#212 | C.S. Lewis in America with Mark Noll

Hey, everybody, it is Travis Michael Fleming here, and I know it's been a while since you've heard an episode from us, and I wanted to give you just a quick update as well as enlist your help.

There are some pretty amazing things coming down the pike that we wanted to draw your attention to, as well as some obstacles that have come up along the way. I have been busy traveling, teaching, going to churches, being at conferences. It's been a wonderful time.

In fact, I had the wonderful opportunity to be a participant at the To Change the World symposium at the University of Virginia at the Institute for the Advanced Studies of Culture. I was invited, along with a little over 30 other intellectuals, to discuss how does cultural regeneration happen?

It was an honor to be there to meet so many ministry leaders, business leaders, thinkers, academics.

I mean, there were so many different people that were there from so many different backgrounds, and it was really an honor to engage in the discussions on To Change the World. Now, the title of the symposium actually came about because of James Davison Hunter.

I'm not going to spoil the thesis for you. If you haven't read it, I would encourage you to do so.

And I know that there are some out there right now are saying, I don't even know who James Davison Hunter is. What are you even talking about? Well, James Davison hunter is the E.F. hutton of culture.

And you would have this group of people in a restaurant or a church or on an airplane or a park, wherever there would be a group of people. And when someone would say, you know, my broker, E.F. hutton says, and then everyone would stop, lean in, and strain to hear what was being said.

When James Davison Hunter talks about culture, people all around strain to listen, especially of those in leadership in D.C. new York, and other cultural centers. He's the person who termed culture war.

So he's a bit of a cultural prophet on what's coming down the line. And when he writes something, people listen. Now, doesn't mean that everyone always agrees. But he is a serious academic, he is a Christian.

And when he discusses or mentions anything about culture, people want to hear what he has to say. So we were invited together to discuss this very important topic on how does cultural regeneration happen? I mean, what needs to occur?

Where does it happen? These are some of the questions that we talked about. And it was really an awesome time. And I learned ton.

Hopefully I didn't make a fool of myself and the conversations that were there, but it really was an awesome time of having conversations. And it's. It's good to be back.

I have not only been at that, but teaching at churches and engaging with people all over the place, trying to get the words of Apollo's watered out there. And as we've gone along, I mean, not only have I been pretty busy, there's a great deal of things that are happening.

Some things that we are planning that we are so excited to bring to your attention.

Things like the watering weekends where we go into churches and help you and your church really fulfill the mission of God, where they are at this cultural moment. Because we do want to equip you in your missionary encounter with Western culture. We are also in the planning stages of creating the Apollos Academy.

This is where people can come from all over the place, jump online, and be equipped in how to deal and interact as a Christ follower in the midst of the culture in which we find ourselves. But we need the funding to be able to make this happen, which is where you come in.

We want you to be praying for us because this is a spiritual endeavor. Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain who build it.

As the scripture says, we need God to build this, but he uses his people in order to do so. We noticed that we had a dip in our giving this summer, and we brought that to your attention. And it's kind of continued down now.

It's been a slight rebound, but we need to be able to shore that up, to be able to do what God has called us to do. And again, we're not doing this by ourselves. We are doing this together. This is how this is accomplished.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know all of that before we get into our conversation with Mark Nolan C.S.

lewis, which is a pretty important conversation, and to let you know that until we make up that funding difference, we're going to go back to one episode a week and we need to do so because we have so many other projects that we want to do and we need the opportunity to really plan that. But I want to thank you for your faithfulness.

I want to thank you for listening to the show, and I just want to really encourage you so that you might be able to fulfill the mission of God where you are. I don't know what your situation is, but I do know that you're listening to this show because you care about Jesus.

You care about people following Jesus. You care about people and their eternal state. You want to follow God, you want to obey his word. I want to be able to help equip you in that.

Together we can fulfill the mission that God has for us, us as equippers. You out there doing it where you are because you are a light in your community. You're a light in your neighborhood. You're a light in your workplace.

So keep it up.

But if you are not one of our watering partners yet, simply go online to our Apollos Watered website, click the support us button, and then select the amount that works for you. Whether it's a one time gift or becoming one of our monthly watering partners, we have so much we want to do and we want you to be a part of it.

But without further ado, let's get to my conversation with Mark Noll as we talk about CS Lewis. Happy listening.

Capacity to watch the news, get the news on your Internet feed and think, oh, the world, the world, the world. It's not irrelevant. But almost none of us, almost all of the time, can do very little to affect the world.

But all of us, almost all the time, can do those things that affect the immediate environment where we live.

It's watering time, everybody.

It's time for Apollo's Watered, a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate.

Your world with the good news of Jesus Christ.

My name is Travis Michael Fleming and I am your host.

And today on our show, we're having.

Another one of our deep conversations.

Have you ever encountered an artist that captures your imagination? It could be a sculpture, it could be a painting, it could be a song or perhaps a song lyric. Maybe it's a writer or a poet.

There are some artists that you encounter that capture your imagination in ways that you can't quite explain. I mean, it's like your imagination is awakened, like it's roused from a sleep and you start to See things differently. For me, that's C.S. lewis.

I'm a huge fan of C.S. lewis. And I remember the first time that I ever heard about him, I was in college. And I remember my friends kept talking about C.S. lewis, C.S. lewis.

They just kept saying his name over and over again. So I thought, well, I don't want to be left out. I want to read this guy. So I ended up reading Mere Christianity.

And I thought it was a good book, but I didn't quite get everything in it. And I kind of played along because all my friends did. And then I read Till we have Faces. I had no idea what he was talking about.

And then I picked up the Chronicles of Narnia. Then suddenly I started to grasp it a bit more. I decided to read his sci fi trilogy, and I was lost. It made me just want to step away from Louis.

I didn't get it.

There was something that I was missing.

That all my friends got, but I didn't. So I resigned myself to just letting Lewis go, just drift away from the shore, go downstream to someone else who would appreciate him more.

However, fast forward about seven years, and for whatever reason, I decided to pick up Lewis again. This time, I found that my mind was like dry logs ready to be set on fire by Lewis's flame. And that's exactly what occurred.

I was awakened in ways that I can't even begin to communicate to you. There's something about Lewis, something deep in the spirit that is awakened within him, that awakens something within other people.

Now, for those who are sticklers for theology, and I consider myself as such and part of that tribe, Lewis really bothered me because he didn't fit my theological categories. He seemed to transcend them.

And even though he violated them, and not only my tribe but several other tribes as well, people still advocated him being red. And there was something to that that made me stop and go, what is it about him? Is it from the Spirit of God? Is it simply that he thought differently?

Or was his mind awake and his imagination captured ours? And what does that have to do with the missionary encounter that we advocate for here at Apollos Watered? Well, plenty.

You know, at Apollos Watered, part of the missionary encounter is advocating for a mere Christianity. And there is no better advocate for that than C.S.

Lewis.

Lewis transcends culture, space, and tribe. And he speaks to each one of us where we are. And he awakens our mind to the reality of who God is in very profound and yet simple ways.

And that's why I've invited Mark Noel back to the show Mark is a world class historian indeed, considered sometimes America's best Christian or church historian. And he's written a book that's coming out very soon on CS Lewis and his reception in America.

And because we are in the West, I wanted to see Lewis again so that we might be able to appreciate more of what God did through him and what he wants to do through him and through us reading him now.

So I would encourage you to listen into this conversation as we talk about CS Lewis's reception in America, but also so that we might be able to engage with Lewis because in doing so we are able to share the faith more effectively and go deeper with Jesus spiritually. So without further ado, here's my conversation with historian Mark Noll. Happy listening.

Mark Noll, welcome back to Apollo's Watered.

Thank you. Thank you, Travis. Nice to be here again.

I love having you on because you, I mean you're a historian and I love history. So I'm excited about our conversation today. But if you remember, we have our fast five. Are you ready for the fast five?

Well, ready or not, here we go.

Okay, here we go. Easy one. Your favorite restaurant is where and why.

I like simply Thai just down the street. It's nice Thai food and it's always very quiet.

Is that where you had some of your conversations? You referred to having conversation with Jerry Root. You said having lunch together. Was that at the Thai place?

I think we might have gone to the small Chinese restaurant close by that unfortunately is closed now. So that was. That's a bummer.

I hate it when restaurants that I enjoy close. All right. But it happens. Number two, what is your favorite non academic hobby?

Well, I'm sure it's walking. My wife and I have walked for years and years together and now as an old guy, that's about all I could do of activity.

But it's refreshing and even on cold and windy days, it's nice to get out.

All right, number three then how about this? Where is the place you love to travel to the most and why.

So love to is a kind of conceptual matter. We one time we're in New Zealand and I thought if this wasn't a billion miles away, I would really like to go back and look at more.

We are mostly in the South Island. I would like, I think to go back and travel in the north as well, in the south again, but we probably won't because it is too far away.

What year did you go there?

2001. So it was just the summer before 9, 11 and actually it was remarkable because you could walk on an airplane and there was, you know, just walked on.

No checks, no nobody looking at you. Just. That was. That was the era that's passed.

Yeah, yeah. Were you actually in New Zealand when 911 happened?

We were there the summer beforehand.

Oh, the summer beforehand. I remember talking with Jill Briscoe about that. She was actually in the air when that happened.

And they got down in a small little airport in Canada and she. And she talked about might have been in Newfoundland, and she talked about washing her clothes in the bathroom because they couldn't leave.

They were, like, stuck there. So it was very interesting hearing her stories. And, of course, she's just this amazing storyteller. Anyway, so, anyway. All right, number four.

Name one historical figure outside of the Bible that you would love to interview and why.

Well, I have been interested for years in the music and life of J.S. bach. He was a very busy guy. I don't think you'd have a whole lot of time for taking in questions and answers, but he certainly would be one.

Are you a musician?

No, no, I. I'm an amateur. Sing in the choir and really enjoy listening to music and having real musicians around. But, no, I'm not a musician.

I was just curious. I mean, Bach is for the serious. I. I've sung some of Bach's stuff, like his B Minor Mass. That's not easy stuff.

Serious. Right.

He was. He was a serious and very underappreciated musician.

Right. Particularly, I think, in church circles. He was a serious Lutheran.

And his cantatas are really very profound and inspiring commentaries on the text for the day.

Yes, very much so. All right, here we go.

This is number five, because you are a historian, you've written so many different works over the years, but let's say that someone writes your biography. What would you hope it to be titled and why.

Is a good one? Well, maybe something like sitting in the library can be fun.

Did you go into the library a lot as a kid? I mean, you're interested in history?

Yeah, actually, I can remember going even before I could read, and we would sit around and hear somebody read a. Read a story and be fascinated by it. And I think I started checking books out at age 6 or 7 and have been doing it ever since. Wow.

I mean, are you using. What libraries do you go to? Are you just getting it online?

It's mostly the Wheaton Public Library, though we're close enough to Wheaton College. I do get over to that, and I'm grateful.

As a emeritus professor at Wheaton that I can check out folks from the Wheaton College Library, which I do from time to time.

What's the best library you've ever experienced? That's not on the question. I mean, I just want to know, having been in so many different libraries around the world. I mean, you're at Notre Dame.

What's the best library that you've ever seen?

I request it, and the next morning it would be there at my. Carol. I think there were one or two that I asked for that they didn't have, but it's remarkable.

Comprehensive resources for studying anything in American history. Anything as American history. Connecting to the world. Wow. So I'm a big fan of the Library of Congress. Huh.

I didn't know that you could do that. I mean, what. Well, there's other questions I have about that. Like, you don't just get a library card from the Library of Congress.

You can't actually. The public is welcome. But there's funding to bring in scholars to the Library of Congress. I was privileged to be one of those for the year.

That's awesome. All right, well, let's. Let's.

Speaking of scholarship and talking about literature and talking about some historical people, and we actually referenced this at a time you've written a book that's not yet been released on CS Lewis in America. And we all.

Anyone who's familiar with Lewis, and I've read this and feel free to correct me, but he's one of the few Christian authors that is read by almost every single branch of Christianity. And considering just how phenomenal he was, I mean, we look at him now, and there's a lot of great admiration for him.

But you write about how really he was received initially in America, and you break that down by Catholics and then kind of the mainstream media and then evangelicals are. They're kind of a little bit late to the game with him, a little bit more apprehensive.

But what.

What sparked your interest in writing about Lewis in America?

Well, the. The.

One of the privileges of teaching at Wheaton College for many years was that I enjoyed Funstein conversations with Lyle Dorset first, and then Chris Mitchell, who are directors of the Wade Center. The Wade center at Wheaton is a collection of works of Lewis about Lewis and then six people who were very important in his life.

So let's see if I can get the other six. J.R.R. tolkien, Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers, G.K.

chesterton, George MacDonald, a missing one, Owen Barfield, and an English professor whom I was privileged to take classes with way back in the dawn of time. Clyde Kilby actually corresponded with Lewis and then visited him.

And then after Lewis died, visited Lewis's brother and collected first manuscripts and then first editions and translations.

And then one of the founders of the Service Master company, Marion Wade and others donated funds to establish at Wheat in the center studying these seven authors. And I'm not a C.S. lewis expert, but I certainly read some and admired a great deal. So it was privileged to work to enjoy these conversations.

And I thought, well, I've been always a fan of Lewis, greatly appreciative, but also just a little bit nervous about making Lewis a kind of icon pulled out of time. So I guess I'm a historian, I'd like to think what went into making Lewis a popular figure?

What was the story behind how he became so well read, so influential, such a common authority and influence in America at the time at Notre Dame, the university graciously was hired my wife Maggie as a research assistant for me for a few hours every week. And she was able to use the excellent resources of the Notre Dame Library as well as online. It wasn't quite so much online stuff available then.

It was short, but a Positive review of the Pilgrim's Regression.

But it's before the really great, great worldwide popularity that comes from Mere Christianity and the Narnia tales. Although C.S. lewis experts now are referring to that as the Ransom Trilogy. So. Sorry. No, no. Getting mixed up already. Yeah, just forget that.

We'll come back to the trilogy, the Ransom. Too many Lewis books to get. So it's before Mere Christianity, before the Narnia Tales.

And the initial question was, well, just, just who's, who's reading these things? And I guess I'd known and partly from the. There's three excellent books that have been published earlier about the reception of C.S.

lewis, including reception in America, one by Alan Snyder, one by Stephanie Derek, one by George Marson. But they were good, but they did not focus on this earlier period exactly. So I knew that there had been early Catholic awareness.

I knew that the Evangelical Protestants were a little bit late. I'm not sure I knew how many interesting people that are known for other things had actually taken the opportunity to review Lewis.

So Maggie was able to pull together this pretty comprehensive catalog into the hundreds of reviews in that 12 year period. So I did a paper for the, for the conference that Chris Mitchell pulled together. Sadly, Chris died of a heart attack not, not too long thereafter.

And there was, then there was supposed to be a book from the conference, but then it became a book in honor of Chris. And I was able to revise the paper I'd given to that conference. But the paper could only get at just a little bit of it.

And meanwhile Maggie continued to do some research. I'd found some more things.

So the Wade center, because of the generosity of the Hansen family, has an annual lecture by someone connected to Wheaton College. Usually it's an active professor. President Phil Reichen has done A series of these lectures on Tolkien, a really nice series.

But as an emeritus professor at Wheaton, they said, well, would you like to sort of expand what you did and talk about in detail how Americans responded to C.S. lewis in this period before mere Christianity and the Narniatail. So it looked like a really fun assignment.

The Hanson lectures are set up so that a Wheaton connected person gives a lecture and then another Wheaton connected person comments. So I had three expert commenters.

Karen Johnson, a historian at the college, Kirk Farney, who is actually the college vice president in charge of promotion, but Also a history PhD and then Amy Black from the political science department, who does a lot of work on evangelicals in the contemporary world. They did commentary after the three lectures I gave, first on Catholic reception of C.S.

lewis, then on kind of academic and general, and then on Protestant. So that's the genius behind the Genesis behind it.

4 Now I'm even more of a CS Lewis fan because he was a very smart guy. I don't know how he could keep so many things going in his head, but he was a very smart guy.

But then as a historian, my main question was, what do the many, many reviews and reactions to CS Lewis tell us about these groups? Why would Catholics be interested in C.S. lewis? What does the academic response to C.S.

lewis and then the general response, why are so many of Lewis's books being reviewed and reviewed positively in the New York Times in those years, the New York Herald Tribune and the Times both had major weekly book review sections. Time still has theirs. It might be the only one left in the country for a daily newspaper.

Why were the literary journals, like the sad review of Literature, reviewing Lewis? And then in the Protestant world, what did what we consider today, mainstream Protestants think about CS Lewis?

And what did fundamentalist evangelicals. And that was the era when the neo evangelicals were coming out. What did they think about it?

And it turned out to be just a lot of fun to look at Lewis's reception as a kind of window into what was the general situation in these three venues? So Catholic, General America and Protestant America. And just it was more fun than I thought it would be. Lectures were given in kind of the COVID era.

So we had to move to an auditorium where people would sit at a distance and wear their masks when they came in.

But I got great questions from the audience for those lectures and it's just been a lot of fun working with the Wade center people, the current directors, David and Crystal Downing, and the associate Marjorie Mead, who takes special responsibility for the Hanson lectures. And so the book, I think is due out sometime pretty soon, maybe in October or early November. The mayor of RC Press.

What were the surprising things that you discovered early on? I mean, like you said before, you talked about Roman Catholics, you talked about kind of the mainstream world and then Protestants.

As you went through that, what was the biggest surprise that you found?

It probably was not just that the Catholics were the earliest group to have a substantial interest in Lewis, but that their interest took place at a depth and with a consideration of literature, theology, culture. That really surprised me.

His article, two part article in effect, put together all of the C.S. lewis books that had been published up to that time. Nobody in America did that in the period that I was studying, except for Charles Brady.

But even Chad Walsh, who is a really good scholar and became personally acquainted with Lewis, never put together Screwtape Letters and preface the Paradise Lost. So you have Screwtape Letters, phenomenally popular with the general public.

Preface to Paradise Lost, a pretty academic book read mostly by those who were experts in John Milton and his work. Brady put together those two worlds and then some of the Christian exposition that had begun to come out in the radio talks. And I was blown away.

In fact, we got permission from the contemporary editors of America magazine to run those two essays as an appendix in the book so people were able to see, people were going to read what were the first comprehensive American appreciations of C.S. lewis. And interestingly enough, Brady sent these articles to Lewis himself and he wrote back. Lewis did not.

I don't know if he liked Americans, but he didn't really write too often to too many Americans at that stage. Later on he did a lot and he said, you're the first person who has worked up my writing as a whole and comprehensively.

So first of all, that's really interesting. So the first comprehend. But what did he say? What did Brady say?

Well, he said there's been no more important advocate for Christianity in the public sphere like G.K. chesterton until C.S. lewis came along.

There's been nobody who understands the history of English literature and how dependent that is upon the Christian faith. There's nobody who can explain with literary and creativity the main teachings. He didn't put it that way.

The main elements, the main threads of the Christian faith and really quite interesting. We're going to get into the weeds here pretty soon.

But there were a few who said, well, Lewis, you know, just doesn't have a strong view of the church and Catholics think that's very important.

There were those who were associated with the Catholic University of America who quoted canon law and said works by non Catholics need to be officially approved if they're going to be recommended to Catholics.

I'm paraphrasing. What are these people thinking? They are picking over things that are just in the grand scope of things, not very important.

And then he went on with his appreciation. Let me read. I can pull out, just read just a little bit. I think I've got it here.

Some of the things that Brady said works like the CS Lewis have made the Screwtapes letters have made Lewis the most phenomenally popular household book. The screwtape letters of applied religion in the 20th century. So people knew screwtape letters. I probably should go back and fill in that.

Lewis was the only true popular champion of orthodoxy in book, pamphlet and radio address since the passing of G.K. chesterton. The pages of Lewis's writing constitute a melodious sounding board, a whispering gallery of what is great in world literature.

And then Brady. Brady was a learned guy. He just rattled off all the sources that Lewis put to use in his work. So Virgil R.H. benson, Olaf Stapleton.

Now, who's Olaf Stapleton? Eider Haggard, Ronald Knox, Tolkien, William Morris, Jonathan Swift, John Henry Newman, Chaucer, Dante, and many others, including especially Milton.

Well, the Wade center is at Wheaton College. Westmont Evangelical College has a C.S. lewis thing. Taylor University, I think maybe even there's a competition of who has the reward role.

lewis. Moody Monthly and the Journal of the national association of Evangelical begin to have little notices of Lewis.

There's three or four of these, but they're only like a paragraph or two. CS Lewis is a lively, important Christian thinker who we're really glad to see coming from Oxford University, but.

And then there'll be a longer paragraph. We're worried about his emphasis on the sacraments. We're worried about his attitude toward the Bible. We're worried about this.

The Christian Herald, which is a very widely distributed magazine, is more appreciative, but also very short. So one of these broadcast talks, they would say, like two sentences, a fine Christian exposition by an Oxford literary scholar.

And then it was, I think, a review of Perelandra, the first of Lewis's space trilogy. Here I get to say now CS Lewis, experts really are calling it the Ransom trilogy.

It's an appreciative review of this science fiction work where a traveler ransomed from Earth, in effect, is back to it, Eden, he's on Venus. And there's a. There's a conflict to see if Eve can be kept from giving way to the. To the devil. It's all science fiction.

He actually has an excerpt from Lewis's books and then he has some positive articles, but compared to Charles Brady and a kind of systematic treatment, mostly positive, Few reservations, a few people with more serious reservations. Amongst the Catholics, it's really night and day. So you ask a simple question. I've droned on in good historians fashion.

It is fascinating.

The depth of the Catholic versus just the initial tentative awareness of the evangelical was sharper than I thought I would find.

What made Catholics so interested in him? Before Protestants.

There were a number of things. One was the emphasis of thought on what would eventually Lewis would call the Tao, or the universal instinctive belief and objective right and wrong.

So what what people believe, objective believes, right and wrong differs from place to place. What's universal is this, the sense that there is a right and wrong. I'm forgetting which. Which of the broadcast talks begins with that.

But that's the way the. The mere Christianity, when these things are pulled together, would work.

And Lewis had had, in one of his early academic works, a dialogue with a fellow English literature professor, E.M. tillyard. Lewis had emphasized that the really important thing about a poem or a work of literature is the world being described by the author.

Whereas Tilliard said, no, what's really important is how the work reflects the personality of the author.

Interestingly enough, one of the very early Catholic reviews of that work was by Thomas Merton, who would become very well known as a kind of Catholic monk, a Catholic guru. But he reviewed the work in the New York Times and said, well, no, Lewis is right.

The personality of authors is clearly important, but what works of literature do most is to tell us about the world that's outsiders.

So Catholics, as part of the very strong Thomistic heritage that was important in their intellectual formation, believed in natural law, believed that all people had access at some level to some awareness about the way in which God had structured the universe.

And Lewis has not used Catholic technical language, but Catholics of all sorts recognized that he was beginning his presentation of the Christian faith by appealing to what all people everywhere feel about morality, about an ethical life.

Now, what I did not anticipate getting into this project is how the most serious evangelical response would be responding to that are that way of Lewis presenting things that the Catholics like.

So the most serious response from what we would call the evangelical world came from the theologically Conservative Presbyterians at Westminster Theological Seminary, often in their journal, the Westminster Quarterly, Westminster Theological Quarterly. There's really some very interesting early evangelical articles. One is by Paul Willey. He was a wonderful gentleman there, a church historian.

Another was by young Edmund Clowney, who eventually became later the president of Westminster Seminary. These writers, you can tell, they love reading CS Lewis. He's vital, he's vibrant.

Paul Woolley, who was something of a European trained gentleman, said fundamentalists should be reading C.S. lewis because he points out that having a glass of wine is not the most important thing in the world.

But after they kind of enthuse about Lewis, they say, you know, there's just some real problem with this theology. And the real problem is he thinks that everybody has a kind of natural ability to have a certain awareness of God in the world.

And you don't want to get too far in the weeds here.

But if you know anything at all about conservative Presbyterian theology coming out of Westminster Seminary, you know the great influence of Cornelius Van Til presuppositionalism, with the strong argument that the world is divided between those who accept the Bible and its truth and those who do not. And those who do not have no real valid awareness of God until they're brought to the awareness of what is in the Scriptures.

So what Catholics liked in Lewis about what could be called his preference for natural law, these most serious group of evangelicals, who were the ones who were leading serious evangelical engagement with Lewis, found disturbing.

So Catholics like that, and then a person like Brady, who taught at the Jesuits, Kinesius College, there's another professor at Marquette, man the name of Ham, who did a very extended article on Perelandra Lewis, Milton scholarship, Jesuits, Marquette, some of these. All of the Catholic people who wrote about Lewis had come out of a tradition that had maintained real intellectual depth. Now it wasn't popular.

Tied to Aquinas, tied to natural law, tied to Catholic doctrines, about the Pope, meant that this background was running parallel to the mainstream of American intellectual development. But it was solid and strong. So it wasn't too surprising that when Charles Brady took up C.S.

lewis, he was really impressed that Lewis knew Milton thoroughly. Milton knew Edmund Spencer thoroughly. Milton knew Virgil, Cicero, Augustine. That Lewis was conversant with the main figures of the.

The Western literary and intellectual canon, which were important also in the establishment of Catholic higher education in the United States. So you had three things for the. For the Catholics, just the literary verb and just Louis creativity. So the GK Chesterton of his era.

But then there was the doctrine. Lewis had this notion of natural law that they could latch onto, and then also the mastery of learning that was important in its own way.

And places like Panicius and Marquette were hanging on to a curriculum.

A lot of influence from Thomas Aquitus, a lot of stress on Latin and Greek still, while American higher education was beginning to move past those things pretty rapidly.

So there were some reasons, and maybe a fourth reason, there were elements in American Catholicism in the 30s and 40s who thought the church was too insular. The church was not aware of the good things happening in the wider Christian world.

And although it would take up, it would take a long time till we get to the Second Vatican Council. The way in which laypeople, Christians, not Catholics, could contribute to Catholicism.

You could see a beginning with at least some Catholic reviewers of Lewis saying, here's a non Catholic, there's a layperson saying things that all Catholics can take advantage of, and that. That actually becomes a much more prominent thing than Catholicism, but not for 20 or 30 years.

Lewis crosses categories. I think that's why he makes so many people uncomfortable.

I remember listening to John Piper at his pastor's conference give one of his biographies, and he starts off talking about Lewis. I mean, the whole thing is about Lewis. And he spends 15 minutes on saying why Lewis is bad. That's how he starts off.

He said, he never could have been an elder in my church. He did this, he did that, he this. And then he stops about 15 minutes in.

And I'm feeling really bad at this moment in time because I'm wondering if I'm getting a rebuke because I love Lewis. He said, now let me tell you why I do love him. And he goes through it.

What is it about Lewis that crosses theological categories in such a way that people, they all give caveats on why he's wrong on something, but nevertheless, they still, they still read, they still love him. I mean, you have. Not only the Protestants, you know, I have Catholics, but I.

And if I remember correctly, and I've heard conflicting things on this, I don't know if the orthodox received him or not. I've heard some say they love him, and I've heard others say they don't like him. So I. I'm not as familiar with that.

But what is it about this enduring legacy that enables so many different Christians to excuse some of his poor theology but still embrace him?

Yeah, I mean, that is a great question.

And for me, more or less a conservative Presbyterian, Calvinist evangelical, I found those articles in the Westminster Theological Journey the most interesting because they did exactly what you said. So they reversed the order. But these articles began with huge enthusiasm.

But then they pause and say, well, you know, what he says about innate human capacity around the world just doesn't work. And actually I'm probably on the fence on that myself.

But it was, it was really good to see serious theological engagement from people who obviously loved. But why? Well, what. One. With one exception. And we maybe get around that because it's an interesting exception.

With one exception and probably maybe close to 200 articles and reviews that Maggie found, and I added a few of them. Everyone said he writes like an angel. So the literary skill, okay. And then just fun creativity.

So, you know, I think Paul Woolley, who wrote this pre. One of the long appreciative articles in the Westminster Journal, said, well, Lewis, great, great, great.

But, but, you know, just a few of his metaphors, just a few don't, don't connect.

And he did not like the one where Lewis said, well, nobody pays to go to a, a theater and watch somebody eat a piece of meat and then talk about it and play with it and then eat a little bit, as opposed you go to see a stripped tea show. Yeah. Willing said that that doesn't work, but he said that doesn't work by way of complimenting how much the other metaphors were.

And then maybe the most important thing, it's known that Lewis and mere Christianity intentionally set out to present Christian faith that almost all of the Christian world could accept. Wonderful book by George Marson, A biography of mere Christianity with just.

I mean, it's not a long book, but there's an ocean of evidence to see how many different people from so many walks of life, so many places around the world have appreciated the argument of mere Christianity, that there is a basic core of traditional Christian teaching that if you're a high church Anglican, if you're a Pentecostal, if you're a Mennonite, if you're anything, you're a free church, Baptist, Bible, Baptist person you can accept. And to me, one of the most moving things that is in your Christianity.

Maybe elsewhere where Lewis makes the comment, and he would have put it much better, I'm going to paraphrase it, but the closer the people get to Jesus Christ, the more they see how much they're like the others who are getting close to Christ.

So it's not just a boiled down simplified Christian faith that's mere Christianity, but it's a condensed view of the heart of Christian faith with a focus on Jesus Christ. And I think that focus Combined with extraordinary, maybe even unique literary ability made it possible for Lewis to appeal to so many people.

I have used another quotation in my book which. Steve, I've got it here from J.I. packer, written after Lewis died. Let's see, maybe I don't have it here.

Anyways, the point was to say that Lewis was not a. Not an Aaronist on his view of the Bible, High Church Anglican. He was a person who had a very high view of the sacraments.

Packer, real strong inerrantist, not a moderate view on the sacraments. And yet Packer was just filled with admiration for the way in which. And again, this is a paraphrase. Packer would have put it much better.

All of Lewis's imaginative work are rooted in orthodox Christian strength. All of Lewis's orthodox Christian writings have a unique imaginative flair.

So he, like John Piper, was someone who would have objected to quite a few elements of Lewis's teaching.

But being aware that there was a drive, a dynamism of life in the presentation of basic Christianity that was appealing and could be appealing across many, many barriers.

I was chatting with Malcolm Gite and he was talking about the imagination. And really the imagination is kind of the back door that bypasses some of our normal mental defenses, if you will.

Is it that he really knew how to draw your imagination in such a way to bring you close to God? I mean, he really does seem to do that by tapping into these different expressions.

I think of the Great Divorce and he's on this bus and seeing this beautiful woman and you realize, you know, she was a saint in this world. I mean, in our world, she wasn't anything to go by, but the real nature is being revealed.

He just draws on the imagination in ways that very few know what to do. And it, I think it's a good reminder for us who are very pro. I mean, we're Protestant, we're very word centered.

But he, he seems to cross those boundaries. I remember reading a book on the difference between Roman Catholic filmmakers and Protestant filmmakers.

And Roman Catholic filmmakers used a lot of symbolism, a lot of color, imagery, music. And they said, and it's no secret why.

Because of course in the, in, in the sacraments, of course at the Lord's Supper or the Mass, the, the body and blood are, are, are changed in, in Roman Catholic theology. There's this massive symbolism that's there within Protestant. We're very word centered. He seems to cross those genres so well.

That's why he piques the imagination of Roman Catholics, because he hits the imagery the symbolic. But yet he's enough word centered that he brings in many of the Protestants.

Would you say that his drawing upon the imagination is one of the reasons why so many people are drawn to him?

Certainly, yeah. And I think Malcolm Gyte's exposition of that point's a really good one.

Recently Karen Swallow Prior has published a good book on the kind of the poverty of evangelical imagination. Right. The Great Divorce is a terrific example.

And it was fun to read the different reviews of the Great Divorce because again, like we've been talking about, usually the reviewer would say, well, this character doesn't work. What Lewis said about so and so. I think I'll refer to a review by W.H. auden. You think, well, sophisticated.

Auden loved the book, but he said, why did Lewis have to introduce the historical figure Napoleon? And why did Lewis demean the animal world by describing lust as an insect? But you should read this book.

So I mean, Auden is saying exactly what you've said. It's the verb to have. But like the figure you mentioned, the woman who is of no account in this world now appears as a figure of inestimable beauty.

This is a great. I mean, you know, that's one of the great lines, isn't it? From the Weight of Glory is.

I said, the humble person sitting beside you has a glory unlike anything possible in this world. And you think, well, I never would have thought of that myself, but it's true.

So right from the beginning there wasn't too much attention paid to the Pilgrim's Regress, the first of Lewis's books, although it was reviewed, there's a positive review by one of the conservative Presbyterians, although he thought Lewis was a Catholic. And from. From. So Lewis actually wrote him and set him straight. But.

But the ability to have the imagination enliven and embody mere Christianity, that combination was really powerful.

Why do you think. I mean it is extremely powerful. Why do you think that he's so enduring to this moment? I mean, you're capturing him at the beginning of his genius.

I mean just the beginning, the dawn of his exposure in the American mind. I'm curious on two things. One, what did the Brits say about him initially? I'm sure you probably uncovered some of that in your discussion.

And number two, and this is a bit more of a distant question, why has he endured so much, even to this modern era of post modernity?

He still speaks the British question really nicely answered by the book by Stephanie Derrick, which came out of a doctoral dissertation done under David Bibington. At Sterling University in Scotland.

Her book's been published by Oxford University Press and she reports that compared to American enthusiasm there is less enthusiasm in Britain. Part of it had to do with envy and antagonism by Lewis's academic peers.

Their high minded objection was that he was spending so much time writing these fantasies and going around giving talks that he wasn't doing his serious literary scholarship. Their low minded reason was he was popular in making money on books and their books were not selling at all or they weren't even getting rich.

High minded and a low minded. And then I think Derek suggests that the British public had never been divided in the way that the American public was.

So that the Protestant world was not divided into evangelical or fundamentalists and non fundamentalists. And so Lewis always had strong supporters. Malcolm Gite a terrific one.

Very positive, really profound Lewis scholarship coming out of Ward forgetting his first name, Michael Ward really, really sound. But you don't have the enthusiasm of the United States in part I think because of things you've mentioned.

Lewis's ability in presenting mere Christianity was novel in the US the real strength of the Christian faith in American history has been individual Christian groups doing their thing for their people. Methodism was a tremendously positive force in the early United States but it was not.

Methodism was for all but it was really for the people became Methodist Catholics had a built of very strong infrastructure. Joel Carpenter is showing how the fundamentalists built a real strong infrastructure.

But none of these the new Carl Henry era in evangelical history build a real strong network of evangelicals. But few of these movements had somebody out of their own narrow confines speaking to a wider group.

To the question of why Lewis endures I think that actually needs more research.

If you look at the Amazon.com bestseller list mere Christianity ranks real high But I'm not sure it ranks as high as the Narnia tales which if that's the case it would indicate that the imaginative works Brutape, Great Divorce, Darnia, Space Trilogy, Ransom Trilogy they continue on with one group of readers. The mere Christianity which we know is important. Charles Colson, Francis Collins referred to often by Tim Keller.

The mere Christianity approach to me still works powerfully with people who who have retained older notions about the stability of truth, about the possibility of knowing something really important outside of your own self, coming into yourself. In other words, it's modern and not postmodern. I don't know. This is a question for people who've studied the contemporary.

How well does Lewis fare with people who are willing to concede yes, every judgment comes from a point of view. That point of view will dominate the judgment. There are a few Christian authors who have taken this direction and worked with it powerfully.

It tends to be non Christians who use it.

I don't know how well Lewis's appeal to universal objective reasoning fares in a world, a postmodern world, where objectivity is supposedly a power game, where the haves impose their will and they have not. The imaginative works, however, there's no question they endure.

And I think for some of the reasons we've been talking about, it's not as though Lewis is bypassing reason, bypassing words, but he's using words to create images and pictures that are able to sway the imagination and disadvantage way of organizing things. They sway the imagination toward understanding and accepting the Christian message.

Why were Protestants so late? I don't want to say late to the game or reluctant. I mean, it seems like they're trailing Roman Catholics in their embrace of Lewis. Why is that?

Well, the fuller picture is that what we would consider today, mainline Protestants mostly really like Lewis. And. And early on there are. There are a few exceptions.

The Christian century, which was probably not as pluralistic in its in the 40s, 50s and 60s, has become. I mean, today the Christian century will have strongly evangelical, strongly postmodern, a lot in between.

Charles Morrison, who was the editor, saw himself as speaking for the mainstream, sophisticated Protestants. And there are some tepid reviews and one really interesting article written by a Episcopal minister who goes to visit C.S.

lewis, and he's not impressed. He says, you know C.S. lewis. I mentioned Soren Kierkegaard, and Lewis said, I don't know anything about Kierkegaard.

The minister said, I told him how important modern existentialism was in my life. And Lewis said, I don't understand existentialism. So this article goes on and on.

But then you find out why is this Episcopal minister from Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, visiting C.S. lewis? Because one of his parishioners has become very excited about CS Lewis and recommending who's the parishioner? WH1.

So here in an article that really is trying to pooh pooh Lewis, you find out that the reason the person is taking time to talk to CS Lewis is because one of the crucial literary figures of the mid 20th century is excited about it mostly, however, mainstream Protestants like Lewis. So there's articles in the Presbyterian journals, Lutheran journals, Episcopal journals, Southern Baptist journals, all saying Lewis is good.

Unlike the Catholics, they don't understand or they're not able to articulate how Lewis's Technical scholarship on Spenser, medieval romance. Milton relates to the C.S. lewis of the Screwtape letters, the Great Divorce, that hideous strength.

So they're positive, but not positive in the Catholics. So the evangelical world, I think this has been well documented by people like I mentioned, Joel Marston, Joel Carpenter, George Marsden.

The fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals had turned their back on what they saw as the contaminations coming out of the university world. So you have the foundation of an alternative intellectual world.

There's some decent work, some good work, but there's not a grounding in an understanding for why might Milton in Paradise Lost have something to say about the present? Why might even more remote.

Why might the tradition of romance in the Middle Ages, culminating in Spencer's Fairy Queen, have anything to do with how Satan can work through and demons like Lewis portrayed in the CS Lewis. And. And there just wasn't any. Almost no evangelical capacity to see how those things came together.

And then I do think that there was damage done in the fundamentalist, conservative, evangelical world by the fights over dogma. And so you have a situation where if someone is perceived as being weak on the doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible, then you write them off.

Well, Lewis was weak on the doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible. It was hard to write him off. So it took a while. And then there were a few lifestyle matters. I remember the story and I think it's documented.

It comes a little bit later. But the. Bob Jones Jr. I think the second. Would it be the second visited? C.S. lewis came back and wrote and he said, that man drinks, that man smokes.

But I do believe he is a Christian. You did. You had a world where.

And this is kind of a harsh judgment, but you had a world where secondary matters of lifestyle and secondary matters of Christian teaching had become primary matters. So it made it hard to evaluate fairly a project like CS Lewis that was presenting a mere Christianity and a mere Christianity that.

I mean, Lewis wasn't maneuvering, but a mere Christianity that would appeal to people across. Across the ecclesiastical spectrum.

I remember reading a manuscript of. Or a recording. There's a recording of Lewis and it might have been a McGrath's biography, I can't remember, but he tells the story. There were.

There was a group of them that are there, and I think it's at Oxford, and he's pouring a drink and they said, should we have this in the recording? And he's like, most definitely, Most definitely.

Because I think he did want to challenge some of those principles that People had that kept them from the true apart. I mean, just the robustness of the Christian faith. And I think many don't realize about him. I mean, he really was a man of prayer.

He was a man of prayer. He was a very. He was a pious man. He talks about.

We hear about him or talking about him going to church and attending services and him getting so frustrated because he couldn't tell what the priest was doing. And he's up to something all over again and he's messing everything up. What do you think Lewis would say?

And I know you're a historian, you look to the past, but look to the future for a moment or a contemporary situation. Knowing what you know, what do you think Lewis would be saying to American evangelicals in this cultural moment?

Well, yeah, that is a really good question. And as you intimated, it's hard for historians to shift gears and think that way.

There are, I think, though, a number of things that just are really obvious. One of them is just. That's just what you said.

Lewis irritated people because he was irritated some people because he was so adept, so skillful at what he did, and yet he just kept doing it. So, I mean, he didn't. C.S. lewis was never about C.S. lewis.

I actually end the book with a short effort to say, well, what characterized Lewis that maybe could be useful for instruction today? And I point out things that he, before he became a public Christian apologist, he was a deeply learned person.

So I thought, well, you know, if you want to be. Have some credibility and what you write properly, do your homework, make sure that you've got a base of expertise. And of course, he was.

He was immensely creative and terrific writer. And you can aspire to those things, not always reach it. But then back to your initial part of this question.

Who's an effective spiritual tutor. And he writes the wonderful poem about the danger to the apologist.

When people cheer the apologist, when people are excited about the speaker, then that brings tremendous danger to the. To the life of the apologist. Tried to get. Yes, here it is. And it's a prayer of all my lame defects and, oh, much more.

From all the victories I have seen to score from cleverness shot forth in thy behalf, at which, while angels weep, the audience laugh from all my proofs of thy divinity, Thou who would give no sign, deliver me. So one of the things that W.H.

auden liked about the Great Divorce was the identification of pride as the basic temptation for anyone doing something positive in the Christian faith. Now, Auden wanted to tweak. He said, now Lewis's understanding of pride needs to be adjusted in this. So it was a good, good, but in effects.

And Lewis is exactly right. Thinking of yourself as the key to what you are doing is the fatal mistake of those who want to be spokesman for Jesus, spokespeople for Jesus.

I think Lewis internalized that the Pilgrim's regress, which is this extended analogy early in his life, which is still fairly difficult to read. Both wonderful annotated edition now that David Downing has published.

But the constant threat of projection of the self as really significant in the communication of the Christian faith is prominent. So I think you're exactly right.

One of the reasons that Lewis continues to be respected as well as read is because his life did not contradict what he said. And we have just so many examples where that's not the case. And then enough positive examples we know people have made.

And I think the recent memorials for Tim Keller have at least pointed out for people who knew him, that Tim Keller was not about Tim Keller, what he was trying to do. So combination of learning, creativity, humility. Not unique. I think there have been other people who have had the same, but very unusual.

Very, very unusual.

Well, as someone who can put all of those different genres together. And I think it was Lewis who himself said, don't try to be. What do you say? Don't try to be original. Just write truth.

And in doing so, you'll become original.

And I thought one of the many, many, yes.

So many different quotes. Out of all the things you've read by Lewis, what is your favorite?

Well, yeah, I was really impressed diving into some of this literary scholarship that I hadn't looked at before. My wife and I read the Narnia Tale several times, many times. Our kids. I like him.

I would probably have to say that the academic book that Lewis worked on for probably 20 years never ceases to provide real insight. It's the Oxford History of English literature in the 16th century, except drama, mid-50s.

It was the book that some of Lewis's friends and colleagues said, look, this is your job. You got to finish this book. Why are you always running around doing these other things? And he would say, you're right.

But he kept at it and just wonderful, wonderfully insightful writing on for example, William Tyndale and Thomas More, whom Lewis values both as among the great writers. But you can tell also he means the great Christians of the early 16th century.

And then, however, he goes into the thousands of pages, vitriolic pages, that More wrote about Tyndale and the dismissive way, but on much shorter compass, the dismissive way that Tyndale responded to More. So you see, in a sense, you see Lewis's appreciation and advocacy of mere Christianity at work in how he puts together this literary history.

Great admiration for two people for different reasons.

I mean, he's very good in the technical reason, why More is important, why Tyndale's important, but also real appreciation for the fact that although they were antagonists, there were things in each of them that could be greatly admired in this kind of literary history. And of course, it's written with the same kind of verb. I suppose, probably I've enjoyed some of the more popular works even more. But it's my.

Are more appropriate, right. My pride, I have to say.

Looking at Lewis, you quote at the beginning of the book, his. Is it a speech or chapel message? Learning in wartime. And he talks, yeah, go ahead. But he talks about. I mean, war is going on at this moment.

And he says that we can't. He goes, the biggest enemy is excitement. Can you elaborate on that?

Because I think that is very appropriate to now with our headline filled the sky is falling. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to that are just beside themselves, like, Jesus is coming back. Jesus is coming back.

And I'm like, well, yes, he is. But for you to think this time is completely unique historically, I think is missing a little bit of.

You need some more historical softening, if you will. And I think Lewis's words are very appropriate to. Now, what is that message that he gave and what did he say in that as war was swirling around them?

I'll come back to that, but just with a slight detail. Ask why are Lewis's work still enduringly popular? One of the reasons was that this will be a slight exaggeration.

You can find almost no political viewpoint in the work. Now, some people have said they're there, and they probably are there, but Lewis is writing during World War II. He's writing.

If he first comes to American attention during the Depression. There's nothing about whether the New Deal is good or bad. There's nothing about whether Britain's response to the Depression is good or bad.

There's almost nothing about the World War. And you think, how is that possible? Then we come to the sermon, Learning and Wartime.

And it might actually be Walter Hansen who introduces the book, who quotes from that.

But it's apropos in any case, I think what Lewis is trying to say is, of course, world events are important, but most of us, most of the time are called to tasks that are within our own capacity.

And in a sermon at the University of Oxford, even though the student body at the University of Oxford is being thinned out, women are able to have a much greater role because the men are many of the men. Most of the men are being drafted, being into the armed forces.

If you're here and you're called to take up an academic life, your responsibility right now is your responsibility right now. And that message, just as you indicate very well, just could not be more pertinent.

The capacity to watch the news, get the news on your Internet feed and think, oh, the world, the world, the world. It's not irrelevant. But. But almost none of us, almost all the time can do very little to affect the world.

All of us, almost all the time can do those things that affect the immediate environment where we live.

That's probably the most difficult part, particularly.

In an age of swirling media expansion.

And it's. It's that it's the era of outrage where we're attracted to the headlines, we go into enemy mode and we are constantly anxious and stressed.

So to have a person in the midst of war, the.

In the depression, as you've alluded to there, helps us to, I think, appreciate him even more simply because he's not caught in the winds of change, not caught up in them. He's familiar, but is so rooted to help us find our mind and a. Maybe a. A harbor and if you will, in the midst of the storm.

What are some concluding thoughts on Lewis for our audience today? That something that they should read or perhaps digest to really gain a greater appreciation for Lewis in their. Their life at this moment.

Well, I think I only.

The Truth of Christian Faith and Narnia Tales, I do think show a little bit of the kind of good old boy networks of the 20s and 30s, but are wonderful in their imaginative presentation of important Christian teaching.

People who are into the literary world and recognize the importance of older scholarship, I think can still benefit from the allegory of love and the preface To Paradise Lost. Screwtape Letters makes a wonderful book for group discussions which we've been privileged to take part in a couple different times.

Some literary people like the knowledge. The novel that came late is Not Till we have Faces. I've had trouble getting through that myself a couple different times.

But people who like it really like it and think it was a very important statement of the later Lewis. The two books that Lewis wrote on grief and pain, Grief Observed, really, really important to recognize that.

And the Problem of Pain, that's the other one, Stress.

There's nothing at all unchristian in experiencing the full range of human emotion at loss or turmoil. Lewis ended, however, I think, not by leaving people and just experiencing loss and grief, but realizing that this is part of the.

The human story that you know from other things he wrote fits into a mere Christianity in which the central event is the suffering of the Son of God. So I probably put in a little bit evangelical spin on Lewis, but.

But it's really hard for whatever your interests are not to find something in the Lewis corpus that will actually make you think and in many cases help you be encouraged.

There are so many books that of Lewis that I've enjoyed and there's some that I'm like, eh, I didn't, I didn't like that. I mean, Pilgrim's Regress, there's so much going on at the thought of the time. It's, it's. It's tough to wade through same until we have faces.

But of course, Narnia being children's Screwtape letters, which I know that was one of the most difficult for him to write simply because he's getting into the mind of the devil. But mere Christianity has benefited so many. And to know he's endured across streams of Christianity, the branches of Christianity is.

Is tremendously encouraging and especially for us as we're talking about a missionary encounter. And one of the things that we're advocating for in a missionary encounter is this idea of mere Christianity.

In order to engage people where they are, we have to come with this mere Christianity.

Not that we, we jettison our doctrine, but it becomes, I don't want to say a means to an end, but it can become a obstacle if it is so rooted in a historical moment where that expression was made, you know, I think to the backdrop of the Reformation as they're talking about what's going on with Roman Catholicism and we've addressed this on the show, that there are so many different issues today.

It's not necessarily Roman Catholicism that's Not the backdrop, it's how do I and articulate the solas in a self centered and narcissistic culture and a self help culture. How do, how do we do that? It's Christ alone and Lewis is, is such a good and welcome breath of fresh air.

That spring breeze that comes in and to be able to see how he has been viewed over time, to see how he was understood right when he came out, it's. I mean everyone's kind of scrambling to say is he good? Is he bad? What do we say? How do we say it? Well, he's bad but he's good.

And that seems to be across the board.

But I want to say thoroughly how much I've enjoyed the conversation today to enjoy your insight again, I want to thank you Mark, for coming on Apollo's watered.

Thank you for trying to do what you're trying to do.

Mark Noll is definitely a historian and that's what I love about him. He gives us the details and the stories that really put flesh on how people understood Lewis and why they loved him then and why we love him now.

I would encourage you to check out the book and if you don't get anything else from this conversation except this, it will be worth it. Here's what I want you to do. If you don't get Noel's book, that's fine. But pick up Lewis.

Whether it's the Chronicles of Narnia, like the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Magician's Nephew, do it.

Pick up the Sci Fi trilogy, read Paralandra, or read Mere Christianity, or the Screwtape Letters, which is on spiritual warfare, or Letters to Malcolm chiefly on prayer. All of these are excellent books. You need to find out which book of Lewis really speaks to you. Because Lewis was a prophet for our own time.

He leads us into mere Christianity and we need that.

Especially in a moment in time when people are increasingly intolerant of the Christian faith, we want to make sure that we do not put any unnecessary obstacles in the way keeping them from Jesus. That's why we need to advocate for a mere Christianity so that they too might see and know who Jesus is.

I want to thank you for listening in today and really go online to Amazon and pick out the Lewis book that you want to read.

I also would encourage you that if you'd like us to come to your organization or church, go to apolloswater.org, click our resources tab and then check out our watering weekend. We would love to be able to come to your church or organization to help equip you in your missionary encounter with Western culture.

I want to thank you for listening today. I also want to thank our Apollos Watered team for helping us to water the world. This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollos Watered.

Stay watered. Everybody.

Sa.