Into the Wardrobe

Hallo Zahir,

I take your point about duelling being (in theory if not in practise) honourable. As for the mediaeval prophets being arrogant, perhaps you are right, but I would sooner call them arrogant one-by-one instead of all of them in a general statement. Whatever their mental/spiritual state, any of them could have been well meaning in his actions.

Malcolm

You are right. Generalization is the sin of the lazy, sorry. I should have explained myself better. Even if they were wrong, they certainly believed their claims (why else would they put themselves through so much aggravation?). While such sincerity/well-meaning and arrogance are not mutually exclusive, it is pointless for me to make judgements on their intentions. They certainly saw putting their faith to test as an elevated heavenly task and were ready to die for principles higher than themselves. That makes the secularization and perversion of their ideals (unfunded or otherwise) the more tragic.

No harm in duels these days, as they are based upon a point system as opposed to a death system. It is most definately not merely about speed and strength, there is much much more to fencing than that. Elsewise you would never find an older man effectively dispaching stronger and faster opponents. It's more about skill in technic, balance, possition, but perhaps most of all about the mind. If you move faster than you think you fumble, fail to see an opening, put your body's energy to an futile task and in general you fail against the slower opponents that think.

Lewis did in fact express an opinion on dueling outside his fiction: I think its in Mere Christianity, but could be in some other apologetic work. He says that while dueling is not the best option, it is better than festering resentment. Hence he would refuse the question: is dueling good or bad?