ARTICLES
June 2001 ARTICLES
Contents © 2001
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
Not A Fan Club
Foundation Carries on C.S. Lewis' Legacy
By Christopher Zehnder
Revisiting old haunts can be sweet. This is true of physical places, but it is also true of books that are one's old, but long unvisited, friends. So have been, for me, the works of C. S. Lewis. In my sixteenth through eighteenth years, when I hovered between evangelicalism and Lutheranism, Lewis' books were pleasant companions and guides. They were friends that accompanied me into the Catholic Church. The Chronicles of Narnia, Pilgrim's Regress, Mere Christianity, Till We Have Faces, and others showed me that Christianity was a world of wonder and an unexplored mystery.
Since then, though I've read the Chronicles of Narnia to my children at least twice, and have replumbed the depths of Till We Have Faces, I have mostly neglected Lewis. When I learned I was to interview Stan Mattson, president of the C. S. Lewis Foundation, in Redlands, I decided to brush up, and I re-read the Great Divorce. Both the book and my conversation with Mattson reawakened slumbering memories of the Christian ethos by which I came to the Faith. That ethos was of the academy, of the Christian scholar engaged in an intellectual struggle with the false philosophies of our world.
"Our primary concern," Stan Mattson told me, "is to restore a vital Christian presence in the mainstream of, primarily, university life. Our colleges and universities are the key institutions that impact the cultural elites." Mattson, who is an American historian and formerly the director of corporate and foundation relations for the University of Redlands, said he found that the climate of college and university campuses today "is one that regards Christian thought and perspectives as alien to the university world. It's something you do in church; it's something student groups engage in as an extra-curricular activity. So, while on campus you have very active and dynamic proponents of radical feminism, or of gay and lesbian issues, or of multi-culturalism -- of every conceivable enthusiasm -- the remarkable phenomenon is this profound and almost deafening silence on the part of thinking Christians to engage the issues of the day from Christian perspectives. We are afraid of the word, 'Christian'; we're afraid of the label; we're very embarrassed."
Mattson said his foundation celebrates the "life and legacy" of C. S. Lewis, but is not a fan club. The foundation's "sense of mission and purpose," he said, is "inspired by Lewis' legacy, which we want to carry forward into our own time. C. S. Lewis invested all of his life as a scholar, first at Oxford, then at Cambridge -- he was a genuine representative of the academy." Lewis, said Mattson, was not merely a Christian apologist, but "published extensively in his own field of English literary history and criticism, and was highly regarded in that academic field."
The foundation, said Mattson, seeks to model, the broadness of Lewis' soul. "Lewis was not simply a left-brain person, but a right-brain person," said Mattson. "We're very concerned about modeling the fullness of Christ, not simply in terms of argumentation in theology, but in terms of addressing the whole realm of the imagination. That is particularly relevant for our time, and that's in part because our era's very proper (we perceive) rejection of the Enlightenment dogma that reason is everything; that if we all build universities and train people in logic, we'll establish a utopia. For Lewis, reason is exceedingly important; it is a gift that is given of God; it is part of the logos of God. But reality is apprehended in ways that transcend mere reason. There are the mysteries of God that will not be penetrated by reason, that we need to approach and experience existentially in ways that are quite removed from [reason.] The arts play a very important role in that. There are not too many who are gifted in apologetics, who, in their very practice, as Lewis did in Till we Have Faces and in the Chonicles of Narnia, really model a Christian who is serious cognitively, professionally and theologically, but also active imaginatively."
Lewis, too, said Mattson, "had a wonderful capacity for humor, which we think is very important in our approach to the university. While he did not water things down, he asserted the importance of not capitulating to a kind of mobocracy and populism by talking down to people, by diluting the core concept that one was attempting to communicate. Still, he held the view that if it is worth saying, it should be said in a way that anybody can understand -- an enormous saving grace for a scholar. He comes smack against the kind of arrogance and elitism that those of us who have come through the academy are so prone to by nature. He said that his Irish nurse taught him early that one can not equate goodness and virtue with learning, 'for she was very unlearned, but she was so profoundly good.' He for a lifetime understood that, and it comes out in his works."
In its fifteenth year, the C. S. Lewis Foundation has tried to carry on Lewis' legacy in a number of practical ways. The foundation's original founding purpose, said Mattson, was to found a C. S. Lewis institute or college on, or adjacent to, a major, secular, college or university. "We are looking to establish a college in the tradition of St. John's in Annapolis, Maryland, or Thomas Aquinas in Santa Paula, California. Ours would be a 'mere Christian' college of the Great Books, unlike Thomas Aquinas College, which is more thomistic, or St. John's, which is much more in Athens than in Jerusalem. Ours would include a rich array of Christians of various communions celebrating the unity in Christ. It would be modeled on Oxford College and be faculty-governed. It would have a school of visual and performing arts associated with it, expressive of our concern that we simply not be right-brain verbalizers, but that we really understand the role of poets and of artists in our midst. St. John's [and Thomas Aquinas] are marvelous models in the sense that, in these colleges, faculty are co-learners with students. They really decry the cult of the expert, but desire that students would see an adult really struggle with the concepts along with them, and discover that, at any age, we are all learners."
Mattson said the original list of 35 institutions the foundation has looked at as possible sites for the C. S. Lewis Institute has decreased to four: Duke University of North Carolina, Princeton, Amherst, and Claremont. "We've had very good discussions with Claremont about becoming their seventh college," said Mattson.
To lay the groundwork for a C. S. Lewis institute, the foundation, said Mattson, began holding faculty forums, which help form networks of Christian faculty and administrators in the world of higher education. The foundation also sponsors the C. S. Lewis Summer Institute at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, where Lewis taught. The institutes, said Mattson, "are open to professors, lawyers, Lewis enthusiasts, attorneys, writers and others. We have workshops in dance, theatre, creative writing, story telling, physics, business and management, and medical ethics." Mattson said the foundation commissions major plays and dances for the summer institutes. The fifth summer institute, under the theme, "Time and Eternity, the Cosmic Odyssey," is tentatively scheduled for July 2002.
One fruit of the summer institutes has been the purchase of C. S. Lewis' home, the Kilns, which the foundation has undertaken to restore to look as it did when Lewis lived there in the 40s. The Kilns, said Mattson, "will be the C. S. Lewis Study Center at Oxford. It will be used as it was when Lewis was alive -- to accommodate visiting Christian faculty." This summer, the foundation will hold a faculty forum at the Kilns entitled "Branches to Heaven; the Geniuses of C. S. Lewis."
The C. S. Lewis Foundation, too, works among churches and parishes. "We have a good number of reading groups" in parishes, said Mattson, and their number is growing. Mattson himself visits parishes -- mostly mainline Protestant churches -- and is available for church adult groups. The foundation also hosts smaller meetings of faculty. "I've just come back now from North Carolina where a group put together a beautiful Inklings weekend at the Cove, which is Billy Graham training center in the Smokey Mountains," said Mattson. "The people attending were from a variety of communions, and it was a wonderful weekend of faculty talking about various aspects of Lewis' work. We had songwriters, there, and an evening of reading short stories and essays and poems that people had written."
If the foundation encourages "right-brain" as well as "left-brain" activities, I asked Mattson, does it promote the revival of cultural practices rooted in the rich soil of Christian civilization -- things like folk and ball-room dancing, folk music, and festivals? "We haven't as yet, except during the Summer Institute," said Mattson, "though I think it is important to recover those kinds of things. They're not intellectual, but they minister very deeply. At the Summer Institute we have three very outstanding worship services, and we do have a black-tie dinner dance. We have an English country dance in a large mediaeval barn, 300 people a night, for two nights. The barn is packed, because we feel it is important for people to touch each other physically, to celebrate. This is not just sober talk; it is not just worship in the narrowly defined sense; it's also celebration that we do as a corporate community. In Boston, you always have the spring rite of a Catholic bishop going out and blessing the fleet. What a wonderful thing! We really need something like that for Christian faculty. We could all come together at the beginning of a fall semester and have kind of an affirmation of the vocation of teaching as we do of fishing."
One important aspect of Lewis' legacy for the foundation is that his appeal crosses the lines of Christian communions. He had a "deep commitment to the essential unity of the Body of Christ," said Mattson. "He was the 'morning star' of the reunion." Lewis' concept of 'mere Christianity' -- that there are core doctrines which all true Christians believe and which define them as Christians. -- is at the center of the C. S. Foundation. Though he goes on retreat at St. Andrew's Abbey in Valyermo, Mattson is not Catholic; he calls himself, simply, a "mere Christian." Catholics, though, form part of the membership of the foundation, and it was at St. Andrew's that Mattson and others drew up a statement of faith following the retreat that inaugurated the foundation.
The statement of faith, according to Mattson, is a "mere Christian" profession of faith, one which "Protestants and Catholics could embrace fully and in an unqualified way." "We accept," it begins, "the "Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the written Word of God. We believe in the divine inspiration, entire trustworthiness and final authority of the Bible in all matters of faith and practice." Following the clause, "We celebrate," the statement appends the doctrines of the Trinity; the incarnation of Jesus Christ, "fully God, fully man;" "the goodness and beauty of the world, created and sustained by the Word of God's power;" "salvation by grace received through faith in Jesus Christ," who alone redeems us; "the essential unity of all believers, who together form one Church, diverse in form and expression, of which Christ is the Head;" the "continuing ministry" of the Holy Spirit among "God's people;" and the "ultimate deliverance of the children of God and of all nature from the destructive consequences of the Fall." The statement of faith closes with the Apostles and Nicene Creeds.
This statement of faith raises an important question, especially for Catholics, who believe that the Church of Christ subsists only in the Catholic Church -- in confessing a "mere Christian" faith, do we not minimize the very real differences between Christians, and, especially, between Catholics and Protestants? Mattson said he does not deny the importance of the doctrinal divisions between Christians, but he thinks we all share a fundamental unity. There is a "mere Christianity" in the sense, he said, "that when we enter into communion with each other, we know that we are talking about the Messiah, Jesus Christ, who is a person in history, conceived of a virgin; who came to be our redeemer, who died, was crucified and buried, and rose again; and who is the lord of history. So, whether I am in West Africa, or whether I am with my Greek Orthodox brothers and sisters, or whether I am at Weston Priory, or whether we're in Oxford celebrating together, we are all together, celebrating, with great joy and in agreement, that fact. If on other issues we differ, those other issues are material and serious; but, as Lewis rightly said, we're all living in separate rooms, and we treasure our particular traditions and truths as we perceive them; but on those core, basic watershed realities there's a basis for enormous heartfelt collaboration. And we've found that to be the case."
I asked Mattson whether he had met those who thought Lewis "out of touch" with modern man and his problems. I recalled that C. S. Lewis had referred to himself as an example of "Old Western Man" -- a "dinosaur" who held fast to the Western European cultural and moral tradition in an age that had rejected it. I recalled passages from his works where he argued against women's ordination and against the general eradication of the distinction between the sexes that has been the hallmark of feminism. I recalled one passage from Lewis' fantasy/science-fiction work, That Hideous Strength, where a newly-reawakened Merlin said of the main character, Jane Studdock, and her husband: "Of their own will they are barren: I did not know till now that the usages of Sulva were so common among you. It would be great charity. if you have order that her head should be cut from her shoulders; for it is a weariness to look at her." Though not an advocate of murder, Lewis believed it wrong to interfere artificially with the conception of children.
Mattson said he had not encountered anyone who thought Lewis "out of touch." "When I lecture university audiences, which are typically very mixed," he said, "people feel that he is enormously in touch, that his Abolition of Man [for instance] is profoundly prophetic -- that he was more in touch with modernity than anyone could possibly imagine in the 40s and 50s. Every now and then I will run into a person who will say Lewis was a male chauvinist, and they say it with some considerable conviction. I say, 'that' s not a surprise to hear you say that, I've heard that before. But I find that almost bizarre. How could someone write the Chronicles of Narnia and have Lucy as almost the one constant source of discernment, wisdom and sensitivity; and have two girls and two boys -- not just two boys -- out there becoming kings and queens; how could he write Till We Have Faces, and have a strong female queen, like Oruel, who really takes on God, for Pete's sake? She's not a fool, and he's not using her to make her some kind of a ploy; he's using her right out of her guts?'"
In the end, said Mattson, Lewis was, and is, profoundly relevant, if for no other reason than that he could, and can still, engage people of very different viewpoints. "He was a pilgrim; he was on journey, and he was appreciative of your company on that journey," said Mattson. "He believed there was a lot he needed to learn, and therefore, he could listen as well as speak. When he does speak, he's not talking down, he's not preaching, he's not lecturing. His approach affords people the space and freedom to reflect on what he is saying without feeling they're being pushed with such fervor. It reminds one of Our Lord's approach with parables."
For more information, contact the C.S. Lewis Foundation at C.S. Lewis Foundation P.O. Box 8008, Redlands, CA 92375; (909) 793-0949; http://www.cslewis.org/