C. S. Lewis: The Silver Chair - Hope in Darkness

Another one of my absolute favorite scenes from The Chronicles of Narnia is in The Silver Chair. This is the book that comes after The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It is Book 4 in the correct order.

The story takes place decades after The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in Narnian time, but less than a year later in England. Therefore King Caspian X is an old man. As the adventure begins we learn that King Caspian's son, Prince Rilian is missing. Aslan sends Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole on a rescue mission. They are joined in their quest by the delightfully melancholy Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle.

Their journey leads them to the "Underland" where the Green Lady has been keeping Prince Rilian as her enchanted prisoner. The Green Lady (the witch) catches the group mid-rescue and tries to work a magic spell to make them forget who they are and why they are there. (And here I think of the admonishment to remember who you are and whose you are as a child of God...)

"Narnia?" she said. "Narnia? I have often heard your Lordship utter that name in your ravings. Dear Prince, you are very sick. There is no land called Narnia."

"Yes there is, though, Ma'am," said Puddleglum. "You see, I happen to have lived there all my life."

"Indeed," said the Witch. "Tell me, I pray you, where that country is?"

"Up there," said Puddleglum, stoutly, pointing overhead. "I - I don't know exactly where."

"How?" said the Queen, with a kind, soft, musical laugh. "Is there a country up among the stones and mortar of the roof?"

"No," said Puddleglum, struggling a little to get his breath. "It's in Overworld."

"And what, or where, pray is this... how do you call it... Overworld?"

"Oh, don't be so silly," said Scrubb, who was fighting hard against the enchantment of the sweet smell and the thrumming. "As if you didn't know! It's up above, up where you can see the sky and the sun and the stars. Why, you've been there yourself. We met you there." [...]

Puddleglum (Original Illustration by Pauline Baynes)

This goes on for a bit, with the witch trying to convince them that their memories of Narnia are nothing but dreams and Narnia doesn't exist. She tells them the only reality that is real is the one they can see right in front of them. But the wise Puddleglum finally uses his bare foot to stamp out the fire she was using to work her magic and then he says something I find myself coming back to over and over again:

"Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a playworld which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. [...]we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland." - C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair, Chapter 12

The times in my life where hope has been faintest, or I felt that it wasn't there at all, the times when everything seemed dark and I was in despair and questioning everything I believed, this is the passage that kept me going. I would pray, "God, even if you're not there I'm going to live like you are, because I don't want to live in a world without Jesus." I also think of the time when Jesus asked his closest disciples if they were going to leave him too and Peter replied, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." (John 6:68)

In my mind these two texts are connected and they are what pull me back from the brink every time: Where else could I go Lord? You have the words of eternal life... so I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan and I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can, even if there isn't any Narnia... 

Amen.

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In response to the 31 Day blogging challenge, I will be posting every day in October. You can read previous posts HERE. Follow me on Facebook and/or Twitter to be notified of new posts. You can also Subscribe to get posts sent to you by email. (There is a simple form towards the top on the right where you can do this.)

Feel free to comment with your own thoughts and questions!

Index of Posts (Highlights):
Day 2. C. S. Lewis on Longing (In "The Weight of Glory")
Day 3. C. S. Lewis on Sehnsucht (Longing and Desire in The Weight of Glory)
Day 6: C. S. Lewis: The Intolerable Compliment (The Problem of Pain)
Day 7: C. S. Lewis: What is "The Weight of Glory"?
Day 8: C. S. Lewis: The Great Divorce and The Weight of Glory
Day 9: C. S. Lewis: A Grief Observed
Day 12: C. S. Lewis and Postmodernism (Part 3 - Conclusion)
Day 13: C. S. Lewis: The Grand Miracle (Myth and Allusions)
Day 14: C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 1: More on Myth)
Day 19: C.S. Lewis: Brief Biography: Did you know? (Part 2)
Day 20: C. S. Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia Correct Reading Order
Day 21: C. S. Lewis: Why The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is my Favorite Narnia Book
Day 22: C. S. Lewis: The Undragoning of Eustace

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C. S. Lewis: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (The Lion and the Lamb)

I nearly forgot to mention yet another scene in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader that adds to the reasons why it is one of my favorite books in the series. (Read the first two reasons here and here.) It is at the end of the book when the children have sailed all the way to the end of the world. You see, the world of Narnia is actually a flat world and not a round one like ours.

As they draw closer and closer to "Aslan's country" the light becomes brighter, the water becomes wetter, "stronger than wine and somehow wetter, more liquid than ordinary water". They stopped needing to eat and sleep. Lewis tells us that the sailors who had been older men when the voyage began were now growing younger every day. Their eyesight grew sharper, like eagle's eyes.

"They saw a wonder ahead. It was as if a wall stood up between them and the sky, a greenish-grey, trembling, shimmering wall. Then up came the sun, and at its first rising they saw it through the wall and it turned into wonderful rainbow colours. Then they knew that the wall was really a long, tall wave - a wave endlessly fixed in one place as you may often see at the edge of a waterfall. It seemed to be about thirty feet high, and the current was gliding them swiftly towards it. ... now they saw something not only behind the wave but behind the sun. They could not have seen even the sun if their eyes had not been strengthened by the water of the Last Sea. But now they could look at the rising sun and see it clearly and see things beyond it. What they saw - eastward, beyond the sun - was a range of mountains. It was so high that either they never saw the top of it or they forgot it. None of them remembers seeing any sky in that direction. And the mountains must really have been outside the world. For any mountains even a quarter of a twentieth of that height ought to have had ice and snow on them. But these were warm and green and full, of forests and waterfalls however high you looked. And suddenly there came a breeze from the east, tossing the top of the wave into foamy shapes and ruffling the smooth water all round them. It lasted only a second or so but what it brought them in that second none of those three children will ever forget. It brought both a smell and a sound, a musical sound Edmund and Eustace would never talk about it afterwards. Lucy could only say, "It would break your heart." "Why," said I, "was it so sad? " "Sad!! No," said Lucy.

No one in that boat doubted that they were seeing beyond the End of the World into Aslan's country." - C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 16)

As I read the descriptions of what they are seeing, even from a distance, my heart beats faster as I long for "Aslan's country".

Once the children have reached the shore Lewis writes:

"between them and the foot of the sky there was something so white on the green grass that even with their eagles' eyes they could hardly look at it. They came on and saw that it was a Lamb.

"Come and have breakfast," said the Lamb in its sweet milky voice.

Then they noticed for the first time that there was a fire lit on the grass and fish roasting on it. They sat down and ate the fish, hungry now for the first time for many days. And it was the most delicious food they had ever tasted.

"Please, Lamb," said Lucy, "is this the way to Aslan's country?"

"Not for you," said the Lamb. "For you the door into Aslan's country is from your own world."

"What!" said Edmund. "Is there a way into Aslan's country from our world too?"

"There is a way into my country from all the worlds," said the Lamb; but as he spoke his snowy white flushed into tawny gold and his size changed and he was Aslan himself, towering above them and scattering light from his mane."

I just love the image of the Lamb turning into the Lion. It's a different twist on the passage from Isaiah about the Lion and the Lamb laying down peacefully, together. (And of course it's also depicting the Lion of Judah/the Lamb of God and how they are one and the same.)

"Oh, Aslan," said Lucy. "Will you tell us how to get into your country from our world?"

"I shall be telling you all the time," said Aslan. "But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do not fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder. And now come; I will open the door in the sky and send you to your own land."

I love it so much! "Notice the "I am" statement, reminiscent of Jesus's "I AM" statements in the book of John.

And finally, there are these great lines:

But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan.

"Are are you there too, Sir?" said Edmund.

"I am," said Aslan. "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there."

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In response to the 31 Day blogging challenge, I will be posting every day in October. You can read previous posts HERE. Follow me on Facebook and/or Twitter to be notified of new posts. You can also Subscribe to get posts sent to you by email. (There is a simple form towards the top on the right where you can do this.)

Feel free to comment with your own thoughts and questions!

Index of Posts (Highlights):
Day 2. C. S. Lewis on Longing (In "The Weight of Glory")
Day 3. C. S. Lewis on Sehnsucht (Longing and Desire in The Weight of Glory)
Day 6: C. S. Lewis: The Intolerable Compliment (The Problem of Pain)
Day 7: C. S. Lewis: What is "The Weight of Glory"?
Day 8: C. S. Lewis: The Great Divorce and The Weight of Glory
Day 9: C. S. Lewis: A Grief Observed
Day 12: C. S. Lewis and Postmodernism (Part 3 - Conclusion)
Day 13: C. S. Lewis: The Grand Miracle (Myth and Allusions)
Day 14: C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 1: More on Myth)
Day 19: C.S. Lewis: Brief Biography: Did you know? (Part 2)
Day 20: C. S. Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia Correct Reading Order
Day 21: C. S. Lewis: Why The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is my Favorite Narnia Book
Day 22: C. S. Lewis: The Undragoning of Eustace

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C. S. Lewis: The Undragoning of Eustace

Yesterday I mentioned a few reasons The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is my favorite Narnia book:

1. It has one of my favorite first lines of a book:
“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”

2. The un-dragoning of Eustace

3. Chapter 12: The Dark Island ("Courage, dear heart") - Yesterday's post.

So today I want to talk about Eustace.

Eustace is a character you kind of just want to punch in the face until his transformation experience with Aslan. He was arrogant, self-centered, and all around annoying to Edmund and Lucy.

On one of the islands the crew lands on, Eustace finds a dragon's lair and is very greedy for the treasure. He puts on a gold bracelet and falls asleep, and when he wakes up, he has been turned into a dragon. Lewis writes, "Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself." Eustace had fleeting thoughts of relief at being the biggest thing around, but he quickly realizes he is cut off from his friends, and all of humanity, and he feels a weight of loneliness and desperately wants to change.

That night, Aslan comes to Eustace and leads him to a large well "like a very big round bath with marble steps going down into it." Eustace describes the scene to Edmund after the fact. He says the water was so clear and he thought if he could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in his leg (from the gold bracelet he had put on when he was human). But Aslan told him he had to undress first. And doesn't God ask this of us? As Lewis wrote in Letters to Malcolm: "We must lay before him [God] what is in us; not what ought to be in us.”

Original illustration by Pauline Baynes

Eustace found that no matter how many layers of dragon skins he managed to peel off of himself, he was still a dragon.

“Then the lion said - but I don't know if it spoke – ‘You will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know - if you've ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.”
...
“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off ... And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me - I didn't like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I'd no skin on - and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I'd turned into a boy again..." - C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 

This scene always grabs my heart. It reminds me that I cannot fix myself. It paints a beautiful picture of baptism and transformation to new life. It humbles me as I put myself in Eustace's place. And even long after our initial baptism we have the ongoing challenge of surrendering to God's work in our lives which can be painful at times, even when it's a good pain.

And I like Lewis's note of narration at the end of this scene as well:

"It would be nice, and fairly nearly true, to say that “from that time forth Eustace was a different boy.” To be strictly accurate, he began to be a different boy. He had relapses. There were still many days when he could be very tiresome. But most of those I shall not notice. The cure had begun."

Isn't that the way it is for all of us? We begin to be different as the grace of God changes us for the better. The cure has begun. 

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In response to the 31 Day blogging challenge, I will be posting every day in October. You can read previous posts HERE. Follow me on Facebook and/or Twitter to be notified of new posts. You can also Subscribe to get posts sent to you by email. (There is a simple form towards the top on the right where you can do this.)

Feel free to comment with your own thoughts and questions!

Index of Posts (Highlights):
Day 2. C. S. Lewis on Longing (In "The Weight of Glory")
Day 3. C. S. Lewis on Sehnsucht (Longing and Desire in The Weight of Glory)
Day 6: C. S. Lewis: The Intolerable Compliment (The Problem of Pain)
Day 7: C. S. Lewis: What is "The Weight of Glory"?
Day 8: C. S. Lewis: The Great Divorce and The Weight of Glory
Day 9: C. S. Lewis: A Grief Observed
Day 12: C. S. Lewis and Postmodernism (Part 3 - Conclusion)
Day 13: C. S. Lewis: The Grand Miracle (Myth and Allusions)
Day 14: C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 1: More on Myth)
Day 15: C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 2: Metaphors, Symbols, and Science)
Day 16: C. S. Lewis and The Trilemma Argument in Mere Christianity
Day 19: C.S. Lewis: Brief Biography: Did you know? (Part 2)
Day 20: C. S. Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia Correct Reading Order
Day 21: C. S. Lewis: Why The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is my Favorite Narnia Book

C. S. Lewis: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Another question I am often asked is which is my favorite book of The Chronicles of Narnia. It is extremely difficult for me to pick a favorite. I have favorite scenes and passages in all of them. And you just can't beat the end of The Last Battle... but I usually end up saying The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is my all around favorite for a few reasons:

1. It has one of my favorite first lines of a book:
“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”

2. The un-dragoning of Eustace (I will write about this in another post.)

3. Chapter 12: The Dark Island

I know, I know, why is a chapter called "The Dark Island" one of your favorite things about this book? Well let me tell you. Here we find Lucy, Edmond, Eustace, and Caspian sailing towards what they believe is an island, but turns out to be only darkness. Lewis tells the reader to imagine a railroad tunnel so long, or so twisty, that you cannot see the light at the end.

"The same idea was occurring to everyone on board. “We shall never get out, never get out,” moaned the rowers. “He’s steering us wrong. We’re going round and round in circles. We shall never get out.”

I'm sure we have all experienced some darkness in our lives. For me, the darkness of depression can feel very much like going round and round in circles with no hope of getting out.

And here when all on the ship are slipping into despair, when all hope seems lost and all they feel is fear, Lucy calls out to Aslan:

"Lucy leant her head on the edge of the fighting-top and whispered, 'Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now.' The darkness did not grow any less, but she began to feel a little - a very, very little - better...There was a tiny speck of light ahead, and while they watched a broad beam of light fell from it upon the ship...It did not alter the surrounding darkness, but the whole ship was lit up as if by searchlight.

Lucy looked along the beam and presently saw something in it. At first it looked like a cross, then it looked like an aeroplane, then it looked like a kite, and at last with a whirring of wings it was right overhead and was an albatross...It called out in a strong sweet voice what seemed to be words though no one understood them...no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her, 'Courage, dear heart,” and the voice, she felt sure, was Aslan’s, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face." - C. S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I love this so much. Because I need to hear those words, "courage, dear heart..."

Like Lucy, sometimes all I can do is cry out to Jesus, "if you ever loved me at all, send help now..."

The darkness may not fade away, but I do feel a little - a very, very little - better... for I know that in the end, the darkness will not overcome the Light. And I know the Light is with me, even when I can't see Him for the darkness.

And sometimes, in precious moments, I can hear him say, "Courage, dear heart."

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In response to the 31 Day blogging challenge, I will be posting every day in October. You can read previous posts HERE. Follow me on Facebook and/or Twitter to be notified of new posts. You can also Subscribe to get posts sent to you by email. (There is a simple form towards the top on the right where you can do this.)

Feel free to comment with your own thoughts and questions!

Index of Posts (Highlights):
Day 2. C. S. Lewis on Longing (In "The Weight of Glory")
Day 3. C. S. Lewis on Sehnsucht (Longing and Desire in The Weight of Glory)
Day 6: C. S. Lewis: The Intolerable Compliment (The Problem of Pain)
Day 7: C. S. Lewis: What is "The Weight of Glory"?
Day 8: C. S. Lewis: The Great Divorce and The Weight of Glory
Day 9: C. S. Lewis: A Grief Observed
Day 12: C. S. Lewis and Postmodernism (Part 3 - Conclusion)
Day 13: C. S. Lewis: The Grand Miracle (Myth and Allusions)
Day 14: C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 1: More on Myth)
Day 15: C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 2: Metaphors, Symbols, and Science)
Day 16: C. S. Lewis and The Trilemma Argument in Mere Christianity
Day 19: C.S. Lewis: Brief Biography: Did you know? (Part 2)
Day 20: C. S. Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia Correct Reading Order

C. S. Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia Correct Reading Order

From time to time I am asked in which order one should read The Chronicles of Narnia. I have a strong opinion about this, and I am in good company.

The original publication order was as such (from 1950 to 1956):

1. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
2. Prince Caspian
3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
4. The Silver Chair
5. The Horse and His Boy
6. The Magician’s Nephew
7. The Last Battle

HarperCollins decided to change the order according to its internal chronology:

1. The Magician’s Nephew
2. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
3. The Horse and His Boy
4. Prince Caspian
5. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
6. The Silver Chair
7. The Last Battle

Original book illustration by Pauline Baynes

But here's the thing, The Magician's Nephew is a prequel. It assumes you already know certain things about Narnia and Aslan. If you read The Magician's Nephew first, you miss out on the awe and wonder of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Lewis even writes in LWW: “None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do.” This obviously wouldn't be true if you've already read The Magician's Nephew.

Lewis scholar, Devin Brown agrees:

"One need not be a Lewis scholar or an English professor to see that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe must be read first if we want to walk with and not ahead of the four Pevensie children as they hide inside the Professor's strange wardrobe and enter an enchanted land called Narnia. Reading this story first is the only way we can share their wonder."

Devin also writes: "Lewis scholar Peter Schakel maintains that the order the books are read in "matters a great deal" and argues that the original ordering is preferred by "a number" of Lewis scholars, is an understatement that should read "most" or "nearly all."

original book illustration by Pauline Baynes

Alister McGrath gives a couple additional reasons in C. S. Lewis – A Life:

• It is not possible to read the books in strict chronological order.
• The Horse and His Boy takes place during The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, not after.

• The books originally had subtitles which reveal Lewis's intentions.
• For example, the full title of Prince Caspian is Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia, which clearly suggests it should be read right after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
• Lewis also uses the subtitle "A Story for Children" for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Last Battle, the 1st and last books published.

So in conclusion, for the love of Narnia, read them in the original published order! ;-)

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In response to the 31 Day blogging challenge, I will be posting every day in October. You can read previous posts HERE. Follow me on Facebook and/or Twitter to be notified of new posts. You can also Subscribe to get posts sent to you by email. (There is a simple form towards the top on the right where you can do this.)

Feel free to comment with your own thoughts and questions!

Index of Posts (Highlights):
Day 2. C. S. Lewis on Longing (In "The Weight of Glory")
Day 3. C. S. Lewis on Sehnsucht (Longing and Desire in The Weight of Glory)
Day 6: C. S. Lewis: The Intolerable Compliment (The Problem of Pain)
Day 7: C. S. Lewis: What is "The Weight of Glory"?
Day 8: C. S. Lewis: The Great Divorce and The Weight of Glory
Day 9: C. S. Lewis: A Grief Observed
Day 12: C. S. Lewis and Postmodernism (Part 3 - Conclusion)
Day 13: C. S. Lewis: The Grand Miracle (Myth and Allusions)
Day 14: C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 1: More on Myth)
Day 15: C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 2: Metaphors, Symbols, and Science)
Day 16: C. S. Lewis and The Trilemma Argument in Mere Christianity
Day 18: C. S. Lewis: Brief Biography (Part 1)

C.S. Lewis: Brief Biography: Did you know? (Part 2)

(Read Part 1 Here)

Did you know that C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien were good friends for a time?
They first met in 1926 at a Merton College English Faculty meeting. Lewis recorded his initial apprehension in his diary - he called him a “smooth, pale, fluent little chap” and that there was “no harm in him: only needs a smack or so.”

Did you know that Tolkien was instrumental in Lewis becoming a Christian? 
I alluded to this in a previous post. On 19 September 1931, Jack and "Tollers" (Tolkien's closest friends called him this) together with their friend Hugo Dyson, were taking their usual after-dinner stroll on the grounds of Magdalen College. This was what Lewis was referring to here:

Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: … if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself … I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: … that the idea of the dying and reviving god (Balder, Adonis, Bacchus) similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even tho’ I could not say in cold prose ‘what it meant’." (Letters 976) 

The three friends talked until after three o'clock in the morning and a few days later Lewis wrote to his old friend Arthur Greeves, saying: "I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ, in Christianity.... My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a great deal to do with it", and that he would explain it at some other time.

Did you know that Lewis was instrumental in pushing Tolkien to publish the Lord of the Rings?
Lewis commented, “If they won’t write the kinds of books we want to read, we shall have to write them ourselves.” Lewis encouraged Tolkien, to continue the work he had started in The Hobbit.
Tolkien also agreed to try “time-travel” and Lewis “space-travel,” which led to the Ransom Trilogy. And of course Lewis wrote the Narnia books as well.


Did you know that Lewis was on the cover of Time Magazine in 1947? 

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If you want to learn more about C. S. Lewis, you could start by reading his autobiography of sorts, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of my Early Life. There are also a number of biographies out there, and of course some are better than others.

His step-son, Douglas Gresham wrote Lenten Lands, My Childhood With C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman

One of the best biographies I have ever read on him was George Sayer's: Jack: C.S. Lewis and His Times

A couple of other important ones would be:

- Walter Hooper and Roger Lancelyn Green's, C.S. Lewis: A Biography

- Walter Hooper's, C.S Lewis: A Companion and Guide

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In response to the 31 Day blogging challenge, I will be posting every day in October. You can read previous posts HERE. Follow me on Facebook and/or Twitter to be notified of new posts. You can also Subscribe to get posts sent to you by email. (There is a simple form towards the top on the right where you can do this.)

Feel free to comment with your own thoughts and questions!

Index of Posts (Highlights):
Day 2. C. S. Lewis on Longing (In "The Weight of Glory")
Day 3. C. S. Lewis on Sehnsucht (Longing and Desire in The Weight of Glory)
Day 6: C. S. Lewis: The Intolerable Compliment (The Problem of Pain)
Day 7: C. S. Lewis: What is "The Weight of Glory"?
Day 8: C. S. Lewis: The Great Divorce and The Weight of Glory
Day 9: C. S. Lewis: A Grief Observed
Day 12: C. S. Lewis and Postmodernism (Part 3 - Conclusion)
Day 13: C. S. Lewis: The Grand Miracle (Myth and Allusions)
Day 14: C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 1: More on Myth)
Day 15: C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 2: Metaphors, Symbols, and Science)
Day 16: C. S. Lewis and The Trilemma Argument in Mere Christianity
Day 18: C. S. Lewis: Brief Biography (Part 1)

C.S. Lewis: Brief Biography (Part 1)

C. S. Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland on November 29, 1898.

He died the same day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated, November 22, 1963. (Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World also died that same day.)

Lewis's friends and family called him "Jack" because he didn't like his given name. The story goes that he had a dog called "Jacksie" when he was young and when the dog died, Lewis started making everyone call him "Jacksie" which later was shortened to just "Jack".

His full name was Clive Staples Lewis. His father was Albert James Lewis and his mother was Flora Augusta Hamilton Lewis. She died in 1908 when Jack was only 10 years old. Jack's brother, Warren Hamilton Lewis (Warnie) was born on June 16, 1895.

After Jack's mother died, his father sent him away to boarding school in England.

Lewis was very bad at math and if it wasn't for the fact that the university waived the entrance exam for those who had served in the army during WWI, Lewis may not have become the man he did because he failed the math section of the entrance exam.

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If you want to learn more about C. S. Lewis, you could start by reading his autobiography of sorts, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of my Early Life. There are also a number of biographies out there, and of course some are better than others.

His step-son, Douglas Gresham wrote Lenten Lands, My Childhood With C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman

One of the best biographies I have ever read on him was George Sayer's: Jack: C.S. Lewis and His Times

A couple of other important ones would be:

- Walter Hooper and Roger Lancelyn Green's, C.S. Lewis: A Biography

- Walter Hooper's, C.S Lewis: A Companion and Guide

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In response to the 31 Day blogging challenge, I will be posting every day in October. You can read previous posts HERE. Follow me on Facebook and/or Twitter to be notified of new posts. You can also Subscribe to get posts sent to you by email. (There is a simple form towards the top on the right where you can do this.)

Feel free to comment with your own thoughts and questions!

Index of Posts (Highlights):
Day 2. C. S. Lewis on Longing (In "The Weight of Glory")
Day 3. C. S. Lewis on Sehnsucht (Longing and Desire in The Weight of Glory)
Day 6: C. S. Lewis: The Intolerable Compliment (The Problem of Pain)
Day 7: C. S. Lewis: What is "The Weight of Glory"?
Day 8: C. S. Lewis: The Great Divorce and The Weight of Glory
Day 9: C. S. Lewis: A Grief Observed
Day 12: C. S. Lewis and Postmodernism (Part 3 - Conclusion)
Day 13: C. S. Lewis: The Grand Miracle (Myth and Allusions)
Day 14: C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 1: More on Myth)
Day 15: C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 2: Metaphors, Symbols, and Science)
Day 16: C. S. Lewis and The Trilemma Argument in Mere Christianity

C. S. Lewis's Baptized Imagination (Why I love C. S. Lewis)

In 1916, when C.S. Lewis was 18 (and still an atheist), he bought and read George MacDonald’s Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women. He writes about this in his spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy:

“That night my imagination was, in a certain sense, baptized; the rest of me, not unnaturally, took longer [...] I had not the faintest notion what I had let myself in for by buying Phantastes” (Surprised by Joy 172).

Years before he intellectually believed in Christianity and accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior, he says his imagination was baptized by this book. Have you had this experience either before or after becoming a Christian?

The writings of C. S. Lewis have most certainly baptized my imagination. (Along with Madeline L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time series, but this is about C. S. Lewis so I'll just have to talk more about L'Engle another time. =) )

I first read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe as an assignment for school in the second grade. I loved it so much that my mom and dad told me there were six more books in the series, and they had them, and I could read them! I was so excited. I have read and re-read those books over and over again ever since. (Interestingly enough, I made the decision to be baptized a couple of years later when I was in fourth grade, so perhaps Narnia and Aslan really did prepare my heart in ways I wasn't even aware of!)

I read The Screwtape Letters in high school and made my first attempt to read Mere Christianity as well.

The next Lewis books to baptize my imagination were The Great Divorce and The Space Trilogy (better called, "The Ransom Trilogy"). I was introduced to these books in Dr. Charlie W. Starr's C. S. Lewis course in college. You see, I have always struggled with trying to keep everything on a more intellectual level. Lewis's fiction helps bridge the gap between my head and my heart via the imagination. He gets past my intellectual defenses just as he intended:

“I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.” - C. S. Lewis, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to be Said"

I hope to write more in a future post about The Ransom Trilogy and the ways in which it has deepened my faith via the imagination.

So what books (or other things) have baptized your imagination? Can you relate to what Lewis is talking about here?

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In response to the 31 Day blogging challenge, I will be posting every day in October. You can read previous posts HERE. Follow me on Facebook and/or Twitter to be notified of new posts. You can also Subscribe to get posts sent to you by email. (There is a simple form towards the top on the right where you can do this.)

Feel free to comment with your own thoughts and questions!

Index of Posts (Highlights):
Day 2. C. S. Lewis on Longing (In "The Weight of Glory")
Day 3. C. S. Lewis on Sehnsucht (Longing and Desire in The Weight of Glory)
Day 6: C. S. Lewis: The Intolerable Compliment (The Problem of Pain)
Day 7: C. S. Lewis: What is "The Weight of Glory"?
Day 8: C. S. Lewis: The Great Divorce and The Weight of Glory
Day 9: C. S. Lewis: A Grief Observed
Day 12: C. S. Lewis and Postmodernism (Part 3 - Conclusion)
Day 13: C. S. Lewis: The Grand Miracle (Myth and Allusions)
Day 14: C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 1: More on Myth)
Day 15: C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 2: Metaphors, Symbols, and Science)
Day 16: C. S. Lewis and The Trilemma Argument in Mere Christianity

C. S. Lewis and The Trilemma Argument in Mere Christianity

In my previous post I mentioned in passing C. S. Lewis's trilemma argument he makes in Mere Christianity, that Jesus had to be either Lord, liar, or lunatic:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Lewis is saying that Jesus had to be who he said he was or else he was a liar or he was crazy/out of his mind.

There have been objections to his argument over the years, as Larry brought up in the comments on yesterday's post:

     "...there is at least one obvious alternative to the "daft, devilish, or divine" fork that Lewis describes in Mere Christianity: i.e., that the character of Jesus was fictional in whole or part, and either did not exist, or did not say the things attributed to him, or did not mean by those things what the Gospel writers, or we, think he did. Whether or not this possibility can be answered by convincing arguments, it clearly exists and is relevant. An unbeliever, citing the principle that remarkable claims require remarkable evidence, might reasonably (I think) argue that it is more probable that the complexly historied Gospel texts do not represent Jesus accurately -- texts often do not represent history accurately -- than that the man whom we glimpse through those accounts, which were written by worshipers of that man, was God.
     In short, only someone who views Christ's Gospel utterances as ipsissima verba, or very close to it, can be supposed to face the trilemma at all -- and such a person is already a species of believer. And even this is to put aside the argument's rather simplistic psychiatry, its baked-in claims about what a "lunatic" is or isn't capable of.
     As a Christian, I find the argument startlingly feeble. I'm startled, that is, that a thinker as good as Lewis usually was would have ever wasted his time on it. Do we really believe in the divinity of Christ because we find all the alternatives psychiatrically implausible? This seems an accurate account neither of Christian theological history, nor of any individual believer's personal path that I have heard of or can easily imagine . . .
What think ye?"

So what do I think? Well, I've heard and read these types of objections before. Bart Ehrman and others have suggested a fourth option could be that Jesus was a legend; not that he did not exist, but that the claims of his divinity were made by his followers and not by Jesus himself. I would argue that there are plenty of reasons/evidence in the text to believe Jesus made the claim himself, but I know there are many scholars who would love to disagree. Lewis denied that the Gospels were legends in an essay called, "What Are We to Make of Jesus Christ?":

"Now, as a literary historian, I am perfectly convinced that whatever else the Gospels are they are not legends. I have read a great deal of legend and I am quite clear that they are not the same sort of thing. They are not artistic enough to be legends. From an imaginative point of view they are clumsy, they don’t work up to things properly. Most of the life of Jesus is totally unknown to us, as is the life of anyone else who lived at that time, and no people building up a legend would allow that to be so. " - C. S. Lewis

N. T. Wright, a New Testament scholar I highly respect, also critiqued Lewis's trilemma in an article in Touchstone Magazine, entitled, "Simply Lewis". Wright says the argument "backfires dangerously when historical critics question [Lewis's] reading of the Gospels."

But Peter Kreeft has described the trilemma as "the most important argument in Christian apologetics" (Fundamentals of the Faith: Essays in Christian Apologetics, 59).  The fact that Kreeft still has a higher opinion of it makes me feel better about the fact that I find that I still like it in spite of the arguments I have read against it. I would agree that it may need more nuance, but I don't think it is a worthless argument.

Lewis used the trilemma argument again in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe when Lucy Pevensie told her siblings she had found a world called Narnia inside a wardrobe, and they ask the Professor what they should do, he replies:

"Why don’t they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn’t tell lies and it is obvious she is not mad. For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth." (pg. 52)

Perhaps then, the trilemma should be more of an invitation for the skeptic to consider the claims of the Gospels more closely, to do honest research about the historical Jesus, and see what truth they find when they do.

What are your thoughts on this? Let's continue the discussion in the comments.

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In response to the 31 Day blogging challenge, I will be posting every day in October. You can read previous posts HERE. Follow me on Facebook and/or Twitter to be notified of new posts. You can also Subscribe to get posts sent to you by email. (There is a simple form towards the top on the right where you can do this.)

Feel free to comment with your own thoughts and questions!

Index of Posts:
Day 1: 31 Days of C. S. Lewis (Introduction)
Day 2. C. S. Lewis on Longing (In "The Weight of Glory")
Day 3. C. S. Lewis on Sehnsucht (Longing and Desire in The Weight of Glory)
Day 4. C. S. Lewis Audio Recordings
Day 5: C. S. Lewis Online Resources
Day 6: C. S. Lewis: The Intolerable Compliment (The Problem of Pain)
Day 7: C. S. Lewis: What is "The Weight of Glory"?
Day 8: C. S. Lewis: The Great Divorce and The Weight of Glory
Day 9: C. S. Lewis: A Grief Observed
Day 10: C. S. Lewis, Myth, and Postmodernism
Day 11: C. S. Lewis, Myth, and Postmodernism (Part 2)
Day 12: C. S. Lewis and Postmodernism (Part 3 - Conclusion)
Day 13: C. S. Lewis: The Grand Miracle (Myth and Allusions)
Day 14: C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 1: More on Myth)
Day 15: C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 2: Metaphors, Symbols, and Science)
Day 16: C. S. Lewis and The Trilemma Argument in Mere Christianity

C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 2: Metaphors, Symbols, and Science)

Today I want to finish going through “Is Theology Poetry?"* (You can read Part 1 here.)

In this essay, C. S. Lewis sought to answer the question:
"Does Christian theology owe its attraction to its power of arousing and satisfying our imaginations?"

After talking about myth in the first half, he then talks about the way theology uses "metaphorical or symbolical language". For example, God the Father is not the "Father" of Jesus in a physical sense, and when we talk about Jesus "coming down to earth" we don't mean that he parachuted down from above, so why do we use this language?

Lewis invites us to consider what the early Christians believed. Did they believe all of this language in a literal way? Lewis says: "It is very probable that most... of the first generation of Christians never thought of their faith without anthropomorphic imagery, and that they were not explicitly conscious, as a modern would be, that it was mere imagery." So we are trying to force a dichotomy on them that simply didn't exist in their minds.

Lewis goes on to say that the reason we don't restate our beliefs without using metaphors and symbols is that we can't:

"We can, if you like, say “god entered history” instead of saying “god came down to earth.” But, of course, “entered” is just as metaphorical as “came down.” you have only substituted horizontal or undefined movement for vertical movement. We can make our language duller; we cannot make it less metaphorical. We can make the pictures more prosaic; we cannot be less pictorial." 

Of course Christians are not the only ones with this problem. Language restraints force us to do this in all manner of situations. Lewis says "all language about things other than physical objects is necessarily metaphorical." (And here I am reminded of my studies in postmodernism again.)

Lewis reminds us that the "Scientific" Worldview is the one he started from, but abandoned, even before he became a Christian, because he found in it a fatal flaw:

"One absolutely central inconsistency ruins it; The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears. [...] unless reason is an absolute — all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based. The difficulty is to me a fatal one..." - C. S. Lewis

This sounds a lot like what Lewis writes in The Abolition of Man, which I will have to save for another post!

Lewis crams so much into this short essay! He even mentions 2/3 of the trilemma argument he fleshes out in Mere Christianity: "Once you accepted Theism, you could not ignore the claims of Christ. And when you examined them it appeared to me that you could adopt no middle position. Either he was a lunatic, or god. And he was not a lunatic."

Lewis concludes by saying that though he may find difficulties in Theology, in trying to harmonize it with "particular truths which are embedded in the mythical cosmology derived from science", he can "allow for science as a whole". But if one was to "swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole" then not only does Christianity not fit into that worldview, but he cannot even fit in science:

"If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees. And this is to me the final test. This is how I distinguish dreaming and waking. When I am awake I can, in some degree, account for and study my dream. The dragon that pursued me last night can be fitted into my waking world. I know that there are such things as dreams; I know that I had eaten an indigestible dinner; I know that a man of my reading might be expected to dream of dragons. But while in the nightmare I could not have fitted in my waking experience. The waking world is judged more real because it can thus contain the dreaming world; the dreaming world is judged less real because it cannot contain the waking one. For the same reason I am certain that in passing from the scientific points of view to the theological, I have passed from dream to waking. Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." - C. S. Lewis, "Is Theology Poetry?"

*You can read the entire essay, "Is Theology Poetry", here. You can also find it in The Weight of Glory and other Addresses and C. S. Lewis Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces)

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In response to the 31 Day blogging challenge, I will be posting every day in October. You can read previous posts HERE. Follow me on Facebook and/or Twitter to be notified of new posts. You can also Subscribe to get posts sent to you by email. (There is a simple form towards the top on the right where you can do this.)

Feel free to comment with your own thoughts and questions!

Index of Posts:
Day 1: 31 Days of C. S. Lewis (Introduction)
Day 2. C. S. Lewis on Longing (In "The Weight of Glory")
Day 3. C. S. Lewis on Sehnsucht (Longing and Desire in The Weight of Glory)
Day 4. C. S. Lewis Audio Recordings
Day 5: C. S. Lewis Online Resources
Day 6: C. S. Lewis: The Intolerable Compliment (The Problem of Pain)
Day 7: C. S. Lewis: What is "The Weight of Glory"?
Day 8: C. S. Lewis: The Great Divorce and The Weight of Glory
Day 9: C. S. Lewis: A Grief Observed
Day 10: C. S. Lewis, Myth, and Postmodernism
Day 11: C. S. Lewis, Myth, and Postmodernism (Part 2)
Day 12: C. S. Lewis and Postmodernism (Part 3 - Conclusion)
Day 13: C. S. Lewis: The Grand Miracle (Myth and Allusions)
Day 14: C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 1: More on Myth)
Day 15: C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 2: Metaphors, Symbols, and Science)

C. S. Lewis: Is Theology Poetry? (Part 1: More on Myth)

On November 6, 1944 C.S. Lewis gave a lecture entitled, “Is Theology Poetry?*,” to the Oxford Socratic Club. He sought to answer the question:
"Does Christian theology owe its attraction to its power of arousing and satisfying our imaginations?" In other words, are the people who believe it "mistaking aesthetic enjoyment for intellectual ascent or assenting because they enjoy?"

Lewis argues, “If theology is poetry, it is not very good poetry.” He mentions Odin's heroic appeal (again, expecting his audience to know the reference, which they probably did at the Oxford Socratic Club in 1944.) He then says, "If Christianity is only a mythology than I find the mythology I believe in is not the one I like best. I like Greek mythology much better, Irish better still, Norse best of all." So by "poetry", Lewis seems to have meant "mythology". At least, he uses the words interchangeably here.

I love the point he makes about the confusion between imaginative enjoyment and intellectual assent which Christians are being accused. He says this does not seem to happen in other situations either, even in children: "It pleases their imagination to pretend that they are bears or horses, but I do not remember that one was ever under the least delusion." (See, not only is he brilliant, he's funny, too!)

Even if our theology (i.e. our Christian belief system) does please our imagination, that would not be a reason to reject it as false. (Here comes "Balder" again!) Here again, Lewis is making the case for the Incarnation of Christ as the Myth that became Fact:

SÁM 66, 75v, death of Baldr

"Theology, while saying that a special illumination has been vouchsafed to Christians and (earlier) to Jews, also says that there is some divine illumination vouchsafed to all men. The divine light, we are told, “lighteneth every man.” We should, therefore, expect to find in the imagination of great Pagan teachers and myth makers some glimpse of that theme which we believe to be the very plot of the whole cosmic: story – the theme of incarnation, death, and rebirth. And the differences between the Pagan Christs (Balder, osiris, etc.) and the Christ himself is much what we should expect to find. The Pagan stories are all about someone dying and rising, either every year, or else nobody knows where and nobody knows when. The Christian story is about a historical personage, whose execution can be dated pretty accurately, under a named roman magistrate, and with whom the society that he founded is in a continuous relation down to the present day. It is not the difference between falsehood and truth. It is the difference between a real event on the one hand and dim dreams or premonitions of that same event on the other."

Lewis says it is like watching something gradually come into focus: "first it hangs in the clouds of myth and ritual, vast and vague, then it condenses, grows hard and in a sense small, as a historical event in first century Palestine."

We see this within the Christian tradition itself. Lewis writes, "the earliest stratum of the old Testament contains many truths in a form which I take to be legendary, or even mythical — hanging in the clouds, but gradually the truth condenses, becomes more and more historical." He gives the example of moving from the story of Noah’s ark or the sun standing still to the more factual information in 1 and 2 Kings. By the time you reach the new Testament, "history reigns supreme, and the Truth is incarnate."

And “incarnate” is here more than a metaphor. It is not an accidental resemblance that what, from the point of view of being, is stated in the form “god became man,” should involve, from the point of view of human knowledge, the statement “myth became Fact.” The essential meaning of all things came down from the “heaven” of myth to the “earth” of history. In so doing, it partly emptied itself of its glory, as Christ emptied himself of his glory to be man. That is the real explanation of the fact that Theology, far from defeating its rivals by a superior poetry, is, in a superficial but quite real sense, less poetical than they. [...] That is the humiliation of myth into fact, of god into man; what is everywhere and always, imageless and ineffable, only to be glimpsed in dream and symbol and the acted poetry of ritual becomes small, solid — no bigger than a man who can lie asleep in a rowing boat on the lake of galilee. you may say that this, after all, is a still deeper poetry. I will not contradict you. The humiliation leads to a greater glory. But the humiliation of god and the shrinking or condensation of the myth as it becomes fact are also quite real."

So when God became man, Myth became Fact. Cool! I love C. S. Lewis!

(This covers about the first half of the essay, so I will talk about the second half tomorrow.)

*You can read the entire essay here.

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In response to the 31 Day blogging challenge, I will be posting every day in October. You can read previous posts HERE. Follow me on Facebook and/or Twitter to be notified of new posts. You can also Subscribe to get posts sent to you by email. (There is a simple form towards the top on the right where you can do this.)

Feel free to comment with your own thoughts and questions!

Index of Posts:
Day 1: 31 Days of C. S. Lewis (Introduction)
Day 2. C. S. Lewis on Longing (In "The Weight of Glory")
Day 3. C. S. Lewis on Sehnsucht (Longing and Desire in The Weight of Glory)
Day 4. C. S. Lewis Audio Recordings
Day 5: C. S. Lewis Online Resources
Day 6: C. S. Lewis: The Intolerable Compliment (The Problem of Pain)
Day 7: C. S. Lewis: What is "The Weight of Glory"?
Day 8: C. S. Lewis: The Great Divorce and The Weight of Glory
Day 9: C. S. Lewis: A Grief Observed
Day 10: C. S. Lewis, Myth, and Postmodernism
Day 11: C. S. Lewis, Myth, and Postmodernism (Part 2)
Day 12: C. S. Lewis and Postmodernism (Part 3 - Conclusion)
Day 13: C. S. Lewis: The Grand Miracle (Myth and Allusions)