Monday, 16 June 2008

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    The Collected Works of C.S. Lewis
    By C. S. Lewis
    see related

    Betcha didn't know he said that....

    ... but I'm glad he did!

    This past weekend found me reading Christian Reflections, which it seems I've read somewhat less often than I've read most other C. S. Lewis books.  I found two sayings that I don't remember reading before, and that I certainly haven't seen quoted anywhere else.  And that I really, really like.  Here they are for your investigation:

    1. Miracles and Normative Christianity

    [It is an] old opinion of my own that we ought all of us to be ashamed of not performing miracles and that we do not feel this shame enough.  We regard our own state as normal and theurgy as exceptional, whereas we ought perhaps to regard the worker of miracles, however rare, as the true Christian norm and ourselves as spiritual cripples.

    --from Petitionary Prayer: A Problem Without an Answer

    [Yet another reason I'm not a cessationist. --EP]


    2. Apologetics and Poetry

    And this is one of the great disadvantages under which the Christian apologist labours.  Apologetics is controversy. You cannot conduct a controversy in those poetical expressions which alone convey the concrete: you must use terms as definable and univocal as possible, and these are always abstract.  And this means that the thing we are really talking about can never appear in the discussion at all.  We have to try to prove that God is in circumstances where we are denied every means of conveying who God is.

    --from The Language of Religion

    [Perhaps if more people understood who God is, there would be fewer people who question that God is. (update) In other words, I've seen far too many atheists who are wasting their time vehemently denying the existence of a "God" that Christians don't believe in either.  Pass me a poet.  --EP]


    Thoughts?

Comments (9)

  • I'm reading a book right now that focuses on learning to pray in such a way where the primary purpose of your prayer becomes seeking to find out more about who God is and allowing the questions of what God will do to come secondary. The author says that if we seek the first, to know God, then the second will fall into place.

    I think such is the same with you Lewis quote. And yet, I have to accept that someone exists before I can get to know that person. So it is that we cannot prove that God is OR who God is unless the person to whom we're speaking is willing to suspend any disbelief and consider God.
  • I'm afraid you lost your bet. I read the Petitionary Prayer recently, and the second one is quoted in Planet Narnia. Good thoughts, though.
  • That second quote made me re-read about four times.  It's right though...look at the lyrics of our hymnody

  • I like! but then I'm one of those tongue talking Pentecostals.   I don't believe "name it claim it, blab it grab it, stomp it and frame," garbage.   And I do think there is a great danger in placing too much emphasis on the miraculous.   Miracles are works God certainly desires to work through us, but wisely recognizes the allure of brazen snakes.   Lewis has it precisely correct.   I would say it differently from Lewis.   I would say miracles don't happen through most of us because we are spiritually immature.   The miracles would become our focus instead of the Miracle working God doing them.
  • Miracles... yes of course... Aslan is not a "tame" lion.

    Apologetics... interesting quote.... I am still thinking on it.

    You know I think the only way to effectively teach a concrete concept in an abstract way is through parable or allegory of which Lewis was a master.
    Blessings, Bee

  • @ataylor -  I stand corrected. I guess I'm a little too used to being the only one on my block who reads eclectic authors from previous centuries.

  • So I have always felt this way about miracles, but I never knew that any one else did too! I read the New Testament particularly the gospels and Acts and I get the sense that those who come after were to greater miracles still. I have even read books like Foxe's Book of Myrters and I find some truly miraculous things in there. Even as you read history you find some pretty fantastic claims being made by many Christians about things seen and experienced. I really truly wonder if miracles should be more common and what would it look like in a church?! Would it look kookiy? Would it be trustworthy? Would it be edifying?

    Along the same thoughts I have also wondered if God would ever inspire men to write more Scripture... I mean I know the standard theology claims that we have all of the inspired words of God that we need until He returns, but does God really say that? And we will be living eternally, so how about the future. Will we need some sort of Scripture for whatever we will be doing in eternity? or will God's presence be enough to inform us of His word?
  • I'm going to do as half of the others before me have done and pretend to ignore or not have read the miracles quote (not because I vehemently disagree, but because I don't currently have the cranial capacity necessary to wrestle the thought and pin it neatly in this thirty seconds of space). But as to poetry (which I love very much), I've had the sneaking suspicion in the back of my mind for quite some time (which never quite came out into the open) that the inherent levels of meaning required for a line of poetry are like listening to a parable (which has to be true because Christ takes even more chewing than Gerard Manley Hopkins, and I don't mean in the transubstantial sense). And there was probably more but my poetic mind has wandered on to something else already. And Lewis is right: if you're trying to PROVE God, then don't expect converts at the same time, but if you are in fact DEMONSTRATING him, then buckle up.
  • I agree about miracles.  It seems to me in Scripture that signs and wonders accompanied the proclamation of the Gospel.  They were present even in congregations which did not have full-time or any known apostolic presence.  If we are REALLY going to be sola scriptura in our understanding of biblical doctrine, then cessationism must die.

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