Transcript
ELLISON: It's my pleasure to welcome you. My name is Brian Ellison. I'm Chair of the TSF Speakers Committee, and on behalf of Theological Students Fellowship, it is our pleasure to be sponsoring this noontime forum today. Just a moment we'll introduce our speaker.
I want to let you know of a couple of upcoming events affiliated with Theological Students Fellowship. Don't forget tonight, Charles Hodge Society is sponsoring its weekly apologetic seminar. Tonight's topic, Social Trinitarianism — Orthodox or Heterodox. Matt Frawley, a Ph.D. candidate here will be speaking.
Also this Friday night, don't forget Friday night fellowship, which begins at 7 o'clock right here in the main lounge, it will be a time of worship and sharing scripture and prayer this week. So I hope you can join us for that.
Also two weeks from today will be our next TSF noontime forum. Our speaker will be Bob Henderson. He is the seminary staff person for Presbyterians for Renewal, which is a nationwide organization of Presbyterians committed to Renewal in the church. So I hope you can be here for Bob Henderson two weeks from today at 12:40.
To introduce our speaker and to open us in prayer, I'd like to introduce Renee Lawler. She's an MDiv senior and the secretary of TSF, Renee.
LAWLER: Let's pray. Gracious God, we thank you for this opportunity to gather together and to listen and to learn. And we pray that you would bless Earl as he blesses us with what he has to tell us today. In your Son's name, we pray. Amen.
Well, it's my distinct pleasure and honor to introduce to you the Rev. Earl Palmer. Earl attended PTS and graduated here 40 years ago with class of 1956. And right after that, he received a call to go to Seattle at the University Presbyterian Church where he was a pastor of youth and college ministry.
From there, he traveled to Manila and served there as a pastor until he got a call to be senior pastor near the University of California Berkeley at Berkeley First Pres. And then finally, he landed at University Presbyterian Church once again in Seattle where he is currently the senior pastor and where I had the opportunity to work with him.
He's on the board of trustees and has been at the last 21 commencements of Princeton Theological Seminary. He is the father of three, the husband of one. He's a recent grandfather. He's the author of 13 books.
He's quite a C.S. Lewis buff. For those of you that have heard him speak before, you'll realize this. He's a climber of mountains, an entertainer and he's a master teacher. And we're in for a real treat today. So it's my pleasure in welcoming, along with you, Earl Palmer.
PALMER: Thanks, Renee. Renee was on the staff at the University Presbyterian Church when I came, Associate Director of University Ministry. She's a very distinguished student here in your midst.
And she did a great job in university ministry there for six, seven years. And then decided to come to Princeton Seminary. So it's been really a great watching her have the experience in this school.
You know, I speak every year. I've been invited almost every year since I've been a member of the board of trustees, which is 21 years ago. That's why I've been to 21 commencements. It's not that I just come to commencements. But the board does have a spring meeting at commencement time when we confer the degrees and then we have our meeting immediately afterward. You know, I've been a member of this board for 21 years. It's just hard to believe. I've been a member so long.
I was first elected as an alumni trustee. And then I was elected a charter trustee. And it's been really, it's my only ecclesiastical responsibility I've ever had. In the ministry, I'm not a great joiner of committees, but it's been my one, it's my school. And I have loved it.
And one of the great fun things I've had is that every year, since TSF has been in existence, they've been inviting me to come and speak for this fall meeting, to be at this noon meeting.
So do you realize the series of sermons I've been giving to the TSF? If I should make a book out of it, visits to TSF for 20 years, because I've been speaking here about 19 years, I have a record of every single one of every talk I've given. Here's today's, I'll take it and put it in my file. But it's just been wonderful.
And to see students in this school. And now to see John Mackay's picture in this Mackay Hall. He was president of Princeton Seminary when I came and one of the great influences in my life.
And you are so privileged to have a man of that stature as a president of the school right now, Tom Gillespie. I was so touched by his sermon today, his message at the installation of the faculty. Just another great, we've had some giants.
I had the privilege of being a student under Dr. Mackay and then a trustee with James — James I. McCord who I loved, another great man. He was an amazing guy. Jim McCord had all the records and everything in Princeton in his head. And he knew everything.
And he knew everybody too. He was amazing. And then now Tom Gillespie, our president now. So I've had a wonderful relationship with this school.
OK, I'm going to talk about arguing today. When I look back on my own history and some of the high points for me in my life, now this may surprise you, but some of the high points of my life I got to thinking about the last couple of weeks ago when I thought, what should I talk to the TSF about this year?
When I look back on my life, some of the high points of my life have been arguments I've been in. Can you say that too? And also some of the low points of my life have been arguments I've been in. And the interesting thing is it doesn't have to do with whether I won the argument or not.
In fact, one of the lowest points of my life was the time when I won an argument when I was in college. And the guy came up to me and said, you didn't even let me save face, did you? And wow, that was a crushing blow. Here I won this argument. It was a political argument. And I nailed the guy in the corner and humiliated him. And then he took me aside and he said, you didn't even let me save face, did you? And that was a great lesson to learn.
So that was an argument where I evidently won, everybody would say, hey, you did that guy in. And I look back on it and I feel like I want to cry because it was not fun at all. It was a great terrible experience.
And then I've had arguments with people, my kids especially, where I've lost the argument. And afterward I was so grateful because they were right. And I changed my mind as a result of that argument. So some of the arguments I lost, I felt, man, I came out the better for.
So I got to thinking about arguments that happened on this campus. I just had lunch with one of my favorite professors, Bruce McCormick and I said, how do you like teaching here? And he said, well, it's a windy place. And it's a windy landscape here and it's fun to teach here.
It's also challenging, a lot of people arguing over things, hey, what makes a difference between whether an argument is good and healthy or unhealthy? And I thought I'd like to talk about that today, is that all right?
I think arguments are unhealthy if they're not done fair and square, whether it's in a family or on a theological faculty or among students. I think when arguments are done fair and square, they can be very, very helpful. It doesn't make any difference whether the person agrees with you or not.
Martin Luther said that Eck made me wide awake. So he argued with Eck and it made him wide awake. So he was grateful for that. My great hero, G.K. Chesterton, all his life, he argued vociferously with George Bernard Shaw and they ended up great friends and they helped each other. They never changed each other's minds, but they were good for each other. And so I think if you argue fair and square, they can be very good for you.
And I would like to offer for our thoughts this afternoon and I know some of you have to leave early so I'll try to give you these quick five rules for doing arguing. For doing the arguing part of theology.
And if you follow these five rules, it seems to me, arguments can be good for you. And for me. And I thought these are all original. I didn't read these anywhere. These are not out of any book on conflict management, believe me. But these are just some thoughts that came to me in the last couple of weeks.
And that is how to argue creatively and positively. And I've come up with five rules. The first three are the lesser value and the last two are the most important, sorry for those that leave early. But the last two are the most important. And but the first three are important but the last two are the most important. Let's start with them.
First, put yourself in a learner's stance in any argument and you're already off to a good start. This goes completely against all these, the dangers of political correctness. Politically correct people never put themselves in the learner's stance. Because they've already decided what's going to be admissible and they have code words and everything. And if you use the wrong code words, you can't even talk to them anymore. I hate that.
Hey, put yourself in the learner's stance even when a person is using all the wrong code language, pushing red buttons and all kinds of buttons with the language they're using. Put yourself in the learner's stance. Learn before offering critique. What it does is it changes the atmosphere for you when you're in a learner's stance.
I found this out with my kids. My kids are all now grown up, they're like you, 34, 30 and 26. And I found that for early on, if I could do this with my kids, even though they were maybe proposing an outlandish thesis for me in some argument, if I could try to put myself in the learner's stance and in effect say to my kids, teach me about it.
I mean, you don't want to be coy and cute about it, but just in effect, have that stance toward your own children. Teach me. Help me understand this.
And if more adults did this regard to youth music, because music is the number one love affair of most youth, if more adults would ask youth to explain why they like it, teach me about it. If you put yourself in the learner's stance, you're far better off later to bear a critique that maybe they would accept too. But most people have a hard time putting themselves in the learner's stance, especially teachers.
And by the way, you're all going to end up teachers and pastors and professors and all that. And it's hard for a professor to be in a learner's stance. But believe me, the great ones do it. The great ones know how to listen.
They know how to — C.S. Lewis, my hero, wrote a book that I would highly advise on Bible study or anything you want to use it for. And that's one of the last books he wrote called Experiment in Criticism. In that book, he talks about how to read a book. And he makes an interesting observation. He says in order to be, in order to really understand a book, you have to risk being taken in. That's the exact phrase he uses.
You have to risk being taken in. And if you don't, which is another way of putting yourself in the learner's stance, you have to be willing to learn from the book. And when you do that, you're on the right road to begin with in any kind of argument you're in.
So let me leave that thought for a moment, we'll go to a second thought. The second rule that I would give for arguing fair and square is to try to state what your thoughts are as plainly as you can, even though they're tentative. And encourage yourself to express and get out a tentative idea. And then listen to what others are saying and allow them to say tentatively where they are right now.
Even how to talk, sometimes in tentative language. And encourage that, in other words, let me put it another way, like in relating to children and your youth when they're teenagers. What parents often make this mistake with kids, maybe your parents made it with you. I know it's often made.
A parent will hear a kid say in a high school or a college or early college years, will make a statement and a parent will immediately freeze that statement in their memory and never forget it. Here's maybe some outlandish thing that was tried out on you by the young person in your family. And then five years later, the parent will say, you said this and you say you believe this. That the young person may have moved far from that point. But you have frozen them in a point and don't allow him to make tentative or her to make tentative statements.
And I think it's very important in any kind of argument to say, where are you now? I routinely do this as people come into my office or any chance I get to talk with somebody who's an inquirer into the Christian faith and many times people who are inquirers in the Christian faith come in ostensibly because they're angry about something. Something has burned them up.
And I have tried to say this to people and I try to say it honestly, partly because I want them to teach me, I want to learn what they're trying to say.
But I also say, tell me where you are right now. Share what you now believe about God or what you don't believe about God, but tell me where you think you are now. By the way, sometimes by giving a little rope like that to a person realized, I haven't even thought any of that through. And then that makes them more teachable.
But you've given them a chance to state tentative ideas. And then you have a chance to state tentative ideas. Now look at the value of this. The value of this is that then you allow one, a person to change their ideas because you haven't frozen what they've said. This is where they are right now.
You know, a lot of young people toy with cults and toy with cultism often are trying out extreme, you might say, positions that come from a genuine insight. There's a genuine concern that's now taken to an extreme position. But it's a genuine concern. And one way of listening to that and allowing a person to voice that and to try to hear it and then you to voice how you tentatively come across that at that point helps them to clarify it.
And then also gives them permission to move from it rather than to be frozen in that spot. And then the whole rest of the argument concerns the one statement they made, which may be five minutes from now they'd like to move from. But you force them to stay in it and then you actually freeze them in that position.
By the way, Will Rogers, I love American humorists, Mark Twain, I read all of Mark Twain's one of my heroes and I just decided that I'm going to get to know Will Rogers better. Partly because I saw the Will Rogers follies, which I loved. And so then I said, I'm going to get to know this man better because he was a hero of my of the previous generation behind me. He lived in the 20s and 30s. And he was an amazing American humorist.
I mean, you think of some of the funniest things that had been said about American politics were said by Will Rogers. In fact, his statue is in the rotunda of the United States Capitol from the state of Oklahoma. He was quite a humorist.
One of his funny lines is he said, you know, I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat. And that's one of his famous lines. All I know is what I read in the newspapers, another one of his famous lines. But here's one that I really like.
He was one half Cherokee Indian and he was very proud of that and his humor is a lot of Cherokee Indian stories. In fact, when I read the biography of Will Rogers by his son, I discovered that the most important influence in Will Rogers' life was his 100% Cherokee grandmother. She was the great influence of his life. And that's why he, perhaps, always wanted to make reference to his Indian heritage.
But he has a very one of his famous lines is this that ties into this second rule of arguing. He's criticizing now white people. He says the trouble, you can learn a lot from Indians. This is a direct quotation from Will Rogers. You can learn a lot from Indians. They say you must never disagree with a man while you're facing him. And his, in this larger statement of this point, he was making fun of the fact that he found out that most white men tend to always want to, you know, we're a confrontational society in which we always tell it like it is.
And we love front to front confrontations. And so he's saying, I don't like that. And then he says, and then he says, and I'll give you an example from my own culture. He says, you can learn a lot from Indians. They say you must never disagree with a man while you're facing him. You must go around behind him and look the same way he looks. Look over his shoulder and see what he sees. And then go back and face him and you'll have a different idea. Now I think that's marvelous advice for a pastor or for anybody trying to argue.
We tend to argue this way with an idea that someone gives us and then we freeze that idea and then we argue with the idea and of course we often leave the person in shambles. Will Rogers says what you need to do is to go around behind that person, in other words wait a little while before you come up with the final conclusion, give tentative thoughts, move around behind, look the way that person's looking, see, try to see what he's seeing. Then come back and he says you have a different idea.
And I found that's always true. How do you do that? How do you look through another person's eyes? One is you get them talking about where they, where they feel they are right now. And I think that's essential in any kind of a fair and square argument.
So many arguments in families, nobody really gets to say what they really are thinking tentatively and get it out. They're afraid to because it'll be frozen and then they can't move from it.
Three, keep your sense of humor. And I think your sense of humor is in direct proportion to our understanding of our own frailties and our own blind spots.
One thing that saved me a lot over the years as a pastor in the Presbyterian Church, believe me. And I was in a church in Manila in the Union Church of Manila, which was an inter-denominational church. But one thing that saved me throughout the years and being a parent and a husband and all the rest is having a sense of humor.
Don't take yourself too seriously. Americans take themselves way too seriously now. Feminists take themselves way too seriously. And now macho male, the macho male movement that's getting a lot of strength, a lot of people taking seminars on how to get in touch with their true maleness, take themselves way too seriously. Hey, life's too short. Don't take yourself too seriously.
Try to see the humor and try to see and humor is related to frailty. It's often related to suffering too. That when you have had some experiences and then you begin to see that they weren't the end of the world and there was another day and you could, by the way, anyone who has a forgiveness theology should have a great sense of humor.
A person that doesn't have a forgiveness theology has a lousy sense of humor because they tend to be legalistic and perfectionist. But when you have a forgiveness sense of theology and you know about redemption in Jesus Christ, you should have a good sense of humor.
One, I'll give you one example that saved me. I was in Berkeley, I've been there almost 21 years and after about 15 years in town like Berkeley, you get a little clout and I had a lot of clout there toward the end. I threw it all away after 21 years and came to Seattle and started all over again. But now I've been there five years and beginning a little bit of clout in Seattle again.
But in Berkeley, I was there because when I left Berkeley, I was the longest standing pastor who had ever survived in Berkeley among any denomination, any church. So I really had clout.
And anyway, I got a phone call one day. It's a true story. I got a phone call from a guy in Omaha, Nebraska and he was writing a book, he said, on religious movements, modern religious radical religious movements and every radical religious movement and political movement at one time or another had a headquarters in Berkeley. I can guarantee it.
And so maybe that's why he looked up the Berkeley phone directory and he phoned me because I was at First Presbyterian Church at Berkeley which he says the leading church in town, Protestant church, largest church.
So he wanted to ask me a question and he had his tape recorder going, I guess you see this scenario unfolding and he said he was writing a chapter on these on various religious movements and he told me at the beginning, I could just see his tape recorder running, I at the beginning, he said, I'm writing a chapter on the Christian World Liberation Front. Now the CWLF, the Christian World Liberation Front was a radicalized Christian group tended to be evangelical but quite outlandish.
They later became the Berkeley Christian Coalition, they became great friends of mine. But at that time they really were doing kind of outlandish things to a lot of people's ideas and they were a Berkeley movement and he said, I am doing a chapter on the Christian World Liberation Front and then he and I said, yes, he said, you know that group, I said, yes, sure.
And then he said to me, this is a funny part, he said to me, now and I could just see the tape recorder going, he said, do you approve of everything they're doing? And I scratched my head and I listened to that and here's where my sense of humor saved me. I said to him, I don't like that question because I don't even approve everything I'm doing.
Why am I now evaluating another religious organization and I could just see he was going to say, I can see in the chapter now, Presbyterian pastor, blasts this religious movement. Why am I giving judgment on them? I don't even approve everything I'm doing.
Do you know that one insight, I believe the Holy Spirit gave it to me to protect me from foot in mouth disease, but I do believe that that one thought has saved me so many times from leaving the Presbyterian Church, oh man people, I'm evangelical, you know. So that people say, how can you stay in the Presbyterian church? Why don't you leave it? Where do I go?
I mean, I don't approve everything that happens in Louisville, but I don't even approve everything that happens at UPC, it's true. You know that's rescued me.
We're all in this together and man there are a lot of sinners around and plenty to go around. And like I said, are you an organized political party, no, I've been a Presbyterian all my life, okay.
That sense of humor in which you recognize your own frailty, your own part of humanity. And like when you're a parent with a teenager, that will do wonders in relating to a teenager who's having a conflict with you over some great issue.
Four, now the last two are the most important. Remember two fundamental truths about the Christian faith according to the Bible. And that first truth is this, that our faith is not in a theory or a formulation. But fundamentally our faith is in a person, Jesus Christ.
And therefore, if I remember that, it helps me a lot not to get entrapped in theoretical entrapments where I freeze somebody's statement and where I become a little too frightened of where somebody is on their journey.
I've always thought of this with my kids. Everyone, and also my young people in my church, everyone is on a journey and they have their own journey and the Bible protects their freedom to have their journey. And so I've got to let my son, my daughters, I've got to let my young men and women that are in my church and fellow pastors, my wife.
I've got to let each person have their own journey. And the best thing about the journey is it's not with a theory, it's not with a formulation of ideas, not even with theology, it's with a person.
That's why you know it's so neat to be a biblical Christian. When you're a biblical Christian, the Bible, the Old Testament in anticipation and the New Testament in witness always brings you to its living center. That's John Calvin. The best gift John Calvin ever gave to Christianity was that insight. The Old Testament in anticipation and the New Testament in witness always brings you to its living center.
That's the authority and that living center wins your respect and the Bible as a matter of fact gets its authority in borrowed fashion from its living center. But the living center, Jesus Christ, is the key to your life. And that, when I know that, it makes me less defensive because I have a living guide.
So I don't have to, I don't have to clutch so much to a particular theory at a moment in my life. And I can be a lot more flexible with the theory part of my life because I have a living personal relationship at the center.
I'll show you how it works. When I came to Princeton Seminary, I came from a very evangelical church, the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley. And a lot of my friends were very worried about me because I was a brand new Christian. I became a Christian just two years before I came here.
And I had a lot of friends who were in the Navigator movement. In fact, before I came to Princeton, a whole bunch of my friends urged me to go to a Navigator conference just to get me ready for Princeton. And I met Dawson Trotman personally who was one of the great founders of the Navigators. And he was great. And I met Jim Rayburn for the first time, the founder of Young Life. So it was a marvelous experience.
I went to Colorado Springs to that conference. But fortunately, that was not the only conference. That conference tend to be a little on the brittle side, a little bit worried about, you know, be sure you hold fast to the Word, the Word, and not that anybody shove you in any way from great doctrines.
And that was good. I was grateful for that. But something better happened. And that was, I went to a conference at Forest Home, that same summer. And two people were there, Henrietta Mears, the founder of Forest Home, one of the greatest, the greatest influence in Michael Bruner's father, Dale Bruner.
Henrietta Mears was there, and Dick Halverson, who later became the chaplain of the U.S. Senate. He was then the associate pastor at the Hollywood Presbyterian Church. And Henrietta Mears, she was great.
I'll never forget we sat there in that room, a bunch of pre-Seminarians. And somebody said to her, Ms. Mears, if you were going to do it all over again, is there anything you do differently in your life? And you know she didn't even miss a beat. She answered, it's when someone said, I thought it was kind of an impudent question.
If you were going to do it all over again, would you do anything differently? And she didn't even make one moment of hesitation. She said, I'd trust God more. Hey, you're good. I never forgot that. I'd just trust him. I'd just trust him more. That's all. Next question. And that's the way she was. Very matter of fact. Ms. Mears was matter of fact.
I'll never forget that the victory circle one time, people were throwing faggots in the fire, you know, a little piece of wood in the fire. And they called them a piece of wood. And they were throwing them in the fire and making their witness. And one guy got a, Ms. Mears always sat there by the big book with her great big hat. And taking down the names of the kids, they put their little piece of wood in the fire and then they made their witness.
And one kid came up and he didn't throw the piece of wood in the fire threw his package of cigarettes in the fire. And then he started to say, I'm not going to ever smoke these again because of meeting Christ this weekend. And Ms. Mears jumped up from her seat. She walked over to the fire. She reached in, took the package of cigarettes out of the fire. She handed them back to this boy and she said, Jesus Christ doesn't want your cigarettes he wants you.
She couldn't stand for any nonsense like that. She didn't like any of that hysterical type of Christianity. She wanted it to make sense. Jesus Christ doesn't want cigarettes. He wants you. Boy, I never forgot that.
But the best thing after she spoke to us and inspired us, the best thing was Dick Halverson. He knew that we were going to, a bunch of us were going to Princeton. And Princeton, of course, you might get an influence of liberals here. And they were worried about me because I was so naive, I didn't know anything about Calvin or anything.
I knew I was a Christian, but I was coming here really, really raw recruit. And Dick Halverson said this to us. He said, you know what? The most important thing for you is to stay close to Jesus Christ personally. That means you need a prayer group. You need some people to love you, to be accountable with you. They're praying for you, that you're praying.
Keep close to Jesus Christ of the New Testament. That means you need to read your Bible. And the Bible is not a book to be critiqued. First, it's a book to nourish. To nourish you to its living center. And then to critique it. Oh man, it's wonderful when it's critiqued because it stands up, wow, it stands up.
But stay close to the living center. Stay close to Jesus Christ. And then he said this, and trust the Holy Spirit to aid you, to protect you. And then throw yourself in the open position and learn everything you can learn. And that's when I came to Princeton. And I had a Renaissance experience in this school, okay?
I think that's when you have that rule that you know that you're going to stay close to Christ and he's the source of your life, hey, you know that arguments actually help you clarify. You don't have to fear them. And it's the fear in an argument that makes you brittle and makes you, gives you the angst and makes you angry.
But when you have a relationship with Christ that makes you feel safe, then you can go into an argument without the fear. And I think that's the cure for the fear.
And now the last, my last rule is the most important rule of all to remember is that God is able to speak for himself. And this is so good. This is what biblical faith is all about, that God has the ability to speak for himself. He can speak. God can speak. And God has spoken in the law of the prophets and in these last days by his son Jesus Christ.
He has spoken. And you know what that means? That means that all of theology and all of my formulations of ideas have always got to be checked and balanced by the witness of the law, the prophets, and the living center of Jesus Christ.
And that makes me feel a little less dogmatic, a little less definite about some of my tentative, allows me to be tentative and grow in my theological formation because of the living center, the person that I'm in relationship with, and the fact that I trust that God is able to speak for himself and the word, the text, tests, then my theology.
And I like the fact that the Apostles Creed does not start, this is the last word, but it starts, I believe. The Apostles Creed recognized that, and that's one of the best theological formations the church ever came up with.
But it doesn't start with, this is the last word, it starts with, I believe. And that's what we need to do in all theological debate, is to say, I believe this is where I am now. But my, everything I'm saying now needs to be tested by the God who speaks and is able to speak.
None of our words are absolute. And that's a tremendous relief it seems to me for all debate.
I'll give you one last C.S. Lewis quotation, and then I'm finished. In the Chronicles of Narnia, in The Horse and His Boy, which is Lewis's story about Moses, it's already a story about himself, too, you know.
Because in the Horse and his Boy, Shasta, the little boy is raised by a stern fisherman, and Lewis was raised by a stern father. And the little boy is an orphan, and Lewis was really an orphan, because his mother died when he was nine. And she was the only bright, warm light in his childhood. His father was a very sort of severe, strict man. So maybe in a way, it's autobiographical, too.
But it's also about Moses, because Moses was pushed in a little boat and then picked up by Pharaoh's daughter, and Shasta was pushed on a little boat too and picked up by the stern fisherman.
Anyway, to make a long story short, this boy Shasta is very superstitious, because he was raised in Tashban, and it's a very superstitious place.
And to make a long story short, when he finally gets to a place where he's on a high mountain pass, he's walking there, he's on a horse. He can't make the horse run, but he's on this horse. Everybody else is left, so he's all by himself.
It's night, it's very foggy, it's very scary, and he begins to be aware of breathing on a very large scale. And the breathing on a very large scale is Aslan, the great golden lion, son of the emperor from beyond the sea.
And if you're a Lewis fan, you know that, like Lewis says, all children know who Aslan is. Aslan is Jesus Christ in the way, Lewis, when people asked Lewis what he was doing in his Chronicle stories, he said, I was not writing allegorically, but I was saying, given a place like Narnia, I wondered what the Redeemer would be like. I wondered what evil would be like, given a place like Narnia. And so that's what he did.
So here's Shasta on this mountain pass, and he becomes aware of breathing on a very large scale. And he finally gets very terrified, wondering what it is, and he wonders if maybe it's a ghost or something dead, and all these terrible thoughts come to his mind.
And finally, he bursts out and asks the voice, who are you? And the voice answers, one who has waited long for you to speak. I like that, don't you?
There's a great freedom passage. Lewis understood freedom very much. God waits sometimes for us to speak too, but he was there even before we spoke.
So then Aslan says to him, one who's waited long for you to speak, and then comes the best line in the whole book, theologically, shows you what a great theologian Lewis is. Then Shasta says to him, are you a giant? And Aslan answers him, you might call me a giant, but I'm not like the creatures you call giants.
Well, as you know, the three great Hebrew words for God in the Old Testament, Adonai, Elohim and El Shaddai, all of them, one way or another, really, are translations of the Hebrew word giant, or great, or mountain. Huge.
It's only Yahweh that's different. That's the "to be" verb. That's that God speaks for himself. But all the words we come up with for God are inadequate. None of them are adequate, yet God allows us to use them. But they're not final. They're tentative. And Lewis saw that.
So when Shasta says, are you a giant? And then Aslan says, okay, I'll let you call me giant. Well, you know, God lets us call him all kinds of things. It doesn't offend him at all.
By the way, it doesn't offend him if you call him father. I'm sure it doesn't offend them if you call him mother. You can't offend God. But when you call him father, he's not like the creatures you call father. You call him mother. He's not like the creatures you call mother. You call him giant. He's not like the creatures you call giant. Who is he? He speaks for himself.
And you know, that is what rescues you, in my opinion, and makes you a good theologian.
Now, I'm finished. Hey, thanks for letting me. What do you do? Do you close right now?
LAWLER: Well, we've got people that need to go out to class and be going to go. And if you would like to answer any questions?
PALMER: Oh, yeah. If anybody has to leave, I know you got to go to classes. Man, I'm for that. Oh, there's five minutes, he says.
ELLISON: For those who want to stay for questions.
PALMER: You want more Will Rogers quotes?
ELLISON: Thank you so much.
PALMER: Great for me.
ELLISON: Thanks for coming. Take care. Are there, were there any questions? I didn't see any hands. All right, great. Thank you for being here. Bye-bye.