia tales, the characters with the most pride are “blind” to their situation, and in order to start along the path to humility, they must first have their unseeing eyes opened to the fact that they are proud. In this way, the issue of pride and humility in Narnia can be viewed in terms of sight: to be proud is to be blind, and to be humble is to go through life with one’s eyes open to those around you and to thus have an awareness of the surrounding world and one’s proper role within society. While some of the main characters are humble throughout the series, there are several characters that move from pride to humility, or from blindness to sight, and eventually become beloved characters themselves. Even the generally humble characters go through one or more instances of pride, indicating that this truly is a sin that no sentient being is totally free from, though some are subject to it to a greater extent than others are. In most of his writings on and examples of pride and humility, Lewis bears a strong resemblance to Augustine of Hippo’s views on these issues. Augustine was greatly influenced by certain aspects of Neo-Platonist thought, and because Lewis, too, demonstrated a debt to Plato in his Narnia series (which he ‘bookends’ with Platonic elements in both The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, with Professor Kirk discussing logic and using the Socratic method of conversing with Peter and Susan, and in The Last Battle, with the concept of Shadowlands and the physical world being less ‘real’ than the divine original), it is appropriate to use Augustine’s ideas to bring clarity to Lewis’s own thoughts on pride and humility. Regardless of whether Lewis was directly influenced by Augustine’s views on these issues from having read Augustine’s works, a comparison between the two can be seen as using one Neo-Platonist to interpret another. Before any analysis can be made of these themes within the Narnia stories, it is first necessary to examine Lewis’s views on pride and humility, comparing them to the similar 4 teachings of Augustine on these subjects. After comparing Lewis and Augustine on pride and humility, this paper will then analyze each of the seven Chronicles in the order in which they were written, examining the way these opposing themes are manifested in pairings of contrasting pivotal characters, with emphasis placed upon the occurrences of these themes in the children, since they are consistently the ones who are either humble throughout or else are redeemed of their initial pride. Comparing Lewis & Augustine on Pride & Humility When comparing Lewis’s and Augustine’s writings on pride and humility, it is astonishing how similar they are despite the fact that their writings were separated by 1500 years. The fact that Lewis read Augustine’s work may perhaps account for some of this similarity, but it is difficult to determine the extent of Lewis’s familiarity with Augustine’s writings on pride and humility, so a comparison of the two is therefore useful in developing a more ordered analysis of Lewis’s views on these issues. In one of the chapters in Mere Christianity, Lewis identifies what he considers to be “the great sin”4 as being that of “Pride or Self-Conceit.” According to Lewis, “the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride,”5 which “comes direct from Hell.”6 He says that many of the other vices “are mere fleabites in comparison…it was through Pride that the devil became the devil…Pride leads to every other vice.”7 Elsewhere, Lewis referred to pride as “the mother of all sins,”8 thus emphasizing his belief that pride is at the root of all other sins. Not only did Lewis believe pride 4 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1952), 121. 5 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 121. 6 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 125. 7 Lewis, Mere Christianity, 122. 8 C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves, 1930, in The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, vol. 1, ed. Walter Hooper (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), 882. 5 was Satan’s sin, but he also believed it was the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. As he states in a 1943 letter, “The corruption of the first sinner consists…in preferring a lesser good (himself) before a greater (God). The Fall is, in fact, Pride.”9 Holding a similar view to Lewis, Augustine saw pride as the root of all other vices. In his writings, he often quoted Ecclesiasticus 10:13, which begins with the statement that “pride is the beginning of sin.”10 Furthermore, Augustine also believed the devil’s sin was rooted in pride. In his Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love, Augustine states that “some of the angels…in their pride and impiety rebelled against God, and were cast down from their heavenly abode,”11 and that the devil “was with his associates in crime exalted in pride, and by that exaltation was with them cast down.”12 Also, Lewis’s idea about how pride was the way “the devil became the devil” strangely parallels something Augustine preached in 411, when he stated, “Pride is a great vice, and the first of vices, the beginning, origin and cause of all sins. It’s what cast down an angel and made him into the devil.”13 Moreover, Lewis is also in agreement with Augustine in seeing the sin of Adam and Eve as a sin of pride, in which humans turned away from God to focus on themselves instead. As Augustine states in The City of God, “This then is the original evil: man regards himself as his own light, and turns away from that light which would make man himself a light if he would set his heart on it. This evil [the sin of pride] came first, in secret, and the result was the other evil [the eating of the forbidden fruit], which was committed in the open.”14 Augustine had also stated the same concept earlier in his City of God, saying that the pride of the fallen angels consisted of “their turning away from him who supremely is, and their turning 9 Lewis to Joyce Pearce, 1943, in The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, vol. II, 585. 10 Frank P. Riga, “Augustinian Pride and the Work of C.S. Lewis,” Augustinian Studies 16 (1985): 129-36. 11 Augustine, The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love, (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1966), 34. 12 Augustine, Enchiridion, 35. 13 Qtd. in Augustine through the Ages: an Encyclopedia, s.v. “Pride.” 14 Augustine, The City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 1984), 573. 6 towards themselves, who do not exist in that supreme degree.”15 Because Lewis and Augustine both agree that pride involves a turning of one’s focus away from God and to oneself, this will be a key concept to keep in mind when analyzing how Narnia characters are sometimes blind to their pride and to Aslan and others because their focus is on themselves. In addition to viewing pride as the origin of all sin, Lewis categorized pride as a spiritual—rather than a fleshly—sin.