Book Review
The Central Lie
C. S. Lewis: Anti-Darwinist: A Careful Examination of the Development of His Views on Darwinism
by Jerry Bergman
Wipf & Stock, 2016
(160 pages, $21.00, paperback)
reviewed by Louis Markos
Let's face it: most Christian writers and academics today who accept the Nicene Creed, who are passionate about evangelism, and who believe that the Christian worldview has implications for all that we study and write owe a conscious debt to C. S. Lewis. That is a good thing, but it can often lead to turf wars, with various factions seeking to appropriate Lewis for their side. Thus, while those on the theological right try to claim Lewis as a biblical inerrantist or a TULIP Calvinist, those on the theological left try to claim him as a proponent of egalitarian, as opposed to complementarian, marriage or of universal salvation. Lewis neither held, nor "matured" into, any of these positions.
But what about science? What position would Lewis attest to were he alive today? If one reads only chapter five of The Problem of Pain, in which Lewis weaves a myth of the Fall that blends aspects of evolution with Genesis 1–3, it appears that Lewis would have been a theistic evolutionist happy to work alongside Darwinian science. Not so, argues Jerry Bergman in C. S. Lewis: Anti-Darwinist.
In his brief but convincing book, Bergman, who teaches biology, chemistry, and anatomy at Northwest State College (Archbold, Ohio) and is an adjunct associate professor at the University of Toledo Medical School, demonstrates, through careful quotations from Lewis's letters, essays, and books, that Lewis grew increasingly disillusioned with Darwinism and saw it as both untenable and a threat to civilization.
Bergman notes that a few years before he became a believer, "Lewis wrote a letter to his father saying that the evolutionary ideas of Charles Darwin and Social Darwinist Herbert Spencer were both built 'on a foundation of sand'" (50). Throughout his Christian writings, Lewis took a hard stand against naturalism, affirming creation ex nihilo and arguing that the blind, unguided, mechanical forces of Darwinism could not have created our super-natural capacity for reason—the very capacity Darwinists rely upon to "prove" their naturalistic theories.
Literary Traces
Lewis, however, also rejected attempts by such writers as Henri Bergson, George Bernard Shaw, and Teilhard de Chardin to spiritualize evolution. (Bergman helpfully references a letter (50) in which Lewis asserts that the Catholic Church was right to silence Teilhard!) In a note he appended to Book I, Chapter 4 of Mere Christianity, Lewis argues that the kind of theistic evolution propounded by Bergson—in which Darwinian mechanisms are propelled forward by an amorphous, non-personal life force (élan vital)—was not really a valid third option between naturalism and Christianity. Rather, it was a cop-out that allowed its proponents to praise and thank someone when the world was bright but dismiss that same someone as removed and impersonal when they wanted to do something they knew they
shouldn't.
Lewis's deep-seated opposition to Darwinism can also be seen in two of the ten books that he claimed had influenced him the most. One of these, G. K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man, Bergman correctly points out, was written in great part to refute the Darwinian-evolutionary account of history that underlies H. G. Wells's influential Outline of History. The other, far less known today, was written by Arthur Balfour, "a Christian apologist and outspoken anti-Darwinist whose ideas . . . permeate the first five chapters of Lewis's book Miracles" (33). Bergman offers a helpful overview of Balfour's book, Theism and Humanism, that includes this incisive quote from Balfour:
I take it as certain that, had no such theory as Natural Selection been devised, nothing would have persuaded mankind that the organic world came into being unguided by intelligence. Chance, whatever chance may mean, would never have been accepted as a solution. Agnosticism would have been scouted as stupidity. (34)
Chief among Bergman's evidence for Lewis's firm anti-Darwinian stance are two essays, "The Funeral of a Great Myth" and "A Reply to Professor Haldane"; a scathing poetic parody of Darwinism titled "The Evolutionary Hymn," whose first stanza runs, "Lead us, Evolution, lead us / Up the future's endless stair: / Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us, / For stagnation is despair: / Groping, guessing, yet progressing, / Lead us nobody knows where" (112); and a personal correspondence with Bernard Acworth, the president of the British Evolution Protest Movement, that includes Lewis's agreement with Acworth that evolution is "the central and radical lie in the whole web of falsehood that now governs our lives" (124).
In "The Funeral of a Great Myth," Lewis expands on the radical lie that is Darwinism, a lie that has convinced the last eight generations or so that just because we see change and adaptation in nature (microevolution), the entire course of life in the universe must be equally evolutionary. The appeal of this myth, Lewis explains, is not to our reason but to our imagination, though reasons enough are soon found to support our emotional need to believe in endless progress. According to the macroevolutionary myth, writes Lewis, reason "has 'evolved' out of instinct, virtue out of complexes, poetry out of erotic howls and grunts, civilization out of savagery, the organic out of inorganic, the solar system out of some sidereal soup" (104).
In "A Reply to Professor Haldane," Lewis shows how the great myth of macroevolution carries with it dangerous social and political implications, implications that give rise to eugenics, genetic engineering, and utopian programming, which Lewis himself critiques and exposes in The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength.
Taken together, the two essays, the poem, and the correspondence make a strong case for Lewis's anti-Darwinism, and yet, as it turns out, the essays were published posthumously, the poem was published anonymously, and the private correspondence was kept, well, private. If Lewis harbored such grave doubts about Darwinism, why was he not more public about it? In what I consider a fair and balanced assessment based on the evidence, Bergman offers the following
answer:
Lewis was far less open in public than in private about his opposition to evolution for several reasons. First, he was not a biologist and wanted to avoid openly confronting biologists because he felt somewhat insecure in the natural science field. . . . Second, he realized that actively attacking evolution would produce much opposition to his person and writings and, as a result, would detract from his main work, Christian apologetics.
(110)
Literary Twinges
I wish I could end my review here, on this note of praise, but C. S. Lewis: Anti-Darwinist, despite its strong and timely thesis, is flawed. It bears all the earmarks of a book rushed into publication without the necessary editing and revision. Like Richard III, it has been pushed "into this breathing world, scarce half made up."
The opening five chapters are weak and disjointed. They have not been mulled over and lovingly crafted, but offer a slapdash pastiche of quotes. After that, the writing improves, but even here, there are disturbing marks of haste and carelessness. Quotes from Lewis are recycled again and again, giving the impression that each chapter was a separate essay and then those separate essays were compiled. This repetition does not take away from the accuracy of Bergman's thesis, but it does diminish its rhetorical force.
Alas, the book bears one other mark of haste that touches me personally. My lengthy endorsement, which appears both at the front of the book and, edited down, on the back, was not written as an endorsement. The text was adapted, without consulting me, from an enthusiastic and supportive email I sent the author four years ago after he shared with me the thesis of his book in the form of a lengthy essay.
Forgive me if I seem to be belaboring this point, but I do so for two important reasons. First, Christian writers and publishers need something of an aesthetic wake-up call. Speaking/teaching and writing represent two different disciplines, each having its own rules. Publishing books that have been hastily lifted from lectures or PowerPoint presentations, or that amount to nothing more than transcripts of extemporaneous sermons or unrehearsed seminars, is not acceptable. We who serve a God who identifies himself as the Logos, the Word, must hold ourselves to higher literary and rhetorical standards.
Second, I fear that the poor writing and construction will prevent readers from taking seriously the thesis of Bergman's book. Far too many Christian academics have slipped into theistic evolution without questioning, vigorously and honestly, the implications of such an uneasy—
I would say incongruous—hybrid position. Bergman's book has the potential to force such academics to face up to their position, but those who do not wish to do so will be able to push Bergman (and Lewis!) aside by saying the book is not "scholarly."
And that would be a crime, for, despite the inelegance of the writing, this is a scholarly book that has been well-researched and documented, one that needs to be read and wrestled with by all lovers of Lewis and all who are interested in the ongoing debate between full-blown Darwinists, theistic evolutionists, intelligent design theorists, and young-earth creationists. As its lengthy subtitle rightly claims, C. S. Lewis: Anti-Darwinist offers a careful examination of Lewis's gradual but firm movement away from Darwinism and theistic evolution toward a position that squares well with the intelligent design movement of the last two decades.
Louis Markos , Professor in English and Scholar in Residence at Houston Baptist University, holds the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities. His 19 books include Lewis Agonistes; Restoring Beauty: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful in the Writings of C. S. Lewis; On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis; and From A to Z to Narnia with C. S. Lewis.
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more on C. S. Lewis from the online archives
22.5—June 2009
C. S. Lewis on Civilization & the Natural Order by Timothy L. Hall
19.6—July/August 2006
The Three-Fold Cord of Imagination, Reason & Will in C. S. Lewis by Michael Ward
18.3—April 2005
on Being a Free Narnian & the Joy of Subordination by Donald T. Williams
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27.6—Nov/Dec 2014
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31.1—January/February 2018
on Taking the Measure of the Deserving & the Undeserving Poor by Martin Bordelon
30.5—Sept/Oct 2017
The Christian Cure for What Ails Modern Politics by David Bradshaw
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