Brown's summary of this session in the accompanying book is well done.  I did not find the discussion questions helpful.  What I did this time was to give everyone a printed handout that both summarized where we have been and the two chapters for this session: Book II, 3 & 4.  We spent the first bit of time going over this, up through ch. 3, and then watched the video. Yancey's strength was his illustrations.  Everyone thought them helpful.  It seemed a lot of people could identify with the illustration of his aquarium.  Though he had nothing but good planned for the fish, when he approached the tank, they always hid from him.  If he was going to help them to understand him better and not hide, he'd have to become a fish in the tank with them.  It's a good illustration for the Incarnation, but I think people were especially touched by the recognition that often we are like the fish, hiding from God because we are afraid of him - when we shou...

This session is on the first two chapters of Book II.  I decided on a different tack this time, and it seemed to have worked well.  The video is only about 19 minutes long.  I spent about half an hour walking us through the two chapters, being sure we understood the flow of Lewis' arguments.  We then watched the video and ended with a discussion of what the "take aways" were for the evening.  Once people had a few minutes to think about that, the "take away" comments were interesting and helpful. The McGrath discussion was quite good.  True to the objective of the course, he did not simply cover the material in the two chapters.  Picking up on how Lewis introduces the problem of good and evil, he refers to Lewis' experience of suffering during WWI and later with the death of Joy.  Lewis' complaint about atheism being too simple an answer for the difficulties we face in life was emphasised, and we learned again of how Lewis was attracted to Chris...

In this session, we finished up Book I.  I did a quick overview of chapters 1-3 and then we watched the video.  Eric's parts were just fine (hate it that I never got to get into Univ), and Jerry Root's session is very good - one of the best I think.  He was to cover ch. 4 (ch. 5 is to be done as a personal study) and hit the main points well.  His stories were great examples of using Lewis' apologetic. For discussion afterwards, I used Brown's questions from the companion book.  I didn't use all of them; just the ones that seemed to fit the way our discussion was going.  There were many comments about our attitude and approach in dealing with the world.  We talked about the prevelance of materialism in our culture, one person advocating that most people here are unaware of their syncretism of shallow materialism and sentimentality. We had Kohlberg's stages of moral development brought up, which I thought was a very interesting reference.  It g...

All of the response from our attendees about the first session of Discussing Mere Christianity has been positive.  There is no question that the video quality is excellent and the content is very good.  Eric's survey of Lewis' life is interesting.  McGrath's review of Lewis' approach to the common man to explain the Christian faith was - as expected - brilliant.   He does get Lewis farther along than Lewis actually wanted to go in those chapters.  Lewis' goal in the Broadcast Talks is to help people to recognize the bad news of the gospel so they will appreciate the good news it contains.  There's no use telling people they need to repent when they have no sense of guilt.  Thus Lewis argues for the existence of a "Law of Human Nature" that we have broken.  He does not want to bring in the Christian God or the gospel at all at this point.  McGrath does, however.  He wants to go beyond the material immediately in the first two chapter...

Tomorrow night, I am going to start leading a discussion group using the new Zondervan DVD series entitled "Discussing Mere Christianity ."  I plan to post here a weekly debriefing of each of the eight sessions as we go through them.  We'll see how it goes. I will say initially that the production is top notch.  It's so much fun seeing all the scenes - mostly from Oxford.  Eric does a great job, as usual, going through the life of C. S. Lewis.  The lectures themselves, by the various scholars, are generally good and helpful.  The result is that the series is a study both of Lewis' book and also his life.  It seems the main motivation behind this is to help people realize something of how the book fits into Lewis' life story.  The series is a study of major themes in the book.  Obviously, they are not going to be able to cover the whole book in eight sessions. Tally hoe, what, and all that!

Below is my address to the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society,  28 April, 2015. I want to thank the officers of our Society for allowing me to speak tonight on the last book that Lewis wrote: Letters to Malcolm , first published in 1964. Let us remind ourselves that Lewis had originally started a book on prayer in 1952.  There is a 45 page manuscript of this early attempt preserved, which I, sadly, have not yet had the time to peruse.  Walter Hooper thinks that Lewis dropped this early attempt because he believed it was coming across in too doctrinaire a fashion, and he thought it poor form to be addressing the public as if he somehow believed himself an expert on the subject.  Lewis writes in Letter XII, parag. 4: "But however badly needed a good book on prayer is, I shall never try to write it.  Two people on the foothills comparing notes in private are all very well.  But in a book one would inevitably seem to be attempting, not discussion, but instruction....

Check out the news.

Go here for the news: http://cslewischatt.blogspot.com/2009/07/unpublished-cs-lewis-manuscript-found.html

http://cslewischatt.blogspot.com/2009/05/n-t-wright-reviews-planet-narnia.html

A very interesting interview with Bishop Wright at Trevor Wax's blog.

The source of C. S. Lewis' phrase "mere Christianity," according to Walter Hooper: "You know not of what Party I am of, nor what to call me; I am sorrier for you n this than for my self; if you know not, I will tell you, I am a CHRISTIAN, a MEER CHRISTIAN, of no other Religion; and the Church that I am of is the Christian Church, and hath been visible where ever the Christian Religion and Church hath been visible: But must you know of what Sect or Party I am of? I am against all Sects and dividing Parties: But if any will call Meer Christian by the name of Party , because they take up with meer Christianity , Creed, and Scripture , and will not be of any dividing or contentious Sect, I am of that Party which is so against Parties: If the name CHRISTIAN be not enough, call me a CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN; not as that word signifieth an hereticating majority of Bishops, but as it signifieth one that hath no Religion, but that which by Christ and the Apostles was left to the ...

The book by C. S. Lewis and E.M.W. Tillyard entitled The Personal Heresy has been reprinted by Concordia! For news, go to the website of the C. S. Lewis Society of Chattanooga .

If you can't get to the Mere Anglicanism conference this week, you can still hear Dr. Jerry Root talk about C. S. Lewis on the Kindlings Muse website. The interview is in three segments, on two separate pages of the blog (a little inconvenient). You can find segment one here.

I've created a BlogSpot page for our Society in hopes that it will serve everyone better. The link is the same: http://www.cslewischattanooga.org/ . All e-mail posts to the Society will be entered here as well as other Lewis/Inklings related material. Let me know what you think.

Peter Leithart's recent article in First Things, "The Pagan West" fits nicely with C. S. Lewis's apologetic on the subject of myth and human culture. Give it a read.

I just posted this to our C. S. Lewis Society e-mail list: Dear Friends of C. S. Lewis: Yes! It’s already here! Our next meeting of the C. S. Lewis Society of Chattanooga – this Friday, 7:00-9:00 p.m. at the Vicarage, 4908 Tennessee Ave., in St. Elmo. We will continue our discussion of the book Miracles. Last time, we just got through chapter 3, so we are a little behind. We’ll see if we can get through chapters 4 to 10. As usual, if you aren’t able to get the reading done ahead of time, come anyway; there’s always lots to discuss and learn. If you are coming, let me know, and if you want to bring something to munch on, let me know that as well so we can plan. Neuhaus Aricle In 1998, Richard John Neuhaus wrote an article which touches our discussion of Miracles. It was entitled “C. S. Lewis in the Public Square,” and you can read it here: http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=3613 . Neuhaus speculates how C. S. Lewis would write and speak for the Christian faith w...

If anyone is interested, I'm reading through the first volume of C. S. Lewis' letters and have a blog recording my observations and thoughts. Feel free to join in!

Go here to read an article by Bishop Wright on Lewis' Mere Christianity in the March, '07, Touchstone.

Pictured left to right: myself, Dr. Dorsett, and Dr. DeHart. I am so thankful to the Lord for his manifest presence at our conference this past weekend. Lyle Dorsett's words to us were enlightening and spiritually helpful. Dr. DeHart's address will be posted on our Society website (see the link). We had almost 50 people attending, which was a real encouragement. By the way, if you know anyone interested in ministering to kids in Mexico on a long-term basis, let me know so I can pass on the info to Dr. Dorsett.

An excerpt from my sermon on Purgatory today: But how did some Anglicans start to believe in it, even though the Anglican Church flatly denies it? It seems to have started with John Henry Newman in the 1800’s. He explained that Purgatory was not the place of hellish suffering, so typically believed by Roman Catholics, but rather more like the Eastern view – a place where the purging away of sin was more like a healing process than a suffering process. It was similar to the idea of Purgatory in Dante’s Divine Comedy . This is also the idea of Purgatory that C. S. Lewis wound up holding. Now, notice this: since Newman’s idea was of a different kind of Purgatory than that of the Roman Church, he did not think that he was contradicting the Articles of the Church of England, for Article XXII states: "The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, … is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God." (emphasis m...