XPost: alt.usage.english, alt.books.cs-lewis, rec.arts.books   
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   On 2/16/2015 5:55 PM, Wayne Brown wrote:> In alt.books.cs-lewis   
   Catherine Jefferson  wrote:   
   >>   
   >> I have run into conservative Restorationists who disapproved of C. S.   
   >> Lewis, though.  They would have agreed with the fundamentalists about   
   >> "The Last Battle", but in general the reasons they gave for disliking   
   >> Lewis amounted to his being too liberal for them.  I think that they   
   >> meant that he was unwilling to judge others as harshly as they thought   
   >> God had taught in the Scriptures.   
   >   
   > I'm one of those you call "conservative Restorationists" (though from   
   > the independent Christian Churches side of the aisle rather than the   
   > non-instrumental Churches of Christ camp) and I've been an admirer   
   > of C.S. Lewis since my late teens/early twenties in the early-to-mid   
   > 1970s.  Much of my personal theology has been shaped (or at least heavily   
   > influenced) by Lewis, especially his "Abolition of Man," "Problem of Pain"   
   > and "Mere Christianity."  My Restorationist friends tend to admire his   
   > work also, though perhaps not quite to the extent I do.   
      
     No, you're a restorationist from my POV, definitely, but not   
   what I meant by a "conservative restorationist", which was somebody in   
   the non-institutional churches of Christ.  For those who are unfamiliar   
   with the Restorationist churches, these are people many of whom who   
   doubt whether church buildings are legitimate because they didn't exist   
   in the First century, reject paying preachers as unBiblical because St.   
   Paul worked as a tentmaker to support himself, and argue incessantly   
   about a number of other small issues. Their mindsets tend to be   
   sufficiently rigid that these few thousand people (in total) are split   
   up into more than a dozen quarreling camps.  (BTW, Wayne knows this   
   story at least as well as I do; I added it so that the rest of you could   
   understand what I was talking about.)   
      
   They'd consider you wildly liberal, Wayne, to the point of not   
   Christian.  Me, they'd be quite certain about.   
      
   Most of the people I knew during my time in the churches of Christ   
   (mainstream) were like you. To the extent that they knew about C. S.   
   Lewis, they loved his work. Those who had been to Bible college or   
   studied theology tended to know it better and loved it more, not   
   surprisingly.   
      
   > I read "Till We have Faces" around 1974 and wasn't too impressed,   
   > largely because I wasn't really ready to appreciate it.  After Bible   
   > college and grad school (working on an MA in Classics) I was far more   
   > familiar with the Classical world and had more knowledge of the Bible and   
   > Western philosophical traditions. I also had a much clearer idea of what   
   > I believe and why I believe it, and came to value "Till We Have Faces"   
   > much more highly than on my first reading.   
      
   I read "Til We have Faces" during my freshman year at Reed College, a   
   small liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon (US).  All freshmen at   
   Reed take a core humanities class during their freshman year.  I was   
   reading Homer, then Hesiod, then Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and   
   Aristophanes, simultaneously with TWHF.  Fortunately my roommate's   
   edition of Lewis's book had a decent introduction, so I knew that it was   
   based on the Greek myth of Psyche and could go find the original.   
      
   The thing is, my roommate was also a freshman, taking that same class.   
   She wasn't stupid; nobody there was stupid.  But she didn't see the   
   connections, and she certainly didn't feel them.  She wasn't Calvinist;   
   her upbringing was in a Pentecostal Holiness church.  Her mindset when   
   it came to theology was similarly rigid, though: a pagan myth was to her   
   a pagan myth and had nothing to do with Christianity and nothing to   
   teach Christians.  This mindset was familiar to me from my time in the   
   churches of Christ: the more conservative members of that church thought   
   in very much this same way.   
      
   Lewis was quite conservative in his theology and views, but not rigid.   
   He could see connections between pagan myths and Christian beliefs.  He   
   could write a brilliant and thoroughly Christian story based on a pagan   
   myth.  I won't go further because I don't want to spoil the book for   
   anybody who is blessed enough not to read it and who can therefore read   
   it now for the first time.   
      
   Lent is fast approaching, though.  I think I might re-read it now. :)   
      
      
   Under His mercy,   
      
      
   --   
   Catherine Jefferson    
   Blog/Personal: http://www.ergosphere.net   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)