Derek - This has been the best way to begin 2025. I am one of those ‘odd people’ Stephen mentioned that read Williams, so his insight here has been tremendous. I love how he gathers the threads ( or in my case, the pieces of glass 😉) to bring into view the connections between Williams, Dante, and GMD- who as you know lectured on Dante.
Pieces of Beauty gathered here are numerous:
True selves
The Tao τ
Is Heaven interesting?
All Loves are grounded in God
Life can only be lived backward ( that time thing! and I must give cred to Father John Behr for gifting my mind with this one!)
Hans Boersma and good characters
The Greater Trumps and the chessboard
Lewis’s healthy suspicion of unordered loves
Choose Earth, lose Heaven and Earth- Choose Heaven, gain Heaven and Earth
And wonderfully - Tolkien’s Leaf by Niggle 🧡
I am so thankful for the vocabulary of others, for the minds you are bringing together in your series as our selves, our true selves are being nurtured into a being of pure Light, fractured and yet One.
Our ‘oneing’ as St Julian of Norwich would say.
And thank you simple, for sponsoring this conversation today.
I do get hung up on the assertion that (my paraphrase here) we are most like God in our freedom… (that this is somehow at the core of our being made in God’s image) - maybe I misunderstood? The “freedom” to choose sin seems inherently contradictory- and is to choose bondage. God does not possess such “freedom” to choose sin. The Image of God is Christ- after whose image we are all made- in, by and for Him (Col.1) That defines our “true” self- the false self is a lie- and in some sense (like evil) non- existent (it’s the absence of the Good).
But with Lewis it seems our “freedom” is greater than God’s- we can utterly destroy our own true humanity- the Christ imprinted on our very being (yes, obscured and “hidden” beneath our fallenness)…
The story of Legion is relevant to me here: how many bad choices preceded such possession? And yet- even apart from an invitation, Love Himself steps up and with a word delivers this man…
Sorry- it’s late and I probably shouldn’t be making any comments at such an hour! Just registering what fundamentally bothers me about my favorite author, C.S. Lewis ❤️
Thank you, Wayne. I always appreciate your thoughtful comments! I am likewise perplexed by Lewis's insistence that human freedom is somehow more powerful than God's love. I am not a Lewis scholar and honestly, though most of my tribe is, have never even been particularly drawn to Lewis's work.
I am compelled by the beauty of Jesus - as you highlight - in his interaction with Legion, and his "judgment" of the women caught in adultery...I could go on and on, but there is far greater evidence (to me) that Grace is actually irresistible.
In the abstract, it is possible to conceive of some maniacally deluded individual refusing God's love. But it is completely implausible. And thus, I cannot follow Lewis and his brethren to the indefinite, even infinite, land of misfit freedom.
listening and making notes at midpoint I wrote - of course the question remains (pun intended), can one be shut up in one’s hell?
Loving Lewis as I do, I want to have him speak the words that broadcast Life, God ‘wins’, Love overcomes our hells and works them backward into Heaven. He may not have communicated this here- I can think that he surely knows ‘now’ as part of the great cloud of witnesses. And we are having the conversation which is so wonderful, uncomfortable, and exhilarating.
Thank you, Karen! And sadly, the only aspect that makes these conversations uncomfortable is the centuries of intellectual conditioning that makes it untenable to accept - however remotely - the possibility that God is Love. Truly and completely, with all the consequences that flow therefrom.
Derek - This has been the best way to begin 2025. I am one of those ‘odd people’ Stephen mentioned that read Williams, so his insight here has been tremendous. I love how he gathers the threads ( or in my case, the pieces of glass 😉) to bring into view the connections between Williams, Dante, and GMD- who as you know lectured on Dante.
Pieces of Beauty gathered here are numerous:
True selves
The Tao τ
Is Heaven interesting?
All Loves are grounded in God
Life can only be lived backward ( that time thing! and I must give cred to Father John Behr for gifting my mind with this one!)
Hans Boersma and good characters
The Greater Trumps and the chessboard
Lewis’s healthy suspicion of unordered loves
Choose Earth, lose Heaven and Earth- Choose Heaven, gain Heaven and Earth
And wonderfully - Tolkien’s Leaf by Niggle 🧡
I am so thankful for the vocabulary of others, for the minds you are bringing together in your series as our selves, our true selves are being nurtured into a being of pure Light, fractured and yet One.
Our ‘oneing’ as St Julian of Norwich would say.
And thank you simple, for sponsoring this conversation today.
Thank you for this exquisite summary!
And, methinks we need to schedule a conversation with Hans Boersma!
Great discussion 👍
I do get hung up on the assertion that (my paraphrase here) we are most like God in our freedom… (that this is somehow at the core of our being made in God’s image) - maybe I misunderstood? The “freedom” to choose sin seems inherently contradictory- and is to choose bondage. God does not possess such “freedom” to choose sin. The Image of God is Christ- after whose image we are all made- in, by and for Him (Col.1) That defines our “true” self- the false self is a lie- and in some sense (like evil) non- existent (it’s the absence of the Good).
But with Lewis it seems our “freedom” is greater than God’s- we can utterly destroy our own true humanity- the Christ imprinted on our very being (yes, obscured and “hidden” beneath our fallenness)…
The story of Legion is relevant to me here: how many bad choices preceded such possession? And yet- even apart from an invitation, Love Himself steps up and with a word delivers this man…
Sorry- it’s late and I probably shouldn’t be making any comments at such an hour! Just registering what fundamentally bothers me about my favorite author, C.S. Lewis ❤️
Thank you, Wayne. I always appreciate your thoughtful comments! I am likewise perplexed by Lewis's insistence that human freedom is somehow more powerful than God's love. I am not a Lewis scholar and honestly, though most of my tribe is, have never even been particularly drawn to Lewis's work.
I am compelled by the beauty of Jesus - as you highlight - in his interaction with Legion, and his "judgment" of the women caught in adultery...I could go on and on, but there is far greater evidence (to me) that Grace is actually irresistible.
In the abstract, it is possible to conceive of some maniacally deluded individual refusing God's love. But it is completely implausible. And thus, I cannot follow Lewis and his brethren to the indefinite, even infinite, land of misfit freedom.
listening and making notes at midpoint I wrote - of course the question remains (pun intended), can one be shut up in one’s hell?
Loving Lewis as I do, I want to have him speak the words that broadcast Life, God ‘wins’, Love overcomes our hells and works them backward into Heaven. He may not have communicated this here- I can think that he surely knows ‘now’ as part of the great cloud of witnesses. And we are having the conversation which is so wonderful, uncomfortable, and exhilarating.
Thank you, Karen! And sadly, the only aspect that makes these conversations uncomfortable is the centuries of intellectual conditioning that makes it untenable to accept - however remotely - the possibility that God is Love. Truly and completely, with all the consequences that flow therefrom.
Thanks so much, Derek ❤️ Your words genuinely encourage me to ultimately trust in God’s maximal Goodness and Love…
Looking forward to the Barfield series!👍