C.S. Lewis -- End of Course

 The C.S. Lewis webinar is now in the history books. The schedule was:

• "Weight of Glory" in the volume of the same name
• Books I and II of Mere Christianity
• Surprised by Joy (his autobiography)
• "Transposition" in the Weight of Glory volume, which is about being attuned to the spiritual realm beyond the merely material
• "The World's Last Night" on the second coming
• The Last Battle as the last of the Chronicles of Narnia
• Book III of Mere Christianity
• Two more essays in Weight of Glory--"The Inner Circle" and "Membership"
• Screwtape Letters
• Perelandra
• The Four Loves

1. This week we read Book IV of Mere Christianity. We read A Grief Observed. And we read two shorter pieces: "Petitionary Prayer" and "Learning in War Time."

I sense it could be a very long time till I would read something else from Lewis so I want to use the Christmas Break to finish some of his key writings. I think I'll work on the Problem of Pain next and post on A Grief Observed at that time. Then The Abolition of Man and Miracles then we are done.

2. "Petitionary Prayer" was an interesting little piece. Lewis presents an age-old conundrum. Sometimes we are to pray, "Thy will be done" and at other times we are to pray with confidence, "to move mountains." The first expresses uncertainty about what God will do. The second has the faith of complete certainty. 

Lewis' possible solution, as I understand it, is that you will know when God wants you to pray the second kind of prayer. Otherwise it's the first. I liken the sentiment to dreaming. When you're dreaming, you can be uncertain whether you are awake. When you are awake, you know you are awake.

So when it is time to pray with absolute faith you will know it is time. Otherwise, "thy will be done."

The question of Jesus' "uncertainty" in the Garden was brought up in class. Was it more an expression of feeling than uncertainty about God's will? It would not be unbiblical to suggest that Jesus was still not fully accessing his omniscience at this point. There is great certainty but still a lack of access to complete knowledge. And there is genuine dread.

Here's a quote I liked from this short essay: "Wisdom must sometimes refuse what ignorance may quite innocently ask."

3. The essay, "Learning in War Time" basically said, "We are in World War II, why study?"

This is an interesting piece because it argues for a space for knowledge for its own sake despite other things that are more urgent. This is a timely question for me. Education of necessity is increasingly utilitarian--"What job can I get with this major?" Similarly in the church, "If winning souls is the most important thing, why would we do anything else?"

Lewis' argument is that humanity doesn't work like that. We will not be saving souls all the time. Even on the front line in war we will read books. The human mind cannot just do the urgent all the time or we will burn out. We need sabbath.

I have taken a different approach. History, philosophy, religion, literature, art, music, wellness, math, science are actually utilitarian, but not everyone realizes it. A liberal arts education, when it works, does something to you. It chops off the extremes that come from ignorance. There will still be variation, but hopefully it will be a variation that is somewhat in the middle rather than at the extremes. I may write on this.

A quote I liked: "Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered."

4. This week we also finished Mere Christianity, Book IV. Here are some quotes:

• Lewis' delineation of the Trinity seems right--We pray to the Father, through the Son, powered by the Holy Spirit within us.
• He espouses a now common trope. For God to be love, there must be more than one person before the creation. Perhaps so, but this overreads the verse, "God is love," which is a metonymy.
• Book IV is largely about sanctification. There is a lot of commonality between Lewis' theology and Wesleyan-Arminian theology. I even wrote "entire sanctification" in the margin at one point.
• We "dress up" like Christ (chap 7). Eventually, when we take off the mask, we will find that we actually look like Christ.
• "Men are mirrors, or 'carriers' of Christ to other men."
• "It is God who does everything," that is the actual sanctification.
• "The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs."
• "If you do not listen to Theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of wrong ones."
• "If Christianity was something we were making up... we could make it easier. But it is not... We are dealing with Fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about."
• "Mere improvement is not redemption."
• "I cannot help thinking that the Next Step will be really new; it will go off in a direction you could never have dreamed of."
• "Just as they are patting down the earth on its [Christianity's] grave, they suddenly hear that it is still alive and has even broken out in some new place."