C S Lewis Summer Institute (as delivered)
July 2003
Time and Eternity
1 John 16: 25 - 33; 1 Cor. 13: 1-13; Psalm 78: 1-8
I have to confess it was not until I began to prepare this sermon that I realised how much C S Lewis has been my companion and for so long. Unlike many, my introduction was not the Narnia chronicles but rather 'The Abolition of Man'. It became my sword. Having grown up in the Swinging Sixties I began teaching in the Subjective Seventies. Armed with the insights of 'The Abolition of Man' I engaged in battle with some of the best and brightest minds in the School's Oxbridge set who were on the verge of declaring that all truth was subjective and all morality relative. (Definition of Relative morality : if 2 wrongs don't make a right try 3!) Such notions were anathema to Lewis who exposed and confounded their argument in 'The Abolition of Man'.
But my starting-point for this sermon to launch your conference on 'Time and Eternity: the Cosmic Odyssey' may strike you as strange. I want you to begin with evil.
Of course, Lewis came to this subject head-on in his Screwtape Letters. Walter Hooper suggests that the inspiration for the book was none other than Adolf Hitler. Lewis had listened to Hitler speaking over the radio 'I don't know if I'm weaker than other people,' he said 'but it is a positive revelation to me that while the speech lasts it is impossible not to waver just a little'. It was the sheer plausibility of evil that shook Lewis. 'Statements which I knew to be untrue all but convince me, at any rate for the moment, if only the man says them unflinchingly.'
There are two reasons for asking you to think about evil at the outset of your C S Lewis conference on 'Time and Eternity'. Firstly, when questioned whether he believed in the Devil, Lewis defined him by reference to eternity.
'Now if by 'The Devil' you mean a power opposite to God and, like God, self-existent from all eternity (my underline), the answer is certainly 'No'.
According to Lewis God could have 'no opposite'. He believed in devils as angelic enemies of God, and in Satan, as 'the leader or dictator of devils' whom he saw as 'the opposite not of God but of (the Archangel) Michael'. For Lewis, the Devil was definitely not eternal. Real but not everlasting. This accords with the New Testament view of evil and the Devil as an influence of power whose days are definitely numbered. In short, evil for all its terror is within time but not of eternity.
The second reason for asking you to begin your conference by thinking about evil is that there is a danger in every retrospective to recreate the world of the artist being celebrated and live and move and have our being solely within their world.
This will not do for C S Lewis! He was an apologist who engaged with the age. If we are to follow his good example so ought we.
Our world (or rather, God's world) experienced a seismic shift on September 11 th 2001. I find it interesting and significant (yet I am not sure of what it signifies) that this event of tragedy should be described by a date in time as 'September 11 th ' or 911' it has no other name except as a date in time. Maybe - the significance of naming such an evil act by a date in time underlines Lewis' point that evil is in time and temporal and not eternal. Commentators have invariably described the actions and the perpetrators as evil. I too have used this language of evil. Yet when you listen to and read the views of the assassins' sympathisers you will know that they too use words like 'evil' to denounce the politics, the economics and the military strategies of the West.
In a conciliatory pamphlet published by the UK Islamic Mission 'Islam and Terrorism' there's a story from St Augustine. A pirate is brought before the Emperor Alexander the Great. When Alexander berates the pirate for molesting the people the pirate replies 'And how dare you molest the entire world? I am called a thief because I do it with a little ship only. You do it with a great army and you are called an Emperor!' The pamphlet concludes 'Under this scenario, powerless people doing trivial acts are the major terrorists of the world whilst major powers perpetrating terrorism in many parts of the world are the civilised barbarians'
Professor Oliver O'Donovan of this University in his book on political theology 'The Desire of the Nations' also uses this story and deploys it to argue the important truth that morality and political action are indivisible.
My point is this, it is disingenuous of political and religious leaders since 911 to travel the world and proclaim that Islam is a religion of peace in the hope that if we say it often enough and loud enough that will calm an increasingly turbulent world. The truth is, as always, more uncomfortable. Islam, Judaism and Christianity can each be interpreted by their adherents to justify the use of force against that which they perceive to be evil. The challenge that arises out of the rubble of ground zero is how do Christains, Jews and Muslims who all believe in a just and merciful God build a global society of justice and mercy.
Together we need to address some fundamental questions: What is evil? What is good? What is a just and merciful world to look like? What actions are morally permissible to advance a cause or block its advance? These are the debates which need to be had across the faith communities of the world for the sake of the future of the earth.
Yet when we try to confront the reality of evil in today's post-modern world we are left floundering, lost for words like a tourist in a foreign country bereft of his phrase-book. Moral categories have become meaningless in a culture of relativism and where words are hyped out of their meaning.
But any colloquium on C S Lewis that takes seriously 'Time and Eternity' will not be able to avoid the reality of evil that is within time but not of Eternity. Any conference with an allusion to Odyssey will know that all adventures are about the conflict between good and evil. That was the stuff of his stories! 911 has put Evil back on the agenda.
We need language and stories that help us; language with which to debate the very future of the planet earth and a language that transcends yet communicates with every culture; we need stories that sustain and inspire us along the way, on the journey through time and within eternity. That is why C S Lewis's legacy is still relevant. He was both philosopher and story teller. As indeed was Jesus.
And yet for Jesus there was always an air of provisionality or rather temporality about stories. He used them as both a Rabbi and a Prophet. On the one hand he, like a Rabbi, would cajole people into surrendering to the rule of God with his stories of the Kingdom. On the other hand he, like a prophet, would use the story to confound people in their wilful rebellion. Yet he told them of 'the hour' that was coming 'when I will no longer speak to you in figures but will tell you plainly of the father'. He seemed to suggest that in eternity we would no longer need the mediation of stories. This seems to be echoed by Paul when in that famous passage he looked forward to the face to face encounter with God. But for now, he conceded, 'we see through a glass darkly'. In the original text there is no 'darkly'. What Paul says is that for now we see in stories. In enigmas. The Greek word is Ainigma. Stories mediate truth now. Then, face to face with God we will know him fully, even as 'we have been fully known'.
In eternity then it seems that we will have no need of enigmatic stories. Why? For two reasons. Firstly, the encounter with God, with Truth, will be immediate, without need of mediation, without the need for story, symbol and sacrament. Secondly, because evil is temporal and not eternal there will in eternity be no need for stories that tell of the struggle between good and evil. When Heaven has finally come down to earth and all grief and tears have been wiped away forever, the struggle will be over and all that is not good will have been banished.
In the end, evil and the stories of the struggle between good and evil are both temporal and temporary.
The truth - as C S Lewis observed - is evil, for all its terror, is not everlasting. Only God is.