Interview with Michael Ward, Part 1

June 10, 2008 Posted by Roger Overton

Go here for the introduction to this interview.

There's been a lot of chatter on the internet discussing your book, Planet
Narnia. Almost every conversant seems to fall into one of two camps: those
who have not read the book and think your idea is preposterous, and those who
have read it and at least agree with most of your thesis. As you've traveled
throughout the and U.K for most of this year, how has reception been among people you've met?

I'm delighted to say that the reception has been
overwhelmingly positive. Of course, there will be a rew nay-sayers;
that's to be expected with such a large claim as the one I'm making. And
usually the scepticism comes from people who haven't read the book, or who
haven't read it in full. But the vast majority of people, including
established Lewis scholars such as Alan Jacobs, Wayne Martindale, Walter
Hooper, Andrew Cuneo, Christopher Mitchell, Sarah Arthur, and many others
besides, believe that there is a genuine literary secret here that has finally
been unearthed. To see what they are saying about the book, please take a
look at: http://www.planetnarnia.com/planet-narnia/reviews

In Planet Narnia, you discuss how following the Copernican revolution
astrology and astronomy became separated. It appears that a naturalistic
worldview dismissed the “non-scientific” understanding of the
planets. You also note that “even where astrology is explicit in Lewis's
work, it has received surprisingly little attention” (245) from Lewis
scholars. Do you think this quick dismissal or avoidance of astrology among
Christians today is related to the naturalism or materialism promoted by
science?

I think that's one of the reasons, yes. Christians who
are too anxious to achieve scientific 'respectability' have bought into the
naturalistic paradigm, – the idea that nature is just so much raw material to
be chopped up and studied without reference to its connection with us, its
fellow creatures, or its Creator. Three other reasons spring to mind.

1. An unbalanced notion of human 'dominion' over
nature, – where dominion is mistakenly glossed as 'domination'

2. An excessive focus upon the distinction between
'nature' and 'grace'. Lewis criticised this in Karl Barth. Lewis
preferred Richard Hooker's line of thinking, in which 'nature hath need of
grace' but, also, 'grace hath use of nature'. In an incarnational
religion, such as Christianity, one can't draw a hard and fast line between
matter and spirit. Christ has honoured human nature by taking it upon
himself, and by being resurrected in bodily form.

3. An unbalanced reading of scripture, focusing only
upon the condemnations of astrology, and not recalling that there is a much
more positive view of star-lore in the Bible as well: e.g. Judges 5:20, Job
38:31, Psalm 19:1-3; Matthew 2:1-10; 24:29, etc.

You say of C.S. Lewis that, “He was not prepared to write off a view
of the cosmos, as his schoolmasters had written off paganism, simply because it
had been shown to be factually inadequate; ideas could be entertained for their
beauty, not just their truth.” (29) This seems to suggest that something
can be beautiful without being connected to truth. How can something false be
beautiful?

Let us distinguish two kinds of falseness. There is a
bad falseness, the falseness of a lie, but there is also a good falseness, the
'falseness' of a story. Both can be beautiful.

The former kind of falseness is dangerous because of its
beauty, its power to attract. It's because temptations to sin can be
attractive that they are hard to resist. The devil can appear 'as an
angel of light'. Lewis pointed out how the idea of 'the beautiful but
evil fay' has all but disappeared from the modern imagination, which is one of
the reasons why the beauty of Jadis in 'The Magician's Nephew' is so
emphasized. She is evil, merciless, false, but she is beautiful.

But there is a second kind of falseness, which is better
called not falseness, but fiction or metaphorical thinking. When Jesus
told parables he was not relating historical events; rather, he was using his
imagination (his power of thinking metaphorically) in a good way. We
don't need to believe that he had a particular fatted calf in mind when he told
the story of the prodigal son. Parables, though 'false' as histories of
particular events, are still true and good and – yes, beautiful – as stories.

It's in this sense that Lewis approached scientific models
of the cosmos. Models of the cosmos are products of the human
imagination. (Imagination, Lewis thought, was essential to rational
thought.) They come and they go. Once upon a time people believed
in the Ptolemaic story of cosmological arrangements. Then they believed
in the Newtonian story. Then in the Einsteinian. None of these
models is the sum total of truth about the universe. Each gets in a
certain number of facts and leaves out others. In that sense, none is
fully true, but each is useful (some much more useful than others), and all
possess degrees of beauty. Lewis thought the Ptolemaic model especially
beautiful because of its orderliness, its comprehensiveness, its perfectly
graded hierarchy in which great and small are equally at home. For more
on why he thought this, read his book, 'The Discarded Image'.

Lewis said that, “the characters of the planets, as conceived by
medieval astrology, seem to me to have a permanent value as spiritual
symbols—to provide a Phanomenologie de Geistes which is specially worth
while in our own generation.” Is that medieval phenomenology still
relevant for today's postmodern generations?

It's important to quote the next sentence. Having said
that the planets are especially worth while in his own generation, Lewis goes
on to say: 'Of Saturn we know more than enough, but who does not need to be
reminded of Jove?' He says this because he thought his own generation had
been 'born under Saturn' (so to speak). Saturn was the planet of calamity
and death and disaster. Lewis thought that his own generation had been
born under Saturn because his own generation was that generation which was
doomed to grow up (and in many cases, not grow up) during the First World War.
Lewis had been a teenage officer in that conflict and was severely
wounded in the Battle of Arras in 1918. He described much of the poetry
of the 1920s and 1930s as 'Saturnocentric', – fixated upon Saturn and
associated pessimism, cynicism, and despair. That was a natural and
understandable response to the tragedy which was the Great War, but Lewis
thought that the Saturnine shadow cast over his own generation was a historical
accident and not an eternal truth about the universe. He thought that
Jupiter (Jove) was a much better representation of the heart of spiritual
reality, because Jovial qualities (kingliness, magnanimity, sacrifice,
festivity) were a good way of symbolising the Christian God.

In today's postmodern generation, we have not the same cause
for being Saturnocentric, though there is still plenty of cynicism and despair
around. Perhaps our current generation is more likely to be fixated with
Venus (sexuality) or with Luna (doubt), than Saturn.

Whichever planet currently 'dominates', Jupiter remains a
valuable summary of spiritual qualities, – qualities which are eternally
relevant, Lewis would argue, because they convey important aspects of the
divine nature.

In Spenser's Images of Life, Lewis coined the term
“donegality.” You've adopted this term to help you describe the
planetary themes you found in the Chronicles of Narnia. For those not
familiar with the word, what does it mean, and how is it helpful for this
study?

Lewis thought that many places, like many books, had an
indefinable quality, – hard to put into words, but unmistakable. London has its peculiar 'Londonness' and Donegal (in Ireland) has
its 'Donegality'. In 'Planet Narnia' I take this word, 'donegality', and
apply it to Lewis's technique of conveying atmosphere in the seven Narnia
Chronicles. I believe that what Lewis was attempting the Chronicles was a
new thing in imaginative literature, and that 'donegality' is a helpful term
because it encapsulates this new thing. By donegality I mean to denote
the spiritual essence or quiddity of the Narnia Chronicles as intended by Lewis
and inhabited unconsciously by the reader. The donegality of a story is its
peculiar atmosphere or quality; its pervasive and purposed integral tone or
flavour; its tacit spirit, a spirit that the author consciously sought to
conjure, but which was designed to remain implicit in the matter of the text,
despite being also concentrated and consummated in a Christologically
representative character, the more influentially to inform the work and so
affect the reader.