C.S. Lewis and Religion
Step 3- Numinous Awe and Morality collide
Finally, we have come to the third step that Lewis believes every religion experiences at its foundation. We would do well to note that this is the final step according to his calculations that every religion experience, and the fourth step is saved for Christianity alone. To recap, the first step was the innate sense of awe towards a numinous (supernatural) reality that is different and alien to human. The second step was the observation that every people set for themselves a moral standard in which everyone under the standard fail at some point producing guilt. Now, we come to the start of a religion: the collision of steps one and two.
Religion, the worship of a deity, begins at this third step when a people connect their moral standard to the numinous awe they feel innately. Now, the people become accountable for the guilt they feel, not to themselves or their culture, but to the Numinous. All of a sudden, the law is not simply law but is owned and/or given by someone which leads toward accountability.
Now, this connection may seem natural to us because we understand this concept and have since birth. In Islam, Allah judges. In Judaism, Jehovah judges. In Animism, the spirits judge and torment. In ‘New Age’ beliefs, the universe judges by progressing or setting back our re-incarnations. We have always been taught this, but at the beginning the jump to connect the dread of the Numinous to the moral law is not “natural.” Remember, in step one of our thinking, the numinous awe does not give a comfortable feeling. It’s one of dread. Think if you were outside in the woods on a dark, cloudy night and heard the leaves shaking and woodsticks crackling; would you want your soul accountable to the feeling you got from that presence? That’s why this is a jump, that’s why it’s crazy to feel this way! It’s not natural by any sense of the imagination.
Interestingly enough, this also explains why every religion attempts to appease, or satisfy, or live up to their deity. There is always a sense of guilt left by their moral standard. There is always a sense of dread left from their sense of the Numinous. Thus, they must appease, satisfy, or work to please their deity.
Well, there you have it, C.S. Lewis’ observation of the beginning of every religion modern or in antiquity. But Wait! There is one religion with a fourth aspect, a fourth step that goes beyond where all other religions stop. In a sense, all these steps can be deduced from experience; sometimes there are jumps, but they can be deduced from the nature of man. However, this fourth step, the step that doesn’t call you and doesn’t plead with you BUT DEMANDS you pay attention to this religion is revelation…. of a person.
