Michael Beasley Interview RE CS Lewis

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Mike Abendroth and I'm your host. Our theme here is always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

And today is no different. I am super excited to have online a special guest today, a pastor, someone

I went to school with and someone who is concerned for the purity of the bride of Christ and for the proclamation of the gospel.

On our show today, we have Michael John Beasley, Mike, Pastor Mike, welcome to No Compromise Radio.

Thank you, brother. Thank you for having me on. Well, some of our listeners might not know about the Armory. That's with a

U dot org. I am reading from the website, the Pilgrim's Progress quote from John Bunyan, the next day they took him that is

Christian and had him into the armory where they showed him all manner of furniture, which their

Lord hath provided. So are you a furniture dealer or what's that? You know, it's, uh,

I am, I'm a, I'm very much, uh, very fond of, um, John Bunyan and Pilgrim's Progress.

And, and, uh, uh, I love the picture of the armory because it is the place of in Pilgrim's Progress.

It is the place where Christian is equipped, uh, and it, it's Bunyan's way of communicating the beautiful truth of, of Ephesians six, that we are to put on the full armor of God.

And so, um, that imagery really is what's represented in the, the armory, um, by title, by name.

And so I'm borrowing that from, uh, Bunyan and Pilgrim's Progress. So Michael, I was reading your book and I thought

I've got to have you on No Compromise Radio because I think we're of the same ilk of the same, uh, desire to present the purity of God's word to our people and to the church.

And you wrote a book called Alter to an Unknown Love. The subtitle is very

Puritan because it's long and the subtitle is Rob Bell, CS Lewis and the

Legacy of the Art and Thought of Man. Why did you write that book and why are you in some controversy because of that?

Well, the, uh, the occasion of the book, uh, stems from Rob Bell's book that he produced

Love Wins in 2011. And the thing that struck me, Mike, was the fact that, um, a number of people were coming out and accusing

Rob Bell, uh, of being a universalist and a lot of the people who were, um, expressing concern for what

Rob Bell had written. Many of these individuals are also, uh, advocates of CS Lewis.

Um, the irony and conflict in all this is the fact that CS Lewis, uh, taught a form of doctrine that basically advocates this notion of purgatorial, we'll call it purgatorial reconciliation.

This idea of, of having a, an opportunity for a second chance, you die, you leave this world and you enter into purgatory and through a period of suffering, you can enter back into heaven.

Uh, his book, The Great Divorce, uh, basically advocates that idea.

Uh, Rob Bell, his book Love Wins is essentially similar in its advocacy of this idea of purgatorial reconciliation.

The thing that struck me, Mike, was the fact that people who were complaining about Bell didn't seem to have any problem and continue not to have any problem with CS Lewis.

And that's a problem. Um, the problem that, that I'm concerned about is that both

Bell and Lewis, um, helped to foster this idea of what we would call subjectivism.

This idea of, of coming to discover truth, not objectively from the word of God, but subjectively from the impulses, thoughts, and inclinations and affections of man.

And so the book, which really deals with a great number of things, and yes, the subtitle is a bit lengthy.

It could have been longer, by the way, probably was in your office and credit for some restraint. There we go.

Um, no, but it's, uh, uh, because obviously in dealing with Lewis, CS Lewis, I also have to deal with his master,

George McDonald, um, who was clearly an influence on, on CS Lewis' life and the way in which he wrote, um, all of these men deal in the currency of subjectivism.

The idea of going to the word of God and submitting exclusively to the scriptures is really not their priority.

Uh, with what they were about is this idea of infusing the thoughts and the intentions and ideas of man with scripture.

And, um, and so I'm very concerned about the way in which, um, CS Lewis continues to be promoted.

Um, and I'm very concerned about what kind of a legacy this will leave within the body of Christ. People who are feeding on a diet of Lewis literature, um, and I think of a lot of people like myself who read, who, who maybe they read, um, uh, the fictional works by Lewis.

Um, a lot of people, um, have read, um, for example, the screw tape letters, but maybe they've never read the problem of pain or the four loves.

If they only consume the diet of fiction from Lewis, they may never pick up these problems.

They may never really, um, uh, discover them. But if you read further into Lewis, you'll discover a lot of the same problems that we find with men like Rob Bell.

Again, the main problem is subjectivism. And the reality is, is that the body of Christ, um, as, as the body of Christ, we need the word of God, not our subjective opinions.

So in it, as best as I can summarize it, that's really what the book is addressing.

Um, it's this problem of, of subjectivism. And I should say this, the book is more than just a critique of that problem.

Um, it endeavors to present the true nature of God's love and the true nature of heaven and hell and why we need scripture above all.

So that's, uh, as best of a good, as good of a synopsis as I can give. We're talking to Pastor Michael, John Beasley, who has written a book, uh, lots of books.

I also liked the fallible prophets book as well, but he's written a book about the love of God and Rob Bell and Michael, what do you think about people who just in general likes

C .S. Lewis? And they'll say, you know, he says a lot of good things, uh, the way he says, uh, certain things is excellently, you know, he's an excellent writer, a craftsman with the

English language. And, and so, you know, he has some good things to say. So why are you so picky?

What's your response to that? Well again, um, and I, and I should say that, um,

I do meet a lot of people who, um, will read his fictional work and they'll have a higher estimation of Lewis.

But when you explain to them, when I explained to them some of the other things that he taught, in other words, he, uh, if you go down the list of some of the problems, uh, and I do enumerate them in the book, uh, he didn't hold to, um, uh, the view of inerrancy of scripture.

He believed in kind of a general view of, of inspiration that all writers are generally inspired and the

Bible just happens to be better, um, than others. Well, with that kind of a perspective, you're now, um, subjugating the scriptures to human judgment and you also have this problem of syncretism and this is a major problem with Lewis.

Uh, he grew up, um, um, feeding on a diet of Norse mythology, which increased his appetite for Greek mythology and, and that influence in his life continued after his, um, his professed conversion, um, such that when you read books like the

Four Loves, you get, um, an amalgamation of scripture along with an abundance of Greek philosophy and mythology.

Something that, uh, people tend not to know, uh, typically, um, is that before writing the

Four Loves in 1960, um, uh, Lewis wrote a book, um, called

Till We Have Faces, which was a, um, uh, a fictional work about, uh, the historic mythology, the

Greek mythology concerning, uh, Psyche and Cupid, which is, which goes further back into, if you study

Greek mythology, it takes you back to the idea of Eros and Psyche.

Um, one of the things we have to understand is, is that if we're going to define love, and this is where I think one of the problems that we have with Lewis, instead of going to scripture, he goes to Greek mythology as much as he goes to scripture, sometimes more so with the

Greek mythology and in creating an amalgamation of thinking and ideas, he ends up passing off a faulty view of love and, and godly affections.

So, um, that's not a small thing. Um, again, people reading as fiction may not pick, pick up on these, these distinctions, but if you, uh, emasculate, or excuse me, if you, um, modify and corrupt, for example, the doctrine of, of godly love, you have, you have mutilated much of the

Bible, because scripture clearly emphasizes this idea of what godly love is and what it looks like.

The problem that we have, though, if you modify this idea of love and, and infuse it with ideas of Eros love, which is self -centered, um, lust, it's not about agape love, if you try to blend these things together, you create a very, uh, polluted idea of love.

And that goes back to your thinking about the nature of God's love. If you impose those, those kinds of thoughts.

So, you know, I, I, I don't have it as a mission to go around and tell people what they can and can't read, but what

I do is I try to warn them about some of these problems, because I want them to be informed readers who go to the scriptures and do, um, what we all need to do.

Whenever we read a book, we need to submit it to the authority of God's word.

And I don't care who the author is. Um, let it be your, your favorite, best author.

Let it be Charles Spurgeon. It still needs to be submitted to the authority of God's word. Well, Michael, I'm thankful for the book because it gives us the critique and it also gives us the solution as well.

And for me, if I give a quote on Twitter or on the radio show, something negative about C .S.

Lewis. And I say with J .I. Packer, he wouldn't fraternalize, fraternize rather with evangelical organizations.

He wouldn't call himself an evangelical. He believes in purgatory. He's not teaching penal substitution.

They don't really, they, they, they push back. They, they like him. And so for me as a pastor,

I might quote C .S. Lewis once in a while. But if I do, I don't say

C .S. Lewis said, because I consider him a gateway drug to bad theology.

Is that right thinking? Am I doing it the right way? Or what's your take on that? Well, I, I'm glad you brought that up because, um, and I, I didn't know how far or broad we might go in our discussion here, but, um.

Well, if this one goes well, I'll interview you again on a later time. Okay. Well, here's the thing.

And I'm glad you brought that up because, um, um, people may not know this after I wrote the book,

I met a Mormon gentleman who was a, he's a former Mormon.

Um, he's now a Christian. He was converted out of Mormonism. And I started,

I spoke to him about the book and he said, he said, you do know that Mormons love

C .S. Lewis. And, uh, I said, you've got to be kidding. And we went through this lengthy discussion and you can search it on the internet.

Um, there is a large following of Mormons after C .S. Lewis. They love his writings.

And, and I would just say to you that Lewis is not clear enough in his theology to be dependable or helpful.

And frankly, because of these corruption, these problems that we've already discussed, and he calls penal substitution silly and mere

Christianity. Uh, in addition to some of the other things that we've discussed, these are not small issues. Um, and, um, and the idea of having a

Mormon following, can you imagine after your life discovering that there was a great Mormon following that you have concerning your books?

Uh, I don't think you would take that as a compliment to your, your life in ministry. Uh, Lewis is a gateway to many things.

And, um, Joseph Pierce wrote a book called C .S. Lewis and the Catholic Church.

Peter Kreeft wrote a book called C .S. Lewis for the third millennium. Both of these men argue a point that I came to conclude myself in doing the research for my book.

And their point is, is that Lewis is a bridge to Roman Catholicism.

And it stands to reason in view of the fact that, um, Lewis in a sense has his foot in, in two different realms.

He, he doesn't really stand firmly in one place, but if you follow his positions, you can see that a number of his positions are very friendly to, uh,

Roman Catholicism, uh, including his, um, his apparent, uh, uh, um, views on, uh, baptismal regeneration.

He's a little ambiguous about that, but, uh, Lewis is a kind of an individual where people can pick him up, read him, and basically, uh, garner what they want from him, um, and even, uh, assume certain conclusions from him that they want, they want to see in the text.

And so I think that's why you have this very broad following Catholics, Mormons, um, if he were more clear, like a

Charles, uh, uh, Charles Adams Spurgeon, I don't think that he would have such a broad following as he does.

Michael, tell me a little bit about, uh, your view of his state before God, as it were.

You know people are going to ask the question. And so I, I get asked the question and I know you don't ultimately know, but can you believe what

C .S. Lewis believed, assuming that he believed what he wrote when he died? What do you think?

Uh, what, what are your opinions? Do you not want to go there? Give us the no compromise scoop. Well, you know, that is, that is, uh, that is a tough question.

And, um, obviously Martin Lloyd Jones, um, doubted, uh, that, that he was converted.

I was told by a reputable source, um, one who knew, uh, Martin Lloyd Jones that, uh,

Lloyd Jones once said that, uh, Lewis was not converted, uh, or excuse me,

Lewis was converted to the philosophy of Christianity rather than to Christ. Um, now

God knows ultimately, and, uh, no one on this earth can know the final state of this man's soul or whether or not he, he knew

Christ. And clearly there are multiple advocates who would even, uh, flinch at the idea of raising the question.

Um, I'm mindful of the conference that was held last year. Uh, John Piper held a conference that, um, uh, summarized the doctrines and beliefs of, uh,

C .S. Lewis. And so there, there's, there's this constant, um, uh, effort,

I think to, to put, uh, Lewis in a favorable light. So to raise the question about whether or not he knew

Christ, uh, that's certainly controversial and we're, we're not wanting to be controversial just to be controversial, but I do believe it's a valid question.

Um, and I would just say that, um, obviously we can't know for sure, but it is a concern because if someone is embracing the doctrines that he embraced, you'd have to ask the question, where is his ultimate hope?

If you could believe that you can somehow atone for, or have your sins atoned for by means of suffering and purgatory, thereby allowing you entrance into the kingdom of heaven, that is not the gospel.

Yet, excuse me, yet this is exactly what Lewis believed. And so again, um,

I think it's a very relevant question. It might seem to be offensive to people, but, uh, we ought to be able to ask these questions of people, no matter how popular they are.

And I think that, I think that Mike, this is a part of the problem that we have in our present society is that there's this, it seems to be this attitude that popular people, we were not allowed to go and ask difficult questions of them.

If they're popular, if everybody loves them, if everybody's consuming their books and their literature and so forth, um, leave them alone.

And, um, because who are you to raise questions? I think that's a dangerous world to live in.

And, uh, we ought to be able to want, want to uphold truth above the popularity of men at all times.

So Michael, you're a pastor. And if someone came to you and said, you know, I read mere Christianity and I'm excited about reading,

I'm a pretty new Christian. What would you put in their hands instead? I would imagine, I would probably say,

I'm glad you want to read books about the Bible and the Lord and to grow in knowledge and grace of the

Lord Jesus. Let me give you something instead. What would be the insteads for you as you would give books to Christians?

Um, well, that's a good question. Um, you know,

I guess we'd have to go back to the question of what, uh, to me, it's a very individualistic thing and people who are reading mere

Christianity, um, you know, if they're trying to get a grasp on, um, the basics of Christian living for me personally, my experience has been just to, um, work through the basics of, of the gospel with people.

And here's why, because if they're reading mere Christianity, they're already getting a diet of confusion about the nature of Christ's sacrifice, the nature of heaven and hell.

Um, the, and also I should mention, they're also getting a confusion of doctrine concerning the exclusivity of Christ.

Christ is the only way. Um, and they're, there isn't some sense in which, uh,

Christians, some Christians are ceasing to be Christians as Lewis, uh, alludes to, or that some are just becoming

Christians and they don't know it. And good, good Buddhists who are becoming better Buddhists are in a sense, becoming

Christians and so forth. I'm summarizing, paraphrasing some of what he says in your Christianity, but, uh, there's such a panoply of problems.

And the question I would have is, what is it that they need, um, that they were trying to get out of mere

Christianity? So I don't know if a particular book comes to mind as one solution as a substitute to mere

Christianity, but, um, I think I'd have to base that upon the individual to some extent and go from there.

Right. Well, I actually had this happen and I just said, Oh, you need to read attributes of God by A .W.

Pink. Or if you want to read knowledge of the Holy by Tozer, something that's more rooted in the Bible and talking about, uh, the

Lord, uh, with biblical, uh, language and categories. What do you think with C .S.

Lewis and his trajectory? Do people say to you, well, like the Anabaptist or maybe like Bonhoeffer, their theology was getting better over the years.

And if he just would have lived longer, he would have been okay. What's your response to that? Um, well,

I'll tell you this. Um, well, two things. Um, the, uh, the, the book itself that I wrote, uh, is very focused on the subject of love.

And so the, the bulk of my examination of Lewis centered on that is that issue, all the things that he had written on that.

Um, I'm not going to prop myself up as a Lewisian expert either, uh, based upon the fact that there are other works that he has written and there, there are actually multiple volumes of letters that he has written.

Um, so I, I want to be guarded with what I say here, but let's put it this way.

Um, we, I think we can safely suggest that, um, every man who, um, puts himself out in the public view, uh, by either preaching or writing or whatever, um, if he comes to understand that he has written in error, if he is, if he comes to a point where he realizes that he has misrepresented, um, the, the beauty of Christ and the doctrine of the scriptures, um, a man of responsibility and a clear, and a man who desires to have a clear conscience before God would rectify and correct those things.

And so I see no evidence of Lewis going in the trajectory of relenting of what he wrote, but actually going more into the realm of, um, of fantasy and fiction, which, uh, by his own admission, this was the aspect of his life and being that was the most fundamental, uh, in a letter that he wrote to the

Milton Society of America. He said that, um, um, that, uh, he was, um, that let's say,

I'm going to read here. He says, uh, that the imaginative man in me is older, more consciously, uh, uh, uh, continuously operative and that sense more basic than either the religious writer or the critic.

Um, it, I think it's quite clear that for Lewis, um, fantasy and fiction was the sine qua non of everything else.

Uh, this, this is the main thing that he was, he was focused on. The concern I have here is that when we think about what, uh,

Paul says to Timothy, when he warns Timothy about the appetites of men and how it is that they will want to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires.

And then he says, and we'll turn away their ears from the truth and we'll turn aside to Muthu's myths.

Um, I, I'm not interested in vilifying mythology or, or excuse me, um, um, uh, fictional works, uh, um, allegories.

Um, I just stated at the beginning that I love Pilgrim's Progress, but there's a difference between someone who seeks to pursue mythology, fiction, fantasy above and beyond the scriptures.

And that really shows forth an appetite that is not healthy. Um, and in, in, in, in, in distinction to this, when you think about John Bunyan and Pilgrim's Progress and those who have read, read

Pilgrim's Progress will understand Bunyan is not inviting the reader deeper into some fictional fantasy land.

He's inviting the reader into the depths of scripture. You cannot read a single page of Pilgrim's Progress and get away with not contemplating the truth of God's word.

So I, I would make a great distinction. And this goes back to a point that you made earlier. Uh, we want to direct people to literature that is constantly inviting people to the text of scripture.

Um, I have a great concern. Um, and I, and I have this concern for my own soul, because I don't want to write a book that comes from machinations of my own imagination.

If I'm going to write a book and I want to honor Christ, it must be from scripture.

It must be rooted in that authority. So you and I as pastors, we, the thing that we want to be concerned about doing and mentioned

A .W. Pink and Attributes of God and things like that. Um, these are books that do just that.

They invite people to the text of scripture. Uh, every premise and conclusion is established from the word.

And so, um, we have nothing better to give than, uh, to Christ's sheep than his word alone.

And so, um, um, so anyway, it's, um, it's, it, it, it's just a concern.

I think that we just seem to maintain and, uh, and yes, we need to be, uh, mindful about the literature that we do recommend to people.

Thanks for being a guest today on NOCO radio. Thank you brother. It was my pleasure. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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