"The Chinese... speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the Tao. It is the reality beyond
all predicates, the abyss that was before the Creator Himself. It is Nature, it is the Way, the Road... It is
also the Way which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming
all activities to that great exemplar. 'In ritual,' say the Analects, 'it is harmony with Nature that is prized.'
The ancient Jews likewise praise the Law as being 'true' (Psalm 119:151)... This conception in all its forms,
Platonic, Aristotelean, Christian, and Oriental alike, I shall henceforth refer to for brevity simply
as 'the Tao'... It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and
others are really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are... This thing which
I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law, or Traditional Morality,
or the First Principles of Practical Reason, or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems
of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value
is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory.
... What purport to be new systems, or (as they now call them) 'ideologies,' all consist
of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then
swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they possess.
If my duty to my parents is a superstition, then so is my duty to posterity. If justice is a superstition, then so is
my duty to my country or my race. If the pursuit of scientific knowledge is a real value, then so is conjugal fidelity.
The rebellion of new ideologies against the Tao is a rebellion of the branches against the tree: if the
rebels could succeed, they would find that they destroyed themselves. The human mind has no more power of inventing
a new value than of imagining a new primary color, or, indeed, of creating a new sun and a new sky for it to move
in."from MIRACLES
"Heaven can mean (1) The unconditioned Divine Life beyond all worlds. (2) Blessed participation in that Life
by a created spirit. (3) The Whole Nature or system of conditions in which redeemed human spirits, still remaining
human, can enjoy such participation fully and forever. This is the Heaven Christ goes to 'prepare' for us. (4) The
physical Heaven, the sky, the space in which Earth moves... We are not to suppose that the writers of the New
Testament mistook Heaven in sense four or three for Heaven in sense two or one... In their idea of Heaven all
these meanings were latent, ready to be brought out by later analysis. They never thought merely of the blue
sky or merely of a 'spiritual' heaven. When they looked up at the blue sky, they never doubted that He was
'ascending' in what we should call a 'spiritual' sense."from GOD IN THE DOCK
"What are we to make of Jesus Christ?... On the one hand you have got the almost generally admitted depth and sanity
of His moral teaching, which is not very seriously questioned, even by those who are opposed to Christianity... The
other phenomenon is the quite appalling nature of this Man's theological remarks... On the one side clear, definite
moral teaching. On the other, claims which, if not true, are those of a megalomaniac, compared with whom Hitler
was the most sane and humble of men. There is no halfway house and there is no parallel in other religions. If you
had gone to Buddha and asked him, 'Are you the son of Brahma?' he would have said, 'My son, you are still in the
vale of illusion.' If you had gone to Socrates and asked, 'Are you Zeus?' he would have laughed at you. If you had
gone to Mohammed and asked, 'Are you Allah?' he would first have rent his clothes and then cut your head off. If
you had asked Confucius, 'Are you Heaven?' I think he would have probably replied, 'Remarks which are not in
accordance with nature are in bad taste.' The idea of a great moral teacher saying what Christ said is out of the
question. In my opinion, the only person who can say that sort of thing is either God or a complete lunatic suffering
from that form of delusion which undermines the whole mind of man... We may note in passing that He was never regarded
as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met Him. He produced mainly
three effects--Hatred--Terror--Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval."
"The wrong asceticism torments the self: the right kind kills the selfness. We must die daily: but it is better
to love the self than to love nothing, and to pity the self than to pity no one."from THE PROBLEM OF PAIN
"Scripture and tradition habitually put the joys of Heaven into the scale against the sufferings of earth,
and no solution of the problem of pain which does not do so can be called a Christian one. We are very shy
nowadays of even mentioning Heaven. We are afraid of the jeer about 'pie in the sky,' and of being told
that we are trying to 'escape' from the duty of making a happy world here and now into dreams of a happy
world elsewhere. But either there is a 'pie in the sky' or there is not. If there is not, then Christianity
is false, for this doctrine is woven into its whole fabric. If there is, then this truth, like any other,
must be faced, whether it is useful at political meetings or no. Again, we are afraid that Heaven is a bribe,
and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that
the mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure
in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man's love for a woman is not mercenary because
he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise
less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object."
"According to the [doctrine of the Fall], man is now a horror to God and to himself and a creature ill-adapted
to the universe not because God made him so but because he has made himself so by the use of his free will.
To my mind this is the sole function of the doctrine. It exists to guard against two sub-Christian theories of
the origin of evil--Monism, according to which God Himself, being 'above good and evil,' produces impartially
the effects to which we give those two names, and Dualism, according to which God produces good, while some equal
and independent Power produces evil."
"No doubt Pain as God's megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But
it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. It removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth
within the fortress of a rebel soul."
"Joy is the serious business of heaven."from MERE CHRISTIANITY
"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea
of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What
was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from
A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction
against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not
feel wet. Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea
of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying
that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very
act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless--I found
I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently
atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that
it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we
should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning."
"Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But the map is based on the experience of hundreds of
people who really were in touch with God--experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings
you or I are likely to get on our own way are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want
to get any further, you must use the map... [This] is just why a vague religion--all about feeling God
in nature, and so on--is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching the waves from the
beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life
by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps
without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map."
"If you do not listen to Theology, that will mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you
have a lot of wrong ones--bad, muddled, out-of-date ideas. For a great many of the ideas about God which are
trotted out as novelties today, are simply the ones which real Theologians tried centuries ago and rejected.
To believe in the popular religion of modern England is retrogression--like believing the earth is flat."
"Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that...
The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple
principles which we are all so anxious not to see."
"People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, 'If you keep a lot of rules,
I'll reward you, and if you don't I'll do the other thing.' I do not think that is the best way of looking at it.
I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you
that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your
innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a Heaven creature or into
a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself,
or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself.
To be the one kind of creature is Heaven: that is, it is joy, and peace, and knowledge, and power. To be the other
means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to
the one state or the other."
"What God begets is God; just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God; just as what man makes is
not man. That is why men are not Sons of God in the sense that Christ is. They may be like God in certain ways,
but they are not things of the same kind. They are more like statues or pictures of God."
"Faith... is the art of holding onto things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods
will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian, I do have moods
in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist, I had moods in which Christianity looked
terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is
such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods 'where they get off,' you can never be either a sound Christian
or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather
and the state of its digestion."
"... As St. Paul points out, Christ never meant that we were to remain children in intelligence: on the contrary,
He told us to be not only 'as harmless as doves' but also 'as wise as serpents.' He wants a child's heart, but a
grown-up's head."
"The Bible seems to clinch the matter [of faith and good works] when it puts the two things together in one amazing
sentence. The first half is 'work out your own salvation with fear and trembling'--which looks as if everything depended
on us and our good actions: but the second half goes on. 'For it is God who worketh in you'--which looks as if God
did everything and we nothing. I am afraid this is the sort of thing we come up against in Christianity. I am
puzzled, but I am not surprised. You see, we are now trying to understand, and to separate into watertight compartments,
what exactly God does and what man does when God and man are working together. And, of course, we begin by thinking
it is like two men working together, so that you could say, 'He did this bit and I did that.' But this way of
thinking breaks down. God is not like that. He is inside as well as outside: even if we could understand who did what,
I do not think human language could properly express it. In the attempt to express it, different Churches say
different things. But you will find that even those who insist most strongly on the importance of good actions
tell you that you need Faith; and even those who insist most strongly on Faith. tell you to do good actions. At
any rate that is as far as I go."
"The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self--all your wishes and
precautions--to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying
to do is to remain what we call 'ourselves,' to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the
same time be 'good.' We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their way--centered on money or pleasure or
ambition--and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ
warned us you could not do."
"If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed."from LETTERS TO MALCOLM
"I do not know and can't imagine what the disciples understood Our Lord to mean when, His body still unbroken and
His blood unshed, He handed them the bread and wine, saying they were His body and blood...
The command, after all, was Take, eat: not Take, understand. Particularly, I hope I need not be tormented by the
question 'What is this?'--this wafer, this sip of wine. That has a dreadful effect on me. It invites me to take 'this'
out of its holy context and regard it as an object among objects, indeed as part of nature. It is like taking a red
coal out of the fire to examine it: it becomes a dead coal."
"There is clearly a theological defense for [devotions to saints]; if you can ask for the prayers for the living,
why should you not ask for the prayers for the dead? There is clearly also a great danger. In some popular practice
we see it leading off into an infinitely silly picture of Heaven as an earthly court where applicants will be wise
to pull the right wires, discover the best 'channels,' and attach themselves to the most influential pressure groups...
The consoling thing is that while Christendom is divided about the rationality, and even the lawfulness, of praying
to the saints, we are all agreed about praying with them."
"Our souls demand Purgatory, don't they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, 'it is true, my son,
that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid
you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the joy'?... I assume that the process of purification
will normally involve suffering. Partly from tradition; partly because most real good that has been done me in this
life has involved it. But I don't think suffering is the purpose of the purgation. I can well believe that people
neither much worse nor much better than I will suffer less than I or more. The treatment given will be the one
required, whether it hurts little or much... My favorite image on this matter comes from the dentist's chair. I hope
that when the tooth of life is drawn and I am 'coming round,' a voice will say, 'Rinse your mouth out with this.'
This will be a Purgatory."
"I suggest two rules for exegetics. (1) Never take the images literally. (2) When the purport of the images--what
they say to our fear, and hope, and will, and affections--seems to conflict with the theological abstractions, trust
the purport of the images every time. For our abstract thinking is itself a tissue of analogies: a continual modeling
of spiritual reality in legal, or chemical, or mechanical terms. Are these likely to be more adequate than the sensuous,
organic, and personal images of Scripture--light and darkness, river and well, seed and harvest, master and servant,
hen and chickens, father and child?"