C.S. Lewis: A Case for Mere Purgatory with Dr. Jerry Walls

welcome we're about our second keynote this is gonna be given by dr. Gerry walls now there there's - Gerry walls --is that are in publishing one is writes children's books on how to keep reptiles as pets this is not the Gerry walls you'll be hearing today the one we have today is philosopher and theologian I know it's like the reptiles I got you all excited sorry my first introduction to him after you know meeting and shaking his hand we were we actually talked extensively at of all places a basketball game which I know if any of you know him is is just very strange he would never be as enjoying basketball but anyway he's been a wonderful colleague and a very active scholar he's written over a dozen books now 80 articles out of those dozen books if you if you go back and read some from a few years ago they talk about his wonderful two book series on the afterlife one on heaven one on Hell of course it would have to stop there since he is after all Protestant but now not leaving well enough alone he wrote a third it's very interesting book on purgatory and no further ado please doctor walls it is basketball season and the greatest sporting event in the known universe starts at about a half hour but as a test of well-ordered loves I will be here all day because you got to show what really matters moments like this all right now I want to also say it is a delight to have all of you here for a philosophy conference I hope you have picked up on the excitement enthusiasm commitment to philosophy at hbu which is just part of a broader classically grounded philosophy of Education that we celebrate here and you all make this experience so much better by coming and joining us and we thank you and are delighted for your presence now I'm talking today about CS Lewis and the case for mere purgatory and let me begin by making this observation in many ways CS Lewis is an ironic hero for evangelicals hero that he is is undeniable the most influential Christian writer of the twentieth and probably the 21st century in no small part largely due to his influence within evangelical Christianity he is by far the most influential writer on this movement at large now what's ironic is this son of Lewis's views are at odds with typical evangelical views and I don't mean just superficial stuff either because some of these differences run rather deep particularly with regard to how he understands the doctrine of salvation and it is precisely and this connection that the doctrine of purgatory emerges a doctrine that the large majority of Evan Jellico's would still no doubt read act out of hand now there are some signs of openness to it in fact one of the one of the reasons I wrote this book is I really think the time may be ripe for an ecumenical recovery of this doctrine across the church at large and I think CS Lewis in fact is a model of a doctrine that can be accumulated in many of angelical circles the rejection would be immediate this was illustrated very recently by something I just actually discovered this week there's a magazine called credo it's published by some Calvinists and reformed people it's an online journal and their most recent issue is devoted to purgatory interestingly and my book comes under no little fire in in that particular issue and in fact James White the popular Calvinist theologian wrote an article entitled purgatory the same yesterday today and forever and the opening sentence reads thus and this ties into our topic for today when Oxford Press published Gerry walls book purgatory the logic of total transformation this past year one could almost hear the echoes of CS Lewis reverberating through what is called evangelicalism today now I can't deny that I kind of like it when someone takes a shot at me in the same sentence in which he takes a shot at CS Lewis I kind of like that and to be fair I have probably engaged in my fair share of criticism of Calvinists so it's only fair if they occasionally return to fire I don't mind I'm cool with that I'm cool with that but before proceeding further in getting to the meat of the talk today let me just take a minute to establish the fact that Lewis did in fact believe in purgatory now he makes us clear in several places but the place that it is most overt most explicit is in one of the last books maybe the last book he wrote that's called letters to Malcolm chiefly on prayer in which he writes a letter of a series of letters to an imaginary correspondent not a real person but a series of letters in which he talks about various spiritual issues and gives spiritual advice and then the twentieth chapter of this book he begins by talking about the fact that he's managed to forgive somebody that he hadn't been able to forgive for years finally after all these years forgave this person and as he reflects on this he wonders I wonder if this person who's dead knows I've forgiven him does he know that and then he gan went on to comment that of course I pray for the dead and he says the action is so spontaneous all but inevitable that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter me and they hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden at our age the majority of those we love best are dead and one of the persons he was no doubt thinking of was his recently deceased wife for whom he continued to pray anyway someone he goes on and us as well look on the Protestant view there's really no point in praying for people because they're either damned irrevocably or they're perfectly saved so what is the point of praying for them and he continues to make the case for prayer and then he writes as follows to pray for them presupposes that progress and difficulty are still possible in fact you are bringing in something like purgatory a few sentences later he says most explicitly I believe in purgatory now for purgatory again is loaded it's a very explosive word has lots of connotations the minute you hear the word purgatory and many Protestant respond by thinking of Tetzel soon as cool and Kaufer spring rings a soul from purgatory Springs and all the abuses of the reformation mediator called the mind and understandably there's this negative reaction I totally understand it given the connotations given the history of the doctrine well anyway Lewis continues to make clear just what sense of purgatory he affirms and what he does not and he says mind you the Reformers had good reasons for throwing doubt on the Romish doctrine concerning purgatory as that Romish doctrine had become and I said I'm not just talking about the commercial scandal not just talking about indulgences and all the abuses financially that were that were involved with the doctrine yeah I'm talking about how the doctorate itself had degenerated and had become a tool of abuse and how it was conceived essentially as a temporary hell with very little sense of what the doctor really is all about in fact he says the very etymology of the word purgatory dropped out of sight its pains do not bring us nearer to God but make us forget him it is a place not of purification but purely of retribution I noticed that line a place of purification not of purification but purely of retribution now the two fundamentally different models of purgatory that can be distinguished and in my book I I have a long chapter distinguishing between what is called the satisfaction model and the sanctification model and there are variations in between those two extremes that also delineated but one is this as often construed purgatory is all about satisfaction paying for our sins and the suggestion being that what Christ accomplished on the cross wasn't quite good enough to relieve us of our guilt we've got to pay through our own punishment for our sins to be satisfied in God's justice to be satisfied that's the satisfaction model loosely broadly speaking now over against that is the idea that purgatory is not about punishment it's not about satisfying the justice of God it's about acta fication it's about transformation it's about something totally different now what I argue is that if purgatory is understood in that way as sanctification it is perfectly compatible with Protestant theology and Lewis continues the right view returns magnificently he says in Newman's dream Cardinal Newman there if I remember rightly the saved soul at the very foot of the throne begs to be taken away and cleansed it cannot bear for a moment longer with its darkness to affront that light religion has reclaimed purgatory and that has this line our souls demand purgatory don't they his answer is obviously yes now I have I have made the case that this is again not something just incidental to Lewis's thought but in fact it felt was quite naturally from what he called mere christianity and attentive readers of that book will see the purgatory flows quite naturally out of Lewis's doctrine of salvation I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this us I give a lot of time to this in the last chapter and I gave a lecture last fall detailing this but I just want to summarize very quickly the main points to set the background for the things I really want to emphasize today so I will summarize this view of salvation then I want to focus on two issues that are more philosophical in nature on which the credibility of the doctrine hinge so the judgment you make about these two issues will go a long way in deciding whether you find this doctrine credible or not all right Lewis's the count on salvation let me sum it up quickly and read a few passages that illustrate it point number one the essence of salvation that restores us to a right relationship with God and fits us for heaven is nothing short of total transformation that makes us like Christ now the lots of passages I could cite in their Christianity but here's maybe my favorite one making this point here's what Louis writes now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this that we can if we let God have his way if we let God have his way come to share the life of Christ if we do we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten not made which has always existed and will always exist Christ is the son of God if we share in this kind of life we also shall be sons of God and the Holy Ghost will arise in us we shall love the father as he does he came into this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life he has but what I call good infection every Christian is to become a little Christ shocking striking astounding amazing the whole purpose of Christianity is simply nothing else God intends to transform us completely make us like Jesus that's the essence that's the heart that's the soul of what salvation is as CS Lewis understands it I think a lot of a lot of Lewis's fans don't really understand this very well that they like the first couple books of Merkerson and the the Lord lion Lema Lord liar lunatic trilemma and and like but they don't really read the rest of the book very carefully the rest of this book is all about especially book for a view of salvation is that at its heart transformational and sanctification estat see understands mere christianity mere salvation that's how he understands it now he asks he goes on well actually on page before so it's not going on but i'm going on on the previous page and not what does all what does it all matter it matters more than anything else in the world the whole dance or drama or pattern of this three personal life is to be played out on each one of us we're putting it the other way around each one of us has got to enter that pattern take his place in the dance there is no other way to the happiness for which we were made this is it this is the only option if you want the happiness for which we were made we've got to enter the dance today this with God you got to be like Jesus and Luis says that's what God is intent on taking the likes of you and me and Russ and making this like Jesus little Christ's that can dance the Trinitarian dance I know it's astounding but Christianity is pretty astounding you know when you don't turn it down and tame it it makes astounding claims now secondly total transformation requires radical repentance radical repentance now right after the the trilemma argument Lord Larry lunatic chapter the very next chapter in mere christianity has a very ironic title it's called the perfect penitent and it's ironic of course because if you're perfect you don't need to repent and the perfect penitent is a reference to Christ and he makes the point in this chapter that in our fallen condition what we need is complete transformation radical repentance going all the way back to God we've gotten ourselves in a hole we cannot get out of and here's what he writes in other words follow man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement it's much much more radical than that not mere improvement he is a rebel who must lay down his arms laying down your arms surrendering saying you are sorry realizing you've been on the wrong track and are getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor that is the only way out of the hole complete repentance going out of the hole and going all the way back the wrongs you've gone away from God it's all the way back now this process of surrender this movement full speed astern is what Christians call repentance the repentance is no fun at all it is something much harder than merely eating humble pie it means unlearning notice this unlearning all the self conceit self will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years and by the way this is a theme that one so much of Louis's writings you know starting with with everything from the abolition of manner Christianity miracles etc we need to retrain our emotions we need to retrain the way we think the way we feel sin trains us in a certain way we need to entrain retrain ourselves well we're not we doing it ourselves that wasn't that's what needs to happen right it means killing part of yourself undergoing a kind of death now remember this repentance this willing submission to humiliation and kind of death is not something God demands of you before he takes you back in which he could let you off if he chose see he can't say well look I'll just skip that part I'll just let y'all repentence part just just have the faith part let's just let that one go he can't why because it is simply a description of what going back is like if you ask God to take you back without it you are really asking him to let you go back without going back you can't skip it you can't shortcut it you can't just say just slide on that part that's what going back is all about is repentance it's essential so radical repentance total transformation requires radical repentance now third radical repentance is made possible by the Incarnation death and resurrection of Jesus the perfect penitent so that is how Luis construes what Christ did in his life death and resurrection and his subsequent work in our lives he enables us to repent which we cannot do on our own so here's just what he says a bad man can't repent perfectly good man doesn't need to but suppose this good man Christ who's perfect suppose he became a man suppose our human nature was amalgamated with God's nature one person then that person could help us he could surrender his will and suffer and die because he was man and he could do it perfectly because he was God you and I can go through this process only if God does it in us but God can do it only if he becomes a man our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we men share in God's dying just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop out of the ocean of his intelligence but we cannot share God's dying unless he dies and he cannot die except by being a man now listen to this line this is the sense in which he pays our debt and suffers for us what he himself need not suffer at all now I want to emphasize here and I could document this in more detail and read more passengers but I won't read others but here's what is very clear Lewis does not understand justifying faith in anything like the way it is typically understood and in popular Protestantism and indeed in much of Magisterial Protestant ISM period popular and Magisterial it is not a matter of having the righteousness of Christ imputed to us it is not a matter of saying Christ got a hundred you got a zero this hundred that christ got is now attributed to you so you got a hundred two and you are therefore seen as perfect in the eyes of God and therefore you will go straight into heaven because you pass the test because Christ passes the test but you don't need to pass it really Christ pass is simply applied to you know Lucis pictures this he got a hundred in order to empower and enable us to get a hundred - and until we get a hundred we're not getting into heaven but that's what grace is about it's about empowering and enabling perfect repentance and giving us the power to get a hundred also which we could never accomplish on our own we have no chance on our own but because of his life death and resurrection and the coming of the holy spirit we can get a hundred and nothing less will do that's the Lewises picture of salvation now I think you can see how purgatory kind of falls out of this pretty easily I'm not going to go into all the details but now I'm going to turn just talk about two more philosophical issues who says of philosophy conference after all so want to highlight a couple of philosophical issues that are crucial to this case and again your judgment on these issues will go a long way in deciding whether you find this doctrine credible or not now by way of contrast and to underline these points I'm going to first reiterate the traditional typical Protestant view that is put in its place because after all everybody agrees that's got to be perfect to get into heaven everybody agrees on that nothing impure can enter that's a point of consensus the question is how do we get there how are we made entirely sanctified Charles Hodge classic nineteenth-century Princeton theologian sums it up as thus the Protestant doctrine is that the souls of believers are at death made perfect in holiness so the basic idea is just this whatever progress you've made in sanctification for the little or lot if you die justified it is as if you've never sinned you would go in without condemnation and whatever is lacking in your sanctification God will unilaterally complete it instantaneously at the point of death so what this means is really sanctification is optional in this life it's optional luxury item for many people but it is not something that is essential to sanctification or to ultimate salvation what is essential to ultimate salvation is just that you are justified in the sense that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to you all right and whatever is lacking in your sanctification you will get it instantly at the moment of death now over against that is the doctrine of purgatory which says no it's not that simple and here are the two issues I'm going to highlight today and I discuss lots of others in this book but I want to highlight two today that I think are particularly pertinent to philosophers question number one is our free cooperation required throughout the sanctification process or can it simply be done unilaterally at the moment of death however far along you've gotten down the road now what you think in this issue will obviously hinge on whether you believe we are free in the libertarian sense and this in turn is going to be closely connected to whether you think libertarian freedom is essential for dealing with and making sense of the problem of evil Louis would say yes on both of these points so clear back in in the early parts of mere Christianity he raises the problem of evil and appeals to freedom and here's what he writes he says it is probably the same in the universe God created things which had free will this means that creatures which can go either wrong or right which can go either wrong right some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong I cannot if a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad and freewill is what has made evil possible why then did God give us freewill here's the reason because freewill though it makes evil possible that's the cost that's the that's the the the loss on it it is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having a word of otamatone of creatures that work like machines would hardly be worth creating the happiness which God designs for his higher creatures is the happiness of being freely voluntarily United to him and to each other in an ecstasy of love now here's the point it's not that freedom is itself the good it is necessary for certain other goods to be achieved and acquired you cannot have a real relationship of love as Lewis sees it you cannot have real joy you cannot have real goodness as he understands it unless it is acquired in finite creatures by way of libertarian freedom all right such the goods it is the goods that freedom makes possible that's why it is so valuable now here is the point I want to emphasize if the goods that require freedom are worth the cost of evil which Lewis held it is natural I do not say inevitable so I don't overstate the case here but it is natural to think this freedom will continue as long as necessary to achieve these Goods even after death now if God can simply unilaterally make us love him perfectly if God can simply unilaterally make us worship Him with our whole heart soul mind and strength unilaterally at the moment of death if he can do that then it is much harder to see how freedom can be worth the terrible price of the enormous pain and suffering it has exacted and continues to exact in this world so if God will simply - moment of death zabis it can perfect us like that without our free cooperation why does he let us have such enormous reign of freedom in this world with the enormous cost that it exacts so again the point I'm simply making is this the more you think God must have good reasons to take our freedom seriously in our relationship to him the more you have reason to think that freedom continues to the end of the sanctification process now a second point from Lewis is this it is our choices over a whole lifetime that are essential for our transformation not simply any one initial choice and here's what Lewis writes I would rather say that every time you make a choice you were turning that central part of you the part of you that chooses into something a little different from what it was before and taking your life as a whole with all your innumerable choices all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or else into a hellish creature either into a creature that is in harmony with God with other creatures and with itself or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God its fellow creatures and with itself to be the one kind of creature is heaven that is its joy peace knowledge power to be the other means madness horror it is see rage impotence and eternal loneliness every one of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other Alice is very emphatic external conditions do not a heaven make we've got to have heaven inside of us we have to become heavenly transformed we have to have God likeness inside of us and only then can we enjoy being in the presence of God if we've not been internally transformed we would not enjoy being in heaven Lewis agrees very much with Cardinal Newman who put it like this heaven would be hell to an irreligious man if you don't have the right loves if you don't have the right emotions if you don't care about the right things if your loves are not right Jordan if you love basketball more than philosophy okay that's bad and if you love God more than you know if you left philosophy more than God that's also bad we've got to have the right kinds of love we got to be rightly ordered internally in order for us to experience heaven it's not simply some external kind of condition that brings us joy now thirdly because we're free we can push him away before the transformation is complete so nothing here in louis about eternal security or anything like that quite the contrary he says that is why he that is christ warned people to count the cost before becoming christians make no mistake if you let me I will make you perfect the moment you put yourself in my hands that is what you're in for nothing less or other than that you have free will and if you choose you can push me away even after you put yourself in his hands you can't push him away not nobody else can take you out of his hands okay but you can push you can push me away Lewis says if but if you do not push me away understand that I am going to see this job through whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death whatever it costs me I will never rest nor let you rest until you are literally perfect until my father can say without reservation that he is well pleased with you as he said he was well pleased with me you notice that a little Christ he's going to say to you I'm well pleased like he said to me because what now you got a hundred - you didn't know without me understand don't get that head idea in your head but with my help you're going to get a hundred eventually and God will look at you just like he looked at me and said with you I am well pleased that's Louis's picture we can push it away we don't have to continue with it but he says this is what it's all about this is where it's headed if this is not what you want sorry this is it this is the only option the only game in town the only game in the universe for free creatures made in God's image such as we okay so we can push him away if we want now finally under this point our freedom is necessary Louis emphasizes precisely because the process is long and painful there's something interesting I think some of the most interesting free choices come into focus in moments of pain that's where choice has got to be made that's got some real moral bite to it painless choices don't reveal a whole lot but when it's hard when it's difficult what it would be easy to turn and run the choice that is made there is really significant and suggestive and brings something important really into focus Louis continues the command Big E perfect is not idealistic gas nor is that a command to do the impossible he is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command he said that we were gods and he is going to make good his words if we let him for we can prevent him if we choose he will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or a goddess a dazzling radiant immortal creature pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine the process will be long and in parts very painful but that's what we're in for nothing less he meant what he said so there is Louis's very strong affirmation that our free cooperation is required throughout the sanctification process now second question that the issue turns on is this and it may be this may be actually and simply another variation of the first question I'm not sure but they're certainly closely related but here's the here it is is moral and spiritual growth and transformation and essentially temporal a chram ental process is moral and spiritual growth and transformation and essentially temporal incremental process again on the traditional view it can happen in the SAP without any time passing an instant without any kind of transformation take you from where you were over time and an incremental progress to perfection now the big philosophical issue here is this what sort of change is in our character and moral disposition are compatible with our maintaining our identity is identity can identity personal identity be maintained across abrupt changes in our character with which we do not freely willingly cooperate David Brown a an Anglican theologian has developed some arguments for purgatory along these lines and the basic idea behind them is that for our identity to be maintained we must retain sufficient continuity with our past this requires that we freely own genuine moral change by accepting truth as it is disclosed to us owning it internalizing it and so on and such a process is essentially incremental gradual now in my book I use the example of Scrooge in the Christmas Carol to make this point but let's rethink the story along these lines that's tell a different story the early parts of the book established that Scrooge is a despicable character stingy hard-hearted a solitary man as alone as an oyster his Dickens puts it out of whom no steal ever struck fire isolated cold selfish self-centered individual and he's irritated already by the fact that Cratchit what's Christmas day off and he's further annoyed when a couple of guys come into his office wanting to raise money for a charity for the people who need help at Christmastime and he says are there no prisons or the no work houses I thought they'd close by what you said and the answer of course is sirs some of them would rather die than go to the work houses and Scrooge says let them die and decrease the surplus population of the earth and the book says he settled down with feeling a great sense of superiority and pride in himself as he said this line let's suppose he goes home this night and has his meals he typically does and he sits there any chuckles over the day remembering the incidence of the day thinking about old Cratchit down there and his little bungalow and his family and begging to get a day off for Christmas and how he's got this little man in the palm of his hand and you know his every fate depends on him because he's poor and and and he's rich and he's just kind of soaking in the sense of satisfaction of superiority he he feels and it remembers that visit from these guys asking about the charity and he laughs again well that was a clever retort then let them die and decrease the surplus population of the earth and he laughs again at what a clever you know retort he gave okay so here's the story different story just goes to bed feeling really good and really smug and really happy irritated about crachit taking the day off but it only happened once a year and he wakes up the next morning and all of a sudden he just got this overwhelming love for crachit and feels really bad about the ways of in treating him and he sees this turkey going by and he says that big turkey down or taking over my my a my employee Bob Cratchit and is made you know furrows her eyebrows says and he's up jumping on the bed and and pulling at the curtains and he's laughing and he said Merry Christmas everybody and she thinks he's gonna not is this the same man I know is this Scrooge who is this guy right and he goes to work the next day and he gives you know a big raise to to Cratchit and man he's just the greatest guy in the world comes home says how long what has happened to me Venus is odd the maid thinks it's crazy and how he's starting to wonder to how did this happen he might wonder am I the same guy who is this talking like this you see two questions here question would he know himself as the same person if he just went to bed one way and woke up the next morning an utterly transformed man with nothing at all to account for it would he know himself that's the histological question and the the more metaphysical question is would he be the same person would he be the same person with that kind of abrupt change now intuitions differ here and again I'm saying can disagree with this but I'm saying is seems to mean both cases no he wouldn't know himself yet I've every right to wonder whether he was the same person in any meaningful sense of the word and I don't think he would be the same person precisely what makes this story powerful and beautiful is the visit of those three ghosts and how he went through this process of looking at Christmas past present and future and gradually seeing things in a totally different light and repenting of his previous way of looking at things as the truth begin to sink in and then he was changed and it made sense oh by the way it's interesting interesting line in the in the in the in the book if you read the book when he's visited by by his Jacob Marley his his previous partner who tells him these three visitors are coming he says can I take them all at once and just get it over with can I just take him all at once and just get it over with the answer this store suggests is no it can't work that way you got a lot of stuff you need to undo you've got a lot of stuff you need to rethink you got a lot of stuff you need to repent of you got a lot of truth that needs to enter this hard heart and close mind of yours and it can't happen just like that all right now let me turn to Louis I'm gonna have to really go fast here and I will Louis makes several points the underlined the essentially temporal incremental nature of moral and spiritual transformation as he puts it there are a number of things we cannot understand until we have been on the Christian road for some time first first we must come to see the point of really wanting to be cured of our sins and again his point is this doesn't happen easily and instantaneously here's what he writes before we can be cured we must want to be cured those who really wish for help will get it but for many modern people even the wish is difficult it is easy to think that we want something when we do not really want it hey famous Christian long ago told us that when he was a young man he prayed constantly for chastity but years later he realized that while his lips had been saying Oh Lord make me chaste his heart had been secretly adding but not yet now here's the thing we can easily imagine we want things we don't by virtue of the fact that we can verbalize them and articulate them easily imagine I really want to be an outstanding student I really want to be an outstanding philosopher I really want to write an outstanding book I want to be holy it's easy enough to say but it's a lot harder to mean and the point is we can't mean it without grace and we can't mean it till we've grown to some degree in our Christian faith now everyone learns as a Christian the right stuff to say that's part of the process you learn the right stuff to say and as you say the right stuff that may actually train the way we feel till we actually want what we're saying we want but we don't really want immediately out of the gate what we say we want it takes getting down the road a bit to really want the things that we know we should want it's not as simple as verbalizing it and articulating it now secondly we must come to see how bad we really are Louis puts it like this no man knows how bad he is - he's tried very hard to be good a silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means this is an obvious lie only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is so till you firmly try to be good you don't really know how bad you are and ironically as Louis also comments as we get better we come to understand more the evil in our lives when a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him it's the contrast with a good that makes the evil apparent those were just evil through and through we don't sense the evil it is the growing goodness the growing sanctification the growing holiness that brings the sin and evil that is still there to light and again we can't see that until we've made considerable progress just how deeply rooted much of our sin and our evil is it's much more subtle thirdly thirdly we must come to discover our inability to be good on our own and Lewis highlights this in his second chapter on faith in mere Christianity and again his conception of faith is not simply believed have the righteousness of Christ imputed to us it's a matter of faith in the sense that we turn our lives over to God and truly allow him to change us here's what Louis writes now we cannot in that sense discover our failure to keep God's law except by trying our very hardest and then failing unless we really try whatever we say there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder next time we shall succeed in being completely good the and one since the road back to God is a road of moral effort of trying harder and harder but in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home all this trying leads up to that vital moment at which you turn to God and say you must do this I can't so till we've really gone down the road and really understood the depth of our sin and how rude it is and how many layers there are to it do have any chance of realizing how bad we are and how much we need help and how out of our hands it is to to change ourselves by our own efforts and our own powers now closely related to this we must come to freely and gladly embrace our need of God and His grace to us Lewis makes this point very beautiful at the end of fourloves you recall he distinguishes between need love and gift love and he makes the point that one of the things that grace gives us is a supernatural ability to gladly embrace our need of God and here is what he writes no sooner do we believe that God loves us then there's an impulse to believe that he does so not because he is love but because we're intrinsically lovable the pagans obeyed this impulse unabashedly a good man was dear to the gods because he was good we being better taught resort to subterfuge far be it from us to think that we could have virtues for which God could love us but then how magnificently we have repented as Bunyan says describing his first illusory conversion I thought there was no man in England that pleased God better than I beaten out of this we next offer him our humility to God's admiration surely he'll like that okay at least our non bad God's got to be pleased about that right team you've got a real world be impressed I mean I want a humility where got a hanging on my office well not here but I had it it's back in the box somewhere or if not that our clear-sighted humble recognition that we still lack humility well at least I know I'm not humble like some of these people walking around here acting like they're all pious and holy at least I know better okay so God will at least be impressed with that money right now listen to this line thus depth of in-depth subtlety within subtlety that remains some lingering idea of our own our very own attractiveness now for this tangled absurdity of need even a need love which never fully acknowledges its own neediness grace substitutes a full childlike delighted acceptance of our need a joy in total dependence again gotta see through those very very Slayers the lights got to keep shining you think you got for the bottom of it not quite yet there's another layer until we finally can embrace our need of God's grace utterly and finally and again I emphasize all of this must be a real discovery as Lewis puts it not just words because the words are easy and all this is reminiscent of a passage in Aristotle the destruct me recently who offered a fascinating analysis of how it is that persons who lack self-control can in some sense say I know better I know this is going to hurt me I know this is self-destructive I know I'm going to regret this and the question is how in the world if people really know this do they do these things isn't that utterly incoherent and in his attempt to shed light on this here's one of the things Aristotle said that they say the things that flow from knowledge indicates nothing since those in the affective States two can recite demonstrative proofs and impetus and if those who have learned something for the first time can string words together they don't yet know what have they learned because they have to assimilate it and that requires time so we must suppose that those who act uncontrollably - are talking like actors on a stage we know the words to say I know this is gonna hurt me I know this is wrong I know this is destructive to me and other people we know the words we know it in some sense pity it hasn't as aristotle put it we haven't assimilated it that takes time marin de cuatro yesterday was talking about putting on some plays at her church I think but Charles Williams and and the like and she she made the interesting observation that some of the people didn't even understand the lines very well it's kind of amusing they were quoting these lines they'd memorized but they didn't really know what they were saying but as they kept saying him kind of learned what they were saying and then it kind of sinks in a little differently beyond merely the first initial memory of it well let me conclude with this thought that passage I read to you from letters on Malcolm go back to that sentence our souls demand purgatory don't they and what Lewis is talking about here is the demand of love I think we need a paradigm shift on this doctrine in order to think rightly about it the reaction that typically comes and understandably sound I don't mean to be insensitive or whatever about this or arrogant or the like but but the knee-jerk reaction that off comes is I've covered with the blood of Christ there's no condemnation why do we need this I'm saved by grace it's about grace it's not about works your brain works into the picture as if grace is entirely a matter of forgiveness well I think we need to understand and see a sanctification and purgatory is an extension of this doctrine is not an alternative to grace it is a crucial central aspect of grace it is grace that transforms us removes the impediments that keep us from loving God and other people and ourselves as we ought and thereby enjoying the happiness and satisfaction for which we were created so why do our souls demand purgatory it's the cry of the heart that says God take it away whatever is standing in the way of me fully enjoying the Trinitarian dance whatever is keeping me from being like Jesus and again even if we don't mean it if we say it at least we might be on the road to at some point meaning it I know I'm out of time so there you go you

Channel: Houston Baptist University

Views: 8,689

Rating: 4.3559322 out of 5

Keywords: C.S. Lewis, Jerry Walls, Purgatory, HBU

Id: 8u2tZjtPMlo

Length: 58min 44sec (3524 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 02 2013