Lewis said that before he was six years old, he was “a votary of the Blue Flower”. The Blue Flower symbolized a life-long longing, “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction”. Lewis used this idea in Mere Christianity to build The Argument From Desire, which Joe Heshmeyer discusses on today’s show as part of “Apologetics Month”.
S5E42: “The Argument From Desire” – After Hours with Joe Heschmeyer (Download)
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Show Notes
Introduction
Quote-of-the-week
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 10)
Biographical Information
Joseph Heschmeyer is a blogger at ShamelessPopery.com.
I first met Joe in person in 2011, while he was a practicing attorney in Washington DC, after reading his blog for several years.
Following that, he spent some time as a Seminarian in Rome, and later worked as an instructor at Holy Family School of Faith in Kansas City. He is now an author and a staff apologist for Catholic Answers.
Biographical Information for Joe Heschmeyer
Chit-Chat
David and Joe have been friends for a long time:
Beverage and Toast
- David was drinking coke
- Joe was drinking a diet coke
Discussion
1. “Background”
- Please tell the listener a bit more about yourself.
2. “The Argument”
- Would you please outline the Argument From Desire?
“It is impossible for natural desire to be empty, for nature does nothing in vain. Now, a natural desire would be in vain if it could never be fulfilled. Therefore, man’s natural desire [for a final happiness proper to his nature] is capable of fulfillment. But not in this life, as was shown. Therefore it is necessary that it be fulfilled after this life. Therefore, man’s ultimate felicity is after this life.”
Summa Contra Gentiles III.48.
The Christian says, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage.
I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
3. “Alternative formulations”
- I’ve seen this argument put forward different ways. What do you think is the best way?
P1. Every natural innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire.
P2. But there exists in us a desire that nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can satisfy.
C. Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth and creatures, which can satisfy this desire.
Peter Kreeft’s Argument from Desire
4. “Have we just not found it yet?”
- Is it just that we haven’t yet found the thing on earth which will make us happy?
5. “Better psychotherapy?”
- Do we just need to be better adjusted? Can this just be solved with psychotherapy?
6. “A theistic trick?”
- Are theists just baking in the assumption of God?
7. “I don’t have that desire!”
- What do you do when someone claims that they don’t have this desire we’re talking about?
8. “A desire for time-travel?”
- Trent Horn has told me that we have a desire for time-travel, but that’s not possible. Is that a defeater?
9. “The Transcendentals”
- How do the transcendentals relate to The Argument From Desire?
We have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the immortality of Man. It is at once a consequence and an indication of his perennial existence. It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us, but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of Time, to attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain to eternity alone.
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Poetic Principle”
10. “Catholic Answers for Lewis?”
- Since it’s Apologetics Month and we’re currently sitting in the Catholic Answers studio, before we wrap up, we should Lewis was uncomfortable with Marian devotion and the authority of the Pope, particularly the idea that one has to sign on to, not only what the Church teaches today, but also in the future. Lewis friend (and non-Catholic) George Sayer, wrote in his biography:
I remember Dr. Havard saying, “Jack, most of your friends seem to be Catholic. Why don’t you join us? Aren’t you tempted?”
George Sayer, “Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis”
Lewis replied that the important thing was to make one’s submission to a Christian church. Which branch of the Christian church one chose was far less important. And he said he was not tempted to share what he called “your heresies.”
“Heresies! What heresies, Jack?”
“Well, here are two — the position you give to the Virgin Mary and the doctrine of papal infallibility.” But he refused to discuss them. (pp. 421-422)
Lewis himself writes:
…the real reason why I cannot be in communion with you is not my disagreement with this or that Roman doctrine, but that to accept your Church means, not to accept a given body of doctrine, but to accept in advance any doctrine your Church hereafter produces. It is like being asked to agree not only to what a man has said but to what he’s going to say… To us the terrible thing about Rome is the recklessness (as we hold) with which she has added to the depositum fidei… You see in Protestantism the Faith dying out in a desert: we see in Rome the Faith smothered in a jungle.
C.S. Lewis, Christian Reunion
I know no way of bridging this gulf.
If there were an ancient Platonic Society still existing at Athens and claiming to be the exclusive trustees of P’s meaning, I shd. approach them with great respect. But if I found that their teaching in many ways was curiously unlike his actual text and unlike what ancient interpreters said, and in some cases cd. not be traced back to within 1000 years of his time, I shd. reject these exclusive claims: while still ready, of course, to take any particular thing they taught on its merits.
C.S. Lewis to H. Lyman Stebbins (May 8th, 1945)
More Information
- Shameless Popery
- Pope Peter
- The Early Church was the Catholic Church
- Who am I, Lord? Finding your identity in Christ
- Catholic Answers
