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Category: C.S. Lewis

Savoir and Connaitre (Surprised by Laughter)

Lewis defined the two experiences or ways of knowing with two French verbs: savoir and connaitre. Savoir is to know about something – to examine it, study it, analyze it. Lewis wrote: ‘But I have an idea that the true analysis of a thing ought not to be so like the thing itself. I should not expect a true theory of the comic to be itself funny.’

Yet the contemplation of an object, its savoir, is only one epistemological way. The other method of knowing – connaitre – is to enjoy an object, to become acquainted with it intimately, to experience and taste it.

-Terry Lindvall, Surprised by Laughter, p. 8

I’ve been familiar with this distinction for several years, but I appreciated Lindvall’s discussion of it. As a preacher, it is something that I want to remind myself of constantly. My goal is not to simply help people analyze the gospel, but to help them have a sense or feeling (experience) of it. And as an individual, I need to make sure that this is the case in my own experience.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones used to say something to the effect that we spend too much time preaching about the gospel and not enough time actually preaching the gospel. That is true of the preaching we perform in, and to, our own souls as well. We need ‘to experience and taste it.’

A Reason to Read Old Books

For Lewis, the reading of literature – above all, the reading of older literature – is an important challenge to some premature judgments based on ‘chronological snobbery.’ Owen Barfield had taught Lewis to be suspicious of those who declaimed the inevitable superiority of the present over the past.

…Lewis argues that a familiarity with the literature of the past provides readers with a standpoint which gives them critical distance from their own era. Thus, it allows them to see ‘the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective.’ The reading of old books enable us to avoid becoming passive captives of the Spirit of the Age by keeping ‘the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds.’

– Alister McGrath, C.S. Lewis – A Life, p. 187

Old books don’t simply bring an old perspective – they bring perspective. You’ll never be a great critic of culture until you gain the vantage point of cultures gone by. I meet people who think that we’re finally figuring it all out these days. We’re the best of the best, surfing the edge of the tide of history. Little do they realize there were people in ages past much smarter than we are today.

This perspective could lead to reverse chronological snobbery. We want to be careful not to put artsy glowing halos around the heads of the departed. They were far from perfect. But their perspective is needed nonetheless – if we are to have any perspective at all.

Enabling the Student (C.S. Lewis)

Alister McGrath comments on C.S. Lewis’s teaching style:

Lewis did not see it as his responsibility to impart information to his students. He resented and resisted what some then called the ‘gramophone’ model of tuition, in which the tutor simply imparted the knowledge that the student had so signally failed to discover for himself.

Lewis saw himself as enabling the student to develop the skills necessary to uncover and evaluate such knowledge for himself.

–C.S. Lewis – A Life, p. 164

This type of teaching philosophy is something I contend for, and something I’ve had to debate and defend for the past couple of years in my studies in Instructional Technology. I always go back to a Wendell Berry quote I came across a while back:

‘Information,’ which once meant that which forms or fashions from within, now means merely ‘data.’ However organized this data may be, it is not shapely or formal or in the true sense in-forming. It is not present where it is needed; if you have to ‘access’ it, you don’t have it. Whereas knowledge moves and forms acts, information is inert. You cannot imagine a debater or a quarterback or a musician performing by ‘accessing information.’ A computer chock full of such information is no more admirable than a head or a book chock full of it (Another Turn of the Crank, p. 96).

My contention is that the true teacher, that is the good teacher, is not someone who sees his or her task as merely imparting information; rather, he or she is the one who sees his or her task as the work of in-forming – that is, actually working to inwardly form the student. Another way of saying that is this: the teacher’s job is not simply to teach the students what to think, but to teach them how to think. In practice, this takes a thousand different forms. For the Literature professor, for example, it means that you don’t simply make your students learn facts about Shakespeare and his plays and sonnets; rather, you teach them to read Shakespeare profitably for themselves. You want them to be able to pick up Hamlet for themselves, even if it’s a year from now, and actually be able to read it and enjoy it. I am having almost daily discussions with a young friend of mine who is taking a summer Lit course at the moment. His daily quizzes involve the remembering of names and places primarily. This is precisely what McGrath says Lewis was against. Teach them to engage the story, not to remember facts about the work. Stop niggling over the data and teach them to engage the actual narrative.

Another example: For the Bible teacher, this means that you aren’t content to teach content; instead you want to impart your students with tools that will enable them to engage the Bible when you are not around. I teach a Sunday School class on a semi-regular basis. I am not the least concerned whether my students can recite all 66 books of the Bible. If they can, that’s great. I’ve never asked them to. I’m more worried about their grasp of the narrative of the Scriptures and their engagement with the Law and the Gospel. If they get those points down, they will essentially be able to engage any passage they come across in their own reading.

I’m tempted to give more examples of how this can play out, but Literature and Bible are my own areas of interest. I’ll leave it to others to make applications in those areas for the time being.

The world around us is in-forming us. Movies are catechisms for our imaginations and impulses. Technology is shaping the way we learn and look at the world. If teachers, especially Christian teachers (and preachers), are content to see themselves as so many shovelers of data, then we are really only digging a hole. If we actually are shoveling something, it probably doesn’t smell too good in terms of pedagogical aroma. Don’t be content to inform. in-FORM.

Always Moving Yet Never Leaving Anything Behind (C.S. Lewis)

Alister McGrath quotes the opening lines of The Allegory of Love:

Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind.

He then comments,

Where some argue that humanity must embrace a synthesis of contemporary science and social attitudes as ‘the truth’ – to be contrasted with the ‘superstitions’ of the past – Lewis declares that this simply leads to humanity becoming a by-product of its age, shaped by its predominant cultural moods and intellectual conventions. We must, Lewis argues, break free from the shallow complacency of ‘chronological snobbery,’ and realise that we can learn from the past precisely because it liberates us from the tyranny of the contemporaneous.

–C.S. Lewis – A Life, p. 184

Humanity is not like the jump from the horse and buggy to the car, in which the horse and buggy gives up the ghost and disappears. Humanity does not, or at least should not, move from life to death, or from one life to another form of life. Humanity is (continuously) alive; it has an organic unity and continuity stretching from generation to generation. The Fourth Commandment, ‘Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land,’ acknowledges as much. If our days are to be prolonged, we must recognize, and especially honor, the continuity of life and the precedents set by those who came before us.

Chesterton made the claim in Orthodoxy that a belief in tradition is simply a belief in the ‘democracy of the dead.’ It is not only our (modern) vote that counts; humanity must acknowledge that the votes of the past cast by our ancestors count for something as well. They may have voted wrong from time to time, but their votes have impacted us and should be acknowledged, and honored where possible.

If you resist the reading of old books, for example, you are doomed to live in the claustrophobic present without any ventilation. A knowledge of, and respect for, the past is like the joy of opening a window in a stuffy room. It lets fresh air in. It is old air, but to us it is fresh.

Democratic Ethos

I got into a discussion about politics the other day. I know better; it always causes problems (I suppose that could be a good thing from time to time). In the discussion I told an older gentleman that I was primarily a Christian (not a partisan of the political sort), and that this means that I want to make both Democrats and Republicans uncomfortable to some degree. He responded by noting that he knew me well enough to know that I was quite conservative. I agreed with him, but then contended that I differed from many Conservatives in that I do not believe democracy itself to be the end-all-be-all of political positions or realities. ‘Really?’ was the response I got.

Now I know what he was thinking at this point: ‘Oh boy, he’s a socialist and I didn’t know it.’ But, of course, this was not what I was thinking, so I interjected: ‘I believe we are all headed for monarchy, and I think that is a good thing.’ To which he replied again, ‘Really?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and the King on the throne will be Jesus Christ; King of kings, and Lord of Lords, forever…’

This effectively ended the conversation. Mission accomplished; I made a Conservative as uncomfortable as I usually make the Liberals. And now I’ve brought it up twice, since I just wrote about it here. But I bring it up here primarily to note this quote from C.S. Lewis:

…A society which becomes democratic in ethos as well as in constitution is doomed. And not much loss either.

– C.S. Lewis, Talking About Bicycles, from Present Concerns, p. 72

Does that make you uncomfortable? Then ponder the reasons why. I think Lewis offers a very helpful corrective for us here. You can read about it in a bit more detail in another post I wrote (HERE). There I agree with Lewis’ idea that you can either view Democracy as good on account of man’s ability to rule himself or because of man’s inability to rule others. One is idolatry and the other is a position of humility.

 

Innovation and Progress (Technopoly)

…Computer technology has served to strengthen Technopoly’s hold, to make people believe that technological innovation is synonymous with human progress.

-Neil Postman, Technopoly, p. 117

This quote brings to mind something C.S. Lewis wrote:

How can an unchanging system [i.e. Christianity] survive the continual increase of knowledge? Now, in certain cases we know very well how it can. A mature scholar reading a great passage in Plato, and taking in at one glance the metaphysics, the literary beauty, and the place of both in the history of Europe, is in a very different position from a boy learning the Greek alphabet. Yet through that unchanging system of the alphabet all this vast mental and emotional activity is operating. It has not been broken by the new knowledge. It is not outworn. If it changed, all would be chaos. A great Christian statesman, considering the morality of a measure which will affect millions of lives, and which involves economic, geographical and political considerations of the utmost complexity, is in a different position from a boy first learning that one must not cheat or tell lies, or hurt innocent people. But only in so far as that first knowledge of the great moral platitudes survives unimpaired in the statesman will his deliberation be moral at all. If that goes, there there has been no progress, but only mere change. For change is not progress unless the core remains unchanged. A small oak grows into a big oak: if it became a beech, that would not be growth, but mere change… (from Dogma and the Universe in God in the Dock, Part 1; emphasis mine).

Our constant change leads us to think that we are constantly progressing. But are we? Not only does progress mean that we have to start somewhere; it also means that we are heading somewhere. If you use the analogy of a trip, the car has to start somewhere, stay on the road, and be heading the right direction toward a destination in order to make actual progress (unless you are only running away from something or someone). Along the way you may add a few things for the ride like gas, food, drinks, a cd, or what have you. You might even stop and get new tires, or even a new car. All of that equals change. But none of it equals progress unless you stick to the road and keep heading in the direction of the destination. Change, even good change, even spectacular change, does not necessarily mean that progress is being made.