How’s that again?

I recently discovered a book called A Year With C. S. Lewis that is now on my list of books to buy. It contains a year’s worth of daily readings from the non-fiction works of the aforementioned Mr. C[live] S[taples] Lewis. More about the book in a minute. But first, I want you to look at something:


Those, my friends, are limpets, or snails, if you prefer. The wikipedia article on limpets includes a sentence about them that says, “In the latest taxonomy the Patellogastropoda have become an unranked taxon as a separate clade.” I haven’t a clue what that might mean. But try to think of yourself as a limpet (or snail, if you prefer) for a moment.

Selah.

Now we can proceed. Below are entries for two days from that book of C. S. Lewis’s writings I mentioned. The material is copyrighted, of course, but since this blog is not for anyone’s commercial use, least of all mine, let’s sneak a peek at something I found quite mind-boggling. In your reading, the limpet (or snail, if you prefer) represents Man, and Man represents God. Put on your limpet-sized thinking cap, everyone, and dive in.

January 2
Imagine a Mystical Limpet

Why are many people prepared in advance to maintain that, whatever else God may be, He is not the concrete, living, willing, and acting God of Christian theology? I think the reason is as follows. Let us suppose a mystical limpet, a sage among limpets, who (rapt in vision) catches a glimpse of what Man is like. In reporting it to his disciples, who have some vision themselves (though less than he) he will have to use many negatives. He will have to tell them that Man has no shell, is not attached to a rock, is not surrounded by water. And his disciples, having a little vision of their own to help them, do get some idea of Man. But then there come erudite limpets, limpets who write histories of philosophy and give lectures on comparative religion, and who have never had any vision of their own. What they get from out of the prophetic limpet’s words is simply and solely the negatives. From these, uncorrected by any positive insight, they build up a picture of Man as a sort of amorphous jelly (he has no shell) existing nowhere in particular (he is not attached to a rock) and never taking nourishment (there is no water to drift it towards him). And having a traditional reverence for Man they conclude that to be a famished jelly in a dimensionless void is the supreme mode of existence, and reject as crude, materialistic superstition any doctrine which would attribute to Man a definite shape, a structure, and organs. (--from Miracles)

January 3rd
Not Naked but Reclothed

Our own situation is much like that of the erudite limpets. Great prophets and saints have an intuition of God which is positive and concrete in the highest degree. Because, just touching the fringes of His being, they have seen that He is plenitude of life and energy and joy, therefore (and for no other reason) they have to pronounce that He transcends those limitations which we call personality, passion, change, materiality, and the like. The positive quality in Him which repels these limitations is their only ground for all the negatives. But when we come limping after and try to construct an intellectual or “enlightened” religion, we take over these negatives (infinite, immaterial, impassable, immutable, etc.) and use them unchecked by any positive intuition. At each step we have to strip off from our idea of God some human attribute. But the only real reason for stripping off the human attribute is to make room for putting in some positive divine attribute. In St. Paul’s language, the purpose of all this unclothing is not that our idea of God should reach nakedness but that it should be reclothed. When we have removed from our idea of God some puny human characteristic, we (as merely erudite or intelligent enquirers) have no resources from which to supply that blindingly real and concrete attribute of Deity which ought to replace it. Thus at each step in the process of refinement our idea of God contains less, and the fatal pictures come in (an endless, silent sea, an empty sky beyond all stars, a dome of white radiance) and we reach at last mere zero and worship a nonentity. (--from Miracles)

(end of quotation)

I can only guess that Lewis goes on in Miracles to reclothe the idea and suggest that God is, in fact, the concrete, living, willing, and acting God of Christian theology.

I think he is saying that God is as inconceivable to Man as Man would be to a limpet. And perhaps he is also saying that the erudite, whom we tend to admire, usually get it wrong and the true prophet or mystic, whom we tend to ignore when we are feeling tolerant and kill when we are not, has a better chance of getting it right.

I don’t always find C. S. Lewis easy to understand, but I love reading his words, even when I have to proceed at a snail’s pace.

Remind you of anything?

I’m indebted to my French blogger buddy, Papy Biou, for his photo of these gorgeous ruins (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) that are somewhere, I suppose, in France. I hope Papy will let me know in a comment as to their exact name and location. Perhaps the ruins were only someone’s chateau and not a royal castle, but when I saw the photo, two words leapt to mind: Cair Paravel.

Readers of C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia will know what I'm talking about. Not in all its glory as in Book 1 (or 2), The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but the ruins found many Narnian centuries later by the returning Pevensee children in Book 3 (or 4), Prince Caspian.

My son-in-law and I had a difference of opinion about the numbering of The Chronicles of Narnia books when the first movie came out. He wondered why the producers decided to film the second book first; I said that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was the first book out of the six, not the second. He said there were seven books in the series, not six. I discovered that it depends on your age and when you were first exposed to Lewis’s Chronicles. Originally there were six volumes, but nowadays a seventh, written last of all, is included. To make matters more confusing, however, the current publishing strategy puts the addition, The Magician’s Nephew, at the beginning and calls it Book 1 because it occurs first chronologically. The original Books 1 through 6 have been renumbered and are now called Books 2 through 7. If you ask me, that’s adding insult to injury.

I suppose nobody cares except older readers like me who remember the world the way it used to be (and ought to be), or people really into publishing trivia (not that I am).

C. S. Lewis is best known for his non-fiction books, but he also wrote a science-fiction trilogy for adults, not children, that might pique your interest. The titles are Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. Any time you read anything by C. S. Lewis, don't be surprised if you find yourself further up, and further in.