"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
This weekend, our San Diego C.S. Lewis reading group will be meeting to discuss Chapter 4 of “The Four Loves”, which is the chapter which speaks about “Friendship”. In preparation for this, I watched the following cracking lecture from Dr. Louis Markos. It certainly gave me a lot to think about, including the question: “Should I go to events more often wearing a tux?”
Given that we’ve just celebrated Christmas and the New Year is just around the corner, it seems a fitting time to post this video from Douglas Gresham, C.S. Lewis’ stepson, who gave this sermon at Liberty University back in 2011…
In today’s episode, we revisit some of the material covered in the previous chapter. In this episode, C.S. Lewis re-examines the question of morality through the classical lens of the four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude.
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Episode 14: “The Cardinal Virtues” (Download)
At the 50th Anniversary of C.S. Lewis’ death, he was honoured in Westminster Abbey’s “Poet’s Corner”. To mark the anniversary and this honour, there was a C.S. Lewis Symposium with lectures given by noted C.S. Lewis experts. Here are the videos of those presentations:
In the New Year, Matt and I will be discussing the chapter in “Mere Christianity” on the subject of sexual morality. In that episode, I intend to speak briefly about masturbation. C.S. Lewis doesn’t explicitly address the subject of masturbation in that work, but he does in a letter he wrote to the young American named Keith Masson:
“For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back; sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides. And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman.
For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no woman can rival. Among those shadowy brides he is always adored, always the perfect lover; no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity.
In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself. . . . After all, almost the main work of life is to come out of our selves, out of the little dark prison we are all born in. Masturbation is to be avoided as all things are to be avoided which retard this process. The danger is that of coming to love the prison.”
– Personal Letter From Lewis to Keith Masson (1956)
The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3
Sounds almost exactly like something Jason Evert or Matt Fradd would write today!
Welcome to the penultimate chapter in Book II! In this episode we look at Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. How did it save us? How have different Christians tried to explain it? Do we need to understand the mechanics of how it works in order to be saved? These questions and more will be discussed on this episode of “The Eagle and Child”, so pull up a chair and raise your glass. Cheers!
If you enjoy this episode, you can subscribe manually, or through a service like iTunes, Google Play, Podbean, Stitcher and TuneIn. As always, if you have any objections, comments or questions, please send us an email through my website or tweet us @pintswithjack.
Episode 11: “The Perfect Penitent” (Download)
“Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith. I don’t agree at all. They are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the Passion of Christ”
― C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer