Posted on 11/29/2004 12:50:35 PM PST by Mr. Silverback
C. S. Lewis was born on this date in 1898, and forty-one years after his death, one thing has become startlingly clear: This Oxford don was not only a keen apologist but also a true prophet for our postmodern age.
For example, Lewis’s 1947 book, Miracles, was penned before most Christians were aware of the emerging philosophy of naturalism. This is the belief that there is a naturalistic explanation for everything in the universe.
Naturalism undercuts any objective morality, opening the door to tyranny. In his book The Abolition of Man, Lewis warned that naturalism turns humans into objects to be controlled. It turns values into “mere natural phenomena”—which can be selected and inculcated into a passive population by powerful Conditioners. Lewis predicted a time when those who want to remold human nature “will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique.” Sounds like the biotech debate today, doesn’t it?
Why was Lewis so uncannily prophetic? At first glance he seems an unlikely candidate. He was not a theologian; he was an English professor. What was it that made him such a keen observer of cultural and intellectual trends?
The answer may be somewhat discomfiting to modern evangelicals: One reason is precisely that Lewis was not an evangelical. He was a professor in the academy, with a specialty in medieval literature, which gave him a mental framework shaped by the whole scope of intellectual history and Christian thought. As a result, he was liberated from the narrow confines of the religious views of the day—which meant he was able to analyze and critique them.
Lewis once wrote than any new book “has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages.” Because he himself was steeped in that “great body of Christian thought,” he quickly discerned trends that ran counter to it.
But how many of us are familiar with that same panorama of Christian ideas “down the ages”? How many of us know the work of more than a few contemporary writers? How, then, can we stand against the destructive intellectual trends multiplying in our own day?
The problem is not that modern evangelicals are less intelligent than Lewis. As Mark Noll explains in his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, the problem is that our sharpest intellects have been channeled into biblical scholarship, exegesis, and hermeneutics. While that is a vital enterprise, we rarely give the same scholarly attention to history, literature, politics, philosophy, economics, or the arts. As a result, we are less aware of the culture than we should be, less equipped to defend a biblical worldview, and less capable of being a redemptive force in our postmodern society—less aware, as well, of the threats headed our way from cultural elites.
You and I need to follow Lewis’s lead. We must liberate ourselves from the prison of our own narrow perspective and immerse ourselves in Christian ideas “down the ages.” Only then can we critique our culture and trace the trends.
The best way to celebrate Lewis’s birthday is to be at our posts, as he liked to say—with renewed spirits and with probing and informed minds.
Just shows how low we've fallen when we go from arguing about birth control to whether partial birth abortion ought to be illegal. Also demonstrates the truth of the slippery slope argument, which is why I've become something of a staunch conservative, paleo in some ways. Abortion at any time should be illegal because it has been proven that people can't handle the power. It leads to widespread infanticide, and that's genocide by another name.
The thing that makes it not Puritan but something far worse is that their outrage is selective. Therefore tobacco smoking is a capital offense but marijuana smoking (arguably more deadly) is to be encouraged and legalized. And don't even get me started on pole smoking.
We use one that is ostensibly religious, but so far it's background stuff, like every once in a while there'll be a question in a science book about "Who made the Earth" or something like that.
One thing's for sure, Lewis and those who inspired him will be in the curriculum as they get older.
If you've not read him, he sounds like some airy professor, but once you have, he's like a favorite uncle in a corduroy jacket with patches on the elbows who smokes his pipe and tells lovely stories. I've never read another author who can take the topic of Christianity and be so increadibly readable. Even "Mere Christianity" which is a series of radio lectures, compels the reader to turn the page. Stories like the "Great Divorce" (with its Celestial Omnibus) and "The Screwtape Letters" will never leave you.
Indeed... do read Lewis.
All analgesics.
I gave this answer last time you raised this invalid argument, and will continue to do so until you admit your error.
Yes, Lewis does fall into the trap of Randian-style didacticism at times.
Thanks.
Analgesics are employed to reduce the detrimental symptoms of injury. Injury represents bodily disorder. This use of drugs is categorically different from using drugs with the primary purpose of hampering or destroying the body's proper operation.
Pain serves a genuine purpose. It alerts us to injury. Once we understand that we are injured, we may use drugs to reduce pain while we simultaneously guard against further aggravating the injury and work toward removing the cause of the pain. This is the proper function of medicine.
Just found his website: www.peterkreeft.com
I didn't even know he had a website.
Just reading the "Introduction" (where he talks about the little boy at the beach and ends up talking about how great God's love is) reminds me of how much I admire Kreeft's mind -- and his desire and ability to use it in God's service.
If you ever have the opportunity to hear this man speak -- go.
The proper operation of the nervous system is to transmit signals, including pain signals, to the brain. Analgesics destroy this proper operation. QED.
Pain serves a genuine purpose. It alerts us to injury. Once we understand that we are injured, we may use drugs to reduce pain
By the same argument, once we have had our desired number of offspring (whether than number be zero or twenty), we may use drugs to maintain that status.
paul:
It was one of the ways of thinking that was condemned and later collated with other condemnations into what became known as The Syllabus of Errors. It is an error. As you can see that error is listed under: "PANTHEISM, "NATURALISM" AND ABSOLUTE RATIONALISM"
If Catholics were taught properly they would know that we cannot be one with God here on earth because God is a spirit infinitely perfect. They would learn about the Trinity, ie one God in three Divine Persons, a mystery we cannot fully understand. We humans are His creation, far from being infinitely perfect, nor can we create from nothing, nor do we know all, nor can we be everywhere at once.
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