Great Christian Biographies with John Piper: C.S. Lewis part 1

Before I pray, let me just give two preliminary comments about Lewis books and and this manuscript

There are some books by Lewis in the bookstore. There shouldn't be any when we shut this bookstore down You you won't go wrong in buying something from Lewis so if you're if you see anything there, you don't have by Lewis you should buy it and With regard to this manuscript that I'm going to be using

David has had a chance to work on it this morning. So it will be on the internet when I'm done here So I didn't want him to put it up now because you go there and look at it while I'm talking and that would be intimidating to me but the best way to listen

I think is is probably not by taking notes since the the manuscript will be there with all of its footnotes, but by thinking and praying and Pondering and maybe jotting questions down for for tomorrow's panel.

Let's pray. Father in heaven Thank you for your Gift to us of C .S.

Lewis. I want to be faithful first to you

Second I want to be faithful to your word third I want to be faithful to tell the truth about C .S.

Lewis and not get him wrong and I want to tell the story of his influence on me and So would you take all of that attempt and make it really profitable for those who hear so that their faith would be strong and their joy would go deep and their

Sense of your absolute truth would be unshaken and they would be mightily influential for the glory of Christ in this world.

I Ask this in Jesus name. Amen. My approach is going to be personal

I'm going to talk about what Lewis has meant most to me

How he's helped me most and As I raise that question as I have many times over the years as to why this man has been so powerful in my life

The backdrop of the question becomes increasingly urgent Namely, why has he been so significant to me even though he's not reformed and Would barely be called an evangelical by typical

American uses of that word He does not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture He defaults to logical arguments more naturally than to biblical exegesis

He doesn't treat the Reformation with respect but thinks it could have been avoided and calls aspects of it farcical

He steadfastly Refused in public and in letters to explain why he did not go to the

Roman Catholic Church But remained in the Church of England He makes room for at least some people to be saved through imperfect representations of Christ in other religions

He made a strong logical and I think unbiblical case for free will to explain the existence of suffering

He speaks of the Atonement with respect But puts little significance on any of the explanations of how the

Atonement actually saves sinners in other words Lewis is not a writer

To which we should turn for growth in a careful biblical understanding of Christian doctrine his value is not in biblical exegesis

Lewis is not the kind of writer who provides substance for pastor sermons

If a pastor treats Lewis as a substance giver his sermons will be quickly exhausted of biblical content so Why don't

I put Lewis in the category say with liberal theologians and with the emergent?

writers at one level the mistakes he makes are very similar to the mistakes that emergent writers make but there was

Something about the way he read scripture that made my own embrace of Inherency tighter not looser

There was something about the way he spoke about the grace of God and the power of God That meet that made me value the particularities of the

Reformation more not less There's something about the way he portrayed the wonders of the incarnation

That makes me more suspicious of his inclusivism

Not more accepting of it there's something about the way he spoke about doctrine as the necessary roadmap that leads to reality and the way he esteemed

Truth and reason and precision of thought that made me cherish more not less the historical articulations of the biblical explanations of how the cross saves sinners the so -called theories of the atonement

Lewis devoted his whole life to what he called mere Christianity to defending and adorning the

Christian religion quote as understood ubique way at omnibus as everywhere and by everyone believed

So he didn't want to write about any denomination or any branch. He wanted to talk about mere

Christianity now there's a price to pay When you set yourself that kind of agenda

You will almost certainly Omit things essential to the gospel not that you don't believe them

I think he was a Christian a very profound deeply true

Christian but virtually all Important doctrines have been disputed from within the church

Not from without but from within the church and if you make it an effort to only deal with matters

About which there is no dispute within the global church you run the risk of omitting very important things and we should have been warned about This because in the

New Testament letters The way Paul in particular Articulates the truth and defends the truth of the gospel is not by arguing with people outside the church

But by arguing with people inside the church all of the New Testament letters Come clear to us through intra -church disputation and therefore if you try to set your agenda as a

Pastor to omit things that are not Controverted you will not preach at all and so it was a highly dangerous

Agenda that he set him Self no pastor should follow him in this namely to ordain

Adorn and defend the truths that all Christians everywhere have

Believed he was a professor of English literature From 1924 to 1963 at first Oxford then

Cambridge. He was not a pastor He didn't have to open the scriptures week in and week out and feed the same flock for 30 or 40

Years and explain to them the meaning of the Bible and give them the riches of the whole counsel of God He had the luxury so to speak of Picking and choosing the things about which he would talk in public about the

Christian faith, and he wrote books on science fiction Children's books poetry essays apologetics and in them all he chose to focus on mere

Christianity and when it within that focus that limited focus, which he would say is infinitely large

He fell short of saying many important things regarding the gospel of Christ however if I focus on what he said

Instead of what he didn't say Even for me who consider some of the doctrines absolutely crucial that he passed over I Find that the blessings of C .s.

Lewis in my life are Incalculable and so you can see the problem that I'm facing as I take this up Having said all of those misgivings about the way he approached

Doctrine and the Bible I find myself in Massive debt

To him and so I speak out of that Struggle to make plain to you how those two things can be.

How can it be that one whose? errors seem so Blatant to me be so significant in my life.

That's the question I'm posing Myself what what was it that helped me so much and I'll tell you in a sentence what it was

And then we'll spend an hour Unpacking it. I Think the answer lies in the way that Lewis Brought the experience of joy.

It's a technical term for him that we'll get at the experience of joy together with a defense of absolute objective truth that puts him in another world from the emergent writers the world where I Love to be

It is a world I feel totally at home in when he talks about it

The way Lewis deals with these two things joy and truth joy and truth is so radically different from liberal theology or from the postmodern slipperiness of emergent writers

That he is in another Universe and I have found myself in that universe with him for 30 years or so 40 years or so Awakened over and over again made more alive more perceptive more responsive more earnest more hopeful more amazed

More passionate for the glory of God every time I turn to see s Lewis it's this combination of experiencing the stab of God's shaped joy and defending objective absolute truth because of the absolute reality of God that sets

Lewis apart as Unparalleled in the modern world as far as I can see to my knowledge.

There is no one else Who puts these two things together the way Lewis? does so Let me unpack for you.

Then what I mean by his Experience of joy and his defense of Absolute Objective ultimate truth and how these two relate to each other in the way that is so explosive for me first Lewis's experience of joy

Lewis wrote an autobiography that covers the first 30 years of his life called surprised by joy

He wrote it 20 years after that and so it bears the marks of his ripe assessment of what

God was doing in his first 30 Years, he tells of three instances as a child

When there was awakened in him Something that he has now chosen at a distance of about 50 years to call joy with a capital

J this term in Lewis is not synonymous with pleasure or happiness according to him the experience of this joy is the most important theme of his life

So in other words in my telling you about what has been personally most powerful for me

I'm not picking something marginal By Lewis's own testimony by Clyde Kilby's testimony by Alan Jacobs testimony what

I'm talking to you about right now was the Central issue for his life and and heart.

He said this of the experience of joy quote In a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else

Close quote. Here's the closest thing. He gives to a definition of joy

It is the experience quote of an unsatisfied desire

Which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction this is why he chose to call it joy and not desire or longing or the

German Zanzibar when writing his autobiography because those words do not convey the desirability of the longing itself the desirability of the unsatisfied nature of the desire quote

I Call it joy Which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from happiness and from pleasure joy in my sense has indeed one characteristic and one only in common with them

The fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again apart from that and Considered only in its quality.

It might almost equally be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief

But then it is the kind we want I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it

Whatever if both were in his power Exchange it for all the pleasures in the world

But then joy is never in our power and pleasure often is

Alan Jacobs is right. That's the Biography that I read in getting ready for this other biography.

I read Ages ago, and I recommend it highly the Narnian. It's called

Alan Jacobs biography his right to say nothing was closer to the core of his being than this experience and perhaps what sealed its

Significance for Lewis is that it brought him to Christ He was an atheist in his 20s

But relentlessly God was pursuing him through the experience of what he called sometimes joy and sometimes an inconsolable longing that he loved to experience and Had no control over and he was increasingly finding in his literary studies

That it was the Christian writers from centuries ago where it happened most often

One decisive influence as he was coming to the Lord was J. R. R. Tolkien the writer of the

Lord of the Rings Tolkien argued and Lewis picked up the argument and repeated it over and over again the rest of his life

When this joy Tolkien was trying to explain to this atheist When this joy this stab of inconsolable longing is awakened by certain powerful myths or stories

It is evidence that behind these myths. There is a true myth with the capital

M There's a true story with a capital S That really exists the reason for the joy

That it's desirable. It's because it's real and the reason it's inconsolable is because where you're getting it isn't the true one

The true myth and the real joy is the original shout So to speak and the stories and the myths that you're reading every day in your career are echoes

Tolkien pressed and Lewis later Used this analogy of what was moving in him a man's physical hunger does not prove

That that man will get any bread He may die of starvation on a raft in the

Atlantic But surely a man's hunger Does prove that he comes from a race?

which repairs its body by eating and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist or To put it another way quote if I find in myself a desire

Which no experience in this world can satisfy The most probable explanation is that I was made for another world

God overcame his atheism in the spring term of 1929 he was 30 years old

Who this is Lewis? Who can duly adore? that love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking and struggling resentful

Darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape Now that was not the end of the struggle because he wasn't a

Christian yet. He just became a theist in the spring term of 1929 gave up protesting against a divine being as the source of the inconsolable

Longing he didn't know Christ yet. It wasn't submitted to Jesus October 1st 1931 two years later

He wrote a letter to Arthur Greaves his friend I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ in Christianity Lewis now began to look back on these 30 -plus years and all of his experiences of joy in his reading and in the stories and in the myths

And in the attic of his old childhood home and in the walks in the woods

Wherever it would be stabbing him. He began to look back and and now things began to look

Different it was still inconsolable. It was still pleasant

But now it was a desire for God and it was evidence that he was made for God quote

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located Will betray us if we trust to them

It was not in them It only came through them for they are not the thing itself

They are only the scent of a flower. We have not found the echo of the tune we have not heard

The news from a country we have never yet visited all

Lewis life, he said quote an unattainable ecstasy has

Hovered just above the grasp of my consciousness The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing

To find the place where all the beauty comes from but when he was born again

To see the glory of God in Christ. He never said that again ever Now he knew where it all came from he knew where the joy was pointing

On the last page of his autobiography Surprised by joy. I recommend it at least if you're a literary type on the last page of his autobiography

He explained the difference between the joy now and the joy then while that other

That other was in doubt when he didn't know what it was all pointing to while it was in doubt

The pointer naturally loomed large in my thoughts When we are lost in the woods the sight of a signpost is great as a great matter

He who first sees it cries look the whole party gathers around and stares at the sign

But when we have found the road and our passing signposts every few miles

We shall not stop and stare They will encourage us and we shall be grateful to the authority that set them up But we shall not stop and stare or not much

Love it not on this road Though their pillars are of silver and their lettering of gold

We would be at Jerusalem So Lewis stopped turning joy into an idol

When he found by grace that it was a pointer to something other namely to God now

We make a turn. How did this experience of joy?

relate to Lewis's defense of objective absolute truth

How did the two come together? The first thing he taught by the way at Oxford was philosophy

He did his first BA in philosophy Then he did a second BA in literature just taught philosophy for a year shifted over and his imagination awoke

He almost died as a philosopher Intellectually mentally imagination