CS Lewis and The World's Last Night

CS Lewis is popular with Christians, so it is worth looking at what he said. The World's Last Night is an essay he published in 1960. It can be found on-line here.

In particular I want to focus on just two paragraphs. Here is the first

But there is worse to come. “Say what you like,” we shall be told, “the apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, ‘this generation shall not pass till all these things be done.’ And he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else.”

This is a good summary of the problem Lewis is trying to resolve. He goes on: 

It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible. Yet how teasing, also, that within fourteen words of it should come the statement “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.” The one exhibition of error and the one confession of ignorance grow side by side. That they stood thus in the mouth of Jesus himself, and were not merely placed thus by the reporter, we surely need not doubt. Unless the reporter were perfectly honest he would never have recorded the confession of ignorance at all; he could have had no motive for doing so except a desire to tell the whole truth. ...

Lewis would have us think Jesus is saying the end times could be any time at all, from later that very day to thousands of years in the future.

But that is not actually true. That is just what he wants the text to say because he knows it has not happened.

Here are the salient verses:

Matthew 24:34 Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.

36 “But about that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.

The truth is that Jesus is clear that it will be before some of the disciples die. He even prefaces it with "Truly" to emphasise how certain this is. Sure, he does not exactly when, he cannot tell us the hour or even the day, but he is certain it is within the lifetime of some of the disciples.

Consider the prophecy that Trump will die in the next thirty years. He is 78, so it is a pretty safe prophecy. Truly I say to you, Donald Trump will die within thirty years, but about that day and hour no one knows.

Jesus was claiming similar; the end times would be within about thirty years, but he was not sure exactly when.

And Jesus was wrong.

It is a failed prophecy, and Christians like Lewis have been trying to make excuses for that ever since.

Strongest proof that the New Testament is historically reliable

 The second paragraph ends:

... And unless later copyists were equally honest they would never have preserved the (apparently) mistaken prediction about “this generation” after the passage of time had shown the (apparent) mistake. This passage (Mark 13:30-32) and the cry “Why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) together make up the strongest proof that the New Testament is historically reliable. The evangelists have the first great characteristic of honest witnesses: they mention facts which are, at first sight, damaging to their main contention.

Lewis is reading the gospels through trinitarian goggles. Take off the goggles, and we can see what has happened.

Mark believed Jesus was a man who was appointed to be the messiah by God at his baptism, and God adopted Jesus as his son. In that context, it makes perfect sense for Jesus to ponder why God had forsaken him.

Not that Jesus said that. The disciples had fled Jerusalem, and no one was there to record his last words. But the disciples scoured the Old Testament for clues as to what did happen, and found what Jesus might have said in Psalm 22. And for a man appointed by God, but now dying on the cross, those words make perfect sense.

It is only later that they become nonsense. Once Jesus was understood to be one part of the trinity, it is ridiculous to imagine he would say his God has forsaken him, given he is part of that God! But by then the text was too firmly rooted in the church, and they were stuck with it.

What of the prophecy about "this generation"? When it was written, the author believed it meant his generation. He actually believed the end times were just round the corner.

And the fact that copyists have blindly copied the failed prophecy is hardly proof that the New Testament is historically reliable, no matter how much Lewis might like it to be.