"According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride... Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind." (p.100, CS Lewis, Mere Christianity)
"unbelief alone commits sin, and brings forth the flesh and pleasure in bad outward works, as happened to Adam and Eve in paradise...Unbelief is the root, the sap, and the chief power of all sin." (p.100, Martin Luther, "Preface to the Epistle of St Paul to the Romans" in Timothy F Lull Ed, Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings)
So who's right; Lewis or Luther?
I think that Luther is right because, as David Powlison points out, unbelief is the act of erasing God from reality. And as GK Chesterton once observed, when we "cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything". If God is not king then perhaps I am, or perhaps my father is, or my boss, or cancer, or [fill in the blank]. Or perhaps they're all kings, with no one all-powerful or deserving of exclusive worship, but some are more powerful and worthy than others. Either way, whether it is ourselves, other people or any other created thing, all other sins are just trying to fill that imaged god-shaped hole in our heart. And often the thing we fill it with is not something we love, but something we're petrified of because it can take as well as give.
[Incidentally, if you're an economics geek I hope you appreciated the allusion in the title to John Maynard Keynes' oft quoted principle, that apparently he never said.]
My hunch is that Luther and Powlison are saying quite different things. (And maybe Luther and Lewis are not so different).
ReplyDeleteFor Powlison, everything's idolatry. Which is right worship. 'God is King' is a statement that requires submission/reverence/worship. 'Christ is Saviour' is a statement that requires faith. Essentially it's the difference between not receiving (Luther) and not giving (Powlison etc).
I think our pastoral theology would be very different (refreshingly, gospel-ly different) if we began with 'unbelief' rather than the idolatry thing that seems so in vogue.
Glen
I'm not sure they're completely at loggerheads. Pride is the substitution of self for God; as you say, unbelief is the substitution of our own ideas of what to believe and worship in place of God's revelation. You could argue that unbelief is pride, in that we try to make the decision over what is important instead of taking God at his word. And you could argue that pride is unbelief, in that it refuses to treat God as God and instead substitutes self.
ReplyDeleteIdolatry is very much in vogue, but I don't think that has to be a bad thing. I agree that if it is emphasising what we DO towards God/idols rather than what we expect to RECEIVE from them then it is less "gospel-ly". I like Keller's approach to idolatry which is influenced by Martin Luther on the first commandment (his comments on this in the Large Catechism being one of my favourite things he ever wrote). Luther said:
ReplyDeleteWhat does it mean to have a god? or, what is God? Answer: A god means that from which we are to expect all good and to which we are to take refuge in all distress, so that to have a God is nothing else than to trust and believe Him from the heart; as I have often said that the confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol.... [God says] "See to it that you let Me alone be your God, and never seek another," i.e.: Whatever you lack of good things, expect it of Me, and look to Me for it, and whenever you suffer misfortune and distress, creep and cling to Me. I, yes, I, will give you enough and help you out of every need; only let not your heart cleave to or rest in any other.
I love that. The whole thing has a brilliant Luther emphasis on God's Fatherly goodness in providing for us through his creation.
'God is King' can sound bad, but if he is a servant king who lays down his life for his people I don't think that that needs to be opposed to 'Christ is Saviour'. After all the Gospel can be summed up as 'Christ is Lord'. Similarly, the truest worship is to look to receive from God because to presume he needed anything is actually to dishonour him (e.g. Acts 17:25).
I may not know Powlison enough to say that he disagrees with Luther, but I think that his emphasis on idolatry can fit with emphasis with Luther's emphasis on unbelief, as I think Keller manages to show in a gospel-centred way (he lists both as influences).
Having said that I wasn't saying Powlison was making exactly my point. In the link he seems to disagree (although he seemed to agree in an MP3 of his I was listening to recently).
So Luther and Lewis...
I see your point Phil. I suppose from that perspective you're right. If pride is the substitution of us for God as the arbiter of reality (was it Van Til who said something similar - Satan tempting A&E to conduct the first science experiment?). I guess I was defining pride not as the judge of truth, but as the judge of whether we live or die (more in line with Luther's definition of 'god'). And I do think life is more fundamental than knowledge (contra much modern theology).
I thought the question has some worth as thinking that sin, when you boil it down, is basically pride doesn't take seriously many people who are living not for themselves but for the others opinions of them, or out of fear of having no money... etc. They wouldn't recognise 'pride' as their problem, but they may be persuaded to see 'fear of man' as their problem. And I think that wouldn't just be blindness to the real nature of their sin. The Gospel Glen hints at could then be declared in all its stunning, life-giving, freeing beauty.
Does that make any more sense? Perhaps my post could have been better written.