Integrative Essay

                The other day I was thinking about the name of the course, Developing a Christian Mind. One of my first thoughts was, haven’t I already developed a Christian mind at school, in my home, in Sunday school and catechism classes? Well, the answer is that yes I had developed a Christian mind in all of those places, but just because I have developed a Christian mind, does not mean that there is no room for further development. Quite the contrary, as there is an infinite body of knowledge to be known about God, so my mind as a follower of Christ must be under a constant state of development. What I learned in my childhood and teenage years at catechism and school were the fundamentals, a foundation on which to firmly place my feet. Now, in my college years my mind will continue to develop, but in a slightly different way. This class, Developing a Christian Mind, helped to expose that to me.

                In many ways, when I was thinking about this concept, I was reminded of Our English Syllabus by C.S. Lewis. In this essay Lewis exhorts students in higher education, such as me, to pursue learning as opposed to education or a specialized vocational training. So, the student becomes educated in a broad spectrum in grade school and high school, and then is equipped for learning. “Here’s your gun, your spade, your fishing tackle; go get yourself dinner. Do not tell me that you would sooner have a nice composite menu of dishes from half the world drawn up for you. You are too old for that. It is time you learned to wrestle with nature yourself.” This same principle ought to be applied to every follower of Christ. We learn the Bible stories as children, we are told to memorize certain verses in the Bible, we are instructed in doctrine; by the time we are seniors in high school we ought to be able to articulate what our world view is and then place our feet firmly on that so that we cannot slip. This is the gun, spade, and fishing tackle Lewis talks about. Now we are equipped to do some exploration, to go see what is out in Creation, to read some literature that is written by someone who might have a false conception about God. But you see, when you build your house upon a rock, though the winds and waves beat against it, it shall not be moved. Our English Syllabus certainly was the reading that had the biggest impact on my own thinking.

                That is not to say, however, that Lewis had written nothing else that is worth reading! I mentioned in my blog at some point that I am engaged to be married next summer, so the essays Have No ‘Right to Happiness’ and on the love Eros out of Lewis’ book The Four Loves were both of particular interest to me. Certainly since my engagement on August 10, 2010 I have been interested in further developing my Christian understanding of the topics concerning sex and the marriage relationship, but even before, that, since the vast world of dating was opened to me in high school, I have been interested in these topics. Lewis further excited that development.

                Have No ‘Right to Happiness’ was a reading that really resonated with me. I advocate the view that divorce is strictly forbidden by the Bible except in the case where one of the two spouses has committed adultery. Even in that case, however, I believe that it would be desirable if the innocent spouse would forgive the sin of the other (unless of course the one spouse will have nothing to do with forgiveness and deserts). In any case, Lewis’ essay resonated with this concept that I believe is truth. In his essay Lewis speaks of the attitude of many that the sexual impulse basically justifies any action taken. So a man and woman may be married for a number of years, and then one of them chooses to desert their spouse because an opportunity to increase sexual happiness (from the purely carnal point of view of the physical aspect) has arisen. To demonstrate this, Lewis invented an imaginary couple called Mr. and Mrs. A, in which Mr. A deserts Mrs. A in the pursuit of sexual happiness. “The real situation is skillfully concealed by saying that the question of Mr. A’s ‘right’ to desert his wife is one of ‘sexual morality’….Mr. A’s action is an offense against good faith (to solemn promises), against gratitude (toward one to whom he was deeply indebted) and against common humanity.” I would go even further and say that it is a direct offense against God’s Word such as the words of Jesus in Matthew 19:9, “Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, comitteth adultery…”

                Lewis also caught my interest in his writing on the love that the Greeks called Eros, which is between lovers (in the bond of marriage). I found Lewis’ description of the beginning of the feeling of Eros to be beautiful as well as inspiring. It is a bit long but I quote it here:

“Very often what comes first is simply a delighted pre-occupation with the Beloved---a general, unspecified pre-occupation with her in her totality. A man in this state hasn’t leisure to think of sex. He is too busy thinking of a person. The fact that she is a woman is far less important than the fact that she is herself. He is full of desire, but the desire may not be sexually toned. If you asked him what he wanted, the true reply would often be, ‘To go on thinking of her.’

This reminded me of my first date with Lisa, in which we spent an hour or two laying on a sled at the bottom of a hill simply staring at each other and talking non-stop. It was cold outside but neither of us noticed because we were so intensely focused on what each other were saying or expressing. When I relate this to developing a Christian mind, I am right away reminded of Christ and His church.

 The members of the church look at Christ with an intense thirst for knowledge about Him. All of the suffering that we experience in the world is inconsequential, our afflictions do not really even matter that much in fact we hardly even notice them because we are so “pre-occupied” by our Beloved. But, we do still have a flesh that needs mortification. In our regenerated heart, the heart which Christ has poured His Spirit into, we want nothing but Him. When we are made new by the resurrection, no longer bearing our sinful flesh which wants to sin, then our whole being will sing aloud with joy and reach up to the Saviour. But in this present life we still have flesh, and so God uses pain as a means to mortify that flesh, making us holy. Lewis describes the will of the flesh in his book The Problem of Pain, “Our will, when we are happy, is carried away in the happiness as a ship racing down a swift stream.” So our flesh delights in the things of the world, which makes us forget about our Lord, and shuts up our heart that thirsts for knowledge of Him. But we have a gracious Lord who “shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

We are constantly learning, developing our Christian mind. Our hearts, being filled with the Holy Ghost, are pure and long for our Lord. But we live in a world in which we experience pain. Christ works through that pain, sanctifying us so that we long for Him even more. In spite of the swirls of darkness in this present life we have the reassuring words of the Heidelberg Catechism in answer to the question “What is the only comfort in life and death?”

That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ; who, with His precious blood, hath fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto Him.”

When we understand the reality of this confession, we have a sense of shalom in our life. We place our hope in Christ, who gives us peace. Shalom is beautifully described by Cornelius Plantinga in his book Engaging God’s World: “Shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight---a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, all under the arch of God’s love.”

                So, the development of the Christian mind is an ongoing process, but with it come blessings that cannot be found otherwise. When our feet are firmly placed on the rock of Jesus Christ, then as the Apostle Paul describes it in Romans 8:31, “If God be for us, who can be against us?”  We simply must develop our minds to be like the mind of Christ, in all issues that we face. When we are facing a new challenge or a new phase in our life, we turn to the Bible for guidance. When we experience pain and affliction, we cast our cares upon our Lord. In this we receive “flourishing, wholeness, and delight” deep within our soul.

Works Cited:

Holy Bible: King James Version. Indianapolis: B.B. Kirkbride Bible Co., Inc., n.d. Print.

Lewis, Clive S. Have No “Right to Happiness”. Print.

Lewis, Clive S. Our English Syllabus. Print.

Lewis, Clive S. The Four Loves. Orlando: Harcourt Books, 1988. Print.

Lewis, Clive S. The Problem of Pain. Print.

Plantinga, Cornelius Jr. Engaging God’s World: A Reformed Vision of Faith, Learning,
and Living. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.

The Confessions and the Church Order of the Protestant Reformed Churches. Grandeville, MI: Protestant Reformed Churches in America, 2005. 83-84. Print.

The Problem of Pain

"For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God. For which cause we faint not; but through our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." ~II Corinthians 4:15-18

How often do we feel pain? I would suggest that pain is felt every day in some form or another. We stub our toes, give ourselves paper-cuts, run into things; sometimes it is serious like a car accident in which we break some bones or perhaps we slip and fall off a ledge. We can get sick with the flu, a cold, pneumonia. And then there is the whole branch of pain caused by human relationships: my girlfriend dumped me or my best friend is upset at something I did, so and so does not like me for whatever reason. The list goes on and on.

So, it is obvious that we feel pain regularly. Now the greater question, how often do we curse God, whether out loud with some spoken profane word, or in our hearts by a thought of discontent for what God has done. This happens with even the slightest of things like the stubbing of the toe.  Immediately following the brief moment of pain comes the "Oh ____!!"

In contrast to this reaction we have C.S. Lewis' book The Problem of Pain. In the chapter on human pain, Lewis explains that God sends us pain because we are "rebels who must lay down our arms." We hate God in our flesh, that is by our original nature, and so God sends us trials and afflictions to mortify that flesh. This is one of the ways in which we are sanctified. According to Lewis, God "shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." Our flesh has a powerful influence on us yet, but in His love God sends us pain so that we turn to Him.

There will come a day when we no longer need the mortification of the flesh, because our flesh will be made new. By the grace of God in that day we will perfectly do what Lewis describes this way: "...wherever the will conferred by the Creator is thus perfectly offered back in delighted and delighting obedience by the creature, there, most undoubtedly, is Heaven, and there the Holy Ghost proceeds. When we feel the base urge to curse God when we experience pain, we have only to remember the words of the Apostle, "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding weight of glory...."

Man or Rabbit?

"One of the things that distinguishes man from the other animals is that he wants to know things, wants to find out what reality is like, simply for the sake of knowing."

"Morality is a mountain which we cannot climb by our own efforts; and if we could we should only perish in the ice and unbreathable air of the summit, lacking those wings with which the rest of the journey has to be accomplished. For it is from there that the real ascent begins. The ropes and axes are 'done away' and the rest is a matter of flying." ~ C.S. Lewis

I found this reading to be a bit more difficult to interpret. I think that in this essay, more so than the others we have read, the Anglican background of C.S. Lewis is manifested. Anglican theology holds that works are a necessary ingredient of justification. For example, Lewis says the following about three men who were unbelievers, Socrates, Confucius and J.S. Mill: "...these men were in a state of honest ignorance or honest error. If their intentions were as good as I suppose them to have been (for of course I can't read their secret hearts) I hope and believe that the skill and mercy of God will remedy the evils which their ignorance, left to itself, would naturally produce both for them and for those whom they influenced." I think that the implication in this is that a man who outwardly does the work of the law even if he does not know Christ, will be forgiven that lack of knowledge. Reformed theology holds that man is justified by grace, and that works will necessarily follow "for it is impossible that those who are implanted into Christ by a true faith should not bring forth fruits of thankfulness (Heidelberg Catechism A. 64)." Notice that fruits of thankfulness only come from those implanted into Christ. God does not justify those who do not know Christ.

The error of Lewis concerning the relationship of justification and works made this reading difficult for me, but I did my best to not write off the whole reading because of its presence. I found the end of the essay to be quite rewarding. "All the rabbit in us is to disappear -- the worried, conscientious, ethical rabbit as well as the cowardly and sensual rabbit. We shall bleed and squeal as the handfuls of fur come out; and then, surprisingly, we shall find underneath it all a thing we have never imagined: a real Man, and ageless god, a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy." I believe that I think differently about this than Lewis did. I think that Lewis is referring to the resurrection only. I think, though, that we can look at this quote in the light of regeneration and the resurrection. In a sense, when we were regenerated we were given a "real Man" that is hidden in the body of the "rabbit." The rabbit representing our old flesh and our old nature. But I like the imagery given by Lewis, that we will "bleed and squeal," because having a new heart is not something that we want, but something that God makes us want and gives to us freely. And then this imagery fits with the final resurrection as well, because we will shed our old flesh when we die, but then we will be made anew. God has done this for us! How amazing!

So as those who are regenerated and look forward to our resurrection, we do not have to decide if we are a man or a rabbit. God pulls off our fur in spite of the fact that we don't want him to, and He makes us Men (and Women). In this knowledge we fly from the summit by the wings of His grace!

Vocation

"But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed." ~James 1:22-25

Those who believe in Jesus Christ have a calling in this life. God has formed each one of them, from birth onward, before and after regeneration, to further His great purpose in manifesting His Son Jesus Christ as glorious. And this forming goes past death and into eternity! So what is our calling? Our calling is to seek the glory of God in all things that we do.

Before we are regenerated we hate the purpose of God, we want nothing more than the humiliation of the Lamb. But after regeneration, we have a new heart that loves that Lamb and wants this purpose of God to be realized, but we still have a sinful flesh which does its best to put down the righteous thoughts of the regenerated heart of the believer. This is why it is so important to go to church where we hear the Word, which James says is like looking in the mirror and seeing how wicked we are in our flesh. The danger is that when we see how wicked our flesh is, we ignore it. James says that instead of seeing our wickedness and then forgetting, we must see what it is that is good in the sight of God, see how we do not match up, and then strive to do what is good. In this way we are sanctified.

Having said all of this, I believe that the church must be at the very core of the Christian calling. The Christian man and woman ought to center their life around the church, because this is where they can look into the "perfect law of liberty." We ought to work to bring up our families in the fear of the Lord, which cannot be done without hearing the preaching weekly. We ought to deliver finances to support the gospel and take care of the poor in the church. Cornelius Plantinga acknowledges the importance of the church in the fifth chapter of his book Engaging God's World. "Of all the ways that we can express our citizenship in the kingdom of God, none is more obvious than becoming an active member in our local church." When we center our calling around the church, we are centering our calling around the preaching, which is Christ speaking to His people!

All this being said, it is obvious that we cannot spend our whole life sitting under a perpetual sermon, and that would be an anti-biblical approach to life. Our life ought to be rooted in the church, but we must also branch out into the world. God put us here for a reason, and that reason is so that we, as children of light, shine out in the darkness. Plantinga says we "need to avoid the despairing tendency to write the world off, to abandon it as a lost cause, and to remove ourselves to an island of like-minded Christians." It would be easy to think this way when one compares the corruption of the world to the blessings found in the church, but we must shine as the people of God! So, since our life must be rooted in the church, when we go out and live in the world, we must be a witness to the blessings that we find in that church! It would be selfish to not want to demonstrate the spiritual blessings we receive through the preaching and fellowship with believers!

In summary, this is our vocation: to hear the preaching, and to be a witness by living out of that preaching. Living out of the preaching means that we behave ourselves in accordance with God's word and are in this way sanctified, but it also means that in our daily lives we talk about the blessings we have received through the Word of Jesus Christ, and demonstrate those blessings by giving of one's self in acts of mercy just as the Father gave His Son in the ultimate act of mercy. I could go on this topic for a while, but I think that I have surpassed the 350 word minimum by about double by now, so I will end here.

The Inner Ring

"For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many." ~I Corinthians 12:12-14

I found this reading to be quite interesting. C.S. Lewis deals here with something that I think every student that goes through high school has had no choice but to deal with; the existence of the "inner ring," or perhaps you could describe it as a clique. In the essay, Lewis describes the existence of the inner ring, but then he goes on to show how everyone gets absorbed in being part of the "know" to the point where it can drive a person away from friends they already have. "I believe that in all men's lives at certain periods, and in many men's lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside."  In my group in class we paralleled this with high school as I mentioned above. There are groups such as the popular kids, the jocks, the nerds, etc. Every kid wants to be a part of one of these rings, and if one person has the opportunity to move up to a more respectable or "popular" ring they often ditch their old friends in a heartbeat. Thus the existence of high school drama.

As I was thinking about this I paralleled this idea with the first sin. Satan says to Eve in Genesis 3: 4b,5 "Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Satan was tempting man with the same sin which he had fallen to, namely, to be a god. In essence, the sin of the Devil and the sin of man was, out of pride, to be equal to God, or perhaps it could be restated as, to be in God's inner ring. This is a great sin, and I think it has been replicated over and over again throughout history by men in competition with other men to be the greatest, to rise up the ranks until you are at the most "inner" of all the rings.

Yet in contrast to this, we have the great Good of our Lord Jesus Christ who did quite the opposite to advancing himself. Rather, we have Him emptying himself, making Himself the most poor of men who ever lived, and this in contrast to the eternal riches He has as God! Lewis says that "the quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it." I think it would be more scriptural as well as more comforting to state it this way: The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts, but Christ has given us a new one that is filled with His Spirit!

So, because of Jesus' sacrifice, we are by His grace in His inner ring, namely, the church. And this inner ring constitutes a multitude of believers who all have the common interest of submitting to and praising our Lord who saved us from the treachery of our own pride!

My Future Bride

This is Lisa and I on our engagement day. July 1 can't come soon enough!

Eros

"And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." ~Revelation 21:2-4 (KJV)

"Within Eros [sexual desire] is rather about the Beloved. It becomes almost a mode of perception, entirely a mode of expression. It feels objective; something outside us, in the real world. That is why Eros, though the king of pleasures, always (at his height) has the air of regarding pleasure as a by-product.....Anyway, whose pleasure? For one of the first things Eros does is to obliterate the distinction between giving and receiving." ~C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

For the last several years I have been fascinated over the idea of love between a man and a woman. That is because over the last several years I have been seeking the woman who will be my wife. I am thankful to God that He has brought me this woman, and we are engaged to be married on the first of July. My fascination over the topic has a lot to do with my pursuit of marriage, but the more I grew in my knowledge of what marriage is really all about, the more it fascinated me.

You may wonder why I used the quote from Scripture that I did. That is because I have the understanding, as does most of the Christian world I presume, that marriage is a picture of the relationship of the church to Jesus Christ. The church is the bride, who formerly was ugly and rejected, a wretch laying on the side of the street waiting to die, who Christ in His loving mercy reached down and picked her up, made her beautiful and adorned her for a wedding in which He would be the groom. In all of eternity, from the day when the church will be resurrected in the new flesh and the creation redeemed from the clutches of sin, "baptism by fire," the bride and the groom, church and Christ, will have the Eros in which the church praises and submits to her Christ, and Christ glorifies and loves His church.

When I seek marriage, this is what I seek. A relationship in which my Lisa and I will have a foretaste of this everlasting relationship that the church as one organic whole will experience with Christ. My earthly marriage will be brief, ending with the death of one party. But the eternal marriage of ultimate bliss in submission to our Lord will be, as I said, eternal! What a glorious and humbling thought.

By the way, when I described the church as being wretched and filthy and fully miserable before Christ's spirit entered her, I did not mean to suggest that this is paralleled in our earthly marriage. Lisa is a very beautiful young woman to whom I an extremely grateful to be engaged.

Redemption

"There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." ~Romans 8:1-4

Cornelius Plantinga writes about redemption in the fourth chapter of his book Engaging God's World. I really enjoyed his introduction into this topic in which he showed from the Scriptures that Adam and Eve's eyes were opened to their nakedness and they felt shame at being exposed before God. They knew that they were sinful, fallen, and corrupt. But then we have a stark contrast to that fall into shame and misery, God makes clothes for Adam and Eve to cover up their nakedness. In Plantinga's words, "Genesis 3 tells us of God's curse on a fallen creation, but in this one verse it also tells us that God cloaks human beings with mercy in a world grown chilly from their own sin." What I wish Plantinga would have mentioned is the fact that God made those cloaks from the skins of animals, and so we have a picture that the sin of the "seed of the woman" would be covered, but blood must be shed in order for that covering to be accomplished. This is the cross! Already in the very beginning of the Bible we have a stark picture of salvation by means of an innocent one, who had nothing to do with sin Himself, but died that the sins of others might be covered.

Plantinga goes on to show throughout the Old Testament how God established His covenant, and in spite of God standing firm on His promise, the people of God continued to fail, falling into sin and idolatry again, and again, and again. This shows how wicked we are by nature; God gives us His promise and is faithful to that promise, but we, just like the Israelites of old, continue to rebel against Him in favor of the death and destruction of sin. Here we can look back at that first picture in Genesis 3. God established His covenant in Genesis 3:15 with the promise of "the seed of the woman," and God shows Adam and Eve that they will be covered from their nakedness by the death of an innocent one that would come from their seed. This promise and picture which God shows to the first man and woman, and then reiterates throughout the entire Old Testament, is made clear and manifest in its fulfillment, Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ redeems us from our sins. We are free form the bondage of sin, free to love God in our hearts even though our flesh cries for us to follow after death; and this grace which we are given through the cross is sufficient for the salvation of all of God's elect children. What a magnificent and wonderful truth!

Learning in War Time

"And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." ~Romans12:2

In this address, C.S. Lewis encourages the students at Oxford to diligently continue their studies in spite of the distraction of World War II. He does this in answer to the idea that taking an interest in the "placid occupations" of studying in the university is almost a waste of time when they may be killed or enlisted in the military, or because the lives their friends and their liberties are in the balance because of the war. To approach this topic, he demonstrates that the activity of man in his wars, etc. are really frivolous when compared to the weight of the afterlife, especially when the gospel needs defending and spreading. "To admit that we can retain our interest in learning under the shadow of these eternal issues, but not under the shadow of a European war, would be to admit that our ears are closed to the voice of reason and very wide open to the voice of our nerves and mass emotions."

He then goes on to explain that no matter what our circumstances in life, whether there be war or peace, whether we are sent to a university or maintain a job sweeping floors, we must do it all to the glory of God. And then, as this is an address to students at Oxford, he says this: "The intellectual life is not the only road to God, nor the safest, but we find it to be a road, and it may be the appointed road for us. Of course it will be so only so long as we keep the impulse pure and disinterested." What I believe he means by this is that as students, we must pursue our work for the glory of God; if at any time we perform a work in our studies that is for our own glory, it is impure and thus does not lead us to God, but rather away from him.

This is a hard thing which Lewis is saying. It is not easy to remain free from distraction when the calamity of the world pervades every aspect of our lives. But when referring to work, which must be to the glory of God, the Bible has a clear warning: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:...(Proverbs 6:6)." When we do our work for ourselves, we are being a sluggard. When we refuse to do our work because something in our lives distracts us from it, we are being a sluggard. This is tough, and would be utterly impossible to do any work for God without His grace!

The Poison of Subjectivism

"And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is His Name? What shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my Name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations." ~Exodus 3:13-15 (KJV)

It is a strange, modern ideology that C.S. Lewis refutes in his essay The Poison of Subjectivism. Subjectivism is the idea that the morals or man are something that man himself has invented, and can thus be changed for better or worse. It is an idea that rejects an absolute standard of moral law that is for every man, and thus rejects God as well. Lewis rejects this idea, saying that it is impossible for a man to rid himself of the moral law, and it is also impossible for a man to create his own values. The only thing that man can do is elevate certain values over others. Lewis gives a hypothetical example of a man who might try to base his own law on something other than the traditional moral law:

"He usually has at the back of his mind the notion that if he throws over traditional judgment of value, he will find something else, something more "real" or "solid" on which to base a new scheme of values....[For Example] he will endeavor to base his values on biology and tell us that we must act thus and thus for the preservation of our species. Apparently he does not anticipate the question, 'Why should the species be preserved?' He takes it for granted that it should, because he is really relying on traditional judgments of value."

I found Lewis' arguments in this selection to be compelling as well as humorous. "This whole attempt to jettison traditional values as something subjective and to substitute a new scheme of values for them is wrong. It is like trying to lift yourself up by your own coat collar." The idea of a law that is subjective to human reason, that is subjective to human control, is absolutely ridiculous. If a child was subject to his own rules, he would certainly kill himself. That is why he has a mother to take care of him, set some rules for him to follow, and discipline him to make sure he follows those rules.

The world may try to reject Him, but God Himself sets our standard. When a man tries to reason out the moral law, it will eventually break down to the threshold which that law sits on; I AM THAT I AM. God IS, and so IS His law. To say that the law is subject to man is to say that God is subject to man; this is pure blasphemy, and God will have his vengeance. Let us thank Him, that we have been given the Spirit so that we may see that God IS, and then are able to adhere to Him by His grace.

The Fall

Generally speaking, Cornelius Plantinga did a good job in representing the fall of man into sin. The first part of the chapter refers to God's deeming of His creation as "very good" after He had finished His work. Man was perfect, obeying the law of God just as he was created to do so. The creation itself was lively and full of exuberance. I can only imagine the richness of the creation just after God had finished His work. But then we have a horrific event. Adam and Eve fell to the temptation of the Devil, and ate a fruit from a tree they were commanded not to eat of. From this event, we have the original sin of all the human race ("For if through the offence of one many be dead..." Romans 5:15) as well as the first step in an exponential growth of sin in the life of each individual, and the first drops poured into the cup of iniquity of the whole human race. Since the sin of Adam, sin has developed and increased. Man continues to find new ways to sin, so that the corruption seen in the world continues to increase. Plantinga poetically describes it this way: "Each generation, and each new person reaps what others have sown and then sows what others will reap."

Considering this state of the human race, that is a state of corruption in the sight of God, I cannot agree at all with the next point made by Plantinga. He begins to talk about a certain grace which the Holy Spirit places in all men, regardless of whether or not they receive saving grace, so that they can do real good. He also describes total depravity as incomplete, in the sense that every part but not all of every part of man is corrupted. Both of these ideas are unBiblical (I am ashamed to say that I lacked the courage to bring this up in class, I apologize for that). There is ample evidence in Scripture against the idea of a "common grace," but one of the most powerful passages is Psalm 73. In this Psalm, the psalmist Asaph wonders why God prospers the wicked, making them rich and powerful, when the godly who serve Him suffer affliction in this life. "Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches (verse 12)." The final conclusion of the psalmist is, however, that God gave them good gifts so that by those gifts they would condemn themselves. "Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction (verse 18)." That does not sound like any sort favor or grace to me.

Now you might wonder why I am spending so much time on this subject, but I believe it to be of quite crucial significance. You see, if God has favor on all men, it can only BE a saving favor, because God would not condemn that which He deems GOOD! If you say that God enables wicked men, by His Holy Spirit (which I remind you is the Spirit of Christ which can only be given to men as a direct result of the cross) men which He intends to condemn, to do good things, then you can only conclude that the sacrifice of Christ is flawed and incomplete. Plantinga himself refutes this idea when he says on page 63: "In the Christian religion God's holiness is strictly nonnegotiable." God's holiness would be flawed if He gave grace to a man which He condemned to Hell.

I make no apology for what I wrote, but I do want to make the point that I do not disagree with everything Plantinga says in the chapter. He makes some excellent points about the fallen nature of man, how we can obviously see this in the world to the extent that even the wicked have to acknowledge it. I also thought he did a good job showing how sin increases and multiplies as history moves on. But we must look at this as a complete desolation. "There is none that doeth good, no, not one (Psalm 14:3)." This is us, too, by nature! We have nothing good in us, just like the unbelievers, but Christ has done a complete and perfect work on the cross, in that He has given grace, particular to His people, so that they might have a pure heart. So we must look to the world, see that they can do no good, realize that we can by God's grace, and then give thanks to our Lord!

Mere Christianity Chapters 1-4

"For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing on another;..." ~ Romans 2:13-15 (KJV)

In the first four chapters of his book Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis sets out to establish by means of reason that there is a moral law, which he calls the Law of Nature, to which all human beings throughout all time are subject. I found this to be extremely interesting because the Apostle Paul refers to the law that the Gentiles were subject to even in the Old Testament when only the Jews had the special revelation of God's Word. This is still true today; those who do not believe in God, or perhaps do not even know of the Gospel, are still without excuse because their conscience bears witness to the law. Here I quote a few phrases from Mere Christianity to see what Lewis has to say about this moral law:

"This law was called the Law of Nature, because people thought that every one knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it. They did not mean, of course, that you might not find an odd individual here and there who did not know it, just as you find a few people who are colour-blind or have no ear for a tune. Bu taking the race as a whole, they thought that the human idea of decent behaviour was obvious to every one. And I believe they were right."

Lewis continues on in the course of the four chapters to further establish that this moral law is there, and that if it is there, it must have been given by someone or something, else the reason we humans feel pangs of guilt when we disobey that moral law (which is all the time) would be vain.

As I mentioned before, I find this to be intensely fascinating. I see the argument of Lewis, namely "There is a moral law therefore there must be a lawgiver" as an irrefutable proof for the existence of God. This fact concerning the moral law demonstrated to me that everyone, even those who do not have the Gospel message, know that they are guilty. Now, this is where we Christians ought to be humble as well as thankful to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Verse 13 of Romans chapter 2 plainly states that only the doers are just before God. Everyone hears the law because their conscience bears witness of it, but only the doers of that law are just. The hard reality of this is that we all, every last human being by nature, hear the law but do the opposite. Lewis points this out in the first chapter of his book:

"It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table. Now if we are agreed about that, I go on to my next point, which is this. None of us are really keeping the Law of Nature."

So, there is a moral law, with a lawgiver behind it, and we all do the opposite by nature. Does this mean that we will all be condemned by the law? This is how the Christian is humbled and why he must be thankful. Jesus Christ died on the cross, satisfying the His justice by pouring out His wrath on His Son, who is the perfect and spotless Lamb of God. This is amazing! We are by nature condemned by that same moral law described by Lewis. We are hearers only and not doers, by nature. But then Christ comes in a satisfies God's wrath and so God sees us as doers of the law and not hearers only. He sees us this way in Christ alone. Thanks be to God!

C.S. Lewis, Beyond Personality

A few days ago in class we listened to a radio program on BBC in which many of C.S. Lewis' friends and colleagues commented on the man's character/personality. I found this presentation to be highly enlightening. Since the first time I read the Chronicles of Narnia, my impression of C.S. Lewis has always been of a tenderhearted man with a big imagination and a big place in his heart for children. I found this to be more or less true, although there were far more dimensions added to him when listening to the comments of those who knew him. For instance, I never would have pictured Lewis as a stubborn man, who could not accept defeat in an argument, which came to my attention when listening to the program. I think as a child, not knowing anything about the man other than that he wrote a fascinating fantasy series, he took a place of revered awe in my mind. This radio program further dispelled that notion and brought him back down to earth for me. He became human, just as subject to the infectious virus of sin as anyone else. A brilliant man for sure. He had a sense of cleverness as well as skill with the English language that is only rarely seen. I have enjoyed reading what I have of his works, and look forward to reading more. But I think we ought to look at him in the light of the fact that there is a sinful nature to every human being, although we can take instruction from his writings nonetheless.

Screwtape Letter XII

"And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him  by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and sea! For the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time." ~ Revelation 12:9-12 (KJV)

What a terrifying thought! The devil, and all of his great army of demons, are here on this earth! Not only that, but as Revelation 12 points out, they want nothing other than the destruction of the church, who is represented by a beautiful woman in the text. C.S. Lewis wrote an intriguing work called the Screwtape Letters in which he makes this great threat real to the church by recording a fictional correspondence between the devil Screwtape and his nephew Wormwood.

In the twelfth letter of the collection of letters between the two devils, we get a glimpse of a diabolical strategy that is far more subtle then one might get the impression of when reading I Peter 5:8; "...your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:..." I quote the following from the Screwtape Letters:

"As long as he retains externally the habits of a Christian he can still be made to think of himself as one who has adopted a few new friends and amusements but whose spiritual state is much the same as it was six weeks ago. And while he thinks that, we do not have to contend with the explicit repentance of a definite, fully recognized, sin, but only with his vague, though uneasy feeling that he hasn't been doing very well lately."

The devil Screwtape goes on to describe to his nephew that this state of the "patient" who is being tempted by Wormwood will lead him into further and further sin (taking small steps) to the point where the patient will develop an overwhelming sense of guilt which will cause him to despise anything that points to God. At this point, Wormwood's job becomes easy, because the patient has been separated from God.

Now, I believe we need to look at this carefully. I think that Lewis does an extraordinarily good job in demonstrating the kinds of thoughts and communications that occur among the devils. However, we must not think that a devil can truly separate one of God's sheep from His care. As the prodigal son, we believers may stray away and carelessly indulge in the corruption of this world for a time, but if we are God's elect, then He will stir us up to repentance by His spirit. What I love about this letter, is that it gives an honest perspective of the devil. If we believe that devils are little imps traipsing a about in the fires of hell carrying a pitch fork, then we have truly been duped. There are devils keeping watch over the shoulders of all who are manifest Christians at all times, doing their utmost to thwart the sovereignty of God over their lives. What I believe the point of C.S. Lewis is, is that we ought to be aware of this, that we fall not into sin, but rather out of love and thankfulness to God work that which is good in His sight!

Creation

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made." ~John 1:1-3 (KJV)

I really enjoyed the first half of the chapter on creation in Cornelius Plantinga's book Engaging God's World. In this chapter Plantinga describes the life of God within the trinity and God's act in creation.

I find the doctrine of the trinity to be extremely interesting. The very idea of three persons within the same essence or being is impossible to wrap the mind around. What is far more interesting to me, though, is God's relationship within the trinity between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Plantinga describes it this way: "The persons within God exalt each other, commune with each other, defer to one another. Each person, so to speak, makes room for the other two." So God, who is worthy of all honor, praise, and glory, is humble and selfless, and we see this in the trinity. Just by way of comparison, by nature, if any of us was (hypothetically) worthy of all honor, praise, and glory (which we by no means are..), we would selfishly claim it for ourselves. God, however, is not this way; rather he gives himself to himself within the trinity, and then He also extends that gift of Himself to His people by way of His covenant promise. So now, we have God selflessly giving Himself to His people, and then we, only by His grace, selflessly give of ourselves to Him (but remember again that is only because He causes us to do it by His Spirit in us, if left to ourselves we would have none of it but would do the opposite.)


Next, Plantinga talked about the Creation. He did a tremendously good job describing the creation in all of its glory, and also of God's love for that creation. I like these words that Plantinga uses: "In creation we find creatures of wondrous particularity - each of them, and all of them, a display of God's inventiveness and love." The extent of God's inventiveness is infinite. That is entirely amazing! When I lay on my back and stare at the stars it always strikes me that God's depth is infinite. And when you think about that, and then think about the fact that God chose this cosmos with this time line of history, over all of the potential ones (I speak hypothetically again), you can see the scope of God's love. As it were, God chose this creation of His out of infinity! (and then on top of that He chose His people out from among the world!) God loves His Creation dearly, and all the more He loves His people! What an assuring thought!

The Weight of Glory

The Weight of Glory is another interesting piece of writing form C.S. Lewis. In this writing, Lewis tries to relate to his thoughts on the glory of the Christian after this earthly life. I found this selection to be a bit more difficult to follow, but I will try to explain my understanding of what Lewis is trying to get at as best as I can.

The first thing in this selection that jumped out at me was Lewis' assertion that the imagery we are given in the Bible is more symbolic than anything. The book of Revelation, for instance, is full of beautiful imagery of what heaven looks like, but that imagery is meant to point us to a higher, more spiritual reality. For instance, in Revelation 21: 21 (KJV) we read: "The twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the streets of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass." This description gives us the idea that the new Jerusalem, heaven, will be a place that is filled with majesty, but to think that the majesty of pearls and gold is anything in comparison with the majesty of God is foolish. God is far higher, far more wonderful than anything that this earth has to offer. Think a minute about Moses, who was allowed merely to see a small fraction of God's glory (Exodus 34: 29-35), but he had to wear a veil to conceal his face because it shone with the glory he had seen! Even this is a picture of God's true glory, which is far greater than bright lights.

So, God is glorious. The new heavens and the new earth will be glorious. The glory of God and heaven is symbolized in the Scripture, but the true nature of this glory is far beyond those earthly symbols that we are given. So what will our glory be? C.S. Lewis puts it this way:

"Apparently what I had mistaken for humility had, all these years, prevented me from understanding what is the most childlike, the most creaturely of pleasures - nay, the specific pleasure of the inferior: the pleasure of a beast before men, a child before its father, a pupil before his teacher, a creature before its Creator. I am not forgetting how horribly this most innocent desire is parodied in our human ambitions, or how very quickly, in my own experience, the lawful pleasure of praise from those whom it was my duty to please turns into the deadly poison of self-admiration."

So, there is a satisfaction we can take when God is satisfied with us, and this is our glory. God glorifies us because He has weighed us in the balances and found us perfect. How can that be? Now, this is where I believe C.S. Lewis falls short. He seems to indicate that there is a possibility that we could be weighed by God and fall short. For instance:

"In some sense, as dark to the intellect as it is unendurable to the feelings, we can be both banished from the presence of Him who is present everywhere and erased form the knowledge of Him who knows all. We can be left utterly and absolutely outside - repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakable ignored. On the other hand, we can be called in, welcomed, received, acknowledged. We walk every day on the razor edge between these two incredible possibilities."

For those of us who are Reformed, we know this to be untrue. We do not hang over two possibilities. There are those who are predestined to eternal salvation, and those who are eternally predestined to be thrown into outer darkness. For the elect (those predestined to eternal life), there is satisfaction in the blood of Christ. Christ died for us and so we are justified before God, there is no possibility that we could be lost. Our glory, then, is found in the fact that the elect, who are by nature unworthy of any favor from God, receive that favor as a free gift, and are able to love God. This is in contrast to what we all deserve, eternal damnation, which is demonstrated to us by the death of the ungodly. For the elect, the fact that God saved them is a mystery, because they can look at the ungodly and see that they are no different then them by nature, but by no act of themselves have the grace of God put in their heart by the Holy Spirit.

Our glory, then, certainly has a weight to it. From our point of view, we could just as well have been damned to Hell, but instead we are brought into the bosom of the Father. By this fact, we praise God eternally for what He has done in redeeming us who are thoroughly unworthy in ourselves. In this sense, we receive glory so that we can give glory to God! And the weight of our glory is this, that we have a sincere desire to spread the gospel, that God will call forth His people! This is love for God. This is love for Christ. This is love for our neighbor. This is our glory!

Our English Syllabus

"Learning is not education; but it can be used educationally by those who do not propose to pursue learning in all their lives. There is nothing odd in the existence of such a byproduct. Games are essentially for pleasure, but they happen to produce health. they are not likely, however, to produce health if they are played for the sake of it. Play to win and you will find yourself taking violent exercise; play because it is good for you and you will not. In the same way, though you may have come here only to be educated, you will never receive that precise educational gift which a university has to give you unless you can at least pretend, so long as you are with us, that you are concerned not with education but with knowledge for its own sake."

C.S. Lewis once again hits the nail on the head when it comes to thinking. In this essay, entitled Our English Syllabus he exhorts his students at Oxford University to pursue learning as opposed to education or vocational training. His view of education is that it concerns the acquiring of skills, such as language, that will prepare the students for learning at the university. He, as a professor, will then assume that the student has acquired those skills at high school or what have you, and is then ready to use them in the service of learning.

Learning, as opposed to vocational training, is the pursuit of the knowledge that concerns a given subject that is in the interest of the student. In order to properly learn, the student must choose a subject that is most interesting to him, and then pursue the knowledge of everything that pertains to that subject from the bottom up. Lewis has a good analogy to convey what he means, in this analogy he is talking about pursuing the study of the English language, of which he was a professor:

"If we picture our subject as a tree we have first of all the soil in which it grows: that is, the history of the English people, social, economic, and intellectual....The great central tap-root is old Germanic developing, as we pass above the ground-level, into Old English. A second root, not quite so big and important as this, is Old French..."

He goes on to further develop that analogy, but the basic idea is that if your aim is learning, then you need to start at that subjects beginning, and then study everything that affected it, along side of studying the subject itself. This stands in opposition to the idea of vocational training, which is the study of only the subject of interest without the factors affecting it. Vocational training pumps out specialists, which, according to Lewis, behave similar to animals. The idea is that animals mindlessly go about their day-to-day activities working for survival; in a similar way, one who specializes in a trade knows nothing other than that trade and so their life falls into a mundane cycle. Here I personally think that Lewis goes a little to far. Human beings are still human beings even if they don't have an extensive education. Education is not the most important thing in life, but having a relationship with God which was established by God through hearing the preaching, studying the Word, prayer, and the communion of the saints is the most important thing.

So, my conclusions on this essay are this. C.S. Lewis did a wonderful job describing the most effective means of gaining knowledge. Studying for the sake of knowing is an excellent approach to ones education which would result in a well-rounded person with a multitude of skills, and the byproduct is, just as exercise is the byproduct of competitive sports, the ability to hold a vocation. However, I think it needs to be said that learning the disciplines of the world (science, mathematics, language, etc.) do not open the door to Heaven, and so we ought to regard those who do not go to college as just as fully human as ourselves.


By the way, this essay was written to college students, so when C.S. Lewis compared certain people to animals he was mostly criticizing the method by which they were trained. So what I am saying is that I don't think he was trying to insult people, but rather scare his own students out of following the same training method.

Longing and Hope

"For if through the offense of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many." Romans 5:15 (KJV)

By nature we, that is every member of the human race, is dead. Dead in the sense that we are dead to God. His justice condemns us because in Adam, as our corporal head, we have sinned against Him (and continue to sin because we are fallen.) This is awful for us who are human because it means that our eternal destination is to be perpetually consumed by the wrath of a just God, and we entirely deserve it.

In his book Engaging God's World, Cornelius Plantinga speaks of a longing that humans have. I quote the following: "We human beings want God even when we think that what we really want is a green valley, or a good time from our past, or a loved one." I find this hard to believe, because of the quote from Scripture I have above. We are dead to God, which means we are cut off from him. We cannot desire Him because we are dead to Him. It is true that we have a longing, but because we are dead to God, we fill that longing with our new god that the human race worships by nature, Self.

Now, I do not believe that this is the end of the story. If so, then all of reality would be pure vanity, because the pursuit of Self is temporal, and that same Self will be consumed by the fires of Hell without an intervention; because even though we are dead to God by Nature, God has showed mercy. "...the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many." Now there is a place for longing after God. By nature, we long after self-fulfillment, but when God saves us, and instills in us a new life by the work of Jesus Christ, then our heart bursts with the longing that Plantinga refers to:

"This webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets called shalom. We call it "peace," but it means far more than just peace of mind or cease-fire between enemies....In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight - a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, all under the arch of God's love."

This is what God's people will experience in the new Heavens and the new Earth. Not because of us, but because God in His mercy chose to do it. This is our hope, because by nature we would seek our Self god until it dragged us into perpetual agony away from God. Instead, because God sent His Son to perform the work of salvation, we will experience shalom with Him for all eternity.

Thanks be to God for the work which He has done!