A third lesson from C.S. Lewis (see lessons one and two here and here) from my time at Oxford with my Pugcast cronies involves The Discarded Image, a book I have read multiple times and used in my classes. I thought I understood what Lewis was doing in the book, but it turns out I missed something very important.

For those not familiar with The Discarded Image, a quick intro to the book might be helpful. The book’s subtitle is An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. It was originally given as lectures to help students understand better the vision of the world that shaped the work of medieval and Renaissance authors, and especially poets.

The Medieval Model

Lewis describes this vision of the world as “the Medieval Model.” This is something like the medieval worldview but includes things we don’t normally think of as part of worldviews. A key part of the Medieval Model is its “bookish” character. Medieval thinkers had an extreme faith in books—the word “author” and “authority” are the same in Latin. Given that, Lewis summarizes a few key ancient works that shaped the medieval mind.

From there, Lewis describes the invisible and visible inhabitants of the world, including things like the fae (i.e. the world of faerie) in the first category and beasts and humans in the second. He then moves on to anthropology. He explains the different levels of the human soul and discusses the way the body was understood. Interestingly, Lewis finishes his exploration of the Model with the liberal arts, pointing out that to the medieval mind, these subjects were understood as an immutable, objective description of reality.

Lewis adds some thoughts on the influence of the Medieval Model and an Epilogue on why it was discarded. The last is particularly important for my purposes here. He argues that it wasn’t new facts that forced a change in the model, but rather a change in mindset that made the old model seem obsolete.

What I missed

Lewis makes it clear that he found the Medieval Model attractive, though he acknowledged that we couldn’t and shouldn’t return to it. When I read the book, like Lewis I was attracted to the Model and wished the world were really like that. I am, after all, something of a romantic. But, of course, I knew it isn’t the way the world works.

And that was where I missed an important element of what Lewis was doing, though in my defense I took his description of the book as “an introduction to medieval and Renaissance literature” as an explanation of what the book was about. It turns out that I was half right. The book is that, but Lewis was also doing something else as well.

The Value of the Medieval Model

During our Pugcast interview with Alister McGrath, he pointed out that although Lewis agreed that we couldn’t return to the Medieval Model as such, that science has revealed many things about the way the physical universe works that are inconsistent with the Medieval Model, science doesn’t tell us everything about the world. Science can’t tell us who we are, what our place is in the universe, or answer questions about meaning.

And this is where the Medieval Model can help us. As Professor McGrath puts it, science gives us one lens to look at the world, but why should we limit ourselves to just one lens? We can use the scientific lens to answer scientific questions, but to answer other questions we can use other lenses. The Medieval Model describes the universe as we experience it, which does not always line up with the way science says it really is. To take a simple (and scientific) example, we all talk about sunrise and sunset, not the earth rotating to bring the sun into or out of view.

In the modern and postmodern world, we tend to reduce things to what we can see, measure, and describe scientifically. But this is only one way to see the world and maybe not even the most important. In The Voyage of the Dawntreader in the Narnia Chronicles, Eustace meets a star. He comments, “In our world, a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.” The star replies, “Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.” Lewis is suggesting that even in the physical world, there is more there than meets the scientific eye. And other parts of our human experience are even less susceptible to scientific analysis or explanation.

The Medieval Model offers us resources to help us understand these parts of our experience and, more importantly, our place in the world and the question of meaning in our lives and in the cosmos. Science cannot give us answers to these questions, but fortunately, science isn’t the only lens we have to find truth. And that makes the Medieval Model worth revisiting and The Discarded Image an important and valuable book for us today.