That mingled fascination and impatience is partly because this post is an advertisement for neo-Thomism but doesn't satisfy the appetite that it encourages by supplying the actual substantive arguments. That might be just what you're aiming for and what your project needs!
But also, how does CS Lewis fit into this? Unlike the philosophers that you're citing, he *is* a household name. I've had a bit of intermittent exposure to Anscombe and Maritain, and I wasn't convinced. I got the impression that they don't doubt deep enough to earn the warrant to be believed. CS Lewis does. He answers Descartes' challenge and brings Christianity through the test with flying colors. And as far as I can tell, he's by far the most famous and influential Christian apologist of the 20th century. How does he fit into your story?
I also get worried when you mention developments in medicine that might cast doubt on the conception of life life as explicable from molecular machinery as if they're load-bearing for the Christian worldview. I'm certainly open to the possibility that some kind of Aristotelian mystical telos is a needed explanatory factor in biology. I'd be a bit surprised, if anything, but I'm open to it. But: the Christian worldview definitely doesn't need that. The soul can be real without teleology pervading physical nature.
I'm quite open to being educated about Aristotle's contribution, and perhaps finding that it's larger than I realized. But I'm worried that this argument is trying to checkmate Christians into acknowledging a debt to Aristotle that isn't actually there.
What I'm presenting here is kind of a ten thousand foot historical narrative, a paradigm. I've dipped into philosophical arguments a bit over the course of this series but you have to come closer to earth to go charging further down particular pathways, and then I won't achieve my purpose of giving the broad map (and thus conveying the paradigm). I would love to explore Neo-Thomism further in future, if I get the chance.
But of course if I just dove into some Neo-Thomist debate about the interaction of grace and nature, most normal readers would reasonably react by thinking, "OK, this is sort of interesting maybe, whatever, but why I do care?" Modern people just in general tend to think of philosophy as kind of a niche interest, fine to do if you like it but not that important and certainly not civilization-driving. And, those deep in the culture war ethos often have the sense that philosophy hasn't done anything helpful (nor could it because who even reads it?). I'm trying to convey a sense of another way to look at things.
There's not really a question of check-mating anyone, because you don't *have* to believe me or agree. But even if you don't agree, maybe it's worth have some sense of another way of looking at things. It's hard to disagree fruitfully with views you don't understand.
C.S. Lewis was a good egg. I agree that he has been the most successful apologist of the modern era. Honestly, I don't even know who else one would put forward as a candidate. Just the other day I was defending in conversation the inclusion of *Mere Christianity* in the apologetics curriculum at my children's school, on the grounds that this is in fact the most successful work of apologetics of the modern era so it's probably good to be familiar with it. Even though I grasp the reasons why some would rather substitute some other things.
He was part of that mid-century flowering of Christian humanism, which is itself an uplifting story that intersects with the neo-Thomist one in various ways. But that's complicated. Would love to explore later if we get to it. Certainly I see the Christian humanists as robustly part of this broader story I'm telling about the recovery of (very broad-spectrum) Aristotelianism. Which, you know, you can label in another way if you want, but I think this is just the clearest. Certainly what would most rapidly convey understanding to someone within the discipline of philosophy (not just Catholic intellectuals but philosophers as a group).
I think Lewis' greatest three strengths were 1) an extremely fertile and wide-ranging imagination, 2) an ability to explain his ideas clearly and in evocative ways, 3) a talent for drawing out other people's potentialities also. That's a lot of gifts! Again, a good egg who did immense good in the world!
If I had a concern about him, it would be that for some people (yes, maybe you) he ends up being... almost their St. Thomas Aquinas? I don't think Lewis is a great substitute for St. Thomas. That's hardly a deep criticism when you understand that St. Thomas was both 1) one of the most brilliant men who ever lived, and 2) working under circumstances far more advantageous to the sort of sweeping systematization he was trying to do. He was part of a broader *project* that many people were pursuing at once, in a Europe where that paradigm set the tone generally. Of course Lewis couldn't single-handedly match him on the level of comprehensive synthesis! It would be ridiculous to expect.
Lewis is, yes, an interesting thinker in his own right, but also optimally an entry point into a broader Christian intellectual tradition. (And he would love that. He wouldn't see that as disparaging in any way.) Here I'm exploring big-picture questions about the shape of that tradition and its relationship to human history more broadly. I think it will be a bit hard to get a sense of that landscape if you're trying to make Lewis into the new St. Thomas.
Re: “There's not really a question of check-mating anyone, because you don't have to believe me or agree.”
That’s an interesting statement. Some philosophical arguments are more insistent than that and do more or less conclude that “you have to agree with this.” The compelling vs. the suggestive. It’s interesting to think about the balance between the two.
Thanks, I really appreciate the contextualization of CS Lewis. I think you’re right that CS Lewis is to me kind of what Thomas Aquinas is to you. I tend to buy into modern, post-Aristotelian science, and CS Lewis synthesizes Christianity with that. Thomas Aquinas synthesized Christianity with Aristotelian science, which was the best available at the time, but it’s been superseded. I’m not convinced that there’s an Aristotle-sized hole in the modern scientific worldview. There is a God-sized hole in it, most obviously at “who caused the Big Bang?” And materialistic science hasn’t had a ghost of a dream of an iota of success in explaining human consciousness: a basic mind/matter dualism stands utterly, totally unembarrassed. So there’s a mind-sized hole in the modern scientific worldview.
Is there also a teleology-sized hole in it? Convince me! But (a) mind isn’t reducible to matter and (b) God caused the Big Bang, with a little help from (c) biological complexity probably isn’t explicable by chance-based evolutionary processes either, is very ample to fending off the scientific materialist threat to the Christian worldview. Teleology may well have truths to teach; but the truth of Christianity is not at stake in whether it does or not.
Did *Lewis* think that he synthesized modern science with Christianity? I don't think he would have said that, though I certainly don't know him as intimately as you.
He certainly had deep concerns about materialism and its potential to strip order and purpose from the world. As we see in, for instance, The Abolition of Man.
Oh, Lewis would certainly be too humble to claim as much for himself as I would claim for him!
And yes, Lewis definitely attacked materialism, and that was one of his most urgent and persistent arguments. But he didn't particularly stressed teleology. He stressed supernaturalism.
I agree that this was another of his very admirable qualities, but I guess my point is that the Scholastics were definitely trying to forge a fairly comprehensive Christian synthesis. It was their collective project, as it were. But I don’t think Lewis understood the synthesizing of modern science and Christianity to be an explicit goal or major project. He was interested in all sorts of stuff, including modern science, and I suppose in a way he had a synthesizing sort of mind, but it would be quite surprising for one guy to achieve a fully satisfactory synthesis of that magnitude when he didn’t even see that as a an explicit goal.
Louis wasn't particularly trying to be a universal systematizer. But he was trying to defend the faith. And the faith was so deeply challenged, and touches so many things, that the task pushed Lewis to developing a great range. Those who want to make his thought the heart of a worldview have to extrapolate somewhat. But the resources are there.
So this makes me fascinated and impatient.
That mingled fascination and impatience is partly because this post is an advertisement for neo-Thomism but doesn't satisfy the appetite that it encourages by supplying the actual substantive arguments. That might be just what you're aiming for and what your project needs!
But also, how does CS Lewis fit into this? Unlike the philosophers that you're citing, he *is* a household name. I've had a bit of intermittent exposure to Anscombe and Maritain, and I wasn't convinced. I got the impression that they don't doubt deep enough to earn the warrant to be believed. CS Lewis does. He answers Descartes' challenge and brings Christianity through the test with flying colors. And as far as I can tell, he's by far the most famous and influential Christian apologist of the 20th century. How does he fit into your story?
I also get worried when you mention developments in medicine that might cast doubt on the conception of life life as explicable from molecular machinery as if they're load-bearing for the Christian worldview. I'm certainly open to the possibility that some kind of Aristotelian mystical telos is a needed explanatory factor in biology. I'd be a bit surprised, if anything, but I'm open to it. But: the Christian worldview definitely doesn't need that. The soul can be real without teleology pervading physical nature.
I'm quite open to being educated about Aristotle's contribution, and perhaps finding that it's larger than I realized. But I'm worried that this argument is trying to checkmate Christians into acknowledging a debt to Aristotle that isn't actually there.
What I'm presenting here is kind of a ten thousand foot historical narrative, a paradigm. I've dipped into philosophical arguments a bit over the course of this series but you have to come closer to earth to go charging further down particular pathways, and then I won't achieve my purpose of giving the broad map (and thus conveying the paradigm). I would love to explore Neo-Thomism further in future, if I get the chance.
But of course if I just dove into some Neo-Thomist debate about the interaction of grace and nature, most normal readers would reasonably react by thinking, "OK, this is sort of interesting maybe, whatever, but why I do care?" Modern people just in general tend to think of philosophy as kind of a niche interest, fine to do if you like it but not that important and certainly not civilization-driving. And, those deep in the culture war ethos often have the sense that philosophy hasn't done anything helpful (nor could it because who even reads it?). I'm trying to convey a sense of another way to look at things.
There's not really a question of check-mating anyone, because you don't *have* to believe me or agree. But even if you don't agree, maybe it's worth have some sense of another way of looking at things. It's hard to disagree fruitfully with views you don't understand.
C.S. Lewis was a good egg. I agree that he has been the most successful apologist of the modern era. Honestly, I don't even know who else one would put forward as a candidate. Just the other day I was defending in conversation the inclusion of *Mere Christianity* in the apologetics curriculum at my children's school, on the grounds that this is in fact the most successful work of apologetics of the modern era so it's probably good to be familiar with it. Even though I grasp the reasons why some would rather substitute some other things.
He was part of that mid-century flowering of Christian humanism, which is itself an uplifting story that intersects with the neo-Thomist one in various ways. But that's complicated. Would love to explore later if we get to it. Certainly I see the Christian humanists as robustly part of this broader story I'm telling about the recovery of (very broad-spectrum) Aristotelianism. Which, you know, you can label in another way if you want, but I think this is just the clearest. Certainly what would most rapidly convey understanding to someone within the discipline of philosophy (not just Catholic intellectuals but philosophers as a group).
I think Lewis' greatest three strengths were 1) an extremely fertile and wide-ranging imagination, 2) an ability to explain his ideas clearly and in evocative ways, 3) a talent for drawing out other people's potentialities also. That's a lot of gifts! Again, a good egg who did immense good in the world!
If I had a concern about him, it would be that for some people (yes, maybe you) he ends up being... almost their St. Thomas Aquinas? I don't think Lewis is a great substitute for St. Thomas. That's hardly a deep criticism when you understand that St. Thomas was both 1) one of the most brilliant men who ever lived, and 2) working under circumstances far more advantageous to the sort of sweeping systematization he was trying to do. He was part of a broader *project* that many people were pursuing at once, in a Europe where that paradigm set the tone generally. Of course Lewis couldn't single-handedly match him on the level of comprehensive synthesis! It would be ridiculous to expect.
Lewis is, yes, an interesting thinker in his own right, but also optimally an entry point into a broader Christian intellectual tradition. (And he would love that. He wouldn't see that as disparaging in any way.) Here I'm exploring big-picture questions about the shape of that tradition and its relationship to human history more broadly. I think it will be a bit hard to get a sense of that landscape if you're trying to make Lewis into the new St. Thomas.
Re: “There's not really a question of check-mating anyone, because you don't have to believe me or agree.”
That’s an interesting statement. Some philosophical arguments are more insistent than that and do more or less conclude that “you have to agree with this.” The compelling vs. the suggestive. It’s interesting to think about the balance between the two.
Thanks, I really appreciate the contextualization of CS Lewis. I think you’re right that CS Lewis is to me kind of what Thomas Aquinas is to you. I tend to buy into modern, post-Aristotelian science, and CS Lewis synthesizes Christianity with that. Thomas Aquinas synthesized Christianity with Aristotelian science, which was the best available at the time, but it’s been superseded. I’m not convinced that there’s an Aristotle-sized hole in the modern scientific worldview. There is a God-sized hole in it, most obviously at “who caused the Big Bang?” And materialistic science hasn’t had a ghost of a dream of an iota of success in explaining human consciousness: a basic mind/matter dualism stands utterly, totally unembarrassed. So there’s a mind-sized hole in the modern scientific worldview.
Is there also a teleology-sized hole in it? Convince me! But (a) mind isn’t reducible to matter and (b) God caused the Big Bang, with a little help from (c) biological complexity probably isn’t explicable by chance-based evolutionary processes either, is very ample to fending off the scientific materialist threat to the Christian worldview. Teleology may well have truths to teach; but the truth of Christianity is not at stake in whether it does or not.
Did *Lewis* think that he synthesized modern science with Christianity? I don't think he would have said that, though I certainly don't know him as intimately as you.
He certainly had deep concerns about materialism and its potential to strip order and purpose from the world. As we see in, for instance, The Abolition of Man.
Oh, Lewis would certainly be too humble to claim as much for himself as I would claim for him!
And yes, Lewis definitely attacked materialism, and that was one of his most urgent and persistent arguments. But he didn't particularly stressed teleology. He stressed supernaturalism.
“Too humble.”
I agree that this was another of his very admirable qualities, but I guess my point is that the Scholastics were definitely trying to forge a fairly comprehensive Christian synthesis. It was their collective project, as it were. But I don’t think Lewis understood the synthesizing of modern science and Christianity to be an explicit goal or major project. He was interested in all sorts of stuff, including modern science, and I suppose in a way he had a synthesizing sort of mind, but it would be quite surprising for one guy to achieve a fully satisfactory synthesis of that magnitude when he didn’t even see that as a an explicit goal.
Louis wasn't particularly trying to be a universal systematizer. But he was trying to defend the faith. And the faith was so deeply challenged, and touches so many things, that the task pushed Lewis to developing a great range. Those who want to make his thought the heart of a worldview have to extrapolate somewhat. But the resources are there.