RATIONAL CHRISTIANITY?
"I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it."
That was C. S. Lewis's claim in Mere Christianity (123) that he had rational arguments for showing how the weight of the evidence supported Christianity. In the Reason/Revelation debate, Lewis thought that Reason could prove, or at least render probable, the truth of Christian Revelation.
If Lewis was right about this, that would deny my contention that while there is an evolved natural desire for religious transcendence, or for what Lewis calls "Joy," the existence of this desire provides no evidence for the real existence of the supernatural object--God--that would satisfy this desire.
That all of Lewis's rational arguments for Christianity fail has been well-argued by John Beversluis in C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion (2007), which is the only book-length critical study of Lewis's apologetic writings. My thinking about Lewis has been influenced by Beversluis.
Most of Lewis's arguments for Christianity and against atheism show up in Mark St. Germain's "Freud's Last Session"--both the play and the movie. Here and in subsequent posts, I will start with the texts of the play (first published in 2010) and the screenplay for the movie released a few weeks ago. My references to the screenplay will be to the scene numbers. As I have indicated, St. Germain draws most of his material from Armand Nicholi's book The Question of God (2002).
In a later post, I will consider William Nicholson's stage play and movie screenplay "Shadowlands," which tells the story of Lewis's marriage to Joy Davidman Gresham and her tragic death from cancer, after only a few years of marriage, which threw Lewis into a dark crisis of faith. In the movie "Shadowlands," Anthony Hopkins played Lewis; in the movie "Freud's Last Session," Hopkins plays Freud in his debate with Lewis.
These plays and movies are impressive examples of how popular culture in a modern liberal social order can probe into the deepest questions raised by the Reason/Revelation debate. I do not know of any historical evidence that anything like this has been possible in any illiberal societies. On the contrary, in the illiberal closed societies of the past, such a public debate about religious orthodoxy and atheism would have been considered dangerously subversive of the social order.
Doesn't this refute those many critics of liberalism (like Patrick Deneen) who whine about the moral, intellectual, and spiritual degradation coming from liberal culture? Doesn't this support those proponents of liberalism (like Deirdre McCloskey) who celebrate the human excellence that comes from the bourgeois virtues of a liberal culture?
I should note, however, that the movie "Freud's Last Session" has not been very popular. When I saw it, there were no more than a dozen people in the theater. The original stage play was more successful. In 2012, when I saw the play twice at the Mercury Theater in Chicago, and I helped to lead a discussion of the play with the audience after they had just seen it, I saw large audiences that wanted to talk about the play.
DOES THE DESIRE FOR JOY POINT TO GOD?
In both plays and both movies, Lewis's primary argument is that the desire for Joy points to God as the supernatural object that will satisfy that desire.
Lewis's argument elicits this conversation in St. Germain's play:
LEWIS. None of us are born with desires unless satisfaction for them exists.
FREUD. Not true.
LEWIS. It is.
FREUD. Example?
LEWIS. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim, water exists to do it. So if I find within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most likely explanation is that I was made for another world.
FREUD. You have just abandoned facts for fairy tales. Our deepest cravings are never satisfied or even identified. In German we call it 'Seinsucht,' a longing. For years I have felt this. A strong desire to walk in the woods with my father, as I did when I was young. He would hold my hand, but I would always pull away and run from him as fast as I could, deep into the trees.
LEWIS. What were you running to?
FREUD. Perhaps I ran to be alone or to escape from my father. I only know the desire was overwhelming.
LEWIS. I call that desire "joy."
FREUD. "Joy."
LEWIS. I don't know a better word for it. I felt it for the first time through a sort of "woods" as well.
FREUD. Yes?
LEWIS. I wasn't yet six. My brother Warren brought a biscuit box into the nursery that he decorated with moss and twigs, tiny stones and flowers. A toy forest. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. I still do. The moment I saw it, it created a yearning I never felt before.
FREUD. To live in a tiny Eden with a tiny God.
LEWIS. God never entered my mind.
FREUD. And this "joy" you equate with an inherent desire for a Creator.
LEWIS. Yes.
FREUD. You were led to God by a biscuit tin.
A slightly altered version of this conversation appears in the movie (31-33). What they say here is taken directly from Nicholi's book, and what Lewis says is taken directly from Lewis's writing--particularly Mere Christianity and Surprised by Joy.
Keep in mind that the book Mere Christianity originated as a series of Lewis's radio broadcast talks on the BBC in 1942. In the midst of the terrifying turmoil of World War Two in Great Britain, Lewis was speaking to a general audience of ordinary English people in a calmly conversational tone about "the case for Christianity." Lewis was asked to give these talks by a BBC producer who thought the radio audience would want to hear them as they worried about whether religion could help them make sense of the war. It is fitting, therefore, that the conversation between Freud and Lewis in "Freud's Last Session" is set on September 3, 1939, the day that Great Britain's war with Nazi Germany began.
A crucial passage in Mere Christianity is in his chapter on "Hope," which is about the hope for Heaven (118-21). Lewis writes:
". . . when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would be ordinarily called unsuccessful marriages, or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in the reality. I think everyone knows what I mean. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may be a very interesting job: but something has evaded us. Now there are two wrong ways of dealing with this fact, and one right one."
One wrong way is the "fool's way"--he "goes on all his life thinking that if only he tried another woman, or went for a more expensive holiday, or whatever it is, then, this time, he really would catch the mysterious something we are after." The other wrong way is the Disillusioned "Sensible Man" who decides that the whole thing is adolescent moonshine, and that grown-up people learn to settle for the modest pleasures of life rather than strive for an unattainable infinite happiness.
The right way is the Christian Way. The Christian says:
"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same."
Those who scorn the Christian Way will ridicule the idea of Heaven by saying that they do not want "to spend eternity playing harps." But, of course, this is a silly objection because it fails to see that the metaphorical imagery of Heaven will always be "a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible." And "musical instruments are mentioned because for many people (not all) music is the thing known in the present life which most strongly suggests ecstasy and infinity."
In Surprised by Joy--Lewis's spiritual autobiography, the story of his conversion to Christianity--he described his search for Joy--"an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other desire"--and said that "in a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else" (6-8, 17-18, 73, 78, 169-70, 220-222).
Reading these passages from Lewis's writings makes the story of "Freud's Last Session" more comprehensible than it would otherwise be. For example, many viewers of the movie will be confused by the prolonged depictions of Lewis's sexual affair with Janie Moore and the lesbian liaison of Freud's daughter Anna and her lover Dorothy Burlingham, to which Freud objects because of his perverse sexual attachment to his daughter.
What does all of this frisson of sexual feeling have to do with Lewis and Freud's debate over God? The answer is that this is all about Lewis's argument from Joy, and for Lewis sex is often a poor substitute for Joy. At the end of the screenplay for the movie, as Lewis is leaving Freud's house, he sees Anna and Dorothy meeting: "Anna turns and smiles at seeing her. Lewis watches their joy in seeing each other, and the two embrace. Lewis realizes their intimacy and looks disappointed, then back at the house, better understanding Freud's struggle" (131).
Similarly, understanding Lewis's account of music as stirring the joyful emotions of "ecstasy and infinity" explains the place of music in the play and the movie. Freud repeatedly turns on his radio to hear news announcements and political statements about the threat of war, but as soon as the broadcast switches from news to music, Freud turns off the radio. Lewis asks Freud why he never wants to hear music (122).
FREUD. I object to being manipulated. To me, it's all church music.
LEWIS. My objection to church music is that it trivializes emotions I already feel. I think you're afraid to feel them at all.
For Freud to reject all music as "church music" suggests that music often elicits deep emotions of transcendence that he does not want to feel.
At the end of the movie, Anna and Dorothy sit together near Freud in his living room. Earlier in the movie, we have learned that Freud had always forbidden Anna to bring Dorothy to his house. But now Freud sits quietly at his radio listening to music.
"MUSIC swells -- Anna looks to her father, surprised to see him listening to music. He turns, meets her eyes."
"Freud then stares at the radio, listening intently, trying to decipher what he should feel" (137).
The play ends here. The movie adds two scenes with Lewis travelling by train back to Oxford. In the first scene, Lewis falls asleep on the train, and he dreams that he is walking in a forest: "The forest is golden now, shimmering between reality and fantasy. The brightness of a single beam of light stops him. He shields his eyes, trying to see--His expression changes, astonishment, awe, at what he--."
Then, the screaming of the train's breaks jolts him awake. As he reaches down for his bag, he feels the book in his pocket that Freud had given him. He looks at the book and sees that it is his own book Pilgrim's Regress. So while Freud earlier in the day had said he had not read this book, which includes a satirical character named Sigismund Enlightenment, Lewis now sees that Freud had indeed read the book. Inside the book, Freud had written: "From error to error, one discovers the entire truth." Lewis smiles as he reads this, and the train enters a tunnel.
This quotation is often attributed to Francis Bacon, although the correct quotation is "Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion," which appears in Bacon's New Organon (II.20), Bacon's book on scientific method. Apparently, it means that the scientific pursuit of truth requires formulating clear interpretations or hypotheses about nature that can be tested and usually falsified, so that from error, the truth might eventually emerge. Lewis's Pilgrim's Regress is about Lewis's search for meaning and spiritual truth--through the story of the pilgrim John--in which he must meet many people with mistaken views of the world. In writing this quotation as a response to Lewis's book, Freud suggests that Lewis really is pursuing the truth in the right way.
In all of this, we can see how "Freud's Last Session"--both the play and the movie--is slanted in favor of Lewis's side of the debate with Freud. The title "Freud's Last Session" is ambiguous. It could mean that Freud is psychoanalyzing Lewis to free him from his religious illusions. But by the end of the story, we see that Freud is the patient, and Lewis is the doctor. At one point in the movie, we see Freud laying on his own couch as he speaks with Lewis.
As I indicated in my previous post, "Freud's Last Session" does not present us with a fair debate because it shows us that Lewis is so superior to Freud--morally and intellectually--that this gives Lewis an unfair advantage over Freud in the debate.
Lewis did not seek out this kind of debate, in which he was sure to defeat a weaker opponent. On the contrary, for twelve years, he was the President of the Oxford Socratic Club, which brought together the smartest Christians, atheists, and agnostics for debates about Christianity and atheism. Participants included some of the best philosophers and scientists of the day--such as Elizabeth Anscombe, A. J. Ayer, J. L. Austin, Antony Flew, C. E. M. Joad, Gilbert Ryle, and C. H. Waddington. Lewis was President of this club from its founding in 1942 until he left for Cambridge in 1954. At its founding, he wrote a statement about how the club would be Socratic in the sense that Christians would agree to debate their opponents while accepting the principle of Socrates that "we must go wherever the wind of the argument carries us" (Plato, Republic 394d; Lewis, "The Founding of the Socratic Club," 131).
The Oxford Socratic Club met every Monday evening during term from 8:15 pm to 10:30 pm. On one Monday, a Christian would deliver a paper on a certain topic, and then another person would deliver a paper criticizing the first paper. On the following Monday, the first speaker would be a non-Christian, followed by a Christian. The meetings were open to all Oxford students and faculty as well as the general public. Usually, it was standing-room-only. And the discussions would continue late into the night. Lewis almost never missed a meeting.
This is the kind of open public debate over Reason and Revelation that began in England in the Metaphysical Society that met from 1869 to 1880, which was made possible by the liberal culture that had emerged in England at that time.
So if we were to rewrite "Freud's Last Session" to make it more like the debates in the Oxford Socratic Club, we would need to introduce a third debater who would be Lewis's intellectual equal and thus able to really challenge him. As I suggested in my previous post, we should look for someone like David Hume or a Humean philosopher who could turn the debate into something like Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
A Humean philosopher (like John Beversluis) could seriously challenge, perhaps even refute, Lewis's argument from desire by showing that Lewis's search for Joy does not necessarily point to the reality of God. That will be the question for my next post.
REFERENCES
Beversluis, John. 2007. C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Lewis, C. S. 1955. Surprised by Joy. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.
Lewis, C. S. 1960. Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan.
Lewis, C. S. 1970. "The Founding of the Oxford Socratic Club." In God in the Dock, 130-34. Edited by Walter Hooper. Grand Rapids, MI: William Eerdmans Publishing.
Nicholi, Armand. 2002. The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life. New York: Free Press.
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