Asceticism, Sacrifice, and Sexual Difference: C. S. Lewis and Orthodoxy in Dialogue

A Review Essay of Further Up and Further In: Orthodox Conversations with C. S. Lewis on Scripture and Theology by Edith M. Humphrey; St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2017; 301 pages, paper, $28.00

One of the things I love about being a C. S. Lewis scholar is that it allows me to speak for and interact with churches and groups from every denomination: Baptist to Pentecostal, Presbyterian to Church of Christ, Methodist to Episcopalian, Lutheran to Catholic. I am even invited to address secular groups—conservative and liberal, academic and artistic alike—and to carry on conversations, in person or online, with Mormons and New Agers, Jews and Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. Such is the depth and breadth of Lewis that he seems to connect with nearly all people at some level. But that should not be surprising, since Lewis himself drew from a wide range of philosophers, theologians, and poets, both pagan and Christian, Catholic and Protestant.

This aspect of the self-proclaimed ordinary layman of the Church of England has ensured a steady stream of books about Lewis from authors of every denominational stripe. Still, to this point, there has been one major group of Christians that has not weighed in fully on Lewis’s legacy: the Eastern Orthodox. That is odd since close readers of Mere Christianity will be aware that Lewis was strongly attracted to the Orthodox doctrine of theosis: defined in Athanasius’ On the Incarnation (for which book Lewis wrote a fine preface) as the belief that God became like us so that we could become like him.

Thankfully, a new book from Edith Humphrey, a Canadian convert to Orthodoxy who is the William F. Orr Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theologian Seminary, promises to initiate greater dialogue between the apologetics, fiction, and literary criticism of Lewis and the rich, but often hidden, theological, philosophical, aesthetic, and mystical treasures of Orthodoxy. In Further Up and Further In: Orthodox Conversations with C. S. Lewis on Scripture and Theology, the Orthodox Humphrey reads Lewis in a way that I believe he would have wanted to be read—as a part of the tradition. In her Preface, Humphrey states clearly the two prongs of her hermeneutical approach: 1) that Lewis’s works provide us, not with “novel ideas, but windows and doors onto ancient vistas”; 2) that “Lewis was motivated by a joyful longing, and throughout his life he was intent to learn as much of the faith given to us by Christ, the apostles, and the Church fathers as he could” (12).

I must admit that as I made my way through the opening chapters, I found myself initially disappointed: that is, until I realized that I was reading Humphrey’s reading of Lewis through the lens of a false expectation. I thought, in good Protestant/rational fashion, that Further Up and Further In would be a niche book on Lewis and the Orthodox Church, committed to tracing Orthodox allusions and lining up Lewis’s teachings with those of Athanasius, Chrysostom, and the Cappadocian Fathers. Only after I accepted that it was the work of an Orthodox academic and theologian in conversation with Lewis was I able to enter myself into that conversation and have my eyes opened to dimensions of Lewis I had not fully delved or experienced before.

Meditating on Lewis from an Eastern perspective allows Humphrey to zero in on Lewis’s view of myth as something that, like an Orthodox icon, leads us “outside of ourselves” (36) and thus allows us to see things from a different point of view. She also affirms fully, alongside Lewis, the goodness of creation and the need for us to become sub-creators (rather than co-creators) who understand and participate in the full sacramental nature of creation. Finally, she discerns the vital distinction Lewis makes between “willful magic” (93) done for show and true miracles that signify God’s glory as creator and incarnate God-Man—miracles that come to us as a gift from the all-powerful Trinity.

Humphrey has much more to say on Lewis’s critique of subjectivism and defense of objective reality and morality that needs to be heard today; however, I would like to focus instead on those parts of her book that most engaged me: namely, her original interpretation of Lewis’s strangest and most haunting novel, Till We Have Faces, and her bold reading of Lewis’s view of masculinity and femininity.

In Till We Have Faces, Humphrey argues, Lewis factors in two elements of traditional Christianity that tend to be overlooked or rejected today: the positive role that asceticism can play in Christian growth; the centrality of sacrifice in God’s theological economy. Although the first-person protagonist of the novel, Orual, is ultimately regenerated by God’s grace, her disordered loves and misdirected desires call for an initial, arduous path of suffering into self-knowledge. Until disciplined effort has revealed her own “spiritual bankruptcy” (142) and the need for “the death of her own passions and self-deceit” (145), she cannot gain the human face that will allow her to look face-to-face upon the gods.

Suffering plays a necessary part in Orual’s salvation-by-grace, but it is also necessary on a larger scale. Moderns balk at the idea of a wrathful God being appeased by sacrifice, whether that sacrifice take the form of animal offerings, the placing of the land of Canaan under the ban, or the penal substitution of Christ on the Cross. Till We Have Faces, which is set in a pagan, pre-Christian realm, reminds us that even the bloodiest of pagan rituals points to deeper truths about the nature of redemption and of God’s holiness. The clean stoic philosophy of Orual’s Greek tutor is not enough; neither the refined pagan nor the sophisticated seminarian can simply ignore the severity of sin and the propitiation it calls for. We must not give in to “what well-meaning revisionists have done in our day to the mystery of the faith, scrubbing its face, and putting it under human control” (163).

However, calling for a fuller understanding of atonement that includes blood sacrifice is not the only hotly controversial topic that Humphrey takes up. If there is one element of Lewis that has come under increasing criticism, it is his assertion that Masculinity and Femininity are real things, that male and female gender are not social constructs but reflections of a God-given distinction that is written into creation.

Dialoguing with the second novel in Lewis’s Space (or Cosmic) Trilogy, Perelandra, Humphrey offers one of the most accurate and succinct summations of Lewis’s essential and sacramental view of gender that I have read: “Lewis describes bodily and psychic gender as a reflection of something greater. He argues against the idea that the principles of masculinity and femininity are simply a projection of our physically gendered state. It is the opposite. Beyond the human gendered condition, there is something even more solid to which our sexual natures point, and in which we participate—realities of which we can hardly conceive” (254). Male and female, like the Fatherhood of God and the bread and wine of the Eucharist may be expressed in metaphorical language, but they are “real, living” metaphors “that partake of the reality” to which they point (264).

In keeping with her Orthodox approach, Humphrey references a book that is now at the top of my reading list: Paul Evdokimov’s Women and the Salvation of the World: A Christian Anthropology on the Charism of Women (1995). According to Humphrey, Evdokimov “suggests a special connection between woman and the Holy Spirit, while man mirrors the Word, or the Son” concluding that “the female charism is prophetic, while the male charism is priestly” (264). Though Humphrey does not wholly endorse Lewis’ or Evdokimov’s reflections on gender, she argues that “they are worth hearing. For they stand against the flat rendering of gender today, and are at least thinking about the mystery of who we are as male and female, as human beings” (265).

Further Up and Further In abounds with such insights, but I found it somewhat lacking in a few areas. First, it needs to include a dialogue between Lewis and his influences: the influence of George MacDonald on his mythopoeic sense, of Chesterton on the distinction between pagan philosophy and folk religion, of Tolkien on sub-creation, of Owen Barfield on metaphorical language, and of Charles Williams on co-inherence and exchange (the interplay between Lewis and Dorothy Sayers is handled well). Second, it really needs to factor in Reflections on the Psalms and Screwtape Letters to round out Lewis’s views of scripture and of sin. Third, it downplays the positive effect that Plato exerted on both Lewis and the Orthodox Church. Fourth, it would do well to put Lewis and Evdokimov into conversation with John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.

Still, none of these things takes away from the vigorous and incisive conversation that Humphrey carries on with Lewis and her Orthodox faith, and Lewis emerges from the pages of her book as a more complex, mysterious, and nuanced thinker.

Louis Markos (www.Loumarkos.com), Professor in English and Scholar in Residence at Houston Baptist University, holds the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities. He is one of the keynote speakers at the 2021 Eighth Day Symposium in Wichita, KS on Jan. 14-16.