Tool Alpha
C. S. Lewis’s Cosmology
Where Lewis’s heavens follow Scripture, where they come from the medieval picture of the cosmos, and where he made them up.
Enemy-occupied territory
Lewis's plainest statement of the cosmic war: not two equal powers, but a civil war, a rebellion, and a world held by the rebel.
1 John 5:19, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: is the world a battlefield between equal good and evil, or something else? Resistance radio in an occupied country. The rightful king has landed in disguise and is calling people to sabotage. That is how Lewis described Christianity to a wartime audience on the BBC.
Lewis sets Christianity against Dualism, the belief in two equal and independent powers. Christianity agrees the universe is at war but holds it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we live in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel. He calls this world enemy-occupied territory, and Christianity the story of how the rightful king has landed in disguise.
1 John 5:19 says the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. In Luke 4 the devil offers Jesus the kingdoms of the world and says their authority has been handed over to him. John 12:31 calls him the ruler of this world, about to be driven out.
Straight from the New Testament. The wartime metaphor is Lewis's, written for broadcast during the Second World War.
Little here departs from Scripture. The image is Lewis's; the claim is the New Testament's.
Not Manichaeism. Lewis's whole point is that the rebel was created good by God and went wrong.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/divine-council-index\/daniel-10-13-20-21\/","n":"Daniel 10:13, 20-21","s":"A prince of Persia resists for twenty-one days, a prince of Greece is coming, and Michael fights for Israel.","r":"Daniel 10:13, 20-21"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/divine-council-index\/ephesians-6-10-12\/","n":"Ephesians 6:10-12","s":"The struggle is not against flesh and blood but against rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers.","r":"Ephesians 6:10-12"}
- Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952), Book 2, ch. 2
