(Beginning of section A [“Chalcidius”] -- Five “regular” paragraphs and “four plus seven” numbered items in the middle beginning with "The work of Chalcidius..." and ending with "...to have been unaware.")
In this introductory part of the section on Chalcidius, Lewis gives us a specific example (identifying four points for and seven against Chalcidius being a Christian) of the difficulty in determining whether certain authors of the period were Christians. Lewis sides with the view that Chalcidius was a Christian.
I can’t help smiling while thinking of a similar list of pros and cons that one might produce in deciding whether MacPhee in THS was a Christian – or rather, since MacPhee himself states that he is not during the course of the story, instead producing a list for deciding whether he was indeed headed into eventual acceptance of the faith:-) The distinction Lewis makes about Chalcidius “writing philosophically”, and excluding matters of faith “as matters of faith, from his thesis” seems very much like what MacPhee tries to do (to humourous extremes to be sure:-) in his “logical” discussions with Ransom and others.
As a side note, I was interested to see the unexpected use of the word “suburban” when he says “those elements…in the Model which made man a marginal – almost, as we shall see, a suburban – creature.” In our modern use of the word it certainly means on the outskirts of the city proper, but the implication that it is a “much further out” version of “marginal” strikes me as connoting a much weaker link than the way we tend to use the word nowadays.
--Stanley