Kim Gentes

C.S. Lewis is one of the most celebrated Christian writers and thinkers in modern times. His literary gift extended his philosophical genius into almost every kind of written scope- children’s books, science fiction, morality lessons, personal narratives, apologetics, theology, counseling, and more. Lewis’ most prized construct was the narrative allegory, exampled most brilliantly in his most well known work of the Narnian Chronicles. Because he is such a master of language, one rarely reads Lewis simply and directly on a given topic. Rather, even his shorter works often speak about the thing obliquely, as a better method of communicating powerful points (drawing on the readers imagination to fill in the powerful truths). While the gift of allegory is at play in poignant manner in his famous sermon, The Weight of Glory, it is his contrasting forthrightness that makes the paper take shape so quickly it stands out as, arguably, Lewis’s most brilliant short work, and what I consider the best sermon recorded since the New Testament preaching of Peter and Paul.

The Weight of Glory is nothing less than an essay on what it means to be truly human, what rewards are truly in store of those of aiming at “heaven” and what God intends by creating us in the first place.  As tall an order as this seems, Lewis accomplishes this in just 10 pages of some of the finest English writing ever composed. Lewis begins by outlining the nature of love and desire. He moves to comprehending our desires, God’s wishes, and his commendation on us at “glory”.  He concludes by circumspection back to love, but this time as a union of both our desires and God’s, founding us centrally in the great belief that we can please God and that God loves us.

What is astounding about Lewis is that he arrives in so many of his works at such great theological conclusions, without primarily taking the route of theology to explain them. Allegory, philosophy and logic are the language here, but Lewis uses them to make points only now being made by some Biblical researchers and scholars.  Primarily, in this work, Lewis comes to the powerful conclusion that humanity is weighted down by the image and glory of God to an extent rarely considered orthodox by his Biblical scholar contemporaries.  Lewis explores with us the nature of our desiring God and his nature to give us immense desires, and then grant them through His love.

So great is the immense attribution of God’s favor on us, Lewis contends we must revise our understanding of the glory set upon us from the creator. In this revision, we find ourselves moored to the profound love of God and enraptured by a favor of God so great it has no match within creation.

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.[1]

and

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.[2]

But the profound truth we encounter on the road to this glorious discovery is that we are foundationally loved of, and pleasing to, God. In the context of the thread of human desire (for something we call heaven) and God-ordained glory that Lewis draws together for us, the treatise culminates into a richly relational understanding of God and our place with him. We find, most surprisingly, that his promise of glory and heaven meets with our deepest desires not only of him, but in him. This is said best, of course, by Lewis himself:

The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God…to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.[3]

The Weight of Glory examines our deepest longings and, in its final sentences, places them soundly on the hope of utter delight and joy in a life founded in God’s love and acceptance. We are his, and we can live like it- for the good of ourselves and the betterment of our neighbor.

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Review by Kim Gentes

[1]Lewis, C. S. “Weight of Glory (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis)”. (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1949), Pg. 46

[2]Ibid., Pg 46

[3]Ibid., Pg 38-39

Pensées is a collection of thoughts, from French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal. In many ways Pascal was an early post-modernist thinker, perceiving and challenging (successfully) not only principles in mathematics and physical sciences, but in the philosophical and religious realms as well. The Pensées (which literally means “thoughts”) is not a completed book, but a point-style outline of important thoughts, that read more like proverbs than treatise.  The work was published posthumously and is missing a readable flow from thought to thought.

However, the concepts presented in Pensées are quite clear- they are a philosophical apologetic for the Christian faith. In Section III of the work (titled “the necessity of the wager”) Pascal clarifies his intention to speak directly to a specific group of people:

A letter to incite to the search after God. And then to make people seek Him among the philosophers, sceptics, and dogmatists, who disquiet him who inquires of them.[1]

From this point, Pascal lays out a logical progression of deconstructing arguments against Christianity.  However, Pascal is not saying that logic or reason as the answers to finding God. In fact, his premise is that reason will not be able to lead you through its processes to knowledge of God.  He uses philosophy and reason to counter the notion that reason is a singular tool to concluding God exists- this dichotomoy is not lost on Pascal and he tries to reconcile this by such paradoxical renderings as :

Submission.--We must know where to doubt, where to feel certain, where to submit. He who does not do so, understands not the force of reason.[2]

and

If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have no mysterious and supernatural element. If we offend the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous.[3]

In the midst of his musing about reason and heart (the contrast of the two), Pascal famously pens the phrase “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”[4] But he winds that discussion eventually around to a simple, clear and understandable summation: “Heart, instinct, principles.”[5]

He tackles a number of topics including integrity of searching for God to the seriousness of eternity and the scope of human lifespan. At almost every turn, Pascal uses the insights of a scientific mindset (along with its proofing mechanisms) to first examine a topic and then lead you to a conclusion.  This progression is sprinkled generously with several “proverb-like” sentences in which he levels basic human truths in seeming juxtaposition to the more straightforward point-building scheme of proofing his opinions.  Occasionally, he also uses a dialogical counterplay of asking us to imagine things about one position and then asking questions about himself, all the while inferring an obvious point toward the validation of the Christian position as a logical premise. 

But it is the punctual proverbs that surprise most readers, for example:

Instability- it is a horrible thing to feel all that we possess slipping away. 213 Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.[6]

One of the most well known portions of Pensées is an argument that is popularly called “Pascal’s Wager”. This proposal is basically a logical explanation for why it would be unreasonable to not believe in God. Through using his wager, he hopes that intellectual people will consider believing in God to be a proper “wager” to take.

In a summary of proofs on believing in God the author gives yet another dailogical possibility:

Two kinds of persons know Him: those who have a humble heart, and who love lowliness, whatever kind of intellect they may have, high or low; and those who have sufficient understanding to see the truth, whatever opposition they may have to it.[7]

Pascal comes to this point, saying that people may come to God through the mind or the heart, and both are acceptable and not to be shunned.

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Review by Kim Gentes

[1]Blaise Pascal, “Pascal's Pensées ”, (Public Domain Books, Kindle Edition), Pg. 53

[2]Ibid., Pg. 78

[3]Ibid., Pg. 79

[4]Ibid., Pg. 80

[5]Ibid., Pg. 81

[6]Ibid., Pg. 63

[7]Ibid., Pg. 83