Yup
“It may not be “Orthodox”, but perhaps it might (if nothing else) show you something a little different than you’re used to seeing from “the West”. This is from the Preface:”
Well, you are right. Its not Orthodox in the sense that an Orthodox probably wouldn’t put it that way, but ultimately Lewis is speaking of dying to the self and theosis which of course is thoroughly Orthodox.
I have noted elsewhere on these threads that Anglicans are the nearest in mindset of all the Western Christians to Orthodoxy and Lewis of course was the best sort of Anglican gentleman. The finest introduction I have ever read to On the Incarnation was written by Lewis. Some truly magnificent modern Orthodox spiritual writings have come from a monastic who lived in England for forty years at the end of the 20th century. Although the Elder Sophrony was Russian by birth and spent years at Mount Athos, his writings from the 1950s on show the influence of English thought and manner of thinking. When one reads the tracts of +J.C. Ryle, it is often, if not always, as if one of the Greek Fathers was dropped into Victorian England with a complete command of the English language.
That an Anglican would demonstrate something akin to an Orthodox mindset and thus write things which sound like “English Orthodoxy” is not a surprise, ZS.
I think Lewis makes a very good point about the underlying assumptions of each age (which is true in general and not just in theology), which is why we shouldn't neglect to study the Fathers. And then:
Lewis: St. Athanasius has suffered in popular estimation from a certain sentence in the "Athanasian Creed." I will not labour the point that that work is not exactly a creed and was not by St. Athanasius, for I think it is a very fine piece of writing. The words "Which Faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly" are the offence. They are commonly misunderstood. The operative word is keep; not acquire, or even believe, but keep. The author, in fact, is not talking about unbelievers, but about deserters, not about those who have never heard of Christ, nor even those who have misunderstood and refused to accept Him, but of those who having really understood and really believed, then allow themselves, under the sway of sloth or of fashion or any other invited confusion to be drawn away into sub-Christian modes of thought. They are a warning against the curious modern assumption that all changes of belief, however brought about, are necessarily exempt from blame. But this is not my immediate concern. I mention "the creed (commonly called) of St. Athanasius" only to get out of the reader's way what may have been a bogey and to put the true Athanasius in its place. His epitaph is Athanasius contra mundum, "Athanasius against the world." We are proud that our own country has more than once stood against the world. Athanasius did the same. He stood for the Trinitarian doctrine, "whole and undefiled," when it looked as if all the civilised world was slipping back from Christianity into the religion of Arius - into one of those "sensible" synthetic religions which are so strongly recommended today and which, then as now, included among their devotees many highly cultivated clergymen. It is his glory that he did not move with the times; it is his reward that he now remains when those times, as all times do, have moved away.
When I first opened his De Incarnatione I soon discovered by a very simple test that I was reading a masterpiece. I knew very little Christian Greek except that of the New Testament and I had expected difficulties. To my astonishment I found it almost as easy as Xenophon; and only a master mind could, in the fourth century, have written so deeply on such a subject with such classical simplicity. Every page I read confirmed this impression. His approach to the Miracles is badly needed today, for it is the final answer to those who object to them as "arbitrary and meaningless violations of the laws of Nature." They are here shown to be rather the re-telling in capital letters of the same message which Nature writes in her crabbed cursive hand; the very operations one would expect of Him who was so full of life that when He wished to die He had to "borrow death from others." The whole book, indeed, is a picture of the Tree of Life - a sappy and golden book, full of buoyancy and confidence. We cannot, I admit, appropriate all its confidence today. We cannot point to the high virtue of Christian living and the gay, almost mocking courage of Christian martyrdom, as a proof of our doctrines with quite that assurance which Athanasius takes as a matter of course. But whoever may be to blame for that it is not Athanasius.
Wow! OK, +Athanasius' On the Incarnation of the Word just got bumped to the top of my reading list!
By the way, C.S. Lewis may have spent his professional career in England, but he was born and at heart always remained an Irishman. ;)
When one reads the tracts of +J.C. Ryle, it is often, if not always, as if one of the Greek Fathers was dropped into Victorian England with a complete command of the English language.
And he even had a beard! :)