New Publications Relating to C. S. Lewis

Joel Heck, Professor of Theology at Concordia University, Texas, has served us again by publishing rare materials relating to C. S. Lewis. In 2008 he published The Personal Heresy: A Controversy. And now he has published the Socratic Digest (Concordia University Press, 2012), a digest of the biannual publication of the meetings of the Socratic Club at Oxford from 1943 to 1952. Lewis was a regular part of this club and seven of his essays are included, plus other Lewis-related interactions.

Here is an excerpt from the preface to help you know what you will find.

With the reprinting of the Socratic Digest, one more major document in Lewisiana becomes available to the general public. . . .

For those, especially, who want to read the actual essay that Elizabeth Anscombe presented in response to Chapter 3 of C. S. Lewis’ 1947 book Miracles or who want to understand better the context in which Lewis wrote seven of his essays, some of which appear in different format than as they were later published, the Socratic Digest will provide that. For those who want to read the response of Unitarian Nicol Cross to Lewis’ chapter in Mere Christianity, “The Shocking Alternative,” this Digest provides that response. For those who want to know the issues of the day in Oxford during the 1940s, particularly for the Christian faith, the Socratic Digest is the answer. For those who want to read the notes taken on Charles Williams’ argument in the first issue that free love is neither free nor love, the Socratic Digest provides it. For those who want to enjoy the give-and-take between H. H. Price and C. S. Lewis on the topic of a minimal religion or the importance of theism, this is where one will find that argument, and in the reading one will see the same Lewis who later proposed similar arguments in Miracles. Those who want to anticipate Lewis’ inaugural lecture at Cambridge will enjoy his statement, “Almost I’d sooner be a pagan suckled in a creed outworn” (164), or this one, “When grave persons express their fear that England is relapsing into Paganism, I am tempted to reply, ‘Would that she were’” (229).

Thanks are to Joel Heck for the kind of scholarly work that continues to fill the widening reservoir of “Lewisana.”

Remember to Breathe

One of the worst aspects of suffering is the way it tends to isolate. When great storms of suffering overtake us, our sense of loneliness can become overwhelming. As the clouds close in, we may lose sight of everything but our suffering, making it loom larger and larger. With profound suffering, we may think that no one else has ever suffered as much.

I have been partially paraplegic since I was 17, with very limited use of my legs. I’m now 62. A few years ago when my walking worsened, my doctor suggested that I see a physical therapist for the first time in almost forty years. Often, when she has just asked me to do something difficult and I’m straining really hard to do it, she’ll say, “Breathe!”

Of course, I’m not the only one who needs to hear that (women in labor and athletes must be urged to breathe). But sufferers often need the same reminder.

Losing perspective in suffering is stifling; it is like forgetting to breathe. More particularly, we Christians can forget that we are never alone, no matter what we are undergoing, because God is with us, just as he was with those saints who have been in similar straits before. Sometimes we are especially prone to forget when we are dealing with some chronic disability of our own or of one of our loved ones that seems to just be going on and on, with no end in sight. We need then, especially, to be reminded to breathe in the word that God has breathed out for us (2 Timothy 3:16–17).

The Scriptures record a lot of suffering because God’s people have never been free of it, not even from the kinds and degrees that can overwhelm God’s most stalwart saints. Indeed, when Job’s suffering seemed to him to be neverending, he actually accused God of keeping him from catching his breath (see Job 9:18, NLT). Yet his story finally conveys that, as awful as his situation was, much of what he needed to hear was something like this: “Breathe! Don’t panic! Slow yourself down! Don’t take everything to be as it seems. And don’t irrationally conclude that things will never get better.”

In other words, even one of the Old Testament’s greatest believers needed some breathing lessons.

The Crux of History

Human history swings on the hinge of a Palestinian Jew. They can call it “Common Era” if they wish, but every event known to man is recorded as occurring (approximately) before or after the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.

And no single event in recorded history is more influential than his execution. Because of Jesus’s death nearly 2,000 years ago, over 2 billion people now call themselves Christians. Most statisticians agree that over 100,000 are killed every year because they take that name.

Why? Why is Jesus’s death so influential? And why are a million people killed in a decade because Jesus was killed?

Why is precisely the right question to ask. Everything hangs on why Jesus died.

The world thinks he died because he threatened the political establishment. But that is not what Jesus believed. When Pilate flexed his governing muscles, Jesus was unimpressed, saying, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above” (John 19:11). Here’s what Jesus believed:

I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. (John 10:17–18)

But why did he believe he had to lay his life down? His answer: "I lay down my life for the sheep" (John 10:15). What does that mean? That’s the most important question to ask about the most influential event in human history.

And the most clear, concise, concentrated Biblical answers to that question (that I’m aware of) are collected in John Piper’s 122 page book, Fifty Reasons Jesus Came to Die. This is one of those rare books that can be read as a devotional by Christians of all maturity levels, and given to non-Christians as a clear explanation of the gospel. Each chapter is only two pages long, but meditation on each could go on for days. The book could be a small group study for a year, or a lunch hour office study for a month. Numerous churches give it to visitors on Sunday mornings and many folks have given them as gifts to family and friends at Christmas.

Because the content of this book is so important, we want to help you read it and give it away. You can purchase it or read it free here, or if you want to give a bunch away, go here to purchase cases (48 copies) inexpensively ($1.65 per copy).

Humans are reconciled to God by Jesus’s death (Romans 5:10) or not at all. That’s why his death is so influential and why it is so violently opposed.

The cross is the crux of history because it’s the crux of the gospel.

The Deeper You Walk, the Hungrier You Get

When you take your stand on the finished work of God in Christ, and begin to drink at the River of Life and eat the Bread of Heaven, and know that you have found the end of all your longings, you only get hungrier for God. The more satisfaction you experience from God, while still in this world, the greater your desire for the next. For, as C. S. Lewis said, "Our best havings are wantings."

The more deeply you walk with Christ, the hungrier you get for Christ . . . the more homesick you get for heaven . . . the more you want "all the fullness of God" . . . the more you want to be done with sin . . . the more you want the Bridegroom to come again . . . the more you want the Church revived and purified with the beauty of Jesus . . . the more you want a great awakening to God's reality in the cities . . . the more you want to see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ penetrate the darkness of all the unreached peoples of the world . . . the more you want to see false worldviews yield to the force of Truth . . . the more you want to see pain relieved and tears wiped away and death destroyed . . . the more you long for every wrong to be made right and the justice and grace of God to fill the earth like the waters cover the sea.

If you don't feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great. God did not create you for this. There is an appetite for God. And it can be awakened. . . . (A Hunger for God, 23)

The Great Story and the Single Verse

In my neck of the Christian woods, words like narrative, meta-narrative, story, storyline, biblical theology, and big picture abound. I would like to sound a note that may encourage some who, like me, may wonder how this language works to build faith in the human heart.

First, I affirm the common-sense hermeneutical principle that in any message, or essay or poem or novel or scene from a movie or conversation or psalm or gospel or epistle or chapter or verse, it is the parts that give existence to the whole, and the whole that gives meaning to the parts. 

The word “boy,” does not have much meaning. “The boy in the corner,” has more meaning. “Feed the boy in the corner,” has even more. “Feed the boy in the corner with the word of God,” makes the meaning clearer. Without this “whole” (sentence) the meaning of the “part” (feed) would not be clear. And yet it is parts that create the whole. Both parts and whole are crucial for meaning to be transferred from one mind to another.

So I rejoice at every effort to see the big picture of the Bible. The whole story. The narrative from creation to consummation. The clearer the whole, the clearer the parts. And the more clearly we see the parts, the more accurately we will construe the whole.

But here’s the note I want to sound. Not only should the particulars of the Bible be seen in relation to the larger storyline of the Bible, but we should also realize that the story exists to reveal the particulars of God and his ways. And those particular glories of God are seen and enjoyed not mainly by gazing over the whole dazzling landscape of redemptive history, but by focusing on some particular thing God did or said inside the story.

For example, Isaiah 41:10 is a particular promise that has sustained me hundreds of times. (“Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”) I would argue that the whole of Isaiah exists so that I might have that kind of faith-sustaining personal encounter with its particular parts.

Yes, Isaiah is a magnificent whole, and, yes, it fits magnificently into redemptive history for the sake of Christ and his kingdom. But if its particulars do not stun us and gladden us and strengthen our faith and increase our hope and intensify our worship, the big picture will have been in vain. I think, in God’s design, the prophecy of Isaiah exists as a whole, and in its relation to the history of redemption so that its particular promises might be known and loved and trusted by me a Gentile, because of the mystery of Christ.

In profound ways, the whole Bible — the whole of redemptive history — exists to create a place and time and meaning where particular, individual, finite humans can encounter its stunning parts. The parts make up the whole, and so serve the whole. They would have no meaning and no beauty without the whole. But it is just as important to say that the whole exists to give place and time and meaning to the parts so that the parts can be known and experienced and enjoyed.

Most of us simply cannot hold the “whole” — the whole Bible, the whole book, or even the whole chapter — in our minds fully enough or steadily enough to feel our joy rising from its fullness. We read it. We gaze on the grand landscape. But it is this particular promise, this particular act of God, this particular warning, this particular turn of providence, that penetrates most deeply and awakens faith and joy and hope.

A beatitude, a line from Romans 12, a promise in Psalm 23, a warning in Hebrews 3, a miracle in Mark 1 — these are the places where our hearts are broken with contrition or leap with joy.

I recognize that people differ in which aspects of God’s glory move them. Some can hold in their minds a large, sweeping terrain of wonder. I don’t have that gift. Jesus manifests himself to me in the particulars. Granted, these particulars would have no wonder or glory if they were not part of something vastly greater. But it is this particular promise at this particular point in history, this particular time in this particular place that does its Christ-exalting work.

One implication of this for pastors would be that we love both. The big picture and the small brushstrokes. And as we open the whole counsel of God, and the whole story of redemption, let us glory in the brightness of the whole, and make the parts glow like a white-hot filament in a light bulb.

The Greatest Enemy of Our Hunger for God

Christian fasting is not only the spontaneous effect of a superior satisfaction in God; it is also a chosen weapon against every force in the world that would take that satisfaction away.

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18-20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.

Jesus said some people hear the word of God, and a desire for God is awakened in their hearts. But then, "as they go on their way they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life" (Luke 8:14). In another place he said, "The desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful"(Mark 4:19). "The pleasures of this life" and "the desires for other things"—these are not evil in themselves. These are not vices. These are gifts of God. They are your basic meat and potatoes and coffee and gardening and reading and decorating and traveling and investing and TV-watching and Internet-surfing and shopping and exercising and collecting and talking. And all of them can become deadly substitutes for God. (A Hunger for God, Crossway, 1997)

On November 2–3 in Minneapolis John Piper will be leading a seminar on A Hunger for God. This is a free event and we'd love to have you join us!

What Happened at Vatican II (And How to Pray 50 Years Later)

It was fifty years ago today that Roman Catholicism launched what many consider to be the most ambitious of its 21 ecumenical councils. Called the Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, the three-plus-year series of gatherings began under Pope John XXIII on October 11, 1962, and concluded under Pope Paul VI on December 8, 1965. Half a century later, Vatican II remains the most recent of Catholicism’s official worldwide councils.

For those of us younger than 50, all we’ve experienced of Roman Catholicism, whether from within or without, comes to us through the lens and practices of Vatican II. It’s an important reality to be aware of as we try to make sense of the (appropriately) deep rift between Protestants and Catholics on many central issues, and as we learn to get over our chronological snobbery and become aware of the full history of the church in her first fifteen centuries, and her unusual last half millennium.

In October 1958, Italian cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was elected pope at the age of 77. Ascending to the papacy at such an old age, he was expected to be a mere caretaker and bridge the short gap to the next ecclesiastical head. But less than three months into office, in January of 1959, he surprised many by calling for the convening of an ecumenical council. Over two years of formal preparations went into launching the meetings on October 11, 1962. It was the first council to be called in almost a century (Vatican I ended in 1870), and only the third since the Reformation (the Council of Trent spanned 1545 to 1563).

Many have summarized the core purpose of the council as adapting Roman Catholicism to the modern world. Summoning and beginning the council proved to be John XXIII’s most significant work as pope, as he died midway through the council on June 3, 1963.

Vatican II brought some major changes to the Roman church. Most obvious were changes in the mass, which had been said in Latin, with priest facing away from the congregation, often speaking quietly (even mumbling). It was impersonal at best, and for most, not understandable.

After the council, the feel of the mass changed drastically. It now was to be conducted in the language of the people, and participation was encouraged in new ways, with new possibilities granted for music and singing, and women allowed into upfront roles as readers, lectors, and Eucharistic ministers, as well as altar servers in some places (though some bishops and priests still discourage it). The sweeping reforms also included no longer forbidding Catholic attendance at Protestant services or reading from a Protestant Bible.

Another major course correction was Catholicism’s orientation on the Jewish people and non-Catholics. According to Catholic author Greg Tobin, this was

one of the most important theological and global breakthroughs, in terms of what came out of Vatican II. The church radically changed its position on the teaching about Jews, and really opened up to dialogue with the Jewish community; and encouraged — and demanded — that Catholics not consider the Jews as “other” or enemy but in fact, as brothers and sisters under the same God. And it was a monumental shift in the position of the church, and in the teachings of the church. So it was a sea change, in terms of the Catholic Church.

Vatican II aimed to produce not only a very different experience of the mass, but also a repositioning of the church in relation to the modern world. But many have wondered, despite all the felt flashpoints of change, whether it hasn’t proved to be much more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Evangelicals should be careful to not assume that Vatican II changed more than it did. Shortly after the release of the council’s official documents (which you can read for yourself here), Reformed theologian and author Loraine Boettner, who lived through Vatican II and watched it with a careful eye, provided his perspective on the council’s effects (and lack thereof) in the preface of his book Roman Catholicism. Vatican II, he said,

repeated the claim that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true church, although it did recognize that other churches contain some elements of truth. . . . Pope John XXIII, who called the first session, and Pope Paul VI, who presided over the later sessions (as well as several prominent cardinals and theologians), took care to emphasize that no changes would be made in the doctrinal structure of the Church. However, Pope Paul did promulgate one new doctrine, which asserts that “Mary is the Mother of the Church.” The primary purpose of the Council was to update the liturgy and administrative practices and so to make the Church more efficient and more acceptable to the 20th century world.

Note the added italics: “no changes . . . in the doctrinal structure of the Church.” Boettner continues,

On previous occasions, Rome has changed her tactics when old methods became ineffective, but she has never changed her nature. In any religious organization, doctrine is the most basic and important part of its structure, since what people believe determines what they do. An official document, “The Constitution on the Church” prepared by the Council and approved by the Pope, reaffirms basic Catholic doctrine precisely as it stood before the Council met. . . . .

[I]f the Roman Catholic Church were reformed according to scripture, it would have to be abandoned. But the gross errors concerning salvation still remain. Moreover, the Council did nothing toward removing the more than 100 anathemas or curses pronounced by the Council of Trent on the Protestant churches and belief.

Boettner concluded that Vatican II

makes it abundantly clear that Rome has no intention of revising any of her basic doctrine, but only of updating her methods and techniques for more efficient administration and to present a more attractive appearance. This is designed to make it easier for the Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant churches to return to her fold. There is no indication that she has any intentions of entering into genuine give-and-take church unity negotiations. Her purpose is not union, but absorption. Church union with Rome is strictly a one-way street. The age-old danger that Protestantism has faced from the Roman Church has not diminished; in fact, it may well have increased. For through this less offensive posture and this superficial ecumenicism, Rome is much better situated to carry out her program of eliminating opposition and moving into a position of world dominance. An infallible church simply cannot repent.

Strong words, but a helpful perspective from a thoughtful evangelical contemporary of the council. Whether you consider Boettner’s concerns to be warranted or overstated, they should give today's evangelicals some pause about being too optimistic about what happened in the reforms of Vatican II.

While Boettner may be wise to caution us about the increased danger facing the Protestant cause, in some sense, because of Vatican II, here are a couple other takeaways, from a more hopeful angle, for evangelical thankfulness and prayer.

First, we can be thankful that Vatican II finally freed Catholicism from the tyranny of Latin. It is tremendously sad to think of centuries of non-Latin-speaking Catholics sitting through a lifetime of masses, in which the Christian Scriptures were being read, but were not able to be understood, even at a surface level, in one’s own language. By and large (despite the apocryphal additions), the Catholic Church has the Christian Scriptures and reads from them in the mass.

Also, Vatican II has produced a heightened emphasis on Catholics reading the Scriptures for themselves. Despite the church’s official doctrine and formal teaching, many Catholics have been born again through the hearing of the gospel through the public and private reading of the Scriptures. It is no small thing that the Scriptures are now read in the language of the people, rather than the traditional Latin. It’s bittersweet, but this is something we evangelical Protestants can be thankful for.

Finally, here’s one way, among many, to pray for Catholics. Pray that God would be pleased to use this hearing and reading of the Scriptures to give new birth in the pews and among the cloth. It is a powerful thing to have the word of God, and to read it in the language of the people, and commend it for further study. May God be pleased to use even the needle of truth in a haystack of error, to draw to his Son all sorts of ecclesiastically baptized unbelievers, whether formally Catholic or Protestant, or none of the above.

Let’s not only consider what Jesus might say to Rome, but also pray for the church in general, and especially the particular Catholics we know. It's amazing what God often chooses to do through prayed-up, gracious, gospel-pointing conversations.