Emeth is a character in The Last Battle the seventh and final volume in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. He is a Calormene. That is, he belongs to the human southern desert nation opposed to the heroic Narnian talking beasts of Lewis’s stories and to their human allies in Archenland. Allegory in C.S. Lewis is a lot more prominent than in Tolkien. Tolkien only really employs allegory in Leaf by Niggle and officially disapproved of the form. Certainly, a lot of the Chronicles of Narnia is non-allegorical but it is hard to deny that some elements, and they are key elements, cannot be classified any other way. This is especially true of The Magician’s Nephew, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Last Battle which provide the creation narrative, the salvation narrative and the eschatological climax to the series. (Incidentally, I can never quite escape the suspicion that Prince Caspian is intended as a pro-Anglican parable about the Reformation). The Last Battle describes the Narnian end of the world in ways that clearly imitate classical Christian eschatology. There is a false prophet (a monkey called Shift) and an (oddly invincibly ignorant) Antichrist (a donkey called Puzzle). Key to the narrative is the infiltration and conquest of Narnia by the Calormenes. The Calormenes are pretty transparently based on the Muslims. This is one reason why I doubt very much that either The Horse and His Boy or The Last Battle will ever be adapted for film. The central role of Islamic conquest in Lewis’s view of the end times is very interesting, especially as it must have been far less obvious that this was at all likely when he wrote in the nineteen fifties. The Calormenes worship a god called Tash who is quite obviously Satan. They sneak into Narnia disguised as merchants and seize control of the country under the auspices of the monkey Shift who persuades his dim-witted friend Puzzle to dress up in a lion skin and pose as Aslan (the Lion who in the Chronicles of Narnia symbolises Christ). It seems from this that Lewis believes that the deception of the Antichrist will be a treason from within Western culture by non-believers posing as believers and manipulating the credulity of the mass of the people but that it will be accomplished in alliance with and ultimately to the profit of Islam. This is very interesting especially when one reflects upon the alliance between Liberalism and Mohammedanism in contemporary Western culture.
Emeth is among the Calormene soldiers who enter Narnia in disguise to assist Shift in his overthrow of the legitimate king Tirian and establishment of an indifferentist pseudo-theocracy centred on the government and worship of Tashlan. Emeth is naturally virtuous sincere believer in Tash and is sickened by the duplicity of the methods by which the conquest of Narnia is to be accomplished and sickened by the suggestion that Aslan and Tash are one and the same. In the event, the conspiracy issues in the destruction of the the entire Narnian world, the defintive expulsion of Tash, and the second coming of Aslan. Emeth, however, is saved and finds himself in heaven. Emeth encounters Aslan, is ravished by his beauty, confesses his lifelong worship of Tash and awaits death at the hands of the true God. He is told instead that every sincere and naturally virtuous act he performed for the sake of Tash (who Aslan describes as his ‘opposite’) was in fact done in honour of Aslan and all evil acts done in Aslan’s name are really done for Tash. For this reason Emeth, as an anonymous worshiper of Aslan, is saved.
“Then I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him. But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child? I said, Lord, thou knowest how much I understand. But I said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.”
This seems like pretty pure Pelagianism. In fact, it helpfully illustrates how utterly Pelagian the Implicitist heresy is. A determination to worship God in whatever manner God has appointed is a requirement of natural reason. If natural moral virtue combined with a determination to worship God in whatever manner He has established, combined with error of fact as to what this religion is, can save us then nature and reason alone suffice for the forgiveness of sins and participation in the divine nature. This is not just heresy it is the central claim of Satan in his rebelion against God. Is Lewis then, ironically, preaching the greatest of all deceptions in a work supposed to warn us about the Antichrist?
I think it may be possible to save Lewis from this most serious charge. I do not deny that Lewis’s theology is often sloppy. Without the solemn defintions of Councils and Popes to guard him against rash speculations and unable, as a Protestant, to submit to the consensus of the Fathers, he often strays too far and entangles himself in positions he probably would repudiate if baldly stated. He also has an odd tendency to fall into dualism (displayed here in the reference to Tash as Aslan’s ‘opposite’) and an unhealthy fascination with platonic angelology probably derived from Charles Williams. Nevertheless, it is not clear that there has been any kind of fall in Narnia or that the Calormenes are descended from Adam. It may be that the non-earth descended inhabitants of the Narnian world have a purely natural end and that if they do receive supernatural beatitude it is by a purely gratuitous elevation at the end of time, not because they possessed supernatural grace (or original sin) during their lives. Furthermore, it is not altogether clear that Emeth is even dead when he meets Aslan.
Of course the entire premise of the story is impossible. It is not possible for there to be non-human rational animals. There are no rational animals who are not descended from Adam. There have not been and will not be multiple incarnations. Furthermore, it is hard not to conclude that Lewis did have a rationalist Pelagian understanding of salvation as the story is almost certain to be taken this way by any ordinary reader. The Last Battle was published in 1956 and Lewis is generally seen as a champion of classical conservative western Christianity against liberalism. The problem of Emeth shows how much the Implicitist error already went by default on the eve of the Neo-Modernism revolution.
“People shouldn’t call for demons unless they really mean what they say.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle
October 19, 2016 at 3:07 am
I don’t think you can quite accuse C.S. Lewis of being Pelagian in this instance without also accusing Bl. Pius IX of definitively teaching Pelagianism in the encyclical Quanto Conficiamur, wherein he writes;
“There are, of course, those who are struggling with invincible ignorance about our most holy religion. Sincerely observing the natural law and its precepts inscribed by God on all hearts and ready to obey God, they live honest lives and are able to attain eternal life by the efficacious virtue of Divine light and grace.”
Or again in the Apostolic Letter Singulari Quadem,
“On the other hand it is necessary to hold for certain that ignorance of the true religion, if that ignorance be invincible, is not a fault in the eyes of God. But who will presume to arrogate to himself the right to mark the limits of such an ignorance, holding in account the various conditions of peoples, of countries, of minds, and of the infinite multiplicity of human things? When delivered from the bonds of the body, we shall see God as He is, we will comprehend perfectly by what admirable and indissoluble bond the divine mercy and the divine justice are united…”
I think it’s pretty clear from Lewis’ work that Emeth does not save himself, but is saved by Aslan. Also to answer your question, Calormens are descended from Adam via a couple already possessing sanctifying grace from baptism in the beginning of the world of Narnia (it’s inferred in The Magician’s Nephew). Not that that changes my point.
October 19, 2016 at 4:18 am
I don’t see how Pius IX’s statements are relevant. In the first one he says persons who cooperate with actual grace under the natural law “are able to attain eternal life by the efficacious virtue of Divine light and grace.” Emeth has not previously received divine light i.e. true positive revelation. In the second one Pius IX just says that such persons’ incredulity is not a fault in the eyes of God. All their other sins would be faults in the sight of God and without faith in Christ could not be forgiven (besides, in context he seems to be referring to incorporation into the Church not assent to supernatural revelation per se). Any claim that one could perform an act of supernatural faith based on truths merely of natural reason is inherently Pelagian (and Modernist) because it implies a proportion between our natural abilities and the divine nature. It would be odd don’t you think if some remarks in nineteenth century encyclicals not even addressed to the universal church could somehow cancel the solemn teaching of an ecumenical council? “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity” Council of Florence 22nd November 1439.
October 19, 2016 at 4:36 am
The claim is not that one could perform a supernatural act of Faith based merely on Natural Reason, but that God takes into account the implicit desire that one might have if one had received positive Revelation. And further all good actions on the part of this person would have had to proceed from the acceptance of actual Grace. This does not contradict the Council, because the Catholic Church is not only the Church Militant on Earth, nor is the Catholic Faith only held on Earth. Thus we read in the catechism “Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it. This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:
Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation.”
October 19, 2016 at 5:04 am
Reason alone tells you to accept anything that God may reveal so to say that “God takes into account” by which I assume you mean justifies by means of “the implicit desire that one might have if one had received positive Revelation” is the same thing as to say that one could perform a supernatural act of Faith based merely on Natural Reason therefore it is Modernist and Pelagian. I see you omtted to quote the following paragraph of the Catechism which reads “848 Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men.” Earlier, in §161, under the heading “The Necessity of Faith” the Catechism specifies what “that faith without which it is impossible to please God” is “161 Believing in Jesus Christ and in the One who sent him for our salvation is necessary for obtaining that salvation. Since without faith it is impossible to please God and to attain to the fellowship of his sons, therefore without faith no one has ever attained justification, nor will anyone obtain eternal life but he who endures to the end.” You make the common confusion of eliding justification and salvation and of confusing the necessity of membership of the Church (one of precept absolutely speaking) with the necessity of faith in the Trinity and the Incarnation (a necessity of means).
October 19, 2016 at 1:42 pm
You are confusing the rational knowledge of God which can be reached by Reason alone, and the desire of God (explicit or implicit) which is a product of the acceptance of God’s actual grace, which is by no means the same as saying that one could achieve supernatural Faith by Reason alone. In the teaching of the Church’s Council this is quite clear;
“All this holds true not only for Christians, but for all men of good will in whose hearts grace works in an unseen way. For, since Christ died for all men, and since the ultimate vocation of man is in fact one, and divine, we ought to believe that the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every man the possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery.”
This does not in any way preclude the urgency of evangelization, as Pope Pius XII declares in Mystici Corpus Christi,
“For even though by an unconscious desire and longing they have a certain relationship with the Mystical Body of the Redeemer, they still remain deprived of those many heavenly gifts and helps which can only be enjoyed in the Catholic Church.”
Further, you use the word Pelagian gar too broadly. It refers solely to the heresy that men might earn grace by meritorious actions, whereas in truth it is only acceptance of grace that makes good actions possible. Thus you can in no way claim that the teaching of the Holy Office in 1949 falls into the Pelagian error,
“Therefore, that one may obtain eternal salvation, it is not always required that he be incorporated into the Church actually as a member, but it is necessary that at least he be united to her by desire and longing.However, this desire need not always be explicit, as it is in catechumens; but when a person is involved in invincible ignorance God accepts also an implicit desire, so called because it is included in that good disposition of soul whereby a person wishes his will to be conformed to the will of God.”
October 19, 2016 at 6:37 pm
You persist in employing quotations which relate to membership of the Church which is not under consideration. One may be joined to the Church by implicit desire so long as one has supernatural faith but in order to have supernatural faith one must believe in God as the object of supernatural beatitude. This belief is not possible by reason for “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him”. This possibility must therefore be revealed. However, if it is not revealed directly in a prophetic manner so that the recipient knows God has spoken to him it will therefore have to be preached and in order to for the recipient of the preaching to believe he hears on the authority of God as an offer of supernatural beatitude from God to him specifically the preacher has to possess a divine mandate. As St Paul says “How then shall they call on him, in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him, of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear, without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they be sent [apostalosin]?” In itself therefore the act of faith requires as matter an explicit revelation with a divine mandate to which the convert explicitly assents. It is also necessary for salvation that the convert recognising his sins adheres to Christ as his redeemer because we are not considering the elevation to the supernatural order here of beings in a state of pure nature but of fallen sinful men who are “by nature children of wrath” and cannot without presumption adhere to God as the object of supernatural beatitude without repentance and satisfaction (which, due to man’s incapacity to make it, must be vicarious). Before Christ came a belief in the revelation of a redeemer who was to come but had not yet come sufficed for this and was expressed by the sacraments of the Old Law. Since His death on the Cross faith of this nature has no longer justified and explicit faith in Him has been necessary for adherence to Christ. This is defined by Florence when it teaches the extinction of the rites of the Old Law. But, as St Thomas says, “It is impossible to believe explicitly in the mystery of Christ, without faith in the Trinity” therefore Florence also defines that one cannot be saved without faith in the Trinity. You are quite wrong to suppose (most extravagantly) that one can acquire justifying faith after death. The blessed do not have faith but vision. The patriarchs who were delivered from limbo already had faith under the old dispensation. There is no question of acquiring faith in purgatory (or indeed hell) for “it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment”. The faith which, as Florence defines, “except every one do keep whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish everlastingly” is faith in the Trinity preached by apostolic mandate in this life. To ascribe justifying power to anything less is to ascribe to man the power by his own resources to elevate himself (or to belong by nature) to the supernatural order and this is Pelagianism and Modernism for, as Pius X teaches “faith is not a blind sentiment of religion welling up from the depths of the subconscious under the impulse of the heart and the motion of a will trained to morality; but faith is a genuine assent of the intellect to truth received by hearing from an external source.”
October 19, 2016 at 6:57 pm
You persist in misreading the authentic magisterium of Church. The quotes specifically refer to those who by no fault of their own are ignorant of the Truth. Has the Church ever condemned St. Justin the Martyr for stating, “We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them;” or St. Irenaeus for claiming that “Christ came not only for those who believed from the time of Tiberius Caesar, nor did the Father provide only for those who are now, but for absolutely all men from the beginning, who, according to their ability, feared and loved God and lived justly. . . and desired to see Christ and to hear His voice…” ? Were they Pelagians? They ascribed not to the efforts of men but to the Grace of God the just lives, which these men lived. Or would you attempt in defiance of the words of Pope Pius IX, “seek to lay claim to put limits to the Divine mercy, which is infinite..”; which even the Supreme Pontiff himself would not do?
October 19, 2016 at 7:19 pm
Yes the texts you cite to refer to those who by no fault of their own are ignorant of the truth but the ignorance to which they refer is of our obligations to the Church such as sacramental incorporation and canonical obedience not to ignorance of “that faith without which it is impossible to please him” which ignorance precludes justification. Salvation is made concretely available to all who reach the age of reason because all receive at least sufficient grace and to those who will receive efficacious grace God sends a preacher. Your quotations from Ss Justin and Irenaeus relate to the time before the passion when (as I explained above) adherence to Christ required only faith in a future redeemer. The extinction of this possibility at the passion was defined by Florence (as I mentioned). You are ascribing salvific power to “a blind sentiment of religion welling up from the depths of the subconscious under the impulse of the heart and the motion of a will trained to morality”. Apart from the Pelagianism of this position you are thereby endorsing what Pius X calls in Pascendi ‘moderate Modernism’:
“We cannot but deplore once more, and grievously, that there are Catholics who, while rejecting immanence as a doctrine, employ it as a method of apologetics, and who do this so imprudently that they seem to admit that there is in human nature a true and rigorous necessity with regard to the supernatural order – and not merely a capacity and a suitability for the supernatural, order such as has at all times been emphasized by Catholic apologists. Truth to tell it is only the moderate Modernists who make this appeal to an exigency for the Catholic religion. As for the others, who might be called intergralists, they would show to the non-believer, hidden away in the very depths of his being, the very germ which Christ Himself bore in His conscience, and which He bequeathed to the world.” Pascendi §37
October 19, 2016 at 7:41 pm
I am (nor is the Church) ascribing Salvific power to anyone other than God Himself. Certainly not a blind sentiment, but to a Divinely given grace by which the doctrine of sufficient Grace is fulfilled in full accord with the teaching of Pascendi Dominici. The Greeks which St. Justin referred to had no knowledge of Divine Revelation, how then can you claim that were under the Old Dispensation, that is, the Mosaic Law?
To quote from the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia (non-magisterial but a great repository of the Church’s wisdom):
“certainly does not mean that none can be saved except those who are in visible communion with the Church. The Catholic Church has ever taught that nothing else is needed to obtain justification than an act of perfect charity and of contrition. Whoever, under the impulse of actual grace, elicits these acts receives immediately the gift of sanctifying grace, and is numbered among the children of God. Should he die in these dispositions, he will assuredly attain heaven. It is true such acts could not possibly be elicited by one who was aware that God has commanded all to join the Church, and who nevertheless should willfully remain outside her fold…
It should be observed that those who are thus saved are not entirely outside the pale of the Church. The will to fulfill all God’s commandments is, and must be, present in all of them. Such a wish implicitly includes the desire for incorporation with the visible Church: for this, though they know it not, has been commanded by God. They thus belong to the Church by desire (voto). Moreover, there is a true sense in which they may be said to be saved through the Church. In the order of Divine Providence, salvation is given to man in the Church: membership in the Church Triumphant is given through membership in the Church Militant. Sanctifying grace, the title to salvation, is peculiarly the grace of those who are united to Christ in the Church: it is the birthright of the children of God. The primary purpose of those actual graces which God bestows upon those outside the Church is to draw them within the fold. Thus, even in the case in which God saves men apart from the Church, He does so through the Church’s graces. They are joined to the Church in spiritual communion, though not in visible and external communion. In the expression of theologians, they belong to the soul of the Church, though not to its body. Yet the possibility of salvation apart from visible communion with the Church must not blind us to the loss suffered by those who are thus situated.”
October 19, 2016 at 8:02 pm
I can’t understand why you persist in citing entirely irrelevant texts about membership of the Church. It is not the necessity of membership of Church (which is one of precept and so excused by invincible ignorance) which is under consideration but the necessity of supernatural faith. Such faith was available to man from the beginning not because of reason but because of revelation as Vatican II (Dei Verbum) teaches “God, who through the Word creates all things (see John 1:3) and keeps them in existence, gives men an enduring witness to Himself in created realities (see Rom. 1:19-20). Planning to make known the way of heavenly salvation, He went further and from the start manifested Himself to our first parents.” So the possibility of assent to positive revelation was present to man from creation to the passion but after the passion all men, as St Thomas says, “are bound to explicit faith in the mysteries of Christ”. This why, as Florence defined, the efficacy of the sacraments of the Old Law ceased the moment Christ died because the faith implied in them ceased to justify. I suppose in one sense you are not deliberately attributing salvific power to anyone other than God in that your position logically (as Pius X indicates) attributes divinity to human nature “hidden away in the very depths of his being, the very germ which Christ Himself bore in His conscience”.
Interestingly, I have noticed that persons strongly committed to the temporal restoration of Christendom can be very tempted to fall into this error because humanly speaking they see no way their hopes can be fulfilled without the cooperation of worldly unbelieving forces and, not willing to accept that this would ally them with the enemies of Christ, they try to imagine how those who manifestly do not believe might somehow be just in sight of God after all. This is the ‘political modernism’ Pius XI was attacking when he condemned Action Française. “Put not your trust in princes: in the children of men, in whom there is no salvation!”
October 19, 2016 at 8:08 pm
I fail to understand why do not read what I have actually presented instead of responding to some point imagined on your own part, viz ” attributes divinity to human nature” which I have not done. St. Thomas in his discourse on Law states that law is only morally binding on those who have explicit knowledge of it, and as we are discussing those who have no positive knowledge of Revelation, you seem to contradict this by implying that even to those to whom knowledge were rendered impossible by say the acts of wicked men, still they ought to be bound by that which they have no knowledge of, nor any way of gaining such knowledge.
October 19, 2016 at 8:18 pm
Here we reach the nub of the difficulty. The Gospel is not law it is grace! We have no right to it. Its proclamation is good news because it the hearing of it proffers to us the only means of salvation. If it were, as you conceive it, law then the preacher of the Gospel would be like the Pharisees to whom the Lord says “you go round about the sea and the land to make one proselyte; and when he is made, you make him the child of hell twofold more than yourselves”. But this is not so, the Gospel and the hearing of the Gospel is the only means of salvation. It cannot be earned and no one has a right to it “as it is written: How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, of them that bring glad tidings of good things!”
October 19, 2016 at 8:21 pm
I never send it was earned. Neither do I say that any of Grace that God gives to any one is earned. But Christ in His New Testament has established the New Law, which you cannot deny (not that anyone has a “right” to Law). I propose this debate requires an external moderator, one who will actually read and justly weigh the evidence present on both sides in order to come to a conclusive judgment. I suggest Pater Edmund Waldstein if he is willing?
October 19, 2016 at 8:19 pm
He (St Thomas) also thinks, though, that if children do what lies in them when they reach the age of reason, God will give them the grace of justification. In the time since the Passion, that would include (on St Thomas’s own principle) giving then knowledge of the Incarnation and Trinity.
October 19, 2016 at 8:20 pm
(that was a reply to HR)
October 19, 2016 at 7:53 pm
The Greeks were not under the Mosaic covenant, which can’t justify, but they were able to believe in the promise of redemption by virtue of the promise made to Adam and presumably repeated to other patriarchs such as Noah.
October 19, 2016 at 7:54 pm
Which they had no knowledge of?
October 19, 2016 at 8:02 pm
St Thomas thinks it’s enough if they believed that God’s providence would liberate man in some manner of His choosing, and that He had revealed to some people what He would do. The second point is important, in that it shows that their faith was not based simply on natural knowledge of God’s goodness, but on some actual revelation that He had made (even if they knew no details of it.)
‘If, however, some {sc. of the gentiles living before Christ} were saved without receiving any revelation, they were not saved without faith in a Mediator, for, though they did not believe in Him explicitly, they did, nevertheless, have implicit faith through believing in Divine providence, since they believed that God would deliver mankind in whatever way was pleasing to Him, and according to the revelation of the Spirit to those who knew the truth, as stated in Job 35:11: “Who teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth”.’
“Si qui tamen salvati fuerunt quibus revelatio non fuit facta, non fuerunt salvati absque fide mediatoris. Quia etsi non habuerunt fidem explicitam, habuerunt tamen fidem implicitam in divina providentia, credentes Deum esse liberatorem hominum secundum modos sibi placitos et secundum quod aliquibus veritatem cognoscentibus ipse revelasset, secundum illud Iob XXXV, qui docet nos super iumenta terrae.” 2a 2ae 2, 7 ad 3
October 19, 2016 at 8:24 pm
If a moderator can be agreed on, I will abide his judgment for the time being (unless it is explicitly against the Faith), and regardless of all with not further comment on this thread once the judgment is given.
October 19, 2016 at 8:35 pm
HR, Berenike is the Supreme Moderator on this blog and Aelianus is her plenipotentiary. However, I certainly think you would profit from the counsel of the sublime Fr Waldstein and I encourage you to seek it. Let me send you on your way with some words of the Angelic Doctor:
“‘Each thing appears to be that which preponderates in it,’ as the Philosopher states (Ethic. ix, 8). Now that which is preponderant in the law of the New Testament, and whereon all its efficacy is based, is the grace of the Holy Ghost, which is given through faith in Christ. Consequently the New Law is chiefly the grace itself of the Holy Ghost, which is given to those who believe in Christ. This is manifestly stated by the Apostle who says (Romans 3:27): ‘Where is . . . thy boasting? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith’: for he calls the grace itself of faith ‘a law.’ And still more clearly it is written (Romans 8:2): ‘The law of the spirit of life, in Christ Jesus, hath delivered me from the law of sin and of death.’ Hence Augustine says (De Spir. et Lit. xxiv) that ‘as the law of deeds was written on tables of stone, so is the law of faith inscribed on the hearts of the faithful’: and elsewhere, in the same book (xxi): ‘What else are the Divine laws written by God Himself on our hearts, but the very presence of His Holy Spirit?'”
October 19, 2016 at 8:37 pm
Then I take my leave. Thank you for allowing me to comment, pray for my soul, and I will remember you and this blog in my intentions.
October 19, 2016 at 11:51 pm
God speed! Thank you for your prayers and be assured of ours.
October 20, 2016 at 8:53 pm
Aeliane, where is it that CCC talks about societies becoming totalitarian without the gospel?
October 20, 2016 at 9:40 pm
2244 Every institution is inspired, at least implicitly, by a vision of man and his destiny, from which it derives the point of reference for its judgment, its hierarchy of values, its line of conduct. Most societies have formed their institutions in the recognition of a certain preeminence of man over things. Only the divinely revealed religion has clearly recognised man’s origin and destiny in God, the Creator and Redeemer. The Church invites political authorities to measure their judgments and decisions against this inspired truth about God and man:
Societies not recognising this vision or rejecting it in the name of their independence from God are brought to seek their criteria and goal in themselves or to borrow them from some ideology. Since they do not admit that one can defend an objective criterion of good and evil, they arrogate to themselves an explicit or implicit totalitarian power over man and his destiny, as history shows.
October 20, 2016 at 9:55 pm
Thank you.
October 21, 2016 at 9:23 pm
All of this discussion is not really to the point, as Lewis would have had to have stated that Emeth lived in a virtuous way through his natural powers rather than through divine grace in order to be Pelagian. He does not do this. The book does not pronounce clearly on the subject (reasonably enough since it is a children’s book). The discussion about Pius IX,implicit faith, etc., is not relevant to the issue, as the book is set in a fictional world different from our own where there is no Christian Church or divinely revealed religion.
October 21, 2016 at 11:27 pm
It is enough for the accusation to stick that Emeth assents to no genuine divine revelation. This establishes that Emeth is able to order himself to a supernatural end. The ‘other world’ issue might help Lewis but the fact that the Calormenes seem to be descended from Adam clouds this. As the purpose of the book is clearly pedagogical and (at least in tone) allegorical it would be misleading the readers in a Pelagian direction at the very least. The whole point of St Paul’s contrast of grace and faith with law is that the necessity of revealed knowledge for justification secures its gratuity and guards us from presumption. Charity is just as much the effect of grace in us as faith but we do not necessarily perceive this subjectively (and we cannot love what we do not know).