Stop Arguing, Start Enchanting
C.S. Lewis, Apologetics, and the Need for a Beautiful Defense.
Hello Everyone, and welcome New Subscribers! Apologies for my brief delay in the weekly postings. As many of you know, and to give new subscribers the lay of the land, my client work in the publishing world is how I make my living (currently), and sometimes, it interrupts my weekly posting rhythm. But the larger this community grows, the more time I’m able to give to my own work.
My goal here is to create a space that provides writing that inspires, equips, and guides readers to live a faithful Christian life in the secular world. I want to serve this community through my writing, research, and teaching in the areas of theology, culture, and the arts. I aim to do this by cultivating this community, pouring into you all as we spur one another on toward love and good deeds. As
wrote in her wonderful article, “The Future of Evangelical Scholars,” for thoughtful evangelical writing and scholarship to flourish, we need a community of readers and supporters.I’d be honored if you’d consider supporting my work by becoming a paid subscriber. It’s because of wonderful readers like you that this space can continue to thrive.
Stop Arguing, Start Enchanting
In 2015, physics Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilzcek wrote a best-selling book titled A Beautiful Question, in which he describes the physical universe as the product of an artist. Wilzcek grew up Catholic but admits to losing faith in conventional religion and turning from God as a teenager.1
When asked in an interview if he was religious, Wilzcek replied, “Physics is my religion.”2 Yet he remains sympathetic to questions about God and believes science has much to say about who or what God is.
He notes how many of the bright stars in the history of science espoused strong Christian beliefs: Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Maxwell. Even Einstein, though he was not a Christian, viewed “the world as God.”
In his book, Wilzcek says the physicality of the universe asks if the cosmos possesses a metaphysical source. He explores beauty through the lens of Core Theory and quantum physics and asks if the world we inhabit embodies beautiful ideas.
His answer: “A resounding ‘Yes!’”3
Embodying beautiful ideas is what art does. A painting embodies the ideas of the artist. So, Wilzcek is saying that the universe is a work of art, which indicates that behind this cosmic work of art is an Artist.
Wilczek says that Nature’s Core does “embody beautiful ideas,” but those ideas are “strange and deeply hidden.”
Here’s how Wilczek summarizes his exploration of Nature’s Core:
“The world, insofar as we speak of the world of chemistry, biology, astrophysics, engineering, and everyday life, does embody beautiful ideas. The Core, which governs those domains, is profoundly rooted in concepts of symmetry and geometry, as we have seen.
“And it works its will, in quantum theory, through music-like rules. Symmetry really does determine structure. A pure and perfect Music of the Spheres really does animate the soul of reality. Plato and Pythagoras: We salute you!”4
Wilczek’s lifelong adventure into physics and cosmology reveals his own quest to regain some of the meaning and purpose he lost when he walked away from religion.
Why is Wilczek’s work important for us to know about?
The World Thirsts for Beauty and Wonder
An argument seldom convinces unbelievers to change their minds. Beauty, on the other hand, works on a different plain.
When we push on the edges of the universe, God comes romping into the picture. Questions of God lead to questions of personal meaning. Why am I here? Why do I matter?5
Beauty stirs these questions, even illuminates them.
Our chief desire in life is to discover and be in a relationship with the Person who created us. “God designed the human machine to run on himself,” writes Lewis. “He himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on.”6
Wilczek’s work stirs people to consider how the mysterious contours of our world can only, at times, be described in terms of beauty.
All of us can describe an encounter with the beautiful. That unexplainable split second when a tingly sensation rushed into our hearts, gave us goosebumps, and froze us in amazement—what Cambridge professor Peter de Bolla describes as “mutism,” or being struck dumb. We somehow know that the cosmos is alive with beauty.
Wilczek is one voice among many in the academy exploring how wonder and beauty give meaning to our world. If we’re attentive to work like his, it will help us see that the world thirsts for the beautiful and help us form a relevant cultural apologetic.
It’s no secret how secular the world is in the 21st century.
Christians respond to this secularity with apologetic books7 that will train you to defend the Christian faith through reasoned arguments, be a better apologist, and have a better grasp of the common philosophical and theological arguments and objections and the best answers to those objections.
But there’s another way to bear witness to God in our secular age.
Beauty as Apologetic
An argument seldom convinces unbelievers to change their minds. Beauty, on the other hand, works on a different plain. It steals behind the “watchful dragons,” as C.S. Lewis liked to say, and works on their emotions, convincing their heart.
“Beauty bypasses rational analysis, appealing to something far deeper within us.”8
In this quote, Alister McGrath was summarizing C.S. Lewis’s notion that beauty can disarm the gatekeepers of our rational minds and speak directly to a person’s heart. And by heart, I don’t mean a wishy-washy emotional clump of sentiment hidden within our minds. I mean the very seat of our intellect.
The sights and sounds of the world and the work of an artist not only affect our thoughts and emotions within but can expand and even open up new pathways of cognitive function.9 Beauty works on us like a gardener works the soil; she cultivates it into a life-giving source. A mind awake to the beautiful not only finds nourishment but nourishes the world.
Historian Cardinal Avery Dulles reminds us that before an apologetic, Christianity was first a message.10 This message was distributed through personal testimony and spoke of the truthfulness of Jesus Christ as the risen Lord.
Due to the nature of these testimonies, Dulles says that preaching in the early church often sought to answer responses to such a claim. So, apologetics first emerged as a formulated response to the doubts of the Christian message.
But those who employed a defense of the faith were not only concerned about making a true argument; they also wanted to make a beautiful one, an attractive one.11
So what type of “defense” should Christians use? One that highlights the attractiveness of the message itself—the message of hope.
Enter the new wave of apologists from the early twentieth century.
C.S Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, Charles Williams, and T.S. Eliot, emerged as literary apologists or imaginative apologists or apologists of the beautiful.12
Dulles says that Lewis’s work especially maintains its freshness and vitality today, more than a half-century later “while massive tomes of previous centuries gather dust on library shelves.”13 Lewis’s unique approach was an apologetic of beauty.
The imaginative apologist’s approach begins from the standpoint of basic Christianity, or mere Christianity, and engages with readers in such a way as to make Christianity not only seem reasonable but attractive. Lewis’s work reached general secular readers and the believing reader who didn’t have time for “technical theological works.”14
Lewis said that the object of defense for the apologist is Christianity, not a person’s personal conception or opinion on a matter relating to religion.15 In defending Christianity, Lewis warns against “keeping abreast of recent movements in theology” as this can confuse what must stand as “the standard of permanent Christianity” in the mind of the apologist.16
“Our business,” writes Lewis, “is to present that which is timeless (the same yesterday, today and tomorrow—Hebrews 8:8) in the particular language of our own age.”17
Stop Arguing, Start Enchanting
The Christian apologia is to be a defense not limited to sophisticated arguments but be a common explanation from the common person of their uncommon hope. But the form of explanation need not be an argument, debate, or formal discussion.
We need to stop arguing and start enchanting. C.S. Lewis believed in this. Later in his career, he wrote fewer apologetic works and focused on stories. Avery Dulles observed how formal apologetics became less effective after the late 1st century. It wasn’t until the 20th century, when the new imaginative apologetics hit the scene that we witnessed the largest impact ever in cultural apologetics.
”But Tim, isn’t Lewis’s Mere Christianity a reasoned argument for Christianity?
Yes, it is. But Lewis wasn’t didn’t set out to argue for the faith. He was asked to address his fellow Britons during wartime to encourage them. Lewis’s intent was compassionate service to his neighbors. He wasn’t trying to argue with anyone or denounce individuals.
What Van Gogh and C.S. Lewis Teach Us About Calling
The Beautiful Disruption is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Vincent Van Gogh wasn’t trying to make an art statement about himself. He was tryi…
In other writings, Lewis critiqued the cultural zeitgeist, but he also taught readers how to think about art and aesthetic judgment.
He also wrote stories utilizing pagan myth, adventure, and beauty.
Another example of Lewis’s apologetic program is how he combined his intellectual work with his works of fiction. Lewis wrote the third installment to his Cosmic Trilogy That Hideous Strength, as a creative way to show the argument that he laid out in his University of Durham lectures that we now know as The Abolition of Man.
Lewis used an intellectual-imaginative approach to express Christian witness, and he did so with the desire to comfort, guide, and inspire his readers.
There is a world out there hungering for significance. Let’s argue the faith less and woo the world with deep expressions of wonder and beauty.
Notes for the really curious.
“The Nobel Prize in Physics 2004,” NobelPrize.Org, accessed April 6, 2021, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2004/wilczek/biographical/.
Claudia Dreifus, “A Prodigy Who Cracked Open the Cosmos,” Quanta Magazine, accessed April 6, 2021, https://www.quantamagazine.org/frank-wilczek-cracked-open-the-cosmos-20210112/.
Frank Wilczek, A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design (New York, New York: Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2015), 321-322.
Ibid., 276.
The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and The Meaning of Life. Dr. Nicholi showed us that when God enters the discussion questions about significance abound. Lewis and Freud thought questions of personal significance were the most important ones in life. See also C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock; Essays on Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 111-112.
C. S Lewis, Mere Christianity: Comprising The Case for Christianity, Christian Behaviour, and Beyond Personality (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 55.
The modern term “Christian apologetics” stems from F. Morel in Corpus Apologetarum (1615) and P. Maran (1742). The “idea” of Christian apologetics, however, dates to 914 according to the codex Paris. gr. 451, which consists of a collection of apologetic writing by Baanes who was under orders from Arethan, archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. The term came to identify the writings of several 2nd and 3rd-century writers who defended Christianity against pagan attacks. Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth, and Esther Eidinow, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 124.
Plato’s famous apologia for Socrates employs a wide range of literary tropes including Socratic cross-examination, storytelling, and lecturing. This varied form of “explanation” (apologia) advances the variegated conception of apologia—of there being a language of apologia. See Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, ed. Harold Tarrant, trans. Hugh Tredennick, 33-34. Furthermore, when later 2nd and 3rd-century apologists wrote in “various styles and literary genres,” they answered charges brought against the Christian faith as well as leveled charges of their own against the pagan culture. Early apologists sought to translate the faith into philosophical categories “and thus to make it acceptable to the pagan elite.” The term, therefore, does not imply narrow meaning and application but finds expression in varied forms. See Hornblower, Spawforth, and Eidinow, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 125.
The context of Peter’s admonition to a general Christian audience is one of possible persecution. Christians facing persecution for their faith often discover opportunities for instances of explanation of their hopeful way of living in the face of such calamity. When the opportunity presents itself to bear witness to such a hope, the Christians should be prepared to defend their lifestyle. Though this term can often be interpreted in terms of answering an accusation (Acts 22:1; 25; 16; 1 Corinthians 9:3; Phil. 1:7, 16) the context here is more general in the sense of replying to “formal charges” or “informal accusations.” The definition of apologia, therefore, may carry the sense of a reasoned response or the simple witness of one’s life and the evident change noticed by the outside world. Wayne A. Grudem, 1 Peter, 161. A classic example of a lived witness as apologia can be found in the so-called “Letter to Diognetus.” See Cyril Richardson, Early Christian Fathers, 217.
Alister E. McGrath, Mere Apologetics: How to Help Seekers and Skeptics Find Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2011), 115. See also Michael Ward’s excellent essay, “The Good Serves the Better and Both the Rest,” in Andrew Davison, Imaginative Apologetics: Theology, Philosophy and the Catholic Tradition (London: SCM Press, 2011), in which he also states that though imagination and reason work together, the imagination engages with reality in a way that reason does not.
G. Gabrielle Starr, Feeling Beauty: The Neuroscience of Aesthetic Experience (Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England: The MIT Press, 2013), 147.
Avery Dulles, A History of Apologetics, 2nd ed., Modern Apologetics Library (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2005), 1.
Ibid., 24. Dulles indicates that the gospel writer Mark employed mysterious elements of awe and fascination.” Mark “vividly portrays the impact made by the Son of God upon the Apostles as he walked among men. They are dazzled and stupefied, as if by a brilliance too great for them to take in.” Likewise, John portrays Jesus as “the Light who has come into the world to shine upon the children of God in every nation and to give them a more abundant life of freedom, truth, and mutual love.”
Ibid., 24-25.
Ibid., 324.
Ibid., 319.
C. S Lewis, C.S. Lewis: Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces, ed. Lesley Walmsley, 147. See also Lewis, “Preface” in MC, 6-7. Lewis echoes this sentiment when he writes, “For I was not writing to expound something I could call ‘my religion,’ but to expound ‘mere’ Christianity, which is what it is and was what it was long before I was born and whether I like it or not.” The absence of personal preference, popular opinion-theology, and theological theories marks Lewis’s theological enterprise. Paul Holmer further states, “But he [Lewis] seems not to have been converted to a theological scheme at all, and he refused all of his life to think that an understanding of Christianity would necessitate that he adopt an elaborate theology.” See Holmer, Shape, 100-109.
Ibid., 149. Lewis distinguishes between the “keeping up” with contemporary movements of theology and the keeping up with contemporary thought on subjects such as science. Lewis argues that theology stands upon established doctrines from ancient times. Science, however, remains in a constant state of flux, therefore demanding that apologists stay apprised of significant new movements.
Lewis, Essay Collection, 147, 151, 153. 153. The audience of Lewis’s essay should not be overlooked lest we ascribe Lewis’s points on apologetics as completely prescriptive for apologetics in general. For example, Lewis details how missionaries and missional presentations of the gospel should be given in a public setting. Lewis is not, therefore, espousing an argumentative or even theatrical apologetic (155-156). Rather, he is exhorting young clergy in their public evangelism efforts.
Wow! I often wondered why C.S. Lewis was so effective - you answered my query. Yes, enchant, rather than argue. Brilliant! Thank you/