21/02/2010 In Uncategorized by Tylan
I was able to view a most interesting “sermon” this week by John Piper. He has kind of a goofy presentation style, but I can’t help but appreciate his humility and passion when he speaks. That, and he’s really smart. He’s one of those guys that can see why something that we like is important, and better yet articulate why we like it. In this segment, he does this with C.S. Lewis…at the macro level. It is an amazing effort on his part. He encapsulates the greatness of Lewis from a theological perspective.
<http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/ConferenceMessages/ByConference/46/4503_Lessons_from_an_Inconsolable_Soul/>
Knowing that some won’t be able to take the time to watch this or read the full set of notes…here’s a recap…the cliff notes, if you will…(All unattributed quotes are from Lewis, unattributed statements are Piper)
IF YOU DO NOTHING ELSE–check out the quote in point 5 towards the end…
Piper begins with an appropriate and well stated discussion about the severe limitations of relying on Lewis for Biblical doctrine…
Premise:
The greatness of Lewis was the ability to combine the pursuit of true joy using the tools of rational thought and argument. He was able to combine a God-shaped experience of joy with an unparalleled defense of absolute truth. He could do this, he recognized, because God is real, and IS truth, He is the central “story”.
Joy:
Joy was the central theme of Lewis’ life…
“The experience of joy is an unsatisfied desire, which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.”
“Joy has only one characteristic in common with “happy” or “pleasure”; that you will want it again.”
Joy is an “inconsolable longing.”
Joy isn’t in our power, though pleasure often is.
Story:
Piper: Even before his conversion, Lewis found joy most often in old Christian writers…
His friend J.R.R. Tolkien said: “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. There is a true Story that really exists…These stories are the echoes…”
Lewis: “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.”
Truth:
Lewis became an atheist only 2 years before he became a Christian.
Lewis knew that if absolute truth went, joy went, because joy, real joy, was found in the Absolute.
“There was no doubt joy was a desire, but a desire is turned not to itself, but to its object. The form of the desired is in the desire. It is the object which makes the desire harsh or sweet, course or choice, high or low. It is the object that makes the desire itself desirable or hateful. I have been wrong in supposing that I desired joy itself. Joy itself considered simply as an event in my own mind turned out to be of no value at all. All the value lay in that of which joy was the desiring. And, that object was quite clearly no state of my own mind or body at all.”
Piper: Lewis went the opposite direction of the entire modern world–he believed and defended the premise that absolute truth exists. “And, we live in a sea of postmodern relativism that he [Lewis] could smell and hate with all his might.”
Lewis’ Abolition of Man was his most important critique of modern culture and defense of absolute truth.
Piper notes that he doesn’t think Lewis ever read Jonathan Edwards, and if he had, he would have hated Edwards. He makes this argument by extension, knowing that Lewis’ spiritual mentor was an avid opponent of Edwards’ teaching. Piper notes how strange a thing it is for him to have his two most influential writers–Edwards and Lewis–so diametrically opposed on basic theology.
Having said that Lewis wasn’t in the Reformed theology camp, Piper shares a quote of Lewis on the chief purpose of man in Absolution: “The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. But, we shall think now that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.” (very Piper-ish)
What drew Lewis to God [search for joy] became the goal in Lewis’ life. “No one else combined joy with absolute truth like Lewis.”
Implications of Lewis’ Perspective for Piper:
Lewis’ pursuit of joy and use of rational, logical argument and defense led to:
1) Liberation from a false dichotomy where passion and joy must be separated from mature and rational thought. Rigorous, precise logic is not the opposite of spiritual experience. Lewis was a “Romantic Rationalist.” He commanded poetry and logical defense, he mastered metaphor and definition.
2) Liberation from chronological snobbery. This is the completely untrue notion that something is good because it is old or that something is good because it is new.
Lewis never read newspapers, wore a watch, or even mastered a typewriter. He was known for wearing the same old clothes until they fell apart.
3) He instills a clean, penetrating sense of ache for joy and amazement and the objective realness of things that pulls one out of self-absorption. Lewis teaches one to savor the world and its Maker with a heightened sense of reality. Lewis was described as having “omnivorous attentiveness.”
Piper follows this with an impassioned statement that we should get out of bed every morning with an ecstatic sense of “He did it again!” Piper notes that if you take this perspective to the Bible it pops.
4) Lewis warned of the perils of introspection. Piper connected this to issues of assurance of salvation…
Piper: “The effort to know the experience of joy by looking at the experience of joy is self-defeating.”
Lewis: “The moment we step outside ourselves to contemplate our enjoying we are no longer enjoying.”
“Pursuit of joy must always be indirect, focusing not on the experience of joy, but on the object of joy. The moment I turn around to examine the experience, I no longer do it and I can no longer see it.”
Piper: “The most authentic faith in Jesus is suspended when we begin to analyze our faith in Jesus. That means this analysis always ends in discouragement. When we trust most authentically, we are not thinking about trusting. We’re thinking of Christ!”
We need to pray for self-forgetfulness.
5) Lewis describes the incompleteness of duty without delight. Piper connects this to truly walking in the Spirit. The error here is in doing duty from outside pressures–religion.
“A perfect man would never act from a sense of duty. He’s always want the right thing more than the wrong one. Duty is only a substitute for love.”
Piper notes that this absolutely changes the pursuit of holiness in our lives.
Again noting that Lewis would not fall in the Reformed theology camp, Piper uses a quote from Lewis’ History of England regarding Tyndale and the pre-Reformation movement:
“In reality, Tyndale is trying to express an obstinate fact which meets us long before we venture into the realm of theology–the fact that morality or duty, “the law”, never yet made a man happy in himself or dear to others. It is shocking, but it is undeniable. We do not wish either to be or to live among people who are clean, or honest, or kind as a matter of duty. We want to be and associate with those who like being clean, and honest, and kind. The mere suspicion that what seemed an act of spontaneous friendliness or generosity was really done as a duty subtly poisons it. Morality is healthy only when it is trying to abolish itself. [Piper notes that Christ was the end of the law...] In theological language, no man can be saved by works. The whole purpose of the gospel for Tyndale is to deliver us from morality; thus, paradoxically, the Puritans of modern imagination–cold, gloomy, hard, doing as duty what richer souls do without thinking about it–is precisely the enemy which historical Protestantism arose and smote.”
6) Lewis showed the caution of overreaching with story:
His friends described Lewis as having an “expository demon” as they encouraged him to give up his heady, theological works for writing stories.
Story is great, but it isn’t everything. Story shouldn’t be overstated to the exclusion of exposition, doctrine, teaching, argument, and defense.
7) Lewis portrays an understanding of heavenly joy that God enables us to live in–an exalting awe of what it means to be human. See people in a sense of wonder, recognizing they are image bearers of God. The people around us, the most common and plain, are immortals!
Because of this, Lewis taught that all of life is serious, even our play.
Joy is not an even in the mind.
