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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I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty and joy to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. . . The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

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We are not going to wait for angels, or for Enoch and his company to come and build up Zion, but we are going to build it.

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.

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.