C.S. Lewis: His Theology and Philosophy - Lesson 6

Dr. Michael Peterson 
C.S. Lewis: His Theology and Philosophy 
ap530-06 
Mere Christianity (Part 3) 
Lesson Transcript

Just a couple items. For the sake of continuity and understanding. One, this formula I put on the board, which I think will recur in many contexts as we go through the course, is a typical way of talking symbolically in probabilistic terms. I'm just saying the probability p the probability of morality as we know it given theism. Assuming theism to be true. How how probable is it that we have morality as we know it? How problems verses how probable is it? Assuming something else? Hinduism, dualism, naturalism, assuming one of those to be true, how probable is and how probable would we have morality as we know it? So it's all about comparative probability, where probability here is not so much quantitative, a quantitative what you can do in certain contexts, but not with these things. At best you could say, well, is the probability above half? I think it's far above half. But when you're comparing, then you've got the greater than the greater than this probability is greater than the other probability. And I like my little touch to put the exclamation point significantly greater than. But I think maybe doesn't hurt to just repeat. So make sure everybody gets what I was doing. Nothing, I think I might mention is I believe I put this in the online classroom. It was a pamphlet done by several Anglican Divines. I don't remember the publication date. Late forties, early fifties and the title of the pamphlet, which is just exquisitely done in terms of. The elevated thought and the in the exquisite expression I think is called catholicity, and I think I put it online. So it's there for you, but it gives you a kind of a feeling of how you take Catholic faith small C and and see it as the basis for a dynamic, intellectual position and great stuff.

In my estimation, it's out of the forties or fifties, as is more Christianity. So it would have been in process, I'm sure, when he was doing this. And published a little bit later than mere Christianity. We probably can't do this in great detail. But what you get in this this book too, of Christianity is a lot of worldview engagement. And I thought I just talk my way through some of the kinds of things, Lewis says, to compare theism still and move toward Christianity, but compare it with some of these other views and all in the same context of morality, what would they say, how they respond to this phenomenon in human life that we call moral awareness? Conscience, for example. Pantheism and the historical expression among world religions of pantheism, we probably say, is classical Hinduism, as expressed in the Upanishads, as expressed with philosophical technicality in the Upanishads. Less technicality in some of the other writings, like the Bhagavad Gita. It's much more popular. Krishna emerges. Compelling figure in the Geeta, you know. But in the Upanishads, it's a philosophical treatise. The point being that Brahman, the Divine. Soul of everything. The hidden inner essence. Of everything. Is beyond. Human categories of good and evil. When you think of what is it the chain dog you Upanishads, the number 14. I remember the table of contents, but you get the little novice learning from the great master and. The novel said, Master, what is what is Brahman and the master? This is this is because human categories. Can't express the divine. He says. Well. Savarkar, too, is the disciple. He says, Get some salt and put it in that broad bowl of water. Just put a little pinch over here at the edge. Okay.

Does it got a bag of salt, did it? This is now sip from this other end. What's it taste like? Salty sip from this other end. What's it taste like? Salty. That's like Brahman. Now, this leads to the great insight. Of Hinduism that Othman is Brahman. That I'd mourn the individual soul. Is Breman. But Brahman permeates everything, and our individuality is a kind of illusion. There's only one reality, one Brahman, what we call the world of various shapes, colors, individuals, is an illusion. And so the human problem is not sin. The human problem is ignorance. We have to see it differently. We have to see ourselves, as always, part of Brahman overcome the ignorance. We'll go into that in great detail. But the point then is you can't permeate everything, as Roman is said to do, can be present in everything unless you're beyond. Categorical distinctions. Such as good and evil. Because if you yourself are good, you can inhabit the good, but you can't inhabit the evil. Now, the claim in in, in classical Hinduism is Brahma inhabits everything. So he's above any distinctions we make, including moral sanctions. Moral sanctions don't apply. No distinctions. Apply to Brahma. So that is a historical expression. There can be others, but that's that's like the paradigmatic expression of pantheism closed in the writings of the Upanishads. And Hinduism. Now, the point then is. How good a sense of this phenomenon in human life does that worldview make versus fearsome? So now we're getting into this comparative engagement. That's just one example. So what Lewis says is it distorts it, it explains it away. It explains it as part of the world of illusion. Maya mj y A The realm of Maya is part of the way we live in the realm of Maya, the realm of illusion.

Its morality is not anchored in the most ultimate that a morality, not morality, is not anchored in the core of reality. The argument Lewis is making is it is anchored. In the core of reality, this moral awareness we have that finite morality is a reflection of a of a more infinite morality. Here. He's saying, Here's just an example of another worldview that has to explain it in a way that distorts and explains it away. And the Hindus would say, you have to act morally this because you have to navigate the realm of Maya. Nobody's saying you can not act morally, but there's something more transcendent in terms of perspective. In a self orientation that you have to have so that you really know you're identified with Brahman. You are you are Brahman. Atman is Brahman. So. He thinks this. As you know, it doesn't make sense of a realist description. Of human moral awareness. I tend to agree. Oh dualism here. Some interesting things to say there. I'm just going through some sample comments so I don't get bogged down like I did earlier. But cosmic dualism posits an ultimate good and ultimate evil principle. I see Zoroastrianism pretty much in that category. There could be a couple hundred thousand Zoroastrians on the face of the earth these days. I really don't even know. Maybe that's too many. I don't know. Historically you can look back at. Saint Augustine comes out of of what religious orientation and philosophical understanding Manichean ism based on the teachings of the great teacher Mani and Manicheism taught. There's an ultimate good principle and an ultimate evil principle, and they're at war in the universe. And that's a super duper explanation of why there's evil and also why there's good.

They're in a mixed success warfare nature. Mixed success. And the mixture of good, evil and human experience explains. So likewise, Zoroastrianism has its own way of of giving a religious expression to what I think is an underlying dualism. And the point is not to get into a lot of detail about the specific living religions that embody it, but to look at the the philosophical core of cosmic dualism. Hell if their equal and opposite ultimate principles, Lewis says. Well, you tell me what Lewis says. What? I'm always telling you what Lewis says. I want this coming back at me. Wake up. Wake up. What is Steve Martin say in Three Amigos? Look up here. Look up here. Is this good on tape? Oh, shoot it. Okay. I said it before. I really. But Three Amigos is a great classic film, as is Princess Bride. You know, There you go. We have. My two sons are part of a big network of cousins. My wife is one of five daughters and Memphis minister's daughter over the middle daughter and all other children. They love each other, cousins, and they speak to each other. And the oldest is my son, Aaron, who's pushing 40. They still speak to each other in the dialog. The Princess Bride. And occasionally three amigos. If you don't know that dialog, well, then you're just you're linguistically out of touch with the big network cousins. Okay. What Lewis wants to say then is that cosmic dualism doesn't fare any better than pantheism when it comes to what? Explaining, Explaining this phenomenon of the human awareness of morality. But you tell me now what he says. Yes. Well, the problem is basically for those who start, are you going to say, and I know you, but whose side will one of the powers be? And it has to be arranged in the the powers on the wrong side.

Yes. Therefore there can be individual. Yeah, exactly. You just your hand, then go. No. Okay. I'm just. Misfire. Yeah, you're exactly right. So that the kind of pushback from a theistic perspective is how do you decide which one is the good power and which one is the bad? You you'd have to have a third element in the equation which adjudicated between this and this, and that would actually be a higher standard. So this is it makes very little rational sense of morality to have a kind of a standoff between two ultimate principles and and yet say that the morality that we find in human experience is, um, made good sense of, uh, explained well within a cosmic, dualistic framework. Because we have a sense of ultimately this is really the way things ought to be. We ought not murder. We ought not lie and defraud. We ought not this. We ought to and we should do this. We should be kind. We should be benevolent. We should be. You know. So he's saying there's no way this to to anchor these in a stable, ultimate reality when you have to their equal and opposite. I think it's really interesting. These are, you know, highly technical discussions. But he's just saying, here's the way you navigate. You go into great detail, much more than he can do in this little book. But this is the way you would navigate the worldview encounter. With respect to this one item. The human awareness of morality. Of course, we looked at really a little bit already what the naturalist or materialist would say. There's no ultimate moral nature to the universe, which is ultimately physical or material in its essence, and therefore is non moral. And so whatever we feel so deeply about doesn't have an ultimate anchor.

So once again, a worldview that ultimately has to deny or distort. This this important human reality. That's a reason for not preferring. That worldview. And what we're looking at is what reason do we have to prefer theism? Is it doesn't deny, it doesn't distort, it gives it morality, a sense of ultimately objectivity. Nobody's claiming that we're we have infinite, perfect understanding of morality, but it anchors it. It makes sense of it. It gives it a worldview home in which having the feelings we do and the awareness we do, giving it the sense of importance that we do make sense. Just to go to my my realist, my realist happy place, you could talk about a realist metta philosophy. A philosophy, A philosophy. I.e., what's the role of philosophy? People differ on this. The whole schools of thought differ on what the role of philosophy is. For example, you could be fine speaking in very general terms, you could be fine as a philosopher with this matter philosophy that by the time you've subjected some important piece of human life and experience to philosophical analysis. You'd be fine if you falsified it or changed drastically from what the common, ordinary person thought. This is often what happens. So that sneering at the most basic common human features of life is is done a kind of undercutting. And so that's a matter of philosophy that philosophy's job is to analyze the ordinary data, rationality, morality and so on. To analyze the ordinary data of life and come up with a highly speculative theory. Fancy. Clever. Quote unquote, sophisticated. But yeah, by the time it's done. The phenomenon you were explaining has been distorted or denied. A realist metaphor philosophy from Aristotle on says, Hey, our job is to clarify and elucidate the important features of life.

Their credentials. Their credentials. Our belief in the objectivity, morality, our belief in the irrevocable validity of reason. You can even argue against reason because you have to assume reason. To argue against it. It's a remarkable. ET cetera. That those beliefs are not to be. Don't get red in the face. When I tell you that people who argue against reason and the incoherence of that exercise. Okay, so. Our job is to elucidate, bring things that are otherwise unnoticed to the surface so that when philosophy has done its job, it's not distorted or deny those realities. It's elucidated them, maybe put them in a coherent framework of understanding. But there are ways of approaching philosophy and doing the philosophical test that don't care for that. And you get a more anti realist set of of matter philosophies. But there are different you know, there's Continental. I mean, I think most of you exposed in theology like Larry Wood to a more continental approach. But the deep the deep instincts of Continental or I think are anti realist either they sound really good. My instincts are right along those those lines. So and Lewis isn't either. So Lewis, you can see he's operating by that particular understanding of what of the job. A philosophy. But he's doing it at a popular level. But he's not saying he's denying or distorting. He's showing that other views will. And so just on that point alone, morality, we have a reason. To prefer theism to alternative points of view. I think it's a good way maybe of saying the upshot. The net result of where he's come to at this point, and he's doing it through this worldview engagement. How are we doing for time? Not too good. Plus, I'm dying on my feet here.

No, I'm good. Now, if you think about it, what's coming down the pike? Is he's got to move from from getting theism on the table. To getting some Christian ideas added to the general theistic. Position. But he's argued for. And that starts with chapter three in book two, where he's going to talk about the shocking alternative. And he sets it up kind of like this. If there is this power, this being behind the universe, who is itself deeply moral, essentially moral in its own nature. And we are in finite ways reflecting that we're somehow tied to that. That's an important point, but it's vague, it's general, and doesn't give us full enlightenment about what the nature and purposes of this power behind the universe. So Christianity and its claims to give us more specific information have to be examined and put into the same rational arena for whether they also enlighten rather than distort, the common data that we're talking about. For the most part, morality at this point. So that's what we're headed toward, is putting some Christian information in the mix and showing how enlightening it is. And you going to have to start with incarnation. My Calvinist friends tend to start with atonement, you know, But whether or not there's atonement, Anglicans will say Catholics will say how they liked their incarnation. So that's the kind of God we have. Whether or not there's a need for atonement. But I think those kinds of matters will have to take up next time. What professionalism is on display to bring this puppy in on time. See you next week. Have a good rest of the week.