Book Review: C.S. Lewis: A Biography by A.N. Wilson

This biography of Lewis certainly never strays into a hagiography. This is certainly a critical work, but one wonders whether this criticism does not arise primarily from the author’s concurrent loss of religious faith and contempt for those who are, perhaps, merely Christian. As such, it seems a work of limited value; the value it does contain seems primarily in the author’s ability to notice and chronicle the impacts particular works of literature and particular friendships had on Lewis and how these influences can be recognized in his various works.

Particularly annoying – and here one can detect the methods of modern biblical criticism and redaction – is the author’s insistence that, while Lewis remained a mystery to those who knew him best, with the benefit of distance and the ability to sift through Lewis’ papers and his associates’ memories, he will unravel this mystery for his readers. He will demonstrate the psychological influences that led Lewis to become the man he was and to believe what he believed. This leads the author to critique Lewis’ autobiographical works for omitting so much that the author thinks is essential to Lewis’ development, ignoring Lewis’ own caveat that, Surprised by Joy for example, is only the story of his conversion rather than a more or less in-depth or comprehensive account of his life. The author insists again and again that Lewis’ childhood tragedies and struggles were something he was “compelled to repeat or work out[.]”

Several times throughout the biography, the author takes issue with Lewis’ dislike and lack of interest in modern literature and modern philosophy. He seems not to realize, or not to consider important, that few people outside those that write such works either read or enjoy them. He fails also adequately to take into consideration Lewis’ concept of Joy (that is, for a longing unfulfilled by anything on earth, teaching that we were made for something more) or Lewis’ commitment – demonstrated by his talks to the English military during WWII and his BBC broadcasts – to defending the faith of the everyman Christian. The author seems to reduce Lewis’ desire for Joy merely to a lack of fulfillment, nurture, and peace in his childhood.

Lewis is also critiqued for his reading habits. “The curious thing is that Lewis… had read almost no works of biblical scholarship. The revolution in New Testament scholarship which had come about during the hundred years before he wrote The Problem of Pain appears to have passed him by.” And for good reason! What nonsense it all is really. The author seems not to understand that for the man whose conversion depended upon seeing Christianity as a myth that “happened to be true,” such silly quibbles about authorship and textual dating could (and should) hold no interest. He writes, “Lewis was fully aware of the fact that there was a purely intellectual snobbery abroad in England at that time, more powerful to any genuine intellectual stumbling-block to faith.” He simultaneously accuses Lewis of cheerfully abandoning “the depth and range of his historical imagination in favor of a style of rhetoric which seems more reminiscent of the Belfast police courts.” But isn’t such a style precisely the antidote required by “purely intellectual snobbery”? “What is so troubling is that the Discarded Image Lewis is there beside the bullying rhetorician and we do not know which of them is going to speak next.” Precisely, Lewis understood and despised modern intellectual conceits; sometimes people simply have to be bullied or shamed out of them. Better to enter life shamed than to enter into hell with one’s pride intact.

Like many works that set out to debunk the errors of previous works, Wilson’s suffers from an unnecessarily antagonistic and contradictory tone. He desires to praise Lewis the literary critic and Oxford don, but to denigrate and destroy the Lewis popularly admired by his readers – not only the “American” Lewis who is a non-smoking, teetotaling evangelical, but also the Lewis so profoundly interested in giving a popular defense of the faith. Such an attitude is both regrettable and profoundly uninteresting; it is, perhaps, the most serious failure of this biography.

A.N. Wilson

Perfect Friendship

Friendship seems, too, to hold states together, and lawgivers ought to care more for it than for justice; for unanimity seems to be something like friendship, and this they aim at most of all, and expel faction as their worst enemy; and when men are friends they have no need of justice, while when they are just they need friendship as well, and the truest form of justice is thought to be a friendly quality. (Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics)

January 2^nd is the feast of St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzen. They, along with St. Gregory of Nyssa (St. Basil’s brother) are known as the Cappadocian Fathers. Basil and Gregory Nazianzen had a deep Christian and intellectual friendship, as recounted by St. Gregory in his sermon “Two bodies, but a single spirit.”

St. Gregory’s account parallels Aristotle’s description of the prefect friendship, that of good men both pursuing truth and virtue. This principle is Scriptural as well, good friends make each other better as iron sharpens iron. This friendship is a love that desires the good of the other person and naturally has a sort of permanence so long as all parties continue seeking the good.

One of the characteristics of such friendship is security from slander (by one’s friends) and a desire for others to know of the value of one’s friend. St. Gregory writes of St. Basil,

I was not alone at that time in my regard for my friend, the great Basil. I knew his irreproachable conduct, and the maturity and wisdom of his conversation. I sought to persuade others, to whom he was less well known, to have the same regard for him. Many fell immediately under his spell, for they had already heard of him by reputation and hearsay.

He writes that their affection was increased as they learned together and realized that they shared the same motivations – a life of true wisdom. St. Gregory writes of the unanimity and freedom of this love,

The same hope inspired us: the pursuit of learning. This is an ambition especially subject to envy. Yet between us there was no envy. On the contrary, we made capital out of our rivalry. Our rivalry consisted, not in seeking the first place for oneself but in yielding it to the other, for we each looked on the other’s success as his own.

Through the perfect friendship, friends spur each other on to godliness. This requires rebuke when necessary, and the humility to recognize other’s strengths and one’s own weakness. St. Gregory writes,

We followed the guidance of God’s law and spurred each other on to virtue. If it is not too boastful to say, we found in each other a standard and rule for discerning right from wrong.

I was fortunate to fund such friends when I attended Patrick Henry College (though I'll not claim we were so wise or so virtuous as St. Gregory and St. Basil). Under the tutelage of wise and caring professors, our friendship of pleasure (to return to Aristotle's categories) grew into the better sort of friendship. Together we pursued truth and virtue, rebuking and submitting to each other when needed. We challenged each other's ideas and assumptions secure in the knowledge that we had the same goal - wisdom.

St. Thomas Aquinas writes that "There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship." As he notes, "Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious." This is very true.

The Manger and the Altar

Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you;

Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

Angels Appearing Before the Shepherds, Henry Ossawa Tanner

“The power of the ministry of God translateth out of darkness into glory, it raiseth men from earth and bringeth God himself down from heaven, by blessing visible elements it maketh them invisible grace, it giveth daily the Holy Ghost, it hath to dispose of that flesh which was given for the life of the world and that blood which was poured out to redeem souls." (Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity)

"The Eucharist is the sacrament of Love: it signifies Love, it produces love. The Eucharist is the consummation of the whole spiritual life." (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica)

Again and again throughout his earthly ministry, Our Lord emphasized the importance of the believer's union with him - a union accomplished through baptism and partaking of his body and blood. This was a stumbling block to many of his hearers, despite the rich Eucharistic imagery of the Old Covenant. 

While preaching, Our Lord compares himself to the manna that sustained the Hebrews during their desert sojourns. With the comparison, he includes a promise:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.

Through this message, Our Lord demonstrates the incarnational manner of salvation. Christ was made man not merely to provide forgiveness of sins, but to restore man's nature and all of creation. Through this restoration, man becomes united with God through union with the incarnate Christ. This results in the glorification foretold in Our Lord's transfiguration. 

But the good news of the Incarnation is inseparable from the means by which we are united with it - altar and sacrament. This truth is presented immediately upon Our Lord's birth.

The Blessed Virgin Mary and her husband Joseph, having received the message of the gospel from the archangel Gabriel, set the infant Christ in a feeding trough. Later that night, angels proclaim the sign of the infant in a feeding trough to local shepherds. They will find the Saviour in the City of David, Bethlehem, "the house of bread." The first presentation of Our Lord is as a Eucharistic symbol. The manger is the altar and the cross, the Child, the Bread of Life.

Incarnation as Re-Creation

O God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth;

Have mercy upon us.

O God the Son, Redeemer of the world;

Have mercy upon us.

O God the Holy Ghost, Sanctifier of the faithful;

Have mercy upon us.

O holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, one God;

Have mercy upon us.

By the mystery of thy holy Incarnation

Good Lord, deliver us.

The Creation - James Tissot

In the beginning, God created all things through the Word. All matter and all life has being only insofar as that being is gifted by God. All being is participatory. When man rejected God, he turned away from being and fell into corruption. Man, made from nothing, returns to nothingness without his Creator. In the beginning, God formed man from the Earth and gave man dominion over the Earth. Man’s rejection of his Creator consequently unleashed disorder and corruption upon Earth. The redemption of man and the redemption of Earth go hand in hand as a form of re-creation.

God could have destroyed this world and begun anew. His being is not dependent upon his creation. But this would not be fitting, as St. Athanasius writes:

Now in truth this great work was peculiarly suited to God’s goodness. For if a king , having founded a house or city, if it be beset by bandits from the carelessness of its inmates, does not by any means neglect it, but avenges and reclaims it as his own work , having regard not to the carelessness of the inhabitants, but to what beseems himself.

A Human Skeleton - James Wark

Man has a complex problem as his sin carries both intrinsic and extrinsic penalties. Man rightly deserves God’s wrath for violating his law – a law not merely of whim, but of being itself. Man surrenders himself and the world to the domination of the Devil. Finally, both man and the created order are subject to the corruption and decay of Death. Repentance can restore man’s relationship with God, but the deprivation of grace and corruption of nature needed to be repaired.

In the beginning, in a timeless moment, God the source of all being created the world outside himself through the Word. And it was very good. But man chose darkness over light because his deeds were evil. 

Then came, at a predetermined moment, a moment in time and of time
A moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call history: transecting, bisecting the world of time, a moment in time but not like a moment of time,
A moment in time but time was made through that moment: for without the meaning   there is no time, and that moment of time gave the meaning. 

A moment when the Word of God entered his creation and began to re-create it from the inside. 

What was required for such grace and such recall, but the Word of God, which had also at the beginning made everything out of nought? For His it was once more both to bring the corruptible to incorruption, and to maintain intact the just claim of the Father upon all. For being Word of the Father, and above all, He alone of natural fitness was both able to recreate everything, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be ambassador for all with the Father. (St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word)

 Man brings sin and death into the world, the Word of God made man brings forgiveness, and life, and resurrection.

Then He also points out the reason why it was necessary for none other than God the Word Himself to become incarnate; as follows: “For it became Him, for Whom are all things, and through Whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory , to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through suffering;” [Heb. 2:10] by which words He means, that it belonged to none other to bring man back from the corruption which had begun, than the Word of God, Who had also made them from the beginning. (Ibid.)

Salvation, therefore, is incarnational. It can never be simply thinking or believing or doing the right thing. What is necessary is union with the Word of God. It is through union with Christ that we can

The Incarnation - Msgr. Anthony A. LaFemina

participate in his perfect humanity and have our nature restored.

And that it was in order to the sacrifice for bodies such as His own that the Word Himself also assumed a body, to this, also, they refer in these words : “Forasmuch then as the children are the sharers in blood and flesh, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same, that through death He might bring to naught Him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” (Ibid.)

But this is no surprise. This is Our Lord's own proclamation in the holy gospels. He says "Except a man be born again, except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." "If I wash thee not, thou has no part with me."

The incarnation teaches us that we are unable to save ourselves. Our believing the right things or doing the right things cannot heal the corruption of our nature. Only in being united to Christ, the Word of God that created the world, can we be re-created in the image of God. In the Word-made-Flesh we see the image of God perfect in man. Only through union with him can we participate in the sanctity of his nature, the perfection of his life, the sacrifice and satisfaction of his death, and the victory of his resurrection. Only through the Incarnation can the world be made new.

A moment in time but time was made through that moment: for without the meaning there is no time, and that moment of time gave the meaning.

Life of Christ - Unknown 15th Century Artist

The Incarnation as the Source of Meaning

So much of what passes for modern Christianity has forgotten that all theology is essentially Christology. One place where this is especially clear is the abandonment of a robust theology of the Incarnation. When was the last time you heard a sermon on the Incarnation? For the early Church, as evidenced by the writings of the Fathers, the Incarnation was an issue of central importance – one which frequently divided the orthodox from the heretics.

This Advent, I am meditating on the Incarnation and what it means for all of theology. Being a political theorist by training, this meditation necessarily leads into thinking about human nature and community. The Incarnation stands utterly opposed to Gnosticism – of both the theological and political variety. As such, it is the foundation of a truly Christian philosophy. I plan to continue developing these ideas over the Advent season.

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In his book, Miracles, C.S. Lewis describes the Incarnation as an invasion,

The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation.… Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this.… every particular Christian miracle manifests at a particular place and moment the character and significance of the Incarnation. There is no question in Christianity of arbitrary interferences just scattered about. It relates not a series of disconnected raids on Nature but the various steps of a strategically coherent invasion—an invasion which intends complete conquest and “occupation.”

This is also how Our Lord presents himself. When asked to read the Scripture at the synagogue in Nazareth, he reads from the prophet Isaiah,

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

Then he closes the scroll, sits down, and says,               

This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.

When St. John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask Our Lord if he was the Messiah, Our Lord replied, 

Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me. 

I have often heard Christians warn against forgetting about Easter during Christmas time, because the Cross is the true meaning of Christmas. I disagree; the Incarnation gives meaning to the Cross, Christmas gives meaning to Easter. For this reason, C.S. Lewis calls the Incarnation, “the Grand Miracle”:

the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. (emphasis added)

The Incarnation shows us that Our Lord’s conception, birth, life, ministry, death, resurrection, ascension, and awaited return do not merely provide us with a covering for our sin and a ticket to heaven. The Incarnation is Our Lord’s invasion of the territory surrendered by Adam to Sin, Death, and the Devil. By taking on flesh and man’s nature, Our Lord redeems it and all that was put under the dominion of man. This is why Our Lord’s life is as important to his mission as his death and resurrection. In the words he spoke, he declared his kingdom. In the miracles he performed, he showed his kingship.

In his poem “Chrouses from ‘The Rock’” T.S. Eliot attempts to describe the central importance of the incarnation. He begins by describing the man’s struggles in the world of sin, their search for God, their turning to idols or to despair, echoing again and again, “Waste and void. Waste and void. And darkness upon the face of the deep.” Then he describes the Incarnation.

Then came, at a predetermined moment, a moment in time and of time,/A moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call history: transecting, bisecting the world of time, a moment in time but not like a moment of time,/A moment in time but time was made through that moment: for without the meaning there is no time, and that moment of time gave the meaning.

Our Lord can heal the brokenhearted, preach deliverance to the captive, and proclaim good news to the poor, because in his suffering, he redeemed suffering. We do not have to despair, we do not have to “stand with empty hands and palms turned upwards.”

The faith and the love are in the waiting. Our Lord has proclaimed his kingdom; the victory is ours. As we await his return and final victory, we are called to proclaim the good news of the Incarnation. While this means first a proclamation of the forgiveness of sins and union with Christ, this also means the proclamation of the redemption of human life. There is, therefore, a Christian – that is Incarnational – way of living every aspect of life. Incarnational Christians do not deny the goodness of material existence, the reality of pain or disease or suffering, of human love and sexuality and family. Through the Incarnation, Christians see human life validated and perfected. The Incarnation is simultaneously an affirmation and an inspiration.

But the Incarnation also forbids Christians to become escapists. Just as God did not abandon his creation but entered it in order to redeem it, so Christians should not expect a ticket out of God’s work of redeeming the world. We will not be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease, as Isaac Watts reminds us. If we would reign with Our Lord, we must fight with him. This fighting is primarily done through the proclamation of the good news on all fronts. We must proclaim the good news against sin, against economic exploitation, against racism, against fear, and against despair. We must build for the kingdom.

 The Church is the kingdom of God on earth through union with Christ, a kingdom not of this world. She is the door through which one is welcomed into the kingdom of God. Because Christianity is Incarnational, Christians must distance themselves from anyone who would seek to proclaim Christ without the Church. There is no unembodied path to God.

The Incarnation is the fount of meaning for a world crushed by Evil. Through it suffering and loss are redeemed. Through it man and nature are affirmed. The Incarnation of Our Lord provides the pattern and inspiration for the work of the Church in furthering his invasion of the kingdom of Sin, Death, and the Devil. The Incarnation provides the hope for the King’s return and the final victory.

Faith as Gift

Old Testament Reading for the second Sunday in Advent: Isaiah 55:1-2

Come every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? And your labour for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.

The story of the world is a story of gift. Man receives the gift of his being in a world given to him, designed to bring him to God. “'God is love:' everything has its origin in God's love, everything is shaped by it, everything is directed towards it. Love is God's greatest gift to humanity, it is his promise and our hope (Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate).” God, perfectly loving, does not content himself with showering us with gifts; knowing that our true good is found only in him, he uses those gifts to direct us to himself. But there seemed to be a catch: in order to make us the true beneficiaries of his gifts, he gave us free will. This “risk” is the price of love.

Paradies, Lucas Cranach the Elder

And man fell. Ignoring the intended purpose of God's gifts – union and communion with him, man abused those gifts in an attempt to “be like gods.” And so begins the story of man in the world, of man's using the gifts from God to fight against him. Man used his free will to disobey the one restriction God placed on his gifts. Human history is fraught with this abuse. Man, rather than receiving God's gifts with gratitude, has tended instead to attempt to dominate his neighbors and the world. Whether destroying whole species of animals in circus entertainments or sacrificing the common good at the altar of capital(ism), the story of man in the world is one of domination rather than inhabitation.
This attitude stands in stark contrast to the loved expressed by God who, for no benefit to himself, gifted man into existence. God, who is Love, seeks not his own (I Corinthians 13:5). This love sent Christ, Emmanuel, into the world as the supreme gift of the supreme Lover. This Gift, like all the others, is designed to bring us to God. Through the means of grace, man is able to receive the gift of faith. Through faith, man is able to love and commune with God and his neighbor and to love and inhabit the world.

Charity is love received and given. It is “grace” (cháris). Its source is the wellspring of the Father's love for the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Love comes down to us from the Son. It is creative love, through which we have our being; it is redemptive love, through which we are recreated. Love is revealed and made present by Christ (cf. Jn 13:1) and “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5). As the objects of God's love, men and women become subjects of charity, they are called to make themselves instruments of grace, so as to pour forth God's charity and to weave networks of charity (Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate).

But man's error persists, and he seeks to ignore the giftedness of grace and love and to come to God on his own terms – just as the first man did in the garden. Why? Thomas Merton suggests,

We reject [love] entirely and absolutely, and will not acknowledge it, simply because it does not please us to be loved. Perhaps the inner motive is the fact of being loved disinterestedly reminds us that we all need love from others, and depend upon the charity of others to carry on our own lives. And we refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation (The Seven Story Mountain).

The result is a “Christianity” devoid of the sacraments and wonder whose adherents ultimately insist on having a part in their salvation. Rejecting the grace in the gifts of Baptism and Holy Eucharist, they insist on “making a decision for Christ,” “inviting Christ into your heart,” or “having faith.” But,

If justification and sanctification are not just God’s work being done in and for me by Christ, but also my work of responding to God and giving Him my best, then ultimately I am left with despair, because the very best that I have will never be enough to vanquish my sin or to fill the big empty hole that lives inside of me. And I will always be left to wonder whether I really have it, whether I am a real Christian or not, whether I am really saved or just in the queue where they give out salvation to all the good little boys and girls (The Conciliar Anglican).

This despair is the despair of our father and mother in the garden who realized that the fig leaves could not cover their sin. Like our first parents, this despair persists with our efforts to achieve holiness on our own.

Now that you know what Jesus did for you, get out there and stay pure, never falling into your old ways, doing good things. You are God’s hands and feet in the world. He’s relying on you to make the difference. He needs you to apply it in your life. He’s made it possible for you to be saved, but now you have to live that out through your own good works (Ibid.)

This is a poverty akin to spending money on “that which is not bread” in an attempt to assuage hunger. As ever, what God offers freely is so much more.

It is more than just forgiveness. It is more than just a second chance. It is more than we can ever hope to achieve through moral shaming or bucking up. What Christ has done for us is to make it as if we were deserving of His share, not in an artificial way but in a real way. And that good Word, given to the sinner who has become convicted of his or her sin, is quite enough to change the heart and cure the soul. But we don’t believe it. We think there has to be more, so we apply extra bits...the added testimonies and declarations of faith of the Evangelical, or the added social justice and healing of the world of the Liberal. In all cases, it is no longer just Christ. It is Christ plus [insert extra item here]. As soon as we make it Christ plus anything else of our own making, we are doomed (Ibid.)

Baptism is “a death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness whereby we are made the children of grace (1928 BCP).” Holy Eucharist “is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God's action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit (Congregation of Rites, instruction, Eucharisticum mysterium, 6).” Both are gifts of God designed to bring us to communion with him and to help us remain there; both seem hard to accept for that very reason – they are gifts. Accepting faith as a gift through grace brings hope rather than despair.

But if our salvation is God’s work alone, there is both hope and comfort for people in all conditions who can look to their Baptism and know that Christ has saved them, who can look to the Word that has been preached in their hearing and know that it brings faith...Christ is not a possession. His grace is a gift that runs through the hands of the priest like water, into the waiting parched mouths of the people of God. We need not add anything to the mix to make it better. We need only to open our hands and let the living water run through, to open our mouths and drink (Conciliar Anglican, “The Right and Wrong Way to be a Pastor”).

This gift is had without money and without price, yet its worth is infinite.

God's Love or, Why I am not Reformed

Near the beginning of his Confessions-esque autobiography The Seven Story Mountain, Thomas Merton recounts a childhood story. He tells of playing with his friends and his refusal to allow his younger brother to play with them - “if they did try to come and get into our hut, or even to look at it, we would chase them away with stones.” For Merton, this came to give him a picture of all sin. He describes the scene,

When I think now of that part of my childhood, the picture I get of my brother John Paul is this: … standing quite still, with his arms hanging down at his sides, and gazing in our direction, afraid to come any nearer on account of the stones, as insulted as he is saddened, and his eyes full of indignation and sorrow. And yet he does not go away. We shout at him to get out of there, to beat it, and go home, and wing a couple of more rocks in that direction, and he does not go away. We tell him to play in some other place. He does not move. 

And there he stands, not sobbing, not crying, but angry and unhappy and offended and tremendously sad. And yet he is fascinated by what we are doing, nailing shingles all over our new hut. And his tremendous desire to be with us and to do what we are doing will not permit him to go away. The law written in his nature says that he must be with his elder brother, and do what he is doing: and he cannot understand why this law of love is being so wildly and unjustly violated in his case.

Written into human nature is the desire to be loved and to love in return. Understanding this, Merton addresses the true nature of sin as he continues.

Many times it was like that. And in a sense, this terrible situation is the pattern and prototype of all sin: the deliberate and formal will to reject disinterested love for us for the purely arbitrary reason that we simply do not want it. We will to separate ourselves from that love. We reject it entirely and absolutely, and will not acknowledge it, simply because it does not please us to be loved. Perhaps the inner motive is the fact of being loved disinterestedly reminds us that we all need love from others, and depend upon the charity of others to carry on our own lives. And we refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation.

This description of sin fascinated me for three reasons: 1) it parallels St. Augustine's writings on love and the importance of ordered loves; 2) it is so often true of me; 3) it seems symptomatic of so much of modern Christianity.

Just last Sunday, I attended a protestant worship service after going to early mass at my Anglican church. The sermon, which interestingly enough seems to take the place of the Sacrament as the focal point of the service, centered on the first chapter of Jonah and emphasized the will and sovereignty of God. According to the sermon, the chief end of man was to “glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” God's will was to bring glory to himself; this will motivated his actions toward mankind, and his sovereignty prevented the thwarting of his will. I sat mute in horror (perhaps also out of politeness/cowardice). The God who creates and sustains the worlds through love, the God who became man, who turned his back on himself and died to redeem me, was described as supremely self-obsessed.

I ought to clarify my objection. St. Thomas Aquinas writes in On the Perfection of Religious Life, “Love is orderly and just, when the greater good is preferred to the lesser good.” God then, in order to be just – to give to himself his due, must love himself first and foremost. According to St. Anselm, God is “that than which nothing greater can be thought.” On this level, I accept a sort of divine self-obession. To give greater love to a lesser entity would be a failure of love. But I think the type of protestant approach that centers on God's willing himself glory goes much farther and either leads to or consists of (or both) deeper misunderstandings.

The first of these is a misunderstanding of the nature of the Holy Trinity. The Athanasian creed states that, “the Catholic Faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all One, the Glory Equal, the Majesty Co-Eternal.” There is then, community within the Godhead; this community leads to self-sufficiency. Because of the multiplicity of persons, God is able to be love, to be loving, without any created things. Because of that multiplicity, his glory is already perfect. God glorifies himself, in himself, perfectly. This protestant misunderstanding¹ fails to understand God as he is and actually decreases his glory.

This view also fails to understand love. Thomas Merton describes God's love as disinterested – that is as regards himself. Love is eternally giving, particularly in the form described as agape. St. Thomas Aquinas writes in his Summa of Christian Teaching, “True love requires one to will another's good as one's own.” Julian of Norwich writes of the central importance of love in God's relation to the world, 

Love is our Lord's meaning....Before God made us he loved us, which love was never abated and never will be. And in this love he has done all his works, and in this love he has made all things profitable to us, and in this love our life is everlasting. In our creation we had beginning, but the love in which he created us was in him from without beginning. In this love we have our beginning, and all this shall we see in God without end (Showings).

 The stunning characteristic of this love of God is its activity on behalf of his beloved. St. Ignatius of Loyola writes in Spiritual Exercises, “The effect of true love is the reciprocal communication of all good things between the persons who love each other; whence it follows that charity cannot exist without sacrifice.” Dante notes that love, while kindled by goodness, increases virtue only when expressed outwardly - "Amore,/acceso di virtù, sempre altro accese,/pur che la fiamma sua paresse fore.”² This activity on our behalf is consistent with the nature of love, the nature of God himself. To suggest that God created us primarily to increase his glory attacks the very nature of God.

This attack involves both God's self-sufficiency and the nature of love itself. If God's glory can be increased by his creation, then he is not sufficiently glorified in himself. If his love is ultimately focused on himself, then love itself it not what we have been taught to believe. Nobody would consider human actions motivated by a desire for glory to be loving – how then can we say this of God? The Bible itself presents a different message: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13).” True love is always directed outward toward the beloved; the more perfect the love, the less self-directed the love becomes. God's love is perfect.

Far from supreme self-obsession, God's love is only interested in the good of his beloved. Were his love self-directed, he need not have created the worlds, with all the self-sacrifice that would entail. “God is love.

In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him (I John 4:8-9).” This love animates the universe, holds the elements together, and makes life worth living. This love is at the center of Christianity and is expressed in its chief symbol – the Cross – and the central mysteries of the Incarnation and Eucharist. In the Incarnation, God becomes man, shares our weaknesses and trials, and demonstrates what true humanity is. In the crucifixion, the ultimate portrayal of love (John 15:13), Christ made possible the reconciliation of man and God. This reconciliation opens the possibility of union with God – that is, perfected love. This union in perfected love, far from subverting our humanity, allows for its fullest expression. Pope Benedict XVI writes, “But this union is no mere fusion, a sinking in the nameless ocean of the Divine; it is a unity which creates love, a unity in which both God and man remain themselves and yet become fully one. As Saint Paul says: “He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor 6:17).” Finally, Christ gives us the most precious gift of his body and blood for the assistance our faith and the maintenance of our union with him. Just as God's love maintains the bonds of the universe, so “The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God's action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit (Congregation of Rites, instruction, Eucharisticum mysterium, 6).”

Despite these gifts (and the innumerable benefits procured by them), there is no shortage of those who would deny the love of God. Similarly, there are those who claim the name of Christ, like the church mentioned earlier, whose conception of God ultimately precludes the possibility of love itself. Both these errors are truly sin in that they are willful separations from the love of God (which is to say God, himself). The former is much more easily answered. Reason teaches that free-will is a necessary condition for reciprocal love. C. S. Lewis makes this clear; as he argues, it is useless to point to the existence of evil as evidence of an unloving or impotent God; the fact that free will exists, the fact that evil exists, demonstrates that our love is more important to God that a “perfect” creation.
Man was created to experience the love of God and to love him in return. God's love persists despite mankind's failing to love him in return, as Saint Catherine of Genoa notes: “But God loves us so much that although he sees us so blind and deaf to our own advantage, yet he does not for that reason cease to knock continually at our hearts by his holy inspirations, that he may so enter and make therein tabernacles for himself into which creatures can never enter more.” Echoing I John 4:19, St. Bernard of Clarivaux writes, “God loves, he desires nothing else than to be loved; for he loves only that he may be loved.”

The very existence of love, then, demonstrates God's love to man. The appropriate question is not, “Why does evil exist?” but “Why do goodness, love, and beauty exist?” and “Why does man desire them?” Why, when happiness is so fleeting, when goodness is so rare and hard to achieve, when love so often fails, when pursuit of them so often leads to disappointment and sadness, do we desire these things? We desire them because we were created out of love and for love by a loving God. St. Basil the Great argues that “In the very nature of every human being has been sown the seed of the ability to love. You and I ought to welcome this seed, cultivate it carefully, nourish it attentively and foster its growth by going to the school of God's commandments with the help of his grace.” This ability is also the end of man - man will not be satisfied until he loves God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength. It is love that makes beauty, goodness, and the happiness of their experience possible. St. Faustina writes, “Love is a mystery that transforms everything it touches into things beautiful and pleasing to God. The love of God makes a soul free.”

Freedom is central to love, not freedom from restraint, but freedom from compulsion. St. John Chrysostom notes this, “Love cannot be compelled. You do not love because you are forced to love: you love spontaneously, of your own free will.”St. Bernard of Clairvaux also notes the free nature of love, arguing that it cannot be compelled by either the one loving or the one being loved. “Love is an affection of the soul, not a contract: it cannot rise from a mere agreement, nor is it so to be gained. It is spontaneous in its origin and impulse; and true love is its own satisfaction.” God's love and desire to be loved in return is demonstrated in mankind's gift of free will which enables man to love God. 

Glorifying God is certainly a chief part of the human telos and an aspect of our love for God. But even that is designed for our good. While God is glorified in and through those who love him, his is sufficiently glorified in himself. His desire for mankind to glorify him is directed towards the good of mankind. As mentioned earlier St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that the greatest glory and love ought to be given to the greatest being; that being is God. God's being who he is creates a duty (honor/privilege) of loving him first and foremost. This is not primarily due to his command, rather it is written into the nature of man as a created sentient creature. St. Bernard of Clairvaux writes,

You want me to tell you why God is to be loved and how much. I answer, the reason for loving God is God himself; and the measure of love due to him is immeasurable love...Therefore even the infidel who knows not Christ but does at least know himself, is bound to love God for God's own sake. He is unpardonable if he does not love the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind; for his own innate justice and common sense cry out from within that he is bound wholly to love God, from whom he has received all things. (On Loving God).

God's love for mankind is so great that he has left signs throughout creation to direct mankind's worship and love back to him. Psalm 19 declares, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.” This, coupled with Christ's continually offered body, demonstrates a perfect love desperate for the good of the beloved.

The danger of considering God to be self-obsessed, demanding love and the increase of his glory, comes from the liberty with which God has endowed man. Because love cannot be compelled, it cannot be commanded. To command love is to be unloving. Those who reject this version of the God of the Bible do so because their very natures revolt against the absence of the love they were created to seek.
But the absence of the command does not reduce the utter necessity of loving God. And again, here we turn to Christ. 

God is the most lovable of all things, and meditation on his nature is the strongest incentive there is to love and devotion; but because our minds are not strong in themselves, we need to be led to knowledge, and so to love of God by way of the world we sense, and above all by thinking of Christ the man, so that by seeing God with our eyes we can be lifted up to love what we cannot see (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica).

Christ offers himself continually to unite us to God. Christ says in John 6,

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

St. Francis de Sales writes, “Love is the chief among the passions of the soul. It is the king of all the heart's impulses; it draws all things to itself, and makes us like to what we love (The Devout Life).” By participating in the love and gifts that flow from the sacred heart of Christ, we become more like him. St. Catherine of Sienna writes, “Love is so powerful that it makes one heart and one will of lover and beloved. Whatever the one loves, so does the other, if it were otherwise, it would not be perfect love.” It is only through this love that we can be so transformed. St. Bonaventure writes in The Soul's Journey Into God, “There is no other path but through the burning love of the Crucified, a love which so transformed Paul into Christ when he was carried up to the third heaven (II Corinthians 12:2) that he could say: With Christ I am nailed to the cross. I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me (Galatians 2:20).

1I mean here the particular protestant misunderstanding I mentioned earlier, not that all protestants share this misunderstanding.

2 Love kindled by virtue always kindles another, provided that its flame appear outwardly. (Canto XXII, lines 10-12)