tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post3756238146385077372..comments2024-03-17T11:05:22.464+00:00Comments on The Life And Opinions of Andrew Rilstone: Owed To Joy (1)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-63974949224550556492022-04-18T16:30:16.394+01:002022-04-18T16:30:16.394+01:00Well, in support of the idea that he held the beli...Well, in support of the idea that he held the belief that once you believe in God, Christianity follows, is that he tells us that once he came to believe in God, without any beliefs about Jesus or the afterlife, he felt he had to start going to Church.<br /><br />After I became an Evangelical Christian in my late teens I was looking for stuff to read and Lewis came up. I found him really readable and much more, no much less, ghettoized than evangelical books. Surprised by Joy, I found very readable, potatoes and all, and I came to it without expectations, since like most of the other Lewis books for grown ups it came with a yellow cover in paperback. But, it does have this blink and you miss it conversion. In fact Lewis is always a bit coy about about his conversion. In an interview with the Billy Graham magazine they asked him how he made his 'decision for Jesus'. More than most people Lewis does explain most of his beliefs as decisions, specifically choosing between options on the basis of plausibility, but, being a contrarian, and speaking to an organisation that is decidedly Arminian, he decided to pretend to be a Calvinist and said, 'I didn't decide, I was decided on'. Although, in some ways the account of his conversion in S by J does look a little Calvinist. I suddenly believed, my eyes were opened as it were, and I can't explain it. In some ways I find that more believable that Lewis's tendency to make all his other switches in belief look like the result of pure ratiocination.<br /><br />I did enjoy A N Wilson's biography of Lewis and for two main reasons. Firstly it does try to give us a picture of a real human being not a plaster saint and secondly, it does try to give an explanation of some of the rather odd bits in S by J, such as the difference between Lewis and his father's understanding of Professor Kirk. But, Wilson introduces his own oddities. Actually there is a whole industry of Lewis oddities. Wilson claims that Walter Hooper, who is himself a bit of an oddity, believed Lewis never consummated his marriage. Another oddity, Katherine Lindskoog, decides to phone Hooper and ask him. He says, no he didn't believe that. I mean the whole who is fighting for what thing is getting very out of hand.postodavehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18402698812156032820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-44550407417425912322022-04-18T12:15:02.306+01:002022-04-18T12:15:02.306+01:00He indirectly alludes to a different incident -- a...He indirectly alludes to a different incident -- an old academic atheists saying "Rum thing about the dying and rising God myth -- I sometimes wonder if it had really happened."<br /><br />You might think that the conversation with Dyson and Tolkien didn't loom very large in him memory -- we happen to know about it because the letter to Arthur survives, but he might have forgotten all about it. Except that he uses the "myth that really happened" and "myth became fact" rather often in his essays. <br /><br />I wonder if he thinks that "How I came to believe in a personal God" is the proper subject for an autobiography, but "How I came to accept the Christian claims about Jesus" belongs more in a book of apologetics? Or if, deep down, there is an ancestral belief that Christianity and Religion are basically interchangeable, and that once you believe in God, the rest follows automatically?<br /><br /> But like you, I was very disappointed when I first read the book: we can have five pages telling us why the Irish landscape looks like a bucket of potatoes, but half a paragraph of "and then I came to believe that Jesus was the son of God." Andrew Rilstonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05786623930392936889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-48006536322838255352022-04-15T23:37:52.805+01:002022-04-15T23:37:52.805+01:00The most puzzling thing about Surprised by Joy is ...The most puzzling thing about Surprised by Joy is that Lewis's story of how he became a Christian does not tell us how he became a Christian. In Lewis's description of his journey to faith Lewis there are two threads, there is the experience of 'joy' which he finds primarily in Norse tales and poems and there is the intellectual journey from atheism to idealism to theism to Christianity. The final move, the one where he moves from theism to belief in Jesus as God incarnate is glossed over. It sort of happened on a bus ride and he can't explain it. And as for joy he may still have those experiences bit now he's a Christian he does not take much notice of them. <br /><br />This is odd because from other sources and from his letters that there was an important discussion with Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, that led to this shift. It potentially links together, as you point out, Lewis's 'joy' experience, with specific features that Christianity shares with some pagan myths. As Lewis described it in his letter sent to his friend Arthur at the time:<br /><br />"Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself, I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it. Again, that the idea of the dying and reviving god similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even tho’ I could not say in cold prose ‘what it meant.’ Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened."<br /><br />It is as if having presented all the clues and gathered everybody in the drawing room for the denouement, the detective just says, 'by the way it was Professor Plumb, another person I do not have the time to describe as he has little to do with this tale, and moves on'<br /><br />I have no idea why, having a story to tell about how he became a Christian Lewis decides at the key point to not actually tell it. postodavehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18402698812156032820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-72773154652532664962022-03-25T23:34:55.617+00:002022-03-25T23:34:55.617+00:00In America "The Monkey's Paw" is a s...In America "The Monkey's Paw" is a story greatly beloved by school anthology compilers. And rightly so, since it is genuinely disturbing and memorable. But Lewis refers to Jacobs as a humorous author, so I guess it was actually not typical of his work.James Kabalahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02335302113772004687noreply@blogger.com