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I'm privileged tonight to introduce to you a very special speaker, a man who's unique

in several ways.

I guess evidence for this comes from very early when Mr. Palmer was born in California

while his parents were in Europe.

He led a fairly normal childhood, I guess, until he went to school at Berkeley, the University

of California there, then came here to Princeton where he attended seminary.

I'm told a story that may be apocryphal, but I hear that Mr. Palmer very nearly flunked

seminary because he was leading about nine Bible studies at the university.

I'm very happy to introduce and invite Mr. Palmer up here to the podium and to talk

to you the title of tonight's lecture is C.S. Lewis, the 20th Century Christian.

Thanks for that introduction, but there was of it.

It isn't all together true, either.

In fact, I don't think hardly anything in what you said was true about me, except I was born

in California, that's true, and I did almost flunk at the seminary, that's true, but I'm

not going to blame any Bible study groups I had at Princeton University for that.

It was basically a problem I had with church music, of course, in church music, and that's

the truth, that is the honest truth.

I didn't do well in song leading, and I really did have trouble with that course, but

I want you to know that I did pass it finally and everything worked out.

I want to, I get a chance to be with you and to delete a discussion, talk tonight on

C.S. Lewis, and also tomorrow night, and for those that want to really have an in-depth

experience with C.S. Lewis, and maybe many of you are already C.S. Lewis buffs, and very

interested about his life, so here's what I propose to do in these two evenings.

Tonight I want to give an introduction to this amazing person, C.S. Lewis, and sort of

tell you about my own personal affection for him and what he wrote and what he has meant

to me, and try to give some understanding of the main lines of his thought and what made

him tick.

Then tomorrow night, I want to work with C.S. Lewis as an apologist, and try to understand

the reasons for his durability, and sort of the apologetic and theological style and method

in, and what sort of are the elements in Lewis that made him so durable, because it is

true.

There is a durability about C.S. Lewis, and I think as we mentioned some of the dates on

things that he wrote, and give you a little bit of a journey through his life today, it'll

come in the focus even clearer.

Well first of all, C.S. Lewis was born in Belfast, November 29th, 1898, and if I had a very

young age, he didn't like his two names, Clive Staples Lewis, and so one very young boy

he just went to his mother one day and said, me Jack, and from then on he was called Jack

by all of his friends, and of course he signed all of his writings, just simply C.S. Lewis.

He had one brother, and the brother Warren Lewis, who was three and a half years older than

he was, was more than just a brother to Lewis, he was a lifelong friend and companion.

In fact, a great number of the years of their life, they lived together, and when they

were grown man, and his own brother was a very brilliant man in his own right, had been

a major in the British Army and wrote a great number of books on military history in his

own right.

But he and Lewis were very close friends, and when Lewis was 10 years old, his mother died,

and this was a catastrophe and a crisis in his life of really major proportions.

He was immediately sent off after the death of his mother, and his mother was a very beautiful

and wonderful woman, though the last couple of years of her life she was very ill.

But she had a warm and tender gentle influence in his life, and then at that very impressionable

period, at the age of 10, she died, and Lewis was sent by his father, along with his brother,

they were sent off to private boarding schools.

And if you've read Surprise by Joy, which is Lewis' autobiography, you know that his experiences

in these private schools were all very grim and very disappointing, agonizing experiences

of depressing experiences in his life.

In this book, I'm going to just read quotations ready tonight from three books, then a group

of other books tomorrow night, but this book, Letters of C.S. Lewis, people ask me what

I think is the best book about Lewis, and I always advocate this book, it's a collection

of his correspondence that goes from his early childhood right on up into his adult years

in fact up until about a week before he died.

Lewis was a prolific writer of Letters, and this correspondence has been collected by his

brother, W.H. Lewis, Warren Lewis, and there is a memoir in the beginning of this book

that is just really beautiful, and I think of all the things I've read about C.S. Lewis,

I think the most moving and most helpful really is this memoir by his brother.

I will read just an opening few lines as to how Warren describes his father and the relationship

that they had with his father, which might give you some better impression of this man.

He tells about the holidays they had when they were young, going off to the coast, and

he says, of the many holidays, two pictures remain in my memory.

The first is of my father's gloomy detachment.

He would sometimes come down for the weekend, but he never stayed with his wife and children

throughout the whole summer holiday.

One business was his excuse.

He was a solicitor, a lawyer, and he may also have felt that 11 months of our company

every year was more than enough.

It may have gone deeper than that.

I never met a man more wedded to a dull routine or less capable of extracting enjoyment from

life.

That's Warren Lewis' description of his father.

A night spent out of his own home was penance to him.

A holiday he loathed, having not the faintest conception of how to amuse himself.

I can still see him on his occasional visits to the seaside, walking moodily up and down

the beach, hands in trouser pockets, eyes on the ground, every now and then giving a heart-rending

yawn and pulling out his watch.

His net point, that is the Warren Lewis' portrayal of his father.

And this father, Lewis had great respect for his father and really wanted to love his

father so badly.

And yet the father was so pontifical, he never listened to his sons.

The sons would come home from prep school and the boarding schools they were living in.

The father would say, now we're going to sit down and visit.

Father would say, all right now, let's talk.

Tell me what you're experiencing and the boys would begin to talk in an animated way.

And the father would always interrupt them and say, yes, I see it all clearly now, which

he didn't.

And then he would pontificate for the next few minutes, totally dominating his boys, never

listening to them.

So it was a very frustrating experience relating to his father.

Lewis became something of a rebel during those student days.

Then he went into the war in World War I.

He was a soldier in France.

He was soon wounded.

It's not funny really, but he hardly was there and he was wounded.

And after being wounded fairly severely, he was brought back to England and put in a

hospital in London.

This was a very, very tender moment's life.

He was in the hospital in London for some eight months.

He wrote a long letter to his father after he got there because he felt estranged from

his father and apologized to his father for being a very terrible son.

He said, I've failed you.

I'm a very bad son, but I really want to be a good son now.

And his father was in Belfast.

Lewis was in the army hospital in London and he said, would you come over and see me?

His father didn't come.

So then Lewis wrote another letter, by the way, those letters are in this book.

They're really moving letters.

He wrote another letter saying, the people in the hospital think that I'm fantasizing about

my father in Belfast.

He had a little humor.

Lewis marvellous humor began to come out early in his letters.

He said, come and prove to everybody in the hospital that you're not a figment of my

imagination.

His father still never came.

He wrote a third letter to his father and said, the long and the short of it is, I'm lonely.

Do you know that the whole eight months that Lewis was in that hospital his father never

came from Belfast to London to see his wounded son?

Something happened very painfully in Lewis's life at that point.

And there was a kind of disengagement between he and his father.

And though he was loyal to his father and his father still stayed loyal to him financially,

his father was fairly well to do and helped him get on to Oxford where he finished his

schooling.

But there was a, the loneliness had made a deep mark.

And Lewis went into a period of atheism.

Lewis's father was ostensibly a Presbyterian in Northern Ireland, Belfast Presbyterian.

But Lewis abandoned the faith that he had to went into a period of agnosticism and atheism

and reached out.

He was interested in his closest friend in France, had been a young man named Moore who died

on the battlefield.

And his mother, Mrs. Moore, who Lewis hardly knew, but out of loyalty for his buddy in

France, Lewis took Mrs. Moore and started to, took care of her.

Even when he was a young student and then he became a tutor at Oxford, he took Mrs. Moore

into his home and cared for her.

And you know, to give you some feeling for Lewis's personality and character, he took

care of Mrs. Moore up until the day she died.

If you read Warren Lewis's memoir, you'll see that Warren Lewis has nothing good to say

about Mrs. Moore.

She was a pee-vish, angry, bitter woman, always complaining.

She never read a single book in her life, Warren Lewis said.

And here was this literary giant in her house and she was always needling and nagging Lewis.

But Lewis in effect adopted her as his mother and took care of this lady.

Mrs. Moore up until the day she died.

And Warren Lewis in the memoir, it breathes a great sigh of relief today, Mrs. Moore

died because he was living there too and had to put up with Mrs. Moore.

But this is just one more insight into Lewis's life.

At Oxford, a lot of things begin to happen.

He won a fellowship there in 1925 in English and he was there after, and soon afterward,

he graduated with honors and became a tutor in medieval literature and stayed as a tutor

at Oxford until 1954 and then he went to Cambridge University as the professor of medieval

literature at Cambridge until his death in November 22, 1963.

And so that's the story of his life.

In 1931, while at Oxford, as a tutor, he became a Christian.

The influences on his becoming a Christian are fascinating.

If you read Surprise by Joy, you can see how they converge.

Influences like G.K. Chesterton, who works orthodoxy and the everlasting man played their

part.

In fact, Surprise by Joy really comes out of a line from Chesterton where Chesterton says

joy is the serious business of heaven.

And is that surprise experience that he, Lewis, it never occurred to me that at the heart

of all reality was joy.

He learned that from Chesterton and of course from the gospel.

And that's the rationale for that title of that book, Surprise by Joy.

People like G.K. Chesterton and his great friend and lifelong friend, J.R.R. Tolkien,

who then became a permanent part of the Inklings group that met on Thursday night in C.S.

Lewis's apartments in Oxford for many years.

Charles Williams, who he said was the best man he ever knew in his life.

Other influences converge his brother, his own brother, played a role.

First Lewis became a theist.

And then finally in 1931, and he dates it down to an exact date, in 1931, writing in

his brother's motorcycle to Wipsenade Zoo.

He tells us in Surprise by Joy.

I began the motorcycle ride, not believing in the deity of Jesus Christ.

And when I arrived at the Wipsenade Zoo, I believed in the deity of Jesus Christ.

And it's just that sort of matter of fact way that Lewis describes his conversion.

All the pieces had been brought together.

He had read what you were supposed to read, I suppose.

He had thought about what you were supposed to think about.

And his brother in Tolkien and others had been trying to Tolkien, who was a very devout

Roman Catholic Christian.

And Chesterton of course, a Roman Catholic Christian.

And then people like Charles Williams and Anglican Christian had all been working on Lewis.

And then finally writing the sidecar of his brother's motorcycle, he decided that he

believed in the deity of Christ.

That belief never wavered again in his life.

As soon as he became a Christian, he wrote his first book about the Christian faith,

called Pilgrims Regress.

It's not one of Lewis's greatest books.

It was a book that he was punished for for many years.

He wrote Pilgrims Regress as a young tutor at Oxford.

It was a diplomatic error because he makes all of his villains too villainous.

But it's a kind of book that a young person would write, who has just had a great experience

in his life and is a little bit overstated.

His heroes are too heroic and his villains are too villainous.

And professors at Oxford thought they saw themselves in that book.

And it is a fact that C.S. Lewis, though he became the most famous man on the Oxford campus

by 1939-40, he was never given tenure.

He was never given a full professorship at Oxford.

Isn't that interesting?

He was always tutor in English and medieval literature.

It was Cambridge in 54 that called him as the full professor of medieval literature

at Cambridge and then Oxford sheepish and embarrassed also gave him a full professorship at Oxford.

But all those years he was punished by his colleagues.

But I want to tell you that's a very interesting thing.

He wrote to a young friend in 1935 that his though his inclination would have been to

have had a full chair.

Because then when you're a full chair you don't have to one meet students, two you don't

have to correct papers.

You don't have to have office hours.

Who wouldn't love that.

But it, and that's the Oxford system.

But because he was only a tutor, all his years at Oxford he had to meet students.

He had to read their papers and he had to hold office hours.

And as a result of that he wrote to a young friend Dom Bede Griffiths, a young Dominican

priest that became his close friend.

He wrote to him because of that I made one good friend in every student generation.

One of those was Dom Bede Griffiths.

He said I made a friend in every student generation because I had to meet students.

And also he became a brilliant lecturer.

He became a very good listener to the student world.

And I personally believe that one of the reasons Lewis was such a great communicator was

it precisely because he was not catapulted by fame and progress academically had not been

catapulted out of the arena where the students were.

And so it what seemed like a pvish kind of punishment of a man who wrote a foolish book.

And the fact that he written that Christian book that was admittedly too heavy handed.

He was kind of sorry he wrote that book.

And by the way it took him another whole nine years before he wrote a book about the Christian

faith again.

But it resulted in a good result for C.S. Lewis and for the world.

After that he after he wrote Pilgrims Regress and then as I say punished he then gave

himself to writing scholarly works and I'm not going to give you a list of all those.

Tomorrow night I'm going to give you a kind of a complete list of his writings.

But in 39 he finally decided the war was brewing in Europe.

He finally decided to write a major work and to take throw caution to the wind and to

really get his neck out on a heavy heavy thing.

And he wrote a book which is a very important book called The Problem of Pain.

His now first reentry, his great reentry into Christian writing.

That was 1939.

Then in 1942 he wrote his greatest work as far as literary acclaim goes.

He wrote a series of letters for the Manchester Guardian which were then later published in

an amazing book called The Scrutable Letters.

And those were a satirical defense of the Christian faith by the back door.

He wrote a letters of a senior devil to a junior devil on trying to tempt a person

the patient who has become a Christian.

And in those 33 letters C.S. Lewis reflects on every kind of theme.

He reflects on the war in Europe.

He reflects on sex.

He reflects on the meaning of prayer, the meaning of the devil, the meaning of love.

What love is?

What humility is?

Great themes.

He reflects on in a satirical fashion.

And that book is of course a real masterpiece.

New York Times called it the finest piece of Christian satire of the 20th century.

And that was his great book of 42.

Tomorrow night I'm going to read a couple of quotations from that book because I call

that one of his great apologetic masterpieces.

Then he turned to other works too.

Let me just give you sort of the kinds of things he wrote.

He wrote novels.

In the 40s he also turned to writing adult novels and wrote three really first-rate adult

novel science fiction called the trilogy.

Out of the silent planet, Parallandra and that hideous strength.

Everybody that ever went to a university campus has to read that hideous strength.

It's a terrifying study of university campuses.

And believe me it applies to Berkeley and I'm probably applies to Princeton.

But it was a remarkable novel.

And he also wrote apologetic works more of them.

The book miracles that I quoted in the university chapel this morning he wrote in 1946.

It's an uneven book.

It has parts of it that are really quite humdrum and parts that are flashes of sheer genius.

And that's typical of a lot of his apologetic works.

He wrote, he gave some radio lectures which were published in three books first and then

became one book that maybe his most famous book right now in the world.

It's the book called Mirchristianity.

And again those were done at that period.

Other apologetic works.

He wrote technical works in his own field of medieval literature and one of his brilliant

technical works is the book called Experimenting Criticism, one of my favorites.

He wrote more satire.

He wrote The Great Divorce, another satirical work first rate.

Personal letters.

He was a correspondent.

He answered letters every single day.

He wrote letters.

He said he hated write letters.

But every morning for an hour he answered letters always writing longhand.

And of course the letters of C.S. Lewis are priceless.

I'm going to give you just since I'm telling you that I'm going to read you a few.

Just the cute ones.

This is a letter he wrote to 1962, just to an inquire.

He wrote to many children, children in the United States, children in other countries

would write him letters.

He answered every letter that was written to him.

And those letters keep cropping up.

There was an American woman in Los Angeles who was a hypochondriac who started writing

letters to Lewis and he answered all of her complaining letters.

He didn't know anything about medicine, but she kept telling about her illnesses and

what she was feeling and he methodically answered all those silly letters that she wrote.

And some of those have been published in letters to American lady.

When I was at Wheaton College they've got the whole collection of all Lewis's letters

and I just glance at some of those and it really is priceless as he's trying to answer

her hypochondria because she's got a different ailment in every letter and because she wrote

he wrote back.

It's true.

If you wrote to Lewis he answered your letters and they were always written in his own

long hand.

He wrote to Dom Bede Griffiths, this man I mentioned earlier who if you've read a severe

mercy which is probably the last book that's been written on Lewis, it was called The Outstanding

Religious Book of Last Year by the way and it was written by Sheldon Vanuchen who was a young

scholar from the United States who went to Oxford and Lewis wrote 18 letters to him.

And those letters are published in that book of severe mercy but Dom Bede Griffiths writes

the poem that's in the opening sheet of severe mercy, the beautiful poem about C.S. Lewis.

But Dom Bede Griffiths was a young Dominican priest and he and Lewis were always having arguments

about spirituality.

Dom Bede Griffiths thought that Lewis was not spiritual enough, he was too intellectual

and Lewis thought that Dom Bede Griffiths was too spiritual and not intellectual enough.

So they were always carrying on this debate.

One night evidently Griffiths came back to Oxford and they had a real argument at night.

And so then Griffiths went back, felt very guilty and wrote a letter back to Lewis saying

I'm so sorry, I hope you'll accept my apology, I didn't want to hurt your feelings and

Lewis answered him this way, I memorized this letter, I found this at Wheaton in the collection.

I read all the Dom Bede Griffiths collection, they go from 1931 till 63 before Lewis died

and here's what he wrote to Griffiths.

My dear Griffiths, you needn't apologize, our friendship was begun in disagreement,

was nourished in argument and nothing of that sort can harm it.

That's an answer of sheer grace.

How many friends do you have where an argument doesn't destroy your friendship?

That's a great, I just love that.

My dear Griffiths, you needn't apologize, our friendship was begun in disagreement,

it was nourished in argument and nothing of that sort can harm it.

One person in 1962 asked him why he wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, and here's what

he said, I turned to fairy tales because that seemed the form which certain ideas and

images in my mind seemed to demand, as a man might turn to fugues because the musical

phrases in his head seemed to be good fugal phrases.

When I wrote Lion, Lion Witch and Wardrobe, I had no notion of writing the others, isn't

it interesting?

Everybody's wondered did he have a magician's nephew in mind when he wrote Lion Witch and

Wardrobe?

Oh no, that's why I should always read it in the proper order.

Start with Lion and go on.

When I wrote Lion, I had no notion of writing the others.

Writing children's stories certainly modified my habits of composition.

Thus, one, it imposed a strict limit on vocabulary, two, it excluded erotic love, three, it cut

down reflective and analytical passages, four, it led me to produce chapters of nearly equal

length for the convenience of reading aloud.

And then I love this last sentence, all these restrictions didn't be great good.

Here's another letter that I just love that he wrote to a friend in 1954, right after

he had published Lion, Witch and Wardrobe.

He said, would you believe it?

No, this is in connection with the letter, screw tape letters.

He writes to a friend, would you believe it?

An American school girl has been expelled from her school for having in her possession

a copy of my screw tape letters.

I asked my informant whether it was a communist school or a fundamentalist school or a Roman

Catholic school and I got the shattering answer, no, it was a select school.

He says that puts a chap in his place, doesn't it?

Lewis had a tremendous sense of humor.

Here's another thing he wrote, right after he'd written Lion, Witch and Wardrobe, somebody

asked him what he thought, what was how, again, about the writing of Lion and he writes

to this person.

I'm glad you liked Lion.

A number of mothers and still more school mistresses have decided that it is likely to frighten children.

So it is not selling very well.

But the real children like it.

That's a great line, the real children like it.

And I'm astonished how many very young ones seem to understand it, interesting.

I think it frightens some adults.

But very few children, he, I'm going to get to those children's stories in just a moment,

but he wrote autobiographically, he wrote, of course, his surprise by joy.

And also at the end of his life, after he, the brief marriage he had, the happy marriage

with Joy Davidman, which ended with her death of cancer, a very painful death, Lewis

went into a period of despair.

And out of that period, he wrote under a pseudonym, a book which then now, of course, is published

under his name, a beautiful book called A Grief Observed.

And by the way, if you've read Sheldon Vanneken's book, you know that Sheldon Vanneken

lost his wife to cancer, to a form of cancer.

And Lewis, in writing to Sheldon Vanneken, said to Vanneken, he was now back in the United

States, Sheldon, Lewis said to him, because Sheldon went into a deep depression, was even

courting suicide.

And Lewis was, was trying to be abrasive and trying to, to pull him back into reality.

And he said to Sheldon Vanneken, he said, what you experienced with your beloved David,

you have experienced a severe mercy, and that's where the title of Vanneken's book came.

Because he said, many people have had love die, but you died in love.

And that was a severe mercy.

It's better than having love die.

So Lewis wrote to him.

And Vanneken wrote back to Lewis and said, I deeply appreciate this grief observed.

And so when Lewis wrote his book, after the death of his wife, which was so painful,

and any of you who read that book, it's an amazing book, some think it's the greatest

thing Lewis ever wrote, was that book a grief observed.

He got his title as he gave severe mercy as the title, which became the title for Sheldon

Vanneken's book.

It was Sheldon Vanneken, this young Oxford student who gave him the title, a grief observed.

So he wrote that book.

One of the last books he wrote, which I think is a masterpiece, which many people have

not read.

And it's unfortunate because it is a masterpiece.

It's the letters to Malcolm chiefly on prayer.

Again, it's a fictitious book written to a fictitious Malcolm.

Though if you know Lewis's theology and know all the people of Lewis's life, you can

see Dom Bede Griffiths being answered here.

You can see different people in his life being answered by that amazing book, Letters to

Malcolm.

I highly recommend that book too.

Now toward the end of his life, starting in 1951, he died in 63 for seven years.

He's now a famous man.

He's now professor at Oxford at Cambridge.

He has secretaries now.

He doesn't have to meet students so much.

He's a very famous man.

He relaxes.

And one novel year for seven years, he created the Chronicles of Narnia.

And he wrote the seven Chronicles of Narnia between 51 through 57 and 58.

And then finally, he wrote, tell we have faces, his last novel.

Which Clyde Kilby and others who are C.S. Lewis's experts feel is the very finest thing

Lewis wrote.

So his powers were getting stronger and stronger.

And then finally, he died really a young man in his early 60s.

What I want to do tonight, now for the rest of the time I have, is I want to consider

with you the significance of C.S. Lewis now as a Christian thinker.

After that whips an A. Zoo ride, Lewis became convinced that Jesus Christ was Lord.

And he gave a great part of his life to trying to make the case for Christianity.

In fact, he wrote a book called The Case for Christianity.

And in these two nights now, I want to work with you on that.

Tonight, I want you to think of the significance of C.S. Lewis as a thinker.

But in order to narrow the topic, I'm going to tonight concentrate on his novels.

And then tomorrow night, on what we call apologetic writings, where he really tried to make

an apologetic statement and work with that part.

But tonight, his novels.

And I would like to do with you, if we have time, three themes that we find in Lewis.

And I'm going to do two readings so that Lewis has a chance to speak for himself too.

But I want to do two themes, or three themes if possible.

If I see we're running short in time, I'm going to have to cancel it down to two and just

elude to the third.

But I'd like to give you a kind of feeling for Lewis as a thinker.

What was it he thought?

What did he believe?

And how did he express it?

And express his worldview in what he wrote and the way he lived.

The first theme that I want us to consider tonight is the, and that you might be surprised

at the way, at the first theme I'm going to discuss because it sounds rather grim.

But the first theme that I'd like you to consider, because you really have to understand

all the other themes, is the first discovery that the children make upon entering Narnia

in the Chronicles of Narnia.

And it's the first experience that Professor Ransom makes out of the silent planet when

the great trilogy begins as he runs in while he's on a walk into the house of Dr. Weston.

And that is the reality of evil.

The reality of evil is a major theme in all of C.S. Lewis' writings.

He grapples seriously with the reality of evil.

Now evil should be seen here in two contexts.

One, he faces up squarely to the sense of what you might say, the full spectrum of evil.

And first of all, scene is in the what you might call garden variety evil.

The evil of weakness.

The evil of betrayal.

The evil of pride.

Lewis, in all of his writings, reflects profoundly on these garden variety evils.

Think of weakness, hummus.

Right away in line, which in Wardrobe, hummus is a fascinating portrayal of weakness.

Mark, in that hideous strength, a fascinating insight, psychological study of weakness

as an evil, form of evil.

And what it does.

Or betrayal, Edmund, in line, which in Wardrobe, the dissection, the understanding of the dynamics

of betrayal, of the betrayal of treachery, are studied with great sensitivity by C.S. Lewis

in that children's novel, in his study of Edmund, in line, which in Wardrobe.

More of the betrayal and pride of Eustace in voyage of the dawn treacher.

He's my favorite bad character in the Chronicles of Narnia.

Eustace, who is so bad and so beastly, and of course being a fantasy story, Lewis, and

this was so wonderful about fantasies.

I don't know if you're all into fantasy.

If you're not, you must read two books to get ready for this.

You must read the chapter in G.K.

Chesterton's orthodoxy called Elfland, and you must read the essay dedicated to Charles

Williams, read the chapter by J.R.R. Tolkien, where he gives his great defense for fantasy

literature.

And then you'll understand and appreciate what Lewis is doing in the Chronicles of Narnia.

Tolkien was very influential on Lewis and Lewis on Tolkien, as a matter of fact, in understanding

fantasy literature.

Fantasy is very important, but here's Eustace, a beastly boy.

Now how do you understand a beastly boy?

Well, if you've read voyage of dawn treacher, Lewis does it all out.

He has Eustace become a dragon, a real dragon.

And then you can really reflect on what it's like to be evil, proud, arrogant, powerful.

That's Eustace in voyage of dawn treacher, and lonely.

The loneliness of the dragon in the voyage of dawn treacher is powerfully moving, and

Lewis portrays that, and works with all these dimensions of evil, that dimension.

But there's still more in Lewis, as there is also in his writings of his great friend,

Tolkien, too.

And that is that Lewis not only considers evil, and you might say in his garden variety,

expressions, the evil of weakness, the evil of avarice and hatred, and of treachery, and

of pride, and all of that kind of evil.

But Lewis accepts the biblical portrayal of Satan, as moral, cosmic, personal will against

the will of God, evil at the cosmic level, evil that's above just the garden variety,

weaknesses that we have.

The evil that has, that where more is at stake, and I'm going to, I've tried to hear

to give a kind of definition of the biblical understanding of Satan or the devil, and I'm

going to define it this way, is that moral, personal, cosmic will against the will of God,

evil at that level, which is what the devil is in the Bible.

And Lewis takes that seriously.

He sees the gradation of evil.

Can I make a parenthetic comment here?

You'll see this in Tolkien, too, in Lord of the Rings, but you'll see it also in a movie

that's been recently made, which is fascinating in its portrayal of this, and that's the movie

Star Wars.

I don't know what you think of Star Wars.

I happen to think there's some very profound things in Star Wars.

One profound thing about Star Wars is the portrayal of evil.

And Star Wars borrowing greatly from Tolkien has shown a kind of gradation of evil, just

like Lewis does.

If you'll notice, in Star Wars you have the evil, if I can just give you a little sketch

of that portrayal in Star Wars.

You have the evil of weakness.

That would be the uncle of Luke Skywalker, who, the uncle and aunt, who don't want to

get involved.

You have the evil of the sand people who are just vicious and selfish and destructive,

but with not much intention.

You have the evil of those thieves who steal all the little computers.

I forget what they're called.

Then you have the evil of the Sodom and Gomorrah scene in the city, the most famous scene

in Star Wars, of the Sodom and Gomorrah scene in that bar room, which is a kind of chaotic,

the chaotic evil, without much meaning at all, total absence of meaning.

Then you have the evil of Luke Skywalker himself, which Obi-Wan Kenobi must discipline.

The evil of the desire for revenge.

Remember that after he's seen the desolation of his own family, he wants to get revenge

against those opponents, the intergalactical opponents.

Luke Skywalker has to learn from Obi-Wan Kenobi that that will destroy him, that that is

not a motivation he can use.

It's not a weapon he can use.

It itself is an evil.

Then there's his friend who has the evil you might say of doubt and all that.

You move into the death star and you move into the space star itself.

In the death star, you have two more fascinating portrayals of evil.

One is that great committee.

This is the most terrifying part of Star Wars.

The committee, everybody dressed in not great flannel suits, but gray turtleneck suits.

All sitting around the table, they're all secularists.

They don't believe in anything divine or demonic.

They're secularists sitting around destroying stars right and left and planets right and

left by decision.

They're a bureaucratic evil with immense power.

Remember when Darth Vader walks into that room and one of the bureaucrats is saying, I

don't believe in all this mysticism and all, Darth Vader walks over to him and he begins

to suffocate.

Then suddenly he becomes a believer.

There's that bureaucratic evil.

The evil of just this sort of cold, calculating bureaucracy, you might say, in the death star.

But then in Star Wars, there's an evil that's even greater and it's the evil represented

by Darth Vader and that's a spiritual evil.

It's an evil fought at a higher level with greater stakes and that's Darth Vader.

He can only be opposed by an opponent who understands that mystery.

Now all this is out of Tolkien.

If you read Lord of the Rings, in fact, Lucas who lives in Marin County crossed the bay

from us.

He's now our most wealthy Californian.

He admitted that it was out of JR Tolkien that he got really the inspiration for Star Wars.

You might say the mythology, the fantasy of Star Wars.

But what you're seeing there is in all good fantasy literature, as Tolkien himself says,

there must be the sense of battle of what he calls catastrophe.

And then later, eucatastrophe, the good catastrophe is the battle where the good wins.

But that battle is basic because it's basic to all of life.

Lewis sees that also.

And in the Chronicles of Narnia, he portrays, you remember that when the children first

arrived in Narnia, this fantasy world, Lewis creates in the Chronicles of Narnia, wrote

seven novels about this world.

As the children enter Narnia, they are made aware of the reality of evil.

And notice in Lewis's first portrayal of evil, it's portrayed as cold.

It's where it's always winter, but never Christmas.

That's the way he describes it.

The evil is portrayed as coldness.

The evil there is portrayed as the tempter.

Remember how the winter witch, the winter queen, temps Edmund with Turkish Delight.

I remember when I went to England, I was so surprised to see there is such a thing as

Turkish Delight.

It's a candy that every kid wants to buy.

We've been bringing back to me, Turkish Delight ever since, because they know I love see

as Lewis's writings.

So Edmund is tempted by the tempter.

The evil is portrayed as a destroyer.

The winter witch destroys endeavors to kill Aslan, the great lion.

Evil is portrayed as powerful, but not ultimately powerful.

The power of the evil, the power that this cosmic evil has in the Chronicles of Narnia,

is the power itself, which is penultimate.

It's very great, but it still does not have the last word.

In Lion Witch and Wardrobe, we discover that it's a power.

She understood the mystery, but not the deep mystery.

Not the mystery behind the mystery, that she did not understand.

So she has power, but not the deep mystery.

If you read the Silmarillion, the latest book that's been published of the JR Tolkien,

you'll know that he's grappling with the same things in the origins of evil in Middle

Earth, where there is the sense of the power that evil has, but it is not an ultimate power.

Yet it is a power that is spiritual, it's a reality, it has to be grappled with.

This is in the Chronicles of Narnia.

In every Chronicle, there is this grappling with evil.

It's present in all the Chronicles.

Now leave it aside for just a moment, because I want you to see a second theme alongside

it.

If Lewis exists, believes in the existence of evil, he believes even more in the existence

of ultimate good.

Now the sense of good is present in the trilogy, the space trilogy of C.S. Lewis.

In that trilogy, the sense of ultimate good is profoundly hidden, very much in the same

way as in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and in Charles Williams, Decent into Hell, War

in Heaven, the sense of the hiddenness of ultimate good.

Lewis is very indebted also to Charles Williams, who is a great hero of his.

The sense of ultimate goodness, and of course in Star Wars too, there's the sense of ultimate

goodness hidden in that sense of the force, and Obi-Wan Kenobi as the prophet, kind of

like a Gandalf the Wizard, if you've noticed the Gandalf the Wizard in the Lord of the Rings,

he's Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, of course, with his rod and everything, and he is in touch

with that sense of ultimate good, which in Star Wars is called the Force, but that's

the kind of hiddenness you have in the space trilogy and also in Tolkien and in Charles

Williams.

What?

Now here's a big point I want you to get a hold of.

In the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis decided to dare to portray the full truth that ultimate

good is really knowable by mere men and women and even boys and girls, children.

And this is what he achieves in the Chronicles of Narnia, and he does it with skill.

He does it preserving the hiddenness and the mystery, yet portraying ultimate good as

specific, concrete, personal, and that's the great golden lion, Aslan.

The golden lion, Aslan, is the son of the emperor from beyond the sea.

And he is the Christ figure in C.S. Lewis.

Somebody asked C.S. Lewis what he was trying to do in his portrayal of Aslan, in his portrayal

of Narnia, and in a letter he wrote just a month before he died, Lewis said this.

He said, they asked him he was writing allegorically, he said, no, I'm not writing allegorically,

but what I did was this.

I said, given a place like Narnia, I wondered what the Redeemer would be like.

I wondered what evil would be like.

I wonder what it would be like to have faith, given a place like Narnia.

And so what he did was he created a fantasy world alongside of our world, and then wondered

what the Redeemer would be like.

And that's what he does in the Chronicles of Narnia.

And unlike what he did in the space trilogy, at which he did very much like what Tolkien

does in Lord of the Rings, keeps the sense of ultimate goodness hidden, which is also profound.

Lewis dared in the Chronicles to express this full truth, which of course is the full

truth of the Christian gospel, that the ultimate goodness of God, the ultimate omega,

the alpha and the omega of God, his word and work, the mystery of his goodness has become

knowable by mere man, woman.

And that's what he achieves in the Chronicles.

Now notice in the Chronicles of Narnia how you meet him.

You'll notice in the Chronicles, first you're always unaware that a meeting is going to take

place.

In this he always preserves the mystery.

No one is really aware they're going to meet Aslan.

And they're always surprised by how they meet him and what and what who he is.

Remember Lucy, in line with you Wardrobe, when she hears that from the Mr. Beaver, you

know the animals all talk in the Chronicles of Narnia, and she hears Mr. Beaver that they

have been called into Narnia by Aslan, the son of the emperor from beyond the sea.

Because these two children, sons of Adams and daughters of Eve and sons and daughters

of Eve and Adam have been drawn into Narnia for a great mission by Aslan.

And he's now moving in the east and we're going to meet him.

Oh, Lucy says how wonderful I can't wait to meet him.

And then it spills out in the conversation that Aslan is a lion.

And then Lucy says, he's one of the great lions of Lewis.

And she says, well, I'm not sure I want to meet a lion, is he quite safe?

You know that great lion?

And Lewis has Mr. Mrs. Beaver answering, Mr. Beaver says safe.

Who said anything about Aslan being safe?

Of course he's not safe, but he's good.

And you know this is priceless.

This is the way Aslan always is.

He's always the wild lion.

He's not a tame lion.

He's not under anybody's captivity.

He doesn't belong to anybody.

He is who he is.

And when I'm going to do a reading in a moment, I think that will let Aslan speak for himself.

But there is this sense in which the mystery is preserved, yet the children meet him,

but they never know they're going to meet him really.

It's on his terms.

You get even in Magician's nephew, though, they use that magic ring to get into Narnia.

Still, it's because Aslan calls them in.

There are also baffling signs in all the chronicles.

And Lewis preserves this, the baffling sign, of course, of the signposts you meet in

line, which in wardrobe, the baffling sign of the thaw, the strange thaw that's occurring,

and these sort of signs that occur.

Also we discover who Aslan is by what he does.

These are profound theological nuances in Lewis.

We discover who Aslan is by what he does.

He creates, and the portrayal of creation in Magician's nephew is just amazing.

Remember, they're all standing there, and Aslan is walking around singing, and while he sings,

the Narnia comes into creation.

That's Lewis' interpretation of Genesis 1.

In the beginning, God said, let there be light, Lewis makes one slight change.

In the beginning, God sang, let there be light.

I love that.

You know, there is a psalm that says, the Lord sang over his creation.

So Lewis has a biblical basis for that.

But that's his little slight innovation of Genesis 1.

In the beginning, God sang, let there be light.

And while Aslan sings, the world comes into creation.

But it's very interesting, not everybody hears him sing.

Uncle Andrew, who hates Aslan, hears him growl.

He only hears a growl.

And that, of course, also, you can see Lewis is the theologian at work here.

The way you look at creation depends on what you think of the creator.

If you think the creator is against you and threatening you, then you look at the creation

as a growl.

But if you see the creator with wonder and excitement like Freddie and the others who

are standing there, and then the creation has that sense of wonder and joy.

Lewis saw this.

This is again, he owed that to GK Chesterton, the serious business of heaven is joy.

It was exciting when God made the world, and Lewis caught all of that.

So we see Aslan and learn who he is by what he does.

And of course, the deepest thing he does is when he redeems.

When he redeems Edmund.

And that's some moving scene, of course, in line, which in wardrobe.

He redeems Edmund by taking Edmund's place and fulfilling the deeper magic than what

the wicked witch, a winter queen, understood.

And then, of course, we see Aslan in terms of who he is by what he does for Eustus.

Eustus is this dragon.

I remember, I told you about him a moment ago, and he got so lonely as a dragon.

And he finally, he wanted to be undragon.

How do you undragon a dragon?

Finally he tells the story himself in the voyage of Don Trader when he comes back as a boy

again.

And he tells the story about how he was standing there in the beach as a dragon and crying.

And his dragon tears were falling on the ground, and Aslan came and drew him up, told him

to come up to a pool, and then said to him, undress.

And Eustus tried to undress, so he said, how can I undress?

The magnum is in portrayal of repentance.

He said, well, so I figured if I'm a snake, I can take my skin off.

So he started tearing off the scales of skin.

And he tore off outer layer, another layer, felt good at first.

But he finally found him just layer after layer of dragon around him.

And the deeper he got, the worse he looked, taking off layer after layer.

Finally he couldn't do it anymore, and he still was still a dragon.

So Aslan says to him, I'll have to undress you.

So Eustus tells Edmund that he then laid down on the ground, and the great lion he said

he took his claw, and I thought his claw would go all the way through to my heart.

And he ripped the dragon off me, and underneath a little boy, and he threw me into the pool.

You explain repentance and forgiveness better than that.

Having the dragon ripped off.

It hurts, salty, joyous, Lewis catches both of those always.

So you understand who Aslan is by what he does.

That is profoundly New Testament.

In the New Testament we understand who God is by what he does.

It's true in the Old Testament too.

In the Old Testament God doesn't say to the Israelites, I love you.

He says, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

That's love.

I did something, and in the New Testament it's the same thing.

So Lewis understands that.

And then of course finally we understand Aslan by his companionship and the way he comes

alongside and finds us and finds the characters.

Now there was one more theme I wanted to mention, but I want to do two readings, because

it's now 9 o'clock and I'd like to do just two readings for you, that give you a chance

to see Lewis speak for himself, to get you some feeling of the way he forms his worldview

in just what he writes, I want to read from two novels.

And the first reading will maybe illustrate this and show us the way Aslan himself is

revealed to us by the portrayal, and you can see this portrayal of ultimate good, and

the way Lewis makes it known.

This is from the book The Horse and his Boy.

I love this book.

This is my son's favorite book.

We've read all the Chronicles of Narnia aloud to our children.

We've now done it three times because we have three sets of ages of children.

We have a 16 year old and a 12 year old and an 8 year old, and we've been going through

them for each youngster.

And we really love them in our family, and my advice to people who are reading the Chronicles

of Narnia is don't do what I'm going to do.

Now I'm going to read them with some theological questions on our minds, but we've read them

and we advise this, read them always without any comment at all, let the story make its

own mark completely with the youngster, and don't worry, the implications begin to have

a wonderful way of, as someone said, in fact it was a newsweek, a critic once said there

is a snare in the Chronicles of Narnia for an unwary atheist.

And it is true that they have caught many, many an unaware atheist has been snared in

the Chronicles of Narnia.

In Horse's Boy, it's a novel about a little boy named Shasta, who is born and mysteriously

arrives on a beach, raised up by a fisherman, stern fisherman, who is not a very nice father.

Maybe I told you about C.S. Lewis's father might be coming through in the story a little

bit.

The stern fisherman is not a real nice father, in fact to prove it.

How would you like this for your father?

Shasta, a very imposing visitor comes who is riding a big horse, and he's in there talking

to his father, and Shasta just happens to overhear this Tashbaan soldier talking to his father,

and he realizes his father is negotiating to sell Shasta to this soldier.

How would you like a dad who did that?

So hearing that, he's very blue, naturally, he goes out to the stable, and then he has

a shock, because in the stable there's a horse, and the horse talks to him.

And the horse turns out to be a horse named Bree, and that's why this book is called

the horse in his boy, because the horse talks to Shasta and says, you know, if I were you

had to make a break for it.

Because the horse turns out as a Narnia horse, it's been kidnapped from Narnia and is in

Tashbaan, and he belongs to this soldier, and he says to Shasta, if you were smart, you

make a break for it like I'd, and I'll go with you.

So Shasta, I don't know how to ride a horse, it's all right.

You don't need to, I'll do the ride, I'll ride, you just get on my back.

So Shasta gets in the back of Bree, and they make a break for it.

Well, amazing things happen.

They're riding along, and at one point they see another horse with a girl on it.

It's kind of a quite dramatic story.

There's a girl on it named Aravis.

She's riding a horse named Hwin, a girl horse, and she's riding, she's run away, done a

very bad thing, she ran away to, she drugged her mate, because she heard she's going to be

sold in marriage to a big fat Tashbaan prince, it's going to marry her, and she's going

to marry him.

So she's running away, too, and she found a talking horse, also from Narnia, she's running

away, then a scary thing happens, a lion scares her, and drives her into the water, and an

lion scares Bree, and drives them into the water, and so Aravis and Bree and Hwin and Shasta

all meet.

And they discover their plight, their mutual plight, they're both making a break for it

from Tashbaan, this enemy country, and so they decide to go together.

They'll make a break together.

They're going along, they have all kinds of experiences, that's this novel is about,

they come into one city, and they're on their way to Narnia, when they're in a city they

hear that Rabadash, who is the general of the Tashbaan armies, is going to go up to Narnia

and is going to do a surprise attack on Narnia and destroy all of, well actually it's Archen

Land, an ally of Narnia, and destroy the whole country.

King Lune and all the people are going to be killed, and they hear this, secretly, and

Anornian prince happens to be in that town, and he says to Shasta, listen I can't make

a break for it now, but you go up and warn King Lune, that Rabadash and his troops are

coming.

Now that's then the exciting part of the story, oh it's exciting, Shasta and Aravis and

the two horses now make a break for it, they're just going as fast as they can, racing the

troops of Rabadash.

They're going on their way up to Narnia and to Archenland to warn King Lune that Rabadash

and his troops are coming to mercilessly kill them all.

And he has scary experiences in the way, one night friends he has to sleep in the tombs

out, and he's very superstitious, he's scared of death because he's a superstitious boy

raised in a superstitious country, and when he's sleeping out there there's shackles

out there, and oh that isn't bad enough, while the shackles are, and lion comes up and

scares the shackles away, but still imagine a lion, and then when he's scared of the lion

then a little p**** cat came up, which was nice, slept with him that night, and that

did comfort him.

And then the next day they're making their racing on, and they're getting tired or

tired of trying to race against Rabadash, and they're just about ready to quit when

another terrible thing happened, a lion came up and chased the horses, and it scratched

Aravis on the back even, Aravis was scratching the back, Shasta became courageous and opposed

the lion, that was really courageous, the lion ran away then, but they finally arrived

at the house of the hermit, and now the horses are so tired that they can't go another

step.

So Shasta is sent on by foot to go on and warn King Lune that Rabadash and his troops

are coming, and Shasta now struggles on by foot, he comes up to the troops and there's

King Lune and King Lune at first says, ah, core my son, no no I'm not your son, I just

look like your son, he met another guy from Narnia in that little town that looked

just like him, and he says, now I'm not your son, I'm Shasta, I'm from this town down

here, and King, you've got to be warned, Rabadash and his troops are coming right behind

us, and they're going to go in and destroy your city.

And so King Lune puts him on a horse and says, all right, come on, we'll march to the

city and get ready for them.

And Shasta gets on the horse and they all go racing off, the only trouble was, Bree never

taught Shasta how to use spurs, because he would never allow Shasta to use spurs on him,

and he shasted to know how to ride horses, because he breathed, it was, remember the story

is the horse and his boy, it's not the boy and his horse.

So Shasta didn't know how to, he didn't know what to do, so all the troops go racing

off to Narnia, and Shasta is just, got a horse that won't even run.

And then the fog comes in, and he can't find his way, and not only that, he comes to

a dividing in the road, and he goes in one way, and then the troops of Rabadash come up,

fortunately they didn't see him, and they pass by him, he hears them telling their plans,

but fortunately he knows the King has been warned, they go on their way, and that's

the point we pick up Shasta for the reading, I had to get it ready, had to get you ready

for the reading.

Shasta is very, very discouraged, and so he says, I do think, Shasta, that I must be the

most unfortunate boy who ever lived in the whole world.

Everything goes right for everyone else except me, those Narnian, lords and ladies get away

safe from Tashbaan, I'm left behind.

Aravis and Bree and Hwin are all snug as anything in that old Hermit's house.

Of course I'm the one that was sent on.

Having a Lune in his people must now have got safely into the castle and shut the gates

long before Rabadash arrived, but I got left out, and being very tired, and having nothing

inside him, he felt very sorry for himself, and the tears rolled down his cheeks.

What put a stop to all this was a sudden fright.

Shasta discovered that someone or somebody was walking beside him.

It was pitch dark, and he could see nothing, and the thing or person was going so quietly

that he could hardly hear any footfalls.

What he could hear was breathing.

His invisible companion seemed to breathe on a very large scale.

By the way, Shasta doesn't know anything about, you know, he's a superstitious little boy

from Tashbaan, he's been raised on superstition all his life, and he's been told all his

lives that there are monsters in Narnia, and talking animals and everything up there,

and it's a deadly place to go.

Remember he was raised down in Tashbaan.

And so he heard this breathing on a large scale.

Shasta got the impression it was a very large creature, and he had come to notice this breathing

so gradually that he had really no idea how long it had been there.

It was a horrible shock.

It darted into his mind that he had learned long ago that there were giants in these northern

countries.

He bit his lip and terror, but now that he had read something to cry about, he stopped crying.

He was in the war, he knows about that.

The thing, unless it was a person, was went on beside him so very quietly that Shasta

began to hope that he only imagined it.

But just as he was quite sure of it, and becoming quite sure of it that he imagined it,

there suddenly came a deep, rich sigh out of the darkness beside him.

That couldn't be imagination.

Anyway, he felt the hot breath of the sigh on his chilly left hand.

If the horse had been any good, or if he had known how to get any good out of the horse,

and here's where Bree and his pride had sure not been much help to Shasta, he should have

let Shasta learn how to use spurs, but see Bree was very proud of horse.

If the horse had been any good, or if he had known how to get any good out of the horse,

he would have risked everything to break away at a wild gallop.

But he couldn't make the horse gallop, and so he went on walking at a walking pace,

and the unseen companion walked and breathed to beside him.

And the last he could bear it no longer, who are you?

Who are you, he said, scarcely above a whisper.

Now you're going to begin a priceless dialogue in C.S. Lewis.

This is Lewis at his best.

One who has waited long for you to speak said the thing.

His voice was not loud, but very large and deep.

Are you a giant, said Shasta, as Shasta?

Now this answer is very interesting, by the way, it's Aslan, who's on the side of him.

He doesn't know anything about Aslan yet, he's going to know very soon.

This is one of those meetings I was telling you about with Aslan.

Are you a giant, said Shasta, and the answer is very theologically profound.

You might call me a giant, said the large voice, but I am not like the creatures you

call giants.

That's deep.

Notice how, if you ever thought about how Jesus Christ doesn't reject our definitions,

but on the other hand, he doesn't accept them.

He draws them into a larger context, but he doesn't say, oh no, no, you've got all the

wrong language, you can't use your language, you've got to use my language.

He uses it, he says, you might call me a giant, but not like the creatures you call giants.

See, very profound.

Shasta continues, I can't see you at all, said Shasta, after staring very hard.

Then for an even more horrible thought came into his eye, into his head.

He said almost in a scream, you're not something dead, are you?

Oh, please, please go away, what harm have I ever done?

Oh, I'm the unluckiest person in the whole world.

He's very scared of death.

Remember, he was worried about the tombs and all that.

He's very superstitious, boy.

Once more he felt the warm breath of the thing on his hand and face, there, it said, that

is not the breath of a ghost.

Tell me your sorrows, I love that line.

Shasta was a little reassured by the breath, so he told how he had never known his real

father or mother, how he had been brought up sternly by the fisherman, and then he told

the story of his escape, and how they were chased by lions, and forced to swim for

their lives, and then of their dangers in Tashbaan, and about the night among the tombs,

and how beasts howled at him out of the desert, and he told about the heat, and the thirst

of their desert journey, and how they were almost at their goal when another lion chased

them and wounded Arabus, and also how very long it had been since he had anything to eat.

It's a boy, remembering the story, with a big appetite.

The answer is, the large voice speaks to him, I do not call you unfortunate, said the large

voice.

Well, don't you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions, said Shasta?

There was only one lion, said the voice.

What on earth do you mean?

I've just told you that there were at least two the first night, and there was only one,

and he was swift to foot, and Shasta says, how do you know?

And then Aslan says, I was the lion, and as Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing,

the voice continued, I was the lion who forced you to join with Arabus.

I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead.

You know, I love that.

Because we have to have the ultimate good come down to our size.

You know, a great lion, Lewis says, the lion, Aslan is like the lions of Trafalgar Square,

they're really big.

I was in London this summer, and I drove by Trafalgar Square, and I saw those four great

lions in Trafalgar Square, and they were, and this is the truth, I drove, I wish I had

my camera with me.

I went by there on a taxi, and they were eight kids sitting on the back of one of those

lions.

That's how big they are.

But that's not much comfort in the tombs of the dead.

You can't snuggle up to a lion that big when you're so scared of giants.

But a little cat, he could snuggle up against, and he said he did.

I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead.

I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept.

I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should

reach King Lune in time.

When I was the lion, you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay a child

near death so that it came to shore where a man sat wakeful at midnight to receive you.

Shasta had been a little baby on a boat, pushed ashore from a sinking ship.

He's a Moses, and this fisherman found him.

It was you who wounded Aravis.

Shasta has a great sense of justice.

And as one always tells the truth, it was I.

But why?

Child said the voice, I am telling you your story, not hers.

I tell no one any story but his own.

C.S. Lewis got that from the last chapter of John, John's Gospel when Peter sees John

and says, what about that disciple, Lord?

And Jesus says, don't you worry about him, you follow me.

I don't tell you about him.

I tell you about you.

And that's where Lewis got that idea.

That's in several of the novels by the way.

Lewis puts that in.

I tell you your story.

I don't tell you anybody else's story.

It's nice for Christians to remember that by the way.

We wouldn't be so sure other people are going to hell if we knew that Jesus Christ tells

us our story, not somebody else's story.

Who are you, said Shasta?

And now comes the great end of this theophany.

Myself said the voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook.

And again, myself, loud and clear and gay.

And then a third time, myself, whispered so softly, you could hardly hear it.

And yet it seemed to come from all around as if the leaves rustled with it.

Rest it was no longer afraid that the voice belonged to something that would eat him,

nor was it the voice of a ghost, but a new and different sort of trembling came over

him, yet he felt glad to.

And you have to read the rest of the horse in his boy.

If you haven't already, I'm sure many of you have to find out what happens to Shasta.

It's really marvelous.

That if you are a study of students at the Hebrew language, you know that myself, myself,

is almost the same thing that Moses heard at the Burning Bush when he says,

who are you?

And God says, I am who I am.

I will be who I will be.

I speak for myself.

That's Lewis.

And I think it gives you a feeling for his portrayal of ultimate good.

Ultimate good is discovered by what Aslan says and what he does.

And I didn't want to give you that reading, so you had a chance just to see it for yourself.

The last theme, and I'm sorry my time is about gone, so I want to just say that the last

theme is that Lewis has a great deal to say that I want to talk about tonight, there are

many other themes, is that Lewis has a lot to say in the Chronicles about what I call

the Dynamics of Faith, but I want to talk about that in more depth tomorrow night,

so I'll just introduce it tonight.

The Dynamics of Faith, in other words, he has a lot to say about us.

Notice what we've done in this little trilogy tonight.

Lewis, we've tried to understand Lewis's portrayal of evil, because you've got to grapple

with evil to understand good, and his portrayal of ultimate good.

But Lewis also, in throughout all of his novels, has a great deal to say about us, and what

it means to believe, what it means to struggle in belief, what it means to be a disciple

of Aslan.

And the Dynamics of Faith, we saw some of them here in the Shasta encounter with Aslan,

the Dynamics of Faith are profoundly portrayed in the Chronicles of Narnia.

It's very interesting that faith in the Chronicles is always portrayed in gradual steps.

You'll notice that here.

There is a sense, that great line, when Shasta finally says, who are you?

And Aslan says, one who has waited long for you to ask.

There is a sense in which Aslan, Lewis saw this clearly, you see it in the Chronicles

and also in Screwtape Letters, that even God, with all his almighty power, does not cast

out our freedom.

One who's waited long for you to ask.

And Lewis also points up the role that other people play in our own journeys.

And of course, you might say Lewis is the understanding of the Dynamics, of Discipleship,

and the Dynamics of Koinonia, of Christian Fellowship, is profound in the Chronicles.

The relationship between Puddleglum and Jill and Eustace is marvelous in the Silver Chair.

Puddleglum is so grouchy, who's so negative.

And Eustace and Jill, who are so optimistic, but yet they need each other.

Jill and Eustace, with their optimism, are not too discerning.

Puddleglum, with all of his discernment, if it hadn't been for Jill and Eustace, he'd

still be sitting there as a marsh-wiggle and would never have gone after Prince Rilian.

Yet when the Jill and Eustace couple long, and he does go after Prince Rilian, yet in

that dire moment when they're all being tempted, is Puddleglum, who's a marsh-wiggle.

Marsh-wiggle's smell very bad when they're burning.

It was Puddleglum who put his foot, Marsh-wiggle's foot, it's kind of like a duck foot.

He put it on the fire and burnt Marsh-wiggle with such a terrible smell that it cleared

everybody's head when they were being tempted.

That's Lewis's humor.

I love it.

And so Jill and Eustace needed Puddleglum, and Puddleglum needed Jill and Eustace.

And you see that little dynamic in all of Lewis's writings, this sense in which we need

each other.

He needed Dom Bede Griffiths.

That's why even though they argued all the time in their relationship, they needed each

other.

And that's a beautiful thing that's present in Lewis.

But the main thing that Lewis sees in terms of our discipleship is that the experience

of faith is primarily a faith and a discovery of the character of Aslan himself.

It's the discovery of his character that liberates, and of his character that in all of the encounters,

it's very interesting.

Lewis is never just interested that a person meet the power of Aslan, but it's always

the character of Aslan, that they understand what makes him tick.

And I think, of course, this is a profoundly, this is a profound gospel insight on Lewis's

part.

There is about 10 minutes.

Can I read one more reading?

Or you probably have to all go study.

But can I do one more quick reading?

This is from Silver Chair, and I won't have to tell you the whole story of Silver Chair

because this is the beginning of the book.

I couldn't tell you about Shasta without a single whole story, because if you didn't know

about the, you know, Hugh and Bre, you would make any sense out of it.

This is the beginning of Silver Chair, so I don't have to tell you so much.

One of my favorites.

Somebody asked me when I favor it in the novel of Lewis's, and I guess I'd have to say

it's Silver Chair.

I guess it's because I love Puddleglum.

I know so many people like him.

And he's so neat.

This is Eustace, remember the guy who was the dragon in The Voyage of Dawn Treader.

He's now a real good guy.

He didn't instantly become a great guy, but he began to change and says, and everybody

noticed what happened and he, the cure was taking effect.

And Eustace now, this is a brand new novel.

He's back at Experiments School, Lewis hates Experiments School because he hated

prep schools that he was in.

And he's back at Experiments School and he's found this girl named Jill who's been

persecuted by everybody.

And they're standing out there and he says, you know, I know a land, a world, another

world.

And he's telling Jill about this other world.

I don't know how to get there exactly, but there is another world.

And then they were being chased.

You see, you can't get into Narnia, unless Aslan asks and calls you into Narnia.

And so anyway, they were being chased by some bullies.

And there was a hole in the wall.

They ran through the hole in the wall and Faroum, just like Dorothy in the Wizard of

Oz.

There they are in the land of Narnia.

Wow.

And they're walking along.

And of course, he knows we're in there in Narnia.

And they walk up to a great cliff.

And this cliff is so high, talk about description.

It's so high, Lewis says, that when they look over the edge of the cliff, as far down as

they can see, they see clouds.

But the earth is still that far again below the clouds, it's a long way to stand.

And Jill then discovers, here's a little bit of human sinfulness that comes in.

Remember, Lewis always has a lot of portrayal of sinfulness.

Jill discovers that Eustace has vertigo, a fear of heights.

And he walks up to, and he's scared.

Jill doesn't.

She's not afraid of heights.

So she walks over to the edge of the cliff.

And it's sort of standing like this, you know.

And Eustace is so panicked by Jill standing over the edge of the cliff.

I'm not afraid of heights.

But he reaches for her.

Oh, by the way, while she's standing there, she does get a little faint.

Because it is a little more heights than she was used to.

She'd only been to the Eiffel Tower in a few places like that.

And she's standing there.

And while she's showing off, she herself gets a little faint.

Jill Eustace, who is courageous, reaches for her, slips and falls.

Starts to go down.

And when he falls, he cries out of great cry of agony.

You know, have you ever had any, I've never had that happen to me.

Anybody falling over.

But I've seen it in movies.

And he falls over.

And this great cry of agony.

But if that isn't bad enough, she didn't know anything about Aslan.

While that's happening, in the horror of the moment, a huge lion appears.

And his mouth is open wide.

But it's no sound coming out.

Just like a rush of wind.

It's kind of a strange thing.

He expected a great growl.

But a great rush of wind.

And that is terrifying.

So then she just falls on her face down on the ground and she's just crying and frightened

to death.

Not only because her best friend Eustace is now falling, but also a lion is attacking

them too.

Okay, and that's where I'll pick up the story to tell you so much for this one.

It must be a dream.

It must be a dream, said Jill to herself.

I'll wake up in a moment.

But it wasn't.

And she didn't.

I do wish we'd never come to this dreadful place, said Jill.

I don't believe Scrubb knew any more about this than I do.

That was Eustace's last name, Scrubb.

Or if he did, he had no business to bring me here and without warning me what it was

like.

It's not my fault he fell over the cliff.

If he left me alone, we should all both be all right.

And then she remembered again the scream that Scrubb had given when he fell and she burst

into tears.

Here's one of the great pastoral lines, psychological lines of C.S. Lewis.

Crying is all right in a way while it lasts.

But you have to stop sooner or later and then decide what to do.

Anger is all right in a way while it lasts.

Sooner or later, you have to stop and then decide what to do.

Anger is all right in a way while it lasts.

Sooner or later, you have to stop and then decide what to do.

Joy is all right in a way while it lasts.

But sooner or later, you have to stop and then decide what to do.

Joy is all right in a way while it lasts.

But sooner or later, you have to stop and then decide what to do.

You see, Lewis is marvelous.

You can throw in a whole bunch of words there but he's talking about crying.

Crying is all right in a way.

Crying is all right in a way.

Don't say don't cry.

Don't say to a person, don't be effusive and emotional.

Emotion is wonderful.

All right in a way while it lasts.

A pause is all right in a way while it lasts.

Sooner or later, you have to stop and decide what to do.

You can throw everything you want.

Studying is all right in a way.

Okay, I just thought I didn't want to let that go by because it's so...

It's so pasturally sensitive, Lewis is so wise.

Okay, crying is all right in a way while it lasts.

But sooner or later, you have to stop and then you have to decide what to do.

When Jill stopped, she found she was dreadfully thirsty.

Profound, psychological insight.

She had been lying face down and now she's set up.

The birds had seen there was a perfect silence except for one small persistent sound

which seemed to come a great distance away.

She listened carefully and felt almost sure it was a sound of running water.

She got up and looked around carefully.

There was no sign of the lion but there were so many trees that there could...

He could easily be quite close to her now and for all she knew there could be several lions.

But her thirst was so bad now that she plucked up her courage to go and look for the running water.

She went on tiptoes, stealing cautiously from tree to tree and stopping to peer around at every step.

The wood was so still that it was not difficult to decide where the sound was coming from.

It grew clearer every moment.

Sooner than she expected, she came to an open glade and saw the stream right as glass,

running across the turf, a stone threw away from her.

But although the side of the water made her feel ten times thirstier than before,

she didn't rush forward and drink.

She stood as still as she had been turned to stone with her mouth wide open.

And she had a very good reason.

Just on this side of the stream lay the lion.

It lay with its head raised, its two four paws out in front of it,

like the lions in Trafalgar Square.

Ten children on top.

That's a big lion.

I really respect this lion.

She knew it once and it had seen her.

For its eyes looked straight into hers for a moment and then turned away,

like the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Lion.

Turned away.

As if it knew her quite well and didn't think much of her.

I love that way.

If I run away, it'll be after me in a moment.

Thought Jill, if I go on, I'll run right into its mouth.

Anyway, she couldn't have moved if she tried.

She couldn't take her eyes off it.

How long this lasted?

She could not be sure it seemed like hours.

And the thirst became so bad that she almost felt she would not mind being eaten by the lion

if she could only be sure of getting a mouth full of water first.

Now the surprises begin.

If you are thirsty, you may drink.

These are the first words she'd heard since Scrubbid's spoken to her on the edge of the cliff.

For a second, she stared here and there wondering who had spoken.

Then the voice set again.

If you're thirsty, come and drink.

And of course, she remembered what Scrubbid said about animals talking in this other world

and she realized that it was a lion speaking.

Anyway, she had seen his lips move this time and the voice was not like that of a man.

Oh, I wish I could use the English language like C.S. Lewis.

Listen to this next sentence of the English language.

Its voice was not like that of a man's.

It was deeper, wilder, and stronger.

A sort of heavy, golden voice.

Can you hear it?

That great voice of Aslan.

It did not make her any less frightened than she had been before.

But it made her frightened in a rather different way.

Profound theological insight again about what it's like to meet God.

Remember, Shasta had the same experience?

A different kind of fear.

Its Lewis struggling with what awe is.

Are you not thirsty, said the lion?

I'm dying of thirst, said Jill.

Then drink, said the lion.

May I, could I, would you mind going away while I do, said Jill?

The lion answered this only by a look and a very low grower.

And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk,

she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move

aside for her convenience.

The delicious, rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.

When you promised not to do anything to me if I do come, said Jill.

Now, this answer is so profound.

I tell you, I have really thought a lot about Lewis's theology about this answer.

I make no promise, said the lion.

You know, that is very profound in a way because in the New Testament,

Jesus Christ really makes no promise apart from himself.

He is the promise.

You have to risk everything on His integrity.

That's what I was struggling with in my sermon this morning and morning chapel.

That that's why maybe it's hard for the first son to go out in the vineyard.

Because he realizes what's at stake.

I have to trust the will of the Lord.

And it's really his character that I have to trust when the chips are now.

So, he says, I make no promise, said the lion.

Jill was so thirsty now that without noticing it, she'd come a step nearer.

How interesting.

She scared the death of the lion.

The lion's made no promises to her.

It was a step closer.

Do you eat girls, she said?

His answer is not too comforting.

I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors,

cities and realms, said the lion.

It didn't say this as if it were boasting,

nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry.

It just said it.

I also think that's profound.

When Jesus Christ in John 5.14 says, I am the way the truth in the life.

No one comes to the Father, but by me.

Jesus is not bragging.

He's not boasting, and he's not threatening.

He's simply stating a fact.

And I think that passage has been ruined by preachers who preach it as if Jesus were threatening us.

He's not threatening.

It's just the fact.

Well, then I dare come and drink, said Jill.

Then you will die of thirst, said the lion.

Oh, dear, said Jill, coming another step nearer.

Is this amazing?

This is Lewis telling the story of his own conversion.

He said, I went in the most unwilling convert in all of England.

Just coming step by step, and yet no, no, no, step closer.

See, it's harmonizing with his second thoughts, though, finally.

Oh, dear, said Jill, coming a step nearer.

I suppose I must go then and look for another stream.

And here's one of those great lines, John 14 line.

There is no other stream.

Said the lion.

It never occurred to Jill to disbelieve the lion.

No one who had seen his stern face could do that.

Her mind suddenly made up.

It was the worst thing she ever had to do.

But she went forward to the stream, knelt down, began scooping up water in her hand.

It was the coldest, most refreshing water she had ever tasted.

You didn't need to drink much of it for it quenched your thirst at once.

Before she tasted it, she had been intending to make a dash away from the lion.

The moment she finished, now she realized that this would be on the hold the most dangerous thing of all.

She stood up, stood there where their lips still wet from drinking.

Come here, said the lion.

And she had to, for she was now almost in between his front paws.

And she looked straight into his face.

She couldn't stand that for long.

She dropped her eyes.

Human child said the lion.

Where is the boy?

He fell over the cliff, said Jill, and added Sir.

She didn't know what else to call him, and it sounded cheek to call him nothing.

I love that British side.

How did he come to do that, human child?

He was trying to stop me from falling, Sir.

Why were you so near the edge, human child?

I was showing off, Sir.

That is a very good answer, human child.

Do so no more.

And now, you know, I love that line.

Have you ever realized that when you're really forgiven, it's faced, it's resolved, it's forgotten?

Isn't that beautiful?

Aslan forces her to face up to her problem.

Once it's faced up, it's resolved.

He is so sure of himself.

He's so able to forgive.

It doesn't have to be indulged in with once more rehearsed again.

Now let's go over that one again next week.

I want to go over that sin again, where the guy fell off the cliff again.

That you told me 34 times.

But I like to hear the 35th time.

There must be something you've left out.

No, no.

When it's forgiven, it's forgiven.

And you'll have to read the rest of the novel to find out what happens now to Jill.

It's amazing.

She sent in a mission with Eustace to rescue a young prince who's trapped on a silver chair.

And that's what that novel is all about.

Well, that's enough for tonight.

I wanted to give you a little feeling for Lewis.

I want to let Lewis speak for himself out of his novels.

I want to give you that little feeling of these at least three theological themes in Lewis.

His serious grappling with evil, but his great love affair with ultimate good.

What Tolkien calls the eucatastrophe.

Tolkien and his great article said,

in order to have a good literature, you've got to face up to the catastrophe.

But there is a eucatastrophe, a good catastrophe.

And if you read Tolkien's great article, he says,

good catastrophe of all time is Jesus Christ.

He's the good catastrophe.

And of course, this finally, Lewis is very concerned to portray what it's like to meet him,

what it's like to discover the eucatastrophe, what it's like to discover this love, this character.

And of course, the chronicles have so much on these dealing with that in the marvelous whimsical way that Lewis does.

Now, tomorrow night, I'd like to see Lewis as an apologist, try to understand why his theology has been so enduring

and sort of the approach he takes, why he's been so helpful to our generation.

Thank you so much for letting me give you this long talk tonight.

Thank you.