Speaker 0 00:00:00 CSS Lewis, in his brilliance as a scholar, was able to kind of have immersed himself completely in the great tradition, right of Plato and Aristotle, of scripture of the fathers, of the Medievals, and of, of course, the Renaissance period. And, and also even great modern, uh, philosophers and theologians. Lewis was able to kind of absorb them all into his mind and then give them life through his writings.
Speaker 0 00:00:35 Welcome to the Catholic Theology Show, sponsored by Ave Maria University. I'm your host, Michael dne, and today we're gonna take a bit of a detour, and instead of having a live guest with us, we're going to have c s Lewis on the show. And we're beginning a little series that I like to call into Narnia with C Ss Lewis. And the goal here is to kind of draw together different writings of C Ss Lewis, so that we might kind of move more deeply into them. I've taught a course at Avi Marie University for over 10 years on introducing students to his theological apologetics. And one of the things I've found very helpful to do is to pair his non-fiction writings with his fiction writings. So, for today's episode, what I'd like to do is we're gonna take, uh, mere Christianity, especially books one and two, and combine it with the lion, the witch in the wardrobe.
Speaker 0 00:01:35 Uh, and one thing that's fun about this for today is these are probably his, probably his two, uh, best known works, the lion, the witch in the wardrobe, the most famous of all, the Chronicles of Narnia and mere Christianity, the most famous of his, uh, nonfiction apologetic works. So just as a starter, uh, I think it's worth considering, right? Why should we read CSS Lewis, right? Why is CS Lewis, uh, so beloved, uh, and treasured by many Catholics? And in part, I can begin answering this by telling a story of just my own, uh, studies and my own reading of CSS Lewis, when I was a revert, uh, to the Christian faith, and eventually to the Catholic faith in college. I, uh, read a lot of the Bible, and I read a lot of c s Lewis, and I found c Ss Lewis very helpful to articulate kind of the basic teachings of the faith, and explained them in a way that was very understandable.
Speaker 0 00:02:32 And he would also, I think he would take what were the dominant objections of our age, articulate them, and then begin to kind of unpack them and show why the Christian claims were not only plausible, uh, but maybe were compelling. So then I went on and I studied, uh, theology. I got a master's degree, a PhD, right? Uh, first at Duke, and then at, uh, Notre Dame. And I studied, uh, you know, basically I, I committed myself to becoming a theologian. And during that time, I went on to, you know, read scripture in depth and learn to study scripture, uh, with a lot of, uh, you know, the help of many scholars, the help of, uh, the fathers. I went back and I studied the philosophers, Plato and Aristotle read the Great Medievals, the Great Fathers, everybody from say, uh, Gregory of Nisa, Gregory of Naus, Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Dante, all the way up to the moderns, uh, John Henry Newman, right?
Speaker 0 00:03:37 So many great, uh, theologians in the church. And then that was one thing. So this is what I did. This was my work. Uh, and then when I went to teach, I would often try to introduce students to this great patrimony. And then, anyway, about 10 years later, I ended up, uh, having the opportunity, uh, to talk with another fellow theologian who was teaching a course on CS Lewis. And I remember, uh, thinking like, oh, I wonder if I should try that. And so I went back and I started reading CSS Lewis again, uh, after about, say, a 10 to 15 year, 10 to 12 year hiatus CSS Lewis. And what I found is when I picked up Lewis, I began to see Augustine. I began to see Paul. I saw Athanasius, I saw Aquinas, I saw Dante. What I realized is that Lewis, in his kind of brilliance as a scholar, was able to kind of have immersed himself completely in the great tradition, right, of Plato and Aristotle, of scripture, of the fathers, of the Medievals and of, of course, the Renaissance period.
Speaker 0 00:04:42 And, and also even great modern, uh, philosophers and theologians, uh, somebody like GK Chesterton, uh, all these different people. Lewis was able to kind of absorb them all into his mind, uh, and then give them life through his writings. Uh, so I began to see that, uh, that one of Lewis's great gifts to readers and to students, and to me, right, as, as a, as a fellow reader and student, is that he kind of draws together the great Catholic and Christian tradition, even though Lewis himself was not a Catholic, uh, as an Anglican, right? He loved the kind of, he loved the, uh, theological continuity and the historical continuity of the Patristic and Medieval age. Uh, so I've really seen in some ways is Lewis is a great one to introduce people to authors and to ideas that otherwise would often seem foreign. Uh, so that's just kind of a starting point on that.
Speaker 0 00:05:42 Uh, second thing that I think Lewis does, that's very unique, and I I'll give a little bit of a, a hard quote here, um, not too hard, uh, but one that I really think summarizes it is what he Lewis does, is he draws together in a way our head and our heart, he draws together our mind and our imagination, right? Our reason, and our, almost like our reason and our emotions, our memories, all these different things. And so, by doing them together, he avoids the errors of rationalism, which so dominated modernity as though thinking we could simply solve the problems of man by reason alone. Uh, often our encounter with God is of the whole person, right? We have to love the Lord your God, with all our heart, mind, and strength, right? Uh, with all our mind. Uh, so it has to be our whole being, right?
Speaker 0 00:06:32 It's our whole being that encounters another person. It's our whole being that encounters God. But this is what he wrote, he said, for me, reason is the, or natural organ of truth. But imagination is the organ of meaning, imagination, producing new metaphors, and revivifying old is not the cause of truth, but its condition. So, Lewis is very clear that our only ability to discover truth is because of our reason. This is the imago de in the human person that allows us to come to know truth, but because we are not angels, but in embodied beings, truth only has meaning for us, insofar as it's attached to imagination. And by the way, you can, even if you're familiar with, uh, St. Thomas Aquinas, he would often talk about the idea that the intellectual concepts or understandings that we have are always connected to what he would call a fanm, right?
Speaker 0 00:07:31 We always have to, we don't just think of the idea of a triangle, we also have the image of a triangle, right? And it's those two that go together. And what Lewis does is he puts these images in motion, right? It's not only the image of a triangle, but now he tells a whole story of the triangle. And so, by taking these ideas and these truths, considering the imagination as he puts it, both by, uh, producing new metaphors or revivifying old metaphors, and in many ways, I think that's what he does so well, is he takes all these wonderful stories, images from the fathers, from scripture, uh, and, and he's able to pull them back together. There's even one of his, uh, books in the Silver Chair, one of the Chronicles of Narnia, where all of a sudden, uh, the characters are in a cave.
Speaker 0 00:08:23 And in a way, he's retelling, uh, the story of, uh, Plato's Cave from the Republic. But he does it in a way, right? That any child could read and any adult can remember, right? And so, this, I think, is one of his real gifts. So, with that in mind, I wanna begin with just an image, a little story that he tells a little section of it from the lion, the witch in the wardrobe. And at one point, as the story develops, uh, the children, uh, from England end up going into Narnia through a wardrobe. Uh, Narnia is another world. Uh, it's a world in a way that's kind of, uh, similar to ours, but different Louis would say that every imaginary world we come up with is ultimately a sub creation. Uh, it's not something, we can't create a world that's not somehow borrowing from the real world that God has created.
Speaker 0 00:09:17 Uh, so in Narnia anyway, he, uh, there ends up being an evil witch, a white witch who has kind of, uh, cursed the land, who has enslaved the land. She's a tyrant. Uh, and the four children, uh, Peter, Susan, uh, Edmund and Lucy end up entering into Narnia, Narnia, which is really a police state ruled by the witch. And as it turns out, Edmond Falls basically gives into the temptation of the witch. And he agrees for Turkish delight and some enchanted, both Turkish delight and enchanted, uh, maybe hot chocolate or something. He basically, he and the promise of a becoming prince. And eventually king, he betrays his siblings, he betrays his siblings, he agrees to tell the witch where they are, so the witch can have her wolves go arrest them. So, as the story goes on, eventually, Aslan comes in. Aslan is a great lion.
Speaker 0 00:10:18 Uh, Aslan isn't, Lewis would always say he is not an allegory of Christ. Lewis would describe him as a supposed, and he would say, suppose their world, world like Narnia and like ours. It needed redemption. And suppose God wanted to become incarnate in that world. Well, in that world, in the world of Narnia, he became incarnate as a lion, right? In our world, he became incarnate as a man. So it's interesting, uh, Lewis is probably the only, it's, it's one of the few fictional stories you can ever think of where it's not a Jesus figure. It's actually the incarnate word in the story, right? So, Aslan, uh, in a is, is much, is very real in his own way, and is still a genuine symbol, a genuine parallel in a way to Jesus Christ. But anyway, we still have the problem that Edmund is a traitor, right? What do we do? And so, Hassan comes on the seam, a great lion. He leads an army al, almost against the witch, but eventually, this is what the witch says. The witch says basically that because of the deep magic, she has the right to the blood of the traitor. Because Edmund betrayed his siblings.
Speaker 0 00:11:43 She properly, in a way, uh, well, has, has a right to his life. She describes it as this, this is the deep magic, the magic which the emperor put into Narnie at the very beginning. That every traitor belongs to me, the witch, as my lawful prey. And that for every treachery, I have a right to a kill. That human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property. Asline responds. Perhaps surprising, uh, for maybe, you know, the reader, you would maybe want the asline to say, no, I forgive Edmond. Edmond can simply come home. You don't own him. But Asline instead says, it is very true. I do not deny it. Fall back, all of you said, Aslan and I will talk to the witch alone. In the story, we discover that Aslan agrees to take Edmund's place. He offers his life in place of the traitor.
Speaker 0 00:12:50 Uh, there's a beautiful scene in the book, the lion, the witch in the wardrobe of how, uh, Lyn is right. Sad before he goes, uh, to offer his life. Uh, the, the whim, the girls, Susan and Lucy comfort him, but eventually he goes off, uh, the witch and all her hoards, uh, they tie him up, they shave his mane, uh, they mock him, they kick him, they spit on him, right? And eventually the witch, uh, kills him on the stone table. Uh, the, the girls come up later, uh, and, uh, see the dead body of Aslan, uh, when the next morning, however, when the sun rises, uh, they hear a great crack, right? Uh, and all of a sudden they look over there, the stone table is broken, and Aslan is standing on it alive, uh, and right, they have, Aslan has resurrected, right? And this is what he says to the girls.
Speaker 0 00:13:58 He says, it means that Aslan, that though the witch knew the deep magic, right? The deep magic by which the blood of a traitor was hers. There is a magic deeper, there's a deep magic, and there's a deeper magic still, which she did not know. Her knowledge goes only back to the dawn of time. But if she could looked a little further back into the stillness and darkness before time dawned, she would've read there a different incantation. This, in a way, is evil, can only know back to the beginning of creation. Evil can never know before creation. Only God, only goodness, right? Knows this, the, the, the reality, the whole reality of creation, because it God is before creation. And this is what Lan continues then saying. If she had known this, she would have known that when a willing victim who has committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the table would crack and death itself would start working backwards, right?
Speaker 0 00:15:13 And now, and then Aslan goes, um, they have a great, uh, romp. They celebrate, so to speak, just the goodness of life. Eventually, he goes, and, um, the witch has been turning, uh, many of the creatures of Narnia into stone. He breathes on them, and they come back to life, and eventually they go back to battle. And the witch is defeated. But I wanna highlight just these, again, these images that Lewis puts before us, which he says, if we remember, if we revivify old or produce new metaphors, then imagination is not the cause of truth, but it's condition. It's the condition that gives meaning to truth. So we have many truths that we receive, both from philosophy and theology. Um, but how do we make sure that those truths have meaning? So let's go back again then to think about this deep magic and the deeper magic, right?
Speaker 0 00:16:12 The deep magic under which we live today, and the deeper magic. So what I wanna suggest is that if we go back to mere Christianity, right? One of Lewis's, uh, really, uh, one of his most popular books, uh, we can see kind of the truth that Lewis is getting at through these images and the story of the deep magic and the deeper magic. Uh, it's interesting, by the way, uh, even Ave Maria's own story as a university, uh, in part goes back to mere Christianity. Uh, Tom Monaghan, who, uh, founded Ave Maria, when, uh, he was interviewed, uh, recently, he said this quote, reading mere Christianity by CS Lewis, changed my life. Specifically, the chapter on pride really hit me between the eyes. I always knew I had a problem with it, and Lewis articulated it so I could understand it and take it to heart.
Speaker 0 00:17:17 And I think in so many ways, that's really what Lewis does, is he articulates things that we already know are part of the tradition, but somehow seems to articulate it in a way that sometimes readers, we can understand it more clearly, and then take it to heart and allow these truths to become more meaningful for us, and therefore, to begin to change our lives. Actually, it was a little side note. It was actually around that time that, uh, Tom Moham began, began to decide to, uh, sell most of what he had and ended up selling, uh, um, Domino's, uh, pizza. Uh, and, uh, really outta that money began the philanthropic, uh, projects of, uh, that, uh, started with VE Maria Foundation and a lot of other, uh, institutions, and including VE Maria College and eventually VE Maria University. So Lewis then, in mere Christianity, he gave these as a series of talks during World War ii.
Speaker 0 00:18:13 Uh, he was asked by, uh, somebody like, kind of the, almost like the religion editor, something like that, at, uh, the British Broadcasting Company, the B B C, uh, because this was during the war, by the way. We don't have any of these original recordings. They were all taped over. There was rationing. There wasn't enough, uh, uh, you know, recording material during the war. There's one surviving one from one of the later episodes, by the way, that you can still find on YouTube. Uh, but so the war is going on, uh, in England and in Europe, right? World War II begins in 1939. Uh, and he's asked at the beginning of 1941 in February, and it's interesting, within, uh, two days, he's asked on February 7th, and by February 10th and 1941, he's already said, yes. Uh, he always, uh, was kind of willing to do whatever he could.
Speaker 0 00:19:05 Uh, when asked pretty much, especially to, uh, support, uh, the nation during the war, and they eventually were delivered as 15 minute talks on the B B C, they became, uh, the most popular, uh, B b C addresses in the day. Uh, by the way, while he was, um, giving these talks in 1941, and he was recording them, the blitz was still going on. The building of the B B C that he was in, which he was giving the talks, was hit twice by bombs, one of which, during Lewis's recordings, right? So, right. Again, the, these, these were acts of courage for him to do this. Now, one thing that's interesting is consider what Lewis does, though, in book one of mere Christianity, book two of mere Christianity During the War, England is not doing well, right? Uh, at, at the early part of the war, um, this is before the United States has entered the war.
Speaker 0 00:19:59 Germany has taken over most of Europe. Uh, England is really, uh, is an, is well, is an island. Uh, and it's an, it's an island, and it, things didn't look great, so to speak. So in August, he gave the first five, and then the second five, he gave in February of 1942. And part of the reason why I mentioned this is just to set the context. So he's asked to comfort a people in the midst of a war. And the first five ones he gives don't mention Jesus. They say nothing about Jesus, nothing about God's mercy. The first five, he eventually are called book one of Mere Christianity, and it's called Right and Wrong, A Clue to the Meaning of the Universe, right? And again, so it's kind of strange, he spends the first five, his, his attempts to address the people. Don't even go straight to Jesus day.
Speaker 0 00:20:51 Don't go straight to God's love or God's mercy. They go straight to the moral law, right? Why would Lewis do this? Right? Uh, and he begins, of course, in a kind of famous way. He says, everyone has heard people quarreling, right? He doesn't try to argue for an abstract notion of the moral law or right and wrong. He just says, everyone's heard, people quarreling. People argue when people argue, uh, they don't merely fight, but they appeal to a standard, um, right? And all you have to know is if you tell the other person, um, that they're doing something wrong, the first thing most people do, well try to defend themselves. So when he's doing this, he is trying to awaken in his audience a sense of the moral law, and also a sense that not only is the law, is morality real in a way that's tangible, something that we just recognize as the foundation of our life of every interaction we have.
Speaker 0 00:21:52 But he also wants us to understand that we don't follow it recovering a sense of the moral law and a sense that we do not obey it. And what Lewis believed, and he thought this was a great kind of problem of Christian apologetics in the 19th and 20th and now 21st century, is the idea that, um, he thought that people are often trying to preach the cure to human beings who no longer think they're sick. And so what he said, you have to actually preach the diagnosis before you can preach the cure. You have to first help human beings genuinely believe that they're fully human, that they have a soul, that there is a standard of right and wrong, and that they've, uh, broken it. Only then can they hear the good news, the cure, that Jesus has somehow taken away sins that only if we recognize that we are somehow not right with ourselves, with our neighbor, and with our God, will we be able to hear the good news that God, Jesus has somehow put us right with God.
Speaker 0 00:23:02 So when he is doing this, and again, how does he do it? When you go to the line, the witch in the wardrobe, he doesn't do it by kind of trying to help people think about sin per se. He just begins with a traitor. A traitor who betrays his siblings as he puts it. No culture around the world has ever honored people that betray their siblings, that betray their families, that betray their country, right? We all have a natural disgust in the face of somebody who would do this. So what he wants to do is help people discover this. And then in book two of Mere Christianity, he goes a little bit deeper to talk about what Christians believe. One thing he starts out as is, you know, Christians don't have to believe that every other religion is false, only that Christianity is the fullness of truth.
Speaker 0 00:23:51 And so when he does this, uh, he then in the second one will talks about how it is that Christ's death puts us right? With God, right? So what I wanna do is before we kind of, you know, go, you know, obviously we're not gonna go through the whole book or, or either mere Christianity or lying the witch in the wardrobe, but before we take our break, I simply want to kind of connect these two dots and go back to it, right? In lying the witch in the wardrobe, we saw that the deep magic was that by which the traitor, the blood of the traitor is owed to the witch. But the deeper magic is when the innocent victim offers himself in place of the traitor, right? The witch, the evil loses its power, and death begins to go backwards. Well, book one of mere Christianity is right and wrong as a clue to the meaning of the universe.
Speaker 0 00:24:37 It's basically the deep magic. It's saying there is a deep magic in which traitors forfeit, uh, their fundamental, um, proper ordering. And he's even trying to get a to, to a certain extent in a small way, we're all traders. Maybe not, maybe we haven't officially acted it, but, but, but, but we betray what's highest in us. None of us live according to that which is highest in us. And then he goes to the deeper magic, what Christians believe, the difference that Christ makes, the difference. That Christ, what Christians believe is not in the morality that they teach, but that they teach, that the morality that we teach, that we do not obey, to which we do not live up is somehow fulfilled, completed, perfected in the redemption of Jesus Christ, right? That in Jesus Christ, God does for us, what we cannot do for ourselves, the blood of Christ somehow.
Speaker 0 00:25:34 Is that right? The working out of our own betrayal so that we could be put right with God. Anyway. So here we can see that, you know, the way he does it then is he thought when he was giving these talks to in England, right? That, and of course, remember, these were broadcast all over the eng, uh, you know, the empire and, and the commonwealth, uh, in, in his day, uh, that you had to begin with, the diagnosis we're somehow sicker than we think. Then you can preach the cure. You have to begin with the deep magic, and then move to the deeper magic. Uh, we'll take a quick break, uh, and then I'll come back and talk a little bit more about the two works.
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Speaker 1 00:26:42 Show.
Speaker 0 00:26:45 Welcome back to the show. And today we're looking at, uh, this little, we're gonna do a series on CSS Lewis called Into Narnia with CS Lewis. And we're focusing, uh, today on mere Christianity and the Chronicles of Narnia, uh, the lead off, uh, the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe. And we've been trying to consider how Lewis takes these truths of creation, the morality, redemption in Christ, and tries to help them become more meaningful. He adds to the truths that are accessed by reason, and he adds to them stories and images so that we can embrace them more fully and find meaning and condition. So just, uh, I wanna look a little bit in mere Christianity and just give a couple examples of how he does this. And then also in lion, the witch in the wardrobe. So, beginning with lying the witch in the wardrobe, uh, I wanna consider a couple things.
Speaker 0 00:27:46 So one, when they show up in Narnia, one of the lines that's very memorable is it said that it's always winter and never Christmas. What does it mean to say that it's always winter and never Christmas? Right? Well, winter is a time in a way of death, right? The normal, the spring, the life of plants, even the life of animals is subdued. Uh, it's a kind of death. It's a kind of, the, the world is so to speak, frozen, not so much in Florida, but at least in, uh, uh, in, in northern climbs. Uh, but what would it mean to say that if the world were frozen and it was never Christmas? Well, really apart from Christ, it is never Christmas, right? We tend to think of Christmas sometimes in a secular mode as though it's simply just, you know, always been there. Uh, we don't realize that it's only because the dramatic historical fact of the incarnation and the historical fact of the resurrection, that these are what, right?
Speaker 0 00:28:56 Created Christmas as we know it. And so, what would it mean then to say, kinda like, well, what would always winter and never Christmas is simply just the whole world without the incarnation, the whole world without Christ, the world in a way that is somehow cursed. Uh, wounded not all. It is meant to be not bearing the natural fruit and life, uh, that happens during winter. So this is something very tangible. It's image like, it's hard to imagine our current world as under a curse, um, because we live in it, right? A fish doesn't know it's wet. You can't see the picture when you're in the picture. Uh, it's hard for us to understand that somehow the world is wounded. Uh, that's partly why, even if you go back to Genesis, what do we learn about in the revelation of Genesis one and two is that creation was fundamentally good.
Speaker 0 00:29:53 Man was good. God was in harmony with man, man was in with, in harmony with God. The disharmony we find, the bloodshed we find between Adam and Eve, the, you know, the anger, the resentment that we find in our minds, uh, and often in our lives are not the way the world was meant to be. Well, that sometimes can be hard to think about, but if we think about simply, we know what spring is, we know what summer is, and we know what winter is. So always winter and never Christmas. This, in a way, is a state of our lives. We need, in a way, Christmas, we need spring to come. We need life to come. Interestingly, uh, you know, when Aslan comes into Narnia, it's not merely that he redeems Edmund, but he also brings spring. He ends the sterility, the frozenness of winter things to be begin to become alive.
Speaker 0 00:30:55 Uh, flowers bloom, all of these different things in a way, creation, in a certain sense, returns to its normal mode. So this is what happens then when Aslan does this. But again, I think it's an always winter, never Christmas. There's another, uh, line that shows up in the story when, uh, he's introduced, right? Um, it's asked kind of like, oh, is, uh, you know, the, the girls are, I think Lucy's afraid of a lion. Uh, and he goes, she says something like, oh, is is he, is he a tame lion? Right? No, he's not a tame lion. The beaver says, right, God is not a tame God. Uh, often in modernity, we want to domesticate God, right? We want to domesticate God so that God becomes comfortable for us, right? But a God who is comfortable for us would never be able to liberate us, right as he puts it right?
Speaker 0 00:31:47 He's not safe, but he's good. As it's put right? We also begin to hear asline is on the move. There's a sense that the problems of Narnia, and you can say, the problems of our world are somehow greater than we can ever solve. We need to look to God for a savior, a redeemer. It's interesting, if you look at the Psalms, how often redeemer savior language shows up, some sense that we've gotten ourselves into, we've dug ourselves into a hole out of which we cannot get right? This is, uh, the basic idea. But Aslan on the move again, is not ent entire is not the whole picture, because it turns out the creatures of Narnia also need to stand up. Uh, there's one time when Susan is being attacked by a great wolf and Peter, who has just received a sword from Father Christmas, and a great shield is there, and Aslan, and Aslan says, stand back.
Speaker 0 00:32:44 The prince must win his spurs. To put all of our attention on God as the Savior on Aslan, as the one who is on the move, as the one who alone can end winter alone, tackle the witch doesn't mean that each of us doesn't have a role to play, right? Peter has to win his spurs. Uh, Peter does run forward. He tries to attack the, uh, the wolf. He ends up, uh, defeating the wolf. But Lewis, in this one page, uh, is able just to describe the absolute kind of horror of battle. It's just all blood teeth nastiness. He tries to, like, he tries to kill the wolf. He misses the wolf tries to kill him. He misses, they end up just falling down. And almost accidentally, Peter has killed the wolf, right? Lewis is who had experienced World War I, who had experienced the horror of war, um, right?
Speaker 0 00:33:45 Doesn't make the battle pretty in a way, the battle is quite ugly. But nonetheless, Peter had to fight it, uh, that this great sense that God will do things that only God can do. But this gives us then the space to follow him. Aslan, in a way, is the one with true courage, but his followers have to imitate Aslan with that courage, right? The courage that ultimately is not their own, but they receive from Aslan. Eventually, again, there's another scene where later in the story, um, Edmund, uh, who has been kind of redeemed by this point, has been bought back by the blood of Christ. But while Aslan and the witch are talking, Edmund would, uh, that he, he writes this, Edmund had got past thinking about himself. After all, he'd been through and after the talk that morning he had with Lyn. And this is just the particular part I love.
Speaker 0 00:34:42 He just went on looking at Lyn. It didn't seem to matter what the witch said in certain said, this is really the call of the Christian right to go on looking at ly to go on looking at Christ, to go on looking at God revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. It didn't seem to matter what the witch said. It doesn't seem to matter what darkness, what fear, what temptation say. Right? In a way, Lewis is giving this beautiful idea that, right? You can't argue with temptation. You can't argue with the devil. You can't argue with, um, our own shame. What we have to do is just keep on looking at our Lord. So, so these are a couple different images where this is present. And one thing we can also then think about. So again, we've had the ways in which by simply looking at trader and betrayal, he's awakening nobody, you know, you don't like the character of Edmund, but it's not just that he's, yes, he's nasty and spiteful, but he's abhorrent.
Speaker 0 00:35:48 Uh, it kind of awakens in us a moral sense of indignation when somebody is that unjust. And then what he does when he moves then to the sanding of the witch, uh, there's a patristic understanding of the redemption, uh, shows up in, uh, in, in Augustine among others, which is sometimes called Christus, victor, uh, Christ the victor. And the idea, uh, that Augustine states very plainly is the idea that because of sin, uh, the devil has kind of a just claim over us, right? In a certain sense, we, we forfeited our sonship of God and therefore subjected ourselves. And in case you think this is too weird, you can even think of like Hebrews chapter two 14 talking about the redemption that Christ won. But listen to what it says, children share in flesh and blood. Therefore, Jesus Christ took on the same nature that through death, he might destroy him.
Speaker 0 00:37:01 Who has the power of death that is the devil. So the devil has the power of death and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage, right? It's not so much that the devil becomes kind of like an, uh, another God with power. It's that because of sin, we become so afraid of death that we enslave ourselves ultimately to, to sin to the devil. Uh, and we can think about this, right? Even today, how many, uh, uh, Aquinas will say that, uh, we are more likely to turn from the good of reason to turn from God because of fear of death or fear of suffering than we are from, for the desire of pleasure. So this is what, so what Augustine says basically is the devil has a right, so to speak, and, and we are properly subjected to the devil because of our sins.
Speaker 0 00:37:59 Uh, but if an innocent victim, so to speak, tricks the devil into killing him, then the devil loses his power over all of us. I remember I had a teacher of theology who said one time, it'd almost be the idea that if you had a, a super mouse, right? And, uh, the super mouse, all the mice go and they eat the cheese. And when they eat, the cheese is part of the mouse trap, right? You know, the mouse trap, cls, and they, and they die. You know, they keep eating the cheese and, uh, they keep dying. But if ever you had a super mouse, uh, well not superman, but you know, a super mouse who came in and, and took the cheese, it would, when the mouse trap snapped, it wouldn't break the mouse. It would break the mouse trap. Uh, and to Aer is a little bit what the father thought is that Jesus Christ tricks the devil into killing him, thinking that the devil has won.
Speaker 0 00:38:49 But because the devil killed Jesus, who in no sense, right, as it says, uh, at the end of Luke, uh, the centurion will say, right, truly, this man was innocent because this man is truly innocent. Then death lost its rightful power. We are now freed from the fear of death. And so anyway, Louis takes this patristic idea, and he just puts it in the form of the story, right? That is what it means to say that the deep deeper magic, right? She would've understood that before time had dawned. She would've known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery, right? Jesus, in this case, Lyn or Jesus Christ was killed on a traitor stead, the table would crack and death itself would start working backwards.
Speaker 0 00:39:42 Uh, so these are at least are some different ways that Lewis tries to put these re theological realities into these images, in these story images for us. And I just wanted to highlight again, how Lewis talks about these same basic ideas in a way, in mere Christianity, right? So at the end of book one, chapter five, he wants to, again, to describe, it's not so much because we can know the moral law, therefore we can all follow it. Or, and again, he's not thinking about the moral law. I think sometimes we think about the moral law as an empirical thing, which means if there's a moral law, then everybody ought to agree about it. It ought to be like gravity. It should be so obvious that we should all agree. Um, well, it's probably a bit, maybe more like if, if anything, it's, it's more like calculus.
Speaker 0 00:40:32 Calculus is kind of confusing. Um, it's understandable, but not by many. And so the moral law is a principle of human action, a standard to which we must conform. But in a way, it always goes beyond the observable actions and behaviors of human beings. And a certain, the moral law is not what we actually do, but it's what we somehow think we ought to do. And I think you can see this if you consider not necessarily your own behavior, but if you consider other people's behavior, right? We're often annoyed and shocked that other people don't behave better. Um, so we're very quick to kind of compare others to a standard that is not what they actually do. But at the end of it, this is what he says. He says, we are in a terrible fix. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run, hopeless.
Speaker 0 00:41:33 But if it is run by, governed by an absolute goodness, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow. And so our case is hopeless again. We cannot do without it. We cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, he is also the supreme terror. The thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from, he goes on a little bit farther. So at the end of this, he says, my reason is that Christianity simply does not make sense until you have faced the sort of facts I've been describing. Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing as far as I know to say to people who do not know they have anything to repent of and who do not feel they have any need for forgiveness.
Speaker 0 00:42:18 Right? Um, it is only when you know you are sick that you will listen to the doctor, right? So that's where he goes with that. And then this is another way he tries to present the redemption. He said that when he was an atheist, even when he began to believe in God, Christianity still didn't make any sense to him. Because why would a man's death 2000 years ago change history and why would it change my life? And basically what he said is that one of the things he could see was that somehow we were not in a healthy relationship with ourselves and with God, right? That somehow something in us needed to surrender. Uh, he says here, he says this, we are told in Christianity that Christ was killed for us. That is death washed us of our sins. That by dying he disabled death.
Speaker 0 00:43:10 That is the formula that is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. Now, he says, ultimately that we've got ourselves into a hole. What sort of hole has man got himself into? He has tried to set himself up on his own to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement. He's a rebel who must lay down his arms. Uh, by the way, it's interesting. There he is again, quoting Newman without letting you know that he's quoting Newman. So we must surrender. And he says, ultimately the problem though is we have to unlearn all the self conceit and self will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of ourselves, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here comes the catch.
Speaker 0 00:43:59 Only a bad person needs to repent. And only a good person can repent perfectly. The worst you are, the more you need it, and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person, but he would not need it. Now remember this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and kind of death is not something that God demands of you because he will take you back and of which he could let you off. Instead, it's simply a description of what going back to him is like. So ultimately, right, what does Christ do? Christ. When God becomes man, then that man in Jesus Christ is able to surrender, suffer, submit, and die. Christ then does He perfects humanity's offering and surrender in order to allow us to be connected back in right relationship with God ultimately to be restored as children of God.
Speaker 0 00:44:56 By the way, it's interesting when CSS Lewis then describes this, so this perfect life that is in Christ which dies. How do we receive it? And he says, how do we get this Christ life? And this again, is where you can see this is Lewis's kind of broadly, at least kind of Catholic imagination. 'cause he says, we receive it in three ways through faith or belief. When we actually believe that Jesus is Lord, that he died for us, that he is the son of God who died for us and rose again. Number two, baptism that we are baptized into his death and resurrection into the name of the Father, son, the Holy Spirit. That is how we receive life. And then thirdly, we not only have faith and belief, we not only have baptism, but he says in a way, right, we have holy communion, we have the Eucharist as he puts it.
Speaker 0 00:45:50 Of course, it's very bizarre that God would do something so spiritual, which is unite us to himself through matter, uh, through the material form of bread and wine of, of right at least the visible appearance of the sacraments. But he says, you know, God actually likes matter. He invented it, right? So he saves us through matter, through God becoming in fleshed, um, he washes even baptism, even belief. It's kind of through the material words of scripture, the material words of the creed that we can believe in Jesus. And it's then through matter of baptism and the Eucharist through the sacraments that we are united. So anyway, these are just a handful of different ideas. I mean, Lewis's writings are so beautiful. I encourage you to take them up. Uh, I think again, these first two books of mere Christianity and Lie in the Witch and the wardrobe just go so well together to help us to kind of deepen an understanding both of the goodness of creation and the way we have twisted it.
Speaker 0 00:46:52 And then ultimately, right the way that the deeper magic, when the innocent victim offered himself for us, that becomes our way home to God. Now, I just wanted to, uh, as as I do sometimes at the end of the show, I like to, uh, interview my guest with three questions. And I thought it'd be fun, uh, just to look at, uh, ask CSS Lewis, what's he been reading lately? While in a, his introduction to Athanasius is on the incarnation. Uh, he gives this advice. He says, it's a good role after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one until you have read an old one in between. If that's too much for you, you should read at least one old, one to every three new ones, right? So Lewis loved old books, um, right? He, he, he lived among them. He read most of them in the original languages.
Speaker 0 00:47:46 Uh, but I definitely think whatever Lewis has been reading of late, it would probably be in an old book and he encourages us to do the same. Uh, secondly, well, it was a daily practice. Well, one thing that's kind of interesting, he says one of the happiest times in his life was actually when he was studying with the great knock, kind of being almost homeschooled by a tutor. But he said that he would read and study every morning, and then every afternoon he would go out for like a two mile hike. And I think he loved this kind of daily physical activity, but being out, um, it's hard for us really to imagine, uh, in, in America and probably even, I'm sure you know, uh, probably even in England, it's much less, uh, common, uh, than it was for him. He grew up in Northern Ireland, right?
Speaker 0 00:48:32 And, but he loved the kind of the, the, the beauty of the freedom of walking out somehow about walking out in nature. Uh, so I think that's an interesting thing. And then as he came back to becoming a Christian, one of the things he would do is he would actually attend daily morning prayer. Uh, that even though in many ways his Christianity can seem very intellectual, can seem very bookish, uh, he wanted to join with Christians in kind of formal liturgical prayer. Uh, it's fascinating by the way, he would even go to weekly confession, uh, which is, you know, something that Anglicans have the option of doing. But it's very strange to find a Protestant who would right, go to weekly confession to a priest, but CSS Lewis did. And then finally, what's a false belief? And I think one of the things he describes a lot in a certain sense to become a Christian is not to find God, but it's to basically be caught by God.
Speaker 0 00:49:26 It's not so much the mouse finding it's, well, let's put it this way, it's the mouse finding the cat, right? The question is really what the cat is going to do with us when we discover God, we discover someone who is so much more awesome, more wise, right? More good, more beautiful, more truthful, more loving, uh, that we surrender everything, right? Uh, he kind of, earlier on when he said he believed in a God who was the absolute, it was basically God who was really just impersonal. God was ultimately tamable, right? God was a tame God because the absolute provided consolation, but made no demands. And he said instead, right? The Christian God, uh, calls us, makes demands of us, and therefore, of course, gives us truly satisfies that desire, right? That's most deep in our hearts for something beyond this world. So with that, I'd love to just, um, thank you for listening today. Uh, by the way, if you are interested, uh, there are a couple other episodes on, uh, c s Lewis. I have one with, uh, Dr. John Hasso on, uh, Chesterton Tolkien and Lewis and the Christian Imagination. I have, uh, another, uh, episode with, um, uh, Joseph Pierce on where we go through, uh, the Chronicles of Narnia and CS Lewis and the Catholic Faith. Uh, so thanks again for listening. Have a good day.
Speaker 2 00:50:58 Thank you so much for joining us for this podcast. If you like this episode, please write and review it on your favorite podcast app to help others find the show. And if you want to take the next step, please consider joining our Annunciation Circle so we can continue to bring you more free content. We'll see you next time on the Catholic Theology Show.
