C S LEWIS: A Christian for all Christians (H&S 1990)

Some rough notes after reading this interesting compendium of essays about the great man, in Macao September 2011:

In Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, Lewis contemplates the possibility that creation is a tragedy, an inevitable separation of creatures from their divine ground. Students of the second century will hear in these words the voice of Valentinus, for whom creation was the result of some primal flaw.

Lewis: ‘I stick to [Owen Barfield’s] view. All creatures, from the angel to the atom, are other than God: with an otherness to which there is no parallel: incommensurable. The very words “to be” cannot be applied to Him and to them in exactly the same sense. But also no creature is other than He in the same way in which it is other than all the rest. He is in it as they can never be in one another. In each of them as the ground and root and continual supply of its reality… Therefore of each creature we can say “This also is Thou: neither is this Thou”. (pp. 166-7)

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Jack knew his Master’s awesome tenderness/And tongue that slashed through Pharisaic stress./The willing servant grew more like his Lord:/At once a lover and a genial sword.

(Sheldon Vanauken’s tribute to C S Lewis)

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The concept of ‘Mere Christianity’ was taken from Richard Baxter

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20^th century’s most read Christian apologist

CSL offered eight definitions of Romanticism in the 1943 Preface to The Pilgrim’s Regress

To know Boethius was to become a naturalized citizen of the Middle Ages
Faith – an acceptance of certain beliefs which is not contrary to reason, but which is supported by reason… What wars against against faith are not rational considerations, but imagination and emotion… Jack’s faith was tested but in the long run strengthened by his grief at Joy’s death.

‘By the way, did you ever meet, or hear of, anyone who was converted from scepticism to a ‘liberal’ or ‘de-mythologised’ Christianity?’

One of CSL’s mentors, G K Chesterton: ‘Even mere existence, reduced to its most primary limits, was extraordinary enough to be exciting. Anything was magnificent as compared with nothing. Even if . very daylight were a dream, it was a day-dream; it was not a nightmare. He expressed his gratitude for existence via this famous early poem:

“By the Babe Unborn”

by G.K. Chesterton

If trees were tall and grasses short,

As in some crazy tale,

If here and there a sea were blue

Beyond the breaking pale,

If a fixed fire hung in the air

To warm me one day through,

If deep green hair grew on great hills,

I know what I should do.

In dark I lie; dreaming that there

Are great eyes cold or kind,

And twisted streets and silent doors,

And living men behind.

Let storm clouds come: better an hour,

And leave to weep and fight,

Than all the ages I have ruled

The empires of the night.

I think that if they gave me leave

Within the world to stand,

I would be good through all the day

I spent in fairyland.

They should not hear a word from me

Of selfishness or scorn,

If only I could find the door,

If only I were born.

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 Austin Farrer said Lewis ‘was an apologist from temper, from conviction and from modesty’. It was part of Lewis’ nature to be combative (not aggressive)… The delight lay in the art of speculation, not argumentation.

The talent of CSLewis was analysis; of Charles Williams synthesis. Lewis’ mind worked naturally in polarities, and dialectically, arguing logically that ‘if this is true then that cannot be true’. Williams’ mind always tried to overcome polarities and work with paradox. Where Lewis would exclude, Williams would include. For Lewis the natural tendency was always ‘EITHER THIS OR THAT’; for Williams it was ‘BOTH THIS AND THAT’. (p.88)

Charles Williams expounded to CSL the doctrine of co-inherence: the idea that one had power to accept into one’s being the pain of someone else, through Christian love. This was a power which Lewis found himself later to possess, and which he used to ease the suffering of his wife, a cancer victim…

CSL: one of the functions of art is to present what the narrow and desperately practical perspectives of real life exclude.

Teaching the Chronicles of Narnia: whether the class be made up of children or adults, some in it respond enthusiastically to the fantasy world and unrealistic happenings, but some resist them, preferring realistic settings, characters and events in their fiction, or preferring expository writing over fiction.

I love Englishness: ‘He invites Lucy to his home for a thoroughly English tea, in an English-style drawing-room…  and asks “Excuse me… but should I be right in thinking that you are a daughter of Eve?”

‘Then [Aslan] isn’t safe?’ said Lucy.
‘Safe?’ said Mr Beaver… ‘Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.’