"The trouble with argument is that it moves the whole struggle onto the enemy's ground." This is a passage taken from C.S. Lewis' "The Screwtape Letters." In light of this, Wormwood ought not to awaken the person's reasoning. This makes sense to an extent. Certainly, ignorance of God is worse than one wrestling with who God is. Ignorance leads to damnation while wrestling with God leads to eternal life, just as Jacob wrestled with God and had his questions answered. On the other hand, human reasoning can be dangerous in a way. Many times when humans try to reason too much, they are in disobedience against God, because they begin to think they know better than God. Does not St. Paul say that, "It was not by man's reason that he came to know God, but it was by God's wisdom that man came to know Him."? Certainly, human reasoning must have its limits.
posted by Tim W. at 7:51 PM
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C.S. Lewis also has something to say on the subject in "The Great Divorce"! How exciting! I am on pages 84 & 85, and this is the conversation in chapter 9 between the ghost of a great artist and a spirit:
"No. You're forgetting," said the Spirit. "That was not how you began. Light itself was your first love: you loved paint only as a means of telling about light."
"Oh, that's ages ago," said the Ghost. "One grows our of that. Of course, you haven't seen my later works. One becomes more and more interesting in paint for its own sake."
"One does, indeed. I also have had to recover from that. It was all a snare. Ink and catgut and paint were necessary down there, but they are also dangerous stimulants. Every poet and musician and artist, buf for Grace, is drawn away form love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interesting in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn't stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower--become interesting in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations."
and again later on page 41:
"Once you were a child. Once you knew what inquiry was for. There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answeres and were glad when you found them. Become a child again: Even now."
It seems that there are two harmful extremes in our quest for knowlege of God (as you point out Tim, there must be some balance). On one hand, pure and intentional ignorance and on the other, being more concerned with the study of God and OUR opinions of Him. As if life wasn't already complicated, it seems theologians and pastors still need to keep themselves in check after all :)
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