C.S. Lewis' Take On Theosis & Divine Energy
C.S. Lewis & the Church Fathers on How God Energizes Us w/ His Own Life
In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis makes an important observation for the Christian life:
“God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there” (pg. 50).
In other words, prayer and communion with God actually complete our nature as humans, and it is His own life energizing us that makes the Christian life possible. There is no real peace or happiness apart from God, because He is the joy and life of the universe! As a leaf wilts without the light of the sun, so we wilt without the energizing light of God within our own souls.
St. Gregory the Theologian (329-390 AD) summarized our need for Christ like this:
“As a fish cannot swim without water, and a bird cannot fly without air, he said, so a Christian cannot advance a single step without Christ.”
In another place, Lewis also uses the word, ‘energy’ to describe what the saints will look like in Heaven and the future eschaton. He speaks of God making a person into
“a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and Jove as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness.”
[Btw, I recently created a resource page for all of my Lewis/Tolkien related writings and videos. I hope you find this helpful. I already have!]
In The Great Divorce, he depicts a glorified saint in heaven named Sarah who is radiating with God’s energy and life. As the animals come near her, she appears before the readers as a new Eve or another Mary:
"Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them." I looked at my Teacher in amazement. "Yes," he said. "It is like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further. Who knows where it will end? Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.”
Lewis has a very high view of humanity (almost god-like), because he has a high view of what God gave to Adam and Eve in Paradise long ago, which was His own energizing life.
The Energizing Work of the Spirit in Scripture
One of the reasons the word ‘energy’ plays such an important role word in Lewis’ lexicon is because he was deeply grounded in thinking of the Scriptures and the church fathers. Let’s turn to a few examples in Scripture to demonstrate this point.
In Philippians 2:12-13, St. Paul writes,
“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who imparts energy in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Dr. David Bradshaw’s translation emboldened).
In his book, Divine Energies & Divine Actions, Dr. David Bradshaw comments on this verse stating,
“The Philippians are both free agents responsible for their own salvation, and the arena in which God works to bring about that salvation… for Paul there is no contradiction in urging the Philippians to do something that he also sees as the work of God. The peculiar nature of God’s activity is that it imparts the energy to do his will, although this energy must be freely expressed or “worked out” to be effective.”
Another good example of the Spirit’s energizing work in us comes from Colossians 1:29 which states,
“It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ ‘striving according to Christ’s working (or energy, ἐνέργεια), which is being made effective (or energized, ἐνεργουμένην) in me’” (Dr. David Bradshaw’s translation emboldened).
Dr. David Bradshaw comments on this verse stating,
“This verse brings out well the synergistic tendency of Paul’s thought. On the one hand the divine energy is at work within Paul, transforming him, so that from this standpoint he is the object of God’s activity; on the other it finds expression in Paul’s own activity, so that Paul’s free agency and that of God coincide. Indeed, not only do the actions Paul alludes to in this passage exhibit full engagement and self-control, they do so more than did his actions prior to his conversion. As the story is told in Acts, Saul was trapped in self-deception until God set him free on the road to Damascus. Now the divine energy which works in him is also his own…”
Although we could turn to several more passages in Scripture, let’s turn to a few church fathers.
The Energizing Work of the Spirit in the Fathers
For the Fathers, the energizing work of the Spirit in our lives conforms us to the image of Christ and restores the energizing grace and glow that our father Adam once had in paradise.
St. John Damascene writes,
‘[In Paradise, man] had the indwelling God as a dwelling place and wore Him as a glorious garment. He was wrapped about with His grace, and, like some one of the angels, he rejoiced in the enjoyment of that one sweet fruit which is the contemplation of God, and by this he was nourished.’ (On the Orthodox Faith, 2: 11).
Thankfully, the grace and energy we lost in the Garden is now available to us once again through the Holy Spirit. St. Basil writes (‘On the Holy Spirit):
“As is the power of seeing in the healthy eye, so is the energy (ἐνέργεια) of the Spirit in the purified soul. . . . And as the skill in him who has acquired it, so is the grace of the Spirit ever present in the recipient, though not continuously active (ἐνεργοῦσα). For as the skill is potentially in the artisan, but only in operation when he is working in accordance with it, so also the Spirit is present with those who are worthy, but works (ἐνεργεῖ) as need requires, in prophecies, or in healings, or in some other carrying into effect (ἐνεργήμασιν) of His powers.”
Although every blade of grass is held together by God’s power or energy,1 humans participate in His energies uniquely, because we were made in His very image and likeness. We have direct communion and relationship with Him as His very sons and daughters. Through prayer and the sacraments, we can have a profound and energizing encounter with the Lord of Glory!
St. John Damascene writes,
“Wherefore, in all fear and with a pure conscience and undoubting faith let us approach . . . let us receive the body of the Crucified One. With eyes, lips, and faces turned toward it, let us receive the divine burning coal (i.e. the Eucharist; reference to Isaiah 6), so that the fire of the coal may be added to the desire within us to consume our sins and enlighten our hearts, and so that by this communion of the divine fire we may be set afire and deified.” (On the Orthodox Faith)
For St. John Damascene, the Eucharist is the fruit of immortality which fills us with divine energy. This is why another John (St. John Chrysostom) stated that we return from the altar as fire-breathing lions looking terrible to the demons!
Tolkien & The Two Trees
J.R.R. Tolkien also uses similar language and imagery throughout his fictional Middle Earth. Many of his characters throughout The Lord of Rings experience a strengthening through Divine intervention. In certain scenes, he is explicit that some of them are being ‘energized’ by the primordial light of Middle Earth. In Chapter 13 of The Silmarillion, he speaks of Feanor and his sons still retaining some of this light within their souls which makes them swift and terrible to their darkened enemies. He writes,
"for the light of Aman was not yet dimmed in their eyes, and they were strong and swift, deadly in anger, and their swords were long and terrible. The Orcs fled before them, and they were driven forth from Mithrim with great slaughter, and hunted over the Mountains of Shadow into the great plain of Ard-galen, that lay northward of Dorthonion."
Just like Lewis and the Fathers, Tolkien views God’s power and energy as permeating all of creation! His uncreated Light still makes its way to us and rejuvenates us just as it did with Ransom as he passed through ‘the heavens’ in Out of the Silent Planet.2
As we conclude, let us remember that we can do nothing apart from Christ. He is the true source of our life joy, happiness, peace, and strength!
“I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5).
St. John Damascene also sees God’s divine energy as permeating throughout Creation. He writes, (pg. 128 in Bradshaw)
“The divine irradiation and energy is one, simply, and undivided, beneficently diversified in divisible things, dispensing to all of them the components of their proper nature while remaining simple… Toward it all things tend, and in it they have their existence, and to all things it communicates their being in accordance with the nature of each. It is the being of things that are, the life of the living, the reason of the rational, and intellectual act of those possessing intelligence.” (On the Orthodox Faith, 14).
Ransom begins his journey by being bathed in the mystical light of God through the Heavens which energizes and renews him.
“almost he felt, wholly he imagined, ‘sweet influence’ pouring or even stabbing into his surrendered body… There, totally immersed in a bath of pure ethereal colour and of unrelenting though unwounding brightness, stretched his full length and with eyes half closed in the strange chariot that bore them, faintly quivering, through depth after depth of tranquillity far above the reach of night, he felt his body and mind daily rubbed and scoured and filled with new vitality… But Ransom, as time wore on, became aware of another and more spiritual cause for his progressive lightening and exultation of heart… now that the very name ‘Space’ seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam. He could not call it ‘dead’; he felt life pouring into him from it every moment. How indeed should it be otherwise, since out of this ocean the worlds and all their life had come? He had thought it barren: he saw now that it was the womb of worlds.”
(This is baptismal language… the font is the womb of heaven where we experience a second birth).