Saturday, December 13, 2008

Avery Dulles on C. S. Lewis

Dulles notes that the Argument from Desire is the prime theistic argument used by Karl Rahner and Henri de Lubac. This was news to me.

6 comments:

Timothy David said...

I've heard that C.S. Lewis may have drawn off Chesterton for this argument. Do you happen to know the passage or the book where Chesterton presents his own argument from desire?

Victor Reppert said...

Steve Lovell is the argument from desire expert, so I will have to defer to him on this.

Steve Lovell said...

Timothy,

I'm not aware of any particular influence from GKC to CSL on this topic. I think Lewis's sources were probably more classical. However, there is an interesting essay collection on Lewis and Chesterton called "The Riddle of Joy: G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis" edited by Michael H. Macdonald (Editor), Andrew A. Tadie. This includes an important paper on the Argument from Desire by Robert Holyer, and would be the natural place to start looking for any connections between the two writers on this topic, though I'm not convinced you'll find anything substantial.

Steve

Timothy David said...

Thanks, Steve.

Victor Reppert said...

Steve: Wasn't that a Kreeft paper in the Riddle of Joy?

I was there for that conference.

Steve Lovell said...

Vic,

You're quite right, I had misremembered. The Kreeft paper is also an important one, though. The Holyer paper is hidden away in some journal from around the same time.

Steve