Step into the Light, Part 1: Contemplation and Enjoyment in the Work of C.S. Lewis
By Annie Crawford
The popularity of C.S. Lewis only seems to grow as we move into the next century. His clarity and charm will edify and delight any reader who comes to his works with an open mind and heart. However, if we want to see deeper into the layers of meaning Lewis has to offer us, we need to understand what Lewis calls “an indispensable tool of thought” that came to permeate everything he wrote and even the way he lived.
Today, Shadowlands Dispatch is pleased to introduce “Step into the Light,” a three-part series in which Annie Crawford explains how this key to Lewis’s work enables his readers to see Christianity not only as true, but deeply transformative.
Click the titles below read other articles in this series:
Step into the Light, Part 1: Contemplation and Enjoyment in the Work of C.S. Lewis
Step into the Light, Part 2: The Necessity of Surrender
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To know the chemical properties of water is not the same thing as knowing what it is to feel the cool liquidity and buoyancy of water as you swim. To know the principles of love is not the same as knowing what it is to love your newborn child or dying spouse. This crucial distinction between abstract knowledge and experiential knowledge formed an integral part of C.S. Lewis’s conversion to Christianity.
Before his conversion, Lewis read Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time, and Deity, which describes these two modes of knowledge as “Contemplation” and “Enjoyment.” In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, Lewis explains that this distinction became an “indispensable tool of thought”1 that helped him reconcile his intimate experiences of deep longing, which he calls “joy,” with the external truths of Christianity. Alexander’s theory of knowledge deeply shaped Lewis’s understanding of Christianity and what it is to know Christ. As an apologist, Lewis used this distinction between Contemplation and Enjoyment to convey that the Christian faith is not just an abstract belief about Christ but, more fundamentally, an abiding in Him.
Lewis further developed his understanding of Alexander’s theory in the essay, “Meditation in a Toolshed.” To explain the two modes of knowledge, Lewis describes standing in a dark shed while a bright beam of light streams in from a crack at the top of the door. When standing off to the side and looking at the beam of light itself, he sees specks of dust floating through the lighted air, as well as the darkness of the shed surrounding it. However, when he steps into the light to let the bright beam fall on his eyes, the dark shed and illuminated dust disappear. He sees through the beam of light to the sunny world outside where a tree branch rustles in the distance. Lewis explains that Contemplation is like the first experience; it is “looking at the beam.”2 As the knower, we are outside the beam of light, for Contemplation is an “external account of a thing.”3 In contrast, Enjoyment is a participatory mode of knowledge we gain by stepping inside the beam and “looking along” it.4 In Enjoyment, we are seeing the world through our experience of the beam.
As the knower, we are outside the beam of light, for Contemplation is an “external account of a thing.” In contrast, Enjoyment is a participatory mode of knowledge we gain by stepping inside the beam and “looking along” it.
Both Contemplation and Enjoyment are intrinsic modes of human understanding. As soon as we perceive the difference between them, we can easily find daily examples of each all around us. In Surprised by Joy, Lewis explains, “When you see a table you ‘enjoy’ the act of seeing and ‘contemplate’ the table. Later, if you took up Optics and thought about Seeing itself, you would be contemplating and seeing and enjoying the thought.”5 While conscious, we are always attending to something.6 Our sense perceptions and thoughts always require an object; they are perceptions of or thoughts about something. Likewise, we are always Enjoying something, for “you can step outside one experience only by stepping inside another.”7 Our consciousness is always grounded inside some kind of perspective or state of being.
Lewis recognized that Alexander’s theory of knowledge carries profound implications for our understanding of the Christian faith. If there are different modes of human knowledge, then to truly know God is to know Him in all of these modes. Firstly, if Christianity is true, then it must be knowable through Contemplation. We must be able to examine the world and see the rational validity of a Christian worldview. We must be able to “look at the beam” and see that it is real. If God exists as an “Other” then He exists as an object for me to Contemplate.
However, the Christian faith is not merely a worldview. It is not merely a set of doctrines to be rationally understood and Contemplated. More fundamentally, the Christian faith is a Reality to be Enjoyed. To Contemplate Christ is not the same as to Enjoy Him. To know God fully is to experience life in Him and through Him, to stand within the beam of his Light and, through it, see all the world.
— Annie Crawford is a cultural apologist and classical educator with a Master of Arts in Cultural Apologetics from Houston Christian University. She teaches apologetics and Great Text courses for Vine Classical Community in Austin, Texas, and is co-founder of The Society for Women of Letters where she serves as Senior Fellow. Annie also writes for The Symbolic World, Salvo, Classical Academic Press, and An Unexpected Journal, where she is a founding editor and writer. Learn more at anniecrawford.net.
C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, in The Inspirational Writings of C.S. Lewis (New York: Inspirational Press, 1994), 120.
C.S. Lewis, “Meditation in a Toolshed,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1970), 231.
Lewis, “Meditation,” 231.
Ibid., 230.
Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 119-120.
One might argue that in meditation or certain states of prayer, contemplation has ceased as one’s consciousness is wholly subsumed in enjoyment of the Other. Such an experience is, however, beyond the normal operation of human knowing and does not affect the present argument.
Lewis, “Meditation,” 233.
Love this. Lewis' works, more than anything else I've read, bring into sharp relief what it means to truly live the Christian life. It is a holistic experience, not simply an identity.