C.S. Lewis and Predestination | Doug Wilson

[Applause] well thank you all many thanks to pastor john for his many kindnesses to me over the years up to and through and including that introduction some of which i agreed with all of which my mother would have enjoyed i also wanted to thank dg and all the all the wonderful folks here you know nancy and i go to a lot of conferences we've been around and this frankly is one of the most hospitable places to come and speak the hospitality is just wonderful i also wanted to thank before i started i give many thanks to crossway books because they are going to be publishing these talks uh you know in a book after the fact and because they decided to do that i am not speaking from an outline which i normally do but from a manuscript and i'm frankly not used to it this means that when you hear three complete sentences in a row subject verb object you you can just sit there and enjoy it and just track with the point but you need to know that i'm up here thinking i hardly recognize you man i don't even know you anymore that said it'd be easy to represent what i'm about to attempt here as part of an unseemly struggle over the body of moses everybody wants a piece of lewis right and so here come the reformed late to the game hindered in this particular foot race by the ball and chain of predestination but that's all right we can't help it now i don't want to be a participant in any unseemly struggles retroactively claiming somebody for quote unquote our side that somebody being now deceased i don't want to do that with anybody much less over the venerable lewis i'm reminded of what lewis himself said in another context about the assured results of modern scholarship concerning the past which as lewis said were only assured results because the men involved were all dead and couldn't blow the gaff so let me begin by noting what i am not seeking to do i'm not trying to represent lewis as a doctrinaire five pointer or as someone in the grip of any precise system whatever he was a churchman not a party man not a faction member this disclaimer even includes the true system of doctrine that as we all know the archangel gabriel delivered in 1619 to the senate of dortmund at the same time and you should know that equality you should have known that a qualification was coming i do want to maintain that lewis had a firm grasp of the true graciousness of saving grace and that he knew that a recovery of this understanding what was an essential part of the rise of classical protestantism when i'm done i hope you i hope that you will see louis as at least a sympathetic observer of historic reformation theology or at most an a systematic adherent of it this latter position is the position i hold actually so with cs lewis small are reformed not exactly and yes of course also keep in mind that lewis's positions were not static those things that he held at the beginning of his christian life were not necessarily things that he would embrace at the end of his life there was progress and development i'm drawing heavily in this talk from his magnum opus the book called english literature in the 16th century including drama and that was written near the end of his life it represents the mature culmination of his thought and the first couple of chapters where he's discussing the reformation reformation in english history are just simply pure gold as as many of you know he and tolkien were good friends throughout their lives but their friendship at the end of lewis's life was somewhat strained and part of the strain was be was because tolkien was a steadfast roman catholic and tolkien believed partly on the strength of this book english literature in the 16th century that lewis at the end of his life was returning to his belfast roots uh tolkien understood that as returning to sort of a a straight line protestantism another quick point has to be made at the outset concerning my qualifications to speak about whether anybody else is reformed am i reformed am i a calvinist this is a point upon which i understand there has been some discussion well in brief let me picture it this way in brief i wish that there were seven points so i could hold the calvinistic extras you may count me as a devotee of crawl over broken glass calvinism jet fuel calvinism black coffee calvinism or as my friend peter hitchens had it weapons grade calvinism no yellow cake uranium semi-pelagianism for me i buy my calvinism and 50-gallon drums with the skull and crossbones stenciled on the side with little dribbles of white paint running down from the corners i get my calvinism delivered on those forklift plats at costco and i trust i trust this reassures everyone and i'm glad we had this little chat [Applause] so on to lewis it doesn't happen very often but when it does c.s lewis is perhaps the most insightful muddler you will ever read he along with chesterton has the capacity to edify you profoundly at the very moment he is saying things to make you wrench at your head in exasperation i'm thinking here of a book like reflections on the psalms referred to in the previous talk uh one of the troubling things to me i've so appreciated that talk his doctrine of scripture makes me go ah at the same time i'm being wonderfully edified by what he's saying and i wonder how can he do that but when he's on which is almost always you can be done with the wrenching and just enjoy the edification so there's that having said this in the screw tape letters lewis took a jab at modern man who's accustomed to carrying around a massive contradictions quote your man has been accustomed ever since he was a boy to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about in his head close quote and owen barfield once said that lewis himself was utterly unlike this with having the incompatible ideas saying that what lewis thought about everything was contained in what he said about anything i add this because i believe that there are many times when we are wrenching at our heads in exasperation over lewis while the heavenly host is looking down on us wrenching at their heads if angels do that i don't there will be times when we are tempted to write off something in lewis as a simple contradiction when we are the ones who have not thought very deeply about what lewis is actually saying michael ward has shown in planet narnia that lewis could look like he was dashing something off when he was actually building an impressive structure on a deep foundation so let us feel free to differ with him obviously but let us also take care not to be patronizing make no mistake lewis had an intentional project and that project is still a gathering river one which shows no signs of diminishing it is already astonishingly wide and it is only down as far as vicksburg we ought not to be patronizing and how we forgive louis's little side ventures or forays and we need to do some serious thinking of our own about how he managed to pull off a massive project like this peter escalante has argued in an outstanding presentation on italian humanism which included figures like dante he was talking about the uh italian humanists and their cultural impact he said the following can any of you think of outstanding examples in our own time of the italian humanist style let me give a checklist one a trained philologist devoted to a comprehensive christian wisdom two exploring and expressing the themes of that wisdom in widely various literary genres and fora while abstaining from formal systematic presentation three addressing the general public rather than a professional elite four passionately concerned about the whole commonwealth and five with the vision of the of the cosmos which has polices at its very heart right there's one man c.s lewis well all of this said it in what might appear to be a desolatory beginning i think we should all exhort me to pull it all together and try to bring in some razor sharp focus in other words let's get to the point so let's begin our discussion of lewis's view of salvation by looking at lewis's view of his own salvation the whole issue really boils down to this how do you understand the grace of god is salvation a cooperative affair or does god simply intervene to bless us by taking the initiative was lazarus raised from the dead in a semi-pelagian fashion with lazarus pushing and jesus pulling or perhaps not listen to c.s lewis describing a moment in his own conversion this is from his spiritual autobiography surprised by joy quote in a sense i was not moved by anything i chose to open to unbuckle to loosen the rain i say i chose yet it did not really seem possible to do the opposite notice that i say i chose but it did not really seem possible to do the opposite on the other hand i was aware of no motives you could argue that i was not a free agent but i am more inclined to think that this came nearer to being a perfectly free act than most that i have ever done necessity may not be the opposite of freedom that's key necessity may not be the opposite of freedom and perhaps a man is most free when instead of producing motives he can only say he could only say i am what i do as ransom discovered on pero landra freedom and necessity are actually the same thing in his letters lewis had this to say about freedom and grace quote when we carry it up to relations between god and man has the distinction perhaps become nonsensical after all when we are most free it is only with the freedom that god has given us mark that when we are most free it is only with the freedom god has given us and when our will is most influenced by grace it is still our will close quote moving to the experience of conversion as it was experienced by others this is how lewis describes the experience of conversion as it was felt by an early protestant that's a quote unquote an early protestant taken from english literature he says this quote all the initiative has been on god's side all has been free unbounded grace all and all will continue to be free unbounded grace close quote he is clearly in sympathy with this for this is how he experienced it now one other thing if we want to pursue this discussion keep in mind that terms do not always stay put in history when we refer to calvinism today we are usually usually talking about soteriology the five points of calvinism thus it is that a man can be a calvinist today and also be a dispensationalist or charismatic or even a presbyterian that last has been known to happen i have met some during the reigns of queen elizabeth the first and james the first identifying as a calvinist at that time was more about ecclesiology including your view of the sacraments in this sense a bunch of the non-calvinists their sense were all calvinists our sense one of the historical graphical fiascos caused by the oxford movement in the 19th century happened as a result of their vain attempt to pretend that the church of england was not part of the continental reformed community of churches but it manifestly was the the establishment elizabethans thought of themselves as one of the reformed churches of europe they were they were part and parcel later on anglo catholics wanted to make them into a third sort of entity but it simply wasn't that way lewis was a conservative anglican churchman who understood the 39 articles in the the the confession of faith of the church of england in their original context and those 39 articles were robustly calvinistic he was thoroughly sympathetic with theologians like hooker jewell or andrews who were not exactly victorian anglo-catholics they were protestants and calvinists in the broad sense they were a key part of the reformed churches of europe and this is exactly where they wanted to be lewis as a literary historian knew what they were teaching and he identified with them but as a natural-born peacekeeper as a natural-born iranist he also wanted to keep the peace for the sake of contemporary inter-anglican affairs this meant that sometimes the precise historical nature of the founding of the church of england sometimes gets a little blue blurred in his discussion but even with that said lewis is far more helpful on this period than many who ought to know better speaking of ecclesiology remember the vivid picture of the church quote spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity terrible as an army with banners that's screw tape page 12. also remember that lewis's most famous phrase mere christianity is taken from richard baxter the puritan this is plainly protestant ecclesiology some might be surprised some staunch protestants might be surprised when they open mere christianity and they're reading in the introduction where he's talking about mere christianity he's talking about how the roman catholics have their own room in the in the great house of mere christianity some staunch protestants might be upset or distressed or surprised that the roman catholics get their get a room um but keep in mind that the whole idea of the house of mere christianity that's a pro it's a protestant house it's a that's a protestant construct that's a protestant way of thinking of it now there are times when lewis is critical of the calvinists and the puritan party in england but there are other places where he praises them earnestly he refers quote to the whole tragic farce which we call the history of the reformation why is that here is his snapshot description of some of the historical theology of that day in fact however these questions and he's talking about faith and works were raised at a moment when they immediately became embittered and entangled with a whole complex of matters theologically irrelevant and therefore attracted the fatal attention of both government and the mob it was as if men were set to conduct a metaphysical argument at a fair in competition or worse still forced collaboration with the cheap jacks and roundabouts under the eyes of an armed and vigilant police police force who frequently changed sides that's how theological debate was complicated in the history of england and lewis understood that with his sympathies established let's turn to a sample citation that would seem some people say it would would seem to contradict the notion that lewis could in any way be considered reformed speaking of total depravity he says this in the problem of pain i disbelieve that doctrine he mentions it by name total depravity i disbelieve that doctrine partly on the logical ground that if our depravity were total we should not know ourselves to be depraved well actually we don't right and partly because experience shows us much goodness in human nature well of course in this he's actually rejecting a doctrine of absolute depravity which calvinists don't hold but if total depravity means total inability which it does it would be the work of 10 minutes to show that lewis does in fact hold to it as we're going to see in a moment in these sorts of formal rejections where he says here's total depravity and i don't buy that in these sorts of formal rejections lewis follows his teacher chesterton and even chesterton who takes shots at calvinism every third chance he gets cannot stay out of the truth for example in orthodoxy he says thus he has always believed that there's such a thing as fate but such a thing as free will also well hey and amen the key to this is a series of statements where lewis acknowledges that the classical protestant position is actually in some fashion a reiteration of pauline teaching listen in these following quotes listen for that key word pauline lewis's lewis uses it repeatedly in this for example under certain calm conditions quote formula might possibly have been found which did justice to the protestant dash i had almost said paul line assertions without compromising other elements of the christian faith notice that uh under these circumstances we might have done justice to the protestant i almost said paul line there but you know six and one half dozen the other in a letter to mrs emily mcclay he he uses an illustration from quantum physics i take it as a first principle that we must not interpret any one part of scripture so that it contradicts other parts the real interrelation between god's omnipotence and man's freedom is something we can't find out looking at the sheep and the goats every man can be quite sure that every kind act he does will be accepted by christ yet equally we all do feel sure that all the good in us comes from grace all the goodness comes from grace we have to leave it at that i find the best plan i find the best plan is to take the calvinist view of my own virtues and other people's vices and the other view of my own vices and other people's virtues now that's typically humble and typical of lewis and his humility it's also i think kind of muddled he's saying uh if i have any virtue it's all of grace and if i have any vices it's all my fault and if the other person has any advice it he can't help it he's predestined and if he has any virtues he he should get credit for it well that's humble but we need to talk about it more continuing the the quote but though there there's but though he says there's much to be puzzled about there's nothing to be worried about it is plain from scripture that in whatever sense the pauline doctrine is true now he he's just putting pauline doctrine in for election predestination calvinism he says in whatever trent in whatever sense the pauline doctrine is true it is not true in any sense which excludes its apparent opposite you know what luther said do you doubt if you are chosen then say your prayers and you may conclude that you are notice him citing luther lewis held that the pauline protestant doctrine is obviously true in some sense but that we ought not to throw out other truths for the sake of our system and again amen and in this following citation he thinks he's not tipped his hand but i'm afraid he has again this is from english literature quote theologically protestantism was either a recovery or a development or an exaggeration it is not for the literary historian to say which of pauline theology theo theologically protestantism was either a recovery or a development or an exaggeration it is not for the literary historian to say which of pauline theology lewis plainly does not believe in the calvinistic caricatures but neither do we and when he speaks in his own voice he says things that are themselves as susceptible to the same kind of caricature here's something from the product from the problem of pain you will certainly carry out god's purpose but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like judas or like john you will carry out god's purpose john did and judas did you will carry out god's purpose but it makes a difference to you whether it's judas or john now uh here's some happy news i noticed that half my time is gone and about half my pages are gone this is good because me it means that near the end uh i don't i won't have to sound like the balloon guy at the fair who's been messing around with the helium tank i want to move to some of louis's fiction let me let me conduct a very brief tour of the narnian tulip garden this is a place of fond memories for me because this is where i first learned my foundational lessons on the meaning of grace now i admit that these are narnian tulips so they don't look quite the same as what we are used to they are larger for one and they open to the sun more quickly than those that some of our stricter brethren have duct taped shut nevertheless we should be able to quickly recognize the gaudy splash of colors that characterize our very floral theology and at the end of the day it's either the calvinist tulip or the armenian daisy you know the armenian daisy right he loves me he loves me not he loves me so let's walk through the narnian tool of a garden i just want to take an example or two you may enjoy it but don't enjoy it too much let me walk through the different points of calvinism and illustrate them from the narnian stories first let's talk about total depravity which lewis said he didn't believe in the problem of pain but i want to show in the voids of the dawn treader he understands the doctrine very very well eustis was miserable as a dragon by his selfishness and his his misbehavior he had been turned into a dragon and he was miserable as a dragon and he discovered that he was utterly unable to heal himself he was utterly unable to prepare himself to be healed when he tried to remove the dragon skin by himself which he attempted all he was able to do was get down underneath the dragon's skin to the next layer of dragon's skin and you know while you're reading this passage beyond any shadow of a doubt that as long as eustis was doing his own scraping it would be dragon skins all the way down that's the way it is we can't do it we can't save ourselves all the goodness good in us is from the grace of god and eustis is undragoned he is he is delivered from his um trap of being a dragon when aslan takes him and aslan scrapes him open and takes him one of it's one of the glorious conversion stories in the narnia narnia stories where aslan takes him pulls him out of the dragon's skin puts him in the water throws him in the water a baptismal image and eustace is turned back into a boy again what about election when peter susan edmund and lucy arrive in narnia for the first time they discover among many other things that four thrones were empty at care paravel empty and waiting for them not only that there were prophecies about them the reason the witch wants to kill edmund is because that would thwart the prophecy and very clearly in lewes there's no way to thwart a prophecy that comes from the emperor over the sea and and that is under the sovereignty of aslan so there are four thrones and the witch is trying to trying to fight this destined result but it is all futile and this is all going to come to pass the four thrones are waiting even though even though edmund arrives in narnia as as something of a stinker right he the throne is still there and then later in in a later book when jill tries to explain to aslan that they had called on him that they had asked him to to bring them into narnia he replies that if he had not called them they would not have called him the initiative is all his quote you would not have called to me unless i had been calling to you said the lion well what does john say we love him because he first loved us that's the order what about the atonement when aslan is killed on the stone table it is for one person the traitor edmund the great lion gave his life for one grimy little boy who remember had a throne waiting for him now it is true that tyrion in the last battle says that it was by aslan's blood that all narnia was saved and while glorious this is an application an extension an afterthought i think it's part of his understanding here but lewis is illustrating the atonement itself by aslan dying for edmond the nature of the lion's death as told in the foundational story is seen as a very definite atonement it really has to be lewis held to a substitutionary atonement and as gary williams has clearly shown in the fourth company forthcoming book from heaven he came and sought her the two doctrines substitutionary atonement and definite atonement are logically intertwined he who says a may not have said be but give him time i think the thing that they have to go together what about efficacious grace what about what about that when jill encounters aslan in his high country he is between her and the stream the stream is living water and she is nearly frantic for it she is invited to drink but the lion is in between her and the stream she asks she tries to deal with him she tries to negotiate a deal as many of us tried to do before our conversion she asks if he could go away for a while while she drinks could i have the gift and not to give her could you go away and she is answered with a very low growl she asks if he will promise not to do anything to her if she does come i make no promise aston said and aslan doesn't follow up with any inquiries about her felt needs i make no promise aslan said she then asks if he eats little girls i've swallowed up girls and boys women and men kings and emperors cities and realms said the lion she says she daren't come and drink then you will die of thirst said the lion she resolves to go and look for another stream there is no other stream said the lion now notice how lewis brings this whole thing this glorious tension to a close and how much like his description of his own conversion that we recalled back and surprised by joy how much like his own conversion it seemed quote and her mind suddenly made itself up notice how he puts that that's not an accident lewis is a master rider and he that's not an accident her mind suddenly made itself up freedom and necessity are the same thing if this is semi-pelagianism then semi-pelagianism has sure come a long way since i was stuck in it this ain't your grandma's semi-pelagianism when it comes to perseverance let's say how many of us might think instantly of susan is she not missing from that glorious reunion in the last battle but i submit that this is a simple mistake susan was not killed in that last railway accident and we shouldn't speculate about her final destiny unless we want aslan to growl at us for impudent guesswork about somebody else's story besides if anybody wants to argue that the ultimate care parable you know when they're going further up and further in and they they they come in this is the real narnia and then they come to the the great gate and then you go further and there's another greater narnia each narnia like a an inverse russian doll where the farther in you go the bigger it gets the more ultimate it gets if anybody wants to argue that the ultimate care parable in the center of the ultimate narnia only had three thrones in it well i wish them luck bless me it's all in the institutes what do they teach them in these schools lewis plainly understands the relief that real grace provides he plainly understands what it tastes like one of the most compelling factors in this discussion for me is the is the fact that lewis plainly knows how salvation tastes and i want you to notice in this quote also from english literature how he contextualizes this in the history of the protestant reformation this is lewis from this buoyant humility this farewell to the self with all its good resolutions anxiety scruples and motive scratchings all the protestant doctrines originally sprang let me give you that again from this buoyant humility this farewell to the self with all its good resolutions anxiety scruples and motive scratchings all the protestant doctrines originally sprang for it must be clearly understood that they were at first doctrines not of terror but of joy and hope indeed more than hope fruition for as tindal says the converted man is already tasting eternal life the doctrine of predestination this is still lewis the doctrine of predestination says the 17th article is quote full of sweet pleasant and unspeakable comfort to godly persons close quote relief and buoyancy this is lewis again relief and buoyancy are the characteristic notes buoyant humility relief and buoyancy joy relief grace this is what the protestant reformation was all about later in english literature um lewis tags the the first puritan uh according to the the later caricature of puritanism which lewis understood was not the aboriginal puritanism lewis understands that the caricature came later and he identifies a particular individual he says this is the first puritan like what everybody thinks a puritan is but before that buoyancy relief no more scoop no more being having all your good deeds wound tight around your own axle so that's how it tastes how does it taste in a story 17th article is full of sweetness how does that translate into stories writing a story involves high theology and the good ones the good stories involve the kind of high theology we have been talking about here it may not seem like that but there are many theological assumptions that have to go into a rollicking good yarn great writers will have reflected on the reality of this and great christian writers tie those reflections in with what god has revealed to us about the story that he is telling there are so many directions we can take with this and we really ought to spend the rest of our lives taking them all storytelling is tied in with the trinity with the doctrine of creation with the incarnation with death and resurrection and with the great de numa of the eschaton or to use tolkien's great word the final you catastrophe how could we not be storytellers we worship god the writer god the written and god the reader we worship god the writer god the written and god the reader how could we not create how could we not write books how could we not read them we are created in god's image and he creates he created us so that we would do this too he came down into our world to show us how it is done his name is emmanuel god with us this god who is with us loves cliffhangers he loves nail biters on the mount of the lord it will be provided and not three days before on the mount of the lord it will be provided exile and return stories are everywhere so are death and resurrection stories so are the elders shall serve the younger stories once upon a time there was a king who had three sons now what do you know already you know already that the youngest of those three sons is going to get the girl you know that but suppose i wanted to argue prove it prove it prove it no god's built the world as a as a platform of story the whole thing is a story and we tell stories because we are mimicking we are imitating god who tells the grand story and all these stories all of them billions trillions of stories the whole thing is going to come together at the last day as promised in romans 8 28 with trillions of plot points all resolved and no remainder all the all the tattered stories that are in this room all the billions of tattered stories that attend god's people all over the world the persecuted saints who are at this moment crying out to god for deliverance how long a lord all of those things are going to be resolved and no remainder and the great throng will be gathered before the throne and they they will cry out with a voice like many waters saying that was the best story we ever heard i was afraid of this pastor john joe rigney and i were talking about this the other day getting choked up and anticipating getting choked up at different places but if you you can't expect the people to be moved at what doesn't to move you secondly on the other hand here i am with time constraints burning daylight so only god creates ex nihilo he speaks and the cosmos springs from nothing when we create we are fashioning or reassembling a carpenter works with wood a musician with notes an author with words all our material is part of the a priori givenness of creation when tolkien speaks of our storytelling as subcreation i think that's a good term for it he acknowledged that we create from pre-existing materials we are not god we do not create create ex nihilo but he is he has told us to imitate him in this in this venture but how can how can the finite imitate the infinite and this goes back to what pastor john was saying last night this is how god reveals himself god reveals himself to us through that which is not god and there are mysteries involved here but god does it if we are imitating him rightly we are still imitating an ex-nihilo creation we are not duplicating an ex-nilo creation but we are imitating one it's like husbands are told to love their wives as christ loved the church and gave himself up for her husbands can't duplicate a substitutionary atonement but they are commanded to imitate it right you can't duplicate the the death of the lamb of god for the sins of the world you can't duplicate that and it would be hubris to think you could but you're still commanded every husband in this room is commanded to imitate that imitate it well we're commanded to imitate god's creativity now think about that god's creativity look at the hubble telescope look at all the things that are going on how can you imitate god's creativity he is the infinite god and he spoke us into existence and he said now you try it and of course it would be arrogance on the one hand to think we could and humility to think we should if we are imitating him rightly we are still imitating the next nihilo creation we are reaching for something that is out of our reach frankly unabashedly we cl we confess this is out of our reach so reaching for it can either be arrogant or humble depending on whether or not we were told to reach for it a creature cannot imitate the creator and yet this is precisely what we are told to do ephesians 5 1 is dearly loved children be imitators of god early in ephesia earlier in ephesians paul was praying that the saints would be able to comprehend things like quote the breadth and length and height and depth ephesians 3 18. he wanted them to know what couldn't be known ephesians 3 19. i what i'm praying for you ephesians is that you would know what you can't know that you would know that which is unknowable that you would grasp that which is ungraspable that you would contain that which is uncontainable he's speaking of the love of christ he wanted them to be filled with all the fullness of god again ephesians 3 19. he wants them to be full of filled with all the fullness of god which is like wanting the pacific ocean in your little thimble think of it he wants you to be full filled with all the fullness of god now for reasons having to do with his good pleasure god has put eternity in our hearts this is why we cannot find out what god has done and this is also one of the ways that we are used by him to make everything beautiful in its time this is how it works ecclesiastes 3 11. he has made everything beautiful in its time also he has put eternity into man's heart yet so that he cannot find out what god has done from the beginning to the end we can't find out what god's up to and god put eternity in our hearts so that we could imitate him in him doing what we don't know what he's doing and that that's quite a task here's your to-do list saints of god now hack writers do not sub-create a world they simply rearrange the furniture in a glibly assumed and largely unexamined prefab world if necessary they turn it into an other world fantasy by hanging two moons in the sky or by naming their protagonists something like shambler but but this is just moving things around on the surface it's very flat there's no deep structure to it the author is not exercising enough authority he's being too timid there's not enough deep structure because there's not enough deep imitation i referred to michael ward earlier in his book planet narnia there's a shorter book called the narnian code uh where he summarizes his thesis the planet narnia is frankly one of the best books i have ever read in my life it is just a wonderful book michael ward has coachingly argued that one of the things that made lewis's fiction so compelling was the element of donegality in it his ability to make a place really feel like that place the name came from an observation lewis had made about the feel of county donegal in ireland it is the reason why narnia tastes the way it does and yet lewis accomplished this by imitating the discarded image the medieval cosmology the medieval model of the entire cosmos the entire solar system he went big he imitated large and most of the imitation doesn't show up in on the surface of the text but it's all there as ward points he's he's imitating big and that's why the stories go deep he's not just just dashing something off for the kids if you try to create a place by simply attaching a label to it a label that says something like quote unquote narnia the result will be listless and flat if you establish the donegality through deep imitation that atmosphere can even swallow up things that don't rightly belong there like mrs beaver's sewing machine for instance um that ought to bother you and it's it's i i actually think that's a leftover from uh lewis wrote uh animal fiction when he was a little boy a land called boxing and uh these were talking animals in an industrialized country and there's not a problem with talking animals using tools and that sort of thing the problem is the sewing machine is the product of industrialization it comes from a factory somewhere and there aren't any there was no sewing machine factory um in narnia and you might say well you're a doofus because father christmas brought the second one he brought it from somewhere where there was a factory okay let's not quarrel over that the point is that there's a there there might be a little anomalous thing that you're saying what's that doing in narnia what's that what's that there for well the donegality of the place the whole world just swallows that up it just takes care of it that imitation that that lewis modeled for us and which we are uh supposed to pursue that imitation will be of the triune god out of the flow of redemptive uh out of the flow of redemptive theology of israel cascading out of egypt of the lord battering down the gates of hades you must know going into it that nothing you imitate can fit into your word count but it will be a word it will be a world that your word count can fit into don't you can't take everything you're imitating and put it in your story but you can put your story into what you're imitating and that's exactly what lewis did and that's why it works several other points need to be made about this before i leave storytelling the first is that storytelling represents a functional calvinism i've emphasized the word functional here because clearly there are authors many good ones who are not calvinists and who might be disposed to argue this point with me fine but let me make it first every author stands in a comparable relation to the world he has created as god stands with the world he has created it is comparable because as you recall we are imitating god when we do this a potter is imitating god when he shapes the clay a playwright is imitating god when he inscribes life into his characters this is why this human relation can serve as an illustration of the divine relation take this illustration from lewis for example again from the problem of pain god can no more be in competition with a creature than shakespeare can be in competition with viola god can no more be in competition with a creature than shakespeare can be in competition with viola when we are talking about a character's motivations there are two ways we can address the question why did hamlet do this why did viola do that one is internal to the structure of the play and the other has to do with the intent of the author it makes no sense to try to divvy it up it makes no sense to try to assign seventy percent of the play to the writer and thirty percent to the characters the apportionment has to be one hundred percent one hundred percent at different levels they're not in the same league they're not in the same category and the more shakespeare writes the freer viola gets and that's how lewis thought of it and that is what god does for us even screwtape sees this god wants beings quote united to him but still distinct united to him but still distinct now our natural and carnal reaction is to kick against this arguing that they are fictional characters viola and hamlet and so on they are fictional characters without eternal souls whereas we have hopes dreams and aspirations we call this a poor analogy for we are much more important than these fictional characters in a play first this objection stands equally well or not against jeremiah's comparison of the potter and the clay in jeremiah 18 6. if this is a bad illustration then so is that second and this is to the point of my talk this is an illustration that lewis uses but third and far more important for our souls such objections reveal what reveal why our defensiveness really arises nobody ever says that when if i am doing a classroom discussion or a q a i'm the sovereignty of god and i say it's like a shakespeare play you know shakespeare's at this level and the characters are here and it's all it's all shakespeare and it's all the characters 100 100 different levels and i illustrate it and somebody says well yeah i don't think i'm a flat fictional character etc nobody ever stands up in the q a ever this never happened to me no one ever says wilson this is a terrible way to illustrate divine sovereignty god is much greater than shakespeare nobody ever says that but in fact the distance between shakespeare and god is light years greater than the distance between dogberry and douglas there's a school of thought actually that says there's only a couple of yards between dog berry and douglas you say you you look at that illustration of the potter in the pot and you say i am not i'm no pot i i'm an eternal soul i'm not a pot well exactly so but god's not a potter either right god's not a potter he's much greater than a potter than you are greater than a pot this leads to the next point an author is sovereign over his story but a good author respects the ingredients and antecedents a good author has affection and respect for his characters and the better the author the greater the respect do you get that there are authors that just write two-dimensional uh fiction and then they're authors that you know you might think you know sam gamgee better than you know some actual people that you know right a good author writes a three-dimensional round character it's called in the business they're they are they're not flat and the better the author the rounder the characters the better the author the more three-dimensional the characters but god is the best author ever run this out the almighty author is not one who writes novels with the flattest characters ever no it goes the other way we do not just have a choice between the will of the author and the will of the character we must take into account the nature of the story and the whole thing and this brings us to one last thing one last point where i believe we in the contemporary reformed world can learn a great deal from lewis reformation calvinism the kind of reformational thinking that lewis understood admired respected and to a measure identified himself with reformation calvinism was born under jove it flourishes under jove and is spiritually healthy there but for the last several centuries at least it has come under the painful influence of saturn now am i revealing here that lewis has gotten way too much of his discarded image into my head will i be having dreads leading our small group bible studies next well no for those who who dismiss my pagan tomfoolery planetary influences and theology indeed with a sneer and say that they want a calvinism under christ thank you very much calvinism without centaurs the better the better to enable us to get back to our gospel preserving debates about superelapsarianism not to mount not to mention how many eggs your wife is allowed to cook on the lord's day several things have to be said first i would suggest mildly that you haven't understood the point nobody around here has any sympathy for pagan unbelief and superstition christ is lord and only christ christ is lord and only jesus but when the point is misunderstood in this way folks haven't understood it because they are under the painful influence of saturn jove and saturn are metaphors but they are not just metaphors the fact that you can wring out the westminster confession of faith like it was a damp washcloth does not mean that you don't have a case of the saturn nine gym jams speaking of metaphor i fear i might be overdoing it but i'm almost done second this is not a minor issue just as lucy and susan wouldn't feel safe around bacchus unless aslan was around neither do i i don't feel safe around anything when jesus isn't there i don't feel safe around anything if jesus isn't the lord of it so they didn't feel safe around bacchus if ashland weren't there neither do i but i also don't feel safe around calvinists under saturn dour calvinists calvinism without jesus is deadly calvinism without jesus is fatalism calvinism without jesus is simply islam calvinism we need jesus when jesus has to be at the center of everything when these precious doctrines of ours are used to perpetuate gloom this is what i mean by being under saturn when these doctrines are used to perpetuate gloom severity introspection accusations morbidity slander nat strangling and more the soul is not safe we have to guard ourselves against that we have to watch we have to watch ourselves third the original protestants and the puritans especially were not at all under saturn and this is something lewis understood and he is a rarity in understanding it few people understand what lewis sees here here is lewis describing the puritans and it is worthwhile reflecting on why there are so many surprises in these few sentences this is taken from selected literary essays but there is no understanding the period of the reformation in england until we have grasped the fact that the quarrel between the puritans and the papists was not primarily a quarrel between rigorism and indulgence and that in so far as it was the rigorism was on the roman side let me say that there's no understanding and he's right about this there's no understanding the period of the reformation in england until we've grasped the fact that the quarrel between the puritans and the papists was not primarily a quarrel between rigorism and indulgence and that's insofar as it was the rigorism was on the roman side on many questions and especially in their view of the marriage bed the puritans were the indulgent party the puritans were the indulgent party and here's the stunner for me if we louis continues if we may without disrespect so used the name of a great roman catholic a great writer and a great man they were much more chestertonian than their adversaries the puritans louis says were much more not a little more they were much more chestertonian than their adversaries may god grant the day when that is said about us where did that come from it came from lewis's thorough acquaintance with the primary sources left to us by our fathers but which we have neglected and that legacy is a large contributor to my willingness to luxuriate in my quite oxymoronic goal of becoming and remaining a chestertonian calvinist someone's going to say if you call yourself a chestertonian colonist that will greatly annoy chesterton well chesterton would say that's why you ought to do it and fourth and last and this is the good news over the last generation there have been a number of indications that our self-imposed saturnine exile may be coming to an end and this is one one of the reasons i so love lewis many calvinists are again becoming jovial which shouldn't be reduced to a willingness to tell the occasional joke many calvinists are again becoming jovial the issue is much more deeper than the occasional joke we are talking about rich worship robust psalm singing laden with harmonies tables laden with good food laughter and sabbath feasting exuberant preaching the exaltation of jesus and all with gladness and simplicity of heart the winter is breaking this is not just a thaw but promises to be a real spring our father and god we thank you for your goodness to us we thank you for all that you've given to us we thank you for our brother c.s lewis we thank you for how your word places him in the right context i pray that we would appreciate him rightly and not exalt him in wrong ways but we your word teaches us that we're to honor those that we've received from we thank you for for all that we've received from him we thank you in jesus name amen

Channel: Canon Press

Views: 20,358

Keywords: Doug Wilson, Was CS Lewis Reformed, Predestination, Desiring God, reformed, predestination debate, cs lewis doodle, cs lewis narnia, cs lewis arminian, cs lewis reformed, cs lewis lecture, arminian, arminian debate, salvation, cs lewis salvation, mere christianity, the horse and his boy, doug wilson talk, doug wilson john piper, doug wilson debate, eschatology, doug wilson desiring god, calvinist, calvinism

Id: UAJcTNCx88I

Length: 57min 40sec (3460 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 05 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Wolfabc]

I wouldn’t call Lewis reformed at all. Just because some people have sound theology in some parts doesn’t mean we have to call him reformed. We can read or listen to nonreformed people. Luther, for example, is Lutheran (shocker) but he’s still placed in high regard for his dedication to Scripture.

[u/Nachofriendguy864]

I've only got so many minutes in a day, and I'm not going to spend 57 of them watching a Doug Wilson video. Does anyone have a quick synopsis?

Some comments seem to suggest he's conflating reformed with soteriologically calvinist and asking whether Lewis is that

[u/TLhikan]

Posting a Doug Wilson vid in r/Reformed?

[u/gcpanda]

Saw who was speaking, and groaned.

[u/BijzonderBaptist]

Great talk! Good suggestion on the at-times conflicting messages that Lewis would send throughout his writings regarding the Doctrines of Grace and Calvinism.