"The Weight of Glory"

The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Revised and Expanded Edition) is a collection of nine essays and articles by C. S. Lewis, most of them written during the early 1940s. As Lewis says in the introduction, most of these were created for specific situations and not intended for collection and publication. Many of them were originally addresses or sermons, meant to be heard and not read. For this reason, there is a distinctly different style here than in Lewis's more formal work--it lacks a certain polish and smoothness which one finds in Miracles or Mere Christianity. (Whether this is a defect or an advantage may be debated.) Most of these articles were written for specifically Christian audiences and so there is little here that is apologetics in a strict sense. For the most part, these articles are aimed at helping Christians understand their own faith or deal with specific difficulties.

Because of the varied and even miscellaneous nature of the book it would be, of course, impossible to perform any formal analysis of the book as a whole. Instead, what I want to do is go through a give a brief summary and discussion on the individual articles, working in a reverse order.

In "A Slip of the Tongue," Lewis tells of how when praying he once mixed up the words of a prayer so that he prayed that he might "pass through things eternal that I finally lost not the things temporal." (126) He uses this as a springboard to discuss a perennial human temptation, even to (especially to) Christians--a temptation, a fear of committing too fully to God, a desire to keep free some part of our life which we can call our own. Lewis compares it to paying taxes--honest citizens will pay their taxes, but not one cent more than they absolutely have to and will keep the rest as their own. That is the same sort of bargain we are tempted to make with God--giving Him His required portion, but keeping something back as our own. But that is specifically what we cannot do. God (out of love) demands all we have. "For [God] has, in the the last resort, nothing to give us but Himself; and He can give that only insofar as our self-affirming will retires and makes room for Him in our souls. Let us make up our minds to it; there will be nothing 'of our own' left over to live on, no 'ordinary' life... There is no bargaining with Him." (130-1)

"On Forgiveness" is a very short and straightforward article (originally intended for publication in a parish magazine). Lewis's main point here is to draw the distinction between forgiving something and excusing it. Too often, he says, when we pray for God to forgive our sins, what we really want is for God to excuse them. "But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing." (122) He argues that these two acts--forgiving and excusing--are in principle exact opposites though they may exist together in practice. That which can be excused does not need forgiven; that which must be forgiven cannot be excused. And the problem with this confusion is that it leads to (or perhaps springs from) a feeling that real forgiveness is not possible; that God will not really forgive us and that we cannot really forgive each other--that the best we can hope for and the best we can give is reasonable justice, not mercy. But Christianity clearly teaches that God forgives us, that God grants us genuine forgiveness--and if we believe that, then we also have a basis for granting genuine forgiveness to others. "To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you." (125)

"Membership" deals with organic structure of the church, of Christianity. His main point is that within the Christian body there is a unique structure in which every member has a place; it is not merely a collection of people but a body in which every part is unique and yet important in its own individual position. This uniqueness and importance comes only as each part is united to the Head; all Christians have a place in the organic church because they share in the divine life of Christ. Lewis's main point is to contrast the Christian life with individualism and collectivism (both of which, in different ways, were rampant in his day and in our) and to show salvation as being God-centered, not man-centered--that our life, our place in God's kingdom is not our own, but comes from God.

In "The Inner Ring," Lewis warns young people against the danger of "inner rings" or what we could call "cliques." In nearly every human institution, you will find these sort of inner rings former and many people go through life desiring and attempting to become part of them. Though their existence is not necessarily wrong, the desire to be part of them usually is: "Let Inner Rings be an unavoidable and even an innocent feature of life, though certainly not a beautiful one; but what of our longing to enter them, our anguish when we are excluded, and the kind of pleasure we feel when we get in?" (99) Not only, as Lewis argues, is this desire a bad desire, but it may easily lead to other things. The desire to fit in and be accepted by such a clique can easily lead a man to do things which he would never do on any other ground. Finally, the desire is illusory and is, in that way, like all vices. "It is the very mark of a perverse desire that it seeks what is not be had." (103) If we live our life trying to get "inside," we will never be satisfied. Virtue may not be its own reward, but vice is its own punishment.

"Is Theology Poetry?" is a very unique article, because Lewis was given the topic and doesn't seem to have known what to do with it. To begin with, he considers the question in the sense of asking whether those who believe Christian theology are "being guided by taste rather than reason." (88) He answers this by pointing out first, that Christian theology (considered simply as an appeal to taste) is not as poetical as some other worldviews; second, that some things are poetical precisely because we don't believe them; and, third, that some things are poetical precisely because we do. He then touches on the question of the similarities between Christianity and certain pagan myths and the use of symbolic and pictorial language in Christianity. (Both of these points are covered more extensively in Miracles.) The most interesting part of this article is the final argument, in which Lewis compares Christianity with the worldview of scientific naturalism. "When I accept Theology I may find difficulties, at this point or that, in harmonising it with some particular truths... derived from science. But I can get in, or allow for, science as a whole.... If on the other hand, I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole, then not only can I not fit in Christianity, but I cannot even fit in science." (91) Just as waking life is more real than a dream--because waking life can explain dreams, but dreams cannot explain waking life--so the Christian worldview is, in principle, more real because it can explain the world and our experience of it, while the world (event though science) cannot explain itself.

"Transposition" nearly deserves an article all of its own to discuss it. Lewis starts with the problem that many things that supposedly have a higher or spiritual significance seem indistinguishable from things that are merely natural. So certain religious experiences (specifically 'speaking in tongues') seem like the same kind of thing as mental hysteria, and the Eucharist is merely the same thing as eating and drinking. In the same way, to some love and lust seem indistinguishable because they lead to the same physical consummation. Finally, the physical sensations which accompany both great joy, great sorrow, and sickness are often more or less the same. Lewis argues that each of these is a case of what he calls transposition. "If you are to translate from a language which has a large vocabulary into a language that has a small vocabulary, then you must be allowed to use several words in more than one sense... If you are making a piano version of a piece originally scored for an orchestra, then the same piano notes which represent flutes in one passage must also represent violins in another... [In drawing] the very same shape which you must draw to give the illusion of a straight road receding from the spectator is also the shape you draw for a dunce's cap." (60-61) In each of these cases, when a higher medium enters a lower one, we see that the same thing may take on different meanings. In light of that, it is hardly surprising that our spiritual life should operate through and be connected to some of the same things, physically, which comprise our natural life. Lewis also uses this analogy to help shed light on the problem of Heaven. We know from Revelation (and reason) that many of the things we know and care about in this life are not, cannot be present in Heaven, leading us to feel "that the vision of God will come not to fulfil but to destroy our nature." (67) Lewis answers this by saying that the things of this world (which we fill we will miss in Heaven) are merely transpositions, rough translations, of the things which are present in Heaven. He compares our situation to that of a boy who knew nothing of the real world except pencil drawings of it and could not conceive of any reality which was not comprised of pencil marks.

"Why I Am Not a Pacifist" was an address given to a pacifist society in Oxford and is a fairly short and succinct statement of the case against pacifism. It is also, in introduction to that subject, works through the steps of moral arguments, discussing how it is we come to believe certain things are good or evil.

"Learning in War-Time" was preached at Oxford in response to the unrest that was felt among many of the students because of the war. The question of the article is whether there is any point to engaging in cultural or intellectual pursuits when the entire world is in danger because of the shadow of war. His basic answer is that the world is always in danger; the world is always dying--the event of the war only makes that fact more clear. Man has always been under the shadow of some danger; they have always had good reason to put off cultural and intellectual matters: "But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never comes." (22) He put this alongside the perpetual problem of the Christian--how can we spend time on such matters in light of the spiritual needs of the world. His answer is that Christianity does not so much add or even take away the natural activities of life but transform them. He then goes on to lay the groundwork for a Christian's pursuit of specifically cultural activities.

Finally, "The Weight of Glory" deals specifically with the promises of final reward for the Christian. Lewis compares the position of a Christian to that of a schoolboy learning Greek. Once he learns Greek, he will have the reward of being able to read the great Greek poets, but while he is still learning he can't understand how that is going to be a reward. He might prefer to read English poets and find no analogy between the pleasure he finds there and the niceties of learning Greek grammar. In the same way, the desires and joy we find in this world are only dim reflections of the reward God has promised us, though we cannot now see any connection--our danger is that we may rest with what we think we have rather than going to the source. Lewis then goes on to deal with what the scripture specifically tells us about our reward, specifically the idea of glory. First, we have the promise of glory in the sense of acceptance by God. "It is written that we shall 'stand before' Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination... to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son." (13) On the other side, glory also means that we will share in the beauty and glory of God, which we now see dimly reflected in the joy and glory of nature. "At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door... We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in."