The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Father Bede Griffiths

This was not merely a psychological analysis, but a deeply contemplative look at the overwhelming inner experience he had gone through. Intimating it was a mystical experience which could not properly be put into words, Father used symbolic language to try and express the depth of the experience. The two symbols he used were the Black Madonna and the Crucified Christ. He said these two images summed up for him something of this mysterious experience of the Divine feminine and the mystery of suffering.

The figure of the Black Madonna stood for the feminine in all its forms. I felt the need to surrender to the Mother, and this gave me the experience of being overwhelmed by love. I realized that surrendering to death, and dying to oneself is surrendering to Total Love.

On the Cross Jesus surrendered himself to this Dark Power. He lost everything: friends, disciples, his own people, their law and religion. And at last he had to surrender his God: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me." Even his heavenly Father, every image of a personal God, had to go. He had to enter the Dark Night, to be exposed to the abyss. Only then could he become everything and nothing, opened beyond everything that can be named or spoken; only then could he be one with the darkness, the Void, the Dark Mother who is Love itself...

I would like to share with you something of my advaitic experience...I was overwhelmed and deluged with love. The feminine in me opened up and a whole new vision opened. I saw love as the basic principle of the whole universe. I saw God in the earth, in trees, in mountains. It led me to the conviction that there is no absolute good or evil in this world. We have to let go of all concepts which divide the world into good and evil, right and wrong, and begin to see the complimentarity of opposites which Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa called the coincidentia oppositorum, the "coincidence of opposites."

(1) Lewis believed "There are people in other religions who... belong to Christ without knowing it."

(2) Lewis had a character in his novel, The Great Divorce, say, "St. Paul talked as if all men would be saved."

(3) Lewis admitted the Bible "may no doubt contain errors," and, he doubted, denied, or avoided discussing, many biblical miracles [A. J. Mattill, Jr., "Some Reflections on C. S. Lewis' `Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism,'" The Journal of Faith and Thought, Spring, 1985, pp. 22-33].

(4) Lewis denied the "inspiration" of Biblical authors whenever they attributed to "God" blatantly immoral actions and commands (such as "striking dead" the couple for withholding some of their money from the church in Acts). Lewis wrote, "The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of Scripture is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two." [John Beversluis, C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985, pp. 156f].

5) Lewis misunderstood several texts and states that Jesus made an error when He predicted that the Son of Man would come in final judgment within a "generation" of Jesus' day, or, "before those standing [around Jesus after his transfiguration] had all died." [C. S. Lewis, "The World's Last Night," The World's Last Night And Other Essays. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich].

6) Lewis focused on Jesus' death as "exemplary," the perfect example of "dying to self" that we all should follow. He did not focus on it as a necessary price to pay to appease God's wrath toward all mankind. [Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, The Role of Revelation and the Question of Inerrancy. Waco: Word Books, 1979].

7) Lewis had no theological difficulty accepting that Genesis may have been "derived from earlier Semitic stories which were Pagan and mythical," [C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms. London: Collins, Fontana Books, 1958, p. 93]. and he found more truth in the story of the "Garden of Eden" when he regarded it as a myth than when he regarded it as history. [Christensen, pp. 34-35].

8) Lewis accepted the theory of the biological evolution of the human form from earlier animal species. [Christensen, pp. 31-32]

9) Lewis speculated that at least some animals might be granted eternal life with human beings in heaven. [Christensen, pp. 32-33]

10) Lewis believed in the miraculously "real" presence of Christ in the communion wafer. [Christensen, p. 30]

11) Lewis believed in purgatory, prayers for the dead, and prayers to saints. [Christensen, pp 29- 30].