C.S. Lewis Panel Discussion - Piper, Wilson, Ryken, Alcorn, Vanhoozer

let's pray father we want to serve now in this panel so would you bring to mind the things here about CS Lewis and Jesus and theology in the world that would be most helpful we need the help of your spirit here in this to Jesus glory and his name we pray amen we are celebrating CS Lewis here this weekend there's plenty of that we can continue doing here in the panel but maybe the way to start is with some of our disagreements with him make sure that we've tackled those and been forthright about them we've already mentioned his doctrine of Scripture we've talked about some seeming inconsistencies in the soteriology another big question people raised about Lois and hell and I should introduce randy Alcorn here Randy will speak this evening Randy will be talking about heaven and the new earth and and he's gonna kick us off here on the topic of lewis and he'll well there's a lot of great insights that lewis had about hell he did say in something that i think phil quoted this morning from the problem of pain that he believes solidly in hell even though emotionally speaking he really it was up to him he would eliminate that doctrine that itself is a challenging thing to say in light of revelation 18 and people called upon to celebrate babylon being judged and and all of this one day will have a perspective that we will better understand hell and how it demonstrates the character of God and His justice and his wrath even when it's hard for us to understand now but Lois did go on to say but I do believe in hell if there's the witness of the scriptures Jesus himself emphatically affirmed a belief in how there is church history and tradition and then also there is a reason and in reason itself argues for hell he also said that he had never met anyone who disbelieved in hell who had a life giving belief in heaven then he said some things that were sort of in the middle and some of those things would be like the gates or the doors of hell are locked from the inside and I think there's a half-truth there people go to how because as he put it people choose hell well what they choose is to turn their back on the Creator and try to find happiness outside of God and they don't find it and they end up in hell it's not really helper say they're choosing it's where they're ending up so that would be kind of rights maybe kind of wrong obviously rich man and Lazarus the rich man wants to get out of hell so anything Lewis said that makes it sound like people want to stay in hell is not entirely accurate but there's some truth in it but then in terms of that the outright disagreement on the doctrine of hell for a lot of us would be his portrayal of Emeth that calormene character who is this soldier who's a follower of Tash this evil God who is really a demon and there are certain things in the last battle that seemed to suggest pretty clearly that there might be equating over to militants Islam and he's a follower of all it's like that and then a salon when everybody dies and they're going to the afterlife Asselin says to Emma this soldier I will accept all of the worship and service you gave to Tash as if it were to me because I know the sincerity of your heart is the essence of it some of us would be very comfortable with that if a salon would have appeared to him before he died and if there would have been a true conversion over to faith and a salon but the timing after his death seems to contradict Scripture which says it's a pointer on men once to die and after this the judgment if I could complicate that a little bit since that's my spiritual gift and you use it so wet I agree with I share the discomfort on the whole story with Emeth and I think that Lewis was too I'll put it in quotes but to charitable on this sort of thing saying well if you sincerely follow every all the service you rendered to - since - is a demon it was actually rendered to me and then somebody says well does that mean - and a slander the same and then as some growls you know don't ever make that mistake but I'm willing to credit to my account you know credit what you did here as though it were not done - Tash I think that that's problematic and I share all the qualifications that would be said having said that we have to take into account things like Old Testament New Testament distinctions and how how much of the true God was represented in some of the some of the religions of the Old Testament so the Apostle Paul in acts quotes from him to Zeus right we are all his offspring so when when Paul goes and preaches and he quotes from him to Zeus well is that the Zeus of the philosophers is that the Zeus of Homer you know what what are you talking about so it's not like I believe that Lewis is wrong on that point but I don't think he's coming to that error making it up out of whole cloth I think there's some complicated things that we have to work through how much did the does the world know the true God you know well Romans 1 says they everybody knows the true God and they're and they're busy suppressing it that's the chief problem I have with Emeth is if someone was really sincere and an honorable and Noble pursuing God then okay that follows but the Bible says nobody does that that's the problem the principle is to be another example I think of Lewis's apparent lack of attending to texts as closely as we might like and building on principle the principle is God won't condemn anybody for not acting on what they don't know and then the Bible says they do all know and they do all suppress and therefore the only exit from the suppressing blindness is Christ and the gospel how shall they believe and call upon the name of the Lord unless they hear a preacher and it's just what distinguishes probably this panel is that we're just all so textually oriented and Lois operated or at least he wrote kind of a level above the text and and that's a warning really to to all of us because like many evangelicals preach that way today they hover above texts drawing out principles and the principles are always on the brink of saying wrong things because they're not tethered tightly to the wording of Romans 1:18 2:23 and other texts like that so just a little lesson in being carefully biblical on these matters other theological concerns worth noting with Lois he was an Anglican had no problem with the bishop the system of bishops and and that sort of thing so as Baptists and Presbyterians I think that covered we would say all right we're not enthusiastic about bishops but in Lewis in another place says he notes that Puritans and another place he's talking about how Puritans were not the dour types he says bishops not beer were there chief aversion but he didn't have a problem with that so we don't belong to the Church of England we're not he was a faithful church man in that communion I think that it's a Christian communion but I more so then than now but but I think that that would be a difference but if that doesn't go to the heart of anything significant so given the disagreements mentioned here and throughout the conference why love Louis why commend Louis why speak at a conference on Louis what is it about Louis that you would want to commend others to read or we were discussing this at the lunch table today and it'd be good to rehearse a couple of those things though the way I had thought of the question is why John Piper do you I mean you're not only do you read him and like him and benefit from him you do a conference on him and you wouldn't do that with certain living people who believed what he believed that's true that's a true statement and either I'm getting consistent or there's something else going on and it's what else is going on that we were talking about and I'll just mention one and these guys can be thinking about what what the others were Louis unlike so many of the people who might stumble over today histologically was a realist and Objectivist he loved objective truth he believed in reason he loved propositional truth he was lucid there was no spin in Lewis there was no fuzz and no froth and no ups few screws the word obfuscation I love the word and never can say I mean I love damning the word so that that is a piece I I can go a long way with a person who may disagree with me on points if we're both totally into what the Bible says is so and you can know it and there's ways to think that you're you're and nobody's trying to to massage the truth and conceal and soften what they say so there's one reason why I'm just drawn to him and find so much help in him I think it's a good reminder really for even the theologians that we feel most offended there are always some places of warning or imbalance no one apart from our Lord Himself as a perfect theologian so I think reading CS Lewis reminds us of that I would also say there are a lot of personal reasons for appreciating CS Lewis and I can't probably say with Doug that what I've learned from Lewis outweighs what I've learned from everybody else but I will say no one has had a bigger impact on my Christian experience and CS Lewis and a lot of it is the things that are formative from childhood what you learn about courage and what it means to live a life of faithfulness even from the from the Narnia Chronicles so in that when you have an author that has that big of that large of a life shaping influence you you recognize the value and benefit of that writer also just say briefly that I think one thing that distinguishes Lewis from some of the people you may have in mind living authors that you wouldn't commend in a conference setting like this is Lewis is very clear that he wants to be in submission to the authority of Scripture and there are some people in the church today you sometimes get the sense they're standing a little bit in authority over scripture and they have a they have their own opinion that they sometimes feel think they know a little better than scripture you don't get that sense with CS Lewis he wants to be Orthodox and in submission to God's Authority I think to a lot of people today who are Christian leaders are drifting and they've they've grown up holding two truths that they are now departing from their trajectory is away from the gospel Lewis came from atheism moving to theism agnosticism came to a life changing faith in Christ was growing in his life came from a world where he didn't have the doctrinal reference points and even though it's not an excuse it's his trajectory was always in my opinion toward the gospel if not always normally usually toward the gospel from the outside also the fact that he did not not only do you not profess to be a professional theologian he just made it clear I'm not now of course when your person of influence you'd would wish as phil was saying this morning that you would do more study in these different areas but to me it's so different because here's a living vibrant faith of someone who came from the outside and for me as a young believer I soaked it up because I I remember when I didn't know God like it was three months ago in my case I didn't know God and he didn't know God and he came to know God and he's really smart and look I can follow his line of reasoning and my faith makes sense and I can defend FA so to me CS Lewis was a godsend and he is doctrinal weaknesses are real but they're not debilitating and we should read him selectively as we should read everyone else selectively be like the Bereans who were more noble than the Thessalonians to search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are true I agree the substance of Lewis is soundly Orthodox which is why I trust him but I want to mention two other factors that appeal to me in particular first the quality of his writing he has set the bar over which I keep stumbling he is the work of the theologian and the preacher is a large extent a ministry of the word it's word craft and Lewis was a master of the craft the second item I can think of is that he was a student of the classics so he was less prone to be influenced by the prevailing winds of cultural fashion he read old books and he could see trends come and go and some trends do come and go in different cultural guys I think one thing that particularly impressed me was how he might have had his finger up and and sensed the wind of postmodernity before it actually arrived I'm thinking of an essay it doesn't often discuss but I really like it it's the one called vulvar ISM I don't think anybody's used that term yet but barbarism tells us I was gonna use that tonight but I'm just gonna can you spell bull ver ISM for us it's the it's the name of a person in his little article he imagines a boy was it Eugene or Edward something with an e I think vulvar and the little boy is listening to his parents argue and at one point his mother says to his father oh you say that because you're a man and little ball ver a little light goes off and he realizes I don't have to answer the objection I just have to point out where the person is coming from don't deal with the argument just identify their location that is exactly what I see many postmoderns doing they they simply say reason is situated it comes from here you say that because you're a conservative or because you're a theist or because you're and then you don't have to deal with the argument you simply locate where it comes from and Luis actually had a name for it Bolivar ISM of course it doesn't work as I if I meet a postmodernist I can't say you're a belverus because no one knows what that is but it impresses me about Luis if I could say what I appreciated this would be a combination what John said to what Kevin said if we laid out all the areas where we agree and disagree with Luis on an eighth temporal grid we could add up the percentages and say well we agree this much or whatever but if you look at the 20th century and say what was the central error what's the central heresy of our time I think that relativism subjectivism me ISM is the central error of our time and Luis didn't give an inch when it came to that sort of thing he was virtually only one standing in the gap fighting that particular fight fighting that particular battle and I'll take it you know I love that man because he's contra mundum he's against the world at a particular time when all the world's going one way he's not going there and the and the places where I think I disagree with them I'm reassured because he not going back to the doctrine or scripture he's not saying there are mistakes in scripture because that's a miracle and of course miracles don't happen his reasoning is completely in another direction I think wrong but he's not being blown by the spirit of the age he called himself an old Western man a dinosaur and that's that's what we needed at that point in time so personally in what ways has Lewis shaped you and who you are now particular insights concepts particular places where he says things have you been shaped by him chronological snobbery came along as a thing he alerted me to in my 20s which said that something not true or because it's newer but that the old may be more beautiful and more true so don't ever equate knew it better that was that puts you out of step with your century very quickly which is a wonderful thing to be there's a freedom in being a dinosaur in the 20th and the 21st century that was that was a huge one for me love old things assess things by virtue of of absolute and eternal standards not how trendy and cool they are the second one for me was what Allen Jacobs calls and I don't know if anybody's really focused on this either omnivorous attentiveness that is Louis saw thinks and really I think that's part Kevin what you're getting at eyes he saw things and Kilby who embodied him from me he saw the world he saw trees and he saw toads he refers to toads a lot and he taught me that nothing interesting can be said about toads the only thing that can be interesting is about this toad this toad with his bulging eyes and his bumps on his back and the way he goes bump when he when he jumps in others he helped me escape from the dangers I'm still working on it of abstraction and move towards concreteness and when I've taught preaching with some of the guys that are out there I'm just pleading continually toward concreteness which is almost the same as what we've been saying about likening or metaphor but it's not it's not the same I move from from tree to oak and oak to the white oak and white oak to the one in the front yard and the one in the front yard to the one where you carved your initials when you're engaged with your wife that moves down to a kind of reality that's engaging and palpable and moving to people and so those those two things chronological snobbery and being omnivorous Lee attentive to concreteness for me as a brand new Christian teenager reading Louis probably the love of God and the fear of God coming together in one person a salon portrayal of Jesus Christ where you've got mr. beaver saying you know when one of the children asked is he safe I mean is the lion safe safe no he's not safe but he's good and then a salaam is not a tame lion and the fact that there was fear and you heard his roar and there was this response of to his might and then the tenderness and the love and the great romp and you know the children grabbing Lucy in particular grabbing onto his Mane and and I could see loving this God and his love for me and yet simultaneously my need to never interpret his good'n as meaning he was tame like I could get him to do what I wanted him to do it was really all about him and not about me and yet he truly did love me that was just formative to a huge degree for me one of the one of the central things in my life and this goes back to what was said earlier about when you encounter it I think my folks were reading the Narnia stories to me start when I was five and they were still coming out I think in 1958 and we were it was just all new and fresh and I remember for example in Prince Caspian Trumpkin doesn't believe in a salon but he's fighting on the good guys side and he doesn't believe in the horn but they're just debating whether to blow the horn and so they finally decide to do it and then dr. Cornelius says well we'll have to send two messengers out to different places where the help might come and Trumpkin said I knew it is the first result of this tomfoolery is we're gonna lose two fighters and and not get not get help and then someone does some backchat and then Trumpkin volunteers to be one of the people to go and and someone said but Trumpkin i thought you didn't believe in the horn horn and he says no more I do your majesty but I know the difference between giving advice and taking orders you've had my advice now's the time for orders right giving you my input and I learned authority from that all right so Lewis was a man under authority it goes back to what I said earlier about him rejecting the subjectivist GU he was a man under authority but then it's not blind Authority it's not wind me up and point me in the right direction because Trumpkin says the same trunk and who goes on a mission he doesn't believe in because he knows the difference between giving advice and taking orders someone suggests well why don't we bring in some augers and hags and everybody and someone says well if we did that we wouldn't have a sling on our side and Trumpkin says what matters more is you wouldn't have me on your side you know if you do that I'm gone all right you bring in the ogres and hag hags I'm gone but if there's a policy disagreement in the board room we take the vote and then I am all in I'm gonna take orders and I'm all in I'm gonna I'm gonna pursue that and Trumpkin like that that and that's the way story shapes someone's whole outlook and and Trumpkin comes up in my thoughts and a Bourdon you know the long board meeting and it doesn't look like the boats gonna go the right way and okay be a Trumpkin when I was talkin mentioning earlier how much influence I think CS Lewis has had on my life that's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about and I remember time welcome into the details of it but there was a group of people that was there was something that they thought would be in the interests of our group but it would involve a lack of integrity that I was not willing to go along with and even as they started to make the argument to me you know just go along with this I was just able to say you know who I am you know that there's nothing you can say that will convince me otherwise and I think that kind of character for me came from going through the Wardrobe with Lucy and from being on the decks of the Dawn Treader with Reepicheep and it just shapes your life and character and in my life it's been a deeply profound ways and that's one of the reasons it's so great to read the Narnia Chronicles to children it shapes their lives I can think of four ways lewis has influenced me as a reader is the first one bulbar ism the first one was a humbling experience where he says you really aren't a reader if you've only read a book once and leave it at that and that was an aha moment for me second he encouraged me to read an old book or maybe more than one old book for every new book I read third he said you have to get the genre of a text right you have to know what kind of a text you're reading is it this is the true of everything are you dealing with a corkscrew he asks or a cathedral the question of genre right identification of the kind of thing we're reading comes first and I've made mistakes in genre when I first read Jane Austen I thought it was a serious story didn't I didn't catch the social satire and pride in prejudice that's awful it's a good thing I read that book twice but the most important way in which he's influenced me and again this is a book we haven't yet talked about but it's as an experiment in criticism and he distinguishes using a book from interpreting or receiving it and we use books will we subject them to our own will we have the will to power as interpreters and we make them say and we do with them what we will receiving a text is quite different one has to be spiritually humble one has to be open to the proposal being made and it reminded me that the reading itself can be an exercise in sanctification am I going to open myself up in all humility and receive the word rather than twist it for my own purposes on that note anything obscure obscure pieces Louis wrote essays he wrote so much various letters are there places you have found gold in Louis that you don't hear commended often and you'd like to commend here for us two things one one more obscure than the other but one is he did a an essay or a little booklet I think I've got in the form called the literary impact of the authorized version so he's just discussing the impact of the King James version of the Bible as it's obscure delightful it's very good less obscure but I would commend a preface to Paradise Lost is not on the not one of the top sellers but there is some gold in that one as a theologian I have to mention because you mentioned preface his preface to a Phinehas treatise on the Incarnation this was Louis's introduction of a most important theologian someone who was instrumental in carving out the doctrine of the Trinity in the 4th century but he was particularly commenting on why it's important to get into the the meat and potatoes of the doctrine of Incarnation and to let a Phinehas do it and then another one is the an essay called transpositions where you asked for something obscure I'm not sure I have the a good grasp of what he is talking about it but it has to do with how lower things can be taken up into a higher medium and somehow become themselves and yet they remit they remain themselves and yet they're transfigured in some way transposition and Barfield thought that transposition might be the equivalent of the well the closest thing Lewis had to a theory of the imaginations I'm still mulling that over I would just really appeal to people if you've read even if you've read ten things by CS Lewis they're probably at least ten more that would be an absolute delight for you and it's worth taking a little effort to find what some of those pieces are I mean it's all great stuff it really is all of it and there are probably a few people here that have read everything by Lewis I certainly haven't read everything by Lewis and even being here for these days is inspiring me to go back and pull some things off the shelf and track down some things that I should read one thing that comes to mind for me is his letters to an American lady not often quoted from but the discipline of writing that has been mentioned this was something that was a burden a huge burden for Lewis and it was a service that he determined that God had called him to do and it required great sacrifice on his part and one time he he wrote back to this American lady could you please not write to me on the holidays because it I received many more letters around Easter and Christmas and it takes away some of the the joy of the holidays so you get that feel for it and then he goes right on to answer in detail her letter and I remember one in particular that was only five months before Lewis died where are the American lady whose name in real life was Mary Mary was writing and talking about her fear of death and you know that maybe she was dying and then he writes back to her and says your sins are confessed has this world been so kind to you that you really feel you must stay and then he says trust yourself to God relax and you know give yourself over to him and then he says and this might not really be the time for your death and then he says but make it a good rehearsal prepare for the day when it really will be your time and then he signs it off something like your fellow-traveller also tired and and ready to leave this world as the idea Jack and I think that little things in his letters is certainly his letters to the children I do not respond personally to every letter from an adult but I've made a policy I will always respond to children and Lewis has been a huge example for me in that area although he did much more of it and was much more sacrificial because of the influence on a single person and I just praise God for all those letters that he wrote that we can benefit from now so if you have not read his letters they've been recommended but please please do they're very rich now I know how to get Randy to respond to my correspondence I'll just but I'm an eight-year-old college president serving in I wanted you know you mentioned the letters in it called to mind another I think really obscure a book of CS Lewis the Latin letters of CS Lewis a correspondence in Latin - I think a Roman Catholic priest in Italy and I think it's in that book that he talks about his practice of praying for the lost and he's writing to somebody that's kind of discouraged not really seeing if God is at work in the world and he agrees with that he said you know sometimes it seems like you wonder what God is really doing but I have a list in my journal of people that I pray for who do not know Christ and I have a list of people for whom I give thanks because they have come to Christ and he said you know the transference of people from one list to another is encouraging as I see God answering prayer over time I wonder if people know about that aspect of Louis's prayer life but those are the kinds of gems you can find in some of these other writings I think just principally what I'd say to people may not be book readers they just a read books the books are too long and they don't I'm I just think he's got dozens and dozens of two to 10 page essays and they're all worth reading you can find them in God in the doc Christian reflections I've got an 800 page thing it's not in print anymore if you could find that called essay collection and other short pieces just some night sit on a chair take a half an hour to read a short piece and and it'll be gold for you almost any of them one of those pieces on life on other planets you know interesting reading I mean something that appeals that the breath that what he wrote these short essays on it's amazing one called bicycles let's talk about joviality Doug wonderful last few minutes about Calvinism good and bad so many good tweetable I think many of us are excited for the jovial Calvinistic vision described the forms that jovial Calvinism takes in this world of pain and suffering the I guess the first thing I would say is you have to take care that the joviality is not sort of a doctor Pangloss like that Candide where you know someone's going through a terrible world of suffering not clued into what's happening that's not joviality that that's not that's not someone who is responding the way he ought to be he needs to be dialed in but true joviality I think has to be understood as an act of defiance the world was a mess the world has fallen it's filled with wickedness and you look in the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe she comes to the White Witch comes across the feast in the woods while this gluttony while this self-indulgence you know Lewis captures that wonderfully Judas is the one who wants to know why this ointment was not sold and given to the poor Judas is the one who was being the skinflint Judas was the one pinching the pennies and one you know he and there was a reason for that as John John tells us the white which captures that wonderfully if if you're celebrating at some Sabbath dinner you know if you're celebrating because you've never heard of any of the conflict then then you just are not clued in but if you are at Rivendell the last homely house if you're feasting there it's an act of defiance it's an act of it's the declaration of war it is the recognition that this is how we fight we've cheerful warriors the happy warrior the cheerful warrior the cavalier we should fight like a cavalier we should fight like d'Artagnan and not like a thug all right we need to fight we must fight but the person who fights like a cavalier is an attractive leader he's going to attract more people to his side he's going to be more effective so if someone says we we can't be this is terrible this we've got to be serious think about like a pro-life activist who who says but they're killing babies and it's terrible and the whole world's going to falling apart whole words going to hell and so they write their letter to the editor with a fisted crayon you know dear enter our secular humanist and what I like to call the spittle flecked letter right that is you you they can't say but abortion so important I've got to do it this way I would say no no abortion so important you must not do it that way if you can't you're not venting you're fighting right and if you fight you want to fight effectively you want to use your head you want to keep your keep your cool and part of this means I think essentially joviality so the Jo rig news talk yesterday was wonderful and he pinpointed king loon as the quintessential he's a king of Archon land but he's the quintessential jovial character but he's not a pacifist he's first in last out you know he he he is the he's a fighting king but he's the cut he's the kind of fighting king that I would want to follow and there are people who are so hard bitten you know they're so disillusioned that they're not going to motivate anybody to do anything so that's in a nutshell what I would say so joviality is not the only mood of the Christian life but somebody that does not have a godly sanctified joviality perhaps as a 1-dimensional or not as fully fully human expression of the Christian life the New Testament seems to present both fasting and feasting as normative for Christian experience both lamentation and celebration and most of us find it hard to get the the balance right or have the proportion right but those are both strongly held values in in in the Gospels and CS Lewis is one of the best exemplars we can think of of the jovial Christian yeah the Apostle Paul says in Corinthians sorrowful yet always rejoicing so you can go through afflictions there's tears and bruises and hard times sorrowful yet always rejoicing and that's what I think biblical biblical joviality means death death is swallowed up by victory at the end and we must never forget that yes so just clarifying that it seems to me there are two ways to talk about how the the groaning and grieving and weeping fit together with the rejoicing one is to say they're always simultaneous that's second corinthians 6:10 sorrowful always in other words they're coextensive it's not sequential it's like you're happy on Sunday sad on Monday because you just saw somebody who's starving on Monday and didn't think about him on Sunday that that's that's not what that verse means however chapter 7 says I'm thankful that I grieved you but not because it was an end in itself but because you were grieved under repenting with these to life and no regret now there is something sequential about that or James to weep and wail you sinners and cleanse your perjure hearts you people of double mind he means get it done finishing now and then have a party so there's two ways that are tough they're both tough one is simultaneous happiness all the time in tears and the other is getting the sequence and proportionality of the rhythm of feasting and fasting weeping and rejoicing right and and I find personally both of those very difficult I almost never am satisfied that I got it right and there's so many hurting people and there's so many reasons to be happy that how to nail that proportion for my family from myself from what church for friends I'm just welcoming you into getting in step with the Holy Spirit who can be grieved and who who is the spirit who's who's second fruit it's joy and if you have a true community of believers if you are plugged into a church and and are a vibrant member of that church and you take the words of the scripture seriously weep of those who weep rejoice with those who rejoice you find yourself having to do a lot of those things in quick succession you know you've got the the funeral on Wednesday and the wedding on Friday or the funeral and on Wednesday and the wedding rehearsal Thursday evening and then fright you know and you've got to go from one to the other and we're not called this schizophrenic scattered nests we are called to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice and the thing I must have to orient me in all of this is the recognition all the time that this is a comedy not a tragedy this ends well the comedy not in the sense of a sitcom but comedy in the sense of the Divine Comedy where it ends well so it begins with the garden and the Bible ends begins with the garden it ends with a Garden City it ends with the bride coming down the aisle that that's how it ends and so that's the story I'm in and so if I'm preaching the funeral of someone whose death just shocked the whole congregation well do I know where I am do I know what kind of book I'm in and this goes back to your point of knowing the genre do I know the genre of the history of the world it's a comedy and that's why I think some many of you have had this experience certainly when I've been doing memorial services the therapy of laughter as certain stories are told about the loved one who is departed and is now with the Lord and you'll have tears just streaming and then laughter where people it's not a superficial laughter it's a laughter that is an overcoming laughter it's a laughter that says we know a God of joy at God who is happy and eternally happy and will be happy for all eternity and we'll be with him and enjoying that happiness and our loved one has gone on to be with him but that doesn't minimize our tears but it does give a tone to that memorial service that's remarkable there are times where laughter is louder at memorial services than in a normal context and when it's done for those reasons it's christ-centered laughter I think it's it's very healthy let's come back to likening and all five you guys are writers use likening in your writing some more some less how intentional is the the use of likening and how much is that something you've picked up through reading Lewis and others how do you think do that as a writer I don't think it matters whether you must work at it or whether it uses provided it doesn't sound like you work at it and and a lot of bad writing is likening that's awkward and mechanical and wooden and doesn't work and the best remedy for that is to read a lot of good writers and Lewis is hard to improve upon so yeah I think I think all of us the reason I moved from saying that I didn't want you to think of Lewis as a Lycan or in that he wrote novels but also ruthlessly logical essays with saturations of likening is so that you would all apply that to yourself I hope that in conversations you'll be more given to likening to putting into words in a little conversation you have over supper tonight that what you experience in your hotel room last night was like this mean like this and and that will be interesting and it will be illuminating but if you just said I didn't sleep well instead of felt like I was sleeping on a you know cactus I mean that's a likening and I just made that up and it's not very good but I'm trying to get the point across that I'm not as good at this as Doug is so yes so my answer to the question how do you think about it is yeah think about it and you think about it long enough so that you take all the steps necessary so that you don't need to be artificial or wooden or mechanical about it but just kind of flows Lewis says somewhere I think it's a short essay about liturgy but one of you can tell me correct me but he's talking about learning the steps of a liturgy so when he compares it to learning how to dance when you're first learning how to dance you're not dancing with your beloved you're counting you know you know 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 and or 1 2 3 oops yeah 1 1 2 3 sorry 1 2 sorry 1 sorry I've never had that it's very so and but Lewis says when you're first doing it you're you're thinking about one thing but you're deliberately doing it so that you may get it into your muscle memory and then you can think about when you learn how to dance you can think about the one you're dancing with and not have to worry about the math and he says liturgy is the same way he he says that I don't much mind what liturgy the Church of England picks as long as they would pick one and keep it that way so that I could learn it and then think about God as I do as I do the steps well I would say it's the same sort of thing with with metaphor and learning to write you when you're if you're wanting to be a writer you should be very intentional read ransacking books reading dictionaries reading good authors who used you know you should be very intentional writing things down but it you should focus on that so that after the early stages of that it just becomes routine and things just come to you unbidden john bunyan says a wonderful thing at the beginning of pilgrims progress I think in the poem he said and that and as told it came talking about the inspiration as I pulled it came it just you prime the pump and get to a certain point where it just starts happening you've learned how to do it so invest at the front end is what I would say I've written the whole book via one likening seeing the Christian life as a drama and I began to pull at that and it just kept coming and coming and it didn't feel artificial that felt organic and I felt challenged and I was caught up in my metaphor and there's a certain sense that we will know a good metaphor by its fruits a good likening by its fruit not just how many pages can you write but what kind of impact on your life is it happening is it drawing you into the gospel further up but further in we had a great example of that from Kevin today actually in his talk discipleship as waking up and I thought it was great when you came at the end of the Transfiguration and there were even details in the biblical text that were really coming to the fore because of this metaphoric world of waking up that you were presenting to us I think it we had a great example today of how effective it can be and in communicating the gospel Kevin you've done a lot on post modernity one question could be has Louis already said what he would say the post modernity and if the question is he hasn't hadn't sent that if he came along 75 years later what might he say today to our context well we've already mentioned the negative critique that's to both heuristic I want to say that again ball veristic what what would he see that's encouraging he might see imagination but as we heard from Pastor John it's it's been unhooked unhooked from the horse that should be pulling it which is a particular epistemology I in my paper was trying to use the word discipline and disciple quite a bit the the imagination must not be unjust and and it must not be hooked to some other horse you know we've got to make sure that we're following the the authoritative imagining that we have in Scripture so you I there's a book out there called metaphorical theology and the author says I'm doing just what the Bible is doing the Bible uses metaphors I'm using metaphors but in this case it's a woman she uses this idea of metaphorical theology to invent her own metaphors and so she is not disciplined by biblical images instead of seeing God as father and Lord she suggests that we see God as mother and comrade with those images carry a host of associations and some of them may be less helpful than others but the point is she doesn't recognize the authority of the biblical imagination so I'm not sure that Lewis would be all that encouraged to see more people imagining if the imagination is not being disciplined with the authority of Scripture so practically how do these folks do that phrase biblically disciplined imagination what's that one of those first two words mean for their daily life it means we need to exchange the metaphors of the stories we live by if we need to get rid of the worldly metaphors and stories we live by stories about what it is to be a success for example and we need to try to learn what success looks like in biblical terms success in biblical terms isn't necessarily a matter of how many people recognize you or how much money you make success is about our faithful witness to Jesus it might be a matter of becoming poor for his sake of giving up everything that doesn't look like wisdom when you have certain metaphors and stories that the world tells us so we have to deprogram ourselves I think and and the means of doing that I would presume is marinating your brain in the Bible if you steep yourself in scripture first of all a lot of the false masks will come off I think there's a moment of deep programming just as Genesis one the true story of the creation it also reveals other stories as false myths to some extent there's a certain DeMuth ala Jai Singh that goes on in Genesis but we if we accept the biblical story as the true story it will challenge other stories we've been living by marination is a good idea one of the one thing I would add to that is when were steeped in Scripture Spurgeon one set of John Bunyan but if you pricked him anywhere his blood would run bib line he would he would bleed Bible verses but we can't just bleed Bible verses or bleed doctrines we have to bleed narrow tidal structures we have to bleed the you know exile and return death and resurrection we have to bleed this the structure or the the story arc that that's part of what we have to be steeped in and there's a great chapter in a great book by Chesterton the book is orthodoxy and the chapter is the ethics of Elfland right so the ethics of Elfland and he shows how fairy stories are all biblically structured narratives so if I just make up one on the spot once upon a time that there was a little boy named Tommy and he lived in a green castle and the edge of the sea and his fairy godmother came to him one day and said under no circumstances are you to go into the North Tower now do you all know what's going to happen Tommy's gonna go into the North Tower something really bad is going to happen as a consequence and there's gonna be an opportunity for redemption and everything is going to be put right somehow at the cost of a great sacrifice on someone's part and how do we know that well that's the Garden of Eden that's the history of the that's the history of the world the history of Tom Tommy is everyman Tommy is Adam and and we should recognize that kind of structure instantly and fairy stories do that folk stories do that and in our modern world we try to mess with the structure and we're we were I think impudent and disobedient and running away from Bible one of the things about story that comes to my mind is it sort of connects to what we've been talking about is the modern emphasis and I think Lewis would say there's good in this people are talking about story and how our lives our stories and we are to live out our story the way it was intended to be lived and things like that but there's a huge downside to that I see many believers now you're kind of celebrating my story you know the story of my life instead of seeing my it's like we're becoming the stars of our teeny little stories it's my story it's about me and there's a whole bunch of them instead of seeing God's huge expansive story in which I am to be a role player in a small part in his big story which is so much better than being the star of some pitiful miserable little story that's all about me and I think that's one of the things that Lois would see through right away with some of the discussion about well let's all tell our story finalists tell our stories let's talk about what God has done in my life and how he may intend me to live out my little place in his big story one of the ways you can tell if people are doing the me story thing is if they're constantly plugged into their iPhone with earbuds so they can have a soundtrack they're walking down the street with the soundtrack going glancing in the in the semi mirrors of the storefront windows watching themselves in their movie what what if they're listening to Doug Wilson on the and they're seriously screwed up okay final question maybe for those here who haven't yet spent much time with Louis or for a younger generation that this wouldn't just be a Boomer phenomenon that evangelicals would love Louis but that Millennials would would love Louis if you're gonna boil it down and say one thing to a younger generation to those who don't know Louis yet why why spend time with him why be influenced and shaped by Louis well Louis said that George McDonald baptized his imagination God used CS Lewis to baptize my imagination in a way by the way that George McDonald never has and and I think with Lewis some of the people that he's so admired and drew from I've read them and I thought oh I mean I don't mean it's bad I mean I think it's good but Louis is the one who God has used in the lives of so many people and you think of the number of people just in terms of quantity Chuck Colson is with the Lord now for many years we've talked about mayor Christianity and God's use of that book in his life but I mean if you pull a large number of people and ask what books have had a huge impact on your life mayor Christianity's come going to come up toward the top on almost every one of those lists and then you'll get Narnia and sometimes you'll get more obscure things of Lewis his space trilogy had a tremendous impact on me and so I would just say just by sheer numbers of people who have gone before you your chances of being highly influenced for the good through CS Lewis are just very high I would say briefly Lewis says somewhere about Edmund Spenser's Faerie fairy queen that to read Spencer is an exercise in mental health and I would say the same thing about reading Lewis he is a bracing dose of sanity in a world gone mad and I just think you we need that kind of engaged touchstone I think he's just wonderful and if I might I'd like to say if you've never read Lewis I would just encourage you to start simple with something like the Screwtape Letters I think you know it's very accessible just straight in if you've never read Lewis and you want to start somewhere something like that would be good and I'd like to mention my favorite Lewis book is probably that hideous strength I think it's one of the great novels of the 20th century and it's just glorious maybe taking my cue from the talk last night romantic rationalist like an ER evangelist and saying in a slightly different way Lewis shows us a person whose heart and head were both completely captive to Jesus Christ combined in one person and who could see what see from what was in this world the things that were pointing us to another world in ways that led him to want to share that so people would understand the gospel I think there are a lot of people in this room that would love to be a whole person heart and head for Jesus Christ taking what's in the world and seeing what's missing in the world pointing people to another world CS Lewis can help you do that as well as anybody I know if the misgiving of a millennial is that he appeals to baby boomers the answer is he was already totally out of date in the 1930s and therefore he's no more out of date today than he was then and he is because he's out of date in the 1930s and the 2000 teens he is perpetually relevant you don't need any more cool hip relevant people you need somebody with roots that is so bright intellectually and so creative imaginative Lee that he communicates to your deepest needs and and I would just piggyback on your piggybacking on me and say you are all romantics and you're all rationalist you are made in the image of a God who is joyful and you're made in the image of a God who is rational and Lois will by being so healthy in both of those awakened the best in you and whether you're 25 or 65 we want that it feels wonderful to have our romantic and our rational side made homemade healthy by having somebody talked to us out of the context of such remarkable mental health speaking of relevance Lewis once said whatever's not eternal is eternally out of date would you close them fair John father we've said it and we'll say it again that we are gathered here to see you and the path of discipleship with Jesus crucified and risen through the lens of your servant CS Lewis so intensify the clarity of that lens for us now through the evening through our supper and our conversations and bless Randy as he comes to talk about this incredible beatific vision and and hope that Lewis saw so clearly about the future and bring us into worship with you tomorrow morning and may the entirety of our time together awaken affections that may have died or may have never existed and sharpen thinking that may have grown dull so that we come alive to what you've made us to be and can be better representatives of you in our creative language and our articulate doctrine I commend these brothers and sisters to you now for the evening in Jesus name Amen

Channel: Descyple91

Views: 37,998

Rating: 4.7368422 out of 5

Keywords: C.S. Lewis, Panel Discussion, John Piper, Doug Wilson, Philip Graham Ryken, Randy Alcorn, Kevin Vanhoozer, Apologetics, Philosophy, Desiring God, Christianity, Christian Talk, Christian Discussion, cs lewis discussion, cs lewis panel discussion

Id: QEPmgty7epU

Length: 62min 53sec (3773 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 19 2017