C.S. Lewis—On the Christ of a Religious Economy, 3.1

I. Creation and Sub-Creation

Brazier

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781621896395
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

C. S. Lewis--On the Christ of a Religious Economy I, Creation and Sub-Creation opens with Lewis on creation, the fall into original sin, and the human condition before God and how such an understanding permeated all his work, post-conversion. For Lewis, Christ, the second person of the Trinity, is the agent of creation and its redeemer. This leads into Lewis's representation through sub-creation: explaining salvation history and the purpose of the creation and the creature through story (The Chronicles of Narnia, The Space Trilogy, Screwtape, etc.), but also the question of multiple incarnations, and the encounters he pens between Aslan-Christ and creatures. What does this tell us about the human predicament and our state after the fall?This volume forms the first part of the third book in a series of studies on the theology of C. S. Lewis titled C. S. Lewis: Revelation and the Christ. The books are written for academics and students, but also, crucially, for those people, ordinary Christians, without a theology degree who enjoy and gain sustenance from reading Lewis's work.

Part One

The Fall, Original Sin, and An Existential Crisis

“A new species, never made by God,had sinned itself into existence.”

“It [the creature] had turned from Godand become its own idol,so that though it could still turn back to God,it could do so only by painful effort,and its inclination was self-ward.”

“The guilt is washed out not by timebut by repentance and the blood of Christ.”

Lewis, The Problem of Pain (1940).

1

Creation and The Fall I:C. S. Lewis—A Doctrine of Creation

SYNOPSIS:

A fundamental component of Lewis’s apologetics and philosophical theology is the fall, defined by original sin. These chapters explore what place it has in Lewis’s theology generally and his Christology specifically. The fall is intimately intertwined with creation; therefore, we start with a doctrine of creation. The Judeo-Christian account is unique: a speech-act model (Gen 1:3), God speaks and things happen, the created world is not divine, objects in the world are inanimate—stars are not “gods,” they are created objects—and creation creates, it “brings forth,” (Gen 1:24). At the heart of creation is Christ, the logos as creator and redeemer of creation. As Lewis notes, creation is on-going; its fulfillment is in the future. Also, creation is a triune act and event, it is Christ who creates (Gen 1–3; Ps 104; and John 1), as the Holy Spirit hovers over the waters (Gen 1:2) and the Father looks on and declares that creation is good (Gen 1:25).

The origins of the world we live in cannot be seen separately from humanity’s rebellion. As a systematic statement of axiomatic truth defined against contradiction and erroneous theories, Lewis’s writing on creation does implicitly form a doctrinal whole, and concurs with orthodox Christian theology. Lewis did not write or publish a doctrine of creation, as such; however, spread across his multitudinous works is a sound doctrine of creation, which can be read from his apologetics, his philosophical theology, his analogical narratives (Narnia, etc.), and from his letters. In so reading we can systematize what Lewis wrote on creation into eight categories: four basic axioms and four principles: first axiom, creation was created (it has not always existed), by God the creator; second axiom, creation is an actuality, is knowable and understandable; third axiom, creation has a particular character, is observable and definable. Following on from these three axioms are four theological principles: a) creation involves separation and distinctiveness, b) the origin of creation is not directly knowable, and myth is essential in attempting an explanation of origin, c) humanity is in many ways the pinnacle of creation, a creature characterized by uniqueness and rebellion, d) humanity is given the responsibility of sub-creation and the custodianship of creation. Finally, leading from the three axioms and four principles is a fourth axiom: there is a new creation that issues from the incarnation-cross-resurrection; this event changes everything and is a response to the fall of humanity into original sin. Understanding a doctrine of creation allows us then to explicate Lewis’s understanding of the fall.

1. Introduction

If a doctrine is a set of principles and beliefs taught by the church, and held against all contradiction, then a doctrine of creation is about the origin and conditions of the reality we occupy; it is also about the perception and truth of what we understand to be creation, and the extent to which we mere humans can understand the enormity of creation and how God creates and sustains all. There are certain fundamental axiomatic statements: God created the universe, the reality we live in; God created all that we sense and perceive, know and understand ex nihilo—out of nothing. Creation is good, God declared it good—not necessarily perfect, depending on what we mean by perfection, but good, purposeful, and suitable. Creation is sustained by God, he could at any moment cast it away, yet God is not dependent upon creation: God creates in freedom and loves creation in freedom. Humanity was in some ways the pinnacle of creation, created to reflect God’s glory, to perceive and understand God, to reflect back to God the love of God, the love that is God. Humanity was created with the freedom to choose to love God and worship God, to put God in the center of its life. But humanity decided not to. This is the fall 1 whereby humanity chose to turn in on itself away from God: this is original sin. This affects the human, the creation, and thereby God’s dealings with humanity, in Christ.

2. “And God said . . .”

At the center of any doctrine of creation is the biblical account: The book of Genesis, the prologue to John’s Gospel, and, for example, Psalm 104. The Genesis account tells us that, as Francis Watson has demonstrated, creation (if we acknowledge the centrality of the biblical account) is a speech-act.2 This is quite different from many of the creation myths found in ancient religions: God speaks and things happen. (By comparison, the scientific theory of the so-called “big-bang” is merely a colossal and unimaginable act of violence, with evolution the accidental by-product.) Watson shows how the speech-act is crucial to creation: God conceives and speaks, and creation is created. But not in an instance. This is also a “fabrication model” for Watson: objects do not magically appear, complete, existence is not instantaneous, they are constructed. Genesis shows how God does initially create instantaneously by the speech-act and then through this fabrication model, but God employs creatures as the womb out of which the others proceed. Creation has a specific nature and it is not inherently divine, creation is separate and different from God: stars and planets are created objects, not “gods” as they were in Pagan and ancient Middle Eastern religions. What is more, the earth and the waters bring forth. Thus we find God’s speech act creates heaven and earth—the speech is important—but then God also declares, “let the earth bring forth . . .” Therefore, at God’s initiative creation creates: “And God said, ‘Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.’ And it was so” (Gen 1:24). God enables the creation to form something new.3 The opening of Genesis and the first chapter of John’s Gospel illustrate the close link between creation, the creative act, and Christ: the logos. Watson comments that—

If the act of creation is accomplished through speech, then speech and act are identified, and this results in what we may call the speech-act model of divine creativity. . . . [T]he first and best known is the command, “Let there be light,” which immediately produces the desired effect—“and there was light” (Gen 1:3). In the second case, the utterance concerning the separation of sea and dry land is followed by the words, “and it was so.” . . . In the third case, the same words announce the immediate fulfillment of the command that the earth should put forth vegetation (Gen 1:11). The specific speech-act implied in all three cases is that of the command, a strange command addressed to entities that do not yet exist and whose coming into being is their act of obedience to it: “For he commanded and they were created” (Ps 148:5).4

God has made known through Scripture what is conceivable for the human mind to comprehend about the creation of reality. What is important about the creation of reality is the election of Israel, and the incarnation, and the atonement: God allows us to know what is important for us to comprehend. There are limits, God-given limits: “the creator is known only insofar as he interacts with the creation.”5 The word of God in the speech-act is creation because it is the gift of God to humanity: “Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made” (Rom 1:19). Therefore, from the created order we can come to some knowledge of God, but not of the true nature of God or the necessity for our salvation: reality reveals a creator, ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: C. S. Lewis—On The Christ of A Religious Economy
• Part One: The Fall, Original Sin, and An Existential Crisis
• Chapter 1: Creation and The Fall I:C. S. Lewis—A Doctrine of Creation
• Chapter 2: Creation and The Fall II:Lewis’s “Augustinian” Account
• Chapter 3: Creation and The Fall III:Innocence and Sin Re-Interpreted
• Chapter 4: Creation and The Fall IV:The Human Condition before God
• Part Two: Christ Revealed Through Analogical and Symbolic Narrative
• Chapter 5: Analogical and Symbolic Narratives I:Narrative Theology, Supposition and Genre,Mythopoeic Theorizing—Imagining The Christ
• Chapter 6: Analogical and Symbolic Narratives II:Christology and Christlikeness—Hiddenness and Multiple Incarnations
• Chapter 7: Analogical and Symbolic Narratives III:Christology and Christlikeness—Trinitarian Considerations
• Chapter 8: Analogical and Symbolic Narratives IV:Salvation, Encounters, and Judgment—the Work of the Aslan-Christ
• Chapter 9: Analogical and Symbolic Narratives V: Father Christmas in Narnia?—Intimations of Atonement and Salvation
• Bibliography