¶1C.S. [music] Lewis was one of the most beloved Christian voices of the 20th century. But did Lewis read the Bible well, and should we consider him to be a theologian? I'm John Nelson, and today on Unbelievable, I'm joined by two of the world's leading C.S. Lewis scholars to discuss Lewis as a theologian and reader of scripture.
¶2Dr. Jonyel Perez earned his DPhil, which is Oxford's speak for PhD, by writing the first ever dissertation on Lewis in the theology department. While he was there, he was president of the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society, and is now assistant professor at Villanova University, which is perhaps most famously where the Pope went to school. So, if you're ever thinking about maybe taking on that that Pope papal office, uh you know who to get educated by.
¶3Jonyel, I have the pleasure of serving as secretary on your committee at the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society. We always used to call you the peresident uh of the society. It's so wonderful to see you again. Welcome to Unbelievable.
¶4>> I'm so happy to see you, John, and Leslie, so happy to see you, too. And it's just a pleasure to be here. >> It's so good to have you on the show. And joining Jonyel, also across the pond, is Dr. Leslie Baynes, who is a New Testament scholar and professor at Missouri State University.
¶5She was sometimes scholar-in-residence at C.S. Lewis's home in Oxford, The Kilns, and she's recently brought together her passion for Lewis and scripture in an incredible tome, which I'm currently reading, Between Interpretation and Imagination: C.S. Lewis and the Bible, which came out in 2025. It's an absolutely fantastic work. It is as lucid as it is insightful.
¶6Um it's really lovely to finally meet you, Leslie. Welcome to the show. >> Thank you so much. It's really an honor to be here. >> Well, Leslie, I suppose today many people know about C.S.
¶7Lewis through his fiction, his Chronicles of Narnia, maybe The Screwtape Letters, or his sci-fi trilogy, or through his theological writings and books like The Problem of Pain, Mere Christianity, Miracles. But, this wasn't actually Lewis's day job. He And he wasn't always a Christian. So, I was wondering, can you give us a bit of a background to Lewis? Who was C.
¶8S. Lewis, and how did he come to the Christian faith and to the Bible? >> Well, early in his life, Lewis was brought up by a Christian family in Ireland. He says at one point that my family went to church and they took me. They were not especially devout.
¶9Um as he was a teenager, he began to lose his faith in God, and he became an atheist. Then, in his late 20s, he started to pursue knowledge of God again, more through philosophy than anything else. And he did renew his Christian faith. Again, some people will say then he became a Christian. I think he was a Christian as a child.
¶10So, I think kind of re-converted or returned to his Christian >> Regressed. >> Yes. Yes. So, he became a professor of English. Uh he went to Oxford, and uh I I know you who have been at Oxford can probably say this a lot better than I can.
¶11Uh studied what is called in Oxford Greats, which I understand as the study of ancient philosophy and classics, as we would call it here in the United States. He also got another degree in English. He happened to get a job in English literature. And that was what he specialized in for the rest of his life. And as Jodrell talked about in a very interesting paper that he published, he called himself an amateur when it came to theology and biblical studies.
¶12And I want to say right off the bat here that biblical scholars consider theology a very different discipline than biblical studies. And we may or may not want to talk about that more as we go on. >> But I think I think that's a really important distinction that a lot of biblical scholars would not necessarily call themselves theologians and vice versa. Maybe you could just, you know, help to unpack that for us. Um just briefly now.
¶13>> Oh, sure. When I was getting my master's degree at the University of Dayton, by the way, a shout-out to the University of Dayton. And I mentioned to my advisor that I was doing theology, she looked at me very seriously. Um if she had been my mother, she would have taken my face between her hands and said, "No, you are not doing theology. Theology is a completely different thing than biblical studies." So, the definition of theology um that's something that is up for debate.
¶14Uh what makes a theologian? What is theology? Lots of people talk about that. I am not someone who is going to settle that debate. I I have some interest in it, but since I'm not a theologian, it's it's not my game.
¶15Uh so, for the book, I had to think rather hard about what is a biblical scholar. And I got on social media and kind of surveyed my biblical scholar colleagues. And what I came up with for the purposes of the book, a biblical scholar is someone who has earned a PhD or its equivalent in biblical scholarship, in biblical studies. So, that's a very, very limited definition. I'm sure people could argue with it, but I had to do something simple with the book because the book was not about what is a biblical scholar and what is not.
¶16>> Yeah. >> Yeah, John Hill, would you like to add something? >> I'm so sorry. I got a glitch and I didn't hear the most important part of your definition. I wonder if you could repeat it just one more time.
¶17So, I heard a biblical scholar is someone with a PhD and then it just went blank for about 10 seconds. >> Okay. So, uh with a PhD or its equivalent, you know, uh ThDs, there are different things that people have, right? Uh from I don't know if I said from a reputable institution. If I didn't, I should have.
¶18Uh >> [laughter and gasps] >> in biblical studies proper. So, for instance, where I got my PhD at Notre Dame, there are various areas of specialization. Uh you could get a PhD in CJA, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity. That was the biblical scholar degree. Uh you could get a PhD in systematic theology, in liturgy, in ethics, in um in history of the church.
¶19So, those were the disciplines. And I took one course in systematic theology at Notre Dame. Uh it was on eschatology. Since my area is apocalypticism, I was interested in looking at eschatology through a systematic theology lens, rather through my lens of ancient Christianity and Judaism, and more of an ancient text standpoint. You know, Revelation, the Enochic booklets, etc.
¶20Uh we looked at Bart, we looked at von Balthasar. Um it was really wonderful, but it really stretched me because it was coming at the topic from a methodology that I had not done before. It was very, very different. >> I think Lewis, who is, you know, someone who has read theologians of the more sort of systematic nature, but had also read biblical scholars. I mean, when he refers to himself as being an amateur theologian, I wonder if he had that kind of broader, you know, purview.
¶21You know, in all senses, he was not that kind of theologian. Um and I think very much the the academy, whether it's biblical studies or systematic theology, has often looked at uh Lewis and seen him as a little bit sort of passé, a little bit of a kind of maverick. Um I remember when when we met Jody-Ann in Oxford, uh you talked about how you were doing a master's degree and how some some people at Harvard had sort of expressed skepticism towards sort of Lewis as an object of theological study. So, I suppose the question is, you know, should we consider Lewis a theologian? You know, is he a proper object of theological study in your opinion?
¶22>> Yeah, that's a great question, and I want to start by saying I don't think we can determine the answer to that question for everyone, and I think part of what traditionally has been going on is that academics like to take a little bit of control of how terms are used, um because we're in a position of authority, we put in, you know, 15 years of hard study, we've earned our stripes. Uh we're we have status in society. Um so, we like to kind of protect certain terms. You see things happen, for example, uh especially in the UK, you can't just call yourself a psychologist or a therapist. That's a protected term.
¶23You have to go through uh a procedure of accreditation. Um, sometimes theologians like to do that, right? To think, we at the top of the academic ladder will define what it means to be a theologian. And I take just Alister McGrath's approach on this. He was my doctoral advisor at Oxford.
¶24Um, that it's kind of out of our our control, and that's I think that's a good thing. I think if religious communities around the world, hundreds, thousands of them, are are are accepting C.S. Lewis as a trustworthy theological voice, then for those communities, C.S. Lewis is a theologian. And that kind of settles it for me, and I could of course debate with others, well, technically, does he meet this or that definition of theology?
¶25And we could debate about that forever. Um, but on the ground, in the lived experience of Christians of all different kinds of denominations, they have found C.S. Lewis to be insightful and trustworthy, and that's enough for me to say that uh we should consider him a theologian. The most we can say is maybe he's not my kind of theologian, but that's fine. There's a Yeah.
¶26There's a bunch of theologians I don't like. But uh I think it's a bit stronger claim to say that we we shouldn't, across the board, do that. Um and it's important to note that he got an honorary Doctor of Divinity from the University of St. Andrews in 1946. You don't just get that by accident.
¶27You have to know uh what you're talking about. So, Lewis, I think, was recognized by University of St. Andrews to be sufficiently theologically insightful. Communities all over the world are are continuing to read his books, to find him as a trustworthy guide. And um I think that's enough for me to say he's he's a he's some he's a theological thinker that academics should take seriously.
¶28>> Mhm. Leslie, would you be in agreement with Oh, yeah, Jardeal? >> One One quick thing, let me just add this in there. So, yes, John, you're right. As I was leaving Harvard Divinity School, I had one professor warn me not to study C.S.
¶29Lewis for graduate school because, and I quote him, "Academics don't take him seriously. And if you want to be taken seriously, you should study somebody else." I spoke to another professor who had actually taught The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in his God in Modern Writing class. And thank God he told me the opposite. He told me, "Jardeal, not everybody has to do theology like Karl Barth. Of course you should go and study C.S.
¶30Lewis for graduate school." Uh and I'm glad I did. >> Leslie, would you agree broadly uh with Jardeal? >> I do agree broadly. Um we could argue forever and a day about what it means to be a theologian. But uh I I like Jardeal's distinction, "Theologian for whom?" Uh for many, many people, C.S.
¶31Lewis is a theologian. And therefore, he is a theologian for that community, no matter what the academic world might have to say about it. Uh you could from a more academic standpoint say, "Is he a good theologian when it comes to topic X?" But is he a theologian for this community? Absolutely. Uh and I'm thinking the idea that the meaning of the word is embedded in the way the word is set up.
¶32So, we have theo, meaning God, and ology coming from logos, reason, or words about. So, using the etymological fallacy, theology is words about God, studying God, rationality about God. And yes, Lewis does that. Uh but again, that's the etymological fallacy, so >> [laughter] >> maybe maybe not the best thing. But but yes, I I would agree with Jadiel.
¶33And to your point, Jadiel, about uh being discouraged to study Lewis, in my world, too, um there are people who would say, "If you are working with Lewis, this is something that puts you somewhat outside the pale of respective respectable academic studies." If I had done my first book and my first articles on Lewis and the Bible, um I I doubt that it would have been received very well. Uh but doing it later in my career, once I've established myself, that's okay. Uh so, there is that odd prejudice among some academics. >> Mhm. I wonder whether there's even a little bit of sort of jealousy going on here, in the sense that, you know, Oxford never made C.S.
¶34Lewis a professor. And I think you know, from my understanding, that was in part because, you know, he was writing these popular books on theology and signing them "Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford." It's like, "What are you doing, leveraging this kind of status to sort of, you know, advance your own kind of, you know, your Christian agenda?" Is But But are there are there ways in which Lewis, not having a formal academic training in theology, actually made him a kind of better communicator of theology. Um, do you think? Maybe Jardiel. I'd be interested to hear your take.
¶35>> So, I go to the preface of Reflections on the Psalms, which is a text that he wrote at the very end of his life. And as he's introducing that text, he says specifically, "I am writing to the unlearned about which I myself am unlearned. I'm writing from one amateur to another." And he goes on to explain that sometimes when you're trying to help a fellow pupil, you can actually be more helpful than the expert in the field cuz the expert forgot what it was like to be a student. And I have found this in my own teaching at Villanova. I have found this to be the case where sometimes I think a student is asking something really sophisticated that I heard in grad school in a seminar and he and he or she must be asking this very specific nuanced question that [snorts] hundreds of scholars have debated.
¶36When in reality, there the student's just asking something else. Uh, they're they're not in that world yet. So, I think part of what Lewis was trying to do was position himself as a fellow learner, as a fellow pupil of theology. And I think that was able to make him that much more effective and helpful as a theological writer. >> Jardiel, I agree with you 100%.
¶37Uh, I also have had that experience teaching where especially coming straight out of a doctoral program, one's head is really in the clouds. One has been spending years and years looking at very sophisticated nuanced questions. You even forget that there are these basic questions and you can't get your mind around the fact that uh, a student is asking this because you haven't thought about it for such a long time. So, as a fellow learner, C. S.
¶38Lewis, I think is uh, wonderful when he speaks on these topics, particularly when he says, "I don't know. I don't know whether this or that or the other thing." He's very endearing and um you can work with him with that. I'm now going to take a more contrary position. >> [snorts and laughter] >> So, when he does address the experts and for example, uh Bultmann, uh who was Rudolf Bultmann, a German biblical scholar who was born in the 19th century and became in the 20th century the premier biblical scholar, New Testament scholar of his age. Uh Lewis didn't like a lot of what Bultmann said and he takes on Bultmann a couple of times and here is where Lewis really falls.
¶39Uh because he hasn't read much Bultmann and he is not part of the ongoing scholarly academic conversation that has been going on for decades with Bultmann, he's completely out of his depth. Uh so, again, when he's saying, "I'm an amateur speaking to other amateurs. I'm learning about this." Excellent. But when he tries to go to levels where he is uneducated, that's a problem. >> Mhm.
¶40And Leslie, [clears throat] um obviously your book I I I want to dive into some of those um criticisms that Lewis had of biblical scholarship and also maybe the criticisms that, you know, contemporary biblical scholars, including yourself, might might sort of raise in return. But I wonder just for sort of the general listener, can you give us just a sense of what is Lewis's I suppose overarching theological vision, you know, and what is his overarching engagement with the Bible? >> I can't speak to an overarching theological vision. I can't [laughter] speak to his view of the Bible. Uh so, Lewis, as I said earlier, begins moving very slowly back to a Christian faith in the late 1920s.
¶41And uh by 1930 1931, he has recovered his Christian faith. According to my research, and again, I can only work with the surviving evidence, the Bible does not seem to have played a huge role in his reconversion. However, um he did read a fair number of books by biblical scholars, and we know this because Lewis's library was sold after his brother died. His brother survived him. Uh then things were sold off after after his death.
¶42So, we have uh most of his library at Wheaton College uh in Wheaton, Illinois. >> Mhm. >> At the Marion E. Wade Center, right across the street from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. And when you peruse that library, you can see what books on the Bible he read.
¶43And because his handwriting changed in distinctive ways over his life uh as Charlie Star, a C. S. Lewis scholar, has demonstrated, he's done great work on the evolution of C. S. Lewis's handwriting.
¶44And because Lewis wrote a lot in his books, you can tell when he read a particular book on the Bible. So, one of the things that I discovered in the course of my research and writing this book no one had yet looked at Lewis's physical library, looked at what he read on the Bible, looked at what he wrote and said about the Bible in these books. So, I discovered that a huge huge uh influence on his life, particularly at this very kind of tender time in his life when he's really sinking in with the Christian faith again as an adult instead of as a child, uh he read a lot of works by a man named Charles Gore. Charles Gore was the premier Anglican biblical scholar and theologian of the first third of the 20th century in England. And Lewis just sucked up his work.
¶45So, he read multiple books by Gore throughout his life. He talked about them in his letters. He wrote all over them. And uh so, I argue that Lewis followed the biblical principles and general theology, if I can call it that, of of Charles Gore. So, I feel like I've talked a lot.
¶46>> No, no. I I [laughter] actually found I actually found your your section on Charles Gore to be one of the most uh illuminating because obviously today uh C. S. Lewis is often read by evangelicals, you know, who have often quite a high view of scripture. So, they sort of prioritize its its kind of uh its historical and kind of scientific truth.
¶47Um whereas Charles Gore was not someone who is who is doing that. Um I wondered if you could just, you know, maybe pick a few ways in which Charles Gore was influencing Lewis's idea of what scripture was. >> Absolutely. Before I do that, may I ask you a question? >> Go for it.
¶48>> Okay. [laughter] Is Charles Gore known in the UK today? >> I I don't think he's very well known. No. >> I did a very informal survey again on social media of my biblical scholar friends and no one remembered him except for people who were Anglican.
¶49And and not even all of those. Okay, so Charles Gore uh gathered together a group of friends prior to 1889 and wrote a book called Lux Mundi, which means uh light to the world. And he wrote an essay in this book called the Holy Spirit and Inspiration. And he was talking about the inspiration of scripture. So Gore believed that all of scripture was inspired by God, but scripture was not inerrant.
¶50Uh there are mistakes in scripture uh especially regarding historical and scientific matters. But all of scripture is inspired in some way. Gore believed that there was fiction in scripture uh and he would include the books of Jonah and Job as fiction. So Gore believed that it was pretty much impossible for the Bible to be inerrant. And in this uh he quoted a great figure of the ancient church, John Chrysostom uh who died in about the year 410.
¶51And he also believed that scripture could contain errors. So did Origen. Some modern Christians today will say that no one ever believed that the Bible contained errors, but some of the greatest figures in the church did. So this is one of the things that Gore argued. Another thing that Gore said was that scripture is not the word of God.
¶52And here we can get into some very uh very deep arguments that could go on for years uh about what does word mean, for example, in John 1:1, In the beginning was the word. The word for word there is the word logos, and logos never ever means written. It always means verbal. There is a different word other different words for written. So, Gore argues scripture is not the word of God, Jesus is the word of God.
¶53In John 1:1, In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God. The logos is not scripture, the logos is Jesus. Gore also [clears throat] believed that miracles are possible, and miracles have happened. So, in all of these things uh Lewis read Gore and followed Gore. >> So, so Lewis is not um what some people might call a fundamentalist on the one hand, but he's also not liberal.
¶54He doesn't just sort of deny the miracles of scripture uh on the other. Um >> Lewis absolutely denied being a fundamentalist. He said, I I I try to distance myself from this. >> Yeah, I remember reading um uh his chapter on scripture in Reflections on the Psalms and being quite shocked at how how blatant he is about this this point that he got from Charles Gore. He says, The human qualities of the raw materials show through, naivety, error, contradiction, even wickedness is not removed.
¶55>> Yes. >> Yeah. Yeah, so it's really really >> wickedness, naivety, and error in the Bible. >> Yeah. Uh Jody, I wonder sort of rounding off this introduction to considering whether, you know, Lewis is a theologian before we dive into some of uh the parts of his writings like his trilemma, like his Chronicles of Narnia.
¶56I wonder if you can sort of fill out his his sort of theological vision for us. Um are there other kind of theological influences on his writings? >> Yeah, I want to start by distinguishing like a vision from a more systematic philosophy. >> Mhm. >> Um and Lewis Lewis writes about this in an article, one of his literary articles, that a vision is kind of a collection of insights.
¶57It's not a systematic relationship between different propositions. So, when we're talking about vision, that's the way I think about Lewis, that he offers a theological vision. What does that mean? A collection of intuitions, insights. It's not very clear how they all hang together or how they relate to authors outside of his purview, but it's kind of a collection a sum of of of intuitions and insights.
¶58That's the way that I think about it. And um in terms of his theological vision, something that I'm working on and I hope if if he were to resurrect and I could ask him a question, I'd ask him, is my dissertation true? Like, could you please give my my forthcoming book a stamp of approval? Um because I see something in Lewis that I might describe as a synthesis um of like joy and sorrow that I find very interesting. So, he mentions the word >> Um >> tragicomic or tragicomedy at least 14 times in his writing and I've just tried to trace that out.
¶59I don't think it's the one key to unlock everything that we don't know about Lewis yet. >> Mhm. >> But I think it's a very interesting position and he describes God's relationship to humanity primarily as a drama, as an unfolding drama. And he'll say, I don't know if humanity is in the early acts of this drama or in the later acts, but I do but he said I do know God is dynamically interacting with humanity and he uses this metaphor of a drama and I think that's really interesting. It foreshadows later developments in theology um with Von Balthasar and Kevin J.
¶60Vanhoozer of Theo Drama is the is the position that I'm referring to. I think that's there's seeds of that in Lewis's theological vision that maybe the best way to describe God's relationship to humanity is through a dynamic drama, a kind of dance of redemption, if you will. Um and I think that's that's a that's a key part of it. So, it's not just here are some doctrines that we can lay out. It's God is drawing us to himself in a dynamic way um and I think that the best way to describe that drama is something like a tragicomedy where there's traces of tragedy wherever you go, but there's also this kind of overwhelming joy.
¶61Um so, it's not just one or the other. It's a very peculiar kind of dance where um both of these things interact. So, that's just one thing that I'd add to uh Lewis's theological vision. >> Uh and do you think that's that's one of the reasons why Lewis sort of didn't embark on um professional theology? I because I know you've written uh an essay which is open open access and I you know, invite everyone to read it.
¶62Um it's on sort of Lewis and his avoidance of professional theology and we'll we'll link it in the in the show description. I Is it that he doesn't want to sort of build a system of theology? Is Is there a kind of deliberate avoidance there of that kind of approach to theology? >> One thing that we have to that I'd keep in mind is the assumption that systematic theology is like inherently good um or at the top of the academic ladder. Like if Lewis was if Lewis was going to be a serious theologian, he'd be doing systematic theology.
¶63I think that's uh that's [clears throat] a questionable assumption. I think there are many different ways of doing theology. Lewis was probably aware of this. So, the idea that he needed a reason to avoid doing theology like Karl Bart, I'd want to question that a little bit. In one of his letters to somebody asking him, "Hey, I'm thinking about switching my career over to theology." Lewis advises him, "Continue on with your tent making." He says there's there's some very valuable reasons to keep your day job separate from professional theology.
¶64And Lewis goes into some of these reasons. Some of them are um you don't want to profane the sacred by making it a mundane matter. Like, there's something valuable about keeping your relationship with God separate uh from the tedium of adding footnotes to an article, going to a manuscript, going I love I love the Wade Center, going to the Wade Center, right? There should be something secret about this, and if that's what we reduce our relationship to God to, we might make a few different mistakes. Uh we might think that the spiritual the spiritual life is drier than it needs to be.
¶65It's just boring. I'm here stuck in an office pouring through these manuscripts of John Chrysostom or all these different or Charles Gore. Uh so, if you confuse those two things, that might actually have some spiritually harmful effects, right? >> Yeah. >> If you confuse them again, it might say, "Wow, look at me.
¶66If I'm an amazing theologian that everybody's talking about, that must mean I'm spiritually healthy. I must have a a vibrant relationship with God." Uh and Lewis just thought, "That's not the case. You could be the best-known theologian in the world and still kind of spiritually struggling or spiritually asleep." There's a few other reasons that my article goes through that I won't go into here. So, I I advise you viewers to read it. But, the claim that I do want to make is Lewis had reasons for not doing theology like the professionals.
¶67I think we overshoot that and the debate typically stops at recognizing that Lewis called himself an amateur, that he didn't describe himself as a real theologian. And oftentimes scholars behave like that just ends the debate. I want to take it one step further and say, why was C.S. Lewis doing that? Why did he call himself an amateur?
¶68I think he's just saying he's a lover of, you know, he's a lover of that he described his relationship to history this way. He said, "I'm an amateur historian." He loves history. So, the way that he's thinking about his own identity as a scholar is primarily as a lover. It's not primarily as someone whose head is full of so much knowledge that he needs to impart to others. It's primarily he's fallen in love with a set of questions, with a set of topics that he wants to share with the world.
¶69And professional theology um just wasn't part he he he didn't desire to be part of that inner ring. >> I want to dig a little bit deeper into Lewis's reading of scripture. And perhaps a good point would be his famous trilemma, which he presents in Mere Christianity. Um he says, "A man who was merely a man and said the sorts of these things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic, you know, akin to the man who thinks he's a poached egg, or else he would be the devil of hell.
¶70You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the son of God, or else a madman, or something else." So, Leslie, you've written quite a lot on the trilemma, and you haven't spared criticism of Lewis here in in the way that Lewis uses scripture to support this argument. Can Can you unpack some of the difficulties you have with the trilemma. >> I could talk about this for so long. >> [laughter] >> So, uh there is a lot there and for people who would like to dig into this more, again, I can point them to the book where you will get footnotes and exact quotations of scripture and so on.
¶71So, as a biblical scholar, uh I am looking at how Lewis uses the Bible to support his argument. Just by the way, Lewis's point in the argument comes down to the end where he says that someone who says these things cannot be a good moral teacher. I don't go there. I have read many articles by philosophers. This is a philosophical question.
¶72If someone says these things, can he be a good moral teacher? That's excellent for philosophers. I'm not a philosopher. I'm a biblical scholar. So, what he says is that Jesus goes about saying that he is God and I am quoting him exactly.
¶73The problem is and many of your many of the people in your audience are going to be very familiar with uh N.T. Wright. N.T. Wright agrees with me 100% on this or to put it better, I agree with N.T. Wright on this.
¶74He is my my senior. >> [laughter] >> So, N.T. Wright laid this out a long time ago. Uh this this particular statement, Jesus does not go about saying that he is God. There are four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
¶75Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels because they share a lot in common. They see things together. And John is not placed among the Synoptic Gospels because it sees things rather differently than the first three do. In the three Synoptic Gospels, Jesus never says he is God. In the Gospel of John, sometimes it looks like Jesus is saying that he is God.
¶76And frankly, among scholars of the Gospel of John, this is a huge argument. When Jesus is saying things like "The Father and I are one. When you have seen me, you have seen the Father." Is Jesus identifying himself with God or is he not? And I again, these arguments have gone on for a long time. They will go on for a long time.
¶77But, uh Lewis says that Jesus goes about saying that he was God. And when another apologist, whose name was Norman Pittenger, said, "Well, in the Synoptics, he does not." Which is absolutely true. Lewis said, "It doesn't matter." Mhm. And here is is where Lewis is just wrong. It does matter.
¶78It matters a lot. So, maybe uh we can go to does Jesus say he was the Son of God? Mhm. Other people say that Jesus is the Son of God in the Synoptic Gospels, but Jesus almost never does. Mhm.
¶79One of my main points is if Lewis is making an historical argument, he's saying Jesus went about saying this. This is an argument from history. And the only access we have to the words that the Jesus of history said about himself are the Gospels. And Jesus did not say what Lewis said he said, the argument falls apart. Mhm.
¶80So, uh there are lots of nuances here. Uh, and one of them is when Jesus said to the paralytic in the Gospel of Mark, for example, um, "Go, your sins are forgiven." There, Jesus is not saying I am God or Son of God, but according to Lewis's argument, um, Jesus is doing what only God can do, forgive the sins of another person who has not sinned against him. And here, too, N.T. Wright has a very, very cogent argument. And that is that lots of people in 1st century Judaism, which is where Jesus was, uh, Jesus died around the year 30 AD, so this is 1st century.
¶81Jesus was a Jew. Other people forgave sins, uh, who did not sin against them. For example, John the Baptist. John the Baptist's baptism was for repentance and forgiveness of sins, but N.T. Wright's argument is this, when Jesus said, "Your sins are forgiven," Jesus was not taking over the prerogatives of God, but that of the priests in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, who said exactly the same thing, "Your sins are forgiven," which is what God in Leviticus told the priests to say when people came to them.
¶82So, N.T. Wright had made this argument. Another biblical scholar, E.P. Sanders, uh, in the United States had made this argument. So, it's not that Jesus is saying that he is God here.
¶83He is using exactly the language that God told the Jewish priests to say when people came to them in the temple. So, according to N.T. Wright, the reason why the Jews around him are upset is not because Jesus is calling himself God, but because Jesus is putting himself in the role of a Jewish priest. Jesus is not born of a priestly family. He doesn't have that right.
¶84>> Jadiel, what do you make of those criticisms? I suppose on the one hand you've got this idea that divine claims are made in John's gospel, but John's gospel is really a different kettle of fish to the earlier >> [clears throat] >> synoptic gospels. But then also if you look in the synoptic gospels for those places where Jesus might be claiming to be divine and you sort of, you know, you take the sort of scholarly scalpel to them, that they don't actually seem to be revealing that. Do you think Lewis's trilemma still has some force today? >> Absolutely.
¶85I think this is a point where I I might disagree a little bit with Leslie and I never thought I'd utter the sentence N.T. Wright. >> [laughter] >> Um, [gasps] but you I'm the I'm the I mean, I'm the amateur here. I'm not a New Testament scholar. I read the Bible because I need the word of God to nourish me.
¶86I don't read it as a as a surgeon or as a, you know, I don't have that eye with the Bible. Um, but what I would want to say is something like make viewers aware of how contested this discussion is among scholars. >> Yes. >> among scholars. So, I think we need to be careful about I'm okay with saying Lewis got this wrong, but to say it he got it obviously universally wrong and there's no scholars that would support his interpretation.
¶87I would I would want to avoid that and I'm not saying Leslie is suggesting that at all, but if if viewers are thinking this, I would want to caution them from making that kind of the that kind of distinction. The way that I approach it >> in, Josh? >> go ahead, go ahead, yeah. >> Right here. Um in our discussion earlier before we started recording, I mentioned another biblical scholar whose name is Jason Staples.
¶88Uh Jason is also working on a book on C.S. Lewis and the Bible. And Jason if I dare say it, is a tad more conservative than I am. And uh Jason has said publicly he knows of no biblical scholar who accepts Lewis's argument for the liar, lunatic, lord, and I agree with him. Um maybe there's someone out there who does, but among biblical scholars, not among scholars of English or systematic theologians or whatever, um there there are none that I am aware of.
¶89>> So let me just ask a quick question. I'm not sure what you mean. Are you saying that there are no biblical scholars that think Jesus is unequivocally claiming to be God in the Gospel of John? Is that the specific claim you're >> The claim that I'm making is whether or not Lewis's formation of the liar, lunatic, or lord argument works. That's what I'm saying.
¶90>> Oh, okay. So, I will definitely disagree on that point. Not not maybe for different reasons. Um let's let's switch away from the messianic divinity claims, right? Let's just take a claim like you have to eat my flesh, right?
¶91Um he maybe he doesn't have to be God, Jesus doesn't have to be God to say that, but if he's saying uh hey, the only way you'll have eternal life is by consuming my flesh, and the audience kind of waits around and says you're joking, or this is metaphorical or symbolic, and then you know, many of his disciples abandon him. Uh I think you could still run the trilemma and say, "Listen, is this do you get the impression that this is somebody who's mentally stable that's walking around saying things like this?" And I would say, "Probably not." Um so, it's not just the the divinity claims. There might be other things that Jesus is saying that would have us question, "Is this a mentally sane person?" Um and I think one of the top >> Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead.
¶92>> Okay, I completely agree with you, particularly regarding the uh the discourse of Jesus in John 6. However, um when I address this in my book, I say all I can do is to look at the scripture verses that Lewis put forth to serve his argument. Um if Lewis did not put forth a Bible verse, I can't engage it because he didn't engage it. And in my chapter on this in my book, I say that there are other scripture passages that Lewis could have used and didn't that would make a much stronger case for his argument. You have just brought up one of them.
¶93>> Yeah. >> But, Lewis did not. So, that's why I say Lewis's form of the liar, lunatic, or lord argument. Um Lewis did not come up with this argument himself. It's very old.
¶94It's centuries old. It goes back to the Protestant Reformation. But, I make very clear that I am engaging only what Lewis said about this, and Lewis never brought that up or anything close to it. So, yes, I give you your point that if you were going outside Lewis's formulation of the argument. Excellent.
¶95Yeah, I agree with you totally. That a kind of person who would say unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will have no life within you. Uh man, yes. But Lewis never engages anything even close to that. >> Yeah, and so what I say is this is just part of charitable interpretation.
¶96This is This is what it means to a hermeneutic of charity is to say you have an argument, maybe it could be formulated a little uh strong a better more more more convincing way. Um so that's what I'm trying to do with Lewis. Maybe he appealed to different scripture passages. But um I don't think I'm straying too far from from his uh formulation. And I think this is just what being a charitable interpreter means.
¶97It's saying you you have this argument. Uh is there a way to patch it up and make it a bit stronger so we can decide does it work? Um That That's what I'm trying to do. And I would just want to say I'm still boggled by the idea. Lewis, I think for your argument to work you need you mentioned there's no biblical scholar you know of that would agree with premise one of the argument.
¶98Premise one is something like Jesus said that he was God. Is that right? Would you agree with that? >> about saying that he was God. Lewis said that he did it a lot.
¶99Um so it's not just once. It's throughout his ministry is what Lewis is saying. >> And you're and you you both of you and John, feel free to jump in here. Um you're saying that you don't know of a biblical scholar that would support that premise that Jesus went around claiming that he was God. Is that Is that the case?
¶100>> That's correct. >> I think the the only person I can think of um in recent scholarship is Brant Pitre who teaches at uh the University of Notre Dame. And he >> Brant and I students together. >> Uh incredible. So So he has he has written a book defending uh the idea that the historical Jesus claimed to be God.
¶101Um although admittedly, I think in the opening of that book, he says, you know, how how hugely that his his argument is being put uh up against the sort of the consensus of biblical scholarship. Um and that's sort of, you know, conser- even more conservative scholars uh usually don't make the claim that Jesus personally claimed um claimed to be divine. >> Even in the So I I I can grant that for the synoptics, but even in the Gospel of John, this is the case? >> Yeah. >> Well, as I >> but it's much more contested in the Gospel of John.
¶102>> Yeah. So it it it would usually be the idea that uh scholars might claim that Jesus is claiming to be divine in some sense in the Gospel of John, but then the Gospel of John is seen as a sort of a more theological work, um and therefore doesn't necessarily communicate to us, you know, the the life and ministry of the historical figure of Jesus. I think that's usually how the argument would go. >> Let me just say two more things and then I'll I'll pass it over. Um >> [clears throat] >> that boggles my mind.
¶103So I And I'm not a New Testament scholar, so it should boggle my mind. I'm very illiterate when it comes to New Testament um scholarship. Um so I I can grant that for the synoptics. For the Gospel of John, which is dated roughly 120, if I'm not mistaken, or it's it's really fascinating to me that scholars wouldn't even grant that in the Gospel of John, which is I think considered theologically way more sophisticated than something like Mark. Um but be that as it may, be that as it may, right?
¶104There are very good Well, let me rephrase that. This project of the historical Jesus project itself rest on some questionable assumptions that are just worth putting on the table. The idea that we can go back or where this project came from, right? The idea that we can go back and neatly carve out this historical person of Jesus that all these Christians have, you know, disregarded for hundreds of years. We can really have access to this historical Jesus in a pure way, in a way that doesn't reflect back to us our own biases.
¶105Uh in a way that we're not seeing our own reflection in this pond, right? That we can really access that Jesus and carve him out from these later interpretations. I'm not saying it's an invalid project. I just want to bring up that it's very it's contested in a way that um I think is very interesting and it certainly should temper the force of the conclusions that we want to make here. Let me add one last thing.
¶106If I were going to agree with Leslie, if I were going to agree with Leslie that the trilemma I don't want to say it doesn't work for biblical scholars. That's not my field. What the way that I would disagree with it, I don't want to. I think it's a very interesting take uh to say that Jesus if he's saying all these things about himself uh in an indirect way, so I don't expect Jesus to talk like Socrates. I don't expect him to talk like an analytic philosopher.
¶107He's obviously using indirect communication all the time. So, if you were going to say that he were like God in a way that wouldn't get him immediately killed, so if he needed at least 3 years of ministry, might this be the way that he goes about communicating this kind of claim? Maybe. I think I I don't have a problem accepting that. Um the way that I would disagree with Lewis is John, you mentioned which book you have in your office.
¶108The one I'm currently holding is Don Quixote de la Mancha by Cervantes. >> Ah. >> So, this is considered the first modern novel. Um, and it's about a story of this 50-year-old man who reads too many books and thinks he's he's a knight. And he's living in a world where this doesn't make any sense.
¶109So, in one sense he's deluded. He has false beliefs about himself. But, still throughout the novel we see uh, of course he causes harm, he hurts others. But, at the end of the novel people want to be sucked into the world of Don Quixote even though he's deluded. There's something admirable about this delusion, there's something didactic.
¶110It teaches us lessons about life, about what it means to be human. So, I wouldn't necessarily attack the first premise like Leslie has. In my in my uh, in my corner of things, I would say if Jesus is like Don Quixote or Don Quixote is like Jesus, there might be a way where he says these outrageous things about himself. >> Mhm. >> And nevertheless manages to be a great moral teacher.
¶111So, at least an exemplar that we could say, "Hey, we do want to imitate that even if technically um, what he said was not true." And I'm I'm I'm talking way too much and I'll I'll have you edit this later, uh, John. But, I think I also, um, believe that we're not just truth-seeking beings and Lewis knew this. We're also beauty-seeking creatures. There's something about beauty that draws us and attracts us. It's the via pulchritudinis, the way of beauty.
¶112And I think you can still see that in Jesus, right? Even if even if he did not claim to be God, even if he was not God, that's still one hell of a story that I want to participate in. This is uh, this is what Puddleglum teaches uh, in the in the silver chair, right? Even if there is no Narnia, even if there is no Aslan, that's still a better story than this underworld that we're stuck in. >> Mhm.
¶113>> There is sacred fiction as well as sacred fact. And I love reading fiction. And when I teach the historical Jesus in the terms of the 20th century quest that you alluded to, Jodrell, I ask them at the end, does it matter? Does it matter if we can determine what Jesus really said, what Jesus really did? And there are arguments and opinions and feelings on all sides of that.
¶114And I ask them not not too many of my students read fiction anymore, unfortunately, but there are at least several say, have you read a book that isn't true that means everything to you? And I have, and some of them still have. Let me get back to historical Jesus. I use the term historical Jesus, but I wasn't using it in terms of the quest. Both Grant Wacker and I studied under John Paul Meier, who arguably was one of the premier historical Jesus scholars of the 20th century going into the 21st.
¶115John Paul Meier dedicated his entire life, almost, to writing these huge volumes analyzing the scriptures on the basis of the criteria, um, this could be another conversation, the criteria that have been developed for saying whether Jesus said or did X or not. In the last decade, that kind of quest of the historical Jesus has been almost universally repudiated by New Testament scholars. They are saying exactly what you are saying, Jodiel. That it's it's impossible. You can't do it.
¶116Uh so New Testament scholarship, it I I think about my teacher Father Meyer, may he rest in peace. He died several years ago. Um and he gave a huge contribution to scholarship. But now they're saying that whole way of looking at it we just don't accept it anymore. So, when I said historical Jesus, what I meant was the Jesus who truly walked on Earth.
¶117The man. And in my book I say at the beginning of this chapter on the liar, lunatic, Lord argument, I am not going to engage historical Jesus scholarship at all. I am going to take the synoptics and the Gospel of John as what they say is true historically. And that's hard for a biblical scholar to do, but I did it because that's how I imagined many of my readers, especially those of C.S. Lewis, were going to be approaching the scriptures.
¶118And I wanted to put myself and them on the same level. I am not going to be parsing uh historical Jesus stuff. >> I want [snorts] to shift gears slightly and take a look at Lewis's fiction, um particularly the work that many people will know him for, which is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Because Leslie, you're much more appreciative of how the Bible is put to use in The Chronicles of Narnia uh than some of Lewis's non-fiction. What are the kinds of ways that scripture is showing up in The Chronicles of Narnia?
¶119>> There are multiple ways that scripture is showing up. First of all, there's just the general arc of the plot. Uh Uh, many people when they read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe see that Aslan is the Christ figure who is giving up his life for Edmund. He dies, he is resurrected, and uh, at the end of the book everyone lives happily ever after. Uh, though that doesn't really happen until the last battle, but uh, we we have the happy ending with the resurrection and restoration.
¶120Uh, the White Witch is defeated. So, lots of people see the general themes. Uh, then many people will want to look at Aslan more specifically as the Christ figure. For example, killed upon the stone table and the hordes of the evil creatures. Uh, you can look at them as symbolizing the devil and his demons and so on and so forth.
¶121I do something a little bit different in my treatment of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and the rest of the Chronicles. I am looking for more specific allusions and quotations of the Bible. Not big themes, but more specific words from the Bible. >> Fantastic. Do you want to give us just a a smash rig of some of those sort of quotations or allusions?
¶122>> Sure. I will give you one of my favorite ones. Uh, and as I was rereading The Chronicles of Narnia over and over again, teaching them to my students, and I I teach a course on C.S. Lewis quite regularly at the university, and I told them that I was working on this book, and I asked them, "If you see some allusions here, please bring them up to me, and if I have not already seen them, I will credit you in the book." Which I did two or three times. A couple of students over the years gave me some things.
¶123Uh, so I I was surprised at what I found as I read and reread and one of the things that I was most thrilled to see was that sometimes Lewis would take a single word. >> Mhm. >> And the word has dual meanings. So, for example, um the word good news. >> Mhm.
¶124>> In Greek the underlying Greek word, I'm going to pronounce it kind of in English, euangelion. We get the word evangelical from this word, evangelist, and so on. And in its original meaning, it just means good news. It was a common word that everybody used to say, "I've got good news. I'm announcing good news." And because Mark who was the first gospel writer said, "This is the good news of Jesus Christ." as the first line of his biography about Jesus, other biographies about Jesus were called gospels because you can take that word good news and translate it either as gospel or good news.
¶125And if you have a study Bible, which I require my students to have, if you read Mark 1:1, there's a little note above it and it says, "This word can be translated either as good news or gospel. Either one, take your pick." And when the children uh the the four siblings meet Mr. Beaver and Mr. Beaver says the word Aslan for the first time, the narrator says that it affected the children as if they had heard good news. >> Mhm.
¶126>> And I had never seen that before. >> Yeah. >> I'm like, Lewis is saying that the name of Aslan the children are being introduced to the gospel. >> Mhm. >> And of course, Lewis writing a children's book does not want to use the word gospel.
¶127>> Yeah. >> Many children would know the word gospel and it would turn them off right away. And here we get to his famous uh essay where he talks about past watchful dragons. Lewis said in an essay that he published in the New York Times uh right when the final Chronicle of Narnia was published, The Last Battle. The New York Times asked him to write a piece talking about what the Chronicles were.
¶128And he said, "Many children are forced by their elders to feel a certain way about God, to feel a certain way about religion." And he says it has the opposite effect. It tends to chill those feelings as opposed to making them feel what they ought. So, he says he is writing The Chronicles of Narnia to get past those watchful dragons. In other words, the feelings of suspicion and rebellion that any human being has being forced to feel a certain way. So, of course, Lewis is not going to use the word gospel, but he hides it in plain sight.
¶129And he does this multiple times in other books. Once I saw the one, I saw it jumping out in other places. So, many people who have written on The Chronicles of Narnia and the Bible have kind of looked at these overarching theological themes. >> Mhm. >> Atonement, resurrection, et cetera.
¶130I am looking at a much more granular level and seeing what pops out. >> That is so interesting and so subtle clever as well. Um, Jolly, I suppose some people when they find out later and he's he sort of smuggles this theology in so successfully that later when they find out that oh, it was really the the Christian story. I suppose some people could be a little bit annoyed, you know, they're like, oh, now you're you're now I realize that Lewis was preaching me that this whole time. Or on a more sort of literary level, they might say, oh, well, that was just kind of an allegory of the Bible or an allegory of the Gospels.
¶131Do you think that that's what Lewis thought he was doing? Was he just kind of allegorizing the Bible or was it something else? >> Uh, yeah, absolutely not. He makes it very clear that uh, Narnia is not an allegory. Rather, he calls it a supposal.
¶132Um, and he thinks if you want to get a taste of allegory, the very first book he published after his conversion was Pilgrim's Regress. It's an allegory of his conversion. And you'll see that the pattern there is from symbols to ideas or concepts that are the real thing. So, what really matters is not that the main character John is going through uh, these different wastelands and in search of this island. What matters is that here's a human being that is after joy or Sehnsucht or that life longing.
¶133So, it's That's what an allegory feels like. That's what it looks like. And that's a world away from the from what we get in Aslan and the Beavers and Lucy, Peter, Edmund, Susan. That's just a different kind of writing. And he calls it a supposal cuz he wants to say something like, well, let's suppose that Jesus was incarnate in a world of talking animals.
¶134What would that look like? And the importance is not in this abstract concept of Jesus, it's on the particular. Like, that's what really matters is the lion with his mane and this this a mixture of levity and gravity and Aslan and his effect on the children, that's what really matters, not this theological abstract doctrine that we might um tease out from that. So, he's very clear that he's not writing uh allegory. >> Mhm.
¶135>> I also want to just emphasize how important this is. I really love that Leslie brought up Past Watchful Dragons in in in his other uh text, Experiment in Criticism, he has a very quick line where he says, "Every time you ask somebody to review a text, it has the opposite effect. Uh it freezes the faculties," he says, "cuz now when you're reading a book, you're you have this pressure of having an opinion, not just an opinion, a clever opinion that will be validated by others." And he says, "This just gets in the way of good reading. Good reading," he says, "is stop, listen, get yourself out of the way, let the text encounter you as a text, try to hear its claim on you." Um that's what really good reading is, is to embed yourself, lose yourself almost in the world of this text. >> Mhm.
¶136>> So, I completely agree with Leslie's point that when you approach the Bible, it has so much what we might call expectation pressure. This is the word of God. Your salvation depends on how you relate to this logos, this text. Um that that's an awful lot of pressure. That's just a lot of pressure.
¶137And I think Lewis rightly suspected this might get in the way of just encountering Jesus, of encountering his drama of redemption and salvation in the scriptures. And I think that's where the value of Narnia uh comes in. I we can lose ourselves in the story. Later the theology might work itself out, but here is a fresh encounter with a supposal, what might Jesus be like in this other world? Uh no pressure.
¶138Don't it your salvation doesn't depend on whether you interpret Aslan correctly or not. And I think that's where the beauty and and the power really lies. >> I love that so much. Yes. Uh typically when one is reading a work of fiction unless one is a scholar of English, you know, having to analyze the text that way, it's relaxation.
¶139It's fun. It's joy, not in Lewis's definition of joy, but in the average definition of joy. Uh and you can immerse yourself in it. And I found when I was having to reread The Chronicles and analyze them, that part was not fun at all. Because I've been reading The Chronicles since I was about 10 years old and I have always read them for fun and to be immersed and going through them line by line like that was not very life-giving.
¶140And the image that always comes to mind for me and did from the the moment I began studying the scriptures as opposed to reading the scriptures for my own spiritual development was from T. S. Eliot's poem Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, one of my favorite poems in high school and I went, "Wow, the Bible is becoming a patient etherized upon a table." I am the one who is looking at it and subjecting it to things. And Lewis was absolutely correct that instead of the I-Thou relationship that a Christian, a Jew, Muslim with their sacred texts should have, it's it's an odd thing.
¶141And as a biblical scholar, I have to flip back and forth between there as I imagine a scholar of English literature would need to do with enjoying as opposed to contemplating uh their their particular text. >> And I'm just really interested, Leslie, and maybe you can also share your opinion, Jody-Ann, how you do this, but I wonder how do you actually go to the text as someone who is sort of studying this professionally? How How would you sort of keep it alive? Because I I suppose many people who are watching this show might be Christians or maybe they're people who are interested in the Bible principally as a sort of you know, academic source or a historical source. So, what does that actually look like in practice?
¶142Cuz I think that's the experience of a lot of people in the modern world is that, you know, as you quote Wordsworth in your book, we murder to dissect. You know, we are [laughter] constantly analyzing and it's difficult to switch off. How How would you personally Do you have any advice for how we might go about doing that? >> I don't know if I have any advice because I am someone deep in the struggle with this. So, for example, as I go to church every Sunday and hear the readings from the lectionary, um what I will try to do is I will read the Hebrew scripture reading and the Psalm in Hebrew before church and then I will read the Gospel in Greek before church because if I don't do that before church, all I'm doing is sitting there in the pew wondering if the translation is good.
¶143>> [laughter] >> Yeah. >> So, [gasps] I'm trying to fend that off by getting it out of the way so that when I am in church, not as a biblical scholar, but as a Christian in a pew, a layperson, I can just let it sink in rather than trying to analyze it because I've already gotten the the analyzing out of the way. >> Yeah. >> That's one thing. >> Maybe that's a really good solution to one of, you know, Lewis's concerns with professional theology, that you're always going to be dissecting.
¶144Uh Jardiel, do you have anything to add to that? >> This is the million-dollar question for me. Um and I find myself like Leslie, even when I don't want to dissect a sermon, I can't help myself often times, and it's not life-giving. It is not It's almost never life-giving. >> Mhm.
¶145>> It's always um I would have done this differently, or the pastor could have used this better verse. And that's just an awful way to be. And this is part Like you said, John, this is part of what Lewis was trying to warn um people in his correspondence was if you take this path of the learned life in theology, if you if you take that on, it's almost like a cross. Like we are going to be at a disadvantage in many important spiritual areas, but this is part of the cross that we have to bear as academics, as intellectuals. Uh it's a kind of handicap, if you might, that we It's just part of our profession, it's part of our life.
¶146It's part of the way that we honor God, I think. Uh I don't think God sees us any less or pities us or anything, but it is important to be aware that that's one of the besetting temptations that we might fall into. I think what Leslie suggested is really valuable, trying to defamiliarize ourselves with the text that we've been dissecting. If you're bilingual, you can do this by reading in the other language, right? So I normally read in English.
¶147Um sometimes I'll read the Bible in Spanish, and it'll It's the same It's the same thing. But using a different language, using a different medium, can help me uh rediscover some of those things that have been lying in plain sight all along. And I would just want to say to all the viewers, this isn't just another topic that we're covering. This is, I think, of the utmost spiritual importance. If you really want to connect with the God, getting this right, learning when to turn off uh or as Marilyn Robinson said, gag the commentator that's always inside of our brains talking, analyzing, dissecting, uh we need to practice saying um you can go read a book, go to the library.
¶148Right now, it's it's time to receive from God cuz God has something for me that that God needs me to hear at this moment. And it's really important. And that takes practice. It takes charity instead of suspicion. It takes being open to receive from God.
¶149And that's not something that's not just a new idea, right? I love the saying, we don't think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking. Mhm. Um I think that's what's going on here is that we just need to practice abiding, living in such a way where Jadiel, the scholar, the dissector, right? He can relax for a bit.
¶150Right now, I just want to be in the presence of God and hear from God and receive from God. Um so, there isn't a neat answer that will fix this for everybody, but I think it is something that takes practice. And I think people have will find will discover for themselves different ways of doing this. >> And I wonder whether writing something like The Chronicles of Narnia is one of those ways that it helps us to switch off. We're not sort of thumbing our way through a systematic We're reading a fairy tale.
¶151Um and I wonder whether there is some the fact that he wrote Supposal or he wrote a fairy tale, is there some sort of particular significance in that? Is there Was there a sense that Lewis thought there's no other way to communicate what I'm trying to communicate than to write a story? That it can't be expressed in any other sort of propositional form. Leslie, I'd be interested to hear your take on that. >> All right.
¶152Throughout our conversation here, from the beginning, I have been thinking that Lewis wrote what he wanted to write. No more. >> Yeah. >> Uh he wrote a lot. He was one of those people who could not stop himself from writing.
¶153Uh he had a block a couple of times. Uh I remember when at almost at the end of his life when Joy was still alive. Uh Joy wrote someone saying, "You know, Jack doesn't know what he's going to do right now. So, we both put down a couple of whiskeys each and threw out some ideas." >> [laughter] >> Uh but most of the time, he had so much to write that he just could not stop writing. And he would refuse to engage in some forms of academic literary criticism because they just didn't interest him.
¶154>> Mhm. >> So, my I looked a lot at why Lewis wrote The Chronicles, and he said slightly different things every time he wrote about it. Um one of the things he said was that he just had images in his head. And the images kept coming back to him. >> Mhm.
¶155>> at one point, he said, "Then this lion jumped in, and it all came together." So, I don't think that is as a matter of fact, he even said, "I did not sit down saying, 'I have Christian truths that I want to get across to children.' It all started with an image. So, >> Yeah. >> he seemed to get these images. Uh if you read his letters, this comes up over and over again. And he was such a natural-born writer that he just started in with them.
¶156>> And I think that's one of Lewis's great pieces of advice to people who would write to him. When they asked him, you know, "What should I do my life, and what should I write?" He said, "Write what you enjoy writing, write what you're passionate about and you're interested in." We have uh Leslie and Jerry, we'll run out of time, but it's been such an honor uh to speak with you both about Lewis as a reader of scripture and as a theologian. Thank you so much for coming on Unbelievable. >> Thank you so much for the invitation. >> Thanks, John.
¶157This was This was a great.