For the last two chapters of Book III we will be looking at the final theological virtue of “faith”. This chapter focuses on faith in terms of holding onto rational truths despite raging emotions.

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Episode 24: “Faith” (Part 1) (Download)

— Show Notes —

• My outline for today’s chapter is available here. Unfortunately, there isn’t a C.S. Lewis Doodle for it.

• Lewis spends most of this chapter dealing with the first definition of faith. He does begin talking about the second kind of faith, but he’ll deal with it primarily in the next chapter, the final part of Book III.

• In this episode we will be answering the following questions:

Q1. What is faith?

Q2. Why is it a virtue?

• The quote-of-the-week:

“If we wish to be rational, not now and then, but constantly, we must pray for the gift of faith, for the power to go on believing, not in the teeth of reason, but in the teeth of lust, in terror, in jealousy, in boredom, in indifference, that which reason, authority and experience (or all three) have once delivered to us for truth”

– C.S. Lewis, Christian Reflections

• Matt is currently doing Exodus 90.

• The drink-of-the-week was Macallen 12. Here are the tasting notes Matt read:

Appearance: Deep amber with strong legs.

Nose: Oaky and hot right off the pour. Loads of oak and perfume reads as somewhat bitter at first, with notes reminiscent of an amaretto sour and a hint of spiced plums. The nose softens dramatically after a few minutes, settling into dark sherry and plum sweetness.

Palate: Sweet and full, but not overly complex. Lots of sherry, plums, powdered sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg give it a silky, round mouthfeel. The finish is quick, with a mild burn and a long, lingering presence of sweetness reminding me of iced cinnamon rolls.

Defintion #1

• The first definition of faith Jack looks at is faith in the sense of holding onto a belief, despite changes in mood and emotion.

• When Lewis was an atheist, he never understood why faith was regarded as a virtue. After all, if there is good evidence for something, then what is praiseworthy about believing it? And in contrast, if the evidence is stacked against a belief, you’d be stupid to hold to it! Jack’s mistake here was assuming that humans are purely rational creatures:

I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up. In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 11)

• Example #1: anaesthetics. His reason knows that he isn’t being smothered and his reason knows that he will be unconscious before the operation begins. However, his emotions rebel against this.

I start thinking I am going to choke, and I am afraid they will start cutting me up before I am properly under. In other words, I lose my faith in anaesthetics. It is not reason that is taking away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 11)

• Example #2: A guy talking to a pretty girl and his rational belief that she is a gossip goes out of the window as his emotions get the better of him.

• Example #3: A boy learning to swim. He knows he can float, but when the instructor takes away his hand, he panics.

• I gave my own example. When I went skydiving, I knew that it was safe, but the safety statistics I had read were quickly forgotten when I found myself standing by an open plane door with the ground far below…

• Jack then explains how this happens with Christianity…

…supposing a man’s reason once decides that the weight of the evidence is for it. I can tell that man what is going to happen to him in the next few weeks. There will come a moment when there is bad news, or he is in trouble, or is living among a lot of other people who do not believe it, and all at once his emotions will rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief. Or else there will come a moment when he wants a woman, or wants to tell a lie, or feels very pleased with himself, or sees a chance of making a little money in some way that is not perfectly fair: some moment, in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true. And once again his wishes and desires will carry out a blitz.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 11)

• Matt gave the example of St. Teresa of Calcutta, who remained faithful to God, despite some dark years.

• The rebellion of your moods is going to come regardless, whether you are a Christian or an atheist. As a result, we have to train ourselves…

1. Prayer/Study

…make sure that, if you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day…

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 11)

2. Church attendance

…That is why daily prayers and religious reading and church going are necessary parts of the Christian life.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 11)

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

– Hebrews 10:24-25

• Departure from Christianity is usually a slow fade:

if you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 11)

Defintion #2

• The second definition of faith relates to our spiritual bankruptcy.

• In an earlier chapter, Jack explained that, in order to become humble, one must first realize one is prideful. He now goes on to say that the next step is to try and really live out the Christian virtues:

Try six weeks. By that time, having, as far as one can see, fallen back completely or even fallen lower than the point one began from, one will have discovered some truths about oneself. No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 11)

• Only good people really understand temptation:

Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in… A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness… Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means-the only complete realist

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 11)

• This teaches us two things:

(a) We can’t earn salvation

If there was any idea that God had set us a sort of exam, and that we might get good marks by deserving them, that has to be wiped out. If there was any idea of a sort of bargain-any idea that we could perform our side of the contract and thus put God in our debts so that it was up to Him, in mere justice, to perform His side-that has to be wiped out… God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam, or putting Him in your debt.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 11)

(b) We can never give God anything which isn’t already his.

Then comes another discovery. Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 11)

He gives the example of a child asking his father for money in order to buy him a present.

• Jack ends the chapter on a cliff-hanger…

When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins. The man is awake now. We can now go on to talk of Faith in the second sense.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 11)

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