RTS Papers / The Theology of C. S. Lewis / Spring 2019
In his essay “On Obstinacy in Belief,” C. S. Lewis draws a distinction between our stance toward evidence before, as opposed to after, coming to faith. In the former, we are assessing faith and, as such, beginning to doubt the position of unbelief. In the latter, we are holding on to faith in the face of skepticism. There are many lessons to draw from this in terms of practical apologetics to be sure, but my basic concern will be on how this may help in the perennial debate between Classicalists, Evidentialists, and Presuppositionalists.
I will leave aside positions like fideism here because very little that Lewis has to say is designed to shake the fideist of the conviction that faith is not to be rationally defended to begin with. Those other three schools of apologetics, however, would do well to allow these reflections by Lewis to inform them in what often becomes an exercise in talking past each other. That is the purpose here: not simply to ask what Lewis’ overall method happened to be, but in that survey, to improve our own. Before drawing out lessons from this essay for apologetic method in our day, I will say a few words on the structure of Lewis’ essay itself and judge whether it is compelling in light of its goals.
THE ‘OBSTINACY OF BELIEF’ PER SE
The essay starts by pondering the modern notion that the virtue of science is forming one’s belief by the evidence, whereas the virtue of faith is forming one’s belief against it. The impression given is that the man of science is for reality while the man of faith is afraid of it. This is the modernist narrative, in a nutshell. At the heart of Lewis’ argument is what looks like the justification of a double-standard. What he admits is that Christians at times discount evidence contrary to faith, and yet they did not come to faith by accepting its propositions against evidence. It may seem as if he is saying, “On our journey to Christ, reason and evidence, and even doubt, are our friends, but once we have faith, we must be ready to betray them all.” The technical rule that this is thought to violate comes to us courtesy of William K. Clifford’s “Ethics of Belief,” in which he stated that “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”
Now both of these tendencies—aggressive inquiry before faith and obstinacy in belief afterwards—are held out as virtues, in spite of the fact that it will naturally draw the accusation of special pleading. Lewis anticipates this, and points out that both believers and unbelievers pursue arguments and evidences according to what they want to be true (or against what they fear may be true). Hence the psychological arguments land us at a draw, and they commit the genetic fallacy in any event.
Lewis then amends the opening picture of the man of science (for evidence) and the man of faith (against it) to a new picture of both men moving “from the region of belief into that of knowledge.” What they know, they no longer say they believe. As McPhee corrected Jane in That Hideous Strength, to cease from “constantly using such terms as believe,” when in the process of investigation.
The really tough-minded thing to do is to graduate from dismissing each other’s arguments for subjective reasons and to get back to a comparison of objective reasons for and against the knowledge claims.
But then comes the difficulty. Christians consider it a virtue for personal faith to resist the sea of doubt, standing alone like a tiny, yet fortress-like, island. If a scientist or historian did this, we would call them unprofessional or even bigoted. In those arenas falsifiability is a mark of integrity. So what is the difference when it comes to Christian faith?
He answers by imagining the scientist, not in his laboratory on the ground of his hypotheses, but in the rest of life with his beliefs, which are different. Using examples of “getting a dog out of a trap, in extracting a thorn from a child’s finger, in teaching a boy to swim or rescuing one who can’t, in getting a frightened beginner over a nasty place on a mountain,” he brings his reader not to something like a worldview buffet table, where the reasoner feels strong and the consequences for assent are well under control. Rather the seeker finds an infinite set of uncertainties pressing in on him for a decision with his whole being and with everything at stake.
Lewis is combining the evidential question with the existential question: as it actually is conjoined in reality. We are not merely, as one author has said, “brains on a stick.” We are souls that will never die. If this is true, then one is more rational by striking this balance: that while we must distinguish the evidential and the existential, we could not divorce them except precisely by an anti-intellectual denial of the way the world really is. They are objectively inseparable.
Here is his key for why subsequent obstinacy is utterly rational: “I am saying that the content of our original belief by logical necessity entails the proposition that such behavior is appropriate. If human life is in fact ordered by a beneficent being whose knowledge of our real needs and of the way in which they can be satisfied infinitely exceeds our own, we must expect a priori that His operations will often appear to us far from beneficent and far from wise, and that it will be our highest prudence to give Him our confidence in spite of this.”
Again if all Lewis meant to do by this is to hold “existential matters” over against questions of truth and reason, then I would question whether he was not a fideist or else would regard this essay as an odd departure from his normal course. As a matter of fact, though, God is not marked off from the other personal objects of trust in Lewis’ several analogies merely by his being all-wise or all-good for us. As Lewis says elsewhere, God is “the source from which all your reasoning power comes.” For all the other doctrines we may disagree with Lewis over, his doctrine of God was of a Transcendent Being who pervades all things and could cease the existence of all things with no effort. From this perspective we have no choice but to hope God is trustworthy! On the other hand, the dimension of personal relationship is all-significant: “No man is our friend who believes in our good intentions only when they are proved.” In the end, there is no need to separate the existential part of the argument from our total apologetic.
What shall we conclude about the role of the argument in this essay? Is Lewis successful? If so, is he being consistent with his approach in other writings? My own answer to both questions is yes. Although some points of weakness are worth our review. One potential Christian critique of Lewis’ argument is that it inflates the role of human reason on the road to faith. In other words, he does not take seriously the noetic effects of sin. The whole thing is reduced to “proper handling” of the evidence. My reply is that since the focus of Lewis is not on the ability of the seeker, but on the virtue of the search, Lewis and his critic have two different objects in view.
One may also mistake Lewis’ “assent to certain propositions” for the whole sum of faith. This is unwarranted. The relevant contrast is between former “belief” meant as an opinion about x and present “knowledge” about that same x. The whole second half of the essay, where he treats the existential problem ought to be enough to confirm this. But finally it may be argued that he missed another reason for virtuous obstinacy: our commitment to the Lordship of Christ. While the honor of God is touched upon in our trust, little attention is paid to our jealousy for his truth.
It may be that the distinction Lewis makes between beliefs and hypotheses is too sharp and gives away too much to an “unbiased realm.” This may prove a distraction, but the basic thrust of the argument can sustain this if we will push through it. And as far as trusting an authority, to read only this essay, one would come away with a restricted view of Lewis’ epistemology of authority. He says elsewhere, “Believing things on authority only means believing them because you have been told them by someone you think trustworthy.” No acceptance of authority arises in a vacuum. There is a thinking process that leads to the conviction of trustworthiness. Authority never bypasses reason.
THE TREES AND FOREST OF APOLOGETICS
What Lewis wants to do in this essay is to reassess proportionality to evidence, given some misconceptions about faith and reason (or science, in the case of the modernist). We can take Lewis a step further and ask two distinct questions about proportionality and evidence. The first is more of an epistemological question: How one can know the tree and the forest? The second has more to do with metaphysics: in what way is the tree what it is by virtue of the forest, and perhaps things beyond? If all we do is ask the first question, then we are really asking whether the man of faith or the man of science is more likely to “get the tree right.” But what on earth does that mean in the grand scheme of things? It means very little if the tree is merely some atomistic fact.
Evidentialism begins with the tree. Because of modern incredulity, neither the believing evidentialist nor his unbelieving neighbor may ever zoom out to the forest. Classicalism begins with the whole forest and presuppositionalism begins with the map. Now all believing parties agree that the King of that forest has given the map, and that we ought not mistake the tree for the forest.
What then? In answering our second proportionality question, zooming out from tree (evidence) to forest (ultimate reality), we will be in a better position to reflect upon the first, namely the one Lewis starts by asking: Who is the more reasonable person? And we must not think that Lewis is pitting “the man of faith” against “the man of science.” Rather he is pushing outward to marginalize the extremes of fideism and scientism.
Scientism has given to us a few powerful equivocations. The scientific man is said to “start” with evidence and then “believes” its verdict. In fact neither is true. In the first place, pure inductivism is a pure fiction. Even if Locke were right that we are born “blank slates,” it would not follow that we remain so, nor that we could ever shake down our minds like an Etch-a-Sketch to return to that presuppositionless canvas.
No, the scientist, no less than anyone else, begins his research with prejudice, fallacies, finitude, and grant money earmarked for a certain political target. This is no strike against science, and Lewis is careful to distinguish between true science and scientism in several of his writings.
In the second place, to speak of the scientist “believing” more rational things after his fact-finding is equally misleading. Lewis assumes a Platonic distinction between knowledge and opinion (which I have no problem with) in order to say that when science is well done, one has passed on to knowledge: a real insight into the way the world is. So to speak of what the scientist “believes” versus what the religionist “believes,” after the evidence, is to create the impression that evidence is the efficient cause of real knowledge. Both the classicalist and presuppositionalist know that this is not the case, and thus far what Lewis is doing could be claimed by both methodologies. Evidence is always reasoned to as well as from.
One last point about deciding which of these three schools Lewis held. There are several places in his writings that may cause us to think he had an “evidentialist bent.” That would at least be better than calling him an evidentialist. In this essay he speaks of the evidence appearing “so overwhelmingly probable” to the person of faith. He begins Mere Christianity with a direct appeal to our common experience of right and wrong. Although he later refers to this as “inside information,” this may still be conceived as a reference to an empirical starting point.
Although his extolling of the Socratic virtue of “following the argument wherever it led them,” is not precisely the same thing as “following the evidence.” Arguments per se are formal; and the rules for their validity and logical relations are necessary things. Evidence, by contrast, regards the phenomenal and at best achieves high degrees of probability. This does not appear to be what Lewis is shooting for in the grand scheme of any of his famous arguments.
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