Although they lived two centuries apart, C. S. Lewis and John Wesley had much in common. Both were Anglicans associated with Oxford University, but more importantly, both were Evangelicals who took the Christian faith seriously and used similar metaphors to describe faith. For both of them, the things of God, although not visible to the natural eye, could nevertheless be seen with the eyes of faith.
In Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis vividly contrasts Psyche’s ability to discern the things of God with her half-sister Orual’s inability to admit, even to herself, the existence of the invisible realm. In a similar manner, John Wesley, in his sermons 19 and 45 makes reference to spiritual senses which enable the Christian believer to perceive the realms of God which remain undetected by those who have not yet been born again of the Spirit of God.
While Till We Have Faces is the retelling of a Pagan Myth, it is nevertheless possible to identify a number of Christian images in this masterpiece by C. S. Lewis, who was, after all, a Christian apologist. In fact, Lewis states that the “central alteration” in his own version of the myth “consists in making Psyche’s palace invisible to normal, mortal eyes.” It is this very palace, redolent of heavenly mysteries, which Orual is unable to see until the very end of her life.
Orual’s transformation from selfishness to selflessness was brought about through the sufferings that she experienced throughout her life, culminating in these words: “Each breath I drew let into me new terror, joy, overpowering sweetness. I was pierced through and through with the arrows of it. I was being unmade. I was no one.” This transformation was both initiated and finalized through encounters with the divine, and in the end made possible her ability to discern spiritual realities, represented in the story by the palace inhabited by her half-sister, Psyche, who told her, at last, “did I not tell you, Maia, that a day was coming when you and I would meet in my house and no cloud between us?”
At the beginning of her spiritual journey, Orual, whom Psyche called Maia, was not equipped to be able to discern the palace inhabited by Psyche. Because of this, Maia was convinced that Psyche was deluded, and this created a terrible barrier, or “cloud,” in their relationship.
According to scripture, “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered the heart of man, the things that God has prepared for those who love Him.” God has in store for us a realm of paradise far greater than anything that can be imagined. This is one of the great truths of the Christian faith that C. S. Lewis illustrates for us in Till We Have Faces. God does grant us glimpses of the glory to come, just as Psyche, a central character is this work, often imagined that she would one day be united to divinity and live in a resplendent gold and amber house on the Mountain outside of Glome. Yet, when she attained to the reality, it went far beyond anything that she could possibly have imagined.
The fact that she was married to and united with divinity in this context drives home to us the reality that, for the Christian, the bliss of the paradise to come is presented to us in Scripture as a marriage to and union with Christ. C. S. Lewis was not ignorant of this Biblical image, and made full use of it in his retelling of a well known Pagan myth, transforming it into a brilliant work of Christian literature. “Psyche, the bride of god,” is, in fact, representative of the Christian as the bride of Christ.
The Christian images inherent in the story are unmistakable. To Psyche’s half-sister Orual, none of Psyche’s perceptions of living in a palace united to the divine in heavenly bliss were real, just as it is the case that, according to Scripture, the things of the Spirit are nonsense to the natural man. The invisible realm of the Spirit is not even discernable to those who are not spiritual. There are therefore distinct differences in world view between one who is a Christian believer and one who is not. These differences tend to cause a lack of trust, resulting in division between those who believe and those who do not. For this reason, Jesus said that He came not to give peace, but a sword. In like manner, there was such a serious breach between Psyche and Orual that Orual was thinking of putting an end to Psyche’s life.
As is evident in the first chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Romans, all people, whether Christian or not, experience hints regarding the existence of the Spiritual realm. So it was that Orual did have hints of the palace which she could not at first see. However, for a long time, she suppressed them. She was well aware that a change in world view would mean that everything in her life would have to be begun over again. She said to Psyche, “If this is true, I’ve been wrong all my life. Everything has to be begun over again. Psyche, is it true? You’re not playing a game with me? Show me.” These are precisely the thoughts of those who are confronted with the truth of the Christian Gospel. If God exists, and if the Christian world view is true, then we are not in control. This is a very scary thing. This is why we resist and it is why our minds do not allow us to see the things of the Spirit until we surrender ourselves to God. If the claims of Christ are true, then major readjustments are necessary. These readjustments will often involve a complete overhaul, not only an intellectually, but morally as well.
Most people are not willing to undergo such sweeping moral and intellectual transformations without a struggle. People do not lightly give up the habits and lifestyles to which they have become accustomed. This was certainly the case for Orual. Her initial thought was that Psyche was insane. She wholeheartedly rejected what she considered to be Psyche’s delusion. She said, “I suppose my first thought must have been, ‘She’s mad.’ Anyway, my whole heart leaped to shut the door against something monstrously amiss-not to be endured. And to keep it shut. Perhaps I was fighting not to be mad myself.” When people resist the Christian gospel, it is often a wholehearted resistance. Much is at stake. People realize that a complete renovation is necessary if the Christian claims are true.
Fortunately, God intervenes on our behalf to bring about transformations of this kind. We are not capable of doing such things on our own, and a serious struggle is usually involved. In fact, C. S. Lewis once wrote that he himself was brought “kicking and struggling” into the kingdom of God. In Till We Have Faces, Psyche recognizes that it is only God who can accomplish this transformation. She says, “And perhaps, Maia, you too will learn how to see. I will beg and implore him to make you able.” At first, Orual wants no part of it. When Psyche says to her, “he will make you able to see,” Orual responds, “I don’t want it. I hate it. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Do you understand?” The world hates Christ, because it means a complete change of life to accept Him. Yet God shows His faithfulness and mercy to Orual despite her resistance. Her complete honesty before him is the very tool that He uses to bring Orual to the realization that she has been wrong in her complaint against “the gods.” When she demands an answer, she is met with complete silence, and this is all that is necessary to bring her to the point of realization that her charges were, in fact, nothing more than “poison.”
For John Wesley, also, abandonment of the self is a prerequisite for the ability to see into the invisible realm. We have seen that a central theme of Till We have Faces is that it is only through such an abandonment that one can find true meaning and, in effect, see the kingdom of God. When Orual is eventually brought to the end of herself in the last days of her life, she finally finds meaning within the larger context of her relationship to the divine and is able to see that which eluded her throughout most of her life’s journey.
In similar fashion, John Wesley in Sermon 17 (II.7) observes that without self-denial, one cannot expect to see the kingdom of God. Wesley’s 48th sermon, on the topic of self-denial, asserts that Christian discipleship is impossible without renunciation of our own will in favor of obedience to God, precisely the same lesson that Orual learns at the end of her life.
John Wesley understands a person’s spiritual senses to be directly analogous to the physical senses. For Wesley, assurance of peace is part and parcel of the inner witness. He wrote in part I of “A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion” that “as we are figuratively said to see the light of faith, so by a like figure of speech we are said to feel this peace and joy and love; that, is, we have an inward experience of them, which we cannot find any fitter word to express.” His emphasis here upon the words “see” and “feel” underscores his understanding that, just as there are physical senses, so are there spiritual senses. The implication here is that the spiritual world is real and can be sensed, just as the physical world is known by sight, hearing, and touch.
In his sermon, “The New Birth,” Wesley provides an extended analogy between a new Christian, who has never used his spiritual senses, and newborn baby, who has not yet learned to use his eyes to see or his ears to hear. In both cases, it is necessary to learn how to use the senses. A child in the womb has never used them, nor has the non-Christian had the occasion to use the spiritual senses until experiencing the new birth. Wesley writes, “How exactly does the parallel hold in all these instances? While a man [or woman] is in a mere natural state, before he is born of God, he [or she] has, in a spiritual sense, eyes and sees not.”
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Western world increasingly began to perceive reality as in some way separate from the self. Wesley’s view of reality was more participatory. Owen Barfield, a close associate of C. S. Lewis and member of the inklings, advocated a similar understanding of reality, and Barfield’s views may have been an important influence upon Lewis, since both Barfield and Lewis sought to bring about a re-enchantment of our contemporary understanding of reality.
This re-enchantment can only be brought about fully through the crucified life. In Perelandra, the second volume of Lewis’s space trilogy, there is an allusion to the crucified life, or death to self, and the understanding that His yoke is easy and His burden is light, to the extent that, indeed, one’s meat and drink, ideally, is to do the will of the Father. Ransom’s thoughts after being in the presence of the Queen of Perelandra were described as follows: “When a man asserts his independence [he] feels that now at last he’s on his own. When you felt like that, then the very air seemed too crowded to breathe; a complete fullness seemed to be excluding you from a place which, nevertheless, you were unable to leave. But when you gave in to the thing, gave yourself up to it, there was no burden to be borne. It became not a load but a medium, a sort of splendor as of eatable, drinkable, breathable gold, which fed and carried you and not only poured into you but out from you as well. Taken the wrong way, it suffocated; taken the right way, it made terrestrial life seem, by comparison, a vacuum.” For the Queen of Perelandra, obedience to God was natural, easy, and fulfilling. “I am his beast, and all His biddings are joys,” she said. The implication is that this state of always being very glad and happy to obey God would be the ideal, also, for humanity redeemed from the fall.
Both C. S. Lewis and John Wesley thus recognized that the truths of scripture and of the spiritual life are discernable only to the one who lives the crucified life, that is, a life of abandonment of the self to God. Apart from any willingness to let go of self-centeredness, the real truth is elusive. On the other hand, those who truly wish to lead selfless lives and center their lives in Christ will be empowered to do so and will be led into all truth.
Richard M. Riss, Ph.D.
Professor of Church History
Somerset Christian College
Notes:
[i]C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1966/1971).
Till We Have Faces, 23, 33, 74, 75, 76, 109, 144.
Till We Have Faces, 112, 115, 16, 118, 119, 120, 126.
Till We Have Faces, 117, 119, 121, 127, 138, 148.
Till We Have Faces, 141, 142, 169.
C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (London: Fontana Books, 1959), 183.
John Wesley, Sermon 17 (II.7), in Albert C. Outler, ed., The Works of John Wesley, vol.1 (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1984), 412. John Wesley wrote here that it is a “vain hope . . . that a child of Adam should ever expect to see the kingdom of Christ and of God . . . without a constant and continued course of general self-denial.”
John Wesley, Sermon 48 (II.4), in Works 2:246. Here, John Wesley states that those who have not been awakened “do not attain faith, because they will not ‘deny themselves,’ or ‘take up their cross.'” Earlier in this sermon (I.2), 241-42, he had identified self-denial with renunciation of one’s will in favor of following the will of God.
John Wesley, Works, 11:171 (emphasis in the original).
For a fuller treatment of Wesley’s understanding of the spiritual senses as analogous to the five physical senses, see chapters two and three of Laura Bartels Felleman, “The Evidence of Things Not Seen: John Wesley’s Use of Natural Philosophy” (Ph.D. diss., Drew University, 2004), 23-99.
John Wesley, Sermon 45 (II.4) in Works, 2:192.
Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances, 2d ed. (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988).
C. S. Lewis, Perelandra (New York: Macmillan, 1965/1970), 47. Lewis writes of Ransom that, “when he opened his eyes-which had closed involuntarily at the shock of moisture-all the colors about him seemed richer and the dimness of that world seemed clarified. A re-enchantment fell upon him.”