If there is one kind of devotion to created beings which is pleasing and another which is displeasing to God, when is the Church, as a Church, going to instruct us in the distinction?
C. S. Lewis, Church Times, 15 July 1949Introduction: a substantial sleuth
It is easy to make a conceptual distinction between ‘worship’ as love that is due to God only, and ‘veneration’ as love that is due to people. What is much more difficult is to substantiate a difference in the two acts themselves, apart from their different objects. What precisely is it that in love we ought to give or perform to God alone, and the giving or performing of which to creatures constitutes ‘idolatry’?
The question is deceptively simple. The first obvious mark of its true complexity is the impossibility of formulating it without smuggling in assumptions. The two assumptions implicit in my formulation of the problem above are that worship and veneration are (1) something that can be given or performed and (2) essentially kinds of love. Indeed, one of the most influential approaches to this question – ‘perhaps the most influential’ (Adams (Reference Adams2002), 186) – is Augustine's famous distinction between two forms of love, frui-love and uti-love.
To speak of the difference between worship and veneration essentially in terms of love is certainly not biblically unwarranted. When asked which of the commandments is greatest, Jesus begins by quoting the Shema: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind’ (Deut. 6:4–5 [NRSV]). This, he says, ‘is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these commandments hang all the law and the prophets” ’ (Matt. 22:36–40).
The one point of substantial overlap between these two loves ‘on which virtually everyone formally agrees' (Outka (Reference Outka1972), 4)Footnote 1 is that the first includes the second. Whatever else loving God with ‘all’ one's heart, soul, and mind may mean, ‘one criterion is neighbor-love itself’ (ibid., 44). The question then becomes: Why does neighbour-love not exhaust our love for God? Why is love for God not reducible to neighbour-love? This is another way of asking our original question. What precisely is the difference between worship and veneration?
In this article, we will interact with the theology of love of C. S. Lewis. He attempts to go beyond, however slightly, a merely conceptual formulation of the difference. Lewis's observations are well worth considering. ‘As survey after survey since 2000 demonstrates’, notes Alister McGrath, Lewis is ‘one of the most influential Christian writers of the twentieth century, with continuing relevance for the twenty-first’ (McGrath (Reference McGrath2014), 176).Footnote 2 ‘If only because he is so influential’, adds Robert MacSwain, we need ‘to be familiar with the specific content of his many books in order to know (and if necessary counter or correct) his impact on the masses’ (MacSwain & Ward (Reference MacSwain and Ward2010), 3). Even Lewis may have his own blind spots.
My argument will unfold as follows. Looking primarily at Lewis's book The Four Loves (1960), which Oliver O'Donovan has called ‘one of the most popular contributions’ (O'Donovan (Reference O'Donovan2007), v) to modern discussions on love, I will delineate two ‘love principles’ that are relevant to our topic. Together they will propel us toward working definitions of worship and idolatry, which will briefly be tested against scriptural support. Lewis himself, however, applies his two principles inconsistently. Mary, Jesus's mother, turns out to be a stumbling block for him, as revealed by a careful analysis of his letters.
Lastly, after a comment on the important prevailing disagreements between Christian churches on the nature of worship and veneration, I conclude with eight follow-up questions that may help us to sharpen the focus of the working definitions. The questions may benefit individual believers who seek to love God and his creatures in everyday encounters, but especially philosophers of religion and theologians entrusted with the often onerous task of ecumenical discussion. Conceptual clarity is the first step in diffusing the still prevailing tension; a shared taxonomy, the sine qua non of meaningful dialogue.
Is it possible to love too much?
We begin with another deceptively simple question. Is it possible to love a human being too much? Lewis's answer, in short, is given in The Four Loves: ‘It is probably impossible to love any human being simply “too much” ’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis1960a), 139).
This is the first of Lewis's two love principles relevant to our project. In fact, it could arguably be reformulated without the qualification ‘probably’. Elsewhere he writes: ‘No person, animal, flower, or even pebble, has ever been loved too much – i.e. more than every one of God's works deserves’ (Hooper (Reference Hooper2006), 782). One searches in vain in the ocean of his worksFootnote 3 for a single admission of a genuinely ‘excessive’ love for anything, whether animate or inanimate. Upon closer inspection possible admissions turn out to be examples of distorted love, not excessive love. Lewis probably included ‘probably’ to be on the safe side, then. Mindful of the risk (however improbable) of misrepresenting Lewis, the First Love Principle can be rephrased:
It is impossible to love a human being simply ‘too much’.Footnote 4
Why does Lewis believe this? A brief detour may help to understand his position.
The Gospel of Mark records Jesus saying that the risen ‘neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven’ (Mark 12:25). Many theologians, like Gregory of Nyssa, have concluded from this that celestial inhabitants are neither masculine nor feminine but genderless. According to a rival interpretation, the one Lewis favours, Jesus's words are subtler than this, pointing to ‘a more fundamental reality than sex’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis1953), ch. 16).Footnote 5 The risen remain gendered beings, but in heaven sex as lovemaking is superseded. There is no sex in heaven, because the reality that lovemaking symbolizes and is a sweet foretaste of on earth (life with God who is love) is there fully consummated. There is no need for lovemaking, because love has been made.
Accordingly, says Lewis, if we find the idea of a sexless heaven mildly disappointing we are like the little boy who is discouraged to learn that sex does not involve eating chocolate (or not necessarily). The boy has tasted the King of Pleasures; without it, ‘sex’ sounds like a mortification.Footnote 6 What has heavenly lovemaking to do with the question of whether it is possible to love a human being too much? Well, a person who thinks it is possible to love ‘too much’ is, Lewis would probably say, like our little boy. The belief is based on a misconception of the nature of things, in this case, the nature of the virtue of love. That Lewis thinks of love primarily as virtue will become apparent.
This is a rather audacious claim. Do we not sometimes go over board (so to speak) in our various loves? Let us look at two possible examples of ‘excessive’ love found in Lewis's own books.
The Four Loves is full of psychological, philosophical, and theological ideas about love, but also metaphors, analogies, and practical case studies that flesh out its more abstract arguments.Footnote 7 One of the most memorable is the figure of ‘Mrs. Fidget’ who, Lewis tells us, had recently passed away. ‘It is astonishing how her family have brightened up’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis1960a), 60). Mrs Fidget often said that she lived for her family, and this was regrettably true.
She did all the washing [though] they frequently begged her not to do it … There was always a hot lunch for anyone who was at home … They implored her not to provide this … She always sat up to ‘welcome’ you home if you were late out at night … you would find the frail, pale, weary face awaiting you, like a silent accusation. Which meant of course that you couldn't with any decency go out very often. (ibid., 61)
The family often protested but to no avail.
For Mrs. Fidget, as she so often said, would ‘work her fingers to the bone’ for her family. They couldn't stop her. Nor could they – being decent people – quite sit still and watch her do it. They had to help. Indeed they were always having to help. That is, they did things for her to help her to do things for them which they didn't want done. (ibid., 62)
The vicar said Mrs Fidget is ‘now at rest’. ‘Let us hope she is’, Lewis concludes laconically. ‘What's quite certain is that her family are’ (ibid.).
Mrs Fidget is of course a caricature. Even her name is an obvious pun. A ‘fidgety’ person is slightly neurotic, over-protective, a busybody. Although Mrs Fidget is a caricature, fidgety misses are not. Undoubtedly she (and any real-life counterpart) loved her family on many levels. But something was amiss. We are tempted to call it ‘excess’ love. This is not, however, Lewis's verdict.
Lewis speaks of an element of gift-love in all human love.Footnote 8 Motherly love is largely gift-love. But like all loves, it too is also need-love. Paradoxically what it needs is to give. ‘But the proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift’ (ibid., 62–63). Gift-love ‘must work towards its own abdication’ (ibid., 63). Mrs Fidget had refused to relinquish her ‘need to be needed’, and as a result it had become ‘ravenous’ by ‘keeping its objects needy’ (ibid.). In reality, of course, the problem was not that she loved them too much but that her love was defective.Footnote 9
Our second example is from The Great Divorce. Although it is not really about divorce or wedlock, it is pregnant with meaning. In this fictional and tragic (but not hopeless) drama, hell is depicted as a rainy, grey, advertisement-infested town.Footnote 10 A motley crowd of people hop on a bus to heaven. They are called ‘Ghosts’ because they lack solidity in contrast to the ‘reality’ of heaven, but are given new impressive solid bodies as they agree to separate (hence the name of the book) from whatever wicked attachments have thereto prevented them from embracing their whole humanity. Most of these attachments turn out to be various forms of distorted love.
One of the most tragic Ghosts, Pam, is a broken-hearted mother grieving over the death of her young son. She is embittered and angry with God: ‘If He loved me why did He take Michael away from me?’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis2001), 99). Her brother has been sent from heaven to meet her halfway. He tells her that her motherly instinct (‘tigresses share that, you know!’) had become ‘uncontrollable and fierce and monomaniac’ (ibid., 100). She snaps back:
This is all nonsense – cruel and wicked nonsense. What right have you to say things like that about Mother-love? It is the highest and holiest feeling in human nature … Give me my boy. Do you hear? I don't care about your rules and regulations. I don't believe in a God who keeps mother and son apart. I believe in a God of love … I want my boy, and I mean to have him. He is mine, do you understand? Mine, mine, mine, for ever and ever. (ibid., 100–103)
C. S. Lewis has been observing this sad dialogue from a distance. The story turns out to be his dream in the end. George MacDonald, one of Lewis's spiritual mentors, is also present. He helps the confused Lewis by diagnosing her predicament: ‘What she calls her love for her son has turned into a poor, prickly, astringent sort of thing’ (ibid. 104).
Soon afterwards a male Ghost is liberated from the tyranny of lust, symbolized by a little red lizard slithering on his shoulder. After an Angel kills it, the lizard morphs into a spectacular stallion. Lewis is again confused. ‘But am I to tell them at home that this man's sensuality proved less of an obstacle than that poor woman's love for her son? For that was, at any rate, an excess of love’ (ibid., 114). ‘Ye'll tell them no such thing’, MacDonald says sternly. ‘Excess of love, did ye say? There was no excess, there was defect. She loved her son too little, not too much. If she had loved him more there'd be no difficulty’ (ibid.).
MacDonald's corrective carries over to the second love principle to which we now turn. In order to assess it properly, we must begin by looking at Lewis's understanding of the nature of virtue. For love is not the only virtue beset by vicious misunderstanding.
What is the solution to disordered love?
‘Give a good quality a name and that name will soon be the name of a defect’, Lewis wrote in Studies in Words (Lewis (Reference Lewis2008), 173). ‘[T]he unconscious linguistic process is continually degrading good words and blunting useful distinctions. Absit omen!’ (Hooper (Reference Hooper2006), 980). In some quarters this has arguably happened to the word virtue itself. A ‘virtuous’ person is a softy, a weakling, a pushover. Lewis learned his virtue ethics from Aristotle directly: ‘Aquinas and I were, in fact, in the same school – I don't say the same class!’ (ibid.). He knows that aretē means exactly the opposite: ‘strength’ and ‘power’ (the old English word manly was often used). Virtues are habitually trained character traits or dispositions that enhance our capacity for good action.Footnote 11
Following Aristotle, virtues are also sometimes called ‘the golden mean’ between two opposite extremes: ‘vices of defect’ and ‘vices of excess’. But since the doctrine of virtue as ‘a mean’ invites the misconception (which Lewis rejects) of virtue somehow being average, mediocre, or lukewarm (‘neither too hot nor too cold’), perhaps it would be better to use a mountain analogy and to think of virtue not as the mean but as the ‘pinnacle’ of human potential, and of the corresponding vices as murky ‘valleys’ or ‘pits’.Footnote 12 This analogy also has its weakness. Busting one misconception, so far as Lewis is concerned, it inflates another: that one could somehow go ‘too far’ in virtue and ‘fall off’ the pinnacle down to the valley of the so-called ‘vices of excess’. In reality these vices too are defective. To be rash is not literally to be too courageous but another way of being defectively courageous. Many goods can be consumed or owned in excess, like sherry or shoes, but it is difficult to see how a good human trait (virtue as defined above) could be in excess.Footnote 13
G. K. Chesterton, another of Lewis's literary mentors, says that problems arise when one virtue becomes dominant. In his idiosyncratic style he writes in Orthodoxy:
The modern world is full of old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have become mad because they have been isolated from another and wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful. (Chesterton (Reference Chesterton1909), 53)
The backcloth here is the old doctrine of ‘the unity of virtue’.Footnote 14 Virtues need one another in order to remain themselves. It is difficult to persevere in love without justice, in justice without courage, and so on.
In The Allegory of Love, Lewis writes that ‘the virtues of a good lover were indistinguishable from those of a good man’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis1976), 199). This is his most succinct definition of a good lover=a good person.Footnote 15 In what was possibly the last essay he wrote, he elaborates: ‘When two people achieve lasting happiness, this is not solely because they are great [sexual] lovers but because they are also – I must put this crudely – good people; controlled, loyal, fair-minded, mutually adaptable people’ (Walmsley (Reference Walmsley2000), 391).Footnote 16 Notice the breakdown of character into a list (unity) of virtues: self-control, loyalty, fair-mindedness, adaptability, and so on. A good lover displays these qualities in abundance.
But to speak of a virtue's ‘dominance’ can also be a bit misleading. Certainly the passage from Orthodoxy does not support the idea of ‘excessive’ virtue. In one of Chesterton's poems, God says to a man in love,
And so, even when presenting Chesterton's view it would be truer to speak not of one virtue's dominance but of other virtues' negligence. A dominant virtue looks swollen only among shrivelled ones.
What is the solution to this imbalance? We can imagine a ladder with one stile (or stringer) shorter at the bottom than the other, making the structure crooked and unstable. To balance it, one could of course cut off a piece of the longer stile. But by extending the shorter one the ladder would reach higher. If I love my children at the expense of loving my spouse, the solution is not to love my children less but to love my spouse more.
Similarly, Lewis writes in The Four Loves, we may love a person ‘too much in proportion to our love for God; but it is the smallness of our love for God, not the greatness of our love for the man, that constitutes the inordinacy’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis1960a), 139–140). When we find ourselves loving people more than we do God, the solution is not to love people less. ‘God wants us to love Him more, not to love creatures (even animals) less’ (Hooper (Reference Hooper2006), 782). This, then, is the Second Love Principle:
The solution to disordered love is always ‘more’ love, never less love.
Notice two important interim implications that follow thus far. First, whatever idolatry means, the one thing it cannot mean is ‘to love a creature too much’. Why not? Because it is impossible to love too much in the first place. The principle does not reveal the right answer to our substantial sleuth outlined in the beginning of this article, but it does eliminate one false answer: idolatry is not ‘excessive veneration’. Second, the solution to the problem of idolatry, or what we misleadingly label ‘excessive veneration’ as a form of disordered love, is always more love, never less love. ‘To love at all is to be vulnerable’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis1960a), 139), but we cannot escape this or any other danger by ceasing to love.
Worship as obedient love
Vulnerability belongs to the proper nature of love, but inordinance – the disorder of love – does not, and ‘all natural loves can be inordinate’ (ibid.). To speak of disorder presupposes a right order. What is it? Does Lewis subscribe to an Augustinian ‘order of loves’? What does ‘inordinate’ mean?
We are now in a position to return to the original context from which we extracted the two love principles, and to see how together they point towards working definitions of both worship and idolatry.
Inordinate does not mean ‘insufficiently cautious’. Nor does it mean ‘too big’. It is not a quantitative term. It is probably impossible to love any human being simply ‘too much’. We may love him too much in proportion to our love for God; but it is the smallness of our love for God, not the greatness of our love for the man, that constitutes the inordinacy … But the question whether we are loving God or the earthly Beloved ‘more’ is not, so far as concerns our Christian duty, a question about the comparative intensity of two feelings. The real question is, which (when the alternative comes) do you serve, or choose, or put first? To which claim does your will, in the last resort, yield? (ibid., 139–140)
For Lewis, the right order of loves does not depend on quantifiable ingredients, like intensities of feelings. If Lewis here subscribes to any ‘order of love’, it is primarily in terms of loyalty. A right order of loves is a right order of loyalties. ‘Inordinate’ in this scheme means misplaced ultimate loyalty. Whether we are loving God ‘more’ – in other words, whether we love God with our ‘all’ (Shema) – does not turn on feelings because feelings are largely out of our control. Such cannot be our ‘Christian duty’. The invitation to love God ‘more’ (with our ‘all’) presupposes something that is in our control. And this, according to Lewis, is our wilful obedience.
For him, love is primarily a relational act of the will for the good of the beloved. The crucial ingredient that prevents our earthly loves from degenerating into idolatry, and that helps us – or makes it even possible – to love God ‘more’, is obedience to him. Fulfilling our Christian duty to love God ‘more’ depends on remaining ultimately loyal to him, consistently aligning our will with his. But loving God ‘more’ is precisely to worship him in the technical sense signalled above. What ought to be given to God alone is, in this reading, our ultimate obedience. This, then, is the working definition of worship that surfaces from the inner twirls of Lewis's theology of love. Worship is obedient love or loving obedience to God and his good will. It follows that idolatry is a kind of disobedient love; a love for a created being that involves disobedience to God.Footnote 18
Obedience and love, as Alan Jacobs has noted, are ‘deeply Lewisian themes’ (Jacobs (Reference Jacobs, MacSwain and Ward2010), 277).Footnote 19 When they appear in tandem in his writings, it seems to me, they usually denote a proper creaturely attitude before the Creator. For example, in The Problem of Pain Lewis uses precisely the term ‘obedient love’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis1998), 60) to describe the unspoilt disposition of the Paradisal man towards God.Footnote 20 Our inability to live perfectly up to the ideal has left the ideal itself unscathed: the call to such obedient love is continually renewed. Lewis uses an analogy between a father and a son to describe this ongoing relation to God: ‘in this symbol, [love] means essentially authoritative love on one side, and obedient love on the other’ (ibid., 30). ‘The kind and degree of obedience which a creature owes to its Creator is unique because the relation between creature and Creator is unique’ (ibid., 93, my emphasis). Sometimes the key terms are used interchangeably, or for emphasis: ‘He demands our worship, our obedience, our prostration’ (ibid., 37).
It is important not to gloss over the second ingredient of worship as ‘obedient love’. Worship is essentially love, though ultimate obedience is necessary to set it apart ‘in kind and degree’ from other loves. The obedience in worship is not surly nor is the love static. Obedience is, or will become, sweet and hardly recognizable from pleasure: hence Lewis speaks of ‘delighted and delighting obedience’ (ibid., 72) and of ‘obedient love and ecstatic adoration’ (ibid., 60). Why does this happen? In his sermon ‘The weight of glory’, he explains that ‘longing transforms obedience’. Our ability to desire and enjoy God can grow, not overnight, but ‘as gradually as a tide lifts a grounded ship’, and we find ‘the first reward of obedience in our power to desire the ultimate reward’ (Walmsley (Reference Walmsley2000), 97). The first steps of obedience will transpose into steps of increasing longing and joy. Worship as love for God can ‘grow’ in this way. This is why in Mere Christianity he says that we ‘cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey him’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis1952), ch. 3).
The Four Loves ends with a somewhat coy and dizzying discussion of what Lewis calls ‘the true centre of all human and angelic life’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis1960a), 159). This is the full blossom of our earthly approach to God in love, ‘the Appreciative love of Him, the gift of adoration’ (ibid., 147). ‘He awakes in us, towards Himself, a supernatural Appreciative Love. This is of all gifts the most to be desired’ (ibid., 159). Donald Bloesch believes ‘Lewis sees the appreciative-love of God as the highest mode of charity [agape], since this is equivalent to adoration and worship’ (Bloesch (Reference Bloesch1960), 1470). This is perceptive but not precise. Lewis himself never calls it ‘worship’. Nor does he use ‘adoration’ in the technical sense of what we ought to give or perform to God alone. Instead he speaks of adoration as a ‘gift’. This is not something we give to God but what he gives to us. It is a taste of the ‘final reward’ of worship. Lewis does not know (‘God knows, not I’) whether he has ‘ever tasted this love. Perhaps I have only imagined the tasting’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis1960a), 159).
It is not difficult to see in Scripture the precursor for the idea of worship as obedient love. It seems to have the weight of both the Old and the New Testaments behind it. Brian Rosner has grouped biblical depictions of idolatry into three models: idolatry as adultery, idolatry as self-salvation, and idolatry as spiritual treason (Rosner (Reference Rosner2007), esp. 43–47, 159–164).Footnote 21 We could spell out the common denominator behind all three in terms of disobedience or disloyalty. In addition to the Shema, an obvious source in the Old Testament would be the first two commandments:
I am the LORD your God … you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol … You shall not bow down to them or [serve] them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God … showing my steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:2–6)
Love for God here manifests itself as obedience. You shall not have, shall not make, shall not bow down. Shall not serve. Love me and keep my commandments. The expression of love for God in the Old Testament is a matter of ‘obedience to God's commandments, serving God, showing reverence to God, and being loyal to God alone’ (Doob Sakenfeld (Reference Doob Sakenfeld1992), 376).Footnote 22
In the New Testament, the organic bond between love and obedience is most unambiguously promulgated in the Gospel of John (esp. chs 14–15). Time and time again Jesus connects the two. He speaks of them in unison practically as two sides of the same coin. ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments’ (14:15). ‘They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me’ (14:21). ‘Those who love me will keep my word … Whoever does not love me does not keep my word’ (14:23–24). ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you … You are my friends if you do what I command you’ (15:12–14). Obedience is also manifest in Jesus's love for the Father. He says he does what the Father commands him to do ‘so that the world may know that I love the Father’ (14:31). ‘If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love’ (14:10).Footnote 23
Understanding God's character and will and obeying his commandments is not always easy. Speaking to his disciples, Jesus said that there would even come the time ‘when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God’ (16:2). And the reason they do this, he explains, is ‘because they have not known the Father or me’ (16:3).Footnote 24
Our situation is not, at first sight, alleviated by Jesus's command to ‘hate’ everyone and everything except him. Lewis also pays attention to these troublesome words: ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even life itself, cannot be my disciple’ (Luke 14:26). But how are we to understand the word ‘hate’? Lewis rejects the simplistic answer.
That Love Himself would be commanding what we ordinarily mean by hatred – commanding us to cherish resentment, to gloat over another's misery, to delight in injuring him – is almost a contradiction in terms. I think our Lord, in the sense here intended, ‘hated’ St. Peter when he said, ‘Get thee behind me.’ To hate is to reject, to set one's face against, to make no concession to, the Beloved when the Beloved utters, however sweetly and however pitiably, the suggestions of the Devil … So, in the last resort, we must turn down or disqualify our nearest and dearest when they come between us and our obedience to God. (Lewis (Reference Lewis1960a), 140–141, my emphasis)
Obedience to God may feel, to our ‘disqualified’ dearests, like hatred of them. So we are to do everything in our power to avoid hurting them – that is, ‘so far as Higher Love permits’ (ibid., 143). Lewis believes it is not easy to know when a crisis that demands such ‘hatred’ is required, and that is why we ought ‘so to order our loves that it is unlikely to arrive at all’ (ibid., 142, my emphasis). The ‘suggestions of the Devil’ do not of course mean literal commands but rather all promptings, regardless of origin, that seriously conflict with God's good will. It is obedience to God, to Higher Love, that can ultimately resist this pull of idolatry. This is why Screwtape calls it ‘the terrible habit of obedience’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis1942), letter 27).Footnote 25
Often enough it is not our beloveds who usurp our loyalty to the Lord, but tragically ‘love’ itself does. The Four Loves illustrates how all earthly loves, whether affection or friendship or eros, when detached from the allegiance of agape, may compel the lover to sin. Many of Lewis's other works, too, from his early study The Allegory of Love (1936) to his late essay ‘We have no “right to happiness” ’ (1963), discuss the mechanics of love that has turned into ‘a sort of religion’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis1960a), 127).
With his don's hat off, Lewis's personal stand against this idolatry of love is uncompromising. ‘If “All” – quite seriously all – “for love” is implicit in the Beloved's attitude, his or her love is not worth having. It is not related in the right way to Love Himself’ (ibid., 143). In other words, such an attitude or disposition harbours a skewed order of loyalties. God is love, but our love is not God. Our loves lack absolute trustworthiness as a moral compass. Apostle John's maxim ‘God is love’ is in Lewis's mind counter-balanced or complemented by Denis de Rougemont's maxim ‘love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be a god’ (de Rougemont (Reference Rougemont and Belgion1940), 321).Footnote 26 Probably to avoid misunderstanding Lewis rephrases it as, love ‘begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis1960a), 15). Love is not a demon but it can become one.
Detached from obedience, love may compel us to sin, and the worshipper of love may even feel like a martyr: ‘It is for love's sake that I have neglected my parents – left my children – cheated my partner – failed my friend at his greatest need’ (ibid., 130). These ‘sacrifices’ are actually collateral damage of an idolatrous love. They fail to express self-control, loyalty, fair-mindedness, and adaptability. In contemporary parlance, unruly lovers are suicide-bombers masquerading as martyrs. Their actions reveal a disobedience to Love Himself. Loves that are not subordinated risk turning into ‘dumb idols, breaking the hearts of the worshippers’ (Hooper (Reference Hooper2004), 98) and those around them. Adrift from the anchor of obedience, love, in the waves of emotion, is in danger of breaking against the rocks of idolatry.
Aslan's mother: Lewis's blind spot?
What about our love for our beloveds in heaven, the cloud of witnesses (gendered or not) that has gone before us? We know that as far as Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox beliefs and practices are concerned, the role of Mary was a personal stumbling block for Lewis. But publicly, in his popular and apologetic works, Lewis tried always to be conciliatory. He rarely, if ever, deliberately imposes his own confessional leanings; rather he discusses what in his view unites all Christians, and avoids what does not – like devotion to the saints.
A rare exception to this taciturnity is a letter written to an American correspondent, Mary Van Deusen, in response to her questions about incense and Hail Marys. The letter was written in 1952 but only came to light in the 1990s. It is worth examining closely because it is rather revealing. After addressing her as ‘Mrs. Van Deusen’, Lewis tackles her questions directly.
Incense and Hail Marys are in quite different categories. The one is merely a question of ritual: some find it helpful and others don't, and each must put up with its absence or presence in the church they are attending with cheerful and charitably [sic] humility.
But Hail Marys raise a doctrinal question: whether it is lawful to address devotions to any creature, however holy. My own view would be that a salute to any saint (or angel) cannot in itself be wrong any more than taking off one's hat to a friend: but that there is always some danger lest such practices start one on the road to a state (sometimes found in R.C.'s [Roman Catholics]) where the B.V.M. [Blessed Virgin Mary] is treated really as a deity and even becomes the centre of religion. I therefore think that such salutes are better avoided. And if the Blessed Virgin is as good as the best mothers I have known, she does not want any of the attention which might have gone to her Son diverted to herself. (Hooper (Reference Hooper2006), 209–210)
What should we make of Lewis's answer? Some parts of it are not immediately clear. The central question is whether addressing devotions to a creature is lawful. By ‘lawful’ we must suppose Lewis means ‘appropriate’ in the sense of ‘not idolatrous’. But what does he mean by ‘addressing devotions’ itself? It seems these include at least salutations – like Hail (Ave) Marys. Is it lawful to address devotion to a creature? Lewis is not perfectly forthcoming here, but if salutations, which cannot ‘in itself be wrong’, rank as devotions, then we must conclude (despite the tenor of the letter) that it is lawful to address devotions to a creature. Perhaps it is even recommendable to do so, for greeting one's friend is not, after all, against good manners.
‘Such practices’, however, may lead to treating a creature ‘really as a deity’ or as ‘the centre of religion’. Again, it is not entirely clear what this means. What does ‘treating a creature as a deity’ look like? It cannot signify addressing devotions to them (like Hail Marys) for otherwise Lewis would end in a tautological circular argument: addressing devotions to a creature is not in itself wrong, but it may lead to addressing devotions to a creature. Whatever the case, such respectful practices carry an inherent and grave risk, the danger of idolatry.
The pastoral advice that Lewis offers is, however, surprising: ‘I therefore think that such salutes are better avoided.’ This advice or adopted attitude is surprising, even a bit odd, for two reasons. First, it is like telling a boy who is worried about accidentally speaking with his mouth full (of chocolate perhaps) that it would be ‘better’ for him to avoid speaking altogether, or eating altogether. More importantly, the advice seems to conflict with the overall thrust of Lewis's theology of love. As we have seen, at the centre of his thinking on love are the very two principles that (1) it is impossible to love any human being ‘too much’, and (2) the solution to disordered love is always more love, never less.
Did Lewis have a ‘blind spot’ when it comes to applying these two principles to Mary and the saints? I ask this ‘with trembling’, for he is ‘a great saint and a great thinker to whom my own glad debts are incalculable’.Footnote 27 What makes Lewis's position even more interesting, almost unique, is that he believed in purgatoryFootnote 28 and he prayed for the dead, even if not to them. That is to say that he asked God to bless the dead, but he did not ask the dead to ask God to bless him in turn. Lewis's communi(cati)on with the cloud of witnesses remained unilateral.
The argument about the ‘best mothers’ is also far from conclusive. Its purported import is undermined by the deflective use of the word might. It is superfluous to say that much (or all) attention ‘might’ have gone to the son: the relevant question is what ought to go to him. Is it inappropriate for a good mother to accept any attention whatsoever? We can imagine a man celebrating his graduation. The guest congratulating his mother ‘for writing such a stupendous thesis' is offering her attention that ought to have gone to her son. But congratulating her ‘for raising such a hard-working son’ is offering attention that might have gone to her son but which ought to go to her.
Lewis may have had other and better reasons for abstaining from, and advising against, devotion to the saints, but the two reasons he shares here are uncustomarily unpersuasive for a thinker of his calibre.Footnote 29 These other reasons would also have to explain and justify the deviation from his love principles. Chad Walsh wrote in his memoir of Lewis that one ‘may see certain blind spots in his books’ (Walsh (Reference Walsh and Gibb1965), 116). I suggest here that Mary may have been one of them. And it is possibly symptomatic of this that in the seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956) the Christ figure, Aslan, has no mother.Footnote 30
An ecumenical challenge
‘Thousands of members of the Church of England’, wrote Lewis a few months after his letter to Mrs. Van Deusen, ‘doubt whether dulia is lawful’ (24 October 1952).Footnote 31 He was addressing the readers of Church Times and objecting to a proposal to ‘set up a “system” of Anglican canonization’. This was not the first time Lewis had involved himself in a similar debate on the pages of Church Times.
In the summer of 1949 Lewis wrote four letters in response to a proposal of introducing devotions to Mary and the saints ‘as a possible liturgical variant’ in Anglican services. His main concern was that these ‘liturgical variants’ would be smuggled in before the underlying doctrinal issues were settled. ‘Can you blame us [laymen] if the reduction of great doctrinal issues to merely liturgical issues fills us with something like horror?’ (20 May 1949).
Interestingly, other readers helped Lewis to make (or remember) two important distinctions. One was a difference between ‘invocation’ and ‘devotion’. Responding to Lewis's mention of ‘the Romish invocation of saints and angels’ (1 July 1949), which the Reformers had abandoned, one reader pointed out that Anglican services had continued to ‘invoke’ saints in some sense. Lewis replied:
Mr Every (quite legitimately) gives the word invocation a wider sense than I. The question then becomes how far we can infer propriety of devotion from propriety of invocation? I accept the authority of the Benedicite for the propriety of invoking (in Mr Every's sense) saints. But if I thence infer the propriety of devotion to saints, will not an argument force me to approve devotion to stars, frosts and whales? (15 July 1949)
The ‘Benedicite’, found in the Prayer Book service of Morning Prayer (Walter Hooper reminds us), ‘has as its source the Song of the three Holy Children (vv. 35–66) in the Old Testament Apocrypha’ (Hooper (Reference Hooper2006), 1591 n. 313). This explains the opaque reference to stars, frosts, and whales. ‘O ye Stars of Heaven, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever … O yet Frost and Cold, bless ye the Lord … O yet Whales, and all that move in the waters, bless ye the Lord’ (vv. 41–57). The value of Lewis's rhetorical question about whales (whether it is probing or flippant) need not detain us here. What interests us more is the second distinction. He finally arrives at the true heart of the matter. In doing so, he puts his finger on a serious ecumenical challenge:
I am also quite ready to admit that I overlooked a[nother] distinction … But if the issue is so much finer than I thought, this merely redoubles my anxiety … If there is one kind of devotion to created beings which is pleasing and another which is displeasing to God, when is the Church, as a Church, going to instruct us in the distinction? (15 July 1949)
Different understandings of worship – or, more regrettably, lack of awareness altogether – has troubled ecumenical dialogue for centuries. To oversimplify blurry party lines, whereas Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have chided Protestants for their ‘defective’ love, manifested in the lack of devotion to the saints and Mary in particular, Protestants in turn have rebuked them for their ‘excessive’ love, manifested in the devotion to the saints and Mary in particular. Catholics can of course defend themselves in many ways. The Council of Trent, the Second Vatican Council, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church all make a distinction between worship and veneration, and caution against inappropriate forms of devotion.Footnote 32
It seems to me, however, that this does not suffice. The distinctions have been conceptual and the cautions generic.Footnote 33 We have argued in circles and past each other. Why? Because we lack criteria: a standard against which we could evaluate our own devotional practices, let alone those of our neighbours. It is not enough to define the worship of saints as idolatry, if worship and idolatry themselves remain undefined. Where is the line between the appropriate and the inappropriate, between the pleasing and the displeasing to God? Where are the goalposts, and when is the ball out of bounds? Without criteria, does not devotion to saints run the risk (like unfalsifiable pseudo-theories) of becoming impervious to criticism, and not because popular piety is self-corrective but because it is self-justifying.
By the same token, Protestant criticism of the cult of saints remains highly unconstructive without a comprehensive understanding of the central acts (worship, veneration, idolatry) and their decided difference. Uninformed criticism throws the baby out with the baptismal water: it risks hitting, by its reckless aim, also appropriate and pleasing forms of love.
There is also a regrettable tendency in all camps to stretch the meaning of the word ‘idolatry’ and to (over)use it irresponsibly, often confusing the different connotations it has as a major category in theological, psychological, and sociological analysis. Idolatry has become a trendy word especially in theological jargon. But if everything is ‘idolatrous’ nothing is idolatrous, and a useful word is made redundant.
Lewis feared that in the lives of some Christians, Mary might loom unhealthily large. Little could he have guessed that fifty years after his death, in the lives of some Christians, Lewis himself might loom unhealthily large. MacSwain is even bolder than McGrath by calling Lewis ‘almost certainly the most influential religious author of the twentieth century, in English or any other language’ (MacSwain & Ward (Reference MacSwain and Ward2010), 3). Everyone agrees that his popularity transcends denominational borders.Footnote 34 He is loved by the masses. Lewis's biographer A. N. Wilson has spoken of ‘Lewis idolatry’ (Wilson (Reference Wilson1990, xvi), and his atheist critic John Beversluis bemoans ‘the escalating hero-worship of Lewis (especially in America)’ (Beversluis (Reference Beversluis2007), 10).Footnote 35 These men do not mean their accusations of idolatry literally; rather they want to poke holes in the uncritical loyalty of some of Lewis's most devoted readers.
Nonetheless, theists believe that idolatry – whether the object is one's family, child, spouse, the Church, Mary, or Lewis himself – is a reality. The question relates to everybody. It relates fundamentally to Christian unity and disunity. For these reasons, locating the difference between worship and veneration is an important (albeit neglected) endeavour for theological and philosophical inquiry. I have suggested that Lewis's contribution to this enormous and elusive task is, in addition to his two love principles, a reminder of one relevant factor: the role of obedience in the heart of worship.
While this is helpful, it is far from exhaustive. I conclude with eight follow-up questions. They may help us further our understanding of the complexity of the problem, and nudge us toward more focused definitions.
Eight follow-up questions
The first question is the meta-question, which in the following seven is broken down into more manageable portions. This article has wrestled primarily with question 5. There is much work to be done especially for philosophers and theologians, but also for church historians, biblical scholars, liturgical theologians, psychologists of religion, sociologists of religion, and specialists in non-Christian (especially Jewish and Islamic) thought.Footnote 36
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1. As technical terms we call ‘worship’ (latreia, adoratio) that which is to be given to God alone, and ‘veneration’ (douleia, veneratio) that which is to be given to people. Do worship and veneration differ as acts in themselves, not only by virtue of their different objects? What precisely is the act or gift that ought to be performed or offered to God alone, and the performing or offering of which to anything or anyone else would count as idolatry? Or is there ‘a single activity, though the objects to which it is directed are different’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis1961), 1)?Footnote 37
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2. Is the difference between worship and veneration quantitative or qualitative? Is veneration a mild electric current that, as it strengthens, approaches worship, or is veneration electricity and worship something more like fire?
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3. Is the difference between worship and veneration external or internal? Is it perceptible to the naked eye, or is it merely a matter of inner disposition and intention? The distinction between act and behaviour is relevant here. Two acts may fundamentally differ, for example, in the case of a murder versus an accident, though the behaviour is identical: a pull of the trigger in a forest. What are the relevant inner thoughts and feelings, and can they be captured in outward behavioural formulas? Are we able to discriminate decisively between offering worship and offering veneration? Or are we faced with an ‘incorrigible inner−outer problem, with an inscrutable “motive” to be forever contrasted with “mere” external acts?’ (Outka (Reference Outka1972), 137)Footnote 38
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4. Is the difference between worship and veneration objective or subjective? Are certain criteria (whether inner movements or outer rituals) timeless and universal, or are they fluid, conventional, susceptible to changes over time and place? Could we, for instance, argue that the Old Testament prohibition of graven images does not apply to our post-New Testament era? If so, has this fact given ‘an astonishing fluidity to “idolatry,” a category that is supposed to be the firmest and strictest of all’ (Harbetal & Margalit (Reference Harbetal and Margalit1992), 250)?Footnote 39
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5. What is the relationship between worship and loyalty? Is obedience to God a necessary condition of true worship? Is disobedience a necessary condition of idolatry (and perhaps also by definition so, for idolatry is commanded against)? What are the relevant ethical dimensions?
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6. ‘The best love … is not blind’ (Lewis (Reference Lewis1960a), 143). Rational love identifies its object with all its strengths and shortcomings. Motherly love exemplifies this. Is idolatrous love, then, a cognitive misidentification of the object by equipping a created being with the characteristics unique to the Creator? Is idolatry a misunderstanding? Can the difference between worship and veneration be traced back to cognitive factors alone? No human being knows God perfectly: a deficient theology does not necessarily equal idolatry. How accurate must our perception of God be for our worship to be worship? How deficient must it be for ‘worship’ to miss its mark?
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7. Some Roman Catholic and Orthodox theologians would like to call the special veneration offered to Mary ‘hyperveneration’ (huperdouleia) as distinct from ‘ordinary’ veneration offered to the saints. This is due to Mary's unique role in salvation history as the Mother of Jesus (to whom he showed perfect loveFootnote 40 ) but also due to her unique immaculate conception. These theologians stress that hyperveneration belongs to the (qualitative) category of veneration, not worship. Does hyperveneration clarify the messy relationship of worship and veneration? Or does it solidify the confusion further?
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8. Does the difference between worship and veneration hinge on the question of sacrifice? We make sacrifices on behalf of each other daily. This is not idolatrous but can be heroic. What about ritualistic sacrifice?Footnote 41 Liturgical worship (the Mass) touches upon the idea of forgiveness of sins. Is the difference between worship and veneration a question of what is sacrificed, why, and to whom?Footnote 42
