Excerpt from A Severe Mercy (2 of 2)

To C. S. Lewis (II)

My fundamental dilemma is this: I can’t believe in Christ unless I have faith, but I can’t have faith unless I believe in Christ. This is ‘the leap.’ If to be a Christian is to have faith (and clearly it is), I can put it thus: I must accept Christ to become a Christian, but I must be a Christian to accept Him. I don’t have faith and I don’t as yet believe; but everyone seems to say: ‘You must have faith to believe.’ Where do I get it? Or will you tell me something different? Is there a proof? Can Reason carry one over the gulf. . . without faith?

Why does God expect so much of us? Why does he require this effort to believe? If He made it clear that He is—as clear as a sunrise or a rock or a baby’s cry—wouldn’t we be right joyous to choose Him and His Law? Why should the right exercise of our free will contain this fear of intellectual dishonesty?

I must write further on the subject of ‘wishing it were true’— although I do agree that I probably have wishes on both sides, and my wish does not help me to solve any problem. Your point that Hitler and Stalin (and I) would be horrified at discovering a Master from whom nothing could be withheld is very strong. Indeed, there is nothing in Christianity which is so repugnant to me as humility—the bent knee. If I knew beyond hope or despair that Christianity were true, my fight for ever after would have to be against the pride of ‘the spine may break but it never bends’. And yet, Sir, would not I (and even Stalin) accept the humbling of the Master to escape the horror of ceasing to be, of nothingness at death? Moreover, the knowledge that Jesus was in truth Lord would not be merely pleasant news gratifying some of our rare desires. It would mean overwhelmingly: (a) that Materialism was Error as well as ugliness; (b) that the several beastly futures predicted by the Marxists, the Freudians, and the Sociologist manipulators would not be real (even if they came about); (c) that one’s growth towards wisdom—soul-building—was not to be lost; and (d), above all, that the good and the beautiful would survive. And so I wish it were true and would accept any humbling, I think, for it to be true. The bad part of wishing it were true is that any impulse I feel towards belief is regarded with suspicion as stemming from the wish; the good part is that the wish leads on. And I shall go on; I must go on, as far as I can go.

~Sheldon Vanauken (from A Severe Mercy)

From C. S. Lewis (II)

The contradiction ‘we must have faith to believe and must believe to have faith’ belongs to the same class as those by which the Eleatic philosophers proved that all motion was impossible. And there are many others. You can’t swim unless you can support yourself in water & you can’t support yourself in water unless you can swim. Or again, in an act of volition (e.g. getting up in the morning) is the very beginning of the act itself voluntary or involuntary? If voluntary then you must have willed it, .\ you were willing already, .. it was not really the beginning. If involuntary, then the continuation of the act (being determined by the first moment) is involuntary too. But in spite of this we do swim, & we do get out of bed.

I do not think there is a demonstrative proof (like Euclid) of Christianity, nor of the existence of matter, nor of the good will & honesty of my best & oldest friends. I think all three are (except perhaps the second) far more probable than the alternatives. The case for Xtianity in general is well given by Chesterton; and I tried to do something in my Broadcast Talks. As to why God doesn’t make it demonstratively clear: are we sure that He is even interested in the kind of Theism which wd. be a compelled logical assent to a conclusive argument? Are we interested in it in personal matters? I demand from my friend a trust in my good faith which is certain without demonstrative proof. It wouldn’t be confidence at all if he waited for rigorous proof. Hang it all, the very fairy-tales embody the truth. Othello believed in Desdemona’s innocence when it was proved: but that was too late. Lear believed in Cordelia’s love when it was proved: but that was too late. ‘His praise is lost who stays till all commend.’ The magnanimity, the generosity wh. will trust on a reasonable probability, is required of us. But supposing one believed and was wrong after all? Why, then you wd. have paid the universe a compliment it doesn’t deserve. Your error wd. even so be more interesting & important than the reality. And yet how cd. that be? How cd. an idiotic universe have produced creatures whose mere dreams are so much stronger, better, subtler than itself?

Note that life after death, which still seems to you the essential thing, was itself a late revelation. God trained the Hebrews for centuries to believe in Him without promising them an after-life, and, blessings on Him, he trained me in the same way for about a year. It is like the disguised prince in the fairy tale who wins the heroine’s love before she knows he is anything more than a woodcutter. What wd. be a bribe if it came first had better come last.

It is quite clear from what you say that you have conscious wishes on both sides. And now, another point about wishes. A wish may lead to false beliefs, granted. But what does the existence of the wish suggest? At one time I was much impressed by Arnold’s line ‘Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread.’ But surely, tho’ it doesn’t prove that one particular man will get food, it does prove that there is such a thing as food! i.e. if we were a species that didn’t normally eat, weren’t designed to eat, wd. we feel hungry? You say the materialist universe is ‘ugly’. I wonder how you discovered that! If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it you don’t feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or wd. not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. (‘How time flies! Fancy John being grown-up & married! I can hardly believe it!’) In heaven’s name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal.

Total Humility is not in the Tao because the Tao (as such) says nothing about the Object to which it wd. be the right response: just as there is no law about railways in the acts of Q_. Elizabeth. But from the degree of respect wh. the Tao demands for ancestors, parents, elders, & teachers, it is quite clear what the Tao wd. prescribe towards an object such as God.

But I think you are already in the meshes of the net! The Holy Spirit is after you. I doubt if you’ll get away!

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

(from A Severe Mercy)