Calvin Academy of Life Long LearningThe Real C.S. Lewis- .ppt

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1、Calvin Academy of Life Long LearningThe Real C.S. Lewis: His Life and Writings Compiled by Paulo F. Ribeiro, MBA, PhD, PE, IEEE Fellow,Spring 2003, ADSB 101,Session IV,Scripture The joy of the Lord is our strength. Neh. 8:10,The Real C.S. Lewis: His Life and WritingsProvisional Schedule3/13/ - Surpr

2、ised by Joy: The Chronology and Development of a Tough And Holistic Christian Mind 3/20 - Mere Christianity: Orthodoxy and Basic Christian Doctrines (Other books: Reflections on the Psalms and Miracles) 3/27 - Screwtape Letters: Hell and Heaven 4/3 - God in the Dock: Common Sense Christian Practice

3、4/10 - From Narnia to Literary Criticism: A Fully Integrated Christian Mind 4/17- The Last Ten Years: Shawdowlands (BBC Movie),God In The Dock Essays on Theology and Ethics,Part I 1. Evil and God 2. Miracles 3. Dogma and the Universe 4. Answers to Questions on Christianity 5. Myth became Fact 6. Hor

4、rid Red Things 7. Religion and Science 8. The Laws of Nature 9. The Grand Miracle 10. Christian Apologetics 11. Work and Prayer 12. Man or Rabbit?,13. On the Transmission of Christianity 14. Miserable Offenders 15. The Founding of the Oxford Socratic Club 16. Religion without Dogma? 17. Some Thought

5、s 18. The Trouble with “X“ . 19. What are we to Make of Jesus Christ? 20. The Pains of Animals 21. Is Theism Important? 22. Rejoinder to Dr. Pittenger 23. Must our Image of God Go?,PART II1. Dangers of National Repentance 2. Two Ways with the Self 3. Meditation on the Third Commandment 4. On the Rea

6、ding of Old Books 5. Two Lectures 6. Meditation in a Toolshed 7. Scraps 8 The Decline of Religion 9. Vivisection 10. Modern Translations of the Bible 11. Priestesses in the Church? 12. God in the Dock 13. Behind the Scenes 14. Revival or Decay? 15. Before We Can Communicate 16. Cross-Examination,PAR

7、T III1. Bulverism 2. First and Second Things 3. The Sermon and the Lunch 4. The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment 5. Xmas and Christmas 6. What Christmas Means to Me 7. Delinquents in the Snow 8. Is Progress Possible? 9. We Have No Right to Happiness,WORK AND PRAYER EVEN IF I GRANT YOUR POINT AND AD

8、MIT THAT ANSWERS to prayer are theoretically possible, I shall still think they are infinitely improbable. I dont think it at all likely that God - requires the ill-informed (and contradictory) advice of us humans as to how to run the world. If He is all-wise, as you say He is, doesnt He know alread

9、y what is best? And if He is all-good wont He do it whether we pray or not? This is the case against prayer which has, in the last hundred years, intimidated thousands of people. The usual answer is that it applies only to the lowest sort of prayer, the sort that consists in asking for things to hap

10、pen. The higher sort, we are told, offers no advice to God; it consists only of communion or intercourse with Him; and those who take this line seem to suggest that the lower kind of prayer really is an absurdity and that only children or savages would use it. I have never been satisfied with this v

11、iew. The distinction between the two sorts of prayer is a sound one; and_ I think on the whole (I am not quite certain) that the sort which asks for nothing is the higher or more advanced. To be in the state in which you are so at one with the will of God that you wouldnt want to alter the course of

12、 events even if you could is certainly a very high or advanced condition.,But if one simply rules out the lower kind two difficulties follow. In the first place, one has to say that the whole historical tradition of Christian prayer (including the Lords Prayer itself) has been wrong; for it has alwa

13、ys admitted prayers for our daily bread, for the recovery of the sick, for protection from enemies, for the conversion of the outside world, and the like. In the second place, though the other kind of prayer may be higher if you restrict yourself to it because you have got beyond the desire to use a

14、ny other, there is nothing specially high or spiritual about abstaining from prayers that make requests simply because you think theyre no good. It might be a very pretty thing (but, again, Im not absolutely certain) if a little boy never asked for cake because he was so high-minded and spiritual th

15、at he didnt want any cake. But theres nothing specially pretty about a little boy who doesnt ask because he has learned that it is no use asking. I think that the whole matter needs reconsideration. The case against prayer (I mean the low or old-fashioned kind) is this. The thing you ask for is eith

16、er good - for you and for the world in general - or else it is not. If it is, then a good and wise God will do it anyway. If it is not, then He wont. In neither case can your prayer make any difference. But if this argument is sound, surely it is an argument not only against praying, but against doi

17、ng anything whatever?,In every action, just as in every prayer, you are trying to bring about a certain result; and this result must be good or bad. Why, then, do we not argue as the opponents of prayer argue, and say that if the intended result is good God will bring it to pass without your interfe

18、rence, and that if it is bad He will prevent it happening whatever you do? Why wash your hands? If God intends them to be clean, theyll come clean without your washing them. If He doesnt, theyll remain dirty (as Lady Macbeth found)! however much soap you use. Why ask for the salt? Why put on your bo

19、ots? Why do anything? We know that we can act and that our actions produce results. Everyone who believes in God must therefore admit (quite apart from the question of prayer) that God has not chosen to write the whole of history with His own hand. Most of the events that go on in the universe are i

20、ndeed out of our control, but not all. It is like a play in which the scene and the general outline of the story is fixed by the author, but certain minor details are left for the actors to improvise. It may be a mystery why He should have allowed us to cause real events at all; but it is no odder t

21、hat He should allow us to cause them by praying than by any other method.,Pascal says that God instituted prayer in order to allow His creatures the dignity of causality. It would perhaps be truer to say that He invented both prayer and physical action for that purpose. He gave us small creatures th

22、e dignity of being able to contribute to the course of events. in two different ways. He made the matter of the universe such that we can (in those limits) do things to it; that is why we can wash our own hands and feed or murder our fellow creatures. Similarly, He made His own plan or plot of histo

23、ry such that it admits a certain amount of free play and can be modified in response to our prayers. If it is foolish and impudent to ask for victory in a war (on the ground that God might be expected to know best), it would be equally foolish and impudent to put on a mackintosh - does not God know

24、best whether you ought to be wet or dry? The two methods by which we are allowed to produce events may be called work and prayer. Both are alike in this respect - that in both we try to produce a state of affairs which God has not (or at any rate not yet) seen fit to provide on His own. And from thi

25、s point of view the old maxim laborare est orare (work is prayer) takes on a new meaning. What we do when we weed a field is not quite different from what we do when we pray for a good harvest. But there is an important difference all the same.,You cannot be sure of a good harvest whatever you do to

26、 a field. But you can be sure that if you pull up one weed that one weed will no longer be there. You can be sure that if you drink more than a certain amount of alcohol you will ruin your health or that if you go on for a few centuries more wasting the resources of the planet on wars and luxuries y

27、ou will shorten the life of the whole human race. The kind of causality we exercise by work is, so to speak, divinely guaranteed, and therefore ruthless. By it we are free to do ourselves as much harm as we please. But the kind which we exercise by prayer is not like that; God has left Himself a dis

28、cretionary power. Had He not done so, prayer would be an activity too dangerous for man and we should have the horrible state of things envisaged by Juvenal: Enormous prayers which Heaven in anger grants. Prayers are not always - in the crude, factual sense of the word - granted. This is not because

29、 prayer is a weaker kind of causality, but because it is a stronger kind. When it works at all it works unlimited by space and time. That is why God has retained a discretionary power of granting or refusing it; except on that condition prayer would destroy us. It is not unreasonable for a headmaste

30、r to say, Such and such things you may do according to the fixed rules of this school. But such and such other things are too dangerous to be left to general rules. If you want to do them you must come and make a request and talk over the whole matter with me in my study. And then - well see,Man or

31、Rabbit?Cant you lead a good life without believing in Christianity? This is the question on which I have been asked to write, and straight away, before I begin trying to answer it, I have a comment to make. The question sounds as if it were asked by a person who said to himself, I dont care whether

32、Christianity is in fact true or not. Im not interested in finding out whether the real universe is more what like the Christians say than what the Materialists say. All Im interested in is leading a good life. Im going to choose beliefs not because I think them true but because I find them helpful.

33、Now frankly, I find it hard to sympathize with this state of mind. One of the things that distinguishes man from the other animals is that he wants to know things, wants to find out what reality is like, simply for the sake of knowing. When that desire is completely quenched in anyone, I think he ha

34、s become something less than human. As a matter of fact, I dont believe any of you have really lost that desire. More probably, foolish preachers, by always telling you how much Christianity will help you and how good it is for society, have actually led you to forget that Christianity is not a pate

35、nt medicine. Christianity claims to give an account of factsto tell you what the real universe is like. Its account of the universe may be true, or it may not, and once the question is really before you, then your natural inquisitiveness must make you want to know the answer. If Christianity is untr

36、ue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be: if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all.,As soon as we have realized this, we realize something else. If Christianity should happen to be true, then it is quite impossibl

37、e that those who know this truth and those who dont should be equally well equipped for leading a good life. Knowledge of the facts must make a difference to ones actions. Suppose you found a man on the point of starvation and wanted to do the right thing. If you had no knowledge of medical science,

38、 you would probably give him a large solid meal; and as a result your man would die. That is what comes of working in the dark. In the same way a Christian and a non-Christian may both wish to do good to their fellow men. The one believes that men are going to live forever, that they were created by

39、 God and so built that they can find their true and lasting happiness only by being united to God, that they have gone badly off the rails, and that obedient faith in Christ is the only way back. The other believes that men are an accidental result of the blind workings of matter, that they started

40、as mere animals and have more or less steadily improved, that they are going to live for about seventy years, that their happiness is fully attainable by good social services and political organizations, and that everything else (e.g., vivisection, birth-control, the judicial system, education) is t

41、o be judged to be good or bad simply in so far as it helps or hinders that kind of happiness.,Now there are quite a lot of things which these two men could agree in doing for their fellow citizens. Both would approve of efficient sewers and hospitals and a healthy diet. But sooner or later the diffe

42、rence of their beliefs would produce differences in their practical proposals. Both, for example, might be very keen about education: but the kinds of education they wanted people to have would obviously be very different. Again, where the Materialist would simply ask about a proposed action Will it

43、 increase the happiness of the majority?, the Christian might have to say, Even if it does increase the happiness of the majority, we cant do it. It is unjust. And all the time, one great difference would run through their whole policy. To the Materialist things like nations, classes, civilizations

44、must be more important than individuals, because the individuals live only seventy odd years each and the group may last for centuries. But to the Christian, individuals are more important, for they live eternally; and races, civilizations and the like, are in comparison the creatures of a day. The

45、Christian and the Materialist hold different beliefs about the universe. They cant both be right. The one who is wrong will act in a way which simply doesnt fit the real universe. Consequently, with the best will in the world, he will be helping his fellow creatures to their destruction.,With the be

46、st will in the world . then it wont be his fault. Surely God (if there is a God) will not punish a man for honest mistakes? But was that all you were thinking about? Are we ready to run the risk of working in the dark all our lives and doing infinite harm, provided only someone will assure us that o

47、ur own skins will be safe, that no one will punish us or blame us? I will not believe that the reader is quite on that level. But even if he were, there is something to be said to him. The question before each of us is not Can someone lead a good life without Christianity? The question is, Can I? We

48、 all know there have been good men who were not Christians; men like Socrates and Confucius who had never heard of it, or men like J. S. Mill who quite honestly couldnt believe it. Supposing Christianity to be true, these men were in a state of honest ignorance or honest error. If there intentions w

49、ere as good as I suppose them to have been (for of course I cant read their secret hearts) I hope and believe that the skill and mercy of God will remedy the evils which their ignorance, left to itself, would naturally produce both for them and for those whom they influenced. But the man who asks me

50、, Cant I lead a good life without believing in Christianity? is clearly not in the same position. If he hadnt heard of Christianity he would not be asking this question. If, having heard of it, and having seriously considered it, he had decided that it was untrue, then once more he would not be aski

51、ng the question. The man who asks this question has heard of Christianity and is by no means certain that it may not be true. He is really asking, Need I bother about it? Maynt I just evade the issue, just let sleeping dogs lie, and get on with being “good“? Arent good intentions enough to keep me safe and blameless without knocking at that dreadful door and making sure whether there is, or isnt someone inside?,