The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses

Lewis cautiously approaches the topic on which he was asked to speak by offering some definitions and assumptions. He takes the question to mean whether (Christian) theology is merely poetry or whether it offers another, additional kind of truth. In other words, the question is whether theology’s appeal to the imagination outweighs its appeal to truth. Lewis begins to answer the question by observing that, to him, Christianity does not have a stronger poetic appeal than other belief systems or mythologies, including pantheism, pagan polytheism, or Unitarianism. Conversely, nonbelievers in Christianity are often the ones who seem most to enjoy Christianity’s “aesthetic trappings.” Lewis goes so far as to argue that in a certain sense “belief spoils a system for the imagination” (120).

However, this principle is not universally true. Belief systems can become imaginatively attractive to people once they believe them to be true. Lewis stakes a claim that “Christians do enjoy their world picture, aesthetically, once they have accepted it as true” (122). This is true of all belief systems, for “all world views yield poetry to those who believe them by the mere fact of being believed” (126). Scientific materialism is a worldview imbued with a tragic pathos that is imaginatively compelling, but Lewis does not on this account find it true. Its truth does not depend on its aesthetic qualities.

Lewis now considers two other senses in which the question of theology as poetry might resonate. Firstly, Christianity has elements that resemble poetic elements in pagan religions. However, these resemblances neither prove nor disprove the truth of Christianity. If the theology is true, it stands to reason that different cultures will have had glimpses of that truth. The real difference between pagan myths and Christianity is that the latter is based on concrete historical events. Rather than defeating paganism with “superior poetry,” then, Christianity in a sense made religion less poetic and more historical. Even within the Bible, there is a steady progression from the legendary or semi-mythical to the historical—a process that Lewis sums up under the slogan “Myth became Fact” (129).

The last way in which theology can be considered “mere poetry” has to do with the use of metaphorical or symbolic language, which Christianity uses to describe things like the relationships among the Persons of the Trinity or Jesus’s ascension. Here, Lewis makes two points. First, although early Christians used symbolic imagery, they would not have recognized that there was any distinction between such imagery and the moral or spiritual truths it was meant to convey. Second, symbolic and metaphorical language is unavoidable; even if one seeks to discard it, one will only end up substituting one metaphorical image for another.

Lewis concludes that to embrace theology is not to abandon reason in favor of “taste.” Lewis cites a personal example: He did not first accept Christianity and then reject scientific materialism. On the contrary, he abandoned scientific materialism on rational grounds before he embraced Christianity. Lewis found scientific materialism a self-contradictory “myth” because, while it depends on reason being absolute, it postulates that reason is itself a random byproduct of evolution. Further, whatever may be the truth of biological evolution, its intellectual application—“universal evolutionism”—Lewis finds to be an illusion. This is because this worldview postulates a universal process “from imperfect to perfect” that does not correspond with observed reality (137).

Having abandoned materialism, Lewis found himself led logically by degrees into idealism, then into theism, and finally into Christianity because of the compelling figure of Christ himself. Lewis found that the Christian worldview was broad enough to accommodate science and all other facets of reality, whereas scientific materialism cannot really explain anything, including science itself. Lewis concludes that in passing from scientific materialism to theology, he has passed from “dreams” to “waking.”