Joe Rigney: C.S. Lewis’ prophetic masterpiece

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, December 10th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. C.S. Lewis wrote:

“There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there’s never more than one.”

That comes from the 1945 novel “That Hideous Strength.”

Lewis is known as a Christian apologist, literary scholar, and creator of Narnia. But WORLD Opinions contributor Joe Rigney says he was also a timely prophet of the modern age.

JOE RIGNEY: Imagine a dystopian novel in the vein of 1984 and Brave New World, but one that is more prophetic than both. It’s a modern fairy tale for grown-ups. One that weaves together the core arguments of many of Lewis’ most profound books and essays…including: The Abolition of Man, “The Poison of Subjectivism,” “The Inner Ring,” “Membership,” and “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment”—all of which could be read as an appetizer for the main course.

The novel’s relevance is nowhere more apparent than when it speaks to issues of sexuality. On the one hand, we see the dehumanizing grossness of gender ideology and insanity. From the Italian Filostrato—who finds intimacy disgusting and desires instead to sterilize humanity to make it more manageable—to Fairy Hardcastle, the sadistic and grotesque head of Belbury’s institutional police. The novel also alludes to a cold and barren society that uses realistic pleasure robots as substitutes for marital relations and uses technology to fabricate children in secret places.

The male protagonist of the novel is consumed with the lust for influence and acceptance by the Inner Ring. He has a deep fear of being ostracized by the Progressive Element so that he eventually becomes an emasculated and pathetic stooge in Belbury’s plots. The female protagonist considers herself to be an up-to-date and modern feminist…one who refuses submission in marriage and deeply fears being invaded by children. That is until she comes face to face with true masculinity of both the earthly and the heavenly kind and is forced to choose to bow up or yield.

From the opening word, the novel is fundamentally about marriage and the centrality of childbearing. In the final scene, the leader of the resistance tells the female protagonist: “You’ll have no more dreams. Have children instead.”

But the mundane troubles of a young married couple are embedded in a cosmic war between the bureaucratic tyranny of the scientistic conditioners and the humane and Christian resistance at St. Anne’s. The National Institute for Coordinated Experiments—or N.I.C.E.—is a prophetic depiction of the Total State, complete with bureaucratic ambiguity and doublespeak that renders all accountability impossible. No one is ever to blame for anything, and yet anyone can be scapegoated at any time. Belbury is committed to “the liquidation of anachronisms,” the destruction of traditional ways of life because of its lack of efficiency.

All of this is managed through propaganda directed at the educated middle class. As one character puts it, “[I]t’s the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? … The educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. … They’ll believe anything.” This includes the so-called “humanitarian theory of punishment” that substitutes “rehabilitation” and “reeducation” for just retribution, thereby enabling the state to experiment on criminals with impunity.

But lurking behind the governmental and industrial powerful are the Macrobes… dark and demonic forces seeking the domination and destruction of humanity. Opposed to them is a motley assortment of Christians and one reality-respecting atheist. Their leader is a crippled academic who has traveled to Mars and Venus and conversed with the angelic Intelligences in Deep Heaven. Together they resist That Hideous Strength.

In short, the novel is timely for a world in which everything is narrowing and coming to a point—good getting better and bad getting worse, and the possibilities of even apparent neutrality always diminishing. In the words of C.S. Lewis: “The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder. … ‘Life’s business being just the terrible choice.’”

And so, this holiday season, the choice is before you. Take up and read…and learn.

I’m Joe Rigney.

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