CS Lewis and the Limpets

Not a very good start - I've already missed two days of the 365 day devotional. Here are the make up days for the 2nd and 3rd.

On January 2nd's reading, Lewis imagines a mystical limpet in describing man. This limpet has some sort of direct experience with man and his followers gain from this mystical experience. But, the philosophers of the limpet race disconnect the mystical experience and give pure philosophical analysis of man. This is how we treat God if we're not careful. We disregard what we see as the primitive notion of God and follow some cold, intellectual model rather than the living, breathing God of Christianity.

We, as rational beings can only describe God negatively. He is not finite, he is not material, etc., etc. But, we as beings who have the possibility of intuiting God can experience the concrete realness of Him. By relying too much of our own rationality we lose the realness God offers to us. We are blinded by our own rationality. The mystical is necessary to truly experience God.

"As long as we remain Erudite Limpets we are forgetting that if no one had ever seen more of God than we, we should have no reason even to believe Him immaterial, immutable, impassible and all the rest of it. Even that negative knowledge which seems to us so enlightened is only a relic left over from the positive knowledge of better men - only the pattern which that heavenly wave left on the sand when it retreated" (Lewis, 6). Our reason as men does not lead us to the totality of God. But, our reason invites us to experience. "When it becomes clear that you cannot find out by reasoning whether the cat is in the linen-cupboard, it is Reason herself who whispers, 'Go and look. This is not my job: it is a matter for the sense" (Lewis, 6). Lewis says it is the same with God. Reason cannot get us all the way; but, it is reason itself that says go and experience God. Mystical experience is a necessary function of a experiencing God.