Transcript
Welcome and good evening. I see we have another small group of stalwarts here. We're pleased
to see you all. For those of you who were here last night, Earl Palmer needs no introduction,
but for those of you who are here for the first time and will be hearing Earl Palmer
for the first time. I've heard some stories about his speaking ability that originate
in his church in Berkeley, California. I'm told that one Sunday after he had preached
a sermon, he was standing in the back greeting the members of the congregation as they exited.
And one man came up and said, Reverend Palmer, you know what I like about your sermons?
And he said, well, no, what? Everyone is better than the next. And he didn't know quite
how to take that. I'm told just a little while later as he was recovering, a woman came
up and said, Reverend Palmer, your sermons have meant so much to my husband ever since
he lost his mind. And, well, without any further introduction, I introduce, it's my privilege
to introduce, Earl Palmer.
Thanks a lot, Craig. Those come next week and see the new president of the CS Lewis
Society. No, those are really, very good jokes. And they're getting a little better, too.
This joke is better than the last one. No, better than the next one.
Last night we began our consideration of CS Lewis as a 20th century Christian and primarily
focused on CS Lewis as his worldview is represented and portrayed by his fictional writing.
We did do a kind of journey through his life last night and then zeroed in primarily
upon his novels to try to understand his worldview and what made him tick. And if you were
going to try to understand what he believed on the basis of his novels.
Now tonight we want to look at CS Lewis as an interpreter of the Christian faith for
his own generation and as is turning out for future generations as well. I was reading
an article in Newsweek magazine a few months ago in which they were surveying the significance
of CS Lewis. And in fact the title was CS Lewis goes marching on. And they were pointing
out that it's something of a publishing miracle that of a man of his age since his death.
He died in 1963. And they were pointing out of this article that though he wrote so
voluminously and he's been dead since 1963 yet every single thing he wrote is still
in print. Anybody that knows anything about the publishing industry know that's a miracle
in itself. And Newsweek magazine went on to point out that the sales of CS Lewis writings
in no way have flattened or bottomed but continued to rise. And they were pointing out some astronomical
figure that was almost hard for me to get a hold of it. In the year 1977 something like
four and a half million of his books were sold in 1977 around the world. So it's just
an incredible way in which he has continued and continues to influence future generations
as he influences on. Lewis has been as a Christian thinker. He's been primarily called
an apologist, a Christian apologist. And so tonight I want to sort of zero in a little
bit on apologetics and try to do a little work with Lewis as an apologist for the Christian
faith, the faith that he embraced in 1931 and then wrote so many books to make an apology
for. Now in order to understand that because if you read about Lewis they'll often say of
Lewis that he was a Christian apologist. And I think we therefore have to define apologetics
because it is a special brand of theology and we have to do a little definition of it before
we show what he is. Apologetics is the theological and biblical task and literary task seen in terms
of two major goals. First it's seen you might say negatively apologetics seeks to defend Christian
faith if you're thinking of Christian apologetics. Apologetics tends to defend or it seeks to
defend Christian faith in the face of its accusers and critics. So there is that defensive element
or nature of apologetics. So if someone is called an apologist for Christianity or an apologist
for Marxism or an apologist for a particular worldview then they're defending it against
its critics. But apologetics especially seen in the Christian theological task of theological
apologetics is also a positive task and spoken of positively apologetics seeks to state Christian
faith in a way that honestly grapples with the objections and the premises of alternative
worldviews. And that's the slight distinction between apologetics say and simply evangelism
or Christian philosophy or Christian theology as such. Apologetic theology is trying to state
the faith but stating it in a way that grapples with alternative worldviews and this Lewis
became famous for. He, uh, he saw himself, he cut out a niche for himself in the 20th century
as a Christian apologist. He was a layman he never took holy orders of any sort in the
Episcopal Church. He was a loyal member of the Church of England but he never became a
Deacon or a priest in Episcopal Church. He had no formal theological training or
nor did he have biblical training in a formal sense. He was a lay theologian much like
Jacques Ellul is today a lay theologian in the French scene in the Reform Church. Again
also an apologist and speaking in his arena. Lewis was an apologist and sought to do these
two things that apologetics tries to do. One, to defend the faith against its critics
and two, to state the faith in a way that grapples with the objections and premises of alternative
worldviews. Now let me say of just three more things about apologetics before I launch into
Lewis as an apologist. In order to be a first-rate apologist what do you need? Any of you here who
are planning on being apologist I'll give you what I see the qualifications of an apologist.
After I finish these qualifications probably everybody will quit and decide just to be something
a little simpler. But in order to be a first-rate apologist you've got to have three qualities.
You've got to have three skills, formable skills, it seems to me. And I have to make a
parenthetic comment at this point. In Christian theology as soon as I say these skills I have
to say something that's even more fundamental than skills. I do believe that the Holy Spirit
is the great apologist and the great evangelist. Just like I don't believe Christians are
really evangelists, their witnesses, it's the Holy Spirit who is the evangelist. Well likewise
it's the Holy Spirit who is the great apologist. But still if you held that view seriously that
doesn't in a sense make you less serious about gathering skills, it makes you more desirous
to gather skills because you now know that you have the Holy Spirit in your side and it
endorses the venture of studying the truth. It's just like when I know that the Holy Spirit
is a source of truth that does not make me less interested in studying the truth. It
makes me more interested in studying the truth. That's a sort of strange kind of logic that
operates in the Christian faith. That when I know God loves me the way I am that does
not make me less motivated to love others but in a strange way it makes me more motivated
to love others. It's just the way it works. So what would be the skills that would be
needed to be a first-rate apologist of the Christian faith? Well let me just suggest three.
One, the first would be the knowledge of the biblical source of the Christian faith itself.
In other words to know what is the heart of the Christian faith. That's the first and most
fundamental skill is needed. Now why is that skill so important? The importance of that skill
is so that we do not err in calling a theme primary which is really secondary.
That's why I've got to know what my own faith is first of all otherwise I might call a secondary
theme a primary theme and that will completely destroy my apologetics because then I end up
defending secondary themes and neglecting primary themes. Does that make sense? You follow me
there? It'll be sort of like getting into a huge discussion of social dancing when I'm talking
to Muslims about the people in the Islamic faith about the Christian faith and they're scratching
their head wondering why I'm so concerned about social dancing when I then neglect discussing
about the deity of Jesus Christ which is the more central and primary question. So that's a
rather ludicrous or facetious illustration but you can see the point that the first and fundamental
need for a good apologetics is to know what is the center of Christian faith and to understand the
biblical wholeness of the Christian faith so that you are able to call a primary theme primary
and a secondary theme secondary otherwise the apologetic encounter will go completely astray.
You'll end up arguing over straw man that don't really matter and you'll miss each other in your
dialogue. Okay the second skill. The second skill is the ability to develop an accurate knowledge
of the best arguments of the worldview that challenges the Christian faith. If you're encountering
a worldview for instance if you're endeavoring to encounter a worldview like the Freudian
worldview and understanding of human personality and you want to bring it into collision with the
Christian worldview of personality then a second basic need to be a good apologist is to understand
what are the best arguments and to understand what is the teaching of this for instance Freudian
worldview of human personality if you're going to encounter it now from a Christian point of
view and again the importance of this is very is very fundamental also otherwise we miss the essence
of their argument or we miss state their real position and nothing is more infuriating in a
dialogue if you're, for instance, being talked to and you realize that someone has misstated your
position you lose all encounter you lose all dialogue because you don't trust them anymore you
don't respect them they have misstated what you believe so that an apologist in order to carry
on a dialogue with another worldview he has got to understand or she has got to understand the
essence of their argument as best that person can to what is central primary secondary in their
teaching so that again in the encounter there isn't an attack there is not an attack on straw man
or red herrings or questions that are not central to them and again that's a very formidable skill
to develop the ability to understand what another position another worldview is really saying
and the third skill if you're not already choked up with these skills and how
difficult they are I think of the third one the third skill is the ability to find a language of
communication a language of shared experience and inner-meaning, inner-yearnings, so that the message
of the Christian faith can be really heard by someone who comes from a different worldview stance
in other words to find the images to find the language to find the communication
symbols to be able to speak the Christian faith in a way that preserves its integrity and yet
to come along side of another worldview and a person who's been a part of another worldview so
that they can really hear your best arguments in their own terms without an accent in a sense
that they can understand it well with that introduction as I see it that's the challenge of
apologetics and when we talk about anyone being an apologist for instance right now a very as
I mentioned him a moment ago jockey Lou is a very formidable apologist in the European scene and
his books are being translated have been translated in English and he's had a tremendous impact I think
among many young intellectuals at the university in the university world this is what you test
an apologist bought is ability to do these three things I think a Christian apologist of a very
great skill in our own time to his John R. W. Stott I understand he's going to be here at Princeton
in February you have a chance to hear him personally but he's a formidable apologist he is he you
get the feeling he understands the essence of his own faith you get the feeling that he's aware of
what is being thought and he has an ability to get a hold of language that communicates so that
a person from another point of view can hear and it makes sense well CS Lewis has one high
marks on all these three skills and added to these three skills there were also qualities of his
own lifestyle you might say these skills are learned skills and skills that you could learn and
bring to a kind of though I do believe the first one knowing the center of the Christian faith
requires a person be a disciple in a sense to submit yourself to that great center too and so in
that sense it's not a skill it's really a way of discipleship but still these skills at Lewis had
and I think he gets high marks for these three skills but added to them there are qualities of his
life of his lifestyle if you want to put it that way of his way of doing things that made him a
remarkably helpful and durable interpreter of the Christian faith these qualities it seems to me
where I'm going to just give you three of them again they just sort of come to my mind from my
reading of his life and all the things I've read and observed in what he's written a sense of
unhurriedness in CS Lewis it was a part of his lifestyle a sense of clarity. Clarity in the way
he wrote. Add that clarity a willingness to be clear and and that's very profound because that
means he was also willing to be vulnerable you know lots of people are not willing to be clear
because if they were clear then you could get at them whereas if they can be just a little bit
foggy you can never really get at them they can always say well you didn't understand me
Lewis was always willing to risk what I would call a kind of transparent clarity
he was willing to risk it and in fact after chapel yesterday morning Dean Gordon and I were taught
walking in the way the coffee hour and he paid a great tribute to Lewis of course I'm sure Dean
I didn't ask him if he had ever met Lewis personally but he said you know it's interesting isn't it
how the theologians have come and gone but CS Lewis has remained durable and here I was going to
speak on his durability tonight but Dean Gordon said that and I I think that's a marvelous appraisal
of Lewis so many have come and gone and then Dean Gordon asked me if I was aware of the correspondence
between Lewis CS Lewis and Norman Pittenger up at Union New York when they carried on a kind of
dialogic warfare in the pages of the Christian century some five years before Lewis died
well I wasn't aware of that and I saved those articles fortunately Pittenger accused Lewis of
not being a very good theologian and all and of writing into to common away to in a two pedestrian
way he wrote theology and Lewis answered Pittenger in a marvelous witty way in which he said
anyone can write learned talk the acid test is to write clearly what you mean
and without... without any kind of boasting about the fact that he was clear anyone who knows Lewis
knows that this is one of the marks of Lewis he always is willing to be clear he's always struggling
to say it as clearly as he can say it there was in those who knew him personally say that that same
transparency was a very real part of his life he was always transparent in that sense and there's
a third quality in the style of his life which comes through in all his writings and it is a kind
of joyousness now I didn't realize it's funny in all that I had read of Lewis and I'd seen pictures
of Lewis and and and I sort of thought that he was very British and quite a kind of British
soft spoken and and I've heard tapes I've heard tapes of his four loves the electricity gave in
four loves and he comes through the rather droll British understatement a little bit like listening
to Robert Morley speak those British airways ads and in fact I thought Robert Morley sounds
great deal like a CS Lewis and so I thought of him as being that kind of personality but when I
read Sheldon Vanauken's book A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken of course who's an American, gives
us a kind of an American appreciation of Lewis and he describes Lewis as being robust now I'd
never heard anyone describe him as robust in fact he tells this story of his final meeting with Lewis
on High Street in Oxford Lewis had played a key part in both Sheldon Vanauken and his wife
Davey becoming Christians and if you that book by the way is a is a marvelous book they're 18
previously unpublished letters by CS Lewis in that letter in that book and they're absolutely
magnificent letters but at any rate Lewis had played a key part in the young couple becoming
Christians in fact when Lewis heard Vanauken wrote him and said that he decided to become a
Christian Lewis wrote him back the most beautiful letter he said a hundred thousand welcomes
and if I can be of any help let me he just he there was a sense of joyousness in that letter but
anyway Vanauken says it on the last day that he and his wife were in Oxford before they came back
to the United States to return to the teaching post that he had at Lynchburg Virginia where he still
is today Lewis came over to their apartment and they had a little farewell supper and then Lewis
was to go home and Sheldon went down to the street and said goodbye and shook hands with this great
friend Lewis walked across the street Vanauken was watching him across the street they had said
farewell and Lewis said this is not farewell he said to him when they shook hands then he walked
across the street and while Vanauken was standing on one side of high street Lewis was on the other
side the buses were going back and forth and he said in the midst of all that five o'clock
traffic Lewis shouted in a full voice across the street and he says people who were driving by
all turned to watch because they what was coming on he shouted he said and besides Christians never
say goodbye and I that was a new insight for me into Lewis I never thought of Lewis as being
this robust personality but he was joyous there was a kind of joyousness a spontaneity and a
robustness in his life too which you would you might not suspect because he was so proper too
and so British for instance he his brother said he used to drive his brother up the wall Lewis
had to have tea every day at four and wherever they were he had to have it at four they'd be
out in the hike in the woods and they had the time everything to get to a to get to a place to have
tea at four I mean he was that kind of person and yet in the other hand there was this sense of
joyousness and spontaneity and an element of surprise that was such a big part of his life all right
now tonight I'm gonna do a I've got some neat readings for you tonight shorter ones and last night
last night we were reading the fun novels tonight we're going to read some of his letters and other
things but I want to explore in a little more deep a little more a little more deeply the all the
apologetic methods of CS Lewis and then finally I want to attempt an assessment of his remarkable
durability and I hope that tonight will be a little shorter so that I can provide for you a
chance to maybe ask questions or make comments of your own at the end here I don't want to hold
you up or anything but if you want to and there's time okay I'd like to explore then
the methods that Lewis used in his apologies his apologetic method and then to do an assessment
of his durability first his methods well if I were going to do a study of Lewis's method and
apologetic method basically you have to say three things about it one the first is his personal
correspondence his personal conversations and relationships with people we as critics now on
this side of his life looking back we're mainly concerned with his writings but it would be unfair
to him as a man to the style of his life if we didn't see as he said in a letter to a friend I have
made one friend in every generation and he made more than one friend he made many friends it's
amazing how many people have surfaced who are very dear friends of CS Lewis and and he cared deeply
about them and he carried on relationships he met students he evidently was a very warm though
demanding person Lewis said been deeply influenced by George McDonald you know in his early life
before he became a Christian when he was still a young man he read the fantasies by George
McDonald he said that was the best thing he'd ever read in his life and he fell in love with McDonald
and one quotation which Lewis himself quotes of McDonald obviously made a great impression on Lewis
after he became a Christian and that's McDonald's description of God George McDonald said
God is impossible to satisfy but easy to please that is a profound description of Almighty God
by George McDonald Lewis never forgot it it was very deep in Lewis's life his relationship to
students people who knew him said he was impossible to satisfy but he was easy to please that's
grace that's the grace of Christian discipleship that's what you discover when you discover Jesus
Christ he's impossible to satisfy he's always drawing you into discipleship drawing you into the
way of discipleship in the way of righteousness but he is easy to please and that that one quotation
from George McDonald I believe is a better clue to the genius of C.S. Lewis than probably any other
quotation because it's the way he related to people he was a relentless taskmaster of students
if they wrote something he thought was garbage he called it garbage and yet he was easy to please
they as persons pleased him and he let them know it and I don't know about you but I think that's
the ideal teacher if you were going to write down for me the ideal teacher would be the
teacher who is impossible to satisfy but easy to please so his he was his relationships were
the first apologetic method he used secondly his public speaking now this is less known again
we're looking back on his life so we're not so aware of his public speaking he did not like to give
public addresses he never traveled to America everybody's supposed to travel to America to give
speeches he never did in fact he had no desire to come to America he didn't particularly like America
he made one trip out of England and that was to Greece with Joy Davidman when they were married
and he had that trip he traveled around England a little bit he didn't even do much of that he
walked mainly but he he was not a traveler he was a reader by the way here's something you might
not know Lewis didn't own many books in fact when his estate was settled at the end of his life
they were amazed how few books he had it's because Lewis was always suffering from what he called
a flash of poverty that's the way he was raised he used to describe he's done suffering now from
a flash of poverty that flash of poverty lasted most of his life until he wrote Screwtape Letters
then he became instantly wealthy but you know he never handled his money his solicitors handled
the money Lewis was giving it away right and left to benevolent causes and so finally the lawyers
took the money away from him and never and didn't allow him to use any of it he just lived a very
frugal life all his life and he didn't own many books and because of that he read most of his books
in the library but because he didn't have the money to buy books he learned how to read very
carefully and slowly and attentively and he took copious notes on books and so that's an
interesting little aside but he did give public addresses a few he wrote gave that as you know
the four loves were radio addresses and mere Christianity is all a collection of radio addresses
all short addresses that he gave and they were really amazing when he did speak by the time 39 came
and he would speak occasionally at Oxford usually at the Old St. Mary's Church in Oxford a great
numbers and great crowds of students came in fact the one of the most famous of those instances
was in 1939 just before the war broke out when Lewis spoke at Oxford on a Sunday evening
and the students had jammed this is the regard the students held still see us Lewis at Oxford
the students had jammed that church that cathedral two hours before he was to speak
and that was the night that he came and gave his great speech a weight of glory that's been
published which you all should read if you think of the drama of that evening two hours before Lewis
got there every seat taken and you know in England people don't go to church that way and
Lewis gave that very moving and eloquent address on the eve of World War II a weight of glory
and basically it's a message about the joy that's the heart of God anyway he did give public
addresses but his main apologetic method was writing so that's what we have to spend the rest of
the night on he wrote is I'm going to I talked about his books that he actually wrote by title
last night so I'm not going to give all titles again tonight just simply give you the the
categories of his books you'll be amazed I think by the categories alone of course as a scholar
and a medievalist he wrote a number of very distinguished technical books on technical themes
and in many of these his Christian faith does come into play very strongly and I'm going to read
from one of them tonight secondly he wrote autobiographically and I meant made comment of that last
night he wrote of course the first autobiographical book was a kind of satirical one of Pilgrims
regress and then of course just surprised by joy and then finally at the end of his life he wrote
toward the end of his life a grief observed correspondence he was a prolific correspondent when I
was at Wheaton College last spring I had a chance to spend four hours in the Wade Collection reading
his correspondence and oh man I want to go back now and spend eight hours just reading correspondents
and in fact I can't wait to get some excuse to go to Chicago to go down and read that court because
much much of it is unpublished still but Wheaton has it all photographed on photograph and it's
it's all organized according to correspondent for instance here's something maybe a lot of you
aren't aware of but Lewis correspondent with a childhood friend named Arthur Grieves whose
far as I can tell never became a Christian through Lewis's correspondence they argue all through
the years of their life about the Christian faith after Lewis becomes a Christian and Arthur Grieves
and CS Lewis corresponded from the time Lewis was about eight years old until just one week before
he died and I read tried to read about five years in that correspondence that's just volumes at the
Wade Collection of the Arthur Grieves correspondence he corresponded with all kinds of people as I said
last night anybody who wrote him a letter he answered just amazing correspondence and of course his
brother Warren he corresponded with his brother his father and all kinds of people and the
correspondence of Lewis is going to be a gold mine for years and years to come for scholars as they
true because he he he let his mind go and he answered questions they asked in a very marvelous way
then he wrote apologetic books outright apologetic books defending the Christian faith and you know
those some of those of the most famous books in the collections of his books problem of pain miracles
mere Christianity out now apologetic works many essays he wrote some for publication in magazines
like Manchester Guardian and the Times and other journals he wrote a satire and of course his
greatest satire would be the Screwtape Letters he also wrote the great divorce and a number of books
letters to Malcolm chiefly on prayer that's a satirical work it's not there is no real Malcolm
that he wrote to again that's one of his latter books I love letters to Malcolm I think that's
one book that nobody knows about because it's got a kind of a frumpy title but it's one of his best
books it was written toward the end of his life and in that book I just let a study group in at last
spring and we had an incredible time in letters to Malcolm because what he does is he if you know
Lewis at all he know you can just hear him taking on Arthur Greeves here taking on somebody here
taking on somebody here and each of those letters it's just marvelous and then he wrote the novels
and last night we looked at his novels in some detail now why is CS Lewis and his work
why are they so apologetically helpful and now I'm going to make four observations and give you
some readings to try to back up these observations why is Lewis's work so apologetically helpful and
durable here we are think of it he wrote the Screwtape Letters I'm going to read you a reading
in a minute from the Screwtape Letters he wrote it in 1942 and not many of you in this room were
born in 1942 1942 and look at here it is 1978 and I'm going to read you a little section I think
you'll all be amazed at how current and relevant his assessment of sort of the world we're in
is and now you take other articles and books written in 42 and you tell me if there is relevant
that's an interesting test to do some of you want to write a PhD thesis let me give you one
did you know I was talking to a scholar the other day at Cal and he told me that in the
the journal of PhD thesis for last year or 77 there were more PhD thesis in America being written
on CS Lewis than any other literary figure think of that include Shakespeare so first time Shakespeare
has been bypassed he said now that made me not true but anyway he said in 77 there were more
PhD thesis being written on themes having to do with CS Lewis than any other literary figure now
that's the kind of force he's having impact and I think it's just beginning but you take here's
a good PhD thesis I'll give it to you if you're in literature take some of his period works miracles
he wrote it in 46 Screwtape Letters he wrote it in 42 and then try to find some sample system to
take a look at other writings by Christians non-Christians any kind of the other propagandistic
documents satirical documents and notice the world view present in each and see and notice
Lewis's accuracy is ability to predict the drift of society the way it was going compared to other
writers I think he comes out with flying colors that's why he's still so helpful to us okay I
want to give you four reasons why I think he's so durable one I think first of all because his
accuracy and sensitive understanding of his own generation is so right on he was accurate
in looking at his own generation and that accuracy I think is one of the reasons he's so durable
he describes where we are in a way that is so fresh and so real that he forces us off of dead center
and that's what makes him apologetically very helpful because with his accuracy he makes us feel
uneasy precisely at the point where we were previously so sure of ourselves until we read him
as Newsweek magazine said about CS Lewis there is a hidden snare in all the writings of CS Lewis
for any unwary atheist did you catch that one that's a great that's a great quotation there's a
hidden snare in the novels of CS Lewis that's they were talking about there for any unwary atheist
in numbers if you're not watching yourself Lewis because of the and one reason it's because of
his accuracy and because of the fresh way in which he sensitively understands where you're at
and because of that accuracy he's able to pull you off dead center and get you to change your
opinion about something you thought you were so sure of before I'm going to give you two readings now
enough of my talking let's let Lewis speak for himself in the beginning of the Screwtape Letters
which is really his greatest work Lewis now you know the Screwtape Letters are written by a senior
devil to a junior devil and like Lewis says at the beginning I'll not tell you how I found
this correspondence because excitable people might make a bad use of it if they learn my trick
and that's really priceless little there's a lot of humor in these letters but in them you discover
that Wormwood is a junior devil being written to by a senior devil the patient is this Christian a
young man who's just become a Christian in England right at the beginning of World War II that's
the setting of it all and the the enemy is God and of course Screwtape is trying to give advice
to Wormwood as to how to reclaim this this patient from the clutches of the enemy and that's
the whole point of the Screwtape Letters and on each of these 33 letters Lewis takes on a different
subject matter or another 31 letters actually and then later he wrote a toast makes it 32
each letter has to do with some different theme and that's the satirical device Lewis uses he
does the same thing in letters to milk him each letter is on a different theme having to do with prayer
this is a different theme he takes on the war in Europe on he takes several letters are written
about sex several letters are written about romance about marriage about mothers-in-law about family
about prayer about you name it he's he covers all the waterfront well here's letter one
he is in fact i'll just read from letter one i'm going to read one page to give you a feeling of
the way the book starts my dear Wormwood I note that you what you say about guiding your
patients reading and taking care that he sees a good deal of his materialist friend but are you
not being a trifle naïve it sounds as if you suppose that argument was the way to keep him
out of the enemy's clutches that might have been so if he lived a few centuries earlier at that
time humans still the new pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not he's referring
to the scholastic era when everybody was concerned about arguments about the existence of God
but if it it was proved they really believed it they still connected thinking with doing
and were prepared to alter their way of life as a result of a chain of reasoning
but what with the weekly press and other such weapons we have largely altered that this is
Screwtape's speaking your man now listen to his description of mankind and in 1942 this is
Lewis's description now through Screwtape's speaking your man has been a custom ever since he
was a boy to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing around inside of his head
what a description and notice the use of imagery by CS Lewis a dozen incompatible philosophies
dancing around inside his head he doesn't think of doctrines as being primarily true or false
but as academic or practical outworn or contemporary conventional or ruthless
in or out therefore jargon not argument is your best ally in keeping him from the church
don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true make him think it is strong
so he writes during the Arab Nazism make him think it's strong or stark or courageous or effective
boy I think of the revolutionary movements and other movements in our time who have used the same
argument that's the sort of thing he cares about or make him think that it's the philosophy of the
future then he goes on the trouble with argument is that it moves the whole struggle onto the
enemies camp I mean the enemies whole ground he can argue too whereas in the really practical
propaganda of the kind I'm suggesting he has been shown for centuries to be greatly the inferior
to our father below that's the end of that little reading I thought you'd get a kick out of that
now look what Lewis has done to you as an apologist you thought before you read Lewis that arguments
were against God and harmed God Lewis has subtly pull that rug out from under you
and he said oh no arguments are in favor of God because they're the search for truth
it's propaganda that God has a hard time with manipulation toying with your emotions over
writing your will you see he's very inferior at that because God respects you too much
so what Lewis has done is in a very subtle way he sort of prepared you to take another look
at the search for truth okay I want to give you another example of Lewis doing this from a book
that I don't know how many of you've read a lot of people have not read this book it was written in
1961 it's called an experiment in criticism it's one of his technical works and it's also a
masterpiece I think I would list it in any list of the ten the finest books of CS Lewis that I'm
aware of and experiment in criticism just for the fun of it I don't want to embarrass anybody because
I know you've read so much of Lewis but is anybody here who has read this book my wife has
well you know then you're in I this like whenever I meet somebody that hasn't read the chronicles of
Narnia I feel very jealous now you're going to you're going to get to meet all those characters for
the first time and so be sure to read after I finish reading this to you you will all want to read
The Chronicles of Narnia and the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings when I finish reading what I'm
going to read to you now this is experimenting criticism published by Cambridge University Press marvelous
little paperback that will soon be carried at the lamplighter bookstore that was the owner the
lamplighter bookstore that asked me what the publisher was okay this is marvelous here's one of the
chapters I'm going to read you a couple of pages from this chapter just to show you Lewis as
an accurate apologist and how he pulls the rug from under you and moves you over to new territory
okay in this chapter he's talking about fantasy literature and the fact that a lot of adults don't
want to read fantasy literature okay first the association between fantasy literature and childhood
that's the reason adults don't read fantasy literature the belief that children are the proper
readers for this sort of work or that it is the proper reading for children is modern and local see
that's why they don't read fantasy literature he says because it's the belief that it's for children
you know like Gulliver's Travels and the the The Chronicles of Narnia you know I have to confess
I was a CS Lewis buff for a long time and I had read all of Lewis I thought and then people kept
saying once while I'd meet students and say have you read The Chronicles of Narnia I said well
aren't those wonderful I'm so glad Lewis wrote books for children that's neat I in fact I bought
them for my daughter my daughter Ann and she read the whole set I hadn't even read them yet then
we went on a study leave and my wife who reads aloud to our children we'd gone through all these
different books and my wife started to go through The Chronicles of Narnia I still had not read them
I'll never forget them the day when my son who was then age seven came running up to where I was studying
and with tears in his eyes he said dad they have just killed Aslan
and you know I realized that this these books were getting a whole of my family
and I started going down on the lawn and listening to my wife reading The Chronicles of Narnia
and I was then hooked and I read them all in fact I can say I read them all about two or three times now
my daughter's read them five times everyone five times and that's the way people are
but I was like Lewis says I mean I thought well fantasy literature oh it's nice for
children so white seven dwarfs and all those are marvelous for children and if they if Disney makes
a film I'll go see them but not until all right now that's what he's talking about he says the
fantasies is because the association of fantasy and childhood and the belief that children are
the proper readers for this sort of work or that it is the proper reading for children is modern and
local most of the great fantasies and fairy tales were not addressed to children at all but to everyone
professor Tolkien has described the real state of the case certain kinds of furniture oh and then
he gives a reference to Tolkien's essay in letter in essays dedicated to Charles Williams where
Tolkien and Lewis both have an article about the value of fantasy literature I talked about
that last night certain kinds of furniture gravitated to the nursery when they become unfashionable
among adults isn't that a beautiful image he gives now in the nursery certain kinds of
furniture is gravitated to the nursery when it became unsuitable for adults the fairy tale has
done the same to imagine any special affinity between childhood and stories of the marvelous is
like imagining a special affinity between childhood and Victorian sulfas just because Victorian sulfas
gravitated toward the nursery doesn't mean there's a special affinity between Victorian sulfas
and children and he says just because fairy tales gravitated toward children does not necessarily
mean there's a special affinity but now watch him go on if you but children as now read such stories
that is not because children as such have a special predilection for them but because children are
indifferent to literary fashions wow see this is experiment in criticism in this book he takes
on all the literary fashions that stifle us in reading I mustn't read anything that's not in this
year T.S. Eliot's in this year I guess he's out this year you know somebody else is in so I'll
only read those and there's only one you ever talk about at a cocktail party because they're in
okay he says but children are immune to literary fashions what we see in them is not a specifically
childish taste but simply a normal and perennial human taste temporarily atrophied in their elders by
fashion see adults only read what's fashionable that's why they don't read fairy tales he says now
look what he's doing to you in a minute he's beginning to rearrange all kinds of things you
thought you had neatly placed on the table right but he isn't finished with you watch it when he
gets through with a few more images he's going to have you in shambles before this page is over I
guarantee it is we not they whose taste needs explanation and even to say this is to say too much
we ought in strict truth to say that some children as well as some adults like this generally and
that many children like many adults do not in other words some children don't like stories
fairy tales either for we must not be deceived by the contemporary practice of sorting books out
according to age groups for which are supposed to be for which they are supposed to be appropriate
that work is done by people who are not very curious about the real nature of literature
nor very well acquainted with its history it is a rough rule of thumb for the convenience of
schoolteachers librarians and the publicity departments in publisher's offices see they're the
ones who divided books into children's books and adult books even as such it is very fallible
secondly if we are to use the word childish or infantile as terms of disapproval we must we
must make sure that they refer only to those characteristics of childhood which we become better
and happier by outgrowing not to those which every sane man would keep if he could and which are
which some are fortunate for keeping on the bodily level now he gives some illustrations of what he
means I want to read that sentence again because he's going to give you two blockbuster illustrations
this is Lewis at his greatest with his illustrations he says secondly we are if we are to use the
words childish or infantile as terms of disapproval we must make sure that they refer only to those
characteristics of childhood which we become better and happier by outgrowing not to those
characteristics of childhood which every sane man should keep if he could and which some are
fortunate for keeping now two illustrations on the bodily level this is sufficiently obvious we
are glad to have outgrown the muscular weakness of childhood but we envy those who retain its
energy it's well-thatched scalp it's it's easily one sleep and it's power of rapid recuperation
see you don't want to outgrow that do you you love to outgrow the weak arms and legs but you don't
want to outgrow the ability to go to sleep fast okay but surely the same is true on another level
the sooner we cease to be fickle or boastful or as jealous or as cruel or as ignorant
or as easily frightened as most children are the better for us and for our neighbors
but who in his senses would not keep if he could that tireless curiosity that intensity of
imagination that facility of suspending disbelief who don't you love that you know we in old age
suspend belief all the time children suspend disbelief that intensity of imagination that
facility of suspending disbelief that unspoiled appetite that readiness to wonder to pity and to
admire how do you like that as a death as a definition of childhood the process of growing up
is to be valued for what we gain not for what we lose not to acquire a taste for the realistic
is childish in the bad sense to have lost the taste for marvels and adventures is no more a matter
for congratulations than losing your teeth your hair your palate and finally your hopes
we do not why do we hear so much about the defects of immaturity and so little about the defects
of senility what do you think of that you see what Lewis is doing to you
you thought you had all your categories neatly arranged and you were growing up and growing older
and putting away childish things and now Lewis has thrown everything up in a turmoil that's
apologists at work getting you ready to take hold of a deeper truth when we accuse a work of infantilism
we must therefore be careful what we mean if we mean only that the taste for which it caters
is one that usually appears early in life that is nothing against the book a taste is childish
in the bad sense not because it develops at an early age but because something having some
intrinsic defect in it and it ought to therefore disappear as soon as possible we call such a taste
childish because only childhood can excuse it not because childhood can often achieve it
indifference to dirt that's something you auto outgrow in other words that's childishness
indifference to dirt and untidiness is childish because it is unhealthy and inconvenient
and therefore it ought to be speedily outgrown but a taste for bread and honey
though equally common in our salad days is not childish it's human
okay that's the apologist and the reason he's so effective is because he's so accurate in the way
he understands us and understands the lay of the land and then he tugs at us and pulls us into a new
setting that's apologetics that's what Lewis was a master at secondly I think Lewis is a great
apologist because he takes the long view of the dynamics of faith the faith of discovery of the
lordship of Jesus Christ which of course is his great concern to communicate and therefore because
of this Lewis is never panicky or desperate or breathless in the way he writes there's a kind of
Lewis is urgent but he's never nervous and I'll give you an example of that from a personal letter
he wrote to someone that's in this book letters I love this letter let me read it's very brief
and it's really very moving too a man wrote him a letter after he read Screwtape Letters
and this man was very enraged by what Lewis had written in Screwtape Letters evidently
unfortunately we don't have the man's letter and but here's Lewis's answer to the letter and we
can kind of figure out what the man must have said by what Lewis answers him evidently in the letter
the man said that Lewis what Lewis was writing was no help because the way Lewis portrayed Jesus
Christ Jesus Christ had an unfair advantage over the rest of us and how could that make Jesus
relevant to us if he has an unfair advantage over us okay now watch Lewis's answer the letter
we can hardly discuss the whole matter by post can we I'll only make one shot I like that see
Lewis takes the long view he never tries to answer all the questions that are being raised he
tries to make one legitimate integral step as if the journey to faith is a thousand single steps
he never pushes it I like that about Lewis in fact people have asked me about my own philosophy
of evangelism and I've always said my philosophy of evangelism is that I relate to each person I
meet as if I'm going to know them for the rest of my life and I want to see their journey of faith
as a journey of a thousand single steps because I found most people becoming Christians it's a
thousand single steps and I don't have to give them everything they need to know because God is
working in their lives in many different ways but I want to try to give one authentic ingredient
part if I can as well as I can to say something valid I don't have to say everything but and then
take a longer view rather than this sort of breathless emergency view that in a sense you're always
shoving things at people that's the way Lewis was watch him here he says let me take one shot he
says to this man when people object as you do that if Jesus was God as well as man then he had an
unfair advantage which deprives him for them of all value now notice what Lewis is doing he's
restating the man's own position he does that to admit let the man know if he understood him see
it's a very good thing to do when you're talking to somebody see if you can restate what they're saying
and Lewis does this a great deal in his dialogue so he says is this what you're saying
then he after restating it to the man then Lewis goes on to speak to it as an apologist
let me read that again he says if when people object as you do that if Jesus was God as well as man
then he had an unfair advantage which deprives him for them of all value it seems to me
as if a man struggling in the in the water should refuse a rope thrown to him by another man
who had one foot on the bank saying oh but you have an unfair advantage that's his illustration
he says it seems to me it's like you saying if a man's in the water and somebody throws him a
rope and that man's got his foot in the bank and you say oh you haven't right to throw the
rope to me because you have an unfair advantage over me that's his illustration then Lewis goes on
he says isn't it not because of that advantage that he can help
and you know that's the end of Lewis's argument he stops right there
and but then notice what he says after that but all good wishes
we must just differ in charity I hope you must not be angry with me for believing
you know I'm not angry with you period best regards see us Lewis
that's an apologist notice not too much and not a sledgehammer
you know he understands where that man is and he gives one point and he does it well
illustration to get in alongside of the man to bring him into a new place to look at it from a
new angle that's apology okay there's a third and just two more and I'm done he speaks
clearly without obscurity and at the same time with a rich imagery and analogy so that we're
able to find ourselves in the sense of analogy and he gives you a Lewis has this marvelous mixture
of on the one hand being clear and lucid but he's not clear like Marxist writers are in fact
this is one of the complaints about Marxist literature that is for instance Soviet literature
right now it's so prosaic and it's so clear that it lacks any life at all it's it isn't willing
to take any risks with the possibility that a doctrine might become revisionist
on unlike Jesus Christ who entrusts his great truth to parables and to images and in other words
he allows his great truth to simply be sprung upon the world as he so sure of himself Jesus Christ
so sure of himself he's not worried about losing track of his teaching Lewis has the same mixture
on the one hand as a clarity I mentioned that earlier a wonderful lucidness in clarity and
vulnerability and on the other hand he springs images on you that literally explode in a thousand
directions okay I'll give you an example yesterday at university chapel I read a quotation from
the book miracles a preliminary study I want to read you another quotation from the same par from
the same chapter I quoted from Sunday the grand miracle only Sunday I quoted from the last
paragraph of that chapter now tonight appropriately I'll quote from the first paragraph of that
chapter the grand miracle actually it's the second paragraph he's talking about the grand
miracle and he's got an image to spin which you'll see it ties into the image I the quotation I
gave Sunday he says let us suppose we possess the parts of a novel or a symphony someone now brings
to us a newly discovered piece of manuscript and says this is the missing piece of the work this
is the chapter on which the whole plot of the novel really turns this is the main theme of the symphony
sort of like you had all the various parts of George Gershwin's Concerto and F which is a very
complicated piece of music and yet my daughter tells me because she's a George Gershwin buff it does
have an integrating set of both rhythms and melodies that will pull the Concerto together and
someone says oh here's Gershwin's integrating thread that will pull the Concerto and F together
same thing with The Brothers Karamazov somebody can say this is the theme that will pull together
this the interplay of those three brothers in the father feud or and Father Zosima it will make
that great novel come together all right Lewis says that's what happened you've got all the parts of
a puzzle the novel of a symphony someone says this is the part that will pull it together okay our
business would be to see whether the new passage if admitted to the central place which the discover
claimed for it did actually illuminate all the parts we already had and pull them together
the new passage if spurious however attractive it looked at first glance would become harder and
harder to reconcile with the rest of the work the longer we considered the matter and of course
that's what I was reading that part last Sunday the longer we considered the matter in other words
if it was false it may look good at first but the longer we work with it it'll look worse and worse
but if it were genuine then at every fresh hearing of the music every fresh reading of the book
we should find it settling down making itself more at home eliciting significance from all sorts
of details in the whole work which we had hitherto neglected wow what an image you see the image
he's got going for you he says if this central chapter were true it would make sense out of
details that hitherto we had neglected we couldn't make sense out of things we could not incorporate
it all now would make sense even though the new central chapter or main theme contained great
difficulties in itself we would still think it genuine provided it continually removed difficulties
elsewhere now that's the end of his image he now applies it something like this we must do with
the doctrine of the incarnation that's the doctrine of the coming of Jesus Christ the doctrine that
God has spoken for himself in human history the most radical doctrine of all of Christianity that's
the big one he says we've got to do that with that doctrine here instead of a symphony or a novel
we have the whole mass of our knowledge the credibility of this doctrine will depend on the extent
to which the doctrine if accepted can illuminate and integrate the whole mass
it is much less important that the doctrine itself should be fully comprehensible
by the way Lewis is on very heavy theological grounds here it shows what a good theologian he is
Jesus Christ in the New Testament is so immense that there are no definitions or words
that can surround him adequately and that's what he's getting at he simply is too big
he was too big for John the Baptist he was too big for the disciples nobody expected the cross
and the resurrection he is simply he has to speak for himself that's it that's what he means
and then Lewis goes on but the credibility depends upon the extent to which the doctrine
if accepted can illuminate and integrate the whole mass notice what he's doing to his reader
he's inviting the reader to take the doctrine of the the reality the lordship of Jesus Christ
and try it out as a center of the symphony he's saying you put something else at the center of your
symphony and see if it can integrate all the parts take your life take yourself put yourself
in the center of your life does it integrate it take your family does that integrate all your
life you want to work for IBM put that in the center of your life and see if it integrates all
of all your life I can tell you parts right now it won't integrate it won't integrate a nervous
breakdown it won't integrate death it can't it may not even integrate your family in fact it may
destroy your family because the better you work for your company it may mean you have to leave your
family all the time and actually abandon your family the company may become a mistress for you
take your nation nationalism or tribalism take aesthetics take anything you want
Lewis says try it out for the center of your life and see if it integrates everything and then
Lewis says try Jesus Christ and see if he can integrate everything you see what he's doing as
an apologist instead of so as those big telling you what to do or what the answer is he's asking
you to journey with the answer and see for yourself with an image to work with and then he
finally comes to the end with a quotation from G. K. Chesterton if you read a Chesterton's Orthodoxy
you read this quotation he quotes from Chesterton now a beautiful quotation he says we believe
that the sun is in the sky at midday in the summer not because we can clearly see the sun
in fact we cannot see irony of the human eye can't look at the sun we believe the sun is in
the sky at midday in summer not because we can clearly see the sun in fact we cannot but
because we can see everything else that's Lewis as an apologist aware of the fact that
Lewis both clear out in the limb he doesn't fudge he doesn't hide he doesn't he doesn't waffle
and on the other hand he tries out an image on you throws out an image to you that just explodes
in all kinds of directions and invites you to work with the image yourself okay finally one last
comment and I believe the final observation I'd like to make is Lewis maintains throughout his
writings a basic and a down to earth faithfulness to the gospel of the New Testament he never forgets
that the gospel of Jesus Christ has its own extra notes integrity just like Luther said the gospel
is extra notes it's outside us it has its own integrity quite apart from Lewis quite apart
from me quite apart from my argument it's what he's really getting at when he says it's
incomprehensible in a sense it's beyond my ability to just think up some clever sentences to
surround it and the result of this is and I believe this is a beautiful thing about Lewis's
life the result is he doesn't take himself too seriously and also there's a second result
because Lewis actually believes he actually believes that Jesus Christ is alive
Lewis is always amazed by the gospel and because he himself is so amazed by it he's able to
share its amazement with others now my time is up but I'm going to give you one more quotation
that's just a fun one from the Screwtape Letters it's in letter number 15 and it's one of my very
favorite Lewis letters and quotations or wait I had a marker here and it just I guess it's letter 13
okay in letter 13 the patient well up to letter 13 the patient seems to be slipping away from
his Christian friends and he's got to involve with a group of smart cynical people and they're
making very good very good headway in winning him away from his heavenly father the enemy back
to the father below so to speak and then everything is lost and here is letter 13 where Screwtape
is furious at Wormwood for the mistakes he made I'll start the letter at the beginning and then
jump over to a fascinating little section it gives you Lewis's humor and everything all at work at
once it seems to me that you take a great many pages to tell a very simple story the long and
the short of it is that you've left this man slip through your fingers the situation is very grave
and I can see no reason why I should try to shield you from the consequences of your inefficiency
so anyway the he tells them to give him that very severe warning and now the blunders he then
decides all right your blunders on your own showing you first of all allowed the patient to read a
book he really enjoyed because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks about it to
his new friends this ties in with experiment and criticism you can see Lewis never forgot that
problem in the second place you allowed him to walk down to the old mill and have tea there a walk
through country he really likes and taken alone gives another little insight into Lewis Lewis love to
take walks by himself as I've already told you he loved to have tea at four maybe this you don't
emphasize so much with these two things this might not help you regain your senses to read a book
you really liked but also to walk down to the old mill and have tea there in other words you
allowed him to real positive pleasures again notice Lewis rearranging our expectations everybody in
this room probably thinks unless you've read CS Lewis and the New Testament you may think that
pleasures are the devil's weaponry god has more austere things in mind for you like prayer meetings
and somber worship services and things like that he says you allowed him to pleasures
were you so ignorant as not to see the danger of this the characteristic of pains and pleasures
is that they are unmistakably real and therefore as far as they go they give the man who feels
them a touchstone of reality you see the devil doesn't want you to have any touchstones of reality
once you live in fantasy all the time it gives them a touchstone of reality thus if you'd been
trying to dam your man by the romantic method you would be submerging submerging him in self-pity
for imaginary distresses then you would try to protect him at all costs from any real pain
because of course five minutes genuine toothache would reveal the romantic sorrows for all the
nonsense they were you know that's really profound there were very few neurotics during the
bombing raids of London because there were too many real pains you know romantic pains are the
kind of pains you feel when you feel that everyone is persecuting me everyone's after me and
no one appreciates me all I want is a little appreciation that's a romantic sorrow now the devil says
if you Lewis says here through Screwtape if you're being damned by romantic sorrows the worst
thing to let anybody who's suffering from romantic sorrows like nobody is treating me nicely and
everybody is so mean to me the worst thing you can do that person with that that person now is
to have a real pain like five minutes of a toothache and they forget about all the romantic sorrows
because the toothache is a touchstone of reality drive your car into somebody's car out here in
Nassau Street and suddenly all the romantic sorrows about the people who are being unkind to you at work
have you forget all about those that's what he's saying so he said you would try to protect him at
all costs from any real pain because of course five minutes genuine toothache would reveal the
romantic sorrows for the nonsense they were and would unmask your whole strategy but you were
trying to d*** your patient by the world that is by pawning off vanity bustle irony and expensive
tedium as pleasures. Expensive tedium. That's Las Vegas. Boy, that is South Lake Tahoe Harris Club
is expensive tedium and he says you're trying to pawn that off as pleasures how can you have
failed to see that a real pleasure was the last thing you ought to have let him have didn't you
foresee that it would kill by contrast all the trumpetry which you have been so laboriously
teaching him to value and that the sort of pleasure which the book and the walk gave him was the
most dangerous of all that it would peel off from him his sense from from his sensibility the kind
of crust which you've been forming on it and it would make him feel that he was coming home recovering
himself and now Screwtape was on as a preliminary to detaching him from the enemy you wanted to detach
him from himself and you had made some progress in doing so now all of that is undone
isn't that fascinating according to Lewis evil wants to always detach you from yourself as a
preliminary from detaching you from God now this last few lines are just profound and that's
the last I'll read tonight now of course I know that the enemy that's God also wants to detach
men from themselves but in a different way remember always that he really likes the little vermin
that's what Screwtape always calls us is vermin that God really likes the little vermin
and he sets an absurd value on the distinctness of every one of them and when he talks of
they're losing their cells he only means abandoning the clamor of self will once they have done
that he really gives them back all their personality and both I'm afraid sincerely that when they
are holy his they will be more themselves than ever before almost makes you want to become a
Christian doesn't that's why CS Lewis wrote all these books and that's the end of my comments tonight