C.S. Lewis And The Evangelical Aesthetic (Part 1)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

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Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

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In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.

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My name's Mike Abendroth. Why NoCoRadio? Well, number one, and now let's do reverse order, three,

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I don't want to compromise, so we don't want God's word compromised, do we?

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No, so that's what we strive to do. Number two, law and love at the cross, neither were compromised.

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God upheld his law, God displayed his love, and as Horatius Bono would say, law and love, no compromise.

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But number one, Jesus never compromised, so we like to talk about Jesus on this show.

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Call me odd, I think it was Byron Young the other day, I was listening to him, and he said, well, with Rome, you know, they tend toward, obviously, sacramentalism through the sacerdotal system, but for evangelicals, it's pragmatism.

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Just tell me what to do. Obviously, there's things to do, there's law in the

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Bible, there are imperatives in the Bible, commands in the Bible. But if you want to hear sermons, you just, you know, just give me 10 easy ways to have a family devotional.

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And actually, I think we've done some of those shows. So in the totality of the ministry of the 1800 shows we've done here,

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I think there's some of those. So there's law and there's order. I have been thinking about C .S.

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Lewis. Now many of you know that when it comes to C .S. Lewis, I'm not the biggest fan.

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Why is it that up until about 60 -something, I think he died, it was 63, same day

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JFK died. Why is it that evangelicalism as a whole did not embrace

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C .S. Lewis? They just didn't. But now everybody seems to love him.

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And I'm thinking out loud today, and I'm thinking style and substance.

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There are some things in this world that have both style and substance. I would imagine you're going to get to heaven and you're going to think, you know what?

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Style and substance. When you go to Niagara Falls, of course, using a secular illustration, a natural illustration, there's style and substance there.

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Obviously, you read the Bible, style and substance, the book of Hebrews. There's a certain style that it has, alliteration and quotinas and other wonderful ways to write.

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But there's a substance too. But don't you think in our society today that we are prone to exterior only, judging books by their cover?

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But when you peel back the style of C .S. Lewis, there's not much substance.

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And if there is substance, it's not of the evangelical kind. That's my little deal for today.

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That's what I want to talk about today and probably next time as well. People ask me, why don't we go longer than 24 and a half minutes?

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I don't know. You just do 1 ,800 shows and that's what happens. I just think to myself, if we ever do go back on the radio, we've got plenty of shows and then see,

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I don't have to do anything. We just put them on the radio. Although I can't imagine radio stations that would want no -compromise radio.

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Maybe that's a good thing. You have to think about substance and style. Don't be just duped regarding style.

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You're going to have to think. No wonder IBM's founder, Thomas Watson Sr., said to himself by putting a little placard on his desk, think, preaching to himself, think.

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Harry Bleymeier's in the book, The Christian Mind, How Should a Christian Think? Here's his thesis, chapter one,

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There's No Longer a Christian Mind. Henry Ford, thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few in the world engage in it.

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We don't have to go back too far to think of the elections that were won, speaking of JFK, versus Nixon, who had bad makeup.

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What did they talk about? Nobody knows. It just, Nixon had the five o 'clock shadow and looked like he was sweating and pasty.

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What's the hardest task in the world, Ralph Waldo Emerson said, to think. Think. This mind that God has given us needs to be used to process information, to discern, and to worship

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God. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and all your strength.

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That's Mark 12 .30. Jesus wasn't adding to the Shema where it says in Deuteronomy, Hear, O Israel, the

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Lord our God is one. The Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord with all your heart and soul and all your might.

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The word mind's not there in Hebrew, but it is implicit in the words of the verse.

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Jesus takes what is implicit in Hebrew and makes explicit with Greek, with all your mind.

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I don't want you to get duped by style trumping substance.

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Maybe I could put it this way, the evangelical aesthetic. Watch out for the evangelical aesthetic.

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Things that are attractive on the outside, appealing on the surface, conforming to accepted notions of good taste, as one dictionary definition gives of aesthetic, pleasing in appearance.

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I think we even say of people, easy on the eye. The test case for today is

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C .S. Lewis. I did not say S. Lewis Johnson, for he has both style and substance.

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But C .S. Lewis, his style dupes many Christians because he was a great writer, and you fall head over heels for a great writer, and then you think about what they say regarding other issues, but he wasn't evangelical.

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His style, I think, is kind of a Trojan horse for bad theology. You have to think.

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You have to think a little bit longer. You have to think past what you just... I don't know what happened to my voice today, but if you lose your voice, you don't have much of a job as a pastor or preacher.

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C .S. Lewis, style over substance, art over precision when it comes to theology.

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Fiction, fine. Romance, fine. Detective novels, fine. Valuing how things are said, yes.

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But you can't value things... How do

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I want to say it? Putting a value on things, how they're said versus what is actually said.

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Picturing valuing art at the expense of precision, you don't want to do that.

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One writer said, images dominate narrative. I think that's what happens here.

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People love the way some liberals write so much, then they end up quoting them without qualification.

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As a pastor, I think to myself, when I quote someone, why do

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I quote them? Well, they say it better than I do. Or, and or, I want to give credence to what

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I'm saying, and who's going to believe Mike Ebenroth, but if I quote John Owen, you might say, oh, I didn't think that view maybe held any water, but now

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I believe it because I see it in the text, Ebenroth is telling me about it, and he's quoting other people who are in the vein of Christianity.

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C .S. Lewis. People love C .S. Lewis. He is so influential.

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Who could argue with that? Christianity Today reader's poll in 1998 rates Lewis as the most evangelical, most influential evangelical writer.

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2005 Christianity Today, Lewis is on the cover. C .S.

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Lewis, superstar. I almost said Jesus Christ, superstar. J .I.

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Pecker called him our patron saint. He has become the Aquinas, Augustine, and Aesop of contemporary evangelicalism.

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Dies in 63, sells a couple million books a year by 1977.

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Ruth Tucker said among Protestants, there's only one Pope of apologetics. If C .S. Lewis said it, it must be true.

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In many circles, it seems that the voice of C .S. Lewis is second only to the voice of God. Ruth Tucker, God Talk, IVP, books.

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Here's the thing. C .S. Lewis said tons of things that were wonderful, that were excellent, that were beautiful.

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Even his famous liar, lunatic, Lord trilemma.

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Is that a word, trilemma? Let's see. It's got a red line underneath it.

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There's a dilemma. I got a trilemma. Let me give you a few quotes of C .S.

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Lewis. And again, here's where I'm going. You just have to be discerning. And I don't quote

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C .S. Lewis from the pulpit because I don't really want people to read C .S. Lewis because they'd do that on their own.

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In the old days when Kim and I, Kim is my wife, we'd say, well, let's have some church people.

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Let's get together. What should we do? Well, let's not go see a movie because they do that on their own. And, you know, there's holes to my theory, but in general, we thought, oh, let's do

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X, Y, and Z instead. I guess you can go play hockey on your own or have a fire on your own or have a dessert night on your own.

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I know you could do that, but let's find a time where we can just get together and socialize. I think people are going to read C .S.

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Lewis on their own. So let me just tell you, if you're going to read him, what should be in the back of your mind so you can think.

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That's all. That's all. This is no, you know, terroristic, got to get rid of him at all costs.

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I just find it fascinating. There has to be a reason why. He used to not be popular in evangelicalism, and now he's popular.

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There just has to be a reason. And I personally think, it's my opinion, that we're so dumbed down, we're so ecumenical as a group of evangelical fish that it works out perfectly.

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Now, let me give you some quotes because I would be dumb to say that he can't write well or he can't say things that are true and quite wonderful as well, but I know what he teaches.

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I guess it's not really the exact same, but I probably could find great things that Benny Hinn has said, too.

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He doesn't say them as well, so the style substance argument's not going to really help me there. But he says great things, too.

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All right, let me give you a few quotes. Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio, quoting C .S.

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Lewis, this is the kind of stuff that draws people in. And in one sense, I get it. Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in.

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Aim at earth and you get neither. If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.

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A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word darkness on the walls of his cell.

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I didn't go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable,

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I certainly don't recommend Christianity. It would seem that our

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Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We are half -hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us.

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Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.

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We are far too easily pleased. Indeed, the safest road to hell is the gradual one.

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The gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts, your affectionate uncle screw tape.

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Now he has a way with words for sure. Style, excellent.

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But did you know C .S. Lewis, regarding the substance of what he wrote, wasn't even an evangelical?

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He didn't say he was an evangelical. And he would say he didn't believe in what a lot of evangelicals believe in.

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For example, literal creation. He denies it.

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In Problem of Pain, Lewis writes, C .S. Lewis, if by saying that man rose from brutality you mean simply that man is physically descended from animals,

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I have no objections. For long centuries God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of himself.

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The creature may have existed for ages in this state before it became man. We do not know how many of these creatures

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God made nor how long they continued in the paradisical state. In the same book,

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Lewis writes, for we have good reason to believe that, let's see, eventually

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God caused a new kind of consciousness to descend upon this organism. So that's the early part

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I'd read before. I have the deepest respect even for pagan myths, still more for myths in Holy Scripture.

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What exactly happened when man fell we do not know, but it is legitimate to guess I offer the following picture, a myth in the

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Socratic sense, a not unlikely tale. What about depravity?

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What about corruption? I guess if you're going to mess up Genesis it's going to have its effect, yes?

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I disbelieve the doctrine total depravity partly on the logical ground that if our depravity were total we should not know ourselves to be depraved and partly because experience shows us much good in human nature.

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He doesn't understand what total depravity is. It's not as, you know, we're as bad as we could be, but we are wholly,

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W -H, depraved. Much good in human nature.

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Does he mean common grace shown in people? Does he mean what? He calls the book of Job unhistorical, so he denies depravity.

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He denigrates the scriptures. He denies literal creation. He says the Bible contains error.

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He says, quote, I take it that the memoirs of David's court come at one end of the scale and are scarcely less historical than St.

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Mark or Acts, and that the book of Joan is at the opposite end. You know,

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Jesus Christ's prediction of his second coming in one generation, error?

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Really? How about substantial atonement? Well, he denies that. So much so that Martin Lloyd -Jones says in 1963,

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C .S. Lewis had a defective view of salvation and was an opponent of the substitutionary and penal view of the atonement.

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And Lewis writes in Mere Christianity, Now, before I became a Christian, I was under the impression that the first thing

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Christians had to believe was one particular theory as to what the point of this dying was.

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According to that theory, God wanted to punish men for having deserted and joined the great rebel, but Christ volunteered to be punished instead, and so God let us off.

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Now, I admit that even this theory does not seem to me quite so immoral and so silly as it used to.

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What I came to see later on was that neither this theory nor any other is Christianity. The central

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Christian belief is that Christ's death has put us right with God and given us a new start.

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Any theories we build up as to how Christ's death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary. Really?

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Well, we see it fleshed out in C .S. Lewis when we go to his view of the atonement.

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I assume he believes that view when he teaches it in Line Witch and the Wardrobe, Ransom to Satan.

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Now, maybe there's a little bit of Christus Victor in there, but Jesus does not pay a ransom to Satan.

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Oh, yes, Christ's death is the ransom price, but it's not paid to Satan, and Aslan suffers

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Edmund's penalty and buys him back from the White Witch. That's not a good way to look at the atonement.

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Why does all this stuff make me tired? What about mere Christianity? It says on page 62 and 65, there are three things that spread the

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Christ life to us, baptism, belief, and the Lord's Supper. And perhaps that explains one or two things. It explains why this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but by bodily acts like baptism and holy communion.

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God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us.

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There are people, a great many of them, who are slowly ceasing to be Christians. A Christian can lose the

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Christ life which has been put into him, and he has to make efforts to keep it. Though all salvation is through Jesus, we need not conclude that He cannot save those who have not explicitly accepted

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Him in this life. But the truth is, God has not told us what

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His arrangements about other people are. There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ, but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are

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His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God's secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it.

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Lewis writes, For example, a Buddhist of goodwill may be led to concentrate more and more on the

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Buddhist teaching about mercy and to leave in the background, though he still might say he believed, the

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Buddhist teaching on certain points. Many of the good pagans long before Christ's birth may have been in this position.

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Mere Christianity. See, the thing is for me, I read Mere Christianity when

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I was a brand new Christian, and I really liked it. Probably loved it. Screw Shaped Letters is my favorite

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C .S. Lewis book. If I had to pick one and only one to read, only one that I really think is of the most value, that would be it.

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But C .S. Lewis, he doesn't get it. He doesn't understand the essentials.

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And you say, well, he just didn't study systematic theology and all that stuff. Well, I don't know what the reasons are, but this is what he wrote.

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Certainly, if I wrote it. I mean, the other day someone said, yeah, your Joyce Meyer thing, she doesn't believe the born again thing in hell anymore.

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She took it out of her book. She's recanted it. Taking it out of your book is not a recantation. If I wrote something so awful about Jesus's death or life, and I needed to change things.

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Oh, if it's a nuanced belief here, objective genitive, subjective genitive, I understand those things were always growing and learning and maturing.

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But if I wrote something wrong, I'm going to say this is wrong. I'm going to say

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I taught the wrong thing to protect people. Why? Because instead of protecting myself,

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I'm to protect other people that I'm influencing. No one's going to say, oh, you know what?

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We're sorry you've changed your view and taught something else. If in fact, it's now the right view.

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Christianity Today, Mormon professor Robert Millett spoke at Wheaton on C .S.

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Lewis. This is back in the 90s, late 90s. He said in Christianity Today, this old dean of Brigham Young University, I don't know if he's still the dean.

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C .S. Lewis is quote, so well received by Latter -day Saints because of his broad and inclusive vision of Christianity, end quote.

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Isn't that interesting? Peter Kreft, he used to be Dutch Reformed. Now he's Roman Catholic. He said of C .S.

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Lewis, he was one of the many, quote, strands of rope that hauled me aboard the ark, end quote, of Roman Catholicism.

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Kreft writes, quote, even C .S. Lewis, the darling of Protestant evangelicals, smelled Catholic most of the time.

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Lewis is the only author I've ever read whom I thought I could completely trust and completely understand. But he believed in purgatory, the real presence in the

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Eucharist, and not total depravity. That's true. I believe in purgatory.

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The right view returns magnificently in Newman's dream. There, if I remember rightly, the saved soul at the very foot of the throne begs to be taken away and cleansed.

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It cannot bear for a moment longer with its darkness to affront that light.

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Our souls demand purgatory, don't they? What does that tell you?

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Do you think he's still evangelical? Do you think he's evangelical when he goes to priests and confesses his sin?

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Do you think he's evangelical when he believes in prayers for the dead? Of course

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I believe in prayers for the dead. The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would determine.

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And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden.

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Friends, there's more to say, but I just looked down and time is fleeting.

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We haven't looked much at the Scripture today, but I think if all of these you go through and say, what does the

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Bible say about the finished work of Christ? You are going to say, substitutionary atonement. You are going to say, no prayers for the dead.

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You are going to say, no purgatory. Why? Jesus is the Lamb standing as if slain in the center of heaven, showing us vicarious, substitutionary penalty as a death.

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Anyway, my name is Mike Abendroth. We're going to look a little bit more about this on the positive side, on the biblical side, next time we talk about C .S.

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Lewis, style over substance, the evangelical aesthetic. Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.