Was C.S. Lewis Saved?

“In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

— From Surprised By Joy,
C.S. Lewis, 1955

I loathe theological debates.

To clarify, I do not dislike discoursing about God, and I have no objection to good faith arguments over what the scripture actually teaches to the extent they cleave as closely as possible to the language of scripture itself. The moment they drift off into coined, often pretentious theological terminology, however, we are in a marsh of our own making, and on our way under.

Moscow Under Attack

Doug Wilson and his Moscow, Idaho compatriots in the Federal Vision movement are under attack. Again. This is becoming a weekly event. You can practically set your watch by it. The latest attack has a theological basis, at least purportedly. However, I must confess that I, like Doug, am starting to wonder if the real reason certain sheep start baaaing at their fellow sheep — rather than, say, at the wolves among the flock unnoticed — primarily has to do with the fact that Doug and his congregation present a great big, visible target to their would-be critics. The word “Moscow” now draws eyeballs and pageviews. This may be because the Muscovites are out there actually doing something in the world, and it is having a notable impact. I too disagree with some relatively minor aspects of what they believe and practice, but there is no denying they are hard at work with kingdom priorities, and a lot of what they are producing is pretty good stuff.

But let me cease speculating about motives and move on to describe the theological fig leaf itself, if indeed that it is.

The Role of Obedience in Salvation

Short version: Tom Hicks and Garrett Walden accuse Wilson of being unorthodox on the doctrine of faith and its relationship to justification. You can find their case here and Doug’s rejoinder here. Here is the essence of their objection to the “Moscow Doctrine”, as they call it:

“Wilson says obedience is essential to the instrumentality of faith. The Reformed faith would agree that obedience is an essential characteristic of faith. But to say that its obedience is an essential characteristic of faith’s instrumentality is unorthodox. Faith’s instrumentality is the manner by which it receives justification. Wilson thinks justification is by faith in its act of obedience and not only by faith in its act of receiving and resting upon Christ.”

Hicks, Walden and Wilson all agree that faith requires obedience. But Hicks and Walden claim the Muscovites believe obedience is what makes faith efficacious; it is “an essential characteristic of faith’s instrumentality”. This, they say, is a bridge too far. Unorthodoxy looms.

See why I loathe theological debates?

Obedience of What Sort?

Well, okay. Here we have what would seem to be a niggling technical objection that, if true, is probably a bigger issue than initially appears. If Doug Wilson really believes that acts of obedience help your faith save you — things like feeding the poor, praying the rosary, etc. — then we do have an orthodoxy problem.

Wilson promptly replies that this is not at all what he was saying. With respect to its salvatory aspect, he stringently limits the obedience of faith to two areas: resting and receiving. These are acts of obedience, certainly, but they are not works, says Doug. They are essentially passive, the mere cessation of active resistance. They are not the sinner presenting to God his own wonderful performance; they are the means by which the new believer trusts Christ for his salvation. As he puts it:

“I am not sending justifying faith out into town in order to help little old ladies across the street, thereby earning Merit Points that can be turned in at the Justification Mart. [Get that? No works.] I am simply saying that faith’s receptive aspect is alive, and so is faith’s active aspect, and they each respectively do what they were created to do, and told to do, and not something else. And doing what you were told to do is obeying.”

“If I were to say that justifying faith rests in Christ, receives Christ, and then tithes ten percent of its income, then Hicks and Walden would be correct in their concerns. But I do not say anything like that. I hotly deny it. I throw rocks at it.”

Voilà, orthodoxy.

Wresting Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

Problem solved? One hopes so. Still, Doug, being Doug, cannot resist throwing in one further complication. I’ll let him spell it out in his own words:

“Resting and receiving are the only verbs I want to allow as the instrument of justification. But we should have no problem at all allowing in adverbs. We must allow adverbs, if we are to remain consistently confessional. Obediently and lovingly don’t bring in any merit at all, but they are indicators of the presence of life. The actions of resting and receiving proceed from a new heart, a heart with a new disposition. The new heart rests for a reason. It receives with a certain attitude. In order to rest and receive it must be submissive, and to be submissive is to be obedient. So if the gospel is the only object, obedience is not a bad word.”

See, now I wish he’d stopped a few sentences earlier. He was doing so well there. Of course obedience is not a bad word. It is necessary to faith. The scripture at least twice refers to “the obedience of faith”, which I take it means that putting your trust in Christ for salvation is itself an act of obedience. But let’s not bring other adverbs into it, please.

Lewis and Salvation

Perhaps there are indeed those who believe “lovingly”. It would certainly be nice to think so. The Lord himself spoke of those who received the word with joy (although these turned out to have no root), so faith with positive adverbs is not an unreasonable proposition on its face. But I was not one of these happy individuals and neither, it appears, was C.S. Lewis, whose faith, as he himself says, flickered to life initially in an atmosphere of reluctance and dejection. My faith in Christ was likewise exercised in a spirit of utter defeat. I simply gave up and said, “Lord, you win.” And he did.

Temporarily, I was quite miserable. I was giving up the last little bit of control and autonomy I thought I had over my own life. Turned out that was wrong too. I had been a slave all along, a fact which shortly became clear to me when an out-of-control drinking habit disappeared literally overnight. I didn’t even notice its absence for three months. I had better things to do with my time, not the next week but the very next morning.

Doug does not push the issue of the spirit in which one obeys, but he’s the one introducing the adverbs to the mix, and they create an unnecessary complication to the salvation issue that is probably worth discussing. It raises the question Was C.S. Lewis really saved? Am I, for that matter? Is the obedience component of faith less active — or, more scarily, inactive — if it fails to embrace the truth lovingly, enthusiastically, or in the absence of any other positive adverbial qualities?

Other Evidences of Life

I would say not, and scripture itself is the reason. If obeying lovingly is an indication of life, so too is obeying reluctantly, dejectedly, fearfully, tentatively … even grudgingly. All involve movement in the right direction. The point is the obedience; everything else is window dressing open to future adjustment by the Holy Spirit of God as one grows in Christ. And he absolutely does change our outlook, and does it in short order. He did it for Lewis, and he certainly did it for me.

Consider the Lord’s parable about obedience leading to salvation. A man had two sons. He commanded both to work in his vineyard. One promised to go and didn’t; the other refused and later thought better of it and went. The Lord then asks his audience, “Which of the two did the will of his father?” The correct answer is the son who went into the vineyard, notwithstanding his suboptimal attitude. He obeyed, and nevermind the rest.

Would it have been preferable to embrace his father’s command with joy? Certainly. But obedience to the will of the father, whatever the spirit in which it was exercised, was good enough to serve as an example.

That the Lord has eternal life in mind here is abundantly clear. He explains his own parable to the chief priests and elders of the people as follows: “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you.” Why? They believed and they obeyed, while the religious authorities of the Jews did not.

So then, Doug, let’s leave the adverbs out of it.

And the theological arguments to the self-styled theologians.