Reading Classics - Mere Christianity (VI)

I'll be days late with my look at this section - too busy this week to write about it! But that Lewis' version of the "outside of time" way of thinking gets a lot of mileage in non-reformed circles I can attest to from experience. I had a dear friend say to me once "Okay, since God is outside of time, then history is like a train. He can look down at it from His vantage point and see the beginning and the end all at once. What's wrong with that?" Her question was sincere, by the way. I just told her, "Well, God is in the train. Does He look down and say, 'mmm, let's see what I'm doing down there?'" She got it right away.

Now, these analogies and metaphors all break down somewhere. But the notion that God knows history like someone who's already seen the movie is just not a sufficient way to think of the one who writes, directs, and acts in it - so to speak. And it does put history in the position of being co-eternal with God. I'm not trying to be too hard on those who think this way, because we are all really limited and we all have our issues like this.

I think I liked this section a bit more than Tim did, but do see how "muddled" it is. Lewis seems to get most muddled when he bumps up against subjects that touch on his assumptions regarding the freedom of man's will. When that happens he starts reaching. Unfortunately, the logically consistent outworking of freewill doctrine is open theism. Thankfully, Scripture speaks strongly enough against that idea to keep most folks from continuing too far down that path. Lewis himself seems to stop just short of it.

Laurie, I've heard the train analogy several times, but never heard it with your follow-up line: "God is in the train." Wonderful insight! I hope I'll be able to remember to use it myself. :-)

I actually enjoyed this section because it seemed a little more tied together thematically (with a few exceptions here and there). I'm still collecting my thoughts for a post to come later...

Ch 1: "...I think any man who wants to think about God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available." You would think so anyway. But I don’t see many people pursuing God in that way, like they do in learning the latest video game, etc. Maybe because God isn’t “new” to us anymore, we get lazy, and settle instead for just our status quo knowledge of him.

"Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map." We need the map AND we need the experience. One without the other leaves us either geeky and professorial, or flighty and unstable. Balance, balance. Read the Book; live the Words; repeat.

Ch 2: I liked the “initiative” analogies. To study rocks, you go to them. You take all the initiative; they have none. To photograph animals, you go to them, but they can run away. To befriend humans, you go to them, and they must equally come to you; the initiative is equally divided. But to know God, He must come to you. “If he does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him.”

Thankfully, he DOES show himself to everyone who will look, and allows us to find him.

Ch 3: "God is not hurried along in the Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel. He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us."

Ch 4: "He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has—by what I call 'good infection.' Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else."

Ch 5: "The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God. ...Every man, woman, and child all over the world is feeling and breathing at this moment only because God, so to speak, is 'keeping him going.' ...Remember what I said about 'good infection.' One of our own race has this new life: if we get close to Him we shall catch it from Him."

The Toy Soldiers analogy reminded me of “The Velveteen Rabbit” where toys became real if they were really loved. We are really loved; we've become Real.

I finish that thought on my blog:http://lisanotes.blogspot.com/2009/01/toys-made-real-thoughts-from-mere.html

(Okay, I originally posted this comment in the previous thread by mistake. Here it is in the right spot.)

I’m way late to the game, but have tried to catch up by reading the previous posts and reviewing the gist of the comments. Thanks for the opportunity to participate. I’ve read the book a few times, and so I’m a bit surprised at the lukewarm reception to these chapters – not because I think they were Lewis’ best, but because I think they were, in some ways, his most reformed.

Not that Lewis was a Calvinist. Not even a closet one. But at least he wasn’t a very good Arminian either. He can’t seem to bring up the idea of free will without smuggling in the idea of God’s sovereignty, and activity, and initiative – often in the next breath and at the expense of our own agency. If he believed in a free will, he didn’t believe it to be very free. Which I think was one of the points in his “obstinate toy soldier” illustration: we are tin through and through, by our very natures set against our Maker and His will for us. There we stand resolute, on guard against any outside interference.

And how do we come to life? By catching an infection. Which is to say we can do nothing in ourselves. “Catch” may be an active verb, but we mean nothing active when we say, “to catch a cold.” We really mean the opposite: that a germ was foisted on us, whether we wanted it or not. The catcher is the passive recipient, the carrier is the active.

Exhibit A from the same chapter: “We have not got to try and climb up into spiritual life by our own efforts; it has already come down into the human race. If we will only lay ourselves open to the one Man in whom it was fully present, and who, in spite of being God, is also a real man, He will do it in us and for us.”

See, with “if we will only” he sets the Calvinist dashboard ablaze with warning lights, seeming to relegate God to the role of responder. We could stop there, but we would miss the crux. It’s been said before that Lewis is doing apologetic work more than theological work. I would also add that he is doing a good deal of evangelistic work. And evangelism without a call to action (read a call to repentance), is half-finished. So of course he calls people to do something. But that something is a curious nothing: a rolling over and dying. He completes the phrase with “lay ourselves open the the one Man.” Or in another place, “to lay down our arms.” There’s no question who is the agent and who is the object here (and an unwilling, obstinate object at that). That our will (the part of us that chooses) must somehow be involved in repentance seems obvious. After all, it can’t just be a matter of intellect or emotion.

Anyways, that’s my read. I’d be curious to hear some specifics about what people thought was muddled in these chapters. Not that I think Lewis can’t be muddled. But “muddled” is not so helpful when used just as a general description.