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Mere Christianity – Book IV – Chapter 7 (“Let’s Pretend”)

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Book-4

Picking back up my notes for C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”…

1. This chapter is about how people pretend and their pretense leads to reality

(a) Beauty and the Beast

(b) A man wearing a beautiful mask for a year and his face becomes conformed to the attractive shape of the mask

2. We “pretend” as soon as we say the first two words of the Lord’s Prayer

“…Do you now see what those words mean? They mean quite frankly, that you are putting yourself in the place of a son of God. To put it bluntly, you are dressing up as Christ. If you like, you are pretending”

(a) When you pretend, you realize what a poor imitation you really make

“…the moment you realise what the words mean, you realise that you are not a son of God. You are not being like The Son of God, whose will and interests are at one with those of the Father: you are a bundle of self-centred fears, hopes, greeds, jealousies, and self-conceit, all doomed to death”

(b) This seems like cheek, but this is what God has commanded us to do

“…this dressing up as Christ is a piece of outrageous cheek. But the odd thing is that He has ordered us to do it.

He has done so because there are two kinds of pretending:

(i) The bad kind

“…where the pretence is there instead of the real thing; as when a man pretends he is going to help you instead of really helping you:

(ii) The good kind

“…where the pretence leads up to the real thing”

This explains some of our experience:

(A) Pretending to be friendly 

“When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already”

(B) Children’s Games

“They are always pretending to be grown-ups-playing soldiers, playing shop. But all the time, they are hardening their muscles and sharpening their wits, so that the pretence of being grown-up helps them to grow up in earnest.”

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PWJ: S1E4 – MC B1C2 – “Some Objections”

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In today’s episode, we look at Chapter 2 of “Mere Christianity” which is entitled “Some Objections”. In this chapter, C.S. Lewis responds to some issues raised by listeners in response to his assertion that there is this Moral Law.

If you enjoy this episode, you can subscribe using iTunes or Google Play. As always, if you have any objections, comments or questions, please send us an email through my website or tweet us @pintswithjack.

Episode 4: “Some Objections” (Download)

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Mere Christianity – Book IV – Chapter 6 (“Two Notes”)

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Book-4

Picking back up my notes for C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”…

1. Why did God not beget many sons at the outset?

“…if God wanted sons instead of ‘toy soldiers,’ He did not beget many sons at the outset instead of first making toy soldiers and then bringing them to life by such a difficult and painful process”

(a) There are two kinds of answer:

(i) The easy answer

“The process of being turned from a creature into a son would not have been difficult or painful if the human race had not turned away from God centuries ago. They were able to do this because He gave them free will: He gave them free will because a world of mere automata could never love and therefore never know infinite happiness”

(ii) The answer beyond human knowledge

All Christians are agreed that there is, in the full and original sense, only one “Son of God.” If we insist on asking “But could there have been many?” we find ourselves in very deep water. Have the words “Could have been” any sense at all when applied to God? You can say that one particular finite thing “could have been” different from what it is, because it would have been different if something else had been different, and the something else would have been different if some third thing had been different, and so on. (The letters on this page would have been red if the printer had used red ink, and he would have used red ink if he had been instructed to, and so on.) But when you are talking about God-i.e. about the rock bottom, irreducible Fact on which all other facts depend- it is nonsensical to ask if It could have been otherwise. It is what It is, and there is an end of the matter. 

(b) How could there be many sons?

But quite apart from this, I find a difficulty about the very idea of the Father begetting many sons from all eternity. In order to be many they would have to be somehow different from one another. Two pennies have the same shape. How are they two? By occupying different places and containing different atoms. In other words, to think of them as different, we have had to bring in space and matter; in fact we have had to bring in “Nature” or the created universe. I can understand the distinction between the Father and the Son without bringing in space or matter, because the one begets and the other is begotten. The Father’s relation to the Son is not the same as the Son’s relation to the Father. But if there were several sons they would all be related to one another and to the Father in the same way. How would they differ from one another? One does not notice the difficulty at first, of course. One thinks one can form the idea of several “sons.” But when I think closely, I find that the idea seemed possible only because I was vaguely imagining them as human forms standing about together in some kind of space. In other words, though I pretended to be thinking about something that exists before any universe was made, I was really smuggling in the picture of a universe and putting that something inside it. When I stop doing that and still try to think of the Father begetting many sons “before all worlds” I find I am not really thinking of anything. The idea fades away into mere words. (Was Nature-space and time and matter-created precisely in order to make manyness possible? Is there perhaps no other way of getting many eternal spirits except by first making many natural creatures, in a universe, and then spiritualising them? But of course all this is guesswork.)

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Restless Heart: 9 – “Friends in high places” (Part II)

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FriendsInHighPlaces

In this week’s episode, we return to the Saints! Nessa and I share some Saint stories: St. Basil, St. Teresa of Calcutta and St. Philip Neri.

Please subscribe to this podcast using iTunes and Google Play and if you have any feedback or would like to pose a question for an upcoming episode, you can send us a message from the website or tweet us at @davidandnessa.

Episode 9: Friends in high places, Part II (Download)

 

— Show Notes —

* My other podcast is “The Eagle and Child”, where my friend Matt and I talk about the works of C.S. Lewis. At the moment we’re working through “Mere Christianity”.

* Brother Peter, who was walking the San Diego Missions, was from the same order as Fr. Benedict Groeschel, who belonged to the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal.

* The Camino De Santiago is a pilgrimage route from the south of France to the far western coast of Spain. I walked this route in September of 1996.

* Our first Saint was St. Basil of Caesarea. I spoke about the Emperor Valens, Arianism and the Council of Nicaea. I’ve written a little bit about St. Basil here.

* Our second Saint was St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

* When speaking about Mother Teresa, I quoted Peter Kreeft, a well-known Philosophy Professor at Boston College: “I think nobody alive today is a more powerful agent of conversion than someone like Mother Teresa. You can refute arguments but not her life. When she came to the National Prayer Breakfast and lectured President Clinton about abortion, he had nothing to say to her. He can’t argue with a saint. It’s too bad there isn’t an easier way, because becoming a saint is not the easiest thing in the world. It’s much easier to become an apologist or a philosopher or a theologian”

* I also quote from St. Augustine’s “Confessions” (XIII, Chapter 7, 17) “But I, miserable young man…entreated chastity of You, and said, Grant me chastity and continency, but not yet. For I was afraid lest You should hear me soon, and soon deliver me from the disease of concupiscence, which I desired to have satisfied rather than extinguished”

* Nessa also quoted from Pastor Rick Warren: “Most people today do not know the difference between a hero and a celebrity. Celebrities are famous for being famous and typically use the spotlight to promote themselves. The difference between heroes and celebrities lies in the reason for their sacrifice. Celebrities often make sacrifices, but they are made for personal benefit: to win a game, an award or an election. For instance, professional athletes, actors and entertainers may be celebrities, but they are not really heroes. They sacrifice for what they do because they enjoy it, or for money, or for fame or for personal satisfactions. Heroes, in contract, sacrifice for the benefit of others. They are self-giving. Mother Teresa is ‘Exhibit A’ of a true hero, a Saint”

* The final Saint we discussed was St. Philip Neri.

* My request “Sing me soft kitty” was a reference to the TV show “The Big Bang Theory”.

* There is still time to follow us @davidandnessa in order to win the new book by Jackie and Bobbie Angel.

Mere Christianity – Book IV – Chapter 4 (“Good infection”)

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Book-4

Continuing my notes for Book IV of C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”…

1. Begin with a thought experiment

(a) Imagine two books on top of one another

“I begin this chapter by asking you to get a certain picture clear in your minds. Imagine two books lying on a table one on top of the other… It is because of the underneath book that the top one is resting, say, two inches from the surface of the table instead of touching the table. Let us call the underneath book A and the top one B. The position of A is causing the position of B”

(b) and imagine that these two books have been like this forever

“…let us imagine that both books have been in that position for ever and ever. In that case B’s position would always have been resulting from A’s position. But all the same, A’s position would not have existed before B’s position. In other words the result does not come after the cause”

2. When we speak about the different persons of the Trinity, it can sound like some existed before others…

“…as soon as I begin trying to explain how these Persons are connected I have to use words which make it sound as if one of them was there before the others”

(a) It makes sense to speak of Father and Son since one “begets” the other

“The First Person is called the Father and the Second the Son. We say that the First begets or produces the second; we call it begetting, not making, because what He produces is of the same kind as Himself. In that way the word Father is the only word to use”

(b) However, this suggests that the father exists before the son

“But unfortunately it suggests that He is there first – just as a human father exists before his son. But that is not so. There is no before and after about it. And that is why I have spent some time trying to make clear how one thing can be the source, or cause, or origin, of another without being there before it. The Son exists because the Father exists: but there never was a time before the Father produced the Son”

(c) Compare the act of imagination and the mental picture which “results” from it

“I asked you just now to imagine those two books, and probably most of you did. That is, you made an act of imagination and as a result you had a mental picture. Quite obviously your act of imagining was the cause and the mental picture the result. But that does not mean that you first did the imagining and then got the picture. The moment you did it, the picture was there. Your will was keeping the picture before you all the time. Yet that act of will and the picture began at exactly the same moment and ended at the same moment. If there were a Being who had always existed and had always been imagining one thing, his act would always have been producing a mental picture; but the picture would be just as eternal as the act”

(d) It is similar with the Father and Son

“In the same way we must think of the Son always, so to speak, streaming forth from the Father, like light from a lamp, or heat from a fire, or thoughts from a mind. He is the self-expression of the Father – what the Father has to say. And there never was a time when He was not saying it.

(e) We must be careful with our images and stay close to the Scriptural language

“All these pictures of light or heat are making it sound as if the Father and Son were two things instead of two Persons. So that after all, the New Testament picture of a Father and a Son turns out to be much more accurate than anything we try to substitute for it. That is what always happens when you go away from the words of the Bible. It is quite right to go away from them for a moment in order to make some special point clear. But you must always go back. Naturally God knows how to describe Himself much better than we know how to describe Him. He knows that Father and Son is more like the relation between the First and Second Persons than anything else we can think of. Much the most important thing to know is that it is a relation of love. The Father delights in His Son; the Son looks up to His Father”

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PWJ: S1E3 – MC B1C1 – “The Law of Human Nature”

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In today’s episode we begin Book I of “Mere Christianity”, which is entitled “Right and wrong as a clue to the meaning of the universe”. In this book, C.S. Lewis builds an argument for the existence of God based upon the idea that there is a Moral Law.

If you enjoy this episode, you can subscribe using iTunes or Google Play. As always, if you have any objections, comments or questions, please send us an email through my website or tweet us @pintswithjack.

Episode 3: “The Law of Human Nature” (Download)

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Mere Christianity – Book IV – Chapter 3 (“Time and beyond time”)

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Book-4

Picking back up my notes for C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”…

1. Some people struggle with the idea of prayer

(a) It relates to how God hears prayer

“A man put it to me by saying ‘I can believe in God all right, but what I cannot swallow is the idea of Him attending to several hundred million human beings who are all addressing Him at the same moment.'” 

(b) Specifically, how God can hear prayers at the same time

“Most of us can imagine God attending to any number of applicants if only they came one by one and He had an endless time to do it in. So what is really at the back of this difficulty is the idea of God having to fit too many things into one moment of time”

2. Our trouble stems from how we experience life in time

“Our life comes to us moment by moment One moment disappears before the next comes along: and there is room for very little in each. That is what Time is like”

(a) They assume that God experiences things in the same way

We tend to assume that the whole universe and God Himself are always moving on from past to future just as we do. But many learned men do not agree with that. It was the Theologians who first started the idea that some things are not in Time at all: later the Philosophers took it over: and now some of the scientists are doing the same.

(b) However, God is not in Time

“His life does not consist of moments following one another. If a million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty-and every other moment from the beginning of the world-is always the Present for Him”

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