1947
TO MRS. FRANK L. JONES: On the meaning of the doctrine of the two natures of Christ and the significance of Gethsemane and the Cross (with a postscript on avoiding ideological psychiatrists).
23 FEBRUARY 1947
(1.) The doctrine that Our Lord was God and man does not mean that He was a human body which had God instead of the normal human soul. It means that a real man ( human body and human soul) was in Him so united with the 2nd Person of the Trinity as to make one Person: just as in you and me a complete anthropoid animal (animal body and animal ‘soul’ i.e., instincts, sensations et cetera) is so united with an immortal rational soul as to be one person. In other words, if the Divine Son had been removed from Jesus what would have been left would have been not a corpse but a living man.
(2.) This human soul in Him was unswervingly united to the God in Him in that which makes a personality one, namely Will. But it had the feelings of any normal man: hence could be tempted, could fear et cetera. Because of these feelings it could pray ‘if it be possible, let this cup pass from me’: because of its perfect union with His Divine Nature it unswervingly answered ‘Nevertheless, not as I will but as thou wilt.’ The Matthew passages…make clear this unity of will [and] give in addition the human feelings.
(3.) God could, had He pleased, have been incarnate in a man of iron nerves, the Stoic sort who lets no sigh escape Him. Of His great humility He chose to be incarnate in a man of delicate sensibilities who wept at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane. Otherwise we should have missed the great lesson that it is by his will alone that a man is good or bad, and that feelings are not, in themselves, of any importance. We should also have missed the all important help of knowing that He has faced all that the weakest of us face, has shared not only the strength of our nature but every weakness of it except sin. If He had been incarnate in a man of immense natural courage, that would have been for many of us almost the same as His not being incarnate at all.
(4.) The prayer recorded in Matthew is much too short to be long enough for the disciples to go to sleep! They record the bit they heard before they fell asleep.
(5.) It is probable that all the gospels are based on acts and sayings which the disciples deliberately learned by heart: a much surer method even now than transmission by writing: still more so among people whose memories were uninfected by too many books and whose books were only manuscripts. But this is guess work. With all good wishes….
Keep clear of psychiatrists unless you know that they are also Christians. Otherwise they start with the assumption that your religion is an illusion and try to ‘cure’ it: and this assumption they make not as professional psychologists but as amateur philosophers. Often they have never given the question any serious thought.
TO BEDE GRIFFITHS, who had informed Lewis that he had just been appointed prior (second in command) of his monastery: On the danger of trying to anticipate future difficulties and of living in the future.
15 APRIL 1947
I offer you my congratulations on your new office: my prayers you know you already have. There will certainly, as you anticipate, be a cross somewhere in it, but one mustn’t assume crosses any more than consolations. You remember in the Imitation [of Christ], ‘The devil does not mind in the least whether he snares us by true or false pictures of the future.’ In my experience the cross seldom comes where it is anticipated.
TO PHYLLIS ELINOR SANDEMAN, who had written Lewis of her attachment to the home that had been in her family for six hundred years: On the possessiveness of the natural loves.
31 JUNE 1947
I think that about Houses the answer is this. Nothing rises again which has not died. The natural and possessive love for a house if it has been crucified, if it has become disinterested, if it has submitted to sacrifice, will rise again: i.e., the love for a house you were willing to give up will rise again. The wilful, grasping love will not—or only rise as a horror.
About the house itself, if the love rises, then all that is necessary to bless it will, I believe, be there. It may not be very like what you would now call ‘a house’: but you’ll see then that it was what you really meant by the house.
But the whole point is that you can keep forever only what you give up: beginning with the thing it is hardest to give up—one’s self. What you grab you lose: what you offer freely and patiently to God or your neighbour, you will have. (Your heavenly library will contain only the books you have given or lent! And the dirty thumb marks on the latter will have turned into beautiful marginal decorations—I’m joking of course, but to illustrate a serious principle).
Loving dogs more than children is a misfortune not a sin. Acting on that superior love for dogs—i.e., sacrificing the interests of the humans in your household to the animals—is a sin. I think myself that animals which have acquired a personality from living with us will probably be restored: but I can only repeat what I said on this point in The Problem of Pain (chapter on Animal Pain).
Remember, all this is only my guess. I’m not inspired, very far from it. All good wishes.
TO ARTHUR GREEVES, who had taken issue with “Miracles of the New Creation,” Miracles, Chapter 16, especially the last three paragraphs: On the physical reality of our resurrected bodies; on God’s use of the physical in the sacraments; and on how God is no way limited by the sacraments.
19 AUGUST 1947
I agree that we don’t know what a spiritual body is. But I don’t like contrasting it with (your words) ‘an actual, physical body’. This suggests that the spiritual body would be the opposite of ‘actual’—i.e., some kind of vision or imagination. And I do think most people imagine it as something that looks like the present body and isn’t really there. Our Lord’s eating the boiled fish seems to put the boots on that idea, don’t you think? I suspect the distinction is the other way round—that it is something compared with which our present bodies are half real and phantasmal.
When I say that certain graces are ‘offered’ us only through certain physical acts I mean that is the ordinary public offer certified by scripture and supported by unbroken Christian experience. I don’t of course (heaven forbid!) mean to limit what God may please to do in secret and special ways. In fact ‘offer’ is the operative word. No doubt He gives more than He offers: but the offer was as I describe.
TO FRANCIS USHERWOOD: On the relationship between God’s sovereignty and our free will; and on the meaning of luck.
9 SEPTEMBER 1947
No, I am sure God has not forced B to give A the job. God’s action would consist, I believe, in arranging all the circumstances so that A came at the right moment et cetera—i.e., in presenting B with the situation, on which then his free will worked. Ordinary people regard life as a mixture of ‘ luck’ and free will. It is the part usually called ‘ luck’ by which, on my view, God answers prayers.
TO RHONA BODLE, a New Zealander who came to live in England from 1947 to 1952 to learn how to educate deaf children and who, having read his three books of BBC radio talks, had written Lewis about her doubts about the divinity of Christ: On trying too hard to believe and to feel; on trusting God and working with the light one has and obeying God first and foremost; on the various kinds of conversion; and on the Christian life as rowing a boat (face toward the Helmsman, back toward the future, body dedicated to rowing). This is the first of fourteen letters from Lewis to Bodle in this collection.
31 DECEMBER 1947
I think it possible that what is keeping you from belief in Christ’s Divinity is your apparently strong desire to believe. If you don’t think it true why do you want to believe it? If you do think it true, then you believe it already. So I would recommend less anxiety about the whole question. You believe in God and trust Him. Well, you can trust Him about this. If you go on steadily praying and attempting to obey the best light He had given you, can you not rely on Him to guide you into any further truth He wishes you to know? Or even if He leaves you all your life in doubt, can’t you believe that He sees that to be the best state for you?
I don’t mean by this that you should cease to study and make enquiries: but that you should make them not with frantic desire but with cheerful curiosity and a humble readiness to accept whatever conclusions God may lead you to. (But always, all depends on the steady attempt to obey God all the time. ‘He who does the will of the Father shall know of the doctrine.’)
As for books, the very best popular defence of the full Christian position I know is G. K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man. Mascall’s The God-Man might also help.
It is only fair to tell you that my impression is that you are in fact very much nearer to belief in Christ than you suppose: and that if you really face the opposite view tranquilly (and why be afraid of it unless you already know in your bones that the Christian view is true) you will find you don’t really believe it—i.e., don’t really believe that all you have got out of the books you mention is based on an illusion—which, if an illusion at all, must be a most blasphemous and horrible one. Conversions happen in all sorts of different ways: some sharp and catastrophic (like St. Paul, St. Augustine, or Bunyan) some very gradual and intellectual (like my own). No good predicting how God will deal with one: He has His own way with each of us. So don’t worry. Continue all your efforts. You are being steered by Another: you’ve only got to row—and therefore the future journey is behind your back.
I’m pretty sure where you’ll land, myself, and you will then wonder how you ever doubted it. But you needn’t keep looking over your shoulder too often. Keep your eye on the Helmsman, keep your conscience bright and your brain clear and believe that you are in good hands. (No one can make himself believe anything and the effort does harm. Nor make himself feel anything, and that effort also does harm. What is under our own control is action and intellectual inquiry. Stick to that.) All good wishes.