Bruce Charlton's Notions

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If alienation (and not sin) is the main self-perceived malaise of modern man - and alienation is life as purposeless, meaningless and the human self as isolated from relationships with the world - then the cure for alienation is mysticism.

If modern Christianity lacks a significant mysticism, then it will fail to attract the alienated souls - who will either dull their pain with distractions and intoxicants, or look to non-Christian spirituality and mysticism.

Yet mysticism was, and is, an aspect of Christianity, part of the fullness of Christianity.

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Christian mysticism is directed at attaining communion with God. An example is the Orthodox Hesychast tradition which may involve ascetic disciplines and prolonged prayer (The Jesus Prayer, and similar short repeated prayers).

However, this solitary striving is pursued under monastic discipline, accompanied by frequent daily participation in numerous formal religious rituals and liturgies.

From a Christian perspective, detached mysticism, solo mysticism - indeed any seeking of advanced and unusual religious experiences outwith Christianity - is hazardous, indeed may be spiritually fatal (that is, fatal to salvation) - because its motivations are flawed: sensation-seeking, power-seeking and pride.

For Christians, pride is the worst of sins, because it sets the self above God, and mystical striving has a strong tendency to induce spiritual pride - which may be very resistant to correction. 

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There is also a non-Christian 'aesthetic' mysticism which may be well-motivated, implicitly motivated towards communion with God - albeit incompletely so, absent the necessary mediation of Christ.

This high motivation will - however - tend to become corrupted by sensation-seeking, power-seeking and pride; since these are powerful and the fallen human has - if unaided by Grace - no ability to resist (or even identify) that which is intrinsic to his nature.

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So - the main mystical tradition in Christianity is in Eastern Orthodoxy - and that is the path of asceticism under monastic discipline - the Via Negativa (Negative Way), the path of rejecting the world and worldly distractions, aiming at a direct approach to God, by Love of Christ.

But Charles Williams emphasized the other mystical path, the Via Positiva or Positive Way, the indirect aim - the aim at becoming more Holy via love of God's creatures (i.e. God's created things and beings).

This is the Christianity of Man engaged with the world - engaged with art, music, philosophy, mathematics, crafts, farming, care of a family...

And especially it is the path of Mysticism of Love - what C.W. called Romantic Theology.

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Thus the path of the Positive Way, the Love of created things, is often through the mysticism of marriage and family.

A recognition that marriage is sacred, a sacrament.

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Interestingly, the greatest, most focused modern Christian exponents of the Via Positiva are Mormons - whose distinctively concrete theology places the married couple and their children at the centre of God's plan of salvation - such that the highest salvation is available only to the married, and mystically sealed marriages and families are continued into the afterlife. Perhaps as a part of the same emphasis, Mormons reject the Via Negativa in its purest form - there are no Mormon monasteries (at least, not yet).

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Modern Christianity needs, as a matter of extreme urgency and importance, to restore its mysticism. It needs to restore the use of sublime language, music and architecture; to encourage a revival of monasticism; and also it needs to restore the mysticism of Love, Marriage and Family.

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I regard the teaching and work of Jesus Christ as having been encapsulated by the Fourth Gospel (of 'John') and confirmed by reflection and intuition. 

Yet this is extremely different from recorded historical Christianity - which therefore suggests that the 'true' message has been greatly distorted (and also over-complexified); and from a very early stage after the death of Jesus. 

The two great distorters have been the Old Testament and Ancient Hebrew Jewish religion in one direction; and, in another direction, the Greek and Roman ('classical') philosophy, especially that of Pythagoras, Plato and the Neo-Platonists and the 'Gnostics' - which comprise what modern Men call the Perennial Philosophy. 

The Hebrew distortion is to regard Christianity as a development of Ancient Judaism, that preserves its Laws, is lived in accordance with Law, and remains guided by the ancient teachings, wisdom, prophecy etc. 

It regards Christians as a tribe, and salvation as happening at a group (i.e. church) level ('no salvation outside the church'); it regards the Old Testament as true (inerrant) - just as true and important as any of the New Testament.

This Old Testament distortion came very early, and is most evident in the Gospel of Matthew; but also permeates Paul's letters - and indeed is mainstream among Christianity through its history. 

The distortion from classical philosophy assimilates Christianity within pre-existent philosophical and abstract concepts of God (as the 'Omni-God'), a (modified) concept of the ultimate oneness of all things, and the idea that time (and mortal life) is an earthly and mortal illusion and a period of trial and suffering merely - such that divine reality is beyond time, and experiences all simultaneously; and the aim of a Christian should be to die and escape this illusory and essentially evil mortal life. 

This distortion came in mainly with some of the early church leaders (church fathers). The Gnostics (who pre-dated the life of Christ, and continued afterwards) were, I believe, merely a more extreme version of the same distortion that afflicts mainstream Christianity: the distortion towards oneness and abstraction, the need for expert philosophical knowledge - the belief that the spiritual is higher than the material; a powerful aversion to the personal and to the incarnated a tendency to regard this mortal life as essentially evil, including our-selves, with the idea of Original Sin (the Gnostics went further to believe the mortal life and world was created by 'the devil' equivalent).

All of these Gnostic features were incorporated, to varying degrees, in mainstream Christianity (some via Paul, in particular; but mainly embedded by later theologians); and led to the powerful strand of asceticism and 'negative theology' (via negativa) which remains strong among intellectual Christians.  

These distortions were probably inevitable, and perhaps necessary, to the history of Christianity; because Men saw themselves as members of a group; and therefore naturally saw and experienced salvation in a groupish way. 

And the church leaders justified their role (and the dependence of laity upon them) mainly by their superior expertise and intellectual capacity - rather like Plato's philosopher-kings or Gnostic initiates. 

But now that modern Men experience themselves as individuals, and the Christian churches and their leadership are corrupt, and mainstream secular discourse is almost wholly abstract - the time has come to take Christianity 'straight'... 

I think more people need to focus upon Christ's message as it was taught and lived by Jesus Christ; as described by the only eye-witness to his ministry; the disciple who Jesus loved; and the first Man to experience resurrection - that is to say the account by Lazarus: the author of the Fourth Gospel. 

Christians do themselves, as well their cause, long-term harm by their habitual (addictive?) use of double-negative theology. Indeed there is a very influential branch of theology and Christian practice that has elaborated this into a vast systematic edifice (the negative path, or via negativa) - plus, this is the basis of much 'eastern' religious philosophy in Buddhism, Hinduism (and Sufism).  

I think we can see the collapse of double-negative thinking in the 21st century; because its lack of simplicity and clarity render it incapable of dealing with the protean and pervasive challenges to faith of this era, as emanating from globalist totalitarianism with its linked-bureaucracies of governance and mass media. 

Negative motivations are counter-productive, because when all is illusion then individuals are (in practice) rendered passively obedient to that which is dominant. And, anyway, the number and strength - and fluidity - of deceptions are now too great to be individually discerned, diagnosed and rejected. 

In a world where (for many or most people) it is a case of me-against-the-world: - my Christianity against a world of demonic- materialist ideology - it seems we must be clear in our own minds; if we are not to be confused and bamboozled, and simply worn-down to impotent exhaustion by the relentless and increasing weight of error and evil.

For us, it is a case of motivation, motivation, motivation! 

Thus, we cannot anymore be motivated by such double-negatives as the avoidance of sin - most Christians who imagine this is possible are simply denying their own vast scale of sinning in domains such as dishonesty, resentment, and fear. Avoidance of sin is now effective (hence valid) only when there is a primary positive impulse towards Good. 

But most people's idea of The Good is some notion of altruism/ unselfishness/ helping-others - which is another negative value. In a world based on utilitarian hedonism, where 'other people' live materialistically - 'altruism' reduces to me trying to 'make' people happy, which is impossible; so it ends-up with the negative goal of diminishing suffering. 

(In practice, altruism at the political level entails a small class of super-powerful/ super-privileged/ super-rich individuals pretending to administer the world on behalf of the 'oppressed' by monopolizing and confiscating all resources - supposedly because this globalist-establishment are the 'agents' of 'social justice.)   

We cannot (if ever Men could) be motivated by a desire for 'freedom' - because freedom is a negative value that only gains motivating-power for Good, when there is some existing positive motivation towards Good that is being thwarted. 

We cannot, if we intend to accomplish Good, be motivated primarily by obedience to any external authority or institution; because all such are so corrupted that in practice Goodness can only be discerned and practiced by the independent thinking of individual persons, and their autonomy of thinking. 

And that returns us to the primary of personal motivation. 

In other words; it is now imperative for Christian Good both that individuals are motivated to think for themselves and do-so, and that they operate from baseline assumptions that are positively-motivating - which means simple and clear enough to be effective. 

In practice; each must discover these for himself. They are not available off-the-peg and will not be the values that get-inculcated-into the passively obedient or non-conscious, routine-thinker. 

Since the problem is insufficient motivation, we need to begin from whatever positive and good motivations we already have; and follow these motivations through, with honesty and diligence to... wherever they will lead. 

The Big Problem is that so few people seem to have the motivation even to recognize a problem with The World Now. 

This could - in theory - be because the world is now so pervasively and persuasively evil that Modern men are helpless against its temptations... But that would be to assume God has failed to give Men a reasonable chance of salvation...

Alternatively, it may be that Modern men are of innately poorer quality than Men of the past; that a mass of Men (especially in The West) are innately more dominated by evil, more prone to evil - and feebler in their strength of Good motivations than before. 

I regard this 'worse Men' as the most probable explanation for a world full of Men who do not even want to be Good; but who instead legislate and enforce inverted-true values, such that great evil is now called great good - and praised, rewarded and accorded the highest status. 

In other words: I assume that God is as Good as ever, as powerful a creator as ever; but the 'quality' of pre-mortal souls available for incarnation into this mortal life is lower than in the past. A lot of incarnated souls nowadays are less naturally-good/ more heavily disposed-towards evil, compared with the past. 

And therefore (here-and-now) all the major (large/ powerful/ wealthy/ high-status) human institutions of The Hegemonic West (including churches) are net-corrupted; are overall affiliated to the side of evil in the spiritual war of this world. 

Quite likely - you and I are similarly misaligned and enfeebled compared with Men of the past - although I would not be writing, you would not be reading, this - unless there we had at least some motivation to be motivated for Good... 

However... What worked for our ancestors may not work for us: since we are worse, and so is The World. 

We need things to be simpler, clearer and easier than They did; if we are to be able to develop and strengthen our embryonic Good-motivations into something positive by-which we can navigate our path against the current of a hostile evil-world of apparently overwhelming strength and scope. 

 

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Some ideas, as a basis for discussion...

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Not merely not having sex, not merely voluntarily refraining from sex in situations where it is not permitted or where children are not wanted...

(that is chastity - I think: a contingent suspension of sexual activity for a reason, rather than celibacy as a resolved cessation offered as a consecrated act...).

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Nor is celibacy legitimately a means to the end of creating an autonomous and dedicated professional priesthood - but celibacy is (like it or not) a spiritual practice.

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In particular, celibacy is an ascetic practice - a denial, part of the via negativa (negative way) akin to fasting, prayer vigils, endurance of heat, cold and other physical harshness etc.

These designed to develop control of passions, and resistance to temptations (including demonic masquerading as divine visions and experiences); prior to attempted Sainthood.

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And, as such, celibacy is hazardous: spiritually hazardous. Especially, celibacy in isolation is hazardous (for many men) - since this is a partial acesticism.

Celibacy is likely to be much harder and more hazardous to attempt when the body is indulged and fuelled by plenty of food, warmth, comfort, alcohol, tobacco...

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Celibacy should therefore properly be done under monastic supervision, as part of a general and mutually-reinforcing programme of ascetic training. (And when monasteries lack such conditions, celibacy is presumably that much more difficult and hazardous.)

Just as monks are only allowed to become solitary hermits after a period of disciplined training under supervision, with the gradual and incremental development of the powers of self-discipline as discerned by a competent Spiritual Father, the same should apply to lifelong celibacy.

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Because celibacy is spiritually dangerous - it strongly tends (like other advanced spiritual practices) to produce spiritual pride; which is why it ought to be practised only under supervision and discipline until a person is 'ready' to go it alone and resist the temptations of pride - and this takes (apparently) something of the order of ten to twenty years of monastic supervision.

Therefore - since celibacy is so difficult to attain and so prone to go wrong, it is spiritually safer, as a general rule, to have mostly married priests administering the sacraments (since many such priests are needed and it is impractical/ impossible that there are sufficient trained and willing ascetics to perfom them), these being led by an elite of Holy and celibate monk-Bishops (Holiness being - ahem - more important than, for example, managerial abilities, eloquence or scholarship).

This was, I understand, the usual and universal practice until medieval times.

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It is very striking to me, how negative are people's ideals now; compared with even fifty or a hundred years ago. 

And I mean negative in practice - not just in theory; because there have been negative religious theories for at least a couple of thousand years - yet in practice Christians had strong positive motivations. 

Negative Theology (Via Negativa) was prominent in Christianity (substantially inherited from pagan Romans and Greeks) in the early centuries AD. I mean the ascetic path of opposition to the world, elimination of temptation, and repudiation of "the flesh", which was taken to the greatest extreme by the hermit Desert Fathers. 

The Neo-Platonic theology (e.g. associated with Dionysius the Aeropagite) was one of explicit negation; that asserted we cannot know God except by knowing what God is Not, are dragged down by our instincts and desires. This in general down-rated or rejected marriage, family, creativity as paths to God; due to their excessive risk of temptation by fleshly pleasures - binding us to mortal life, its pleasures and pains. 

These desires were to be overcome by prolonged disciplines of deprivation and chosen suffering; so that we may learn control of them, and ultimately independence from them. 

Yet, in practice, there was at this time also a very powerful yet implicit positive desire for communion with God, to emulate (their idea of) Jesus Christ, and to dwell spiritually in Heaven even while on earth.

Therefore, the true situation was one in which there was strong positive desires that were unconscious and implicit; which were disciplined and shaped by the explicit rituals and practices of a negative nature. 

Through human history, these unconscious and implicit positive instincts have dwindled, until many modern people are hardly aware of them, deny their validity, and often altogether deny their presence. People (especially in The West) are no longer guided by positive implicit instincts towards God, the spirit, higher consciousness... 

Instead we are guided by external human-originated ideals - especially the dominant ideology of 'secular-leftist-materialism' that underpins all of social and political discourse and institutions in The West. 

If an individual rejects the dominant ideology, he must (as a rule) do so by an explicit and consciously chosen act of will. 

Interestingly, even the ideology of left-materialism itself has been subject to the same trends in consciousness. It has gone from containing a considerable largely-unconscious and implicit positive element; to being almost wholly negative in its ideals, and oppositional in its practices. 

When it began to emerge a couple of hundred years ago, leftism often shared in the (mostly unconscious) positive goals of Christianity; so that there were many "Christian socialists" in the UK (from the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England, as well as Nonconformist churches), who (albeit misguidedly) saw socialism as a means to the end of a more Christian society. These were a significant cultural phenomenon into the middle 20th century. 

Even among the explicitly materialist-atheist leftists of the late nineteenth century - such as the revolutionary communist William Morris and the gradualist Fabian George Bernard Shaw - there was strong (albeit un-theorized, un-grounded) positive assumption concerning the goals of leftism. 

Such Men would argue that socialism was a necessary/ the best means to achieve the kind of society that was 'common-sensically' (by appeal to universal evaluations) regarded as a good environment for positive virtues. 

For Morris that was a quasi-Medieval agrarian society in which the arts and crafts thrived, and were universal - a world of craftsmen and artists, for whom labour was an altruistic joy. 

For Shaw it was a modern industrial society where all were allocated an equal income that made accessible all the higher things in life (arts, sciences etc). The purpose of universal and equal prosperity was to enable Men to pursue 'mystical' goals; such as attaining higher consciousness - en route to a somewhat Platonic world of pure intelligences whose gratification was contemplation, and untrammeled creativity.

For the likes of Morris, Shaw and other early socialists; the desirability of such a society was self-evident; but it is no longer self-evident in 2022. Indeed, such utopian schemes are all-but off the map, seldom mentioned; and so weakly believed (if at all) that such ideals are unable significantly sustain a life or even (noticeably) to influence behaviour.  

What I mean is that - diminishing, but evident until about the middle-20th century - the underlying, even if unstated, belief even on the Left was that if the obstacles to a better and higher life could be removed by socialism (or feminism, antiracism, an economy of common ownership etc) - then a better and higher life would spontaneously emerge - because that (it was assumed) was what Men wanted.

And it was that better/ higher life that was the ultimate justification of leftism. 

 

Well, that concept has become meaningless, and since the 1960s, as the New Left has focused on negative aims, without any positive sense of where this is going, or what state of society it is trying to achieve, or what people are supposed to do and live-by in a future society. Contra Morris; the arts and crafts, guilds and professions, small villages and farming as a vocation; have all declined catastrophically. And, contra Shaw; Men are more, not less, focused on materialism, consumption and shallow pleasures and dissipating distractions.  

Underlying such changes in both Christianity and Leftism is this waning of the unconscious and implicit, ultimately spiritual and self-justifying, ideal of The Good Life.  

Now we must consciously choose God, Jesus Christ, and to live by the transcendental values of divine creation. These are not longer spontaneously generated from within ourselves. 

On the one hand; we are free-er than Men used to be; because we are no longer subject to uncontrollable drives from unconscious motivations. 

On the other hand; if we do not choose correctly; then we are prone to purposelessness, meaninglessness and therefore despair - in a way that used to be extremely rare, even among the explicit atheists and nihilists of 100-plus years ago. 

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http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/bede-cuthbert.asp

Bede: The Life and Miracles of St. Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindesfarne (721)

CHAPTER XVII - OF THE HABITATION WHICH HE MADE FOR HIMSELF IN THE ISLAND OF FARNE, WHEN HE HAD EXPELLED THE DEVILS


WHEN he had remained some years in the monastery, he was rejoiced to be able at length, with the blessing of the abbot and brethren accompanying him, to retire to the secrecy of solitude which he had so long coveted.

He rejoiced that from the long conversation with the world he was now thought worthy to be promoted to retirement and Divine contemplation: he rejoiced that he now could reach to the condition of those of whom it is sung by the Psalmist: "The holy shall walk from virtue to virtue; the God of Gods shall be seen in Zion."

At his first entrance upon the solitary life, he sought out the most retired spot in the outskirts of the monastery. But when he had for some time contended with the invisible adversary with prayer and fasting in this solitude, he then, aiming at higher things, sought out a more distant field for conflict, and more remote from the eyes of men.

There is a certain island called Farne, in the middle of the sea, not made an island, like Lindisfarne, by the flow of the tide, which the Greeks call rheuma, and then restored to the mainland at its ebb, but lying off several miles to the East, and, consequently, surrounded on all sides by the deep and boundless ocean.

No one, before God's servant Cuthbert, had ever dared to inhabit this island alone, on account of the evil spirits which reside there: but when this servant of Christ came, armed with the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, all the fiery darts of the wicked were extinguished, and that wicked enemy, with all his followers, were put to flight.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/bede-cuthbert.asp

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Traditional and orthodox Christians need to recover the mode of thinking in which we can read the above account - by Britain's first great historian writing of her greatest Saint - and regard it as an account of what happened.

For instance, that Inner Farne was un-inhabitable because of the evils spirits, and after Cuthbert arrived to set-up his hermitage, the first thing he did was to expel these devils.

And it was participation in this cosmic conflict, on behalf of Good, that was the highest activity of Holy Elders of the past, that towards which the greatest Saints strove.

In other words, ascetic monasticism (and the Via Negativa) was (in part) intended to be a spiritual training for unseen warfare for the benefit of mankind - when [Cuthbert] had for some time contended with the invisible adversary with prayer and fasting in this solitude, he then, aiming at higher things, sought out a more distant field for conflict...


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I am often stirred by the idea of a 'fellowship quest' - a small group who go on a journey to find, discover, destroy something; for the good of all. A band of brothers against overwhelming odds - the sort of thing seen in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, of Lewis's That Hideous Strength - and which links back to medieval examples such as Malory's King Arthur and Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West.

When I consider what might be our modern equivalent, I am initially faced by a via negativa of what it would Not be - rather than any clear idea of what it should be; because it does seem clear to me that the old style heroic quest has been made impossible (or rather useless) by modern materialism, and the modern tendency to reduce spirituality to psychology...

The kind of journey we need to embark upon is one where we don't go to any particular place, and are not accompanied by any physical persons; we seek something that can be known only by an inner and direct intuition - and which will save only those who grasp it for themselves - the most that the heroes can do is point at it, or at least point in the direction where other people might fruitfully start looking...

The companions are as likely to be drawn from the imagination as from the address book; and are more likely to communicate in meditative convictions as by words or writings or gestures...

Read the whole thing at Albion Awakening

I have often commented on the deep problems with the double-negative theology in mainstream Christianity. 

It is double-negative because it regards the problem of this life as sin, and the work of Jesus Christ as purging us of this sin - of removing this sin from us. 

This mortal life is therefore conceptualized negatively, as dominated by sin; and Jesus's work is the negation of this negative - i.e. removing sin, so that we can be resurrected into Heaven: a double-negative. 

This concept regards Heaven as a perfection, and mortal Men as imperfect due to sin; so we cannot enter Heaven until we are ridded of sin - and that is what Jesus made possible. 

So, by one means or another (and this means differs between Christian denominations), before we get to Heaven we go through a process whereby sin is removed (purged) from us, and what is left-over is wholly-good, and therefore we are allowed to enter Heaven.

To enter Heaven is understood as a willingness to undergo this purgation, this 'amputation' of our sinful elements.   

I find many problems with this set of ideas - which boil down to this concept being an implicit an assertion of the idea that God (the Creator and our loving Father) has put us into a sinful world, ourselves being riddled with sin; and that to reach Heaven we must have this sin stripped out from us - implying that what is allowed into Heaven is an incomplete version of ourselves... 

(Indeed, perhaps, for very sin-full people, there will not be much of ourselves remaining, by the time we are suitable for Heaven.)

The purpose of this mortal life - according to such theology - is to reject sin: a negative purpose.  

I find this kind of behaviour - imputed to God - incompatible with him being a loving Father; who might have created things differently and better.

And I find the idea of this mortal life as a negative motivation (against sin, which sin is against-God) both inadequate and somewhat repugnant. It points at the via negativa - a life of rejection that amounts to life turned-against life.

Whereas I feel in my heart (and from the example of Jesus Christ, who was incarnate, active, positive), that this mortal life is - or ought to have - a positive purpose. We ought to be able to become better through our living (experiencing and learning), rather than merely 'avoiding becoming worse'.   

Instead, I see 'sin' as essentially meaning 'death' (which is clear from the Fourth Gospel) - and also the other forms of anti-creative innate corruption and decay that lead up to death (and which modern physics terms entropy). 

Sin in this sense, is the severing of our souls from our bodies at death - and it is this 'death' which Jesus overcame himself, and made possible for those who followed his path. 

Sin, more broadly, is a turning-away from what God desires from us. And a turning-away is not dealt with by purgation but by turning us in the right direction - permanently!

In other words, the main thing that Jesus did is to bring the possibility of eternal life; and this life as a resurrection of our real selves, and with a body - destined for a Heaven where all beings are turned in a direction in harmony with divine creation. 

All beings in Heaven have made an eternal commitment to God's creative goals. 

Rather than a purgation of all that is worst in our-selves; I see the work of Jesus in terms of an amplification of our-selves at their best. 

In this mortal life we find ourselves, intermittently and infrequently - turned in a Heavenly direction. So we know from experience what it is like to live in harmony with divine creation - to work with (rather than against) God.

(We also know what it is like to be turned-away from God and creation - what this feels like, where it leads; and we may learn something of how to overcome this turned-away state in ourselves) 

To prepare us for life in Heaven is therefore something like making it possible for us to stay permanently turned in the direction of Heaven and Creation, in permanent harmony with God's creative will. 

For this to happen, we each must choose whether to allow it to happen. 

Do we want the best in ourselves to become our whole self - or not? 

(This naturally entails leaving-behind those things that can only be achieved by going against God and creation - but the positive reason is that we desire wholly to be our best selves; and because we want to dwell eternally in a situation where we can whole-heartedly and actively work for such goals.)

It is a matter of what we want, and what we want most. 

By analogy; if this mortal life is a walk; then it is a walk when we spin around: sometimes walking with God, sometimes off on a tangent, sometimes pushing against the direction of God. 

Those who choose to follow Jesus Christ, are those who value most - indeed, at root, deeply-value only - those times when they are walking with God (times when they are motivated by love, and participating in the work of divine creation). 

Those who choose Heaven are those who want to do this walking-in harmony with God and sharing God's goals all the time - because they value love and creativity above all else; and indeed these are ultimately the only things of mortal life that they truly, everlastingly value. 

From the Essay Transposition by CS Lewis.

I believe this doctrine of Transposition provides for most of us a background very much needed for the theological virtue of Hope. We can hope only for what we can desire. And the trouble is that any adult and philosophically respectable notion we can form of Heaven is forced to deny of that state most of the things our nature desires. There is no doubt a blessedly ingenuous faith, a child’s or a savage’s faith which finds no difficulty. It accepts without awkward questionings the harps and golden streets and the family reunions pictured by the hymn writers. Such a faith is deceived, yet, in the deepest sense, not deceived, for while it errs in mistaking symbol for fact, yet it apprehends Heaven as joy and plenitude and love. But it is impossible for most of us. And we must not try, by artifice, to make ourselves more naïf than we are. A man does not “become as a little child” by aping childhood. Hence our notion of Heaven involves perpetual negations: no food, no drink, no sex, no movement, no mirth, no events, no time, no art.

Against all these, to be sure, we set one positive: the vision and enjoyment of God. And since this is an infinite good, we hold (rightly) that it outweighs them all. That is, the reality of the Beatific Vision would or will outweigh, would infinitely outweigh, the reality of the negations. But can our present notion of it outweigh our present notion of them? That is quite a different question. And for most of us at most times the answer is no. How it may be for great saints and mystics I cannot tell. But for others the conception of that Vision is a difficult, precarious, and fugitive extrapolation from a very few and ambiguous moments in our earthly experience, while our idea of the negated natural goods is vivid and persistent, loaded with the memories of a lifetime, built into our nerves and muscles and therefore into our imaginations.

Thus the negatives have, so to speak, an unfair advantage in every competition with the positive. What is worse, their presence – and most when we most resolutely try to suppress or ignore them – vitiates even such a faint and ghostlike notion of the positive as we might have had. The exclusion of the lower goods begins to seem the essential characteristic of the higher good. We feel, if we do not say, that the vision of God will come not to fulfil but to destroy our nature; this bleak fantasy often underlies our very use of such words as “holy” or “pure” or “spiritual.”

We must not allow this to happen if we can possibly prevent it. We must believe – and therefore in some degree imagine – that every negation will be only the reverse side of fulfilling. And we must mean by that the fulfilling, precisely, of our humanity, not our transformation into angels nor our absorption into the Deity. For though we shall be “as the angels” and made “like unto” our Master, I think this means “like with the likeness proper to men” as different instruments that play the same air but each in its own fashion. How far the life of the risen man will be sensory, we do not know. But I surmise that it will differ from the sensory life we know here, not as emptiness differs from water or water from wine, but as a flower differs from a bulb or a cathedral from an architect’s drawing. And it is here that Transposition helps me.

While Transposition is one of Lewis's best and deepest essays; nonetheless I diagree very strongly with some aspects of it; but more to the point - Lewis disagrees strongly with the account of Jesus's teachings in the Fourth Gospel.

The problem is the above passage starts with: any adult and philosophically respectable notion we can form of Heaven. This sets off warning bells! It then parodies the child’s or a savage’s faith - and then conflates the silly with the profound - harps and golden streets and the family reunion. 

But the family is the best, and literal, picture of the nature of reality; and of the pupose of creation.

Then Lewis says what he understand Heaven really-is like: perpetual negations: no food, no drink, no sex, no movement, no mirth, no events, no time, no art. 

Contrast this with the repeated demonstrates in the Fourth Gospel of how the life everlasting is about qualitative enhancements, trasformations of earthly things.

When I read this kind of passage in Christian writers such as Lewis, it becomes clearer to me why Christians through the ages have had trouble in explaining the faith, and making it appealing - and why its joy and Good News are so often obscured. I personally can feel the appeal of the Via Negativa, and its roots in Greek Platonic philosophy; but to the mass of Men, such a life is a real horror and terror.

No wonder that even the simplest depiction of an afterlife in terms of an earthly paradise, have such appeal to so many people. No wonder the appeal of Christianity has so often been in negative terms of escape from a Hell of torment...

Unless and until Christians can know Jesus's message as Good News, and Heaven as a desirable place and situation - we really don't have much of a chance at saving those who need it!