A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

C. S. Lewis on the Bible

A couple more nuggets from Lewis’s letters:

To “Mrs Ashton”, November 8, 1952:

It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers, will bring us to Him. When it becomes really necessary (i.e. for our spiritual life, not for controversy or curiosity) to know whether a particular passage is rightly translated or is myth (but of course myth specially chosen by God from among countless myths to carry a spiritual truth) or history, we shall no doubt be guided to the right answer. But we must not use the Bible (our fathers too often did) as a sort of Encyclopedia out of which texts (isolated from their context and not read with attention to the whole nature and purport of the books in which they occur) can be taken for use as weapons.

To Clyde S. Kilby, May 7, 1959:

To me the curious thing is that neither in own Bible-reading nor in my religious life as a whole does the question [of the inspiration of the Bible] in fact ever assume that importance which it always gets in theological controversy. The difference between reading the story of Ruth and that of Antigone — both first class as literature — is to me unmistakable and even overwhelming. But the question “Is Ruth historical?” (I’ve no reason to suppose it is not) doesn’t really seem to arise till afterwards. It can still act on me as the Word of God if it weren’t, so far as I can see. All Holy Scripture is written for our learning. But learning of what? I should have thought the value of some things (e.g. The Resurrection) depended on whether they really happened, but the value of others (e.g. the fate of Lot’s wife) hardly at all. And the ones whose historicity matters are, as God’s will, those where it is plain…

…That the over-all operation of Scripture is to convey God’s Word to the reader (he also needs his inspiration) who reads it in the right spirit, I fully believe. That it also gives true answers to all the questions (often religiously irrelevant) which he might ask, I don’t. The very kind of truth we are often demanding was, in my opinion, not even envisaged by the ancients.

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6 responses to “C. S. Lewis on the Bible”

  1. gaius sempronius gracchus

    My current lunchtime reading is Richard Elliott Friedman’s “Who Wrote the Bible?”, an introductory discussion of the documentary hypothesis, of which he is a leading exponent.

    It’s quite interesting.

    Every done any reading in this area, Lee?

    Reply
  2. Gaius Sempronius Gracchus

    Sorry, that should be “ever done.”

    Can’t type.

    Reply
  3. Lee

    I have a passing familiarity with the various theories about authorship, etc. but haven’t given it much serious study (apart from a class on the Bible as Literature that I took in college). The Friedman book looks good from the desc. at Amazon, tho.

    Reply
  4. Camassia

    I read the Friedman book a few years ago. It was pretty convincing on the documentary hypothesis (you can definitely hear the different “voices” when he breaks them out, especially P). It was a little more speculative on its explanations of why the differences between them exist — he took a kind of “it’s all really about politics” lens to it, as I recall.

    Reply
  5. Gaius Sempronius Gracchus

    Pretty much.

    It would be interesting to see discussion of how this hypothesis bears on various theories of biblical truth, proper interpretation, divine authorship, or divine inspiration.

    It appears that Christian fundamentalists (and perhaps Jews, as well) continue to defend the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch against the documentary hypothesis.

    I suppose part of the problem, for them, is that the text contains claims to its own authorship, and to God’s role in producing it. Impossible to give them up and maintain the doctrine of inerrancy, it appears.

    But it’s actually more complicated than that.

    Reply
  6. Lee

    My own view, fwiw, is that divine inspiration (though not inerrancy) is compatible with virtually any account of the authorship of the individual books (or parts of books). After all, everyone, no matter how strongly they hold to inerrancy, is committed to the view that some editing process took place: no one claims, I think, that the Bible fell out of the sky whole and complete in the King’s English. 😉

    So, inspiration (however we might understand it) extends to the editing, compilation, and reception of the various texts as well as to their original writing. Consequently, I’m not too worried about individual claims of authorship (though, naturally, in some cases there could be problems – if, say, all the letters of Paul were somehow found to be forgeries).

    Reply

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