Desiring God Blog : Posts by Joe Rigney

Having examined the form of education that Lewis rejects, we turn now to a brief summation of his own view. The following tenets are not the whole of Lewis’s educational paradigm, but instead form some of the nonnegotiables that Lewis felt were under particular attack in his day.

The Tao

Genuine education embraces the Tao. For Lewis, the Tao appears to be a combination of the absoluteness of reality and the human way of life that conforms to this reality. In other words, reality simply is a certain way, and human beings are called to order their lives by the pattern of the Tao.

Lewis believed that some aspect of the Tao was present in all major ancient philosophies and religions (Christian, Platonic, Oriental, Stoic, etc). Christians in search of biblical support for such an idea might look to Romans 1, where what can be known about God (i.e. Absolute Realit…

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For me, one of the most exciting elements of Scripture is its use of typology. Put simply,

[Typology is] the idea that persons (e.g., Moses), events (e.g., the exodus), and institutions (e.g., the temple) can — in the plan of God — prefigure a later stage in that plan and provide the conceptuality necessary for understanding the divine intent (e.g., the coming of Christ to be the new Moses, to effect the new exodus, and to be the new temple) (Graham Cole, He Who Gives Life, [Wheaton: Crossway, 2007], 289).

I love to read the New Testament and see the ways in which the biblical authors read their Old Testaments in light of Christ. I love that Matthew depicts Jesus as the true Israel, who escapes from a wicked king like Moses did (Matthew 2:13-18; cf. Exodus 1:15-2:10), who passes through water and is declared God’s son like Israel (Matthew 3:13-17; cf. Exodus …

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We’ve seen, in Part 1, that Lewis’s critique of modern education begins by highlighting the marginalization of value statements, the separation of fact and value, and the creation of men without chests. However, Lewis is not merely lamenting the loss of virtues like courage, fidelity, and sacrifice. For he knows that nature abhors a vacuum, and in the absence of these virtues, men will turn elsewhere to find meaning and purpose.

The Appeal to Instinct

Lewis rejects the notion that those who are debunking “traditional values” are themselves value-less. “A great many of those who "debunk" traditional or (as they would say) "sentimental" values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process” (43). Indeed, Lewis contends that these “skeptics” would be well-served to be a little more skeptical about their own syste…

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Part of my goal in writing these posts is to commend the Narnian stories as a component of Christian discipleship. In doing so, I’m not merely contending that we can read them profitably as Christians, but that C. S. Lewis intended these stories to inculcate Christian values, habits, and truth.

We’ve already seen that he intended these stories to “steal past the watchful dragons” that hindered true affections for God and Christ and that he believed that fairy stories should be read by adults as well as children. But another way to approach the issue of discipleship is to reflect on Lewis’ critique of modern education in his brilliant little book The Abolition of Man.

Lewis regarded the trends in the educational establishment of his day as problematic on a number of levels. Choosing a standard English text-book as his starting point, Lewis offers a shrewd and perce…

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Edwards writes:

God’s providence may not unfitly be compared to a large and long river, having innumerable branches beginning in different regions, and at a great distance one from another, and all conspiring to one common issue. After their very diverse and contrary courses which they hold for a while, yet all gathering more and more together the nearer they come to their common end, and all at length discharging themselves at one mouth into the same ocean.

The different streams of this river are ready to look like mere jumble and confusion to us because of the limitedness of our sight, whereby we can’t see from one branch to another and can’t see the whole at once, so as to see how all are united in one.  A man that sees but one or two streams at a time can’t tell what their course tends to.  Their course seems very crooked, and the different streams seem to run …

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Many Christian readers, upon discovering additional layers of meaning in the Narnian stories, immediately jump to the conclusion that the Chronicles are allegories. These same readers would be surprised to learn that C. S. Lewis denied multiple times that the stories are allegories.

The Narnian Stories Are Not Allegories

But it is not, as some people think, an allegory (“Letter to Sophia Storr,” in The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, vol 3, 1113).

You are mistaken when you think that everything in the books ‘represents’ something in this world. Things do that in The Pilgrim’s Progress but I’m not writing in that way (Walter Hooper, Literary Criticism, 426).

Lewis defined allegory as “a composition (whether pictorial or literary) in which immaterial realities are represented by feigned physical objects, e.g. a pictured Cupid allegorically represents erotic l…

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One of the great challenges for those of us who love and embrace “the supremacy of God in all things” is to push this glorious truth into the corners. We must get specific. The supremacy of God in science. The supremacy of God in technology. The supremacy of God in literature. And, in light of our reflections on Jonathan Edwards’s “A History of the Work of Redemption,” the supremacy of God in history.

In addition to what we’ve seen so far, Edwards also helpfully highlights two recurring motifs that appear throughout history; for simplicity’s sake, let’s call them the cyclical motif and the progressive motif (see the obscenely-expensive-but-good book, Encounters with God: An Approach to the Theology of Jonathan Edwards [New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998]).

History is a Cycle

On the one hand, history is repetitive and cyclical. What goes up must come dow…

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C.S. Lewis loved fairy stories. He thoroughly believed that “sometimes fairy stories say best what needs to be said” (the title of one of his essays). And, as we’ve seen, Lewis rejected the modern association of fairy tales with children. Adults can and should enjoy fairy stories.

But Lewis was aware that many regarded fairy stories as unsuitable even for children. In “On Three Ways of Writing for Children,” he sets out to defend the fairy tale against three objections.

Objection 1: Fairy tales give children a false impression of the world.

Lewis: On the contrary, fairy stories give them a realistic impression of the world. In fact, it’s the realistic stories that are more likely to deceive them. “All stories in which children have adventures and successes which are possible, in the sense that they do not break the laws of nature, but almost infinitely improbabl…

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The final portion of Jonathan Edwards’ first sermon on “A History of the Work of Redemption” relates five designs of God in the great work that he carries on from the fall to the end of the world.

1. According to 1 Corinthians 15:25 and 1 John 3:8, “one great design of God in the affair of redemption was to reduce and subdue those enemies of God till they should all be put under God's feet.”
2. God’s design was “perfectly to restore all the ruins of the fall,” including both souls and body of elect men, and the physical world, so that there is a new heavens and a new earth (Isaiah 65:17).
3. God aims “to bring all elect creatures in heaven and earth to an union one to another, in one body under one head, and to unite all together in one body to God the Father” (Ephesians 1:11).
4. God designed “to advance all the elect to an exceeding pitch of glory, such as eye has not seen.” …

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The central thrust of this recurring column is that learning to live like a Narnian is something worth pursuing. Indeed, I want to commend it as a crucial component of Christian discipleship. In other words, I want to make a case for Narnian discipleship, not merely as a coincidental byproduct of reading the Narnian stories, but as one of Lewis’s (and God’s!) chief goals in the Narniad itself.

Beware of Two Traps

But our tendency is to fall into one of two traps. Either we accept the idea of discipleship through Narnia and rush to the moral or allegorical meaning of the stories prematurely, short-circuiting the actual breathing of Narnian air, or we dispense with the notion that the stories can be a component of Christian discipleship at all. “It’s just a story,” we think. And a children’s story at that.

To this latter point, it must be said that C. S. Lewis did…

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