PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS
Weight of Glory
INTRODUCTION
In my opinion The Weight of Glory is one of the finest writings I have ever read. Period. Its scope is breathtaking. Trying to wrap your mind around the concepts is one of the most challenging and rewarding exercises I have ever engaged in.
There is one problem though with The Weight of Glory: although there is organization to the writing, it nevertheless tends to be unmanageable. G. K. Chesterton described himself as a "rollicking journalist"; his writings many times reflect that self-description. C. S. Lewis has a somewhat similar problem. Processing The Weight of Glory is like trying to drink from one of the massive fountains at Versailles. Whereas you are sure to get some water, it takes longer to drink from that fountain than it would be to drink from a normal drinking glass, and you are definitely going to get wet in the exercise. The Weight of Glory is like drinking from of the huge Versailles fountains. All the water you could possibly want is there; it's just hard to drink. It is surely like drinking from a fire hydrant, with one major difference: it is worth it.
What actually is the flow of The Weight of Glory? First, Lewis is going to back up his claim that Beauty exists, not that there are some beautiful things in the world, but that Beauty itself, one of Plato's Ideas (Forms) actually exists. Second, he is going to link this Beauty to the Christian God Himself. (Lewis is not going to argue that Christianity is true; that is not the purpose of this writing. Rather, he assumes Christianity is true and then attempts to show the relationship between Beauty and the Christian God. Third, Lewis is going to show how this view of God should affect our lives and affect the way we should treat others.
How does Lewis back up his claim that Beauty exists. He will point to several pieces of evidence that Beauty exists: (1) the desire that each of us feels, a desire that this world does quite seem able to fulfill; (2) the rewards which we strive for; and (3) the fact that nature seems to be communicating something to us, something beautiful indeed, something communicated through nature but which is actually not nature itself.
To be more philosophically accurate: Beauty not only exists but tells us something about God Himself (ontology); this knowledge of God should affect the way we view ourselves and the way we treat others (ethics). We come into contact with this Beauty through our desires and through nature (epistemology).
PART ONE: The Implications of Desire
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According to Lewis what did men used to think was the greatest virtue?
What do men today consider the greatest virtue?
Does the Bible promote self-denial as an end in and of itself?
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According to Lewis why are we to deny ourselves?
The following statement is significant: "Nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to ____________."
Does the Lord condemn this desire?
"It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too _______, but too _________."
Non-Christians will claim that when we desire rewards, we are being mercenary. It is as if it is "unspiritual" to want rewards. According to Lewis when does a reward become mercenary? How does he use the example of money and love to illustrate proper rewards and rewards as mercenary?
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"The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in ____________." In other words the rewards are the natural outcomes of the activities themselves.
The third example of rewards involves learning Greek language and enjoying Greek poetry. What rewards does the student first try to achieve? (These rewards are mercenary.)
What reward does the Greek student ultimately achieve?
Did the Greek student know that he was going to get the second reward when he started learning Greek?
Page 28
"But it is just insofar as he approaches the reward that he becomes able to desire it for its own sake; indeed, the power of so desiring it is itself a preliminary reward."
According to Lewis the Christian is like which example, love and money, war and generals, or schoolboys and the study of Greek? Explain your answer.
In the bottom paragraph how else are Christians like schoolboys? What is the danger of learning?
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The same applies to Christianity. "Now, if we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the tru object, and will even appear as the ___________ of that object." What would be some rivals of that object? That is, we have within us a desire for heaven. How do many of us fulfill that desire?
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This desire for heaven some call nostalgia or romanticism or adolescence (idealism). It is a secret we cannot tell and yet we cannot hide. Why can't we tell it?
Why can't we hide it?
"Our commonest expedient is to call it ___________ and to behave as if it settled the matter."
Woodsworth identified this desire with certain moments in his past. How does Lewis respond to what Woodsworth says?
Is beauty located in books of music?
"These things--the beauty, the memory of our own past--are good images of what we really ____________; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb __________, breaking the heart of the worshippers."
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Lewis admits that he may be weaving a spell about us. What 2 kinds of spells are there in fairy tales and which spell is he weaving about us?
Lewis is trying to "wake us from the evil enchantment of ________________ which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years."
What has our whole education been trying to silence?
Our modern philosophies tell us that the good of man is to be found where?
Progress and Creative Evolution tell us that earth is our home. They try to persuade us that earth can be made into "_________________, thus giving a sop to your sense of exile in earth as it is."
According to modern philosophers when will earth become heaven?
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According to modern philosophies even if we did attain to this heaven on earth what would ultimately happen to it?
No matter what modern philosophers do, they cannot get rid of this desire which no happiness on earth can satisfy. Simply because you have this desire for complete joy, is there any reason to suppose that we are going to receive ultimate fulfillment of that joy? (How does Lewis use hunger and bread as an example? This is extremely important.)
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Although we have never experienced this ultimate joy, this beauty, the Bible does give us an account of the object. What kind of account is it? Is this account literal or symbolical?
What is important about the scriptural account?
Why do we think that the scriptural account has authority?
Should we be surprised that the scriptural description of heaven at first chills us instead of thrilling us? Why or why not?
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Why should we never turn away from those elements which seem to be puzzling or repellent?
What are the five heads of the promises in Scripture?
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Even if we got rid of all the 5 heads except for the first one, we would still have to come up with symbols to describe this joy, this heaven. This will probably concentrate on the humanity of Jesus and exclude what?
When they do come up with earthly imagery, it is normally either "hymeneal or __________ imagery."
We need all these different images for the purpose of "correcting and ______________ each other."