George MacDonald and C. S. Lewis (7)

 

 

From C. S. Lewis’s Preface to the MacDonald Anthology:

 

“It must be more than thirty years ago that I bought – almost unwillingly, for I had looked at the volume on that bookstall and rejected it on a dozen previous occasions – the Everyman edition of Phantastes. A few hours later I knew that I had crossed a great frontier…Nothing was at the that time further from my thoughts than Christianity…I was only aware that if this new world was strange, it was also homely and humble; that if this was a dream, it was a dream in which one at least felt strangely vigilant; that the whole book had about it a sort of cool, morning innocence…”

 

“What it actually did to me was to convert, even to baptize…my imagination. It did nothing to my intellect nor (at that time) to my conscience. Their turn came far later and with the help of many other books and men. But when the process was complete…I found that I was still with MacDonald and that he had accompanied me all the way and that I was now at last ready to hear from him much that he could not have told me at that first meeting.”

 

“But in a sense, what he was now telling me was the very same that he had told me from the beginning.”

 

What do you see in Lewis’s words? What do you perhaps see in Lewis? What do you identify with? Is there anything utterly foreign to you?

 

Do you have long-term relationships with authors who have lived before your time? Is there a man or women, who lived before your time, whose writing has spoken to you in Christ in a profound way?

 

I emphasize “lived before your time”, or perhaps mostly before you time (such in my case C. S. Lewis), because while contemporary authors have their place (I hope!), those who have gone before us have stood the challenge of time, their words have been tested. Often people who lived outside of our own time and immediate culture have more to say to us of lasting value than we have to say to one another – we can lack perspective because of our attention on the immediate and its pressures. Naturally the Bible is the best example of this because the Bible is transcendent – the Word of God is alive in Christ ever and always.

 

Lewis’s idea of crossing a frontier is prominent in his writing and his experience and we will explore that in the next reflection (the Lord willing), but right now I’d like us to think about Lewis’s imagination being baptized and converted.

 

In The Abolition of Man Lewis wrote of “men without chests.” What does our imagination do with this image? Do we see men literally without chests? Or do we see beyond words? Do we see into the words? Do the words “men without chests” help us to “see” a condition of humanity, especially Western humanity?

 

Mankind is abolished when our hearts and souls are stripped from us, when they are educated and programmed out of us, when notions of righteousness and goodness and truth and beauty and courage are exterminated within us. Mankind is abolished when our God-given imaginations are either silenced or perverted.

 

What do I mean when I ask, “Do we see men literally without chests?” Of course I mean “physically without chests.” But what does Lewis mean from a literary point of view? He certainly doesn’t mean “physically”. Lewis is giving us a literary image that he wants us to explore using our imaginations in conjunction with our intellects and consciences.

 

Prior to his conversion, Lewis struggled with the tension between materialistic atheism and the sense that there must be something more than what the eye can see or that can be proved by scientific experiment. Lewis could not shake the sense that there are such things as goodness, truth, and beauty – and evil and despair; that there are things “other” than the material.

 

Imagination is seeing beyond what is seen, it is also a bringing into conceptual existence, it is also visualizing the words we hear and read. Perhaps imagination has more facets, it certainly does not have less. Perhaps we are the closest to our Creator when we participate in holy imagination. Does not Paul teach us to look at the things that are unseen, rather than the things that are seen? (2 Cor. 4:18). Did not Moses “see” Him who is invisible? (Heb. 11: 27).

 

When Jesus speaks of His being the Light of the world, the Bread of Life, eating His flesh and drinking His blood, being the Resurrection, destroying “this temple,” – can we hear and see and read these words, can we hear His Voice – without imagination?

 

Is it really possible to read Psalm 23 without imagination? Come now, is it really possible?

 

Did not God create Man in His image? That is, does not God speak with images? We speak of the image of God, and yet we do not want to speak of imagination, of visualizations, of that which is unseen being seen and heard and touched. Jesus is not the dialectical proposition of God, Jesus is the image of God, the exact image of God. Certainly the Logos can only be seen and experienced holistically by the grace of God – He cannot be defined, He is the I AM.

 

Lewis felt that had his imagination not be baptized and converted, that he may have “floundered into its darker and more evil form, slithering down the steep descent” of Romanticism. [Preface, XXXVII].

 

There are, I think, at least two insidious movements in our time with respect to the imagination. On the one hand we see the perversion of imagination in which we have pandemonium. On the other hand, we have materialism in many forms, including in Biblical interpretation. Is it too much to suggest that the church is also engaged in the abolition of man when it insists on naturalistic hermeneutics?

 

After all, the historical – grammatical method, on its face and at its root, is naturalistic and materialistic, it does not require grace or the Holy Spirit – it requires learning and employing a method. We can say that it leaves nothing to the imagination, or better, to the God-inspired imagination. Of course, learning and employing the historical – critical method is critical to good grades and graduation in many seminaries, and professing adherence to it is required for membership in some academic and ecclesiastical circles. (This requirement would disqualify the writers of the New Testament and the Church Fathers, including Augustine. O yes, it would also disqualify Jesus.)

 

A fair reading of 1 Corinthians 1:17 – 2:16, and of Jesus’ teaching on the Holy Spirit in the Upper Room, ought to show us that Divine illumination and revelation are the essence of Biblical hermeneutics. How can we experience such things without our imaginations being converted and baptized? If our epistemology is faulty, then our exegesis and hermeneutics will be faulty and fall short of the glory of God.

 

Perhaps we can simply say that Jesus Christ is our epistemology and hermeneutic (Luke 24:27; 44 – 47).

 

The New Testament’s view of the Old Testament is not the product of the historical – critical method, it is the fruit of the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ living in the People of God, enlightening men holistically in communion with the Trinity and the saints and the mysterious Living/Written/Spoken Word from ages past.

 

The emperor is stark naked, we have become Christian men and women without chests – and we do not think it strange. How can men without chests help other men without chests? How can dead bones live?

 

I don’t think we appreciate Lewis’s statement, regarding MacDonald, that it has not seemed to him "that those who have received my books kindly take even now sufficient notice” that MacDonald is Lewis’s master. (Preface, XXXVII). We want to separate Lewis’s didactic work from his imaginary work, but it cannot be done. For example, in The Problem of Pain, Lewis lays a foundation of the numinous, of the “Other,” as he moves into the subject of pain. The numinous remains with us throughout the book – even though we may want to bring Lewis’s thinking on pain down to the naturalistic.

 

The most beautiful passages in the Chronicles of Narnia are those in which Aslan appears. Everything in every book, and every book bound together, anticipates Aslan’s appearance. Every time, and I do mean every time, I reread a book in the Narniad I read it longing to see Aslan. The joy I have in seeing Him, and in others seeing Him – both in the story and in daily life – fills my soul with love and the numinous – the cloud of glory. The Narniad is a high sacrament for me, a high sacrament indeed.

 

As I open the Scriptures daily I do so in anticipation of seeing Jesus – whether I am in Leviticus or 1 Kings or Obadiah or John – I expect to see Jesus coming to me and coming to His People – coming to us. It never occurs to me that Jesus might not be greeting me and meeting me when I open His Book.

 

How have we strayed so far from loving Jesus?

 

Yes, yes, you are right. It is difficult for professing Christians without chests to love.

 

Can these dry bones live?

 

O holy Father, baptize, convert, and renew our imaginations in the image of your Son Jesus.

 

 

George MacDonald and C. S. Lewis (6)

 

 

I want to share some observations that may be helpful to some of us, and in the next post we’ll return to MacDonald and Lewis.

 

Jesus Christ is Biblical Christianity, and Biblical Christianity is Jesus Christ. There is cultural Christianity, there is churchy Christianity, and then there is Jesus Christ as He is revealed through the Scriptures. I think the Nicene Creed has no peer when it comes to expressing the essence of the Bible. And may I gently say that we are foolish children if we think creeds are unimportant – for we all have creeds, written or unwritten; so why not honor a creed that was forged in the fires of persecution, deep Biblical reflection and hard labor, and a passion for the glory of God in Jesus Christ?

 

I can’t begin to tell you of the many peoples I’ve met over the years, I say “peoples” because I’m thinking of communities, whether churches or ethnic groups, or theological traditions, or groups that almost defy definition such as the Jesus People and many of the folks in the early Charismatic Movement.  Nor can I hardly begin to share the many authors I’ve read from various traditions, many long dead (in the natural) and some still living. I owe many debts to the living and the dead – I am the product of many wonderful sisters and brothers in Jesus Christ – including dear friends over the years…again…some are now in the Presence of our Lord…some are still on earth.

 

The women and men I remember, the ones who have built into my life, the ones who have made a difference, are those who have loved Jesus Christ and have transmitted that love to me and others; for you can’t separate loving Jesus and loving others, or truly loving others and loving Jesus. This is a love with clear articulation and definition, it is not nebulous. The form it takes is the Crucified Christ, it is cruciform; Paul writes that he determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified – O friends, if we do not hear and see this message we ought to run from what we do see and hear; as the disciples on the Mount, we want to look up and see only Jesus.

 

I will be the first to say that this makes life a bit difficult – not so much with respect to the world, for the world is the world is the world. Rather, it makes life difficult with respect to the professing church, for it seems that Jesus is never enough for us. We want our best lives now. We want success. We want to be esteemed by others. We want to accumulate things. We would much rather talk about “church” than talk about Jesus. Just listen to what Christians talk about and you will see what I mean.

 

This is a mystery to me, this propensity we have to talk about everything and everyone but Jesus. Why is this? If we truly know Him, then why don’t we talk about Him? What good is it to be a good Presbyterian or Roman Catholic or Baptist or Pentecostal if we don’t talk about Jesus? What good is it to be confirmed or baptized or to be ordained if we don’t know Jesus? What good is beautiful worship music or lively “praise” music if we don’t know Jesus? And frankly, a “Christian” worldview, if there is such a thing, is worthless without knowing Jesus Christ – for without knowing Jesus we can think we are something that we are not.

 

This insistence on Jesus Christ being Christianity makes life difficult with professing Christians because we don’t like it – we have our own agendas; political, nationalistic, economic, denominational. We also take subsidiary elements of the Bible out of context and make them the main thing – we often go from one “spiritual” religious “Biblical” fad to another, it is like having a membership in the “revelation of the month club.”

 

And the thing is, these “new” main things all look pretty good, they all appeal to our sense of making things better for us and others – usually these things that distract us from Jesus Christ are not bad things but good things. As the adage goes, “The good is the enemy of the better, and the better is the enemy of the best.” Let’s recall that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil looked good. If we are not in love with Jesus we will not see this, we will not understand it, we will not have an eye nor an ear for it.

 

The Nicene Creed is not enough, the Bible is not enough, Mere Christianity is not enough – the Person of Jesus Christ is not enough. It seems was always want to add something to Jesus Christ.

 

But the men and women who have spoken into my life have insisted that Jesus is indeed not only enough, but that He is everything.

 

As with Lewis and MacDonald, and as Murray with Law, I have known saintly men and women who have radiated Jesus Christ and yet who have not always seen certain elements of the Bible as clearly as we might desire. I have also known people, and I have been one myself, who have had finely-turned doctrinal knowledge, but who have not been gracious or loving or caring or forgiving or giving or sacrificial – in short, who have not radiated Jesus Christ. As I look back over my life, I am appalled at what I see in my past, for there was a time when at best I was a Pharisee.

 

Someone once said to me that right doctrine produces right living. That is not true. Jesus Christ living in us produces righteous living – frankly, right doctrine without Jesus Christ can be dry orthodoxy and it can be toxic in the self-righteousness it can produce. Perhaps the most important doctrinal question is, “What do we think about Jesus Christ?” Or perhaps, “How is our relationship with Jesus Christ?” Then the next question is, “How is our relationship with His Body, His Bride, His Temple, His Church?”

 

We can hardly have a relationship with someone if we don’t communicate with them and they don’t communicate with us. If we speak to God then of course we ought to expect that God, our dear loving heavenly Father, will speak to us. Of course we ought to expect that our Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, who died and rose for us, who has given us His very Nature, will speak to us. Of course we ought to life live in and by the Holy Spirit, speaking to us holistically – whatever that may look like in our respective lives, in our marriages and families, in our congregations, our friendships.

 

And we ought to expect that God will speak to us through the transcendent Body of Jesus Christ, for we are members of one another. We ought to always be learning from one another, growing with one another in Jesus Christ.

 

I owe debts to so very many men and women in Jesus Christ, so many I have known in person, and so many through history via books of their writings and their recorded words and deeds. I owe a debt to William Law because I owe a tremendous debt to Andrew Murray, and since Law built into Murray, I owe a debt to Law. I was introduced to Murray just months after becoming a follower of Jesus, so for 58 years Andrew Murray has been a mentor to me in Jesus Christ…always pointing to Jesus, always encouraging me to abide in Jesus, to rest in Him, and to live by the Holy Spirit.

 

I owe a direct debt to both MacDonald and Lewis, or I suppose I could say that I owe a double debt to MacDonald. While I can’t recall when I first encountered Lewis, I also can’t recall when I haven’t been reading Lewis. Considering that Lewis called MacDonald his master, I obviously owe MacDonald a debt for I owe Lewis a debt.

 

But I owe MacDonald another debt, a first debt, a debt incurred prior to encountering Lewis; for when my mother read The Princess and the Goblin to me as a child, the numinous reached into my soul and gave me a sense of the Other that has continued to grow within me, in Christ, to this Day.

 

I am deeply thankful that others in Christ have touched me and continued to point me to Jesus, always to Jesus…from many traditions, from traditions within traditions, from seemingly outside traditions (such as the Jesus People), from many ethnicities and social and economic environments. I want to live as a Mere Christian, die as a Mere Christian, and stand before our Lord Jesus as a Mere Christian. After all, He has purchased me and I am His mere bondservant.

 

 

 

George MacDonald and C. S. Lewis (5)

 

From Andrew Murray’s Introduction to William Law:

 

“I confess that in all my reading I have never found anyone who has so helped me in understanding the Scripture truth of the work of the Holy Spirit. And it is because I know of no one who has put certain aspects of needed truth with the same clearness, that I cannot but think that he is a messenger from God to call His Church to give the blessed Spirit the place of honour that belongs to Him.”

 

“…all true religion in heaven and earth, consists in nothing but an absolute and unalterable dependence upon God, and how the highest blessedness is nothing but the most complete surrender to let this blessed God do His work.”

 

Here again we see a similarity in Murray’s approach to William Law and C. S. Lewis’s approach to George MacDonald.

 

Lewis said that he was not a theologian, I’m not sure in what sense he meant that, or why he made the statement – he was certainly a critical thinker, he knew the Church Fathers who laid the theological groundwork for our faith by articulating its cardinal doctrines from Scripture. He knew ancient Greek and Latin; he read the New Testament in Greek and reviewed the translation work of J. B. Phillips at Phillips’s request. Sometimes I think Lewis may have used “I’m not a theologian” to give himself a pass not to move beyond Mere Christianity, at least a pass in not making public statements about certain doctrines and practices. Of course I really don’t know what Lewis meant, but functionally I consider him a first rate theologian.

 

Murray could not give himself a pass by saying that he wasn’t a theologian, for he was trained in theology and was a leader in the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa. It was as a pastor, a theologian, and a leader in his denomination that he writes the following in his Introduction to Law:

 

“In some respects no two men differ more than John Calvin and William Law…And yet no one reminds me more of Calvin than Law. Calvin’s theology had but one thought, the glory of God, and our absolute dependence upon Him. The shape this principle took in his teaching of the Predestinating Sovereignty of Grace, Law utterly rejects. And yet, I have nowhere met a teacher who, from another side, has opened up this same truth of the Glory of God and our absolute dependence on Him, as Law.”

 

“Often the thought has come to me of seeing Calvin and Law in heaven, very near each other, side by side, in deepest prostration, special witnesses to that absolute dependence which alone can bring God the glory due to His name.”

 

Murray was a Reformed pastor and leader, his roots were in Scottish Presbyterianism and the Dutch Reformed church, his immediate audience was his Reformed denomination – as such he addressed the elephant in the room, the differences between John Calvin and William Law. Murray saw them reconciled in Jesus Christ – they were both seeking the glory of God.

 

C. S. Lewis also saw the glory of God in George MacDonald – MacDonald was pointing to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and MacDonald’s glorious expression of God overshadowed those areas in which MacDonald may have displayed an imperfect understanding.

 

And here is the critical thing to remember, MacDonald and Law were centered on the Person of Jesus Christ and the Good News about Him. They were centered on the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There may have been areas of their thinking that did not align with orthodoxy, but in practice, in their love for God and love for people, they were often more orthodox than those who were orthodox.

 

Over the years people have often recommended “Christian” teachers and authors to me who are not centered on Jesus Christ and His glory. They are focused on the supreme “self” and not Almighty God. They are positive thinkers; they teach ten or twelve or twenty principles that promise to make our lives better. They sell us the idea of having our best lives now. They dangle success and health and wealth in front of us. They will equip us to manipulate God to answer our prayers. They often caricature the Cross and the Atonement and our need for repentance, confession, new birth, and obedient discipleship.

 

If our lives are not centered in Jesus Christ then we will not discern false teaching, for we will not have ears to hear and eyes to see, we will not have a sensitivity to the Voice of our Good Shepherd. George MacDonald and William Law teach us to hear this Voice, they teach us to live in deep daily relationship with the holy Trinity, and how to live with one another in Christ.

 

Believing and articulating orthodox doctrine is no substitute for living in fellowship with Jesus Christ – if we are truly born of the Holy Spirit then we are to live in, and by, and through, the Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ.

 

There is beauty is Christocentric doctrine; as Dorothy L. Sayers said, the beauty is in the dogma. We see this beauty as we are in Jesus Christ. Outside of the Bible I know of no beauty greater than the Nicene Creed – but this beauty is the beauty of Christ, and of the Father and of the Holy Spirit and of the communion of saints. This is a sacramental beauty that comes to me in God’s glory – it never fades, its glory ever increases.

 

Lewis and Murray, two critical thinkers, can teach us to look for Jesus in others within the tent of Mere Christianity; they can teach us that the centrality of Jesus Christ, as He is revealed in the Bible, is the core of Christianity, indeed, Jesus Christ is Christianity. Murray and Lewis knew there is such a thing a lifeless orthodoxy, both Law and MacDonald challenged misconceptions about God in their teaching and writing as they pointed to a vibrant life in the Holy Spirit and in deep communion with the Father and the Son.

 

In our next reflection, the Lord willing, I hope to share some things I’ve observed in life regarding the above, and then we’ll come back to Lewis and MacDonald.