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A Nerd and a Friday Night’s Existential Crisis
Scan of photograph by Arthur Strong, 1947
This original version of this post was aired in 2012 at the blog ThinkingThroughChristianity.com, which sadly is no more.
Some years ago I was at Dallas Baptist University taking a class with Dr. William E. Bell. He’s second from the left at the picture here. I learned about the penal substitutionary atonement, and happened to learn that, at least according to Dr. Bell, C. S. Lewis denied the doctrine.
I considered Lewis to be the great Christian thinker that he is. I grew up on Lewis: originally the Narnia books and movies (the old BBC ones, with the bad special effects and the awesome portrayals of the White Witch and Puddleglum), then Screwtape Letters in middle school and Mere Christianity in high school. My family has been reading Lewis for several generations.
My reverence for Dr. Bell was no less. I saw him as the bulwark of orthodoxy and serious biblical teaching that he was.
So my college hero was telling me that my childhood hero was a heretic whose salvation was uncertain as a result of his bad doctrine. This was a big deal. We’re talking about a genuine existential crisis here (though I admit I’ve had worse crises in my time).
So, of course, I went to the library and wrote a paper. What else is a little nerd with an existential crisis supposed to do on a Friday night?
I still have the paper. It’s about 2,500 words. (It’s very embarrassing that the Introduction does not clearly state the thesis.) In it, I argued for three points.
- In Mere Christianity Lewis doesn’t deny the penal substitutionary atonement. He just admits that the modern mind has trouble understanding the idea, and then suggests an understanding of the atonement that makes sense to the modern mind: the theory that Jesus paid our debts on the cross. (Looking at the relevant passage later, I have to admit I may have misread it; I think he really does reject the penal substitutionary atonement there; it just wasn’t his main point.)
- The theory that Jesus paid our debts on the cross is an orthodox theory. Here I cited a passage in the New Testament. (Interestingly, it wasn’t 1 Timothy 2:5-6, but 1 John 1:9 — it turns out the Greek word for “forgive” there can refer to forgiving a debt, or at least that’s what the Greek lexicon I cited said.) I also alluded to the old hymn that says of Jesus, “He paid a debt he did not owe / I owed a debt I could not pay / I needed someone to wash my sins away.”
- In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lewis illustrates the penal substitutionary view of the atonement in Aslan’s death in place of Edmond.
I shared my paper with Dr. Bell, who read it more than once. He thought it was a valiant effort to defend Lewis, but he wasn’t convinced.
Now up to this point I still thought Lewis did not reject the penal substitutionary atonement, but Bell shared with me a story that finally convinced me: that Lewis had personally told J. I. Packer that he did not accept the penal substitutionary atonement. Packer had personally passed this information on to Bell, who now passed it on to me. I now pass it on to you. (You’re welcome.)
The third point from my paper is puzzling in light of this, but I think it may yet be correct. Perhaps in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Lewis wrote a better book than even he intended, and managed to illustrate an extra view of the atonement. (He was really going for the Christus Victor view, and did it well.)
A few quick observations in favor of Lewis would be in order.
First, Lewis is still the man. This may suggest a poor memory on my part (or a need to do some careful rereading!), but I can only think of about three sentences in all of the fifteen or so books I’ve read by Lewis with which I disagree. It is largely because of the occasional problem like this (and because he’s often a much better philosopher than a biblical theologian) that I recommend Christians read N. T. Wright and John Stott alongside Lewis. But Lewis is irreplaceable. A solid grounding in ten or twenty of his little books will do any Christian good, and, I might add, will probably do more good than thirty or forty large books in philosophy and theology.
Second, Todd Kappelman, another of my favorite undergrad teachers, wrote this on the need to read Lewis. I agree.
Third, this sort of allegation that C. S. Lewis is a heretic and the author of “demonic fantasies” is no doubt well-intentioned; but it is incorrect, impolite, unhelpful, poorly researched, and hardly worth the time it took to write this sentence.
Published in Religion and Philosophy
People who throw out allegations like this seem to be unable to design attractive web pages.
That reminds me: DemonBuster.com!
If I had to guess, I would say that this guy is some flavor of fundamentalist Baptist. His attitude of certainty about all he believes is very typical of the majority of whom that I have been exposed to throughout my life. A “local” example is an Arizona lawyer who posts frequently here on Ricochet.
Okay, I’m all confused.
You are so right; it’s almost as if they don’t wish people to read what they are saying.
I might be a flavor of fundamentalist Baptist myself!
But . . . I’d need a definition first. The F-word means lots of things.
Jesus paid our debts. In the drama of crucifixion-burial-resurrection he defeated Satan and rescued creation from him.
Off the top of my head, all I got is that if the Bible uses more than one simple idea of the Atonement then I’d like to know more myself.
The confusion is introduced by the “penal” and “substitutionary” adjectives. Would C. S. hit us with different ones? If so, what are they?
Different adjectives?
Well, here’s the Lewis quote:
This isn’t answering your question, is it?
Well, not exactly, but it seems that the “substitutionary” is superfluous. Yeah, it’s substitutionary. Maybe one of them is penal and the other one liable; a debt is owed, atonement is required.
I fall back on my favorite way of thinking about it:
Yeah, this.
I am enjoying the discussion here, and I recommend the OP for promotion to the Main Feed.
I was raised Southern Baptist and self-identified as such up until six years ago. Now I am a professed Anglican (ACNA, High Church, “smells-and-bells,” etc.); this came about in no small degree to my observation that, if it was good enough for C.S. Lewis, it was good enough for me.
(Of course, there’s a boat-load more to it than that; my Roman Catholic friends like to say that I’m “one good pope away from converting.” Perhaps: but not today…)
Hmm.
Not today.
It was a couple months ago, actually. Maybe I oughtta leave it at that!
Aside from your brilliant expositions, your ability to make philosophy understandable, and your deference toward anyone else’s beliefs (as much as you may disagree), it is your sense of humor that enlivens every post. Those last lines . . . I can hear the old 1960’s Batman series in my memory, “Wham!” “Bam!” “Pow!” :)
Well, maybe one thing comes to mind.
Without a penal, or at least some kind of a legal, substitutionary Atonement, how can we say that sin is fully forgiven while we have not yet fully stopped being sinners?
Thank you. So kind.
I like that. Nice.
?
Interesting. I suspect that you mean me.
I’m actually not certain about all that I believe about the Christian faith. I have quite a bit of uncertainty about end times issues, for example.
I am certain about the things that I find to be clearly taught by Scripture. There’s quite a lot in this category, and quite a large number of professed Christians who, in my view, simply ignore the obvious teachings of Scripture.
Lewis certainly appears to be one of these, on the issue of penal substitutionary atonement. Romans 3:25 and 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 seem very clear on this point, among others.
This is very disturbing on the part of Lewis, and the quote in Comment #9 above is troubling. Looking back, I seem to recall Lewis doing this sort of thing quite often, though I haven’t found him very helpful in recent years. He seems to hold to his own personal views, and dismiss — in this instance as “very silly” — the agonizing death of Jesus Christ Himself. Another example that comes to mind, from memory, is his casual dismissal of witchcraft as impossible. As if there are no demons and no Satan, despite Jesus plainly telling us that there are.
I’ve been increasingly convinced, in recent years, that when my view is inconsistent with Scripture, the problem is me, not God. I don’t get to judge God by my standards, as Lewis was doing in the quote above. I have to submit myself to God’s view of things.
It is very ironic to see Lewis making this error, in light of his famous essay God in the Dock.
Given your posts, I seriously doubt you are the flavor I’m talking about.
Most of people that I have known, who self-identify as “fundamentalist Baptists” have been: not particularly well-educated (Biblically or secularly), hypocritical, judgmental, firmly convinced of their complete and total rightness, sanctimonious, smug, and generally Pharisaic.
Maybe I have just been unlucky. Maybe there are scads of F-Baptists who are delightful people.
https://ricochet.com/1484104/why-not-sola-scriptura/
But that’s not why they call themselves fundamentalists, is it?
Right on.
Jolly good.
Bell agrees.
I know nothing of this. But I do know Lewis knows demons exists. Screwtape Letters.
Amen.
No idea why they call themselves fundamentalists. I’m just taking them at their word that they know what they are.
“By their fruits ye shall know them” and most fundamentalist’s fruit is not too appetizing.
Anyway, your post was interesting and I myself am rather a Lewis fan. My comments were off on a tangent, but it doesn’t seem to have derailed the discussion, so there’s that. Nevertheless, I apologize.
Probably because they believe in certain fundamentals that they think are important.
Not a problem.
Isn’t a fundamentalist one who accepts the literal truth of the holy writ, in this case the Bible?
That’s one definition. Now if we can clarify what “literal” means, maybe we can say whether I’m a fundamentalist. Only ever heard of one person who thought the rivers in the Holy Land had milk and honey instead of water.
Well, there’d be a spectrum of adherence, that we could still identify as fundamental. The thing about a really good religion is that one may take it as literally as one chooses and still rely on a positive result.
Spectrum of adherence–to Scripture?
No.
Spectrum of the tendency to interpret it literally more often?
Yes.
I’m a Lutheran, which has been described as “my Catholic friends think I’m a Baptist and my Baptist friends think I’m a Catholic.”