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“All teaching is either about things or signs; but things are learned about through signs.”

Augustine

In The Silver Chair, Jill Pole is with Aslan in Aslan’s country. On a mountain top, impossibly tall, she is given signs she must remember to complete her mission. Importantly, Aslan warns her that she must constantly repeat them, because while the signs can be clearly recognized in his country, when she descends into Narnia her mind will become muddled and the signs won’t be as obvious as they seem to her now.

I’ve recently been rereading The Silver Chair to one of my children, and I was struck by this section in a deeper way than I had been prior. Throughout the book Lewis gives what we might call a phenomenology of faith.

When we read a Bible passage, it all seems obvious. Standing next to Jesus, and hearing things like, “my power is made perfect in weakness,” makes it all seem so clear. Then the next thing you know you are inundated with weakness and begin despairing.

In those places, suddenly the air seems heavy and our mind loses the signs.

We are called to love our neighbor as ourselves, which seems to make sense when we read it. But then we are in situations and we begin wondering what “as ourselves” might entail.

We are called to proclaim God’s Word in this world, and yet Paul warns us against modes of preaching that empty the cross of its power. It is not always obvious what this looks like.

In the Protestant tradition we read the Bible according to what was called “the rule of faith.” As it developed, the rule of faith emphasized the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the 10 Commandments. Luther included the movements of the worship service as well (for an excellent book on Luther’s understanding of the rule of faith, see ).

The rule of faith is akin to Pole repeating the signs, and practicing them throughout her day.

If we think of scripture as signs that signify reality - “the kingdom of God is realism” as Willard used to say - then the rule of faith is the way we internalize those signs so that we can see this reality as it really is. The danger, however, is that we read, not by the Spirit, but we read by the letter: “For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6).

This is the tension we feel as we follow the signs in the thicker air of this present evil age. There is a way of life, but when we look at it with our eyes it appears as the way of death. The way of death, on the other hand, appears to our eyes in this place as the path of life. In this age we are tempted by sight, but the signs of Aslan are only recognized by faith.

The rule of faith is not, therefore, a magical tool to fix the interpretation of hard passages. Rather, it moors us to the truth of who God is, what he has done and how he calls us to himself so that we never lose sight of the truth.

The evil witch, seeking to deter the children and Puddleglum, tries to muddy their minds with lesser things. Seeking to play on their base desires, fatigue and longing for rest, she seeks to make the signs even more opaque.

The rule of faith is meant to protect us from this kind of muddiness, and remind us of the clarity that we know in Christ Jesus. So repeat the signs, lest when your mind is heavy from fatigue, and you desire to walk by sight rather than by faith, you lose sight of the truth who is right before you.

This originally appeared on Kyle's .