More than mere reason

Rev. Marion Schaffer responds :My first reaction was despair (only briefly) that Mr. Faiz's words were so misunderstood. But now I feel good about the fact that he has stirred up some reaction and concern.
Isn't it ironic that Faiz (and I, since I responded positively to his statement about "that kid … in that barn") are accused of being disrespectful! In fact, what we are crying out for is a return to what we were given in the beginning: Emmanuel = God with us.
Faiz was asking us to strip away all the hoopla we have created and get back to Christ. By using the words "that kid that was born in that barn" he reminds us that God came into the world the same way we did, journeyed here as we do; he was fully divine but … fully human.
I was interested in the different reviews (December) of C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity and agree with most of them. However, I disagree with Harris Athanasiadis' description of Lewis as a leftist rationalist. Politically, in addition to his socially conservative views on women and homosexuality, which were conventional for the time, Lewis was highly critical of the post-war socialist government of Clement Atlee. This becomes clear from reading his collected letters, which for anyone willing to plough through the 2,000 pages that have been published so far (up to the year 1949) make fascinating and rewarding reading. However, it is with the notion that Lewis approached Christianity primarily from a rationalist perspective that I would take issue. As one of the most distinguished literary critics of his day he was certainly an academic, and in today's climate of anti-intellectualism this may be enough to diminish his stature among contemporary post-modernists. No question he belonged to the earlier modernist tradition, which, beginning with the 18th-century Enlightenment, acknowledged human reason as an important guide to truth. After all, God endowed us with the ability to think and to use our minds in the service of science or the improvement of our world. But Lewis goes far beyond this. He seems to be following the tradition of the greatest philosopher of the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant, who concluded that reason can conceive the existence of certain transcendental truths which are simply beyond reason's reach. Didn't Paul say more or less the same thing when he spoke of seeing through a glass darkly?
C.S. Lewis was one of the greatest writers of popular Christian theology and apologetics. Today, only Philip Yancey comes close. I call him popular to distinguish him from those theological heavyweights, quoted by many and read by few. Lewis set out to bring the essential truth of Christianity to ordinary people, though he did expect them to think a little in the process. He certainly used his own formidable powers of reasoning – especially logic – in support of the truth. Yet, the truth itself comes not from logic alone but from faith, honesty and good instincts. To understand this connection we need look no further than the superb screen version of the Chronicles of Narnia, whose scriptwriters very wisely include the words of the professor (who else?) which are the nub of Lewis's rationalist proof that Christ was who he said he was. When the children doubt Lucy's claim that she has seen Narnia, the professor tells them to use logic and adds: "There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn't tell lies and it is obvious she is not mad. For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth." It would be impossible for the children to accept that logic without faith in their sister.
There's a lot more to Lewis's rationalism than mere reason.