By Michael Cassidy, reprinted from Out of Africa with permission

When I was at the Oxbridge conference in England in 1988, CS Lewis' book The Abolition of Man, was referred to, especially the chapter called "Men without Chests". I felt in the dark, not having read it. This I have now done.

Who are "the men without chests"? Theologian James Packer shed light on this, noting Plato's notion that there is the mind, "which is direct, and there is the belly which is the seat of all strong desires. And between the mind which is located at the head, and the belly, there comes the chest. And the chest is the seat of what Plato saw as the spirit or heart, understood as character or formed character. This character has learned from the mind habitually to direct the individual along that path rather than letting desire, located in the belly, lead the whole person astray."

Going on, Packer noted that Lewis was accusing contemprary culture, by its subjectivism and its refusal to acknowledge that there are any universal values which ought to be taught to children from their youth up, of abolishing the chest and producing human beings without chests, people who have a mind which is adrift, operating alongside a whole range of unbridled and uncontrolled desires.

"And so." says Lewis, "if you have lost...those values and morals common to all religions and seen in the absolute standards which Christians have seen as given to the world in General (or Natural) Revelation according to the teaching of the first two chapters of Romans, and if you lose the chest (e.g., in the attempt to form the character of the young with out the absolutes). you lost the whole heritage of developed wisdom. You become a cultural castaway and you end up lost in the cosmos, with your life becoming a matter of merely 'existing', but hardly deserving the name of living. You don't know where you are going, your life doesn't make sense and you are in very truth lost, which is tragic. And you need someone who by the grace of God will bring you the light of the Gospel or you will never find yourself at all."

In effect, we should all ask of any who teach us or our children, whether in school, university or church, "Have they got chests?" In reality, of course, we do find ourselves with political leaders without chests, school teachers without chests (teaching no values to their pupils, yet being shocked by their shameless, amoral behaviour), academics without chests, or even pastors without chests. In this latter regard, the villain of the piece for Lewis is what he calls the "thoroughly modern, liberal-minded clergyman" who spends life relativising morals and truth and denying the Gospel. The origins, says Lewis shatteringly, of these teachers without chests, lie sadly in many of our modern theological colleges. Lewis deplores theological institutions which are not true to the Gospel and he lays much responsibility for moral relativism and breakdown at their door.

As to the natural order of things, Lewis would find coming from that order such notions as basic justice, truthfulness, kind-heartedness, mercy, magnanimity, respect for parents and elders, the wrongness of murder, stealing or lying, the necessity of looking after widows and orphans, the unacceptability of incest and the obligation or "first principles of natural reason", Lewis sees not as one among a series of possible systems of values, but as the sole source of all the value judgements.

In the Old Testament, this Law, this moral code written into the fabric of reality, is written down in the Ten Commandments. For the New Testament, "the Way" (Acts 16:17; 18:26; 2 Peter 2:15; 2 Peter 2:21), as personalised in Jesus is not only the Way to salvation but the Way for everything - for living, loving, behaving and doing. To follow "the Way" is to live out and cooperate with the moral law written into the fabric of the universe by Jesus Himself, "without whom was not anything made that was made" (John 1:3). For Paul in Romans 2:15a, it is seen in what he calls "the law written on their hearts" and to which our "conscience" bears "witness" (2:15b). And it is this, of course, along with God's testimony to Himself in the created order ("the things that are made"). Which leaves us "without excuse" (Romans 1:20) before the just demands or even judgements of a Holy God. And being "without excuse" and guilty before God, we now have to face something awesome, says Lewis - namely, that without even opening our bibles we are aware of two realities: "First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not, in fact, behave in that way. They know that Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in."

And so we have to say that there is such a thing as a moral code written into the fabric of the universe and into our hearts (chests) and into nature by God Himself. And we find it to be so that there is such a thing as right and wrong. And we find it to be so that this moral law is known and discerned in Natural (or General) Revalation. Hence, incidentally, Paul's condemnation in Romans 2 of homosexual sin as being "against Nature", i.e., against the constituted natural order of things as established by our Creator in the handiwork of creation.

That is why, with all of that being true, "we have cause to be uneasy" because faced with this Law of God, and with Absolute Goodness, and its demands, we see we have "all sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom/ 3:23). That's why we are in "a terrible fix". And that's how we become ready for the Gospel.

Of course, once we understand that we are in "a terrible fix", Christianity begins to speak. And it tells us the Good News that this "Law is our tutor to bring us to Christ that we might be justified by faith" (Gal. 3:24). It tells us in short that we are sinners in need of a Saviour. Knowing all that, we are now ready to hear about Jesus and the Cross, and forgiveness and eternal life and heaven for all who believe. And as we respond and follow, there is also the prospect of built-up chests for all of us!

Talk about Amazing Grace!

Michael Cassidy
24 March 2002