Of course, the perspective is different when the author is a Christian. Somewhere, between texts and persons, we meet in dialogue. And there are different kinds of Christians. How does CS Lewis differ from street evangelicals?
His character, Ransom, says:
"' This is the courtesy of Deep Heaven: that when you mean well, He always takes you to have meant better than you knew.'"
-That Hideous Strength, CHAPTER 11, p. 588.
And here, in different forms, is the philosophical question that divides us:
How does being become conscious?
How did sensitivity become sensation?
How do brains generate minds?
How do neurons cause experiences?
What is the relationship between neurology and psychology?
How does objectivity produce subjectivity?
Lewis argued that Reason preceded Nature, not vice versa, whereas secularist sf writers, Wells, Stapledon, Anderson etc, have accepted scientific cosmogony and the evolution of all species, including human minds and bodies, by natural selection.
(The title of this post is the title of CHAPTER 14 of That Hideous Strength. See also here and here.)
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Anderson was not hostile to Christianity, and treated honest believers (Catholic of Protestant) with respect. And I have speculated before on how much of an agnostic he truly was, esp. in his later years.
And there was JRR Tolkien, who was a devout Catholic. BUT, some have noted, with surprise, his restrained use of religion in his Middle Earth legendarium. I think that was at least partly because he did not want to intrude too many explicitly Christian ideas into eras set long before Christ. But religion can be found in his Middle Earth works, mostly in stories and essays set in the First Age. Such as THE SILMARILLION and in unfinished/hitherto unpublished works collected in MORGOTH'S RING.
Ad astra! Sean
Lewis was an Anglo-Catholic; hence, for example, he didn’t believe that everything in the Bible was “truth” in the sense of a documentary — that it contained metaphors and analogies, intended to be read as such. He believed the Bible was divinely inspired, but he wasn’t a literalist.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Broadly speaking, I agree. There are times when the "literal" sense can be properly used of holy scripture: as in the Book of Psalms is literally a collection of hymns and songs, the books of Kings is literally a theologically interpreted history of the Jewish kingdoms, etc. But Scripture also contains analogies, metaphors, allegories, etc. And I believe only the Catholic Church can infallibly interpret Scripture, when that becomes necessary.
It can be very frustrating trying to discuss Scripture with "evangelical" Protestants, precisely because so many of them insist on only a rigidly literal interpretation of the Bible. As, for example, when they claim Scripture "proves" evolution is not true or that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. To say nothing of how obsessed many "evangelicals" are with the AV/KJV!
Ad astra! Sean
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