Episode 072: Literature and C.S. Lewis

[Music] welcome to godsplaining contemplative preachers contemporary age each week join the dominican friars as they consider all things catholic welcome to godsplaining i am father bonaventure and i'm with father gregory pine as you can tell in the luxurious studios of dominican council studies for a short period of time because pretty soon father gregory you will be changing your logo or i suspect your uh your job title i think um you may already be there at this moment um what's going on yeah i think when this when we will have posted this episode it's live yeah exactly i'll be in switzerland so um i at this point can imagine what it will be like to be in switzerland and maybe extemporize based on the experience of others who have been in switzerland so at this point i will have been living for like a month and change at the uh kuva sanya san which is a uh song what's up which is a convent of the dominican province of switzerland and uh i am studying with jill emery at the university of freeburg i'm studying two mystic christology specifically how the lord jesus saves big words so that's it yep so i'm studying big words so that i can do further big word things big wording yep so big wording and bounds um and yeah so far we're just going from five syllables to six and i i foresee seven in the future dominicans love it ratchet up you can add like a neo on to something or a paleo onto something you can just it's not we'll never catch up to german where you can just smash words together suzaman fossen and such yeah but uh but we can with hyphens we can approach it and uh we can yeah and especially with ologies and such that's great um and so your well what should we say ready for covid in europe um am i ready for coven in europe i don't know i'm um i'm wildly under-informed as to how coveted works in europe um so switzerland is a mountainous country and it's a little bit finicky i suppose when it comes to immigration so they don't they don't very much like for people to come there irrespective of whether or not you are sick or suspected to be sick so i think they've been ready for covet for like you know thousands of years um as to how it really changes their culture i have no idea but i don't suspect that it's going to affect like you know sunday walks in the mountains as much so well switzerland also has a neutral country if i remember correctly so they didn't join wars and i assume the same thing viruses apply and uh they they respect that they lift up the bridges or blow up the bridges or something so i'm sure they've done something similar to that for kobet so yeah but we hope everyone else is enjoying coveted right now we continue in this season of grace and uh the opportunity to wear special investments especially on your face which we are not doing but that's because we're in a house um so that's okay but one day who knows you just never know we might have to but a tumultuous time so we continue on with this this great festival and season uh but we're not gonna speak about covid anymore no because our topic for today is clive staples lewis who is i suppose we generally do literature it seems like and he's a well we're going to talk about that i suppose clive staples lewis c.s lewis also known as jack those to his friends and such and we're not friends with him so we'll call him c.s lewis um but he's delightful so when did you first come up with uh when did you first meet c.s lewis i first met c.s lewis in my mom and dad's bookstore so my mom and dad owned a little catholic book shop for 25 years it didn't make much money um but it made much friends a catholic bookstore you said exactly correct especially in the uh the dispensation of amazon instant delivery they found it difficult to keep up with drone delivery it was pretty it was pre-drone i think i just wait till now yeah but um i used to work for my mom and dad um so like take some hours as the whatever shopkeeper i guess would be my technical and during that time um people would come in and talk to my mom they wouldn't come in to talk to me because my mom is good at talking to people and i'm not so when i was there they just caught the impression like gene is not around so um no don't bother going to solve a regina uh so i would have a lot of free time so i would just toddle around the store and pick up things that looked nice to me and i started picking up the cs lewis signature classic oh those are nice aren't they yes they look nicer now than they used to that's true they've gone through a few printings yes i think i picked up maybe the screw tape letters okay mere christianity yes pain over like over the course of one summer and i was just uh i was smitten yeah it's hard not to be i'm i mean most of the listeners now and maybe viewers who knows um probably have i have read cs lewis and some he he's written in so many different genres of course born in 1898 in belfast ireland so he's not english he's actually irish um and not catholic of course from belfast that should be obvious um and then 19 died in 1963 in oxford so he spent most of his life in oxford um in the kilns was his little house there with warnie his brother um enjoyed david's all see the thing with csl's biography is i think everyone knows basically all the important stuff know about him i mean he went was in world war one and then he gave world war ii talks and things on the radio that's where christian worked out but he wrote a ton yeah a ton and really hard to describe like some when i was thinking how do you describes ma'am he wrote apologetics things so known for a defense of the faith and mere christianity people probably read or miracles and uh screwtape letters um and then he wrote literature so a lot of people would have been introduced to him through chronicles of narnia perhaps they they read those when they were growing up uh had or had them read to them or watched the movies uh and then also the ransom trilogy of the space trilogy um we tell we have faces a bunch of of questionable literature you could say wow um i mean add questionable as literature i should say it's all pure and good to go and wholesome but quite maybe question and then and then there's just like these other the category miscellane miscellaneous the miscellany of tons tons letters to malcolm uh a grief observed you know problem of pain i think is really more of that than apologetics tons of essays i mean on humanitarian theory of punishment weight of glory that collection with the in the inner ring just tons of these things i think those are those the two essay collections or something um uh short answer is i don't know all of the essay collections but i know the there's also like a bunch of stuff that just because it hasn't been reprinted by like penguin or by like harcourt bryce juvanovich yeah no one sees it but he also has a bunch of scholarly stuff oh sure i was going to say a discarded image yeah about medieval literature and then he's also got a glory of love [Music] also latin letters to his friend of course that's called like he wrote latin i mean what a what how do you just i mean yeah he's you put this with i feel like i know exactly who he is and then when you start like talking about him and you think how is this man possible yeah like what i mean i guess reminds one of of perhaps another uh you mean are we are we gesturing towards we're gesturing towards the chesterton maybe i don't know do you refine that he's like chesterton but with like skill and yeah exactly yeah and beautiful english yeah no there's there's a sense in which um he is a polymath so he is student of many disciplines um and he is also in no wise pedantic you know or like uh hoity toity i don't know if i'm coming up with a good adjective describe the phenomenon but he's very very learned obviously so a scholar of like medieval and renaissance literature um and it's it's evident that he's formed in that tradition and that he has all the acumen of you know a literary critic or an appreciator thereof and um and yet it's not like you didn't you never get the impression like he's showing off yes so he knows all of the things um but you do not feel like snowed over or otherwise kind of like blown blown over maybe just by his knowing of the things it's he he always is able to bring his like very vast knowledge to bear on very practical problems and to do it in a way that is um yeah eminently relatable it's awesome yeah he's there's really no one no one like him as far as i don't know who to again who to compare with them i think of like for instance introduction to an introduction to christianity um a book if you want to give someone a book about what christianity is really about and sort of thing but uh you know an easy introduction or something mere christianity was written in 1943 or something like that i don't know of any i mean nt write me to go with this um but i don't know if anyone has been able to pull it off in the way that is that book is i mean delightful is the way that i describe i mean every one of his writings even agree observed is not delightful but it's it's something about it there is that's readable yeah you you i was put this way i've never read something by lewis and thought well that was a waste of time and it wasn't even enjoyable you know it's always enjoyable it's edificatory i mean it is yeah he is he is phenomenal but as you say no slouch uh a very very intelligent man and people i think at least they compare him literary wise to j.r tolkien so this is the kind of are you uh you know are you a uh a lord of the rings person or a chronicles a narnia person you know yeah and i think tolkien also thought he didn't read someone asked him about narnia chronicles or something the chronicles of narnian i think he said i just don't know yeah don't worry about him there's just he thought they were too simple or too simplistic right yeah and uh and of course lewis thought well i'm ready i'm trying to get people to believe in god you know in jesus christ and i want to tell them all these things and laura maybe we should talk at some point it's fine it's fine but i mean the images you get from lion wish in the wardrobe you know the fawn and the little the the lamppost missing one of its little things how'd that happen you know and uh always always snowing but always winter but never christmas the one horse and his boy book three about providence and kind of the the footsteps always walking by and sort of thing then the remembering the book the images she has to remember things in the fourth one or so there's just stuff that you you'll never forget i mean it's a catechesis a brilliant catechesis yeah yeah no i think that um so there's a sense in which everything that c.s lewis does he does deliberately and i think that um you know you mentioned a kind of disagreement between tolkien and lewis as to the integrity of literature right so tolkien was very much well he thought that you told a story and you didn't worry too terribly much about being kind of overtly allegorical because he thought that if the thing were true then it could be brought to bear on one's own life or the life of faith as it were um whereas lewis is very overt um in his drawing of connections between the stories that he writes and the religious truths that he seeks to illumine but i think that like that that literary theory which kind of undergirds especially the chronicles of narnia it's also part of the reason why he's so such a good apologist right because he's so clear yes right and and to some it may seem crass um i don't think it is i think it's just delightful and he's very explicit that the chronicles of narnia are written for children you know and the introduction to the lion the witch in the wardrobe he dedicates it i think to his niece polly maybe and he says i intended to write this for you you know when you were a child but you've grown old basically that the children grow quicker than do books yeah um but they'll come a time he says when you'll be uh you'll be able to read it and to appreciate it again so there's a sense in which um you know it's for children and so it can they can afford to be a little bit straightforward but um it's also we can appreciate it too and so far as we're all in need of a kind of popular apologetic as intelligent as we might think ourselves it's always beneficial to hear the truths of the faith explained in a way that's clear that's concise that's compelling that's informed you know kind of formed by faith and fired by charity and that's certainly something that one gets when reading c.s lewis and as a result of which it just it just continues to be refreshing and delightful and eminently readable yeah he's a he's a popularizer that you think well i'll just stick with him you know he has that like you read you read his his things and you think well that's yeah what else would i want to go anything else would be i'll go on to the things but like he's still the bit you know it's still the base it's very i'm always taking away i just i love his work uh four loves also another one well look we're gonna get some details about it we'll say greatest hits the second half of this episode the greatest hits of c.s lewis maybe talking about that and uh you can be following along it's not a call-in show but you can just yell at um at your screen or anyone next to you so we'll be back in just a moment to talk about cs lewis our greatest hits and thoughts about him and maybe some pieces that you haven't read that you might want to dip into this is godsplaining get up to date on all our latest episodes at opec.org godsplaining and we're back talking about c.s lewis and some pieces by him i think everyone has favorites um but perhaps there's some pieces that people haven't read as much of um so why don't you start us off father gregory do you any any piece that i say your favorite piece baby and then maybe like a piece that people aren't familiar with but it's just really good true yeah no i think that um yeah just because modern publishing houses tend to pick up volumes that they think will sell more a lot of us are familiar with maybe five or six things um so grief observed problem of pain scrub tape letters mere christianity abolition demands miracles abolition of men like that's that's kind of the ones that people will have read or will have been assigned to them at a catholic or christian college but then you know the next the next layer as it were uh contains a wealth of insight uh but may just not sell as well you know um so i think the four loves is one that i that i really love uh in this regard and i think it's really uh beneficial to read the four loves together with surprise by joy which is his own description of conversion and um with till we have faces because i hate that book carry on okay uh father bonaventure and i once uh listened to that book when we were driving cincinnati i think it was cincinnati yeah yeah that was tough that was tough no stuff for you one time for me okay i love that book um but those books all written together i think at the beginning of the 1960s uh really focus on similar themes and um the i mean the theme of love effectively and what it means to love and to be loved and why uh why do i appreciate it well um so when the four loves as the name betrayed you know he goes through these different kind of different different modes of love uh but it's the type of thing that's just system systematic enough um so yes not to be kind of piggledy piggly yes um but it's not it's not dry uh scholastic pros it's um it's very experiential and it's you get the distinct impression that it's based on his own life friendship um what he describes as friendship i think oftentimes is probably just masculine friendship yes uh so i think he he tends to universalize a little bit beyond his experience but it's good when it stays close to his experience so like an image taken from uh taken from the four loves that i really appreciate is that of friends kind of like not getting lost in each other or not being overly sensitive to each other's interior states but having their friendship flourish to the extent that they are directed on a common object and he he says is a criticism of erotic love that you know kind of erotic lovers are face to face and can get lost in each other as a result but he says of friends that they are side by side proceeding towards a common goal and i mind you you know there may be limitations to that image but i think at the very least this idea of um order in relationship as issuing from a common end is a really attractive one because i think sometimes in our relationships we try to manipulate or tinker or otherwise try to elicit from the other a response when truth be told he says in order to have friends you need to want something more than friends right that your friendships will grow flourish be healthy to the extent that you together prize a common goal and together proceed towards it whether hand in hand or arm-in-arm or skipping or you know you get it uh so yeah that's that's the thing yeah yeah i think his his turns of phrase i'm from that friendship and that i think the friendship one is the best of those four four love essays one the chair i have i always forget what charity when he says in there i'm sure it's good but like the the philia is the one that i really sticks my mind um and because he starts it off saying i know people are gonna are suspicious of friendship today because there's a concern that it might be something that men don't do together you know and then he gives his lip but then he gives his list of historical references like this you know jonathan david tristan whatever and he gets to and he says roman and the roman centurions leaving their men and giving them farewell kisses all pansies i just it's just fantastic this is a way like just cutting right through things so that is a great that is a great book i think um so to what i love the ransom trilogy the space trilogy um even though i think some people re you know it's it's overshadowed by the chronicles of narnia but it's like the adult fiction book and it has it's made of three books and the first two books aren't books and the third one is a book it's not good that's how i generally describe it but they're all because he from a philosophical aspect the first two are little vignettes into they just he's able to nail images down that just queer a bit your view of reality and the truth you know he always says that as amir christian always says the christian that certain things christian has that certain queerness about it that means it's true you know and there's just a a bunch of insights from out of the silent planet the first book of ransom trilogy and then peralondria the second book of ransom trilogy um space trilogy like in the first book there's he talks about being out in space um and he talks about the life of it and how alive it is out there and warm and how he'd always thought it was actually you'd assume that it'd be kind of dead cold space because that's what science tells us dead cold space but actually it's a place of warmth and light and all of this um and it just conceptually switches you around a little bit the things he talks about but language in there are just fascinating fascinating vignettes i think in perilondra you see pre-fallen he kind of does what i think i was taught in college called like supposalism so he has this is his genre is like he supposes his imagination suppose that you there was no fall what would it look like or suppose we were back before the fall and you just you get to see human character and human virtue in a different light in a way kind of pre-fallen and you know i mean it's if it's fiction but it does open up little conceptual schemas uh the second thing is there's his uh very the unread book uh the discarded image you could say where he talks about and scar damage refers to the medieval model of literature and mind and mindset and all this compared to the modern and that's a fascinating book just for the epilogue i would say amongst other things because he just show off his like philosophical chops he brings up an issue that is huge in philosophy of science so right around the same time thomas kuhn is writing structure of scientific revolution that science changes from old models to new models because of research projects not because of getting a truth but because a new model is more exciting or answers different questions better problem solving and all these sort of sociological reasons as opposed to just kind of an epistemological reason or a truth reason and i don't i have any idea if cs lewis read thomas kuhn it's written about the same time i doubt he did it wouldn't have been his thing but in that epilogue he says he spent time talking about the medieval mindset the medieval model of the world and he says i'm not gonna lie i love this i'm very enchanted by it but you're gonna agree you're gonna say to me well you know it's got a problem it's not true and i says yes it's not true but then he talks about how our current models of thinking about the world and scientism and and stuff are also models that you know are not are structured and win out against the medieval model not really because it's piling up more facts but because of all these sociological other reasons he doesn't discount them but what he's done is developed a notion of paradigm thomas queen's paradigm just reflect on medieval and modern literature and that's like that's mind-blowing to me and he summarizes you don't even need to read structured science structures of scientific revolution i have to read eight pages of the epilogue of uh and that's just that's brilliant i love finding those philosophical gems in there because he says them in such a clear way that are profound so that's those are two two i have yeah when you're talking about the uh space trilogy i read that uh the summer before i entered the order and it was like yeah i was i was so delighted to have discovered something that i did not know existed because when i finished the chronicles of narnia i was very disappointed to be done you know yeah uh when i read the the introduction to lord of the rings uh i think christopher tolkien wrote the introduction of the volume that i read he said uh the principal criticism of the lord of the rings is that it's too short you know and you're holding like a thousand page book in your hand and you're like yeah right sweetheart um but then by the end you like give me more pages you know and and i had a similar i had a similar experience with the chronicles of narnia because yeah i just hadn't read him as a kid or i might have read one or two i hadn't read i read them in college as well yeah but i read him at the end of college and i just loved him so much and then so to discover that there were these three other books i was just over the moon i was so pleased i went how did you like them i did yeah yeah okay and i think it was because um at that point i was i was more inclined to think parabolically you know i was yeah i was kind of looking for i'd been reading chesterton at that point for three years so i was always looking for the moral of it as it were um i i didn't really care too terribly much about literary integrity right yeah i don't know that i ever will um because i was just so i was so yeah just i was so taken with his imagination and i think that that's something that you get so he he himself says when writing the chronicles of narnia that it began with an image that he had in his mind of a fawn yes holding an umbrella standing next to him yes amazing so he began with an image and then he makes this whole world that radiates from you know from that image um i think that's i think that's an important point that um when you read cs lewis it's like you're reading a very smart child like i get this sense that this was a man who was ever a child and if you read grief observed for instance you know this isn't always this isn't the case um but but he you get the sense that it's like stumbling on he's just excited about everything yeah and not in a weird curiosity way but in a real robust way and his imagination is and so he in a sense because we're told like don't use your imagination you know imaginations for kids and all this sort of thing like fawns with with you know um what do you have a brawly or something umbrella uh yeah bumper shoes um you know like yeah that's for kids in this sort of you know this this but no he sees lewis allows you to vicariously participate in childish imagination that turns out to be the most profound rationalistic discourse that could be around that's what i love that yeah you know and and and it kind of comes i think it kind of comes to fever pitch in the space trilogy so again out of the silent planet perilandra and that hideous strength and by the end of that heavy strength i was just i was i couldn't i couldn't put it down really so fascinating oh my gosh wow the ending just killed you though right it kills everybody it's the most disappointing thing in the world i was absolutely rich wow yeah listeners please i want you must read obviously space trilogy i call the ransom trilogy because ransom is the main character in it and he's fantastic i love i love him to death um but space trilogy recommend it and then send in your comments who's right you know um were you disappointed whatever so i mean i love it too because it's like the only trilogy of books that you'll ever read in which a philologist you know is the hero yes so clash royale lewis yeah but i speak talking head yeah that's in store for you and later yeah well i like chesterton so who cares oh yes um so yeah and especially in that first book some of the ideas that he kind of trots out namely that you can have rational creatures that aren't human i never thought about that yeah also you know c.s lewis is a guy who read a lot of science fiction um walter hooper was his literary executor he pulled together a bunch of uh different essays called on stories and it's like his literary theory but a lot of you read that a lot of it's about science fiction okay just he loved cannibal for leibowitz um wow i knew he loved norse mythology and all that yeah george mcdonald but i didn't know science because wow love science fiction um so there it's you you get a sense for his own scientific fictional kind of appetite um because he plays with gravity you know yes i remember that so like the mountains are much much more sheer and tall and there are creatures that are accompanyingly long you know the sorens yes but then he also takes a thing which you think to be just dumb like a little like kind of the beaver building creature the tail type thing looks like a marmot that's the impression that i got yeah and then they end up having these just like wild rational discourses amongst and between themselves yes um so he goes and he like accompanies them on one of their initiation rights when they go out on this boat and they have to hunt this thing in the water which is lethal deadly yes and and and ransom is like why are you doing this you know like why would why would you hunt this thing that's gonna kill you and it isn't actually good to eat and they're like you know it's an initiation right effectively they're like we live because there's death in the water and i was just over there thinking about baptism just pumping my fists just like in my mind and mind you it's so overt but it's so beautiful you know yes it's so just imaginatively beautiful sometimes the cross just smacks you in the face it's the cross you know like you look that oh wow you know yeah that's that's true but the space trilogy is is phenomenal well there's plenty more we could talk about cs i mean just episodes an episode this guy wrote a ton his essays especially in god in the docs there are some just phenomenal essays in there uh about political issues even but that's for you to go and and have a have a go at it and try some of the ones you haven't read lewis is just when you're good you're good so from god's planning um we're hoping you all do well please share this if you have a lewis fan maybe an evangelical or something he's big with them as well um share the podcast with anyone who might be interested in cs lewis or might be hearing about some dominicans and we uh yeah wish you all the best during covetide and perhaps one day we'll be out of this as well god bless [Music] thanks for listening to god's plan a work of the dominican friars of the province of saint joseph visit us at opeeast.org

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Keywords: catholic, dominican friars, theology, philosophy, religion, faith, order of preachers, godsplaining, seekers, Truth, preaching, questions, searching, prayer, meditation, #literature, #cslewis, #books, #frgregorypine, #gregorypine, #frbonaventurechapman, #bonaventurechapman, #priests, #priest

Id: aXm_yISdpzw

Length: 27min 27sec (1647 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 17 2020