“Telling the Truth Through Imaginative Fiction”

            Dr. Malcolm Guite was passionate and engaging.  He lacked the crisp, precise speech McGrath had presented, but his lecture was far more organic and personable.  At one point during the lecture, in his zeal, Guite knocked over his glass of water—but the mild distraction did not halt his speech once.  He made a joke about the “cup runneth over” and carried on. 

            Guite began his lecture by quoting a poem C.S. Lewis had written before his conversion.  His American clerk, Walter Hooper, had posthumously entitled the poem, “Reason”, and it was this poem that fluidly connected both McGrath and Guite’s lectures. 

Reason

Set on the soul’s acropolis the reason stands

A virgin, arm’d, commercing with celestial light,

And he who sins against her has defiled his own

Virginity: no cleansing makes his garment white;

So clear is reason. But how dark, imagining,

Warm, dark, obscure and infinite, daughter of Night:

Dark is her brow, the beauty of her eyes with sleep

Is loaded, and her pains are long, and her delight.

Tempt not Athene. Wound not in her fertile pains

Demeter, nor rebel against her mother-right.

Oh who will reconcile in me both maid and mother,

Who make in me a cocord of the depth and hight?

Who make imagination’s dim exploring touch

Ever report the same as intellectual sight?

Then could I truly say, and not deceive,

Then wholly say, that I believe.

            Athene is representative of Reason, the goddess Lewis could openly profess to venerate, while Demeter symbolized the allure and warmth of imagination.  In Guite’s words, “Basically, Lewis was saying, ‘My problem is that I can’t get my inner goddesses together!’” 

            Through a Christian lens, it seems an obvious and poignant foreshadowing of ‘who will reconcile in me both maid and mother’.  Guite agreed with McGrath, that Christianity fully accepted and even expected such paradoxes of ‘maid and mother’, ‘reason and imagination’.  Lewis was searching, as so many do, for the reconciliation of these paradoxes.  He sought not just a rationally plausible worldview, but a meaningful worldview. 

            Guite quoted the old phrase, “Happiness writes white”, meaning that writing goodness in creative fiction was strikingly difficult to do so.  And yet, Guite reminded us that after Lewis’ conversion, he became a master at just that.  The inherent goodness in his heroes of Narnia had the power to re-enchant and captivate us into the wardrobe and into magic.  Just as so many other fantasy worlds—Fairyland, Middle Earth, the wizarding world of Harry Potter, even Storybrooke, Maine—all of these are more invitations into beauty.  Just as Christianity is an invitation to truth reliant on imagination. 

            Guite cited a section of Voyage of the Dawntreader, where Lucy read a spell from the magician’s book called, “For Refreshment of the Spirit.”  It was not so much a spell, but a story, “the loveliest story I’ve ever read or shall read.”  Part of the enchantment meant that Lucy could not turn the pages of the book backwards to reread it, nor could she remember the story when she had finished.  When Lucy asked Aslan later if He would tell her the story, he told her, “Indeed, yes, I will tell it to you for years and years.” 

            There would be so many stories, so many enchantments and worlds that would invite our spirits and refresh our souls, an allegory of Christianity, whether intentional or unintentional.  Guite quoted from Dawntreader, Aslan’s farewell to Edmund and Lucy, telling them, “That by knowing me here, you may know me better there.”  It is through imaginative fiction that we truly begin to understand and accept Christianity. 

            Guite ended his lecture with one of his own sonnets honoring C.S. Lewis, which can be found on his blog at http://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2013/11/20/off-to-the-westminster-lewisfest/. 

“Telling the Truth Through Rational Argument”

            When I arrived at St. Margaret’s Church outside of Westminster Abbey, shortly before 1PM, there was no one in sight.  I saw more tourists than I expected—it was a cold, blustery day, surprisingly clear for London, but the more determined visitors were still taking photos, chattering amongst themselves.  The gate to the chapel was locked, unsurprising, seeing as I was an hour and a half early. 

            Nevertheless, it wasn’t long before a long queue of people began to form outside the chapel.  There were to be two lectures in the chapel, one by Dr. Alister McGrath, entitled “Telling the Truth Through Rational Argument” and the other by Dr. Malcolm Guite, called, “Telling the Truth Through Imaginative Fiction”. 

            Dr. McGrath is a Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education as well as the Head of the Centre for Theology, Religion, and Culture at King’s College, London—however, in April 2014, he will take up the Andreas Ideos Chair in Science and Religion at Oxford University.  He’s written several books discussing the flaws in modern atheistic theory (focusing especially on Richard Dawkins’ worldviews).  His most recent works have focused on the life of C.S. Lewis, both intellectual and personal.

            Dr. Malcolm Guite is the Chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge as well as the acting Vicar-Chaplain of St. Edward’s King and Martyr.  His varied accomplishments range from writing books such as, What do Christians Believe?, Faith Hope and Poetry, Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year, to being the front man for the Cambridge rockers Mystery Train.  

            I had thought that both lectures would be distinct from each other.  After all, Lewis’ dry theological works differed greatly from his creative prose in both style and substance.  But I was very wrong in distinguishing the two.  Both McGrath and Guite concentrated on how imagination and reason were intertwined, how looking at the world through a Christian lens (as Lewis did) required both facets.  Lewis’ theology and creative fiction were not nearly as distinct as I thought they were.

            McGrath started off by detailing C.S. Lewis’ significance to Christianity.  His works not only stood the test of time, they transcended denominations.  There was something core about the Christianity Lewis subscribed to that touched the hearts of Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, even Mormons—Lewis’ brand of ‘mere Christianity’ was something universal. 

            McGrath continued focusing on the accessibility of Lewis’ works, how academics and laymen could connect and respond.  According to McGrath, Lewis was not so much a composer of theology, but an arranger—taking dry, arduous theological ideas and making them palatable, understandable, and relatable. 

            McGrath warned us not to see Lewis as a man who followed pure, rational, logic to find Christianity.  Lewis’ approach “was more inductive than deductive, more visual than rational.”  Lewis did not so much tell the truth through rational argument—but showed the truth through rational argument.  Reason was visualized by imagination.   

            For the first half of his life, C.S. Lewis was a coldly rational atheist.  Nevertheless, he found the rationalist worldview uninteresting and bleak.  There was no place for imagination—“Nearly all I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless.” (Surprised by Joy)  Ironically, the writers he preferred, George MacDonald, G.K. Chesterton were Christian (he once described MacDonald as someone who ‘baptized his imagination’), while most of the writers he disdained were atheist—Lewis found their work dull and austere.  

            In McGrath’s view, Lewis was drawn to Christianity because of “its intellectual capaciousness and its imaginative appeal”—Christianity was not limited by what could only be understood or grasped by reason.  Conversely, the Christian worldview provided a way of seeing life that was rationally plausible.  McGrath quoted Lewis’ good friend Austin Ferrer’s comment, that Lewis made us “think we are listening to an argument…we are being presented with a vision, and it is the vision that carries conviction.” 

            McGrath concludes his lecture by saying that Lewis’ true genius as an apologist is how he showed us how Christianity identifies the human experience, connects with it, and still remains imaginatively satisfying.  Lewis was always careful to state that nothing could “prove” Christianity, but observation might “suggest” a certain point.  The longing that pierced Lewis’ life, which he later deemed joy, was a good example of this.  Christianity teaches us to expect these unsatisfied desires, as they are echoes of the world we are meant for.  In the end, Lewis’ argument for Christianity was not an argument at all—it was a collection of observations on various facets of life and how very persuasively these fit in the worldview of Christianity.  In doing so, Lewis affirmed rationality without plunging it into cold logic.  Apologetics is not just deduction, but an invitation into this worldview.  McGrath insists Lewis’ appeal to reason is implicit to imagination, which brings this worldview into sharpest focus. 

            McGrath ended with the very apt quote that best summed up Lewis’ approach to apologetics (and was inscribed on his memorial stone):  “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”