C. S. Lewis' Critique of Naturalism in That Hideous Strength

C. S. Lewis was a prolific and versatile author who wrote popular theology, literary criticism, and children's books, as well as science fiction. As a young man he was a professed atheist, but was challenged in his non-belief by reading George MacDonald's Phantastes, G. K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man, and the philosophy of Henri Bergson. Lewis became interested in Christianity through his association with J. R. R. Tolkien and his own study of St. Augustine, The Imitation of Christ, and Luther's TheologicaGermanica. Later he was profoundly influenced by Aquinas' Summa and came to admire the works of Buber, Marcel, Maritain, and Berdyaev, along with Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy. Though he was a committed rationalist he believed that the highest theological truths could only be understood imaginatively, not rationally. And so he exploited literature's capacity to accomplish that undertaking. Because Lewis became convinced of the philosophically untenable nature of atheism and was sickened by the direction of modernity he attempted to provide an alternative vision through his imaginative literature. This effort is nowhere more evident than in That Hideous Strength, a visionary, apocalyptic novel, written during World War II. It is perhaps Lewis' most forceful attack on the abuses of modernism and the philosophical bulwark of naturalism that sustains it. This doctrine holds, in Lewis' view, "that only nature--the whole interlocked system--exists, and it is the operative underlying belief of the evil forces centered 1n Belbury, hell bent on the perversion of Nature. Only the small band of Christians clustered at St. Anne's can stop them. That confrontation constitutes the structural drama of the work. Lewis held that good literature must perform as a spiritual aid or tool for saying what needed to be said, and that it should always be committed to the pursuit of moral truth. For him imaginative writings serve not only as a creative outlet but also bring home to the reader inner truths in a much more forceful way than can either philosophical or historical forms. Today That Hideous Strength can still be enjoyed and contemplated for its revelations about the nature of man and the inexplicable ways in which the powers of good and evil work through him. The kind of characters who inhabit Belbury, their intentions, and the dramatic situations which arise all serve to underscore the meaning of naturalism and the implications of its long-term use.Englis