C.S. Lewis VS Rob Bell

(With apologies to chapter 5 of The Great Divorce.)

The year is the distant future, and an elderly Rob Bell (who has aged masterfully well) is sitting in his study, finishing his latest manuscript, when he is startled by the materialized spirit of C.S. Lewis.

Bell: My dear sir! What are you doing here?

Lewis: I was sent to you, my friend. Your time is soon, and I have been commissioned to aid in your last rites. A bit of a jump start, as it were.

Bell: Well isn't that fascinating! I never would have guessed such a thing, though why not? All things are possible, you now.

Lewis: (grins) All except the impossible, friend.

Bell: Ah, sir. It's charming to see you still being a stickler for rigid categories. Reminds me of when I used to read your books. I suppose you've changed your views a bit since then. You became rather narrow-minded around middle-age, but I suspected death would broadened you back out.

Lewis: How do you mean?

Bell: Well, it's obvious to you by now, isn't it, that you weren't quite right. Why, my dear sir, you actually believed in a literal Heaven and Hell! (laughs humorously)

Lewis: But wasn't I right?

Bell: Oh, in a spiritual sense, to be sure. I still believe in them in that way. I am still, good sir, looking for the Kingdom, but nothing fundamentalist or outdated....

Lewis: Excuse me, my friend. Where do you imagine I've been?

Bell: Why, right here! In a higher dimension, perhaps, but under God's endless hope of morning and empowerment, with its field for indefinite progress and human aggrandizement. That is, in a sense, Heaven, if only we had eyes to see it. It is a beautiful idea. (looks expectantly) Have you, perhaps, been sent to tell me as such.

Lewis: I have been sent to give you a jump start on your last rites.

Bell: Ah! Right. Well, go on, good sir, go on. What have I to confess first?

Lewis: Well, your heresies for starters.

Bell: (taken back) Are you serious, sir?

Lewis: Perfectly.

Bell: You really think people are penalized for their honest opinions? Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that those opinions were mistaken?

Lewis: Do you really think there are no sins of the intellect?

Bell: There are indeed, good sir. There is hide-bound prejudice, and intellectual dishonesty, and timidity, and stagnation. But honest opinions fearlessly followed---they are not sins.

Lewis: I know you like to talk that way. So did I until my middle-age when I became what you call narrow. But it all turns on what are honest opinions. 

Bell: Mine certainly were. They were not only honest but heroic. I asserted them fearlessly. For example, when the doctrine of Hell ceased to commend itself to the critical faculties which God had given me, I openly rejected it. I wrote my famous book. I defied the whole of evangelicalism. I took every risk.

Lewis: What risk? What was at all likely to come of it except what actually came---popularity, sales for your books, invitations, and a loyal following?

Bell: (offended) What are you suggesting?

Lewis: Friend I am not suggesting at all. You see, I know now. Let us be frank. Your opinions were not honestly come by. You simply found yourself in contact with a certain current of contemporary ideas and plunged into them because it seemed relevant and fashionable. When did you put up one moment's resistance to your loss of orthodox beliefs?
 

Bell: If this is meant to be a sketch of the genesis of liberal theology in general, I reply that it is mere libel. Do you suggest that men like....

Lewis: I have nothing to do with generality. Nor with any man but you and me. Oh, as you love your own soul, consider! You know you were playing with loaded dice: you didn't want the other side to be true. You were afraid of crude salvationism, afraid of a breach with the spirit of the age, afraid of ridicule in front of Oprah and any number of secular idols, afraid of real spiritual fears and hopes.

Bell: I'll admit I needed to step out of the limelight for a while, which I did. And I'll gladly admit that men can make mistakes, and that they may well be influenced by current fashions of thought. But it's not a question of how my opinions were formed. The point is that they were my honest opinions, sincerely expressed.

Lewis: They were sincere in the sense that they did occur as psychological events in your mind. If that's what you mean by sincerity, then they were sincere. So were mine, in my younger days. But errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent.

Bell: (scoffs) Such intolerance. You'll be justifying the Inquisition any moment!

Lewis: Why? Because the Middle Ages supposedly erred in one direction, does it follow that there is no error in the opposite direction?

Bell: Well now...I hadn't looked at it that way before. (considers, then chuckles) My dear sir, I apologize. Is not this disagreement verging on mudslinging? I am a Christ-follower, like you. I am a believer, like you. We may not by perfectly agreed, but you have completely misjudged me if you do not realize that my religion is a very real and a very precious thing to me. (leans forward) I simply believe in a religion of certain guarantees, certain assurances about the next life: a wider sphere of usefulness, and further scope for the talents God has given me to flourish, and an atmosphere of free inquiry! In short, all that is truly meant by a civilized, contemporary spiritual life. Can you not, from your exalted perspective, confirm these things for me?

Lewis: No. I can promise you none of these things, for you or anyone else. No sphere of usefulness: you are not needed there at all. No scope for your talents: only forgiveness for having perverted them and restoration to what they ought to have been. No atmosphere of inquiry, for you shall be brought not to the land of questions but of answers, and you shall see the face of God.

Bell: Ah, but we must all interpret those beautiful words in our own way! For me, there is no such thing as a final answer. The free wind of inquiry must always continue to blow through the mind, must it not? "Prove all things." The journey is more important than the destination. To travel hopefully is better than to arrive.

Lewis: If that were true, and known to be true, how could anyone travel hopefully? There would be nothing to hope for.

Bell: But you must feel yourself that there is something stifling about the idea of finality? Stagnation, dear sir, what is more soul-destroying than stagnation?

Lewis: You think that way because you have experienced truth only with the abstract intellect. I have been where you can taste it like honey and be embraced by it as a bridegroom. Your thirst shall be quenched.

Bell: Well, really, you know, I am not aware of a thirst for some ready-made truth which puts an end to intellectual activity in the way you seem to be describing. Will I still have the free play of Mind, good sir? I must insist on that, you know.

Lewis: Free, as a man is free to drink while he is drinking. He is not free still to be dry.

Bell: (brows furrowed) I can make nothing of that idea.

Lewis: Then listen! (leans forward) Once you were a child. Once you knew what inquiry was for. There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answers, and were glad when you found them. Become that child again!

Bell: (smiles) Ah, but when I became a man I put away childish things.

Lewis: (concerned) You have gone far wrong. Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you call the "free play" of inquiry, or the "sacredness" of doubting,  or "holy questioning," has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given than masturbation has to do with marriage.

Bell: Easy now! (sits up straighter) The suggestion that I should retrogress back to the mere factual inquisitiveness of childhood strikes me as preposterous. That question-and-answer conception of thought only applies to matters of fact. Religious and speculative questions are surely on a different, much higher level.

Lewis: There is no religion where you're going: there is only Christ. There is no speculation either. Soon, you will come and see! You will be brought to Eternal Fact, the Father of all fact-hood.

Bell: I should object very strongly to the describing God as "fact". The Divine Progressive would surely be a much better description. It's hardly....

Lewis: (alarmed) Do you not even believe that He exists?

Bell: Exists? What does Existence mean? You still keep on implying some sort of static, ready-made reality which is, so to speak, "there," and to which our minds have simply to conform. These great mysteries cannot be approached in that way. If they could, then I would not be interested in it. It would be of no religious significance. God, for me, is an inward spirit pushing us progressively forward, into sweetness and tolerance and...and service, good sir! We can't forget that, you know!

Lewis: (saddened) Then...the thirst of the Reason is really dead.... (ponders next move)

Bell: (waits, twiddling thumbs) You know, if you're going to stand there for a moment, I'd like to tell you about my latest and, it seems, last book! I'm taking the text about "growing up into the measure and stature of Christ" and working out an idea which I'm sure you'll find interesting. I'm going to point out how people always forget that Jesus was a comparatively young man when he died. He would have outgrown some of his earlier views, you know, if he'd lived. I am going to ask my audience to question what his mature views would have been. A profoundly interesting idea, wouldn't you agree? What a different Christianity we might have had if only the Founder had progressed to his full stature! I shall end up by pointing out how this deepens the significance of the Crucifixion. One feels for the first time what a disaster it was, what a tragic waste! So much promise cut short... (startled as Lewis fades away) Oh, must you be going? Well, so must I. Goodbye, dear sir, and see you soon! It has been a great pleasure, most stimulating and provocative.

No way through....

"...a beautiful city..." (Nolan's Defense of Civilization in The Dark Knight Trilogy)

Aristotle once said that man is a "political animal." He did not mean that we instinctively form voting blocks. What he meant is that human beings are fundamentally communal: they come together and form families, and many families come together to form communities, and many communities come together to form the city, the "πολις". Nations and empires also emerge from this ascension, but what also emerges is what we call "civilization," an ordering of human conduct and affairs around our communal instincts. Whether in the home or in the city, there is (or ought to be) a general sense of deference to those who share the space with you. We all belong to the city; we are all in this together. To be "civilized" is to respect your fellow man as a member of your community; to act otherwise is to go the way of the brute, the savage.

For millennia, civilization was thought to be a good thing, or at least better than barbarism. Heaven was often viewed as the place of ideal order and community, and thus Augustine lauds The City of God, while Charles Williams' Arthurian poetry contrasts the Christian image of Logres with the pagan wildness of Broceliande. The key to all of this is the idea of order: order is good, while chaos is bad. In the Christian worldview, the whole of existence is built on the order that is Christ (Col. 1:17), and the city (with its inherent civilizational bent) was  meant to be a concrete emblem of that order, of Christ, of heaven itself. Thus, order was beautiful, order was true, and order was good, and thus so was the city.

Not everyone agreed or agrees with this idea. There have always been anarchists and extremists who view order as the height of oppression. Ovid's subversive narratives in the Metamorphoses, the barbarism of the dark ages, Romanticism's revolutionary poetry and practices, anarchical terrorists at the turn of the 20th century as well as postmodern deconstruction at its end: history is full of those who would see order fall, fail, die trying. They have existed alongside and in tension with civilization, and the howling debate between the two rages on to this day: is civilization good? when and how does it become destructive? ought it to be defended? how ought we to defend it?

One of the most recent voices in this debate (I believe) has been director Christopher Nolan and his Dark Knight Trilogy (henceforth, DKT). Ostensibly a set of Batman films, Nolan's work has been lauded for legitimatizing the "superhero" film as a genre capable of true cinematic quality and narrative depth. It was not just his move towards realism (as opposed to the visions of Burton and Schumacher), but also the serious substance that he gave to his films: they proposed intriguing scenarios, asked interesting questions, and provided powerful (and sometimes controversial) answers. One such scenario was the various dangers that can threaten the "city" (viz., Gotham, which comes from a nickname for New York City), which lead to questions about the inherent goodness and defense of civilization itself. I believe that Nolan's answer to this scenario and subsequent questions is that the "city," while far from perfect, is good and ought to be defended against all extremists.

DKT is full of extremists, some more easily recognized than others. Of course, the Joker is the most obvious example. The self-described "agent of chaos," he sees "these civilized people" as monsters just like him: their "moral codes" (i.e., the deference towards others that creates civilization) are all flimsy facades, "dropped at the first sign of trouble." Unique in his anarchism, the Joker is not out to destroy the city but rather prove that it is already destroyed: we maintain the illusion of civility and order, but "when the chips are down, [we'll] eat each other." Thus, for the Joker, the city and civilization are not just bad; they are a "bad joke," and he feels called, like an unholy prophet, to point us all to the punchline.

The League of Shadows is a unique kind of extremism. Whereas the Joker sees civilization as so meaningless as to be illusory, characters like Ra's al Ghul and Bane see civilization as so paramount that they will destroy any and all that do not meet their ideal standard. Thus, they will "bring justice to Gotham," but it is justice in the void, cut of from any other balancing virtue (such as mercy or wisdom). They are so sure of Gotham's irredeemable corruption that they will not simply destroy it; they will let it destroy itself, whether through "fear" or revolution (two highly corrosive elements to any civilization). There is a certain satanic allure to both their and the Joker's extremism: civilization is often messy and imperfect, and the drive to burn it all down and either start afresh or just "watch the world burn" can become irresistible to those who have lost all hope for the city.

It is indeed possible to lose hope for the city, but it only comes when you first give in to another kind of extremism, an extremism that is far more subtle, and if you weren't watching the films carefully you would've miss it. I am referring to the extremism of characters such as Officer Jonathan Blake, Commissioner Loeb, and (most significantly) Harvey Dent. This is the extremism that says that the city ought to be defended, but its defense must always play by the rules of the city. Thus, Commissioner Loeb wants the "vigilante" known as Batman "off the streets," and Blake always works inside the system (often with an air of pretentious self-righteousness). In their world, the rules are the city, and to work outside of them is to not only defy civilization but also (in effect) fundamentally deny it. As Blake tells Gordon, "You've betrayed everything you've stood for." Why? Because Gordon broke the rules.

Gordon is an excellent counter-example to this, as he (and Batman) are there to teach us the hardest lesson of all: if you would defend the city, then you must get your hands dirty. This is a hard truth for many (esp. Americans) to swallow, but it is an incredibly necessary and relevant hard truth. When you run into people who "don't want anything logical like money," who "can't be bought, bullied, reasoned to, or negotiated with," you have to take them down for the good of the city. Furthermore, you must realize that more often than not "the systems fail" you (as Gordon says), and "the rules aren't weapons anymore, they're just shackles, ways for the bad guys to get ahead." In those moments, you have to do what needs to be done (what "needs to happen," as Batman puts it), not what will look good on paper. Gordon stated it perfectly to Dent: "I don't get political points for idealism. I have to the best I can with what I have." If you do not have this balanced view, if you succumb to the extremism of the system, then you will fall when the system inevitably falls.

Harvey Dent is the prime example of this fall. As Gotham's district attorney, he is the system, but he has balance in the beginning. He's willing to turn a blind eye to Batman's "outlaw" activities, mainly because they're accomplishing the goal of taking out organized crime (a cancer on any civilization). But he still believes that "we can be decent men in an indecent time," and when he discovers that there are those who will use your systems against you (as the Joker tells him, "I took your little plan and turned it on itself"), he falls into madness and despair. As Two-Face (the hypocrite, the law turned criminal), "the world is cruel, and the only morality [i.e., civilizing deference] in a cruel world is chance," i.e., chaos, the flip of a coin. This is what the extremism of the system does: when it fails (and it does fail), you run the risk of falling with it. (It is important to note that Officer Blake avoids this fate.)

One special case must be mentioned, and that is Alfred. In Batman Begins (BB) and The Dark Knight Rises (TDKR), he too is an extremist (albeit a sympathetic one). In the beginning, he fears Bruce's transformation into Batman is mere "thrill seeking" (a "taste for wanton destruction" as he says in TDKR), and in the end he wants Bruce to give up Batman and work with the police, instead of around them. There are two ironies at work. The first is that he sees Batman as an extreme action when, in fact, Batman is the proper balance (as we'll see). The second is that some of the best statements on that balance come from Alfred, all in The Dark Knight (TDK). This film is unique in that when faced with the Joker, even Batman feels the pull towards the extremism of the system: he will turn himself into and cooperate with the police because "I see now what I have to become to stop men like him.... Batman can't take this." It is Alfred who pulls him back from the brink:

B: "What would you have me do?"

A: "Endure, Master Wayne. Take it. They'll hate you for it, but that can be the point of Batman. You can be the outcast. You can make the choice no one else can make: the right choice."

Alfred understandably forgets his own advice by TDKR, as his concern for Bruce overcomes his understanding of Batman. Nonetheless, for one moment (or film) at least, he did understand the "point" of Batman: the police don't need Bruce Wayne to work with them; they need Batman to work around them, doing what they can't do, going where they can't go, being willing "to plunge his hands into the filth so that you can keep yours clean" (as Gordon tells Blake).

Batman's "point" is to be a paradoxical balance. He is the defender of the city by going outside its systems. He ensures the success of justice by breaking the law. He only has "one rule" (i.e., he won't kill: "I'm no executioner"); any others are expendable. "At what cost?" we may ask along with Lucius Fox (a man also tempted by the extremism of the system). To that question, Batman gives no answer then, but he does later to Gordon: "The Joker cannot win." That is the view Batman maintains (through great struggle) throughout the trilogy, and it is the balanced view. The Joker cannot win; the extremists must not win. The city is good, and it must be defended, even if it takes drastic steps (like "burn[ing] the forest down," as Alfred puts it). That is the messy yet necessary paradox that Batman embodies.

Batman is for the city, for civilization, and he is for it against all comers, willing to even take its reproach in order to save it. ("You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. I can do those things.... I'm whatever this city needs me to be.") The greatest image of this comes in the climactic battle in the final film. Bane, in seeking to "bring justice [i.e., destruction] to Gotham," has started a pseudo-revolution between the haves and the have-nots. Batman mounts his offensive against this extremist activity, and he does so with an army of police officers. This is significant because the police are symbolic of the city; their name even comes from the word "πολις". So when Batman faces down the extremists one last time (because he cannot stand by "while my city burns"), he does so with the literal embodiment of the city itself, all uniformed, marching as one, in defense of civilization.

It is fitting that when Batman is presumed dead at the trilogy's end, Gordon reads a passage from A Tale of Two Cities(!), a passage that could very well summarize the Batman credo, and the credo of all who would defend civilization:

I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see their lives, for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done. It is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known.

This is the final logic of all defenders of the city, of the dark knights and the watchers on the wall: we defend the "beautiful city" because of the "brilliant people". The city must be defended, for the city is good because people are good. It is not necessarily a moral goodness (for we are all sinners), but an ontological goodness: we are, and we make and commune after the image of our Creator. To attack the city and the civility that it stands for is to attack people per se; to attack people per se is to attack God per se, and that is the greatest anarchy, and evil, of all.