The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses

Lewis proposes to discuss glossolalia, or the speaking in tongues that the disciples of Christ experienced after the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Lewis admits that this phenomenon has been a “stumbling block” for him. On the one hand, it is a strange and embarrassing phenomenon, appearing in the present day to be a form of “hysteria” producing “gibberish.” On the other hand, glossolalia in the New Testament was clearly not gibberish but the speaking of real languages, and the phenomenon is “built into the very fabric of the birth story of the Church” (93).

The difficulty, Lewis argues, is that while in some cases glossolalia is “pathological” in nature, in other cases it is the Holy Spirit speaking. However, the skeptic will claim that if it is pathological in the majority of cases, it must be so in the other cases, too. Lewis expands this dilemma into a larger issue: the continuity of things that have natural causes with things that have spiritual or mystical causes. He questions where the natural ends and the spiritual begins, as well as how one can avoid the conclusion that all spiritual experience can be reduced to natural phenomena. A skeptic would argue that everything that is claimed to be spiritual can be traced to natural causes.

Lewis proposes an example that proves the skeptic’s case is false. The diarist Samuel Pepys describes an experience in which hearing beautiful music made him feel “sick.” Although the experience of being sick is unpleasant, Pepys desired to have this experience again by playing music himself. Bolstering this with his own similar experiences, Lewis concludes that emotion and sensation are entirely distinct. The emotional life is “higher” than the life of the senses. The emotions use “the same sensation to express more than one emotion” (98). What humans discover in their emotional lives is thus a “transposition or adaptation from a richer to a poorer medium” (99).

From this, Lewis expands the phenomenon of “transposition” to the relationship between the natural and the spiritual. First, he argues, “what is happening in the lower medium can be understood only if we know the higher medium” (100). Second, “symbolism” is a helpful but imperfect way to describe the relationship of the lower to the higher medium; it covers only some cases. While written words symbolize spoken words, the relationship of drawing to real objects is more complex. Pictures are themselves part of the physical world they depict, so that a picture of the sun, for instance, can be said to share in the sun’s nature by virtue of the sun shining on it.

Lewis now responds to the objection that spiritual realities are merely manifestations of natural phenomena. Using the analogy of transposition, Lewis argues that the skeptic’s objection is the mistaken conclusion of someone trying to approach a higher reality from a lower one. The picture changes when one approaches the question of transposition from above. One can then understand the lower as an aspiration toward or imperfect version of the higher. Of course, human limitations necessitate that one picture the higher in terms of the lower—for example, to picture heaven in terms of earthly images. However, Lewis prefers to stress that spiritual realities build upon—that they are more than not less than—earthly realities. In fact, transposition is the means by which “heavenly bounties” are “embodied during this life in our temporal experience” (111).

To conclude, Lewis adds four points. First, he clarifies that he is not arguing that natural things developed or evolved into spiritual ones. In fact, he is saying just the reverse: There is a “Spiritual Reality” that preexisted natural realities and gives them meaning. Second, Lewis tentatively suggests that transposition can shed light on the Christian idea of the Incarnation and on the drawing of humanity into divinity that that mystery implies. Third, he observes that skeptics claim the upper hand by accepting only facts and ignoring meaning. This is itself an example of looking at things only from below, according to Lewis, but until it is recognized as such, the skeptical case will continue to look plausible. Finally, Lewis suggests that transposition, by bridging the gap between the spiritual and the sensory, throws light on the Christian idea of the resurrection of the body.