Annotations and Study Guide to Letters to Malcolm

 

 

            For about seven years C. S. Lewis carried on a correspondence in Latin with an Italian priest living in Verona, Don Giovanni Calabria (1873-1954). In one of those letters, 5 January 1953, Lewis asks for prayers “about a work which I now have in hand. I am trying to write a book about private prayers for the use of the laity, especially for those who have been recently converted to the Christian faith and so far are without any sustained and regular habit of prayer. I tackled the job because I saw many no doubt very beautiful books written on this subject of prayer for the religious but few which instruct tiros and those still babes (so to say) in the Faith. I find many difficulties nor do I definitely know whether God wishes me to complete this task or not” (trans. Martin Moynihan). In March, he writes to him, “I am still working on my book on Prayer.”

            Letters to other correspondents in 1952 and 1953 frequently provided answers to questions raised about prayer, and on 8 December 1953, Lewis presented a paper, “Petitionary Prayer: A Problem without an Answer,” to the Oxford Clerical Society. However, in a letter to the Anglican nun Sister Penelope on 15 February 1954, he writes, “I have had to abandon the book on prayer; it was clearly not for me.” A 45-page manuscript of this attempt has survived and is summarized by Walter Hooper in C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide, pp. 378-80.

            A decade later he did write a book on prayer, incorporating some of the things from that manuscript as well as from “Petitionary Prayer” and letters from the early ’50s. In a letter to Mary Willis Shelburne, 22 April 1963, Lewis wrote, “I’ve finished a book on Prayer. Don’t know if it is any good.” On 16 May he told his publisher, Jocelyn Gibb, that the book was being typed. After receiving and reading the typescript, Gibbs wrote to Lewis on 13 June: “Respect and admire you as I do, this Letters to Malcolm . . . has knocked me flat. Not quite; I can just sit up and shout hurrah, and again, hurrah. It’s the best you’ve done since The Problem of Pain.”

            Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (1964) turned out not to be a carefully reasoned work of apologetics, like The Problem of Pain (1940) or Miracles (1947). Now in the last year of his life, Lewis did not have the physical or intellectual energy to undertake such a task, and perhaps he decided that was not the right approach for a discussion of prayer. As he puts it in Letter 12, “In a book [on prayer] one would inevitably seem to be attempting, not discussion, but instruction. And for me to offer the world instruction about prayer would be impudence.” So, he says, tongue-in-cheek, “however badly needed a good book on prayer is, I shall never try to write it.” He of course is writing a book on prayer, but as discussion, not instruction. He creates a correspondence with an imaginary friend, Malcolm, in which the two exchange ideas about their prayer lives: “Two people on the foothills comparing notes in private.” It was the last book Lewis wrote. He died 22 November 1963; the book was published in London two months later, 27 January 1964.

            Responses to the book have varied widely. The book has received widely varied reactions. Lewis’s friend J.R.R. Tolkien disliked the book intensely: “I personally found Letters to Malcolm a distressing and in parts horrifying work” letter to David Kolb, S. J., 11 November 1964). But Tolkien felt laypersons should not write books on theology and religious practice. As a Roman Catholic, he believed that should be left to priests. A reviewer in The Church Times, on the other hand, called it “as good as anything he ever wrote. . . . It is splendid, glorious stuff, the product of a luminous and original mind, tough and honest in facing the agonizing questions raised inevitably by any consideration of prayer, and yet endowed with an extraordinary sensitivity and tenderness for the fears and foibles of men” (31 January 1964, p. 5). In my book Reason and Imagination in C. S. Lewis (pp. 173-79), I argue that it is the most fully integrated of Lewis’s books on Christianity, illustrating a full reconciliation and unification of the reason he admired with the imagination he loved.

            Letters to Malcolm is well suited for use by a Sunday School class or discussion group: the chapters are short and they raise a wide range of questions that a group can profitably explore together. In this site I have attempted to provide resources that might be helpful for individuals reading the book or groups using it for discussion—annotations that clarify allusions, references, and ideas in the text and topics for reflection and discussion for each letter. I hope they will be helpful in making one of my favorite Lewis books more widely appreciated.

           

            Unless otherwise noted, quotations of the Bible in these notes are from the King James Version, the translation Lewis generally used in Letters to Malcolm. In his writings, Lewis often quoted literary works or the Bible from memory; as a result, the wordings sometimes are not exactly accurate. References to and  quotations of The Book of Common Prayer in these notes are from the 1662 prayerbook used in the Church of England throughout Lewis’s lifetime (see the note to Letter 1, paragraph 12). Because Letters to Malcolm exists in several editions, these notes refer to it by letter and paragraph numbers, instead of page numbers.

 

 

Letter 1

 

            Letter 1 deals with corporate prayer (prayer as a part of pubic worship), saying that will not be the subject of this book. Lewis explains why he likes worship services to remain the same, so he can cease paying attention to the form and concentrate on God; and explains why, although he wants the form to remain constant, he accepts that the language of the prayer book needs to change to fit contemporary usage.

           

            *Paragraph 1, the Republic – Plato’s Republic.

 

            *Paragraph 1, the “new” psychology – Especially Freudian psychology. Sigmund Freud’s first book, Studien über Hysterie, was published in 1895. Lewis was an undergraduate at Oxford from 1918-1924, as it andlater books were becoming well known. Lewis writes in Surprised by Joy, “The New Psychology was at that time sweeping through us all” and convincing Lewis that his romantic longings were only fantasies (chap. 13).

 

            *Paragraph 6, thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping – This is an application of a principle Lewis learned from Samuel Alexander’s Space Time and Deity (1920), which he regarded as “an indispensable tool of thought” (Surprised by Joy, chap. 14): “You cannot hope and also think about hoping at the same time; for in hope we look to hope’s object and we interrupt this by (so to speak) turning round to look at the hope itself.”

 

            *Paragraph 8, habito dell’arte – Dante, Paradiso, 13.78 (“in the practice of his art”).

 

            *Paragraph 12, if we can also reconcile government, to a new Book – A revision of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer was completed in 1927 and approval by the Church of England Convocations and Church Assembly. However, since the Church of England is a state church, the revision also needed to be approved by Parliament, and the new prayerbook was rejected in December 1927. Further revisions were made in 1928, but this too was turned down by Parliament. Since then no further attempts have been made to revise the prayerbook. Attempts to update the prayerbook have employed a different process, of producing books that can be used instead of, or in addition to, The Book of Common Prayer, such as the Alternative Service Book (1980).

 

            *Paragraph 19, Cranmer – Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), Archbishop of Canterbury 1533-1556, who shaped the doctrine and liturgy of the Church of England under Edward VI. The first Book of Common Prayer (1549) was compiled under his guidance, and his revision of 1552 gave the BCP the beauties of prose style for which it remains famous.

 

            *Paragraph 20, “let your light so shine” – Matthew 5:16.

 

 

            Topics for reflection and discussion:

            --Do you share Lewis’s preference for having the structure and words of a church service remain the same week? Why or why not?

            --Lewis explains in a letter why he prefers that even the wording of the prayers be the same each week: “The advantage of a fixed form of service is that we know what is coming. Ex tempore public prayer has this difficulty; we don’t know whether we can mentally join in it until we’ve heard it—it might be phoney or heretical. We are therefore called upon to carry on a critical and a devotional activity at the same moment: two hardly compatible things. In a fixed form we ought to have ‘gone through the motions’ before in our private prayers; the rigid form really sets our devotions free. I also find the more rigid it is, the easier it is to keep one’s thoughts from straying” (Letters, 1 April 1952). Discuss the extent to which what Lewis says here fits your own experience and does not fit.

            --Lewis says we go to church to use or enact the service, to worship God, not to be entertained. Do you see the two as incompatible? Is “being entertained” a danger in church services?

 

 

Letter 2

 

            Letter 2 moves into the book’s discussion of private prayer by considering the advantages of “ready-made” (written) prayers and prayers in one’s own words (or without words, which Lewis considers the best approach, when it can be achieved).

 

            *Paragraph 1, “magical” – Lewis indicates his “high,” “magical” view of the Eucharist in the last paragraph of his sermon “The Weight of Glory” (1941), when he says that “the Blessed Sacrament . . . is the holiest object presented to your senses.”

 

            *Paragraph 1, the Imitation – Thomas à Kempkis, Imitation of Christ (1418).

 

            *Paragraph 2, Rose Macaulay – English author (1889?1958), who published thirty-five books, mostly novels but also biography, travel, and literary studies. She is remembered especially for her novels satirizing middle-class life. Her letters had recently been published: Letters to a Friend, 1950-1952 in 1961 and Last Letters to a Friend, 1952-1958 in 1962. The friend was the Reverend John Hamilton Cowper Johnson. In a letter dated 5 March 1951 she wrote, “I am interested just now in selecting short passages, fragments from Psalms and Bible and collects and missal and general reading (in any language that I know) that seem to suit the occupations and emergencies and encounters likely to occur in the day ahead. If one collects a store of such, one can select at will.” Later letters refer frequently to that collection, as for example a letter dated 10 September 1951: “As I told you, I have a scrap book collected for use; a random collection of prayers in English and Latin, psalms or parts of psalms, and other things.”

            *Paragraph 2, objets d’art – (French) Art object. Any object that has been fashioned to be a thing of beauty in itself rather than having a practical function.

            *Paragraph 3, “Who art thou that judgest – Romans 14:4.

 

            *Paragraph 5, PascalBlaise Pascal (1623-62). See #350 in his Pensées de M. Pascal sur la réligion, et sur quelques autres sujets (“Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on other subjects”) (1670): “The Stoics. - They conclude that what has been done once can be done always, and that since the desire of glory imparts some power to those whom it possesses, others can well do likewise. There are feverish movements which health can not imitate.”

 

            *Paragraph 8, As Solomon said – 1 Kings 8:38.

 

            *Paragraph 10, “the faith once given” – Jude 3.

 

            *Paragraph 11, “what things I ought to ask” – Romans 8:26 (“For we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us”).

 

            *Paragraph 12, Petrarch, Donne – Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), Italian poet who is known for perfecting the sonnet form and for his love poems addressed to Laura. John Donne (1572-1631), English poet and clergyman, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London from 1621 until his death. He is known for sensual, passionate love poetry as well as devout, thoughtful religious poetry and prose.

 

            *Paragraph 14, My grandfather – Lewis’s grandfather, Thomas Hamilton (1826-1905) was vicar of Saint Mark’s, Dundela—the church which Lewis’s parents attended and in which Lewis was baptized—from 1874 until ??.

 

            *Paragraph 14, they affected him like mountains – Dante, Paradiso 25.38.

 

 

            Topics for reflection and discussion:

            --Do you pray using both your own words and prayers written by others? If so, why? What benefits do you find in each? If not, why not? Some people believe when one prays aloud, one should not write out the prayer—“genuine” prayer should be spontaneous, not “prepared.” Do you think that? Why or why not? How does considering such issues take us back to the heart of what prayer is and does?

            --Do you sometimes pray without using words? When or why do you do so? What is helpful about doing so? When or why is using words more valuable or important?

            --Mother Teresa once was asked, “When you pray, what do you say to God?” She replied, “I don’t say anything, I listen.” Then she was asked, “Well, when you listen, what does God say to you?” And she answered, “He doesn’t say anything either, he listens.” Discuss how this relates to Lewis’s remarks on prayers without words.

 

 

Letter 3

 

            Letter 3 begins to treat practical matters regarding prayer, some hows, whens, and wheres of private prayer.

 

            *Paragraph 1, Manichaean – Follower of the beliefs put forward by Mani (c. 216-c. 276); basic to Manichaeism is the conflicting dualism between the realm of God (light and spiritual enlightenment) and the realm of Satan (darkness and material things).

 

            *Paragraph 2, when consistent with good faith and charity – In Mere Christianity, Lewis calls sex outside of marriage a “monstrosity” because it tries to “isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it.” He adds that marriage must be considered in relation to justice, the keeping of promises.

 

            *Paragraph 2, “whether we eat or drink” – 1 Corinthians 10:31.

 

            *Paragraph 2, Bishop of WoolwichJohn Arthur Thomas Robinson (1919-1983), the Bishop of Woolwich from 1959 to 1969, was considered a left-wing modernist. The best-known of his writings is Honest to God (1963).

 

            *Paragraph 2, Aphrodite – The Greek goddess of love (known as “Venus” in Roman mythology).

 

            *Paragraph 2, Homeric laughter – Roaring laughter. See the Iliad 1.599; the Odyssey 20.346.

 

            *Paragraph 4, festoon – Literally it means to decorate with a string or garland of leaves, flowers, or ribbon in loops between two points; here it is used figuratively, as explanations or amplifications of a text.

 

            *Paragraph 8, “work is prayer” – Alluding to St. Benedict’s maxim, Orare est laborare, laborare est orare (To pray is to work, to work is to pray).

 

            *Paragraph 8, oratio – (Latin) Speech, message.

 

            *Paragraph 9, the resurrection of the body – Discussed in Letter 22.

 

            *Paragraph 10, the osteoporosis – Lewis suffered from osteoporosis the last five or so years of his life.

 

 

            Topics for reflection and discussion:

            --Discuss the kinds of practical matters Lewis explores: When do you find is the best time for prayers? What is the best place? How important is it to kneel? What other problems do you encounter in or about prayer? How do you deal with them?

            --Do you, like Lewis, find it an enrichment to think that your prayers of praise and adoration are joined with those of the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven?

            --How important are specific details in your prayers? Do you think we can become too concerned about details? If so, in what ways could that be detrimental?

 

 

Letter 4

 

            Letter 4 deals with two difficulties regarding prayer: why should we pray, since God already knows what we need? And, what things is it appropriate to include in our prayers?

 

            *Paragraph 6, school of thought, “freedom is willed necessity” – Lewis probably is referring to “compatibilism,” of which David Hume is the most prominent defenders. Compatibilists believe that every event (and thus all human actions) are causally determined (i.e., necessary), but among those events some occur as the result of human choice, others don’t. If I remain in a room because I choose to, I’m free; if I remain in a room because I am locked in and cannot exit even if I wanted to, I’m constrained. The first case is as causally determined as the second, but the first occurs as the result of my choice (i.e., my will is part of the causal sequence), the second doesn’t. Thus, the first case (the case of freedom) exhibits “willed necessity,” whereas the second doesn’t (because what is necessary is not also willed). [Thanks to my colleague Anthony Perovich.]

 

            *Paragraph 6, unveiled – See also Letter 21, paragraph 8, and the note to it. Veils cover up; prayer involves removing anything that hides our real selves or forms a barrier between us and another.

 

            *Paragraph 8, Buber – Martin Buber (1878-1965), Jewish philosopher. His best-known book is Ich und Du (1923), translated into English in 1937 as I and Thou. Buber conceived the relationship between God and humanity not as abstract and impersonal, but as a dialogue between persons addressing each other with the familiar Du (“thou”) rather than the formal Sie (“you”).

 

            *Paragraph 9, anthropomorphic images – See the introductory note to Letter 15. In Miracles, chap. 10 (“Horrid Red Things”) Lewis argues that it is pretty nearly impossible to avoid using anthromorphic images in thinking about God; if we try, they are only replaced by more absurd images, such as a gas or a fluid.

 

            *Paragraph 9, “Not thus, not thus, neither is this Thou” – A variant on “This also is Thou: neither is this Thou” as said by one of the church fathers, St. Ephrem the Syrian. See the note to Letter 14, paragraph 6, below.

 

            *Paragraph 14, “ordinate loves”Saint Augustine (354-430), Christian Doctrine, “That man lives in justice and holiness who is an uncorrupted judge of things. He has an ordinate love and neither loves what he should not love, nor fails to love what he should love, or loves one thing more than he should, nor loves two things equally that deserve different loves, nor loves differently two things that deserve equal loves. Every sinner, insofar as he is a sinner, is not to be loved; but every man, insofar as he is a man, is to be loved on account of god. God is to be loved on account of himself” (1.27.28).

 

            *Paragraph 16, when the great blow had fallen upon me – Lewis presumably refers here to the death of his wife in 1960, or the reappearance of the cancer that eventually was the cause of her death.

 

 

            Topics for reflection and discussion:

            --Lewis does not define prayer, but his most basic description of prayer, or explanation of why he prays, is that to pray is to enter and be in the presence of God. How might this relate to Lewis’s idea of prayer as “unveiling”?

            --What things do you consider appropriate to pray about in petitionary and intercessorary prayer? What things are not? On what basis should we decide?

           

 

Letter 5

 

            In Letter 5 Lewis explains the way he meditates on, or elaborates on, phrases in the Lord’s Prayer as he prays them. 

 

            *Paragraph 1, festoonings – See note to Letter 3, paragraph 4.

 

            *Paragraph 5, Queen Victoria – The Queen disliked Prime Minister Gladstone, in part because, she said, he addressed her as though she were a public meeting.

 

            *Paragraph 8, “the same mind which was also in Christ” – Philippians 2:5.

 

            *Paragraph 10, Lycidas – John Milton’s famous pastoral elegy on the death of his friend Edward King in 1637.

 

            *Paragraph 12, encore – Lewis also warns elsewhere against seeking satisfaction or security through repetition. In Lewis’s novel Perelandra, the character Ransom, on the planet Venus, comes upon a fruit whose taste is so delicious and satisfying that it seems “a totally new genus of pleasures, . . . out of all reckoning.” He is about to pick another one, but it feels wrong “to repeat a pleasure so intense and almost so spiritual” (chap. 3). The next day, after a similar experience with a certain kind of berry, such restraint turns into a principle: “This now appeared to him as a principle of far wider application and deeper moment. This itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be unrolled twice or even made to work backwards . . . was it possibly the root of all evil? No: of course the love of money was called that. But money itself—perhaps one valued it chiefly as a defence against chance, a security for being able to have things over again” (chap. 4). Upon further reflection, it occurs to him that on earth people would learn how to produce it and charge more for it so people could have that taste as often as they want it: “Money, in fact, would provide the means of saying encore in a voice that could not be disobeyed” (chap. 4).

 

            *Paragraph 13, “Unless a seed die . . .” – John 12:24 (“Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit”).

            *Paragraph 14, “things requisite and necessary . . .” – From the Order for Evening Prayer in The Book of Common Prayer.

 

            *Paragraph 14, Burnaby – John Burnaby, “Christian Prayer,” in Soundings: Essays Concerning Christian Understanding, ed. A. R. Vidler (1962): “For the present we need only note the complete simplicity or naïveté with which the Apostolic Church did its praying. To make ‘in everything’ our requests known to God was for St Paul the cure for all worldly worry” (p. 224).

 

            *Paragraph 16, Juvenal – Roman poet (c. 60-140 A.D.), known for his harsh, biting satire. The quotation is from his tenth satire (line 111).

 

            *Paragraph 17, de jure – (Latin) Legally; according to law.

 

            *Paragraph 17, de facto – (Latin) In fact; in reality.

 

            *Paragraph 17, “beauty so old and new”St. Augustine, Confessions, 10.27: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness” (trans. Henry Chadwick).

 

            *Paragraph 17, “light from behind the sun” – Charles Williams, “The Calling of Taliessin,” the opening poem in The Region of the Summer Stars (1944): The climax of the search of the poet Taliessin for a depth of poetry worthy of Camelot comes near a clear city on a sea-site, through “a light that shone from behind the sun; the sun / was not so fierce as to pierce where that light could / through every waste and wood; the city and the light / lay beyond the sun and beyond his dream.” Lewis uses this passage also as the epigraph to the fourteenth chapter of Miracles.

 

 

            Topics for reflection and discussion:

            --As Lewis prepares to tell Malcolm some of his festoonings, he says that Malcolm in turn must tell Lewis some of his. Reflect on your own ways of thinking about phrases in the Lord’s Prayer and compare them with those of Lewis and of others in your discussion group.

            --Lewis says in paragraph 5, “prayer is not the time for pressing our own favourite social or political panacea.” What does he mean by that? Have you heard people do that sort of thing?

 

 

Letter 6

 

            Letter 6 begins by arguing that religion is not the same as Christianity or the Church, and goes on to discuss whether feelings of guilt are a good thing or not.  

 

            *Paragraph 2, Vidler, Soundings – Alec R. Vidler (1899-1991), historian, Dean of King’s College, Cambridge, and Canon of Windsor. He was a long-time editor of Theology. In 1962 he published a collection of essays, Soundings: Essays Concerning Christian Understanding, mostly by Cambridge theologians, which expressed the need for some major reassessments of Christian beliefs in the light of the impact of secularization and contemporary philosophy. Vidler’s essay in Soundings, “Religion and the National Church,”  argues that the church is not a religious organization, but an embodiment of Christian community which should be kept as free as possible from the domination of organizers and legalizers.

 

            *Paragraph 2, F. D. Maurice – Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872), author of many books on education, morality, and theology, and one of the originators of the Christian Socialist movement. The views expressed in his book Theological Essays (1853) were described as dangerous by the council of King’s College, London, and he was asked to resign from his position as Professor of Theology. He was later appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge University.

 

            *Paragraph 2, Bonhoeffer – Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), German theologian. He was a leader of the Confessing Church in Germany that openly declared opposition to Nazism, and was involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler, for which he was imprisoned for two years and executed a few weeks before the end of World War II. The letters he wrote from prison were edited by Eberhard Bethge and published in 1951 as Widerstand und Ergebung: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft (English translation, Letters and Papers from Prison, by Reginald H. Fuller, 1953).

 

            *Paragraph 2, the Establishment – That is, the Church of England. I suspect the kind of argument Lewis refers to was: “A national church—that is, a church built into the constitution as a complement and counterpoise to the state and to civil government—is a standing witness to the fact that man, every man, is a twofold creature with a twofold allegiance, whether he realizes it or not. He is a citizen of an earthly temporal state, and as such has duties to perform and needs to be satisfied. But he is more than that. He has a mysterious origin and destiny and spiritual capacities for freedom and fullness of life which are not within the power or control of civil government. A man is not only a political creature, but also a spiritual being who belongs to a realm of eternal verities which lifts him above all the realms of this world even while he is immersed in them. A national church, recognized as such by the state, is a constant, public and impressive reminder of this fact” (Vidler, “Religion and the National Church,” Soundings, 262).

            *Paragraph 3, Newman – John Henry  Newman (1801-90) was a promising Anglican clergyman and theologian who converted to Catholicism in 1845. The first volume of his Parochial Sermons, from which Lewis quotes, was published in 1834 (later reprinted as the first volume of Parochial and Plain Sermons): “Heaven then is not like this world; I will say what it is much more like—a church. For in a place of public worship no language of this world is heard; there are no schemes brought forward for temporal objects, great or small; no information how to strengthen our worldly interests, extend our influence, or establish our credit. These things indeed may be right in their way, so that we do not set our hearts upon them; still (I repeat), it is certain that we hear nothing of them in a church. Here we hear solely and entirely of God. We praise Him, worship Him, sing to Him, thank Him, confess to Him, give ourselves up to Him, and ask His blessing. And therefore, a church is like heaven; viz. because both in the one and the other, there is one single sovereign subject—religion—brought before us” (sermon 1, “Holiness Necessary for Future Blessedness”). The choice of the word religion may be unfortunate; but thrust of the passage as a whole seems unobjectionable.

            *Paragraph 5, Simone Weil – French philosopher and mystic (1909-1943). Originally Jewish, she converted to Christianity and became a practicing Roman Catholic. Most of her books, published posthumously, consist of notebooks and religious essays.

 

            *Paragraph 6, “When the means are autonomous they are deadly” – Charles Williams, “Bors to Elayne: on the King’s Coins,” in Taliessin through Logres (1938): “When the means are autonomous, they are deadly; when words / escape from verse they hurry to rape souls; / when sensation slips from intellect, expect the tyrant; / the brood of carriers levels the good they carry.” Lewis quotes the same passage in the sixth chapter of Reflections on the Psalms (1958), to amplify this sentence: “Thus the Law, like the sacrifice, can take on a cancerous life of its own and work against the thing for whose sake it existed.”

 

            *Paragraph 7, Voilà l’ennemi – (French) “There [is] the enemy”—that is, putting religious trappings above essential truths is the enemy of Christianity.

 

            *Paragraph 10, “outgrown . . . survive chiefly as venerable archaisms or as fairy-stories” Vidler, “Religion and the National Church,” p. 254.

 

            *Paragraph 12, maladies imaginaries – (French) Hypochondriacs.

 

            *Paragraph 17, “Peace, prattler” – George Herbert, English poet (1593-1633), “Conscience” (1633).

 

 

            Topics for reflection and discussion:

            --Some people say, “Christianity is not a religion.” Do you agree? If so, what do you mean by that? Does Letter 6 support the point you are making?

            --What, according to Lewis, is positive about feelings of guilt? What is not positive? How do we keep the two sides in balance? What does Lewis recommend?

            --What does Lewis mean by saying church activities can become “an idol that hides both God and my neighbors”?

 

 

Letter 7

 

            Letter 7 explores the objections some people raise against petitionary prayer: that prayer is useless because things are predetermined, or that if God alters the course of events in answer to prayer, the world would be unpredictable, which would be an unacceptableposition to hold. Lewis refutes both arguments.

 

            *Paragraph 1, “Lord, I am not high minded” – Psalm 131:1 (Lewis uses here the translation by Miles Coverdale found in The Book of Common Prayer, which he would have heard in chapel and church services).

 

            *Paragraph 1, Our Lord in Gethsemane made a petitionary prayer – Matthew 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42.

 

            *Paragraph 2, “nevertheless, not my will but thine – Matthew 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42.

 

            *Paragraph 2, The servant is not greater – John 13:16, 15:20

 

            *Paragraph 3, cairngorms – Precious stones of a yellow or wine-colour, consisting of rock-crystal coloured by oxide of iron, in common use for brooches and seals and other Highland articles.

 

            *Paragraph 8, “the masterly administration of the unforeseen” – Robert Bridges, English poet (1844-1930), “Introduction,” The Testament of Beauty (1929), Book 1, line 7 (“We sail a changeful sea through halcyon days and storm,  / and when the ship laboureth, our stedfast purpose / trembles like as the compass in a binnacle. / Our stability is but balance, and conduct lies / in masterful administration of the unforeseen”).

 

            *Paragraph 11, Burnaby – For Burnaby, see the note to Letter 5, paragraph 14. Lewis refers here to the following sentence: “The thoughtful Christian . . . will have learnt to take for granted the observable uniformities of the natural world, and to attribute the unpredictable character of human history to the existence in men of a real power of deliberate choice and effective action” (“Christian Prayer,” Soundings, ed. Vidler, p. 225).

 

            *Paragraph 11, BradleyFrancis Herbert Bradley (1846-1924) was the most famous, original, and philosophically influential of the British Idealists. As a philosophy student at Oxford, Lewis studied Bradley’s works. He talks in Surprised by Joy (chap. 13) about ways of thought that “enabled one to get all the conveniences of Theism, without believing in God. The English Hegelians, writers like T. H. Green, Bradley, and Bosanquet (then mighty names), dealt in precisely such wares.”

 

            *Paragraph 11, Ethical Studies – F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studies, 2nd ed., rev., with additional notes by the author (London: Oxford University Press, 1962).

 

            *Paragraph 11, Arnold – Matthew Arnold (1822-88), English poet, known for his influence on public education and as a “prophet of culture.” The “baiting of Arnold” occurs in the final chapter of Ethical Studies, “Concluding Remarks,” where Bradley disputes Arnold’s claim that it is “verifiable” that virtue always leads to and goes with happiness.

 

 

            Topics for reflection and discussion:

            --Are there other objections to petitionary prayer that you have heard people raise, or can imagine them raising? How would you reply to their objections?

            --What does Lewis provide as reasons we should offer petitionary prayers? Can you think of other reasons for doing so?

 

 

Letter 8

 

            In Letter 8 Lewis responds to news that Malcolm and Betty’s son George might be seriously ill, which makes questions about petitionary prayer no longer theoretical, but intensely real.

 

            *Paragraph 1, froth and bubble – Lewis may have been alluding to a line by Austrailian poet Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-70),Life is mostly froth and bubble.”

 

            *Paragraph 2, “He has no children” – Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.3.216.

 

            *Paragraph 2, in my own trouble – Presumably after the death of his wife in 1960, or after the reappearance of the cancer that eventually was the cause of her death.

 

            *Paragraph 6, before He prayed in Gethsemane – See note to Letter 7, paragraph 1.

 

            *Paragraph 6, Isaac had been spared – Genesis 22:1-14.

 

            *Paragraph 8, an angel appeared “comforting” him – Luke 22:43.

 

            *Paragraph 9, the servant is not greater than the master – See Letter 7, paragraph 2.

 

            *Paragraph 10, raison d’état – (French) A political principle or basis for action.

 

            *Paragraph 10, murderous rabble – Luke 23:18-23.

 

            *Paragraph 10, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” – Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34. Jesus was quoting Psalm 22:1.

 

            *Paragraph 11, Every rope breaks . . . Every door is slammed – Lewis echoes what he wrote a few years earlier in A Grief Observed (1961), describing his feelings after the death of his wife: “But go to Him when your need is desperate . . . and what do you find? A door slammed  in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence” (notebook 1, paragraph 7). And, “It has been an imaginary faith playing with innocuous counters labeled ‘Illness,’ ‘Pain,’ ‘Death,’ and ‘Loneliness.’ I thought I trusted the rope until it mattered to me whether it would bear me. Now it matters, and I find I didn’t” (notebook 3, paragraph 3).

 

            *Paragraph 12, “dark night” – That is, the “dark night of the soul,” from the book with that title by St. John of the Cross (see note to Letter 12, paragraph 7 below). The “dark night” is a crucial part of the journey into mystical experience. It begins by leaving behind worldly comforts and securities and continues by exploring the mysteries of divine nature. “The final stage of the dark night, which John sees as only for the most spiritually adept, is an utter relinquishing of self, a painful death of the ego that leads to an eventual dawn, a whole level of illumination in the seeker’s understanding of God and his purposes” (David Downing, Into the Region of Awe: Mysticism in C. S. Lewis [2005], 77).

 

            *Paragraph 12, One of the seventeenth-century divines  ??.

 

            *Paragraph 12, “sensible consolation” – “A supernatural illumination of the intellect giving rise to joy, peace, courage, and divine love, attracting the will and heart to virtue and heavenly things. Substantial consolation affects the intellect and will. It is often a simple tranquillity in God’s service” (New Catholic Dictionary).

 

            *Paragraph 12, Niebuhr – Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), American theologian, author of many books including Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (1935), and The Nature and Destiny of Man (2 vol; 1941-1943).

 

            *Paragraph 13, a Job’s comforter – Job’s friends came to him in his distress supposedly “to mourn with him, and to comfort him” (Job 2:11), but they ended up rebuking him for failing to admit to doing evil, which they assume must have been the cause of his misfortunes.

 

            *Paragraph 14, playing with counters, stakes have to be raised – More echoing of A Grief Observed: “Bridge-players tell me that there must be come money on the game ‘or else people won’t take it seriously.’ Apparently it’s like that [with faith]. . . . You will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high; until you find that you are playing nor for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world” (notebook 3, paragraph 4).

 

 

            Topics for reflection and discussion:

            --Do you agree with Lewis that feeling anxieties in a situation like Malcolm and Betty’s is an affliction, not a defect of faith? Why or why not? How should we deal with them?

            --What does Lewis mean by saying “In every Church, in every institution, there is something which sooner or later works against the very purpose for which it came into existence”? Do you agree with the statement? Can you provide illustrations? What responsibility does that place upon members of the organization?

           

 

Letter 9

 

            Letter 9 focuses on what for Lewis is the actual problem regarding petitionary prayer: Do prayers act as genuine causes? If so, how?

 

            *Paragraph 3, if the disciples were asleep  – Matthew 26:40; Mark 14:37; Luke 22:45. “The prayer recorded in Matthew is much too short to be long enough for the disciples to go to sleep! They record the bit they heard before they fell asleep” (Letters, 23 February 1947).

 

            *Paragraph 3, astonished St. Augustine was – Augustine, Confessions 6.3: “When he [Ambrose] was reading, his eyes ran over the page and his heart perceived the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent” (trans. Henry Chadwick).

 

            *Paragraph 5, God and His acts are not in time – For a fuller discussion of this, see Mere Christianity 4.3 (“Time and Beyond Time”).

 

            *Paragraph 6, God, we believe, is impassible – That is, as a spirit, God does not have or show emotion.

 

            *Paragraph 7, post hoc, propter hoc – (Latin) After this, because of this.

 

            *Paragraph , 11, “Work out your own salvation” – Philippians 2:12.

 

            *Paragraph 11, Pelagianism – Pelagius, British monk living in Rome (360?-420?), denied original sin and believed in freedom of the will, in opposition to the positions of St. Augustine.

 

            *Paragraph 11, “For it is God who worketh in you” – Philippians 2:13.

 

            *Paragraph 11, AugustinianismSt. Augustine (354-430) held that humanity was corrupt and helpless, totally dependent on God’s grace.

 

            *Paragraph 12, “whereto serves Mercy but to confront the visage of offence?” – Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3.3.46-47.

 

 

            Topics for reflection and discussion:

            --Lewis wrote, in a letter quoted above, “One cannot establish the efficacy of prayer by statistics.” Elsewhere (in “The Efficacy of Prayer”) he describes experiments he has heard of, where a team of people pray for one group of patients but not for another group, and the effectiveness of prayer is assessed after three months or a year (according to a recent news program, such a study is about to be undertaken by a research institute in the United States). Are such studies a good or worthwhile thing? If so, what is their value? If not, what is wrong with them? How does the question relate to an understanding of what prayer is and how it “works”?

            --In the 1993 movie Shadowlands, the priest Harry Harrington says to Lewis, when Lewis’s wife has shown some improvement, “Christopher can scoff, Jack, but I know how hard you’ve been praying; and now God is answering your prayers.” And Lewis replies, “That’s not why I pray, Harry. I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God, it changes me.” Discuss what is sound and helpful about what the character Lewis says, and what is not, and how it relates to what is said in this chapter.

 

 

Letter 10

 

            Letter 10 begins by discussing how images should be treated in reading the Bible, then returns to petitionary prayer, explaining why he believes that prayer does matter, especially because “the course of events is not governed like a state but created like a work of art to which every being makes its contribution and (in prayer) a conscious contribution” (par. 11).

 

            *Paragraph 1, this language is analogical – That is, God can be said to be grieving only by speaking of God in human (anthropomorphic) terms (by a comparison or analogy). See the note to Letter 4, paragraph 9; the note to Letter 9, paragraph 6; and the introductory note to Letter 15.

 

            *Paragraph 2, Never take the images literally – Lewis’s point can be illustrated from what he says in Mere Christianity 3.10 about biblical imagery used to depict heaven: “There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of ‘Heaven’ ridiculous by saying they do not want ‘to spend eternity playing harps.’ The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course, a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible. Musical instruments are mentioned because for many people (not all) music is the thing known in the present life which most strongly suggests ecstasy and infinity. Crowns are mentioned to suggest the fact that those who are united with God in eternity share His splendour and power and joy. Gold is mentioned to suggest the timelessness of Heaven (gold does not rust) and the preciousness of it. People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs.”

 

            *Paragraph 2, “demythologising – An approach to New Testament studies developed by German theologian Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976); Bultmann held that many passages in the Bible, especially those about God and his dealings with man, have the form of mythological expressions; if they are to be intelligible in the twentieth century, that which is mythical must be explained as such, so that the essential meaning of the work can appear more distinctly.

 

            *Paragraph 3, “God has instituted prayer . . .”Blaise Pascal (1623-62), Pensées de M. Pascal sur la réligion, et sur quelques autres sujets [“Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on other subjects”] (1670), #513.

 

            *Paragraph 3, stone will be bread – Matthew 7:9; Luke 11:11.

 

            *Paragraph 4, “the first Almighty Cause . . .” – Alexander Pope, English poet (1688-1744), An Essay on Man, 1.145-46.

 

            *Paragraph 8, “To generalise is to be an idiot” – A marginal comment by romantic poet William Blake (1757-1827) in a copy Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Discourses: “To generalise is to be an idiot; to particularise is the alone distinction of merit.”

 

            *Paragraph 9, the death of every sparrow – Matthew 10:29; Luke 12:6.

 

 

            Topics for reflection and discussion:

            --What are advantages, and disadvantages, of using anthropomorphic images for God, as the Bible does regularly? Should we try to conceptualize God without them? If we use them, is it important to keep in mind that they are only images?

            --Do you agree with Lewis that having one’s prayer be “heard” is more important that achieving a “result”? I heard a lawyer say that frequently people undertake a legal action not so much to achieve a certain result (win the case) as to have the case be heard, to have their issue taken seriously. Could that sometimes apply to prayers as well?

            --What does Lewis mean by “The world was made partly that there might be prayer”?

 

 

Letter 11

 

            Letter 11 deals with the difficulty that arises from the fact that the New Testament tells us two apparently contradictory things about petitionary prayer: In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus taught his disciples to pray “Thy will be done,” and that is the way he himself prayed in Gethsemane; but elsewhere he removes that limitation and promises that whatever we ask for in faith will be given us.

 

            *Paragraph 2, aorist – The simple past verb in Classical Greek, expressing past action with no implication as to completion, duration, or repetition.

 

            *Paragraph 4, “That which they greatly feared . . .” – Job 3:25 (“For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me”).

 

            *Paragraph 8, on Vidler’s principles, “venerable archaisms,” “outgrown” – See Chapter 6, paragraph 2 (and the note to it) and paragraph 10.

 

            *Paragraph 10, the Widow started Huck Finn off – Samuel L. Clemens, The Adventures of Huckkleberry Finn (1884), chap. 3.

 

            *Paragraph 10, “addressed to our condition” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), chap. 3: “There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us.”

 

            *Paragraph 13, the “evidence . . . of things not seen” – Hebrews 11:1.

 

            *Paragraph 14, friend is above the servant – See Letter 7, paragraph 2, and Letter 8, paragraph 9.

 

            Topics for reflection and discussion:

            --Lewis writes in Surprised by Joy about his experience when he was nine and his mother was gravely ill with cancer: “I remembered what I had been taught; that prayers offered in faith would be granted. I accordingly set myself to produce by will power a firm belief that my prayers for her recovery would be successful; and, as I thought, I achieved it” (chap. 1). Yet his mother died, which probably—although he denied it—contributed to his loss of faith a few years later. What would you say about prayer and its effect to someone in such a position?

            --Lewis says working up a subjective state of belief by will power or emotions “is not faith in the Christian sense.” What is faith in the Christian sense? How can it be developed?

 

 

Letter 12

 

            Letter 12 picks up on the reference to those of advanced degrees or kinds of faith in Letter 11, and moves on to talk about mystics and mysticism, with two paragraphs on intercessory prayer at the end.

 

            *Paragraph 1, Rose Macaulay’s approach – See Letter 2, paragraphs 2-4 and the notes to them.

 

            *Paragraph 1, the Imitation – Thomas à Kempkis, Imitation of Christ (1418).

 

            *Paragraph 2, when I was still a walker – For most of his life, Lewis took daily walks in the afternoon and enjoyed cross-country walks, staying overnight in country hotels. In the last few years of his life, because of osteoporosis and heart problems, he had to give up walking. “I’ll never be able to take real walks again—field-paths and little woods and wonderful inns in remote villages, farewell!—but it’s wonderful how mercifully the desire goes when the power goes” (Letters to an American Lady, 30 November 1957).

 

            *Paragraph 2, the precipices of mysticism – For a study of Lewis and mysticism, see David C. Downing, Into the Region of Awe: Mysticism in C. S. Lewis (2005). Downing concludes that Lewis was “part logician, part mystic, and his books offer a unique blend of charisma and clarity—of explaining what can be known, while exploring the unknown and the unknowable” (14).

 

            *Paragraph 5, aiguilles – Sharp, pointed mountain peaks.

 

            *Paragraph 5, “If it were so, He would have told us” – John 14:2 (“If it were not so, I would have told you.”)

 

            *Paragraph 6, “And when he hatth the kernel eate . . .” – John Donne (1572-1631), “Community” (1633), 23-24.

 

            *Paragraph 7, Plotinus, Lady Julian, St. John of the Cross – Three notable mystics. Plotinus (205-270 a.d.) was born in Egypt and is generally regarded as the founder of Neoplatonism and one of the most influential philosophers in antiquity, after Plato and Aristotle. The ultimate goal, in his philosophy, is unification with God, which can be attained only when the soul, in an ecstatic state, loses the restraint of the body and has for a time an immediate awareness of God. Lady Julian: Juliana of Norwich (1342-c. 1416), English anchoress and author of Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1390), an expression of mystical fervor in the form of sixteen visions of Jesus. St. John of the Cross: John de Yepes (1542-1591), founder (with St. Teresa of Avila) of the Discalced Carmelites, and author of a number of important works of Christian mysticism: Ascent of Mount Carmel, Dark Night of the Soul, and the Spiritual Canticle of the Soul.

 

            *Paragraph 7, “It may be that the gulfs . . .” – Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses” (1833), 62-63, describing what might be the different results if Ulysses’s men join him in undertaking one, last voyage to the west.

 

            *Paragraph 10, “mortal glimpse of death’s immortal rose” – ??

 

            *Paragraph 11, “flesh” and not “spirit” – Romans 8:1-8.

 

 

            Topics for reflection and discussion:

            --Mysticism is defined as experiencing immediate spiritual intuition of truths believed to transcend ordinary understanding, or a direct, intimate union of the soul with God through contemplation or spiritual ecstasy. Have you had such experiences yourself, or know others who have? Discuss their value or their effect on the person who has them.

            --Lewis says a desire to “peep behind the scenes” (to attain a glimpse of heaven) should not be one’s motive for attempting the mystic way. What would the proper motive be?

            --In an essay, “Work and Prayer” (1945) Lewis recalls an old maxim that says “laborare est orare (work is prayer),” at least a kind of prayer (God in the Dock, 106). What does the maxim mean? What seems to you the proper mixture of prayer and work?

 

 

Letter 13

 

            Letter 13 picks up the question raised at the end of Letter 11: is there a Listener at all, when we pray, or “Are we only talking to ourselves in an empty universe?” Lewis had raised similar questions in a poem he wrote in 1933 and reprints here, with some minor revisions. He enclosed a copy of the original poem with a letter to his friend Dom Bede Griffiths, dated 4 April 1934 (see Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, p. 137).

 

            *Paragraph 1, “I’ve just found in an old note-book . . . with no author’s name attached” – Lewis often wrote ideas for essays or books, or first drafts of them, in school notebooks. A Grief Observed (1961) purports to be notes he jotted in four such notebooks during the night when he wasn’t able to sleep. That “no author’s name [is] attached” is a signal that it is his own poem; if it were by someone else, he would have recorded the author’s name.

 

            *Paragraph 2, “Pantheism” – A belief system that identifies the universe with God or God with the universe: “God is all, and all is God.” Use of the word “dream,” Lewis seems to say, breaks down all separation between humans and God: if the one great reality, infinite and eternal, is God, everything finite and temporal is part of God. In that case we, like a dream, have no actual reality. Lewis disagrees with this in the following paragraph.

 

            *Paragraph 2, soliloquy – A speech in drama in which a character talks to himself, revealing innermost thoughts.

 

            *Paragraph 2, If the Holy Spirit speaks in the man, then in prayer God speaks to God – This sentence may be exploring the idea raised in Romans 8. “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit” (v. 15-16 NRSV) and “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words” (v. 26 NRSV). The rest of the letter discusses the way God can be in us and help us speak to him while still remaining “other,” separate from us.

 

            *Paragraph 3, Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances – Arthur Owen Barfield (1898-1997) was one of Lewis’s closest friends, from the time they met as undergraduates in Oxford. Although Barfield practiced law for his livelihood, he published many books on language and philosophy. Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry was published in 1957. The two maxims Lewis summarizes can be found in Chapter 23, “Religion.”

 

            *Paragraph 3, “Arnold speaks of us as ‘enisled’” – Matthew Arnold, English poet (1822-88), in his poem “To Marguerite” (1852), line 1.

                                                            Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
                                                            With echoing straits between us thrown,
                                                            Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
                                                            We mortal millions live alone.

 

            * Paragraph 3, “enisled” – To be placed or settled on an island; thus, to be isolated or cut off.

 

            * Paragraph 5, ontological continuity – In philosophy, “ontology” is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of existence or the essence of being. “Ontological continuity” here summarizes the connection we have with God through the nature of our existence as created beings has been discussed in the previous two paragraphs.

 

            *Paragraph 5, “Whither shall I go . . .” – Psalm 139:6band 7b; Lewis uses here the translation by Miles Coverdale found in The Book of Common Prayer, which he would have heard in chapel and church services.

 

 

            Topics for reflection and discussion:

            --What does Lewis mean by saying that “prayer in its most perfect state is a soliloquy, . . . God [speaking] to God” (paragraph 2)? What does it mean in regard to what prayer is? How might it affect the way we engage in prayer?

            --What is Lewis’s answer, and your answer, to his question, “Why should God speak to Himself through man?”

            --In the last paragraph, Lewis distinguishes between creation and Incarnation, and then comments on the importance to God of the Incarnation, what it does for God. Explain what it does and discuss how that is meaningful to us.

 

 

Letter 14

 

            Letter 14 develops further the idea introduced in Letter 13, the “otherness” of God, and thus continues to explore the relationship of human to the divine. The letter affirms again that God is in us, without being us, and asks what that means in terms of our daily walk with God.

 

            *Paragraph 1, “got it all out of his head” – Lewis echoes here words he had used in talking about Creation in Mere Christianity: “Christianity . . . thinks God made the world—that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God ‘made up out of his head’ as a man makes up a story” (Bk. 2, Ch. 1). He used the same wording in the sixth of the Chronicles of Narnia, The Magician’s Nephew, describing the creation of the Narnian world: as Lucy hears Aslan sing, plants and then animals begin to spring forth across the landscape and “with an unspeakable thrill, she felt quit