Reverend Brian McGreevy continues his series, Not as Unwise but as Wise: Reflections from C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength on Living Christianly in a Post-Christian World. This is available as a podcast on iTunes.
Episode 24: Not as Unwise but as Wise: Reflections from C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man and That Hideous StrengthSUMMARY OF CHAPTER 14, “REAL LIFE IS MEETING”
–adapted from Rudy Rentzel
[Martin Buber (1878-1965) was an influential existentialist philosopher and theologian, who emphasized an “I and You” personal relationship with God that would deeply affect all our other relationships by making them more personal. He summarized these views in his saying, “All real life is meeting,” from which Lewis derived this chapter’s title.]
Mark remains in a cell at Belbury, visited at times by Frost, who seeks to remove all emotions from him (all humanity and the personal), and replace them with complete objectivity (the impersonal and inhuman). Though Mark inwardly resists, he outwardly plays along, thinking he may eventually gain his freedom this way. As part of this process, he had to endure exposure to art intended to offend him in an effort to numb his human emotions. Instead, this method reinforces his determination to choose the opposite – the objective and normal, all wrapped up in his wife, Jane. Frost leads Mark to a bedroom with a roaring blaze and an old man in the bed and tells him to monitor the man, who does not speak English. If the man says anything, Mark is to call the Deputy Director. However, soon after Frost leaves, the old man wakes and speaks to Mark in English.
Meanwhile, Jane helps Mother Dimble prepare a bedroom for the reuniting of Ivy Maggs with her husband, who is being released from prison. Jane begins to wonder how her relationship with Mark will develop when he returns. When Jane sits alone, she sees an enticing woman in a flame colored robe, who reminds her somewhat of Mother Dimble. She then notices a group of five fat dwarfs accompanying her who mock Jane. The woman holds a torch, but when she touches items, instead of burning them, it causes ivy, honeysuckle, red roses, and lilies to grow. Meanwhile, the dwarfs tear up the room. Suddenly, Jane realized she was dreaming – yet the room was empty but for the bed which had been pulled to pieces. She decides to see the Director at once.
Mr. Bultitude (the bear) climbs a tree over the walls of St. Anne’s and encounters two men from the N.I.C.E., who wonder if perhaps he is an escaped bear from Belbury. They are on a mission to secure a wolf for use in experiments at the N.I.C.E., but the owner has balked when he learns what they intend. They are worried their boss at Belbury might fire them for not returning with the wolf and decide it is better to return with a bear than empty-handed, regardless of whether the bear is actually the one from Belbury. They throw Mr. Bultitude a drugged sandwich to subdue him, tie him up, throw him in the van, and take him back to Belbury.
Meanwhile, Mark spends more time talking with the tramp. Wither and Frost bring in several experts who attempt to speak to him in various foreign languages, but the tramp fails to respond, maintaining an expression of tranquil indifference. Back at St. Anne’s, the Director explains to Jane that as long as Merlin remains with them, they are not exactly in the 20th Century: they have entered into a time overlap through which Jane’s gifts as a seer not yet converted to the Christian faith will cause her to run into presences that are pre-Christian and untransformed. Jane begins to realize that the Director stands on the side of Mother Dimble and her traditional views about marriage and men and women. While she hoped for a world where all differences of sex were taken away, she begins to suspect that a deeper reality may exist where the differences run all the way up the ladder. The Director reinforces this view by saying, “What is above and beyond all things is so masculine that we are all feminine in relation to it.” The Director ventures the Huge Woman was the earthly Venus in anticipation of Oyarsa of Perelandra (Venus), since Director plans to bring Merlin before the various Oyarsas of the various planets so they can empower him. Since the N.I.C.E. has been advertising for experts in archaic Western dialects, the Director plans to send Merlin to the N.I.C.E. to apply for the post. Meanwhile, the Company receives word that Mr. Maggs has been sent to Belbury for “remedial treatment.”As Jane contemplates what the Director has been saying, it seems nonsensical to her as a view of religion. But as she reflects further, she realizes the Director and others at St. Anne’s never speak about religion but instead speak of God. Rather than steam rising upwards, they picture strong, skillful hands thrusting downwards to make someone into a truer version of what that God had designed them to be. Jane experiences a profound change and encounters the presence of a Person who demanded everything right. The “Me” she had centered on before vanished, and in its place she felt something new being molded, an experience that was the most important of her life thus far (circling back to the chapter title’s idea of metting a God who is personal, not an abstract idea).
SUMMARY OF CHAPTER 15, “THE DESCENT OF THE GODS”
Framing this chapter in the medieval view of the beauty and majesty of the Cosmos, Lewis has the chief angels (Oyeresu) of each planet descend upon St. Anne’s in this chapter. Though they specifically descend to the Blue Room where the Director (Ransom) and Merlin await them alone, their descent affects all others at the household. First comes Viritrilbia (Mercury/Hermes), accompanied by the doubling, splitting, and recombining of thoughts, which they only endured with some knowledge of poetry, followed by Perelandra (Venus/Aphrodite), accompanied by a summer breeze and Charity such as no one on Earth had ever experienced. Next came Malacandra (Mars/Ares), bringing a sense of the ordered rhythm of the universe, sharing in a processional pomp, and a readiness for action, followed by Lurga (Saturn), accompanied by incredible pressure, freezing cold, and sorrow. Finally, Glundandra (Jupiter/ Jove/Zeus) descends with an aura of Kingship, power, festivities, and music, which dispelled the sorrow of Lurga. These Oyeresu (often confused by men with the “gods”) empower Merlin for his task. MacPhee drives Merlin to Belbury and drops him off. Merlin presents himself as responding to the N.I.C.E.’s ad for someone familiar with obscure languages. Frost and Wither mistake Merlin for a priestly type wearing a rusty cassock and a wide brimmed black hat. Merlin speaks to the tramp in a strange language which the tramp seems to recognize and respond to (likely a language empowered by Viritrilbia, the master of languages). Thus, Merlin can control Frost and Wither, since they are eager to please the man they believe to be Merlin.Merlin says the tramp demands a tour of Belbury led by Wither and demands robes appropriate to his station. Wither dresses him with robes as a Doctor of Philosophy and begins the tour. Mark remains with Frost, who demands that Mark trample a large crucifix on the floor and otherwise insult it. Frost hopes this will confirm Mark is with them. Though Mark does not believe in Christianity, the demand disturbs him, and after much consternation, he emphatically states he will not do so. The N.I.C.E. Director, Jules, shows up for a scheduled dinner party; he is actually a figurehead but doesn’t realize it and thinks he is directing the N.I.C.E. Jules is affronted that Wither is not there, but he eventually appears with the tramp in his robes and Merlin (as his interpreter) in tow. Jules is unimpressed with their appearance. Mark tries to speak to Jules, but Wither and Frost interfere. Jules expresses his displeasure at how things are being run. Wither expresses his sympathies and introduces the tramp as Dr. Ambrosius. Jules doesn’t like him and dislikes his interpreter (the real Merlin) even more.
KEY PASSAGES FROM CHAPTER 14
“You think, then,” said Mark, “that there would be no sense in asking whether the general tendency of the universe might be in the direction we should call Bad?” “There could be no sense at all,” said Frost. “The judgment you are trying to make turns out on inspection to be simply an expression of emotion… I am referring to the famous Romanes lecture. When the so-called struggle for existence is seen simply as an actuarial theorem, we have, in Waddington’s words, “a concept as unemotional as a definite integral” and the emotion disappears. With it disappears that preposterous idea of an external standard — of value which the emotion produced.” “And the actual tendency of events,” said Mark, “would still be self-justified and in that sense ‘good’ when it was working for the extinction of all organic life, as it presently will?” “Of course,” replied Frost, “if you insist on formulating the problem in those terms. In reality the question is meaningless. It presupposes a means — and — end pattern of thought which descends from Aristotle, who in his turn was merely hypostatising elements in the experience of an iron-age agricultural community. Motives are not the causes of action but its by-products.—abolition of Objective Value, abolition of Good and Evil
“And that,” continued Frost, “is why a systematic training in objectivity must be given to you. Its purpose is to eliminate from your mind one by one the things you have hitherto regarded as grounds for action. It is like killing a nerve. That whole system of instinctive preferences, whatever ethical, æsthetic, or logical disguise they wear, is to be simply destroyed.”—”objectivity” that is the absence/nullifcation of objective value
“He led him across the room to a narrower little door with a pointed arch, in the far wall. Here he paused and said, “Go in..”. The room, at first sight, was an anticlimax. It appeared to be an empty committee room with a long table, eight or nine chairs, some pictures, and (oddly enough) a large step-ladder in one corner. Here also there were no windows; it was lit by an electric light which produced, better than Mark had ever seen it produced before, the illusion of daylight — of a cold, grey place out of doors. This, combined with the absence of a fireplace, made it seem chilly though the temperature was not in fact very low. A man of trained sensibility would have seen at once that the room was ill-proportioned, notgrotesquely so, but sufficiently to produce dislike. It was too high and too narrow. Mark felt the effect without analysing the cause and the effect grew on him as time passed. Sitting staring about him he next noticed the door — and thought at first that he was the victim of some optical illusion. It took him quite a long time to prove to himself that he was not. The point of the arch was not in the centre: the whole thing was lopsided. Once again, the error was not gross. The thing was near enough to the true to deceive you for a moment and to go on teasing the mind even after the deception had been unmasked. Involuntarily one kept shifting the head to find positions from which it would look right after all. He turned round and sat with his back to it… one mustn’t let it become an obsession. –impact of architecture not aligned with true objective value
“Then he noticed the spots on the ceiling. They were not mere specks of dirt or discolouration. They were deliberately painted on: little round black spots placed at irregular intervals on the pale mustard-coloured surface… He determined that he would not fall into the trap of trying to count them. They would be hard to count, they were so irregularly placed. Or weren’t they? Now that his eyes were growing used to them (and one couldn’t help noticing that there were five in that little group to the right), their arrangement seemed to hover on the verge of regularity. They suggested some kind of pattern. Their peculiar ugliness consisted in the very fact that they kept on suggesting it and then frustrating the expectation this aroused. Suddenly he realised that this was another trap. He fixed his eyes on the table. There were spots on the table too: white ones. Shiny white spots, not quite round. And arranged, apparently, to correspond to the spots on the ceiling. Or were they? No, of course not… ah, now he had it. The pattern (if you could call it a pattern) on the table was an exact reversal of that on the ceiling. But with certain exceptions. He found he was glancing rapidly from one to the other, trying to puzzle it out. For the third time he checked himself. He got up and began to walk about. He had a look at the pictures. Some of them belonged to a school of art with which he was already familiar. There was a portrait of a young woman who held her mouth wide open to reveal the fact that the inside of it was thickly overgrown with hair. It was very skilfully painted in the photographic manner so that you could almost feel that hair: indeed you could not avoid feeling it however hard you tried. He had not had such a sensation before. For the moment he hardly cared if Frost and Wither killed him.“—impact of art not aligned with true objective value (loss of hope)
“There was a giant mantis playing a fiddle while being eaten by another mantis, and a man with corkscrews instead of arms bathing in a flat, sadly coloured sea beneath a summer sunset… At first, most of them seemed rather ordinary, though Mark was a little surprised at the predominance of scriptural themes. It was only at the second or third glance that one discovered certain unaccountable details — something odd about the positions of the figures’ feet or the arrangement of their fingers or the grouping. And who was the person standing between the Christ and the Lazarus? And why were there so many beetles under the table in the Last Supper? What was the curious trick of lighting that made each picture look like something seen in delirium? When once these questions had been raised the apparent ordinariness of the pictures became their supreme menace — like the ominous surface innocence at the beginning of certain dreams. Every fold of drapery, every piece of architecture, had a meaning one could not grasp but which withered the mind. Compared with these the other, surrealistic, pictures were mere foolery. “—art used for Evil to wither the mind
“Long ago Mark had read somewhere of “things of that extreme Evil which seem innocent to the uninitiate,” and had wondered what sort of things they might be. Now he felt he knew. He turned his back on the pictures and sat down. He understood the whole business now. Frost was not trying to make him insane: at least not in the sense Mark had hitherto given to the word “insanity”…To sit in the room was the first step towards what Frost called objectivity — the process whereby all specifically human reactions were killed in a man so that he might become fit for the fastidious society of the Macrobes. Higher degrees in the asceticism of anti-Nature would doubtless follow: the eating of abominable food, the dabbling in dirt and blood, the ritual performances of calculated obscenities. They were, in a sense, playing quite fair with him — offering him the very same initiation through which they themselves had passed and which had divided them from humanity, distending and dissipating Wither into a shapeless ruin while it condensed and sharpened Frost into the hard, bright, little needle that he now was. But after an hour or so this long, high coffin of a room began to produce on Mark an effect which his instructor had probably not anticipated. There was no return of the attack which he had suffered last night in the cell. Whether because be had already survived that attack, or because the imminence of death had drawn the tooth of his lifelong desire for the esoteric, or because he had (in a fashion) called very urgently for help, the built and painted perversity of this room had the effect of making him aware, as he had never been aware before, of this room’s opposite. As the desert first teaches men to love water, or as absence first reveals affection, there rose up against this background of the sour and the crooked some kind of vision of the sweet and the straight.
“Something else — something he vaguely called the “Normal” — apparently existed. He had never thought about it before. But there it was solid, massive, with a shape of its own, almost like something you could touch, or eat, or fall in love with. It was all mixed up with Jane and fried eggs and soap and sunlight and the rooks cawing at Cure Hardy and the thought that, somewhere outside, daylight was going on at that moment. He was not thinking in moral terms at all; or else (what is much the same thing) he was having his first deeply moral experience. He was choosing a side: the Normal. “All that,” as he called it, was what he chose. If the scientific point of view led away from “all that,” then be damned to the scientific point of view! The vehemence of his choice almost took his breath away; he had not had such a sensation before. For the moment he hardly cared if Frost and Wither killed him.“—importance of living in accord with God’s created order for flourishing
“And day by day, as the process went on, that idea of the Straight or the Normal which had occurred to him during his first visit to this room, grew stronger and more solid in his mind till it had become a kind of mountain. He had never before known what an Idea meant: he had always thought till now that they were things inside one’s own head. But now, when his head was continually attacked and often completely filled with the clinging corruption of the training, this Idea towered up above him — something which obviously existed quite independently of himself and had hard rock surfaces which would not give, surfaces he could cling to.”—objective Truth of spiritual Reality
“You said she was a little like Mother Dimble. So she is. But Mother Dimble with something left out. Mother Dimble is friends with all that world as Merlinus is friends with the woods and rivers. But he isn’t a wood or a river himself. She has not rejected it, but she has baptised it. She is a Christian wife. And you, you know, are not. Neither are you a virgin. You have put yourself where you must meet that Old Woman and you have rejected all that has happened to her since Maleldil came to Earth. So you get her raw — not stronger than Mother Dimble would find her, but untransformed, demoniac. And you don’t like it.”—identity without Christ’s transforming influence
“But your trouble…we call it Pride. You are offended by the masculine itself: the loud irruptive, possessive thing — the gold lion, the bearded bull — which breaks through hedges and scatters the little kingdom of your primness as the dwarfs scattered the carefully made bed. The male you could have escaped, for it exists only on the biological level. But the masculine none of us can escape. What is above and beyond all things is so masculine that we are all feminine in relation to it. You had better agree with your adversary quickly.” “You mean I shall have to become a Christian?” said Jane. “It looks like it,” said the Director.—immutable reality of the creation, male and female
”It ought to have been she who was saying these things to the Christians. Hers ought to have been the vivid, perilous world brought against their grey formalised one; hers the quick, vital movements and theirs the stained glass attitudes. That was the antithesis she was used to. This time, in a sudden flash of purple and crimson, she remembered what stained glass was really like.”—failure to understand the Wonder of Christianity
“Meanwhile, in the Objective Room, something like a crisis had developed between Mark and Professor Frost. As soon as they arrived there Mark saw that the table had been drawn back. On the floor lay a large crucifix, almost life size, a work of art in the Spanish tradition, ghastly and realistic. “We have half an hour to pursue our exercises,” said Frost looking at his watch. Then he instructed Mark to trample on it and insult it in other ways. Now whereas Jane had abandoned Christianity in early childhood, along with her belief in fairies and Santa Claus, Mark had never believed in it at all. At this moment, therefore, it crossed his mind for the very first time that there might conceivably be something in it. Frost who was watching him carefully knew perfectly well that this might be the result of the present experiment. He knew it for the very good reason that his own training by the Macrobes had, at one point, suggested the same odd idea to himself. But he had no choice. Whether he wished it or not this sort of thing was part of the initiation. “But, look here,” said Mark. “What is it?” said Frost. “Pray be quick. We have only a limited time at our disposal.” “This,” said Mark, pointing with an undefined reluctance to the horrible white figure on the cross. “This is all surely a pure superstition.” “Well?” “Well, if so, what is there objective about stamping on the face? Isn’t it just as subjective to spit on a thing like this as to worship it? I mean — damn it all — if it’s only a bit of wood, why do anything about it?” “That is superficial. If you had been brought up in a non-Christian society, you would not be asked to do this. Of course, it is a superstition; but it is that particular superstition which has pressed upon our society for a great many centuries. It can be experimentally shown that it still forms a dominant system in the subconscious of many individuals whose conscious thought appears to be wholly liberated. An explicit action in the reverse direction is therefore a necessary step towards complete objectivity. It is not a question for a priori discussion. We find it in practice that it cannot be dispensed with.” Mark himself was surprised at the emotions he was undergoing. He did not regard the image with anything at all like a religious feeling. Most emphatically it did not belong to that idea of the Straight or Normal or Wholesome which had, for the last few days, been his support against what he now knew of the innermost circle at Belbury. The horrible vigour of its realism was, indeed, in its own way as remote from that Idea as anything else in the room. That was one source of his reluctance. To insult even a carved image of such agony seemed an abominable act. But it was not the only source. With the introduction of this Christian symbol the whole situation had somehow altered. The thing was becoming incalculable. His simple antithesis of the Normal and the Diseased had obviously failed to take something into account. Why was the crucifix there? Why were more than half the poison-pictures religious? He had the sense of new parties to the conflict — potential allies and enemies which he had not suspected before. “If I take a step in any direction,” he thought, “I may step over a precipice.” A donkey-like determination to plant hoofs and stay still at all costs arose in his mind. “Pray make haste,” said Frost.
“The quiet urgency of the voice, and the fact that he had so often obeyed it before, almost conquered him. He was on the verge of obeying, and getting the whole silly business over, when the defencelessness of the figure deterred him. The feeling was a very illogical one. Not because its hands were nailed and helpless, but because they were only made of wood and therefore even more helpless, because the thing, (or all its realism) was inanimate and could not in any way hit back, he paused. The unretaliating face of a doll — one of Myrtle’s dolls — which he had pulled to pieces in boyhood had affected him in the same way and the memory, even now, was tender to the touch. “What are you waiting for, Mr. Studdock?” said Frost. Mark was well aware of the rising danger. Obviously, if he disobeyed, his last chance of getting out of Belbury alive might be gone. Even of getting out of this room. The smothering sensation once again attacked him. He was himself, he felt, as helpless as the wooden Christ. As he thought this, he found himself looking at the crucifix in a new way — neither as a piece of wood nor a monument of superstition but as a bit of history. Christianity was nonsense, but one did not doubt that the man had lived and had been executed thus by the Belbury of those days. And that, as he suddenly saw, explained why this image, though not itself an image of the Straight or Normal, was yet in opposition to crooked Belbury. It was a picture of what happened when the Straight met the Crooked, a picture of the Crooked did to the Straight — what it would do to him if he remained straight. It was, in a more emphatic sense than he had yet understood, a cross. could not avoid feeling“Mark made no reply. He was thinking, and thinking hard because he knew, that if he stopped even for a moment, mere terror of death would take the decision out of his hands Christianity was a fable. It would be ridiculous to die for a religion one did not believe. This Man himself, on that very cross, had discovered it to be a fable, and had died complaining that the God in whom he trusted had forsaken him — had, in fact, found the universe a cheat. But this raised a question that Mark had never thought of before. Was that the moment at which to turn against the Man? If the universe was a cheat, was that a good reason for joining its side? Supposing the Straight was utterly powerless, always and everywhere certain to be mocked, tortured, and finally killed by the Crooked, what then? Why not go down with the ship? He began to be frightened by the very fact that his fears seemed to have momentarily vanished. They had been a safeguard… they had prevented him, all his life, from making mad decisions like that which he was now making as he turned to Frost and said, “It’s all bloody nonsense, and I’m damned if I do any such thing.”—Crooked v. Straight, Jesus’s crucifixion as the ultimate collision between Good and Evil, Straight and Crooked
THEMES THAT APPEAR IN CHAPTERS 14 AND 15
–abolition of Objective Value, abolition of Good and Evil
–”objectivity” that is in fact the absence/nullification of Objective Value
–negative impact of architecture not aligned with true Objective Value
–negative impact of art not aligned with true Objective Value (loss of hope)
–non-objective art used for Evil to wither the mind
–importance of mimetic living–in accord with God’s created order–for flourishing
–objective Truth of spiritual Reality
–flawed identity without Christ’s transforming influence
–immutable reality of the Creation, male and female
–failure to understand the Wonder of Christianity
–waiting on the Lord and open doors
—power of conversion and subsequent transformation
—Hatred as concomitant of Evil
—suspicion and distrust as concomitants of Evil
–Crooked v. Straight, Jesus’s crucifixion as the ultimate collision between Good and Evil, Straight and Crooked
—Evil and Lies entrap themselves
Practices of Hope and of Wisdom
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.—Phil. 4:8-9
1. Develop an appreciation for classical architecture that reflects Objective Value “Let them construct a sanctuary for Me, that I may dwell among them. “According to all that I am going to show you, as the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all its furniture, just so you shall construct it. (Ex. 25:8-9) For he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God (Heb. 11:10) [These] serve as a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, just as Moses was warned by God when he was about to erect the tabernacle; for, “See,” He says, “that you make all things according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain.” (Heb. 8:5)
2. Develop an appreciation for art that reflects Objective Value And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (Gen.1:31) The place where they serve is a sketch and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary, just as Moses was warned by God as he was about to complete the tabernacle. For he says, “See that you make everything according to the design shown to you on the mountain. (Heb 8:5)
3. Be discerning and wise about what is Evil and what is Good. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. (2 Tim. 4:3-4) Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter (Is. 5:20)
4. Meditate on the Cross and the new creation that results from Jesus’s sacrifice for us. For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.(I Cor. 1:18) He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.(Col. 1:17-20)
