Arminianism, Calvinism, and C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis described the process of salvation and sanctification throughout his works as something that is both wholly dependant on the Christian and wholly dependant on God. The constant argument among Christians, specifically regarding Arminianism and Calvinism, is how contingent one’s salvation—-or sanctification— is on God, and how contingent it is on humans. The extreme Calvinist would argue it is only and completely dependant on God, humans do not have the power to perfect themselves or the goodness to make the choice to live for God willingly. Calvinism commonly coincides with the theory of Predestination. The extreme Armenian would argue that it is wholly dependant on the free choice of the individual to accept God’s gift of grace (ticket to heaven), and to willingly follow through with what is required to be a good Christian, namely a good person. C.S. Lewis presents a third way— a medium between these two views of salvation and sanctification regarding the role humans play and the role God plays.
It is tempting to say both human choice and God’s power are essential to our salvation and leave it at that. C.S. Lewis, however, takes careful time in his works unpacking how exactly each person is responsible for their free will and how exactly God uses his power when our will is not enough. I will outline three key instances of this in his works Mere Christianity, Screwtape Letters, and The Great Divorce. His aim is not necessarily to establish a clear doctrine, but to widen the lens of our practical understanding of salvation— and the transformation that follows. (Mere Christianity, 15, 60).
First, it is important to clarify that Lewis’ understanding of salvation and sanctification are interwoven. Part of how Lewis’ views differ from popular ideas of salvation is that he does not draw a clear line of when someone is “saved”. In his works, there is no prayer that is said, statement to be believed, or goodness to be achieved that allows someone entrance into paradise after they die. To be saved is to be sanctified, and to be sanctified is to be saved. That said, being sanctified, or “transformed” is an ongoing process. He describes in Mere Christianity that the incentive of the Christian is to simply reach, and by the grace of God your reach will extend to otherwise impossible lengths; only once you “throw up the sponge”. This is where he clarifies the human initiative in sanctification:
“In a sense, you may say that no temptation is ever overcome until we stop trying to overcome it— throw up the sponge. But then you could not “stop trying” in the right way and for the right reason until you had tried your very hardest. And, in yet another sense, handing everything over to Christ does not, of course, mean that you stop trying. To trust Him means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way.
Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”
Lewis describes what it looks like to “try” to obey God and be transformed. To become more practical in how we “try”, Lewis outlines three areas in which we must be transformed. The metaphor he gives regarding a fleet of ships outlines three important aspects of ourselves that must be made new: Our relation to each other, Human Nature(1), and our purpose (Mere Christianity, 71).
Lewis spends most of Book III in Mere Christianity intricately detailing how we are to try to obey God by improving our treatment of others, our relation to Human Nature, and lastly how we set our eyes on the grand purpose of it all. He describes how we are called to attempt each endeavour, ultimately fail our attempts, rely on Christ’s power to help us, and continue our attempts. At the end of Chapter 5 of Book III, The Obstinate Toy Soldiers, he comes to a conclusion which may seem to nullify everything he had thus stated in terms of human responsibility. Moving on to God’s ultimate role, he states:
“Humanity is already “saved” in principle… We have not got to try to climb up into spiritual life by our own efforts; it has already come down into the human race… Remember what I said about “good infection.” One of our own race has this new life: if we get close to Him we shall catch it from Him.
Of course, you can express this in all sorts of different ways. You can say that Christ died for our sins. You may say that the Father has forgiven us because Christ has done for us what we ought to have done. You may say that we are washed in the blood of the Lamb. You may say that Christ has defeated death.”
Thus far we have established the human responsibility to try to obey God’s commands, or get close to the “Good Infection”, and the Divine role in bringing the unreachable reachable and bringing the infection to Earth. After such lengths in describing both roles of God and Man in “working out our salvation”, Lewis succeeds in making clear exactly how these roles function and how each role is essential to our individual and collective transformation. But one can still beg the question by the end, is free will really necessary after all? At least to “get to heaven”? C.S. Lewis makes clear in that we can guess God wants us to join him freely in order to remain distinct (Mere Christianity, 65) (Screwtape Letters, 38). And he finishes Mere Christianity with how life, joy and purpose can be experienced when you surrender everything to God (Mere Christianity, 227). Therefore, there is certainly immeasurable benefits to fulfilling our human responsibility in our salvation... but are they necessities? Based on my reading of Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce, Screwtape Letters, and others of Lewis’ works, C.S. Lewis did believe free will is essential in experiencing salvation (both as transformation and an ultimate destination); though he believes we already have salvation, we have only to choose to realize it and surrender. This is a special picture C.S. Lewis paints for us: our purpose is not necessarily to surrender to God and submit, but to surrender to Love and be “made Real” (The Great Divorce, 70; Mere Christianity, 226).
In the end of Screwtape Letters, this view of the human role is reiterated. We are revealed the truth from Screwtape himself that Hell’s powers are very limited. They can incite negative feelings or doubts, but ultimately how the Patient chooses to respond to these feelings or doubts is what determines his salvation and character— further valuing the human role (Screwtape Letters, 62-63). However, the Patient is immeasurably aided in choosing the correct response through prayer and the Holy Spirit. When Screwtape is instructing Wormwood to distract the Patient in prayer, he describes how the Patient is being influenced by God in three ways: being compelled to pray, being enabled to pray, and the conscious interaction with God (Screwtape Letters, 21-22). With all this in mind, God is intricately interwoven in who we are, how we act, and how we think. He influences our free will to such a degree that as Christians, we can hardly take credit for the goodness that seems to take over our very being. The essential freedom we have is that we let the infection spread— and continue to let it.
Before I conclude, it must be said that C.S. Lewis directly addresses these questions at the end of The Great Divorce. He describes in a picture of humans moving on a chessboard that our understanding of Freedom (free will) can only be understood through the lens of Time— in contrast to our desire to see “the final state of all things as it will be… when there are no more possibilities left but only the Real.” He continues to criticize the “definitions” of Predestination and Universalism in that both remove the deeper truth of Freedom; in that God’s will supersedes human will. Expertly articulating the gravity of free will and the humility of our perspective, he writes off in the fictional words of George MacDonald, “How long could ye bear to look … on the greatness of your own soul and the reality of her choice?” (The Great Divorce, 140-141)
C.S. Lewis dances between the two necessities of ‘God’s will’ and ‘the human will’ in a stunning exploration through prose and fiction, never landing at any point. In terms of Calvinism and Arminianism, we find he is intentionally neither and specifically both.
1. It is important to note that when Lewis refers to Human Nature, or Moral Law, he means our innate sense of what is right and wrong that is edified throughout humanity, but most importantly through our personal experience. We can grow to be more “in tune” with our God-given Human Nature or out of tune with it. This is where he first expounds on the role of Man and God. God has given us this Moral Law, but Man can choose to follow it, and therefore strengthen it, or rebel against it.
Works Cited
Lewis, C.S. Screwtape Letters: Revised Edition. Macmillan Publishing Company, 1982.
Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. Harper Collins Publishers, 2001.
Lewis, C.S. The Great Divorce. Harper Collins Publishers, 2001.