Grasping the Hand

Defending freedom with C.S. Lewis

“I don’t doubt that the Holy Spirit influences my choices. But influence is not compulsion. The Initiative must surely come from my side. If I couldn’t choose, I couldn’t be a son of God, only a puppet.” – Letters to Malcolm

It is peculiar how popular C.S. Lewis is in orthodox protestant circles, given how highly he esteems free will over the dictatorship of grace. But perhaps the matter isn’t so difficult to explain. Most protestants likely feel strained in their commitment to a monergism – the idea that God’s grace elects unilaterally, without any act or decision on our part. Letting go of free will puts an excruciating pressure on one’s soul. Amid that struggle, the Lewisian understanding is like a balm to people shackled by Luther’s bondage of the will.

The challenge of monergism

The standard protestant view is that we are the passive objects of God’s grace. God elects some of us to salvation, while damning the rest to hell. This he has preordained from eternity. If he has decided to elect you, you shall be saved – the matter is not in your hands in any way. If he has decided not leave you unelected you, you will be damned, with just as exact a certainty. Some protestants like to make a big point of God not “creating anyone for damnation”. But is it not a height of sophism to split hairs like that? By not electing you he is de facto damning you.

The monergistic position commits you into believing that whatever we do in life matters not at all to our ultimate destiny. Luther puts the matter honestly and repulsively, urging his followers to “Rejoice in Christ and sin boldly.” This attitude is indeed a logical consequence of monergism and of scorning free will and chosen acts. Intellectually consistent monergism places an intolerable strain on human accountability and psychology. Can there be a monergist who doesn’t struggle with it?

On the one hand they will argue that what we do or decide doesn’t ultimately matter, the end is simply up to God’s grace. But the next moment they say we still mustn’t do as we please. They can’t follow Luther where he attempts to lead them, unwilling and unable to consent to the monergistic logic. Doing so would go both against their conscience and their reason.

Indeed, among the most instinctive, bone-marrow convictions a man has is that of free will. It is a day to day, moment to moment realization which even the most hardened materialist cannot avoid practically believing in, despite his abstract arguments. Indeed, it is quite ironic that monergistic Christians make themselves the allies of materialists and naturalists in their assault against the legitimacy of free will. Fortunately it is doubtful whether either group can ever live as they preach.

A consistent attempt would likely lead to a quick loss of sanity, so central is free will to reason itself, and to any reasonable understanding of human nature. Luther was keen eyed in realizing this, which explains why he so hated reason. Reason keeps telling us our will is free and that our acts really matter. This is why Luther frames reason as something diabolical. He calls reason the “Devil’s whore”, because it keeps on suggesting that your freely chosen acts and decision matter to your ultimate destiny, making monergistic convictions more difficult to maintain. Thus the angel of our better nature is transformed into a demonic temptress.

Choose life so that you may live

The Lewisian position (supported both by fringe protestant Arminian-, as well as by catholic Molinist theology) can be described in the following fashion: imagine a deep, dark pit you’ve fallen in. You are solidly stuck. A blue-eyed optimist like a Pelagius would argue this is just a matter of effort. Be persistent and dedicated enough and you can climb out of the pit, relying on your own strength. You can save yourself. This kind of optimism is anti-Christian. Truth is that we are weighed down by sin and brokenness we cannot get rid of. No matter how hard we strive at the bottom of the pit, we’ll never get out on our own.

But luckily we have a savior, someone who comes to the edge of the pit, kneels on the ground and reaches out his hand to us, inviting us to grab it. Mark you, he does not club us on the head, put us in a harness, and crane us up while we are unconscious. He does not force himself on us. Instead he waits patiently at the edge above, keeping the offer open in the expectation that we decide to grasp the hand that is freely given. In our predicament we mustn’t be proud and think we are above needing help. We have to accept our weakness and the fact that we can’t manage on our own.

So begins the process of our salvation. After we have decided to grab the offered hand, we must hold on tight and trust that our savior is strong enough to pull us from the pit, regardless of how much we weigh. We mustn’t lose trust or get impatient half way up, releasing our grip. That will only make us fall back to the bottom. Neither must we act like a limp sack of potatoes, but keep on striving with our free hand and feet, easing the process as best we can. The uplifting strength comes from above, and without it we would be hopeless. But we are not unconscious objects of salvage, but active participants and willing beneficiaries of a rescue operation.

Certainly the monergists can quote Bible verses that go against this synergistic, co-operative understanding. Perhaps most famously from Ephesians 3: 8-9,

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

However, it may be argued that passages like this do not necessarily refute the synergistic understanding I’ve outlined above. The synergist does not deny we can never get up by our own doing. And indeed it is our faith (= trust) that enables the savior to lift us up. Without it we would either let go or never grasp his hand.

And mind you, a synergist can likewise take part in the ever popular Bible-passage one-upmanship, and throw out his own, including some of the most cherished passages in the whole of scripture:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

That is to say God gave the offer of grace to everyone, to whoever. Because it is said he loved the world, i.e. mankind in general, his love is not targeted just at the “ultimate elect” – the ones who will end up saved in the final reckoning – but at everyone.

Naturally, because God is outside time, the divine perspective on matters can be understood as “predestitarian”. He knows how the story will end, because he is the author. In that divine sense the theology of predestination is quite true. But from our human perspective it is a deceptive lens that leads to insanity and immorality. We human beings are temporal creatures, and as such our understanding of salvation must be based on temporality, even as we accept that God’s view on the matter is different and beyond us. We simply accept the paradox of faith: God is all-powerful and all-knowing AND we truly have free will and the capacity to affect our ultimate destiny.

Does this mean that Lewis is a Pelagian or a Semi-Pelagian? Does he think we can be the driving force and initiator of our own salvation? No, because like all Christians he believes that the key to our salvation is Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross. Naturally that comes first, both chronologically and in terms of effect and importance. The grace brought about by redemption loosened our shackles, and thus made it possible for us to reach out to the hand that is offered us.

Temporally speaking, perhaps it’s best to say that through Jesus’ infinite atonement, all mankind became the potential elect of God. But because God loves and respects our freedom, we must co-operate with the rescue. We must strive, grow, humble ourselves, resist temptation, combat sin, do our best to keep on the strait path and choose to enter at the narrow gate. Of course the whole concept of the strait and narrow loses its sense and gravity if our salvation is simply external.

Be that as it may, Bible quote-competitions rarely lead anywhere. Chances are especially bad in a case like this, where the Bible is ambivalent, allowing multiple interpretations and much opportunity for picking and choosing. Luckily, unless we are “Bible-Christians”, the Bible isn’t our only resource.

As earlier stated, we have our conscience and our reason to look up to, which both must be trod upon if monergism is to be maintained.

We also have the tradition which emphasizes striving and penance, and of course the sacraments, which all lose their meaning in a strictly monergistic understanding. This goes a long way to explain why conventional protestants are less keen on the sacraments than traditional Christians. Indeed, why do penance? Why strive? Why help your neighbor? Why take the Eucharist? Why do anything at all, if what we do doesn’t ultimately matter?

Finally, we have good teachers like C.S. Lewis to learn from. Now, of course a monergist can say that by teaching synergism Lewis merely proves that he is not a good teacher. But if Lewis does not count as a good teacher, are there any good teachers in the world?

Day of testing

There are dire consequences to abandoning synergism and saying no to free will. Even in people who don’t commit consistently to monergism, the mental toll is significant. If what we do doesn’t and cannot matter, then everything hinges on our preordained state of electedness. After reaching this juncture we are faced with two alternatives: either there is no way to know who is elected, or there is some way.

Deciding that there is no way to know leads to restlessness. Instead of giving you peace, Christianity places a sword of Damocles over your head. You’ll either end in heaven or hell after you die, and there is no way to know which it it will be, and no way to affect the result. In fact, given that it stands to reason most people will be damned, simply based on numbers you’ll be more prudent in assuming you too will be damned. This is a dark religion most people would struggle to maintain for long.

The other alternative is to say that there is some way to know. This leads to the protestant focus on “born again moments”. These are immense, emotional turning points through which you gain some kind of inner conviction that you indeed number among the elect. A monergist wants and needs to experience a personal miracle to keep hold of his faith and to gain a sense of peace.

This naturally leads to the peculiar idea that our Christian faith is something nobody can really believe in without receiving a personal miracle. Instead of being an exoteric, reasonable faith, Christianity turns into an unreasonable esoteric faith, reliant on subjective experiences within the heart of the individual believer.

The obvious dangers that results from such a personal conviction in irresistible grace and electedness are pride, carelessness, and a haughty attitude towards the un-elect. But likely with most people pride is not strong enough to carry them to a sense of peace and security. Often monergists end up struggling forever with the restlessness, even after going through some vivid born-again moment. They keep on praying for some new miracle, some new emotional experience or show of force that would fuel them up, and help them trust they count among the elect.

But there is a third option. Synergism replaces restlessness with romance. Indeed, you can’t know for sure until the end comes. But what the end will be like depends to a large part on you. How do you live? How do you strive? How do you pray? How do you resist? How do you repent? How do you worship? How do you treat your neighbor? How do you partake in the process of your salvation? Do you take up the offer or not?

Conventional protestants argue that this leads to anxiety, “Am I doing enough?”. But it is common knowledge in human psychology that purposeful activity reduces anxiety, while inactivity tends to increase it. And given the prevalence of restlessness resulting from monergistic thinking, they may not have a leg to stand on.

Instead of resigning to the state of an object, synergism allows us to maintain the splendid dignity and danger of living as a subject. God is the one who saves us, but only through a personal adventure that lasts a lifetime. Instead of a restless wait, we have a romance filled with real temptations to sin, genuine growth, actual possibilities for heroism, true opportunities for good and evil.

The Lord is walking with us throughout, giving us the strength to do what we couldn’t do alone. Under God’s grace and guidance we meet this challenge as friends and loyal subjects, not as puppets or bondsmen. The adventure of salvation offers us no guarantees of triumph, but neither does it bind us in shackles and chains.

“He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.” – Screwtape Letters