1942
TO MARY NEYLAN: On troughs; on believing as an intellectual assent and as a psychological state; the despair of overcoming chronic temptations; and on how God likes to be asked. Lewis discloses that, at the direction of Father Adams, he has shortened an ever-lengthening list of people for whom he was praying.
20 JANUARY 1942
Sorry you’re in a trough. I’m just emerging (at least I hope I am) from a long one myself. As for the difficulty of believing it is a trough, one wants to be careful about the word ‘ believing’. We too often mean by it ‘having confidence or assurance as a psychological state’—as we have about the existence of furniture. But that comes and goes and by no means always accompanies intellectual assent, e.g. in learning to swim you believe, and even know intellectually that water will support you long before you feel any real confidence in the fact. I suppose the perfection of faith would make this confidence invariably proportionate to the assent.
In the meantime, as one has learnt to swim only by acting on the assent in the teeth of all instinctive conviction, so we shall proceed to faith only by acting as if we had it. Adapting a passage in the Imitation one can say ‘What would I do now if I had a full assurance that there was only a temporary trough’, and having got the answer, go and do it. I a man, therefore lazy: you a woman, therefore probably a fidget. So it may be good advice to you (though it would be bad to me) not even to try to do in the trough all you can do on the peak.
I have recently been advised by Fr. Adams to abbreviate a prayer for other people which was becoming so long (as my circle widens) as to be irksome. I have done so, but kept the longer one on two days a week. Result, that having ceased to be the rule and become a kind of extra, it ceases to be irksome and is often a delight. There is danger in making Christianity too much into a ‘ Law’. Let yourself off something. Relax.
I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptations. It is not serious provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience et cetera doesn’t get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes are in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present to us: it is the very sign of His presence.
The question about Sarah is why she wants not to have to ask the good one to make her good. Would it be right (I know so little about children) to point out to her that He likes being asked: and that if she could be good on her own, taking no notice of Him, that itself wouldn’t be good. But ten to one the 2 sticks were primarily a game….
Ransom is having a grand time on Venus at present.
TO MR. H. MORLAND, who seems to have written Lewis for a reading list on the different atonement theories and other theological and spiritual topics.
19 AUGUST 1942
The great classical statement of the Anglican position is Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. A good modern book is Essays Catholic and Critical, edited by Selwyn, Moberley Atonement and Personality, though needlessly long and difficult, is good: should be corrected by Aulén Christus Victor giving a different kind of theory. If you read Greek, St. Athanasius, De Incarnatione is splendid…. My own greatest debt is to George MacDonald, specially the three volumes of Unspoken Sermons (out of print but often obtainable second hand). Other books you might find helpful are Edwyn Bevan’s Christianity and Gore’s Jesus Christ, Bevan’s Symbolism and Belief, Gore’s Philosophy of the Good Life, Otto’s Idea of the Holy, von Hügel’s Eternal Life and Essays and Addresses: and, going further back, Theologia Germanica, Traherne Centuries of Meditations, Lady Julian of Norwich Revelations of Divine Love, Boethius De Consolatione Philosophiae, Augustine Confessions and De Civitate Dei.
TO SISTER PENELOPE, who was in the process of translating St. Athanasius’s The Incarnation of the Word of God: On gratitude and feelings of gratitude; and on the larger question of whether theoretical questions in the spiritual life are a mask for the reluctance to obey. Tinidril is the naked heroine of Perelandra.
22 DECEMBER 1942
I have been an unconscionable time answering your last letter, half hoping we might have seen more of St. Athanasius by now. I am so glad the cognoscenti approve of it: you will have done a most useful work and, so far as I could judge, done it rather better than well.
Perelandra will reach you, I hope, early in January: I have deterred the artist from putting his idea of Tinidril (you can imagine!) on the cover. I have been very busy with one thing and another: there aren’t the days and hours there used to be, are there? The minute hand used to go as the hour hand goes now!
How does one feel thankful? I am thinking of the improvement in the war news, and I don’t mean (rhetorically) ‘How can one be thankful enough?’ but just what I say. It seems to be something which disappears or becomes a mere word the moment one recognises one ought to be feeling it. I always tell people not to bother about ‘ feelings’ in their prayers, and above all never to try to feel, but I’m a bit puzzled about Gratitude: for if it is not a feeling, what is it?
A funny thing how merely formulating a question awakes the conscience! I hadn’t a notion of the answer at the bottom of the last sheet, but now I know exactly what you are going to say: ‘ Act your gratitude and let feelings look after themselves.’ Thank you. (Do all theoretical problems conceal shirkings by the will?)