Denying Dualism (Protestant/Evangelical Caucus and Devotional)

The Devil-as-myth view is Satan’s right-hand punch. If that one doesn’t get you, then watch out for his left hook. The left-hand attack moves the disinformation to the opposite extreme. If Satan can’t get you to ignore him by denying his very existence, he will cunningly lead you to attribute power to him far beyond what he actually possesses. He will seek to persuade you that he is virtually equal to God.

Dualism, as a philosophy and a religion, has vied with Christianity from the beginning. Dualism affirms that the universe is the staging area, the combat zone, for two equal and opposite beings who struggle with each other eternally.

Satan is falsely described in terms of omniscience, omnipresence, and the power to do actual, not merely counterfeit, miracles. He is given attributes orthodox Christianity labels as the incommunicable attributes of God and he is assigned power over nature that rivals the Creator’s.

The Bible teaches that Satan is a finite spiritual being. He is temporal and created. In a word, he is a creature. He is more powerful that we, but he is not omnipotent. He is not immutable, as God is. Indeed, Satan’s mutability is profound. His most obvious mutation is his fall. He was created a good angel. He fell from his original righteousness and is now totally malevolent.

Have you been attributing power to Satan beyond what the Bible indicates he possesses?

Luke 10:19 Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.

Acts 26:17 delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you 18 to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’

1 John 4:4 Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

Narrative Dualism in C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength

https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-256864478/narrative-dualism-in-c-s-lewis-s-that-hideous-strength

IN A LETTER CONCERNING C.S. LEWIS'S WORKS, his dear friend J.R.R. Tolkien makes an observation about the prevalence of dualism in Lewis's fiction: "I noticed, for the first time consciously, how dualistic Lewis' mind and imagination [were], though as a philosopher his reason entirely rejected this. So the pun Hierarchy/Lowerarchy. And of course the 'Miserific Vision' is rationally nonsense, not to say theologically blasphemous" (371). In this letter, however, Tolkien blurs the distinction between two different types of dualism: a philosophical dualism, the dualism that Tolkien says Lewis's reason rejects, and narrative dualism (a term of my own coinage and defined in the following paragraphs), which serves as a literary device. Although Lewis rejects philosophical dualism, he employs narrative dualism in his fiction, namely in That Hideous Strength; there Lewis uses the device paradoxically to lead Mark and Jane, the novel's two protagonists, to a unity of purpose and marital harmony by means of their separate experiences in the camps of Logres and the N.I.C.E.

In Mere Christianity, Lewis defines philosophical dualism as "the belief that there are two equal and independent powers at the back if everything, one of them good and the other bad, and that this universe is the battlefield in which they fight out an endless war" (42). He goes on to say that "[t]he two powers, or spirits, or gods--the good one and the bad one--are supposed to be quite independent. [...] Neither of them made the other, neither of them has the right to call itself God" (42). With this philosophical dualism, as Tolkien states, Lewis did not agree; he believed that the opposing forces, good and evil, right and wrong, were neither matching in power nor did they equally deserve to exist. He believed, as he says in Mere Christianity, that "one of the two powers is actually wrong and the other actually right," and "what we mean by calling them good and bad turns out to be that one of them is in a right relation to the real ultimate God and the other is a wrong relation to Him" (43). One should note, however, that although Lewis did not believe in dualism as a religion in itself or as part of his own Christianity, he maintains that dualism is almost a part of Christianity:

   One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New
   Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power
   in the universe--a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the
   Power behind death and disease, and sin. The difference is that
   Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was
   good when he was created, and went wrong. Christianity agrees with
   Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is
   a war between independent powers. It thinks it a civil war, a
   rebellion, and that we are living in part of the universe occupied
   by the rebel. (45)

This rebellion to which Lewis refers is one of the main themes in That Hideous Strength. According to Charles Moorman, "in order to provide a suitable literary vehicle for orthodox ideas, Lewis creates his own cosmic myth. Science fiction provides him with a method and a plot" (401).

Although Tolkien neglects to distinguish between philosophical dualism and narrative dualism in his letter about Lewis's imagination, Lewis himself employs purely narrative dualism as an element of storytelling. I have come to define narrative dualism as the existence of two opposing forces that define each other in their contrasting roles and, in so doing, further the plot and character development of a story. In That Hideous Strength [HS], the last installment of Lewis's space trilogy, almost every aspect of the story is dualistic in nature, emphasizing the many themes discussed later in this essay. Most clearly, the Pendragon of Logres and the Head of the N.I.C.E. have different methods of maintaining order: free will versus compulsion, clarity versus confusion, true news versus false news, the spirit of life versus the sterility of life. …

Lewis also shows the influence of George MacDonald’s tendency towards belief in re-incarnation: One of Pendragon/Ransom/Tolkien’s recommendations in That Hideous Strength is for the key, psychic female character is to read MacDonald’s “Curdie” stories. In the first of these, the ancient Grandmother gives Curdie the gift of discerning with his hands, which kind of animal various villains have become. This tends towards re-incarnation and is not commonly present in much of the rest of Christianity. In Divine Comedy, however low satan falls, it always retains some measure of its original goodness, despite its decision to disordered self-love. Also, in the second story, Curdie has a dog-like monster character, Lina, who it is implied, attains of kind of atonement-merit by her good service to the King and Princess, implying that Lina might be re-incarnated as a human, and perhaps that she had previously been human, but had to become a dog-monster to work out that atonement. This isn’t far from karma.

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