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

The Book, Rob Bell, and C. S. Lewis as a Source of Controversy

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

The way of communicating is what's represented.

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 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, C .S. 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?

Rob Bell, Love Wins, and the Charge of Universalism

Well, the occasion of the book stems from Rob Bell's book that he produced, Love Wins, in 2011. And the thing that struck me, Mike, was the fact that a number of people were coming out and accusing Rob Bell of being a universalist.

And a lot of the people who were expressing concern for what Rob Bell had written, many of these individuals are also advocates. The irony and talk basically advocates this notion of purgatorial, we'll call it purgatorial reconciliation, this idea of having an opportunity for a second chance.

You die, you leave this world, and you enter into purgatory and enter back into heaven. His book, The Great Divorce, basically advocates that idea. Rob Bell, his book, Love Wins, is essentially similar in its advocacy of this idea that struck me, Mike, was the fact that people who were complaining about Bell didn't seem to have any problem and that's a problem.

The problem that I'm concerned about is that both Bell and Lewis, this idea of truth not objectively from the word of God, but from the word of man. 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. It probably was in your office. Give me some credit for some restraint, there we go. No, but it's, because obviously in dealing with Lewis, I also have to deal with his master, George MacDonald, influence on C .S. Lewis' life.

All of these men deal in the currency of subjectivism. The idea of going to the word of God in scriptures is really not their priority. This idea of infusing the thoughts and the intentions, learned about the way in which he promoted, and I'm very concerned about what kind of a legacy this, people who are feeding on a diet of Lewis literature, like myself, who read a lot of people, for example, the screw tape letters, but maybe they've never, these problems, they may never really, but God not, are really what the book is.

Why Some Christians Defend C. S. Lewis

Pastor Michael John Beasley, he's written a book, lots of books. I also like 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 like C .S. Lewis?

And they'll say, you know, he says a lot of good things. The way he says certain things is excellently, you know, he's an excellent writer, a craftsman with the English language. And so, you know, he has some good things to say, so why are you so picky?

What's your response to that?

Again, and I should say that I do meet a lot of people who, for estimation of Lewis, but when you explain to them, when I explain to them, amalgamation of thinking and ideas and godly affections of godly love related much of the Bible because this idea of what godly love is and what it looks like, modify this idea of love and a love.

If you try to blend these things together, you create a back to your thinking about the nature of God's love. If you impose, I try to warn them about some of these problems because.

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 fraternize 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 push back, 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'm glad you brought that up because, and I didn't know how far or broad we might go in our discussion here, but.

Well, if this one goes well, I'll interview you again on a later time.

Well, here's the thing, and I'm glad you brought that up because people may not know this. After I wrote the book, I met a Mormon gentleman who was a, he's a former Mormon. He's now a Christian. He was converted out of Mormonism.

And I spoke to him about the book and he said, he said, you do know that Mormons love C .S. Lewis. I said, you've got to be kidding. And we went through this lengthy discussion and you can search it on the internet.

There is a large following of Mormons after C .S. Lewis. They love his writings. 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 corruptions, these problems that we've already discussed, and he calls penal substitution silly and mere Christianity, in addition to some of the other things that we've discussed, these are not small issues.

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 concern? I don't think you would take that as a compliment.

Lewis is a gateway to many things. And a book called C .S. Lewis and the Creeped 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, and firmly in one, a number of his views about that, but Lewis is a kind of an individual where people can pick him up, read him, and basically garner what they want from him.

And even Catholics, Mormons.

C. S. Lewis, Mormon Appeal, and the Problem of Subjectivism

Michael, tell me a little bit about your view of his state before God, as it were. You know, people are going to ask the question. And so 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? What are your opinions? Do you not want to go there? Give us the no compromise scoop.

That is a tough question. And obviously Martin Lloyd-Jones, that he was converted, I was told by a reputable source, one who knew what Lloyd-Jones once said, was not converted, or excuse me, Lewis was converted to the philosophy of Christianity rather than to Christ.

Now, God knows, ultimately no one on this earth can know the final state of this man's soul or whether or not he knew Christ. And clearly there are multiple advocates who would even flinch at the idea of raising the question.

I'm mindful of the conference that was held last year. John Piper held a conference that summarized the doctrines and beliefs of C .S. Lewis and his constant effort, I think, to raise the question about whether or not he knew Christ.

That's certainly controversial and we're not wanting to be controversial just to be controversial, but I do believe it's a valid question. 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 can believe that you can somehow atone for suffering in purgatory, thereby allowing you entrance into the kingdom of heaven, that is not the gospel. Excuse me, yet this is exactly what Lewis believed.

Again, I think it's a very relevant question. It might seem to be offensive to people, but we ought to be able to ask these questions of people no matter how popular they are. And I think that we have in our present society is that there's this, it seems to be this attitude that popular people, we're 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, leave them alone. And because I think that's a dangerous world. We ought to be able to want to uphold truth.

What to Put in the Hands of New Christians

So Michael, you're a pastor. And if someone came to you and said, do 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 wanna 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?

That's a good question. You know, I guess we'd have to go back to the question of what, to me, it's a very individualistic thing. And people who are reading Mere Christianity are trying to get a grasp on the base.

For me personally, my experience has been through the base Mere Christianity. They're already getting a diet of confusion about the nature of Christ's sacrifice, the nature of heaven and hell. And also, I should mention, they're also becoming Christians and they don't know it and good, what is it that they need 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.

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 wanna read Knowledge of the Holy by Tozer, something that's more rooted in the Bible and talking about the Lord with biblical wisdom.

And biblical language and categories. What do you think with C .S. Lewis and his trajectory? Do people say to you, well, like the Anabaptists 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?

Fantasy, Fiction, and the Authority of Scripture

Two things. The book itself that I wrote is very focused on love. And so the bulk of my examination of Lewis, I'm not going to prop myself up as a Lewisian expert either based upon, they're actually multiple.

I wanna be guarded with what I say. I think we can safely suggest that in the public view or writing or whatever, if he comes to understand it, the beauty of Christ, a man of responsibility and a man who desires a trajectory of relenting of what he's actually going more into the fantasy and fiction, his own admission, his life and being that was the most fundamental.

In a letter that he wrote to the Milton Society of America, he said that imaginative man in me is older, more consciously, continuously operative and that sense more basic than either the religious writer.

I think it's quite clear that for Lewis, fantasy and fiction was the sine qua non of everything else. So this is the main thing that he was focused on is that when we think about what the appetites of men and how it is that they will get their ears from the truth and will turn aside to Muthu.

I'm not interested in vilifying mythology or between someone who says, seeks to pursue mythology, fiction, fantasy above and beyond the scriptures. And that really shows forth an appetite that is not healthy.

Distinction to this, when you think about John Bunyan and Pilgrim's Progress and those who have 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 wouldn't make a great distinction.

This goes back to a point that you made earlier. We wanna direct people to literature and I have this concern for my own soul because I don't wanna write a book that comes from machinations of my own imagination.

If I'm gonna write a book and I wanna honor Christ, it must be from scripture. It must be rooted in the thing that we wanna be concerned about doing and you have nothing better to give.

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.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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