C.S. Lewis and the Englightenment, by John Allums

ENLIGHTENMENT IN ALL OF US: YOU HAVE NEVER MET AN ORDINARY PERSON

C. S. Lewis emphasized the reality of hell in many of his books and other writings. This might be seen obvious to many, but they seldom consider the time and place he wrote in: Oxford in the first half of the twentieth century. A time and place that would have been especially hostile to this belief because in part of the influence of the Enlightenment. He wrote in "the Weight of Glory":

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

"All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.

"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

"This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love. . . .

"Next the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses."

Lewis would never say as relates to other people: "W-H-A-T-E-V-E-R . . . !"

SCREWTAPE AND ITS CRITICS

Walter Hooper recounts how the very popular "Screwtape Letters" had its detractors and critics. One wrote: "With the concentration camps across the channel and the Blitz at home, Screwtape seems to have been aiming at rather small targets and to have been decidedly lacking in historical imagination." Another noted the "general moral pettiness" adding that, "In the age which has produced Auschwitz, it is distasteful to have such slight topics associated with human damnation."

Lewis would have responded to these criticisms in this way. Auschwitz's bigness and uniqueness blunt its usefulness as a universal temptation to sin. Lewis's answer to such critics--his answer to what Screwtape is about--is writ plain in Screwtape's caution to the younger devil:

"You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."