C.S. Lewis, Just War, and the Locus of Authority

In a 1939 letter to the journal Theology, C.S. Lewis raises a very important, and too little discussed, question of just war theory: who is responsible to decide whether a war is just?  Too often, just war debates focus on the six traditional just war criteria, whether they are sufficient, and whether they have been fulfilled in a particular case.  But Lewis objects, "It is plain that equally sincere people can differ to any extent and argue for ever as to whether a proposed war fulfils these conditions or not.  The practical question, therefore, which faces us is one of authority.  Who has the duty of deciding when the conditions are fulfilled and the right of enforcing his decision?"  To this, Lewis offers a very interesting and uncomfortable answer.  To be sure, he grants from the start, no subject must obey a decision that he knows to be wrong and unjust; indeed, he must not obey.  But just how responsible is he to determine whether it is wrong or unjust?  Lewis is inclined to think that the ordinary citizen has, in fact, relatively little responsibility on this front.

He uses the analogy of a hangman.  Assuming that a Christian may legitimately be a hangman, we will of course say that

"he must not hang a man whom he knows to be innocent.  But will anyone interpret this to mean that the hangman has the same duty of investigating the prisoner's guilt which the judge has?  If so, no executive can work and no Christian state is possible; which is absurd.  I conclude that the hangman has done his duty if he has done his share of the general duty, resting upon all citizens alike, to ensure, so far as in him lies, that we have an honest judicial system; if, in spite of this, and unknowingly, he hangs an innocent man, then a sin has been committed, but not by him.

Click to read more ...

Two Faces, Two Kingdoms

Each time I read through C.S. Lewis's masterpiece, Till We Have Faces, I'm struck by some new layer of meaning, some new profound insight, and this latest (fifth, I think) time was no exception.  One of the most emotionally wrenching and mentally jarring moments in the book comes on the very last page, the only bit not written from the perspective of Orual.  "I, Arnom, priest of Aphrodite, saved this roll and put it in the temple.  From the markings after the word might, we think the Queen's head must have fallen forward on them as she died and we cannot read them.  This book was written by Queen Orual of Glome, who was the most wise, just, valiant, fortunate, and merciful of all the princes known in our parts of the world…."

On their own, there is nothing particularly arresting about these words.  However, to any reader who has traversed the pages of this book, following Orual on her psychological journey of love, hate, envy, insecurity, and pettiness, these words come like a splash of cold water on the face.  This is the same Orual who has been consumed, up till the final days of her life, with jealousy and self-love, who is Ungit, the embodiment of sin and ugliness, devouring everyone around her: "It was I who was Ungit.  That ruinous face was mine.  I was that Batta-thing, that all-devouring womblike, yet barren, thing.  Glome was a web--I the swollen spider, squat at its centre, gorged with men's stolen lives." 

How can she be simultaneously the embodiment of wickedness and yet praised by her subjects as "the most wise, just, valiant, fortunate, and merciful"?  

Click to read more ...

Drenched with Deity

In his English Literature in the Sixteenth-Century, C.S. Lewis offers perhaps what is the best summary of and introduction to Richard Hooker that I have yet found, far more lucid and on the mark than most "specialist" treatments.  Toward the end, he offers this luminous passage:

"Every system offers us a model of the universe; Hooker's model has unsurpassed grace and majesty.  from much that I have already said it might be inferred that the unconscious tendency of his mind was to secularise.  There could be no deeper mistake.  Few model universes are more filled--one might say, more drenched--with Deity than his.  'All things that are of God' (and only sin is not) 'have God in them and he them in himself likewise', yet 'their substance and his wholly differeth' (V.56.5).  God is unspeakably transcendent; but also unspeakably immanent.  It is this conviction which enables Hooker, with no anxiety, to resist any inaccurate claim that is made for revelation against reason, Grace against Nature, the spiritual against the secular.

Click to read more ...