In Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe, Jeffrey Hart says of the Socratics that they “sought to know ‘actuality,’ which ultimately had to include everything, and do so independently of religion, myth, and received tradition.”1 While the search for knowledge and understanding of science and philosophy is admirable, the attempt to do so independently of religion and myth is fundamentally incompatible with Scripture. This post does not evaluate the intersection of science and religion; while important, it’s not what I want to focus on here, and I don’t think it is the central issue Hart is getting at in the Socrates and Jesus chapter of his book. Instead, I’d like to share some thoughts about one of my favorite books, Till We Have Faces.
With Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis beautifully explores the collision of Socratic/Platonic philosophy and paganism in a pre-Christian culture. Set in opposition to each other, Greek rationalism and the mythology of the book’s pagan “barbarians” both fall short of offering sufficient answers to the deepest questions of identity and purpose that the main character, Orual, asks. Orual is the “other sister” in Lewis’ retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth, a bitter woman who does not understand her sister’s love of a god that is unknowable and wholly other. Growing up in a pagan society filled with the “smell of incense” and the “reek of holiness,” Orual learns to fear and hate the goddess Ungit, a mysterious force that is worshipped through rote ceremony but not loved or understood.2
When her sister Psyche is sacrificed to the Brute, son of Ungit, and then marries him, Orual cannot comprehend the change and joy that overcome Psyche when they are reunited. Orual fears that she has lost Psyche forever, and spends the majority of the book veiled and brooding. Her closest consolation is the Fox, a Greek slave and teacher who embodies the philosophy of the Socratics. Speaking about the Fox, Orual says, “He thought there were no gods, or else (the fool!) that they were better than men. It never entered his mind—he was too good—to believe that the gods are real, and viler than the vilest men.”3 The Fox does not believe that Psyche is with a god but with a man, and attempts to find a rational explanation for everything he encounters. He views the pagan practices of Orual’s people as foolish and primitive, preferring instead the enlightened philosophy of the Greeks. But the Fox’s philosophy is no consolation for Orual; in fact, she tries to follow the wisdom of the Greeks, but her attempts are futile:
And I thought Socrates understood such matters better than the Fox, for in the same book he has said how the soul ‘is dragged back through the fear of the invisible’; so that I even wondered if he had not himself tasted this horror as I had tasted it in Psyche’s valley. But by the death which is wisdom I supposed he meant the death of our passions and desires and vain opinions…if I practiced true philosophy, as Socrates meant it, I should change my ugly soul into a fair one.4
Thus, Orual tries to save herself through philosophy, through pursuing wisdom: in a Platonic sense, she thought she could escape the chains of the Cave through her own efforts. Lewis shows us, however, that the Socratic solution to healing our diseased souls will always be fruitless. “I could mend my soul no more than my face. Unless the gods helped. And why did the gods not help?”5 The gods did not help Orual because she was looking for the wrong kind of healing. She wanted to understand what happened to Psyche, to have her complaint against the gods heard and understood, but she could not fix herself because she ultimately did not know who she was or who the gods were. “How can they meet us face to face until we have faces?”6 is Orual’s concluding revelation, the point at which she had to fall before she could receive the grace of salvation. Her face (which she habitually kept veiled), her identity, was not something she could construct or understand through philosophy and reason. It wasn’t something she could see mirrored in any dark, mysterious pagan god. She must be unmade before she could become remade into her true self.7 At the end of the series of visions in which she receives grace (not through her own efforts, but as a gift bestowed on her), Orual finally realizes that all answers are found in the Lord (Lewis, interestingly, shifts from referencing “the gods” to “the Lord” at this point): “I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice? Only words, words; to be led out to battle against other words.”8
It is good and right to admire the ancient philosophers for their hunger for knowledge. Hart says, “the Platonic ascent to true knowledge [was] motivated by the driving force of Love, understood as the desire for perfect knowledge.”9 The character of the Fox in Lewis’ book is not a villain; in fact, it is he who leads Orual through her visions toward her ultimate encounter with the Lord. But any attempt to understand “ultimate and permanent reality”10 without revelation from the One who is the source of that reality will ultimately be in vain.
