"The Weight of Glory": C.S. Lewis' Most Pathetic Sermon. 91 ... sermon's rhetorical devices is helpful because, like New Testament rhetoric,. "rhetorical devices ... are ... others more than ourselves at all times, reminding Warnie that at this point.
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John Anthony Dunne
. creat ed by the main themes . . I of lluded to Esther because it fit the matnx aTWHF These correspondences between Esth er and TWHF m particu E arh .. d h and the commonalities between st er divine h1ddenness, reworke myt ' 'd · 'ght i'nto the h d eens-prov1 e an ms1 and Istra being beautiful, orp ans,.anh qu II . to Esther. If Lewis was . I d motivation for making t e a us10ns
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"The Weight of Glory": C. S. Lewis' Most Pathetic Sermon TOBY
F. COLEY
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n A Chorus of Witnesses: Model Sermons for Today's Preacher, Long and Plantinga recognize the "last paragraph of" Lewis' sermon "The Weight of Glory" 1 as a "classic in twentieth-century Christian literature:'2 Thirty years prior, Horton Davies accentuated Lewis as a master craftsmen when he summarized the beauties of "The Weight of Glory:' The clear distinctions, careful arguments, pellucid clarity, fertility of illustrations, pithy epigrams, the deep wisdom and insight into the will of God and the nature of man, the candidness that is piercing, the presentation of central themes and abiding issues, as well as the loyal exposition of ageless and unpopular religious and moral truth, are some of the eminent characteristics. 3
Davies lucidly directs attention to the pathetic (emotional) power of this popular sermon. It is this persistent use of pathos that empowers Lewis' sermon so richly. It was Aristotle who first explicitly codified the term pathos for rhetoric, forever defining it as the appeal to the emotions, sensibilities, and
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Lewis "hearkens back to Aristotle's concept of pathos:'7 However, James P. Beasley, in his review of Tandy's The Rhetoric of Certitude: C. S. Lewis' Nonfiction Prose,8 argues that Lewis was more familiar with "Hugh Blair on issues of taste, or even more specifically, the sermonizing of Richard Whately;'9 than ancient Greek rhetoric. Additionally, it is Lewis' copies of Quintilian, Blair Lectures on Rhetoric and Belle Lettres and I.A. Richard's The Philosophy ofRhetoric that are "underscored, annotated and corrected;' 10 not his Aristotle. Even so, Aristotle is still important here in so far as his delineation of pathos is foundational for the nineteenth-century rhetoric upon which Lewis draws for his rhetorical theory. For Anderson, the evidence demonstrates that Lewis took "rhetoric seriously as a student but even more so as a young don. His focus was not so much on classical as on medieval and even modern rhetoricians:' 11 This emphasis on the medieval period is understandable considering Lewis academic scholarship explores the same era. In Letters to Malcolm, 12 Lewis puts to rest any doubt that he was not well versed in classical rhetoric. Lewis argues that Luke's recording of Tertullos's speech (a professional rhetor) in Acts 24 was an abbreviation of classical approaches. The Jews had got down a professional orator called Tertullos to conduct the prosecution of St. Paul. The speech as recorded by St. Luke takes eighty-four words in the Greek, if I've counted correctly. Eighty-four words are impossibly short for a Greek advocate on a full-dress occasion. Presumably, then, they are a precis? But of those eighty-odd words forty are taken up with preliminary compliments to the bench-stuff which, in a precis on that tiny scale, ought not to have come in at all. It is easy to guess what has happened. St. Luke, though an excellent narrator, was no good as a reporter. He starts off
7 Anderson, "TI1e Sermons of C. S. Lewis;' 86. ' Gary L. Tandy, The Rhetoric ofCertitude: C. S. Lewis' Nonfiction Prose (Kent, OH, 2009). 9 James P. Beasley, "Gary L. Tandy's The Rhetoric of Certitude C. S. Lewiss Nonfiction Prose:' In The Creesset, 2009, LXXIII (2). 111 G reg M. Anderson, "A Most Potent Rhetoric: C. S. Lewis, Conge~ital Rhetor ican:' in Bruce I .. Edwards, ed., C. S. Lewis Life, Works, and Legacy, Vol. 4: Scholar Teacher and 1'11/Jlir /11/ellec/1.1ul. (Sa nta Barbara, 2007), t98. 11 /\ndcrsnn, "/\ Most Pot e nt Rhe toric;' 198. " ( :Jive Staples I .cw is, l.1·111·rs 111 M11/r11/111: Cliiefly 011 Prayer (New Yo rk, 2002).
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by trying to memorise, or to get down, the whole speech v ·rbatim . And he succeeds in reproducing a certain amount of the exordium (the style is unmistakable. Only a practising rhetor ever talks that way). But he is soon defeated. The whole of the rest of the speech has to be represented by a ludicrously inadequate abstract. But he doesn't tell us what has happened, and thus seems to attribute to Tertullos a performance which would have spelled professional ruin. 13 The quotation demonstrates Lewis' familiarity with the nature of classical rhetoric's canons and the audience's assumptions regarding the performance of Tertullos. In "Rhetorica Religii;' James Como successfully positions Lewis as the consummate rhetorician, going so far as to argue that Lewis is best represented by the term homo rhetoricus, 14 and "The Weight of Glory" certainly demonstrates Lewis at his rhetorical best. In relation to Lewis' other sermons, "The Weight of Glory" provides a more careful treatment of its topic and a more elevated style in its use of soaring imagery. Judging his sermons' reception, reprinting, and acclaim, audiences and scholars alike must agree with this claim of precedence. Lewis' contemporaries, his brother, and current scholars such as Alan Jacobs, Peter Kreeft, and Walter Hooper all recognize "The Weight of Glory" was a "sermonic masterpiece:' 15 Lewis' other sermons contain his usual logical approach and informal style, but the language of those sermons never quite rises to the level of the "grand" or "elevated" style and pathetic appeal often reached in "The Weight of GlorY:' Examining the sermon's rhetorical devices is helpful because, like New Testament rhetoric, "rhetorical devices ... are used to serve serious purposes about matters theological and ethical:'' 6 In following his typical pattern, Lewis opens his sermon as traditional Asiatic rhetoric 17 would recommends; the same rhetoric Paul often uses in his epistles to his Asiatic audiences. Ben Witherington explains that Asiatic rhetoric, different from its more formal and reserved Attic cousin, is more Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, 47. 11 James Como, "Rhetorica Religii:' in Renascence, 1998, 5 1(I), 3. 15 Anderson, "The Sermons of C. S. Lewis:' 84. 16 Ben Witherington III, New Testament Rhetoric: J\n Int roductory Guide to the Art of Persuasion in and of the New Testament (Eugene, OR, 2009), 15. 17 George Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric and Its Christ.ian "'"' Secular Tradition (Chapel Hill, NC, 1999), 49.
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