Lewis on his book The Problem of Pain

the only purpose of the book is to solve the intellectual problem raised by suffering; for the far higher task of teaching fortitude and patience I was never fool enough to suppose myself qualified, nor have I anything to offer my readers except my conviction that

when pain is to be borne,

• a little courage helps more than much knowledge,
• a little human sympathy more than much courage,
• and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.

(formatting mine, from the Preface of The Problem of Pain, p.xii)

If there is no God, why by good?

Richard Dawkins responds to the quesion that, "if there is no God, why by good?"

Posed like that, the question sounds positively ignoble. When a religious person puts it to me in this way (and many of them do), my immediate temptation is to issue the following challenge: 'Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base thought.' As Einstein said, 'If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.'

(p.259, The God Delusion)

It is a fair point, but Lewis explains why Christians motivations to be moral are not necessarily like Dawkins describes:

We must not be troubled by unbelievers when they say that this promise of reward makes Christian life a mercenary affair. There are different kinds of rewards. There is the reward which has no natural connection with the things you do to earn it and is quite foreign to the desires that ought to accompany those things. Money is not the natural reward of love; that is why we call a man mercenary if he marries a woman for the sake of her money. But marriage is the proper reward for a real lover, and he is not mercenary for desiring it. [...] The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation.

(The Weight of Glory)

I think there will be varying degrees of reward in the New Creation, but it will be the reward of the joy in the fruit of the works we have done. E.g. if I encourage a brother or sister, or I see someone come to faith in some small way due to God's work through me then I will rejoice in the New Creation in their joy and happiness. The more such works, the more causes of joy I have.

After all. Jesus laid down his life for the reward of "the joy set before him" (Hebrews 12:2), and that joy was that he would have a bride. Paul laboured to plant churches for the reward of his joy in the joy of the churches who would know Christ as a result (1 Thessalonians 2:19).

There is nothing mercenary about that.

Tough to stomach

There are so many things that we read in the Bible that are difficult to stomach. The obvious things to say when that happens are:

• If it is the truth, it doesn't matter how you feel about it; and
• God is God, and he is the one who gets to decide what is true and what is good. Get over it.

However, I think more can be said about why it is actually not just necessary but also good to swallow what the Bible says, even if we don't like the way it tastes.

1. Not a Stepford God

Firstly, it is an indication that we are dealing with an independent person. And a new personal relationship with our Heavenly Father is what makes the Gospel attractive. Tim Keller says this better than anyone I have read:

“If you don’t trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God? In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you.

“For example, if a wife is not allowed to contradict her husband, they won’t have an intimate relationship. Remember the (two!) movies The Stepford Wives? The husbands of Stepford, Connecticut, decide to have their wives turned into robots who never cross the wills of their husbands. A Stepford wife was wonderfully compliant and beautiful, but no one would describe such a marriage as intimate or personal.

“Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won’t! You’ll have a Stepford God! A God, essentially, of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction.

“Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination.

(Tim Keller, The Reason for God, pages 113-114)

2. True Truth

Secondly, as Keller mentions in that final paragraph, it is also an indication that we have come up against true truth. In his brilliant address, The Weight of Glory says the same thing:

The natural appeal of [the imagery of 'glory'] is to me, at first, very small. At first sight it chills, rather than awakes, my desire. And that is just what I ought to expect. If Christianity could tell me no more of the far-off land than my own temperament led me to surmise already, then Christianity would be no higher than myself. If it has more to give me, I must expect it to be less immediately attractive than “my own stuff.” ... If our religion is something objective, then we must never avert our eyes from those elements in it which seem puzzling or repellent; for it will be precisely the puzzling or the repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know.

3. The way to find new vistas we could not conceive

Thirdly, we trust God from experience and his promises that if we go through accepting these difficult truths we will find that actually it opens up even more beautiful and awe-inspiring vistas than we would otherwise have seen. Lewis, having taken us on just that journey in The Weight of Glory, explains how pushing through his initial distaste with the concept of glory led him to discover something that is richer and more satisfying than if he had just rejected it out of hand:

If I had rejected the authoritative and scriptural image of glory and stuck obstinately to the vague desire which was, at the outset, my only pointer to heaven, I could have seen no connexion at all between that desire and the Christian promise. But now, having followed up what seemed puzzling and repellent in the sacred books, I find, to my great surprise, looking back, that the connexion is perfectly clear. Glory, as Christianity teaches me to hope for it, turns out to satisfy my original desire and indeed to reveal an element in that desire which I had not noticed. By ceasing for a moment to consider my own wants I have begun to learn better what I really wanted.

Today I have listened to Rob Bell quizzing Adrian Warnock whether he is happy with the idea of God condemning people to hell. The doctrine is difficult for both to swallow, but Adrian Warnock choses to swallow and Rob Bell doesn't.

But I have also listened to Jack Miller, saying "cheer up, you're a lot worse off than you think." Original sin is a difficult doctrine for many to swallow, but Jack Miller movingly shows how it is only through fully absorbing it that we find freedom and adoption.

Finally, I would say - bring your concerns and questions to God. Wrestle with him, but with the hope that he and not you will prevail.

Tom Wright on Mere Christianity

Tom Wright's untimely born review of Mere Christianity by CS Lewis (HT Mike Bird) is an worthwhile read. Ironically given one of his regular gripes with critics is that they require you "to say everything all the time" (e.g. here), one of the refrains of the review is that Lewis fails to mention lots of important matters (Easter, Kingdom of God, etc). But I do like his main criticism that the book plays down the personal historical Jesus, in favour of a more Platonic theism.

This criticism of Lewis led me to engage in some self-criticism, when he discussed Lewis’s famous argument that "Jesus must have been bad or mad or God". Wright comments:

What Lewis totally failed to see—as have, of course, many scholars in the field—was that Judaism already had a strong incarnational principle, namely the Temple, and that the language used of Shekinah, Torah, Wisdom, Word, and Spirit in the Old Testament—the language, in other words, upon which the earliest Christians drew when they were exploring and expounding what we have called Christology—was a language designed, long before Jesus’ day, to explain how the one true God could be both transcendent over the world and living and active within it, particularly within Israel.

Lewis, at best, drastically short-circuits the argument. When Jesus says, "Your sins are forgiven," he is not claiming straightforwardly to be God, but to give people, out on the street, what they would normally get by going to the Temple.

For Wright, understanding "Judaism’s incarnational principle…enables [the claim of Jesus to be God] to be at once nuanced into a proto-Trinitarian framework".

The 'claim' of Jesus to be God in Mark 2:5 is familiar territory for anyone who has run evangelistic courses on the Gospel of Mark. It is clear to most participants that Jesus is not "claiming straightforwardly to be God", because God to them is Unitarian – and as Jesus talks to, and about, God as distinct from him, he can’t be God as well. But to the Jews of the time, which did not have a Unitarian view of God, Jesus was clearly claiming to be God in such a straightforward way that the scribes felt he was blaspheming.

But was Lewis wrong to short-circuit this Jewish/OT background? Wright feels that if you don’t first lay the Jewish/OT background "you will inevitably put him in a different one, where he, his message, and his achievement will be considerably distorted." That is no doubt true, but is that an irredeemable distortion? As you fill modern Brit’s concept of ‘god’ with Jesus Christ, couldn’t the God-who-is-there slowly redefine the word/framework as he refuses to be contained by our false concepts?

I’m sure there has to be a balance found, and I tend to think that simply reading the Gospels is the best way to get that balance. You can’t read the Gospels without discussing the Jewish/OT background, but equally you’re not spending limited time and energy studying that background directly before you hear about Jesus himself.

That’s one reason why I like introducing non-Christians to Gospels, courses based on Gospels (e.g. Christianity Explored on Mark), and books based on Gospels (e.g. Mike Cain’s Real Life Jesus).

But that’s something to reflect on more.

Digging a god-shaped hole and filling it up again

"According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride... Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind." (p.100, CS Lewis, Mere Christianity)

"unbelief alone commits sin, and brings forth the flesh and pleasure in bad outward works, as happened to Adam and Eve in paradise...Unbelief is the root, the sap, and the chief power of all sin." (p.100, Martin Luther, "Preface to the Epistle of St Paul to the Romans" in Timothy F Lull Ed, Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings)

So who's right; Lewis or Luther?

I think that Luther is right because, as David Powlison points out, unbelief is the act of erasing God from reality. And as GK Chesterton once observed, when we "cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything". If God is not king then perhaps I am, or perhaps my father is, or my boss, or cancer, or [fill in the blank]. Or perhaps they're all kings, with no one all-powerful or deserving of exclusive worship, but some are more powerful and worthy than others. Either way, whether it is ourselves, other people or any other created thing, all other sins are just trying to fill that imaged god-shaped hole in our heart. And often the thing we fill it with is not something we love, but something we're petrified of because it can take as well as give.

[Incidentally, if you're an economics geek I hope you appreciated the allusion in the title to John Maynard Keynes' oft quoted principle, that apparently he never said.]

Why the deepest truth has to be mythic

Listening to: Laura Marling: I speak because I can

Why don't we abstract all the truth found in the Bible and cast of the 'husk' of story, and 'myth'?

CS Lewis argues that the mythic elements of Christianity are actually the "vital and nourishing element in the whole concern". The story of the Bible is the "substance", and not "vestigial".

"And yet the human intellect is incurably abstract. Pure mathematics is the type of successful thought. Yet the only realities we experience are concrete - this pain, this pleasure, this dog, this man. While we are loving the man, bearing the pain, enjoying the pleasure, we are not intellectually apprehending Pleasure, Pain or Personality. When we begin to do so, on the other hand, the concrete realities sink to the level of mere instances or examples: we are no longer dealing with them, but with that which they exemplify. This is our dilemma - either to taste and not to know or to know and not to taste [...] As thinkers we are cut off from what we think about; as tasting, touching, willing, loving, hating, we do do not clearly understand. The more lucidly we think, the more we are cut off: the more deeply we enter into reality the less we can think. You cannot study Pleasure in the moment of the nuptial embrace, nor repentance while repenting, nor analyse the nature of humour while roaring with laughter. But when else can you really know these things? [...]

Of this tragic dilemma myth is the partial solution. In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction. [...]

Now as myth transcends thought, Incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact."

("Myth became fact" in CS Lewis: Essay Collection: Faith, Christianity and the Church)

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe film discussion questions

[These are my notes for leading a discussion on the film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Feedback welcome. Sorry for the extent that they're decipherable only to me. I haven't had time to edit them for public consumption]

From dedication of the book: "My Dear Lucy, I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather, C. S. Lewis."

We're a bunch of adults who have decided to watch a 'kids' film, involving talking animals and a secret other world. Is Lewis right that you grow out of fairy tales, and then grow into them again? Why?

• Escapism?
• Sentimental longing to relive childhood?
• Do they enable us to understand the real world in a way which realist fiction or abstract argument can't?

** WATCH FILM **

Any parts of the film you particularly enjoyed, or thought didn't work?

• Tilda Swinton
• Colours of Narnia, particularly when Lucy and Edmund first enter. Snow.
• Soundtrack
• London scenes. Character development. Parallels of war in England and Narnia.
• Why Aslan had to die.

Once all four children enter Narnia, it is largely the actions of Edmund that drive the story. What motivates Edmund to join the White Witch?

• Absence of his father (running back to save his photo in air raid; "Wouldn’t have to go away if Dad was here" at station). Does this excuse him?
• Book: new school is blamed
• Estrangement from siblings, in particular from Peter.
• Problem with authority: Doesn't like authority of Peter and Susan over him ("You think you’re Dad, but you’re not" when Peter tells him off for mocking Lucy’s belief in Narnia; "Yes Mum" his response to Susan when she suggests they go to bed)
• Desire to be king (Doesn't like it when he thinks Witch will make Peter king as well; sits on Witch's throne: “like it?” she asks - “yes” Edmund replies).
• Half-believes she is right (thinks that faun may be lying about her, that and that it is Tumnus who is a criminal).
• Enjoys the Turkish Delight and wants more (book: "this was enchanted Turkish Delight and... anyone who had tasted it would want more and more of it, and would even, if tthey were allowed go on eating it till they killed themselves")
• In the end he doesn't get anything that he betrayed his family for. No throne, no food.

If Edmund is flawed, is Peter any better?

• self-righteous
• quick to round on Edmund at any opportunity (gets angry at air raid about photo Edmund goes back for, gets angry about cricket ball, gives Edmund girls coat out of wardrobe, "I know")
• He likes authority too. Not happy to ask Professor for help, "we can handle it".
• Confession to Aslan: "It’s my fault really. I was too hard on him"

Aslan sacrifices himself to save Edmund. Self sacrifice is a common theme in films. The centaur and rhino sacrifice themselves in this film to save Peter. Is Aslan's self-sacrifice different in any way?

• Planned? No, it is often planned in stories.
• He is in control though in a way that you don't often get. He has to satisfy the Deep Magic. That is the problem, not the Witch.
• Only he could "turn death backwards", be resurrected, break the Deep Magic's hold over Narnia, because he is the only innocent one - and god?
• Why does he have to die? What does it achieve?

[OPTIONAL QUESTION: Tilda Swinton says about the film: "It's about finding self-sufficiency in difficult circumstances and finding the capacity to dig deep, survive and prevail."

Is her interpretation of the film correct?

• Yes, digging deep and courage important themes.
• No, self-sufficiency is far from promoted (Children need each other and other animals, need Aslan - “Only Aslan can help your brother now” Mr Beaver on Edmund going to the witch’s palace, Aslan's desire not to be alone as he goes to his death, contrast the Witch who needs no-one and doesn't want to - even says to dwarf who asks if she will kill him: "not yet"). We are created to need others, and particularly to need Christ (and his death). Self-sufficiency is not an ideal to aspire to.

]

Running theme in film is who is telling the truth. Lucy and Edmund contradict on existence of Narnia. Lucy: "She calls herself the Queen of Narnia thought she has no right to be queen at all". Faun has book on his shelf "Is Man a Myth?" Edmund on Mr Beaver: "how do we know we can trust him?" What does film say about how we can know what is true?

• Edmund at least really knows in deep-down that witch is evil. He lies to himself.
• The Professor's advice to Peter and Susan on whether to believe Lucy: "If she’s not mad and if she’s not lying then she must be telling the truth"
• Ultimately, belief in truth is presented in a very personal way.
• Some are ignorant of truth so doubt it ("Is man a myth?").
• Truth is inescapable reality whatever stance people take.

The Deep Magic of Narnia

A lot of Evangelicals have a problem with the atonement theory they see displayed in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis. They are uncomfortable that it seems to suggest that:

1. the devil had something he could demand of Christ
2. Christ's death was not to satisfy God's wrath, but to satisfy the devil

But I think that CS Lewis does not say anything wrong, but he leaves the door open to problems coming in.

The Witch appeals to the "Deep Magic" for her claim on Edmund's life. She also says "the Law" demands it. For Lewis the "Deep Magic" seems to be another name for "the Law" in Christian theology. It is built into the fabric of the universe, but it is not an independent god which both the Witch and the Aslan have to obey. It was put in place by the "Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea" (God the Father), and it belongs to him. The Stone Table represents this Deep Magic. It has the words of it written on it, just as the words of the Law were written on stone tablets delivered to Moses.

Any claim that the Witch has against Edmund is derived from the Deep Magic, and more fundamentally from the Emperor who gave it. Aslan says that the offence committed by Edmund was not an offence against the Witch, and so she does not have a natural right to claim Edmund's life. As the Beaver observes, she is "the Emperor's hangman" and it is he who gives the Witch her right. It is ultimately not either the Witch or the Deep Magic which has a claim on Edmund's life, it is the Emperor. The devil in Christian theology is in the same position. He is called Satan ('the accuser') because his power is only in bringing the Law of God to bear on people's lives. As the early chapter's of Job show clearly, he is God's servant and not a truly rival power.

Aslan would not go against the law given by the Emperor who is his father, but his authority does not derive from it like the Witch's does. He subjects himself to the Deep Magic voluntarily, even though it clearly only applies to traitors. In this sense Aslan and the Witch are not two equals under the Deep Magic. Aslan lowers himself to the Witch's level, but that is not where he belongs. It is only as Aslan identifies with Edmund that the Witch can demand anything from him. The parallels with Christ are obvious.

When Christ died on the cross in the place of us, the Law was nailed to the cross (Col 2:14). The Law has been torn down and we no longer will we be put to death by it. Similarly, the Stone Table cracks when Aslan is brought back from the dead.

That's all good stuff, but I think Lewis leaves the door open for problems in several ways:

• God is distant. It is only in a very indirect way that Aslan seems to be experiencing the Emperor's wrath. Because of this it appears that our biggest problem is not God's anger at our sin, but the devil out to hurt us.
• Because of this distance of God, it seems almost like the devil is acting as a free agent, albeit under authority of the Law. There is no sense that God has sovereignly arranged for the attack of the devil. Except perhaps in Aslan locating his army's camp at the Stone Table from the beginning.
• Because Aslan is a lion and Edmund a human, it is not clear that Aslan is only subject to the "Deep Magic"/Law by his identification with Edmund. It could be misunderstood that he is under the "Deep Magic" in exactly the same way the Witch is.
• The Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea does not seem to be the loving Heavenly Father of the Christian Faith. He is not only distant, but possibly even evil. He does not act for good (it is never clear that he sent his son, Aslan). He is only ever depicted as standing behind the cold justice executed by the evil Witch. The Deeper Magic which means Aslan is raised from the dead is only implicitly the Deeper Magic of the Emperor. In contrast the New Testament is crystal clear that it was God the Father raised Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. The whole Trinity is acting in the salvation of sinners. If it is was not then, like here, God the Father is thought to be the angry God, and Jesus the loving God subjected to divine child abuse.

Those are my thoughts. Do you have any others?

These are the only relevant passages in the book:

"You have a traitor there, Aslan," said the Witch...

"Well," said Aslan. "His offence was not against you."

"Have you forgotten the Deep Magic?" asked the Witch.

"Let us say I have forgotten it," answered Aslan gravely. "Tell us of this Deep Magic."

"Tell you?" said the Witch, her voice growing suddenly shriller. "Tell you what is written on that very Table of Stone which stands beside us? Tell you what is written in letters deep as a spear is long on the fire-stones on the Secret Hill? Tell you what is engraved on the scepter of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea? You at least know the magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to kill."

"Oh," said Mr. Beaver. "So that's how you came to imagine yourself a queen - because you were the Emperor's hangman. I see."

"Peace, Beaver," said Aslan, with a very low growl.

"And so," continued the Witch, "that human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property."

"Come and take it then," said the Bull with the man's head in a great bellowing voice.

"Fool," said the Witch with a savage smile that was almost a snarl, "Do you really think your master can rob me of my rights by mere force? He knows the Deep Magic better than that. He know that unless I have blood as the Law says all Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water."

"It is very true," said Aslan, "I do not deny it."

"Oh, Aslan!" whispered Susan in the Lion's ear, "can't we – I mean, you won't, will you? Can't we do something about the Deep Magic? Isn't there something you can work against it?"

"Work against the Emperor's magic?" said Aslan, turning to her with something like a frown on his face. And nobody ever made that suggestion to him again.

(pp. 128-129)

"though the witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge only goes back to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards."

(p. 148)

How to seek to have our relationship needs met

Listening to: Sovereign Grace Music: Worship God

In The Four Loves, CS Lewis begins by making a helpful distinction between what he calls "need-love" and "gift-love". He explains that:

The typical example of Gift-love would be that love which moves a man to work and plan and save for the future well-being of his family which he will die without sharing or seeing; of the second, that which sends a lonely or frightened child to its mother's arms

He successfully shows that there is nothing wrong with "need-love". We all have emotional, physical and spiritual needs that we need meeting. So how should we go about having those needs met in our relationships?

Firstly, I think it is helpful to take the point that Ed Welch makes in When People Are Big and God Is Small. We need to examine our "needs" and consider whether they are actually sinful wants. We shouldn't just assume that because we feel the need for something that it should be met.

But given that we have done that, how should we pursue the meeting of those good relationship needs we have? Perhaps we should just look for them from God. Shouldn't he meet our needs for love, recognition, friendship etc? This seems to have some weight because to seek the meeting of our needs elsewhere looks (a) like idolatry; and (b) hopeless, because of people's limited ability to "deliver".

But if we should look only to God, is there still a place for desiring marriage, friendship etc? We know that these things are good things, but maybe only in moderation. You shouldn't love your wife too much, or be too dependent on anyone. Perhaps we just have to keep things in proportion, and ensure we always are more dependant on God. Perhaps Tim Keller definition of an idol is helpful:

It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God (my italics)

But the first commandment, is not "You are to have no other gods more important than me", but "You are to have no other gods". God is one.

Martin Luther is right when he says that "it is God alone ... from whom we receive anything good". But, no sooner has he seemingly backed some super-spiritual monasticism than he says that "much that is good comes to us from human beings". He believes both these things because:

we receive our blessings not from [human beings], but from God through them. Creatures are only the hands, channels, and means through which God bestows all blessings. For example, he gives to the mother breasts and milk for her infant or gives grain and all sorts of fruits from the earth for sustenance - things that no creature could produce by itself.

In fact, to reject our needs being met through other human beings is to "through arrogance...seek other methods and ways than those God has commanded". In seeking to have our needs met only in God, we could be in danger of actually spurning his gifts and before we know it we would "not be receiving [our needs met] from God, but seeking them from ourselves".

But returning to the practicalities of how we should seek to have our needs met in relationships, this means that if our emotional needs (as well as 'spiritual' ones) are met by God, then we should receive them in the same way as we always receive gifts from God: passively.

But as when we receive our righteousness passively, that does not mean that we are not active. But we are active not in earning or obtaining it for ourself. The activity comes from the faith that we already have everything in Christ, even if we do not see or experience it yet.

On reflection I think that it is in those relationships where I have set out to serve and give, and continued to have to do so, have been the ones that have given the most to me and helped me through the most. But when I think about relationships that I have sought for what they give to me the fruit goes rotten in my hands. They just don't deliver.

Perhaps then we should seek only gift-love in our relationships, but then we will receive need-love anyway. The problems with idolatry come when we are actively looking for our needs met in relationships with other people, instead of passively expecting to receive through them by God's grace. Only in self-giving love are we free (as Jesus was when he gave himself for his people) and only in that way do we actually receive the love and glory we long for (as Jesus received from his Father who glorified him because of his obedience).

In Luther's book The Freedom of the Christian he sets out two famous statements:

1. "A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none"
2. "A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all"

He is basically saying there are two dimensions to life and if we misunderstand this then everything goes astray (The two kinds of righteousness). By faith in Christ we share in his lordship of Creation. Everything serves us and works for our good (Rom 8:28 etc), and this happens freely apart from any effort or works of our own. But at the same time we are called and empowered by this grace to serve everyone we meet. We don't do things to receive justification before God, or good things from people, but we serve everyone without any hope of gain because we already have everything in Christ who gives through his creatures.

By the way, I haven't thought about all this a great deal until very recently, so please feel free to poke holes. It would be helpful if you do. Hopefully, its not totally obscure.

Flippancy

I enjoyed reading The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis recently. I lot of challenging stuff. I was particularly challenged by his discussion in letter 11 of the four causes of human laughter ('Joy, Fun, the Joke Proper, and Flippancy'). Screwtape identifies flippancy as the most likely to lead people to damnation. It is something I suffer from, and I found his description of it quite brilliant:

Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy: it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it

Study Questions on 'The Weight of Glory'

So here are my study questions on 'The Weight of Glory' by CS Lewis. It is for a discussion with a group of very clever people so should be interesting to lead. My problems with the essay may come out in questions 3.(b) and 4.(d).

The difficult thing has been finding a balance between letting Lewis have his say, letting the bible have its say and then analysing Lewis. I'm not 100% happy that I've achieved this. Also there is just so much in the essay that it has been difficult choosing what to explore and what not to. I may have to leave out section 5 if discussion goes on. Any suggestions would be even more welcome than usual.

1. Christian Hedonism

‘We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire’

(a) Is it mercenary for Christians to seek happiness when living out their faith?

2. The Argument from Desire

‘Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.’ (Mere Christianity, Bk. III, chap. 10, "Hope")

(a) Do you agree with the argument?

(b) Lewis finds ‘our desires, not too strong, but too weak […] we are far too easily pleased’. A non-Christian may say that they are perfectly happy with their life as it is, and don’t have a ‘God-shaped hole’ waiting to be filled. Does this invalidate the argument from desire?

3. Our relationship with creation

‘These things – the beauty, the memory of our own past – are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers’

(a) How can we enjoy God’s good creation without it being an idol and rival to God for our affections?

[I think I might show this video before the next bit to mix it up a little!]

‘The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things - the beauty, the memory of our own past - are good images of what we really desire […] they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune wee have not heard […] When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive. Nature is only the image, the symbol […] We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects.’

(b) Does this downplay the goodness of Nature (because beauty is not ‘in’ it)?

(c) Does this overplay the role of Nature (because the beauty, which is God, comes ‘through’ it)?

4. The promise of glory

‘Glory suggests two ideas to me, of which one seems wicked and the other ridiculous. Either glory means to me fame, or it means luminosity.’

(a) Can you think of biblical passages that speak of glory as ‘fame’?

(b)In the light of them how well do you think Lewis does at explaining how ‘fame’ is something ‘of heaven’ rather than ‘of hell’?

(c) Can you think of biblical passages that speak of glory as ‘luminosity’?

(d) In the light of them how well do you think Lewis does at explaining how ‘luminosity’ is not ‘ridiculous’?

5. Difficult bits of the bible

‘If our religion is something objective, then we must never avert our eyes from those elements in it which seem puzzling or repellent; for it will be precisely the puzzling or the repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know’ He applies that to the idea of glory and concludes: ‘having followed up what seemed puzzling and repellent in the sacred books, I find, to my great surprise, looking back, that the connexion is perfectly clear.’

(a) Have you had a similar experience with any particular teaching you find in the bible?

What is good about creation? (Part 1)

In 'The Weight of Glory' CS Lewis states that:

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things - the beauty, the memory of our own past - are good images of what we really desire ... they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune wee have not heard.(italics original)

I have two concerns about this.

1. It seems to give creation a position of mediating God.
2. It downplays the goodness of creation.

Maybe I'm being too harsh on Lewis with my first point. I want to be able to say with the bible that the heavens declare the glory of God, but I don't want to use the word 'through' like Lewis does. How can you do this?

Bizarrely, after criticising him for having too 'high' a understanding of creation in one breadth, my second concern comes from him having too low a understanding of creation's goodness.

By making creation a mediator of God's beauty he actually turns it into an obstruction. It becomes instrumental and so disposable. He looks forward to a day when creation passes away and there is just us and God:

When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive. Nature is only the image, the symbol...We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects.

In contrast I would like to say:

1. Christ is the only mediator between God and man.
   Because Christ is not an imperfect image, but God himself, he is not a mediator who serves his purpose until we pass beyond him to a more intimate relationship.
2. Creation is good in itself.
   But this is not because of any worthiness inherent in Creation as a rival to God's worthiness. Instead it is a gift that Creation receives because of the declaration of God (see previous post).

Notes on 'The Weight of Glory' by CS Lewis

I will post some reflections soon because I'm supposed to be leading a discussion on this essay soon. I really like some of it, but I have some big problems with other bits. If you have any thoughts on the essay I'd be glad to hear them. In fact it would also be useful if anyone has any thoughts on leading a discussion on something other than a bible passage. I've never really done that before.
1. The Highest Virtue

Not unselfishness or self-denial, but love.

Problem: negative rather than positive.  Suggests it doesn't matter what the result is, just the nature of the action.  Self-denial seems to be an end in itself.

NT thinks the outcome is important, and promises joy as reward for self-denial.

2. Three kinds of reward

2.1 Mercenary reward

rewards where there is 'no natural connexion with the things you do to earn it'

2.2 Proper reward 1: 'the activity itself in consummation'

e.g. marriage is the proper reward for a lover, victory for a general.

The reward is connected to the activity directly, and the reason for doing the activity.

2.3 Proper reward 2: Reward is connected to the activity, but may not be desired when doing the activity

e.g. Schoolboy learning Greek grammar, works for the sake of grades, but may hope for proper reward of enjoying Greek poetry even though he is not capable of even desiring it.

The desire for the proper reward, and even the partial experience of it, creeps in gradually.

Christian in relation to heaven is in similar position to schoolboy.  Only by obeying (as law) can we slowly begin to desire the ultimate reward which is the proper reward and find 'the first reward of our obedience in our increasing power to desire the ultimate reward'.

Schoolboy while studying Greek grammar will occasionally neglect study to read Shelley:
'the desire which Greek is really going to gratify already exists in him and is attached to objects which seem to him quite unconnected'

Similarly 'if we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and will even appear as the rival of that object'.  The difference with the schoolboy being that 'any other good on which our desire fixes must be in some degree fallacious, must bear at best only a symbolical relation to what will truly satisfy'.

3. The dissatisfaction of seeking gratification in other things than heaven

3.1 Why it is not talked about
We don't like talking about 'this desire for our far-off country' because it is something we have never actually experienced.

3.2 Good things in creation 'image' the reality
All those moments, or things such as books and music, where we think to find beauty are only conduits 'through' which beauty comes - it is not 'in' them.  They are 'good images of what we really desire'.  If we trust to them they are idols and break our hearts because they are not the thing itself.

3.3 Promise of modern philosophies of progress
Modern philosophies of progress, want to keep us looking for 'the good of man' on earth.  They set about persuading you by:
1. Saying Earth can be made into heaven;
2. Explaining that the fortunate event is in the future (because they know it has not been experienced);
3. Using rhetoric to hide the fact that even if all they promised happened you would still be dissatisfied.

3.4 Apologetic use of this dissatisfaction
Doesn't prove that there we will find the something that actually satisfies, but indicates that it does exist and some will experience it.

4. Nature of Scripture's account of heaven

Scripture points us to where the true object of our desires is.

Scripture is still symbolic as it must be intelligible to us who haven't experienced it. 

Scriptural imagery has authority.

The fact that not all the imagery is immediately appealing is to be expected if it is objective.

The bits that we don't like straight away conceal something which we don't yet know.

5. Different heads of Scriptures promises

Scripture's promises come under five heads:
1. being with Christ
2. being like Christ
3. that we have 'glory'
4. that we shall feast
5. that we shall have official positions (e.g. of rule)

God will be our ultimate bliss but the other images are added because 'any conception of being with Christ which most of us can now form will be not very much symbolical than the other promises'.  This is because as Christ is divine he 'is more than a Person' and so any human conceptions of personal love will be insufficient.

6. The head of promise that we shall have glory

Prominent in the NT even though it has little appeal to 'moderns'.

Suggests two ideas:
1. fame
2. Luminosity

7. Glory as fame

Not fame conferred by other people, but 'appreciation' by God.  Desire for fame is often corrupted by us but it can be pure.

Accepting this 'well done' requires being childlike.  Pride is what prevents us seeking it.  'Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.  If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself'.

What God thinks of us is more important than what we think of him.

By following through on Scriptural promise which at first was puzzling and repellent we have found the connection between our unsatisfied desires and the scriptural promises.

Part of what makes transitory imperfect experiences of beauty unsatisfactory is that we have not been personally recognised.  They seem to carry a message which is not for us.

This promise that we can be known by God, also contains a warning that it is possible to be left outside, and ignored by God.

8. Glory as luminosity

We want more than to see beauty, we want to be 'united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to bathe in it, to become part of it.'

This is not like being absorbed into nature.  Nature is mortal and just an image.  We pass beyond and through Nature to what she reflects.

9. Life before glory

At the moment we have the self-denial before the joy, so what is the point in thinking about the joy?

It makes us realise the nature of the destiny of other people around us.  We are interacting daily with 'immortal horrors or everlasting splendours'.  This does not prevent merriment, but means that we must take each other seriously.

In particular if he is a Christian neighbour he has Christ ('the glorifier and the glorified') in him.

Using the imagination in apologetics

I've been listening to some lectures on apologetics by Alister McGrath. In them he explains how you can respond to the argument of Ludwig Feuerbach (and carried on by Marx, Freud and others) that 'when we think we are talking about God, we are in fact, just talking about ourselves... [that] just as a film projector throws images on to a blank screen, we project [our ideas] on to that ultimate reality and call them God' (p.5, Tom Smail, Like Father, Like Son).

McGrath explains that we can easily show the logical incoherency of this, but there are other ways of showing up the argument for what it is, and one of those is by employing our imagination and telling a story. He quotes CS Lewis' The Silver Chair where Scrub and the Prince are being held captive in an underground kingdom and arguing with the witch that is holding them that there is an overground world. She mocks them in their 'faith'.

"What is this sun that you all speak of? Do you mean anything by the word?"

"Yes, we jolly well do," said Scrubb.

"Can you tell me what it's like?" asked the Witch (thrum, thrum, thrum, went the strings).

"Please it your Grace," said the Prince, very coldly and politely. "You see that lamp. It is round and yellow and gives light to the whole room, and hangeth moreover from the roof. Now that thing which we call the sun is like the lamp, only far greater and brighter. It giveth light to the whole Overworld and hangeth in the sky."

"Hangeth from what, my lord?" asked the Witch; and then, while they were all still thinking how to answer her, she added, with another of her soft, silver laughs: "You see? When you try to think out clearly what this sun must be, you cannot tell me. You can only tell me it is like the lamp. Your sun is a dream; and there is nothing in that dream that was not copied from the lamp. The lamp is the real thing; the sun is but a tale, a children's story."