Posted on 04/23/2005 7:52:37 AM PDT by logos
A few lessons back, we made the point that holiness is nonnegotiable for deep, settled satisfaction. Now we want to insist that holiness is equally essential for true epistemological insight and profound discernment. In other words, personal character has a direct bearing on one's ability to apprehend the nature of ultimate reality.
As noted in chapter five, Lewis thought one reason God has not provided unambiguous revelation is because such a message might have engaged only the mind instead of "the whole man". God's primary purpose is not to satisfy our curiosity but rather to transform us into holy beings. With this goal in mind, it seems quite plausible that the ambiguity found in Scripture and in the world at large is necessary to elicit the holistic response God desires. If we approach the truth in holistic integrity, we can trust God to supply ever-increasing insight and psychological certitude.
This conviction, which has been advanced under the rubric of virtue epistemology in recent times, is woven throughout the Lewisian corpus. In Price Caspian virtuous Lucy can perceive the guidance of Aslan, while the rest of the children are oblivious to his presence. In Till We Have Faces the undefiled Psyche can see an invisible palace, while her sister is blinded by the perversion of possession love. In The Magician's Nephew Digory and Polly can understand Narnia's talking animals, while devious Uncle Andrew can only hear beastly inarticulate utterings.
The bottom line is that epistemological insight is more than a cognitive operation. It takes the whole person, including a purified will. Paul Holmer, author of C.S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought, has made this point well: "What we know depends upon the kind of person we have made of ourselves. The world's infinite riches, its values and worths, its pleasures and depths can be found only if we are qualified subjects."
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There is a lesson here for those who like to debate. It is in the nature of argument to take a side; it is in the nature of truth not to; rather, truth recognizes that understanding is a means to humility.
Check this out from an old saint:
. . . the very nature of the contraries themselves is not entirely without mixture of properties, each with the other, so that, as I think, all that we see in the world mutually agree, and the creation, though discovered in properties of contrary natures, is yet at union with itself. For as motion is not conceived merely as local shifting, but is also contemplated in change and alteration, and on the other hand the immovable nature does not admit motion by way of alteration, the wisdom of God has transpose these properties and wrought unchangeableness in that which is ever moving, and change in that which is immovable; doing this, it may be, by a providential dispensation, so that that property of nature which constitutes its immutability and immobility might not, when viewed in any created object, cause the creature to be accounted as God
There is a lesson here for those who like to debate. It is in the nature of argument to take a side; it is in the nature of truth not to; rather, truth recognizes that understanding is a means to humility.
Check this out from an old saint:
. . . the very nature of the contraries themselves is not entirely without mixture of properties, each with the other, so that, as I think, all that we see in the world mutually agree, and the creation, though discovered in properties of contrary natures, is yet at union with itself. For as motion is not conceived merely as local shifting, but is also contemplated in change and alteration, and on the other hand the immovable nature does not admit motion by way of alteration, the wisdom of God has transpose these properties and wrought unchangeableness in that which is ever moving, and change in that which is immovable; doing this, it may be, by a providential dispensation, so that that property of nature which constitutes its immutability and immobility might not, when viewed in any created object, cause the creature to be accounted as God
We cannot overlook the vice epistemology: when those who are not virtuous perceive more than the virtuous. It happens. Something along the lines of a Jonah complex. Prophets tend to have this disorder.
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