C.S. Lewis on Eternal Progression

C.S. Lewis

eternal progression christian authorities faith

He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

The class of transformations that could happen spontaneously - in the absence of knowledge - is negligibly small compared with the class that could be effected artificially by intelligent beings who wanted those transformations to happen.

Letter VIII, The Screwtape Letters, page 37, New York: HarperOne, 2015

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John A. Widtsoe

As science advances and increases, as new discoveries are made, as more complete command is obtained over the forces of nature, the more necessary it becomes that we have a religion to guide us in employing these discoveries. To save the world from science, and to make science the builder of a good world, we must hasten our progress towards the fuller acceptance of God. So, the answer to the question at the head of this article is very simple.

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More from C.S. Lewis

If anyone swear by Tash and keep their oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that they have truly sworn, though they know it not, and it is I who reward them. And if anyone do a cruelty in my name, then, though they say the name Aslan, it is Tash whom they serve and by Tash their deed is accepted.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations.

Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. If we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always existed and always will exist. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be sons of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has — by what I call “good infection.” Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.