The Christian Platonism of C S Lewis

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, your book God and Abstract Objects addresses this topic. You also contributed to a book Beyond the Control of God edited by Paul Gould. We are looking at an article by Dr. Gould – The Christian Platonism of C. S. Lewis.^[1] Can you tell us about that? Was C. S. Lewis a Christian Platonist?

DR. CRAIG: This really depends on what you mean by Christian Platonism. I personally think the expression is something of an oxymoron. I think Platonism and Christianity are fundamentally incompatible with each other, and therefore you’ve got to redefine your terms in radical ways if you are going to talk about a Christian Platonist. I’m inclined to say about Christian Platonism what the Pope said about Islam and Christianity a few years ago. He said, “The only good things come from Christianity, not from the other component.” And I would say that about Christian Platonism, too. Any good in it is from Christianity, not from Platonism.

KEVIN HARRIS: Paul begins the article,

Let’s begin with Platonism. Perhaps the central notion of Platonism is the two-tiered nature of reality. There is the Realm of eternal, invisible, and immutable Forms or “Being,” and there is the temporal, visible, and changing world of “Becoming.” It is Platonism’s adherence to a transcendent realm beyond the world of our sensory experience that has been particularly attractive to Christians. With this brief sketch of Platonism, I want to describe the mood, method, and doctrines of Christian Platonism.

What do you think about that definition so far?

DR. CRAIG: What's important to understand is that Platonism's transcendent realm beyond our sensory experience is not the transcendent realm of the Hebrew Bible. Certainly, Jews and Christians have believed that God is the creator of the heavens and the earth, as Genesis 1:1 says – he transcends the physical universe and therefore is a spiritual reality beyond the universe. So Christianity and Judaism affirm the reality of this transcendent realm. But notice how different this is from what Platonism thinks of the transcendent realm. Paul says rightly here that for the Platonist it is a realm of eternal, invisible, immutable forms or ideas that exist. This is not a personal spiritual reality. These are impersonal ideas that are thought to transcend the physical world. So when Paul talks about the temporal, visible, and changing world of becoming, what's important to realize is that for Platonists this changing temporal world is ultimately unreal, that it's a sort of shadowy existence compared to the true reality which is this unchanging realm of these impersonal forms. That is so contrary to the Hebrew worldview which sees the created world as the creation of God and as very good. So Hebrew religion affirms the reality and the value of the material, physical world. It does not depreciate it in favor of the spiritual world. In that sense the Hebrew concept of two-tiered reality is vastly different than this Platonism that Paul is talking about.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next he writes,

First, Christian Platonism marks out a particular kind of mood when it comes to intellectual inquiry. This mood can be expressed in terms of a preference for rainforest over desert landscapes. The idea is that reality is rich, abundant, complex, magical, and full of wonders and delights. As Shakespeare’s Hamlet describes,

“There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than Dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Comment on that, and tell us about the term “mood” that’s being used.

DR. CRAIG: I don't know why Paul uses the word “mood” here. As I said, on Platonism the physical, material world has only a sort of shadowy existence and the real world is this unchanging realm of the forms. So if Christian Platonism has this rainforest mood that celebrates complexity and abundance and diversity and so forth, this is a departure from Platonism. As I said, this would be a contribution of Christianity, not Platonism. So who needs Platonism if you've got Christianity?

KEVIN HARRIS: Paul continues,

Contrast this mindset with the modern preference for reductionism, simplicity, and what is sometimes described in philosophy as “desert landscapes.” The idea is that the world is simple: reducible to fundamental particles (Humean corpuscles or whatever turns out to be the fundamental particles according to physics) and the rest of reality is “nothing but” organized clumps of this fundamental bits of reality. To cite but one example of what is sometimes called “nothing-buttery”—the CIT cosmologist Sean Carroll describes humans as “nothing but organized mud.”

Nothing-buttery?

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. This tendency to say we're nothing but atomic particles or we're nothing but bags of chemicals on bones and so forth is certainly to be repudiated. That's right. But, again, you don't need Platonism to repudiate that sort of nothing-buttery philosophy. That's already repudiated in Judaism and Christianity. When Paul affirms that God is the ultimate fundamental uncaused-cause and ungrounded-ground of all the phenomena of the physical universe, that without reference to God there cannot be a satisfactory account of the origin, identity, persistence, or destiny of the universe, who needs Platonism for that? That's part of Judaism and Christianity. Platonism really contributes nothing to the mix here. He's talking about essential tenets of the Hebrew Christian worldview. I don't see that Platonism contributes to this.

KEVIN HARRIS: The article continues,

Finally, Christian Platonism endorses a sacramental ontology. The idea is that the universe is a sacrament, for two reasons. First, it functions semiotically, as a sign pointing beyond itself to (what I’ll call) the sacred order. Second, the universe is sacramental because God’s grace and presence are mediated to creatures through the universe (that is, the universe participates in God).

What do you think about sacramental ontology?

DR. CRAIG: That is certainly not a tenant of Platonism. Platonism does not point to the sacred. The forms were not thought to be a personal, spiritual reality like God. In fact, in Plato's dialogue, The Timaeus, he has a sort of God-figure (the demiurge) who looks to the forms as the basis for constructing the universe. So he's actually a subsidiary being. It's the forms that are ultimately real – this impersonal, transcendent, conceptual reality. Certainly Plato did not believe that God's grace and presence are mediated to creatures through the universe. These are all elements imported into Christian Platonism from Christianity. In that case, I wonder why call it Christian Platonism? Why not just Christianity?

KEVIN HARRIS: We will get to a little more on C. S. Lewis in just a moment, but in the meantime, Paul concludes part 1 of this article by looking at four doctrines. He says,

This sacramental vision of reality is usually spelled out in terms of a commitment to four doctrines:

* First, a participatory ontology. The idea is that things in this world “participate” in God in some way. Good things participate in Goodness itself; beautiful things participate in Beauty itself; individual trees participate in Tree-hood itself.

I kind of like the idea that everything participates with God in some way. Any part of this that you agree with?

DR. CRAIG: Well, I think the difficulty here is that nobody understands what Plato meant by “participation.” What it means “to participate in” a form. I do think we can say that God is a sort of exemplary cause for things in the world so that, for example, he is the ultimate standard of goodness and beauty and that insofar as things resemble God and his nature they can be held to be beautiful and good. But I don't think that the language of participation is particularly elucidating.

KEVIN HARRIS: Continuing, he writes,

Second, a commitment to divine exemplarism. Divine exemplarism relates to the doctrine of creation and provides an account of how God created. The basic idea is that God creates according to divine ideas. So, prior to creating trees, God had in his mind an idea or concept of trees and created according to that idea or concept. Prior to creating C. S. Lewis, God had an idea of C. S. Lewis in his mind. On this view, all creaturely reality resembles a divine idea.

Sounds rather common-sensical. God had the idea of something prior to creating it.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, and the question would be do you need to be a Platonist to have that insight or to believe such a thing? And it doesn't seem to me that you do. Of course God knew what he was creating and so would have an ideal concept of the thing he's making.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next he writes,

Third, a commitment to the hierarchy of beings. The idea here is that reality is ordered and structured along a great chain of being (organized according to an ascending or descending hierarchy of powers or perfections). This is the ancient idea of a Great Chain of Being, with God at the top, followed by angels, humans, animals, plants, inanimate things, and finally non-being.

Could we conceivably kind of make a big chart of how things are ordered here according to this?

DR. CRAIG: This was a medieval idea that there is this kind of great chain of being that extends from God as the highest being down to the very lowest being. I don't think it's a particularly Platonic notion, and I'm not even sure that it's true though it is one that was popular in medieval theology. It was thought to reflect the sort of plenitude of God in creation – that God is so great that his creation must express in all its plenitude the greatness of God. But that, of course, is very different than Plato's worldview which didn't have a personal deity in it. Now, of course, Paul Gould is talking about Christian Platonism, but I guess over and over again I just wonder – I don't see that Platonism contributes anything to Christian Platonism. Anything good in it comes from Christianity.

KEVIN HARRIS: He wraps up part one writing,

Finally, a commitment to the principle of plenitude. A strong version of the principle of plenitude states that “every possible thing is actual.” Christian Platonism need not (and usually does not) commit to such a strong version of plenitude, but the idea that God creates a universe full of good things is a powerful and pervasive aspect of Christian Platonic thought.

DR. CRAIG: That's exactly what I was just explaining about the great chain of being and how the creation in all its plenitude reflects the infinity of God which is more of a Christian idea than a Platonic idea.

KEVIN HARRIS: Let’s go on to part 2 and talk a little bit about C. S. Lewis here. Part 2 begins,

To begin, Lewis wanted to be identified as a Christian Platonist. One particularly poignant example of this is found in the closing sections of The Last Battle. The forces of good and evil come to a head, and Aslan ushers in the end of Narnia and the beginning of eternity. Toward the end of the book, the old Narnia has ended and the faithful have entered through a magical door into Aslan’s country. As they explore this new world, they notice that it looks a lot like the old Narnia, just better—richer, purer, more real, untainted by evil, eternal.  And Lord Digory, who had been present during the creation of Narnia (another wonderful tale found in The Magician’s Nephew), blurts out:

“It’s all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at these schools!”

What we find here, and in many places, is Lewis using Platonic concepts to explain a deep truth of the Christian faith. In this instance, we learn that when this age has passed, and God redeems and restores all of creation, the faithful will finally experience life the way it is supposed to be. In a sense, our experience will seem more real, because it will be untainted by sin and misery and suffering. As Lewis puts it in The Great Divorce, “Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.”

In eternity, the faithful will experience intimacy with God and harmony with each other as we worship, serve, and explore for eternity the new heavens and new earth (Revelation 21:1). We shall be in Aslan’s country and the “shadow lands” (another Platonic reference common in Lewis) will be no more. Lewis wished to be understood as a Christian Platonist.

OK, Bill, that was a mouthful. Break it down for us.

DR. CRAIG: The problem here is the ambiguity in the word Platonism and the way it's used. This is not at all Platonism in the classical sense of the word. For example, Plato does not hold that when this age has passed God redeems and restores all of creation; the faithful will finally experience life the way it is supposed to be. That's just not classical Platonism. The problem is that people are using the word “Platonism” in ambiguous ways to express things like the objectivity of moral values and of truth or the reality of transcendent realms or even there is a God (although for Plato the ultimate reality is the Good which is a form, not a personal being). So, you see, if you're allowed to use “Platonism” (the word now) to mean whatever you want then it can be very ambiguous to talk about being a Christian Platonist. What Paul doesn't mention in this article (very interesting to me) is Lewis's important essay (and these are nonsense words), Bluspels and Flalansferes. Many think that this is Lewis' most important essay and most philosophically sophisticated. I was stunned when I read that essay to find that the way Lewis treats abstract objects, and particularly mathematics, is metaphorical. He is what is called a figuralist who thinks that mathematical language and language of abstract objects is merely figurative language and therefore should not be taken literally. All of this is merely metaphor. So Paul needs to interact with that essay, Bluspels and Flalansferes, before he misleads people by saying that Lewis was a Christian Platonist. Certainly, in some senses of the word he was, but not when it comes to the reality of this abstract realm of forms which wasn't, remember, the way Paul originally defined Platonism in the first half of the essay.

KEVIN HARRIS: The article continues,

Next, let’s consider one of my favorite passages from Lewis’s essay “The Weight of Glory.” Lewis writes:

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located betray us if we trust in them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but . . . they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

Paul makes four observations about this passage but, first, what are your thoughts on it?

DR. CRAIG: I think that the passage is vague enough to be interpreted Platonistically – that there is beauty that is a transcendent form or reality and that it is reflected in beautiful things that we see in the world. It's not clear to me that this longing that was so important for Lewis and that he spoke of so often was a characteristic of Platonism itself.

KEVIN HARRIS: The first observation from Gould, he says,

First, notice the connection between art (stories and music), beauty, and longing. Lewis understood, like Plato, that “beauty evokes desires” (as the theologian David Bentley Hart states it in his book The Beauty of the Infinite) and thus he, like the poets and storytellers of old, writes what he calls later in his essay “such lovely falsehoods” as the Narnia tale. Lewis dubbed this intense longing (most often experienced through engagement with beauty) “romance”—and thus he intentionally employed what he called “romantic imagination” in his art and literature to evoke and awaken desire.

DR. CRAIG: It's certainly a part of Lewis' aesthetics, but whether or not this is Platonism I think is ambiguous. You can stretch the word Platonism to mean this if you want, but that wasn't the way Paul initially defined it. I think these are accurate reflections of Lewis' thinking, but for my money it doesn't make him a Platonist.

KEVIN HARRIS: I wonder if we could chase a quick rabbit. Is this often used as an apologetic perhaps for God or for something transcendent? The fact that we have a longing for these things and because we do that that is evidence that they actually exist. We have a sense of something.

DR. CRAIG: I would like to see someone develop that argument more fully. But definitely Lewis did have this argument where we would not have a longing for something that was inherently unfulfillable. So this longing for God, for spiritual reality, he thought must be something that has an object.

KEVIN HARRIS: The second observation, Paul says,

Second, note the participatory nature of reality on full display: we have beautiful things (books and music) and we have the experience of Beauty itself.

DR. CRAIG: I don't have much to add to that except again the language of participation is very vague and not clear. But it's certainly true that we do experience beautiful things, and I think these are a reflection of objective standards of beauty and goodness.

KEVIN HARRIS: Third observation,

Third, note that this participatory ontology undergirds a distinct (and Christian Platonic) way of seeing called by the medievals “continuation” or “co-seeing.” The idea of continuation according to the theologian Junius Johnson “is to see two things with one simple act of seeing.” In acts of co-seeing, one thing is seen through the other. Thus, continuation is a kind of spiritual vision that enables us to see the second object (in this case Beauty itself) within the first object (in this case beautiful things). I love how Harvard professor Elaine Scarry describes our encounter with beautiful things in this world in her book On Beauty and Being Just as “small wake-up calls to perception” that “[spur] lapsed alertness back to its most acute level.” More broadly, given the fact that every created thing points to and illuminates the divine, everything, for those of us who have eyes to see (as Lewis encourages us) points to and illuminates the divine.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, I think we can affirm that as Christians. I just don't see anything particularly indebted to Plato in this as opposed to Christianity.

KEVIN HARRIS: There is some deep stuff in there. I’m reminded of reading, trying to understand Kant.

DR. CRAIG: This is very different than Kant. Certainly the notion of appearance and reality is a very long and important theme in the history of philosophy. But for Kant all we know is appearances and so ultimately our knowledge of reality is illusory. We don't know reality; we know only appearances. And that's very sharply in contrast to what Paul is talking about where it is through the appearances that we see to the reality that is behind it. So we see examples of kindness and goodness in the world, in our family, and among our friends and this helps us to see that there is an objective good, kindness, or compassion. Similarly, we see a beautiful painting and that helps us to see that there are objective standards of the beautiful. So far from being mere appearance, as Paul says we see through these things to the reality that lies behind them.

KEVIN HARRIS: That’s what I get for reading Kant! Totally misunderstood! Gould writes,

Finally, the means of acquiring truth is deeply Platonic. One is admitted to important knowledge of reality because of a love and reverence for the new truth glimpsed. As Lewis puts it in Out of the Silent Planet (part of his Ransom Trilogy), when speaking of the hero Ransom’s experience of the eldila: “Through his knowledge of the creatures and his love for them he began, ever so little, to hear [their music] with their ears.”

What we love, as seekers of truth, goodness, and beauty, shapes what we see and hear . . . . Further, in order to gain wisdom, we must turn our souls in the right direction. We must turn toward “the good” as Plato would put it (in his discussion in Book 7 of the Republic and the Allegory of the Cave). We must turn away from the “stream of experience” as Lewis puts it in The Screwtape Letters. Or as the writer of the book of Hebrews puts it, we must “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2).

Summation, Bill?

DR. CRAIG: Platonism is a multifaceted, variegated worldview. So it's possible to pick and choose aspects of it and adopt them and call yourself a Christian Platonist. So, for example, he says as seekers of truth, goodness, and beauty we turn our souls in the right direction. Well, yes, we can agree with that. But when he says we must turn away from the stream of experience and fix our eyes on Jesus, that's not Platonic. On the contrary, as I said, in the Hebrew worldview the physical, material realm is just as real and just as good as the spiritual transcendent realm, and it's wrong to depreciate it in the name of this Platonistic philosophy. The ultimate reality to which we turn our eyes on Platonism is not a personal God; it is certainly not Jesus. So that is quite in contrast with Christianity. So while you could pick and choose certain aspects of Platonism to affirm and call yourself a Christian Platonist, you need to understand that fundamentally I think this is really an oxymoron because the worldview of Platonism as a whole is very different (and I would even say incompatible) with the Hebrew-Christian worldview.^[2]