Clive Lewis - Collected Letters Volume Three - Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963

There are lots of good religious works both in prose & verse waiting to correct & supplement whatever is over—or under—explained in me: a Kempis, Bunyan, Chesterton, Alice Meynell, Otto, Wm. Law, Coventry Patmore, Dante—

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO GENIA GOELZ (P/Z): 118

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

13/6/51

Dear Mrs. Goelz

(1)I think you are confusing the Immaculate Conception with the Virgin Birth. The former is a doctrine peculiar to the Roman Catholics and asserts that the mother of Jesus was born free of original sin. It does not concern us at all.

(2) The Virgin Birth is a doctrine plainly stated in the Apostles Creed that Jesus had no physical father, and was not conceived as a result of sexual intercourse. It is not a doctrine on which there is any dispute between Presbyterians as such and Episcopalians as such. A few individual Modernists in both these churches have abandoned it; but Presby-terianism or Episcopalianism in general, and in actual historical instances, through the centuries both affirm it. The exact details of such a miracle—an exact point at which a supernatural force enters this world (whether by the creation of a new spermatozoon, or the fertilisation of an ovum without a spermatozoon, or the development of a foetus without an ovum) are not part of the doctrine. These are matters in which no one is obliged and everyone is free, to speculate. Your starting point about this doctrine will not, I think, be to collect the opinions of individual clergymen, but to read Matthew Chap. I and Luke I and II.

(3) Similarly, your question about the resurrection is answered in Luke XXIV. This makes it clear beyond any doubt that what is claimed is physical resurrection. (All Jews except Sadducees already believed in spiritual revival—there would have been nothing novel or exciting in that.)

(4) Thus the questions that you raise are not questions at issue between real P. and real Ep. at all for both these claim to agree with Scripture. Neither church, by the way, seems to be very intelligently represented by the people you have gone to for advice, which is bad luck. I find it very hard to advise in your choice. At any rate the programme, until you can make up your mind, is to read your New Testament (preferably a modern translation) intelligently. Pray for guidance, obey your conscience, in small as well as great matters, as strictly as you can.

(5) Don’t bother much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them: when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you , but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behaviour. (I hope all of this is not very dull and disappointing. Write freely again if I can be of any use to you.)

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

P.S. Of course God does not consider you hopeless. If He did He would not be moving you to seek Him (and He obviously is). What is going on in you at present is simply the beginning of the treatment . Continue seeking with cheerful seriousness. Unless He wanted you, you would not be wanting Him.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

[The Kilns]

16/6/51

My dear Arthur

You’re right. Not that I shall be tired of hotels, still less of you, by then, but that I shall be feeling like getting down to a little work. Also I think you wd. find it a waste both of Lily 119 and of me to have us together.

Love to the Unbelievable and to yourself.

Yours

Jack

TO WARFIELD M. FIROR(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

22/6/51

Dear Firor

I sympathise with you about my handwriting. I used to have a v. good one but no efforts will now recover it. I say! nothing could be nicer than the Hams. If it is not troublesome I’d like you to cancel the new order about Beef & Eggs and revert to the Hams. (We keep poultry and are alright about Eggs).

I don’t know about Deadlines. I somehow can’t quite believe in myself going to Wyoming 120 –perhaps this is a case for psychoanalysis. Your patient who actually wants his Red Lizard 121 fattened up is of course a disgusting old brute but is he also mad? By what sort of transaction did he propose to transfer his soul? And what value did he suppose it wd. have?

My brother is away so I have all the mail to cope with by hand. Therefore in haste.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ROBERT C. WALTON (BBC): 122

04/SB/RCW

Magdalen College,

Oxford

10/7/51

Dear Mr. Walton

I am afraid I couldn’t. The route by which I actually became a Theist ( viâ subjectivism and as an escape from Solipsism, almost in Berkeley’s manner) could not be used for such a dialogue as you have in view. And also, like the old fangless snake in The Jungle Book, 123 I’ve largely lost my dialectical power. I am really very sorry. It sounds an excellent series and I wd. like to have been in it if I could.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

14/7/51

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

Yes: GEORGE HERBERT, Seventeenth Century religious poet: his book is called The Temple and is available in many modern reprints.

Yes: by Reason I meant ‘the faculty whereby we recognise or attain necessary truths’ or ‘the faculty of grasping self-evident truths or logically deducing those which are not self-evident’. I wd. not call the truths Reason any more than I wd. call colours Sight, or food Eating.

Yes: Christ is the eternal, unique 2nd Person of the Trinity: sharing His Sonship we can become sons of God in a real, but derived, manner.

I am v. sorry your husband is going through a bad time. You are all in my prayers. Thanks for the charming photos.

Yours very sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

17/7/51

Dear Miss Pitter

Very many thanks for reading the MS. The idea that you should also thank [me] is to me fantastic: I was ‘making use of you’, you were a thermometer. The thermometer reading (print the good ones because they’re good and the bad ones because they’re bad) is intriguing: a line more easy to take about other people’s work than one’s own. One sees Huck’s point of view: the Widow, getting the house ready for a visitor would not have shared it.

I am lately back from Cornwall where I have been sailing for the first time. I think it is a way in which people who can’t dance can get some of what dancing was made to give. There’s nothing like water after all. Do you know David Lindsay’s lines explaining why there was no wine before the Flood—

The wattir was sae strung and fine Thei wald nat labour to mak wyne . 124

That is why they lived so long. Well, thank you. My duty to you both.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER(BOD):

REF.310/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

17th July 1951.

Dear Mr. Kinter,

The sardines, and the enormous tin of ham which you so very kindly sent me, have arrived in good condition, and I am most grateful to you for such a welcome gift; it could hardly have arrived more apropos, for I saw yesterday in the paper that our microscopic ration of bacon is shortly to be reduced by one ounce. Your ham will be of great service in tiding us over a lean period. It shall be consigned to the refrigerator until the time comes—though I was a little surprised to find the instruction that it needed refrigeration on the label; over here we never put canned goods into the frig., but just store them in the coolest part of a larder.