I found this at an old bookstore. I had never collected old books. I thought it was a neat find.

I was thrilled to see that the Space Trilogy was coming out as a full-cast BBC production onMarch 27th! As a lover of this sometimes hard to find collection, this blew my mind.

Also a little tip that may help a few friends. Right now Audible is doing a $0.99 for three month promo, so I pre-ordered the collection for my permanent library for a $1.

I’m not promoting Audible, but sometimes you got to share a good deal with your peeps. Hopefully you are as exited as me to experience Ransom’s adventures again!

source: tomatobirdart

I wonder if the cult of Ungit and the God of the Mountain was inspired by Elagabal (Ilaha Jabal), another mountain God that took the form of a stone. The Glome culture is very interesting in this book. It seems to be inspired by the Ancient Levant, is distinctively non-Greek, exists in a time with writing, and seems to be a minor yet prominent kingdom when Orual takes command. The mix of the concrete descriptions of experience of the landscape vs the ambiguity of time and setting is part of the allure of this book.

For any stories by cs lewis. Are there any audiobook version that reads each character's lines in different voices? As if it was like theatre?

Thank you

What I mean is, we only get to see Earth, Venus, and Mars. What about Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, ect...?

Do you have any ideas for what might be living on them if Ransom visited?

And yes, if I'm missing something in the books that says they are uninhabited, please mention it.🙂

AI ; )

I tried searching for it but I couldn't find it -- I know I've found it online before just I can't remember the name of the mother chatacter. I would really appreciate if anyone familiar with Lewis could facilitate.

I always found this to be a very cool concept __ lands that float on the water. They are like giant sea mats basically, with soil on them and plants. This is the kind of stuff that makes me geeky. 🤓

My attempt at getting the AI to draw it ; )

can anyone please explain: "you , Weston, were not here when i unmade the dead hrossa whom you killed etc. (last 20 lines of the chapter)

why would CS Lewis have chosen to name God Maleldil given that the prefix "mal" means evil ?

Similar to another post from a few months back, looking for artist/prints of the 70s Macmillan printings of the Space Trilogy. Any leads would be greatly appreciated.

For the podcast that I run, we started reading C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity". In it, he develops a rational argument for christian belief. A major portion of his opening argument states that morality is universally understood - suggesting that all people around the world, regardless of culture, have essentially the same notions of 'right' and 'wrong'. He goes on to argue that this can be seen in the morality of selflessness - suggesting that an ethic of selflessness is universal.

I would go so far as to say that a sense of morality is universal - but I am not sure if the suggestion that all people have the same morality, more or less, is defensible. Further, I completely disagree on the selfishness point. I would argue that a morality of selflessness is certainly not universal (look to any libertarian or objectivist philosophy).

What do you think?

I know that some people say the idea of a Law of Nature or decent behaviour known to all men is unsound, because different civilisations and different ages have had quite different moralities.

But this is not true. There have been differences between their moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like a total difference. If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own. Some of the evidence for this I have put together in the appendix of another book called The Abolition of Man; but for our present purpose I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to—whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or every one. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked. (Lewis, Mere Christianity)

If you are interested, here are links to the episode:
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pdamx-30-1-the-lion-the-witch-and-the-christian/id1691736489?i=1000670896154

Youtube - https://youtu.be/hIWj-lk2lpk?si=PaiZbHuHnlMompmN

Looking for a quote - I thought it was CS Lewis, but am not 100% sure now.

It is something related to using one’s will to decide to do something and one’s feelings eventually following the will “whimpering along behind.”

Does that sound at all familiar?

I'm trying to find the book or essay where C.S Lewis talks about the tree of Life and the tree of knowledge of Good and evil.

In the writing, he compares, choosing the tree of knowledge of Good and evil is a form of being in self-control. Or control of your own environments. And the contrast, choosing a tree of life is choosing more dependence on God.

Any help or direction is certainly appreciated

English is no my first language, I am really stuck on this part. I don’t understand what it means or what it is saying.

This title is a compilation of

• The Weight of Glory

• God in the Dock
• Christian Reflections
• On Stories
• Present Concerns
• The World’s Last Night

The kindle edition is on sale at Amazon for $3.99 in the US for an unknown amount of time.

A friend of mine recommended me this book and it does look like something I would be interested in but I have learned it is part of a trilogy series and so I am wondering do I need to read the previous two books in order to enjoy this one? Or should I just read them because they are good books?

I don't understand something about the ending of 'That hideous strength'. Mark goes in to see the woman with the flame-colored dress. And when Jane goes in there later, she sees Mark's clothes disorderly in a pile and the lights off. Did Mark just sleep with that strange woman? Or am I overlooking something?

he still believes he has run up a very favourable credit-balance in the Enemy's ledger by allowing himself to be converted, and thinks that he is showing great humility and condescension in going to church with these "smug", commonplace neighbours at all. Keep him in that state of mind as long as you can.

Hello,
In case it's of interest, I wanted to share some thoughts on Lewis' cataloguing of late antique/medieval theories concerning the existence of "fairies" or spirits in The Discarded Image. I've made a video drawing on this work here: What are the Jinn/Fairies [European Folklore, Bible, Qur'an] (youtube.com)

Lewis is addressing a deficit in modern Christianity, which tends to collapse its understanding of the spiritual into demonic and angelic, whereas the medieval world-view made room for other, intermediate entities (like Islam's "Jinn").

Lewis discusses the (Hellenic) idea that each environment must have a species native to it, able to rest in it, requiring that some aerial creature exist, for, although birds can fly, they are too heavy to rest in the air. Then there's the idea that "nature has no gaps," whereas too wide a chasm exists between humans and angels, requiring some subtle form to bridge the gap.

I would add that the medieval idea that man is a microcosm tended to match the animals to our own bodily instincts, the angels to our own higher intellect, and so implied some other being corresponding to the psychic plane, the mutable human mind, which the fairy ended up occupying.

This is not only a Greco-Roman and later folkloric notion, but also Biblical, as we get spirits (not quite angels) in the divine council in 1 Kings, St. Paul talks about Elementals, and so on.

CS Lewis' work is so timeless it's perpetually timely. When I read him, I frequently find myself saying, "This had to be written last year, not in the 1940s." I'd like to share one of his lesser-known essays that has a lot to say about our era.

The essay is titled "Meditation on the Third Commandment" (appearing in God in the Dock), which seems odd because it's all about politics. But the title works, for reasons we'll come to in a bit.

Lewis says he frequently sees calls for a Christian political party in his 1940's Great Britain. He wants to explain why that would be a bad idea.

The thing is, the scriptures do not give us instructions on running a modern country. They give us moral guidelines and priorities, but it's left to us to work out exactly how to implement them. We mostly all have the same ends in mind — national security, a strong economy, and "the best adjustment between the claims of order and freedom." We differ over how to achieve those ends. "We do not dispute whether the citizens are to be made happy, but whether an egalitarian or a hierarchical State, whether capitalism or socialism, whether despotism or democracy is most likely to make them so."

He gives us three hypothetical Christians with vastly different political views. One we would probably call an integralist today, one a proponent of modern democracy, one a leftist. If these three views tried to come together, they could not agree on policy, so one would dominate the new party and the others would leave. That party would be made up of a minority of Christians, who are already a minority in the nation. So to gain any real influence, this new party would have to attach itself to the most similar non-Christian party: The democratically oriented would be "temped to accept aid from champions of the status quo whose commercial or imperial motives bear hardly even a veneer of theism." The other two would likely end up allied with fascists or communists, respectively.

What happens then?

"It is not reasonable to suppose that such a Christian Party will acquire new powers of leavening the infidel organization to which it is attached. Why should it? Whatever it calls itself, it will represent, not Christendom, but a part of Christendom. The principle which divides it from its brethren and unites it to its political allies will not be theological. It will have no authority to speak for Christianity; it will have no more power than the political skill of its members gives it to control the behaviour of its unbelieving allies. But there will be a real, and most disastrous, novelty. It will be not simply a part of Christendom, but a part claiming to be the whole. By the mere act of calling itself the Christian Party it implicitly accuses all Christians who do not join it of apostasy and betrayal."

So it cannot control its unbelieving allies and slanders (implicitly or explicitly) its brothers in Christ.

And so we come to the reason for the name of this essay: "Meditations on the Third Commandment." As an Anglican, Lewis thought of the third commandment as "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain." And this is exactly what happens. Brothers are anathemized for having different political opinions, while worldly allies are sanctified:

"The danger of mistaking our merely natural, though perhaps legitimate, enthusiasms for holy zeal, is always great. Can any more fatal expedient be devised for increasing it than that of dubbing a small band of Fascists, Communists, or Democrats 'the Christians Party'? The demon inherent in every party is at all times ready enough to disguise himself as the Holy Ghost; the formation of a Christian Party means handing over to him the most efficient make-up we can find. And when once the disguise has succeeded, his commands will presently be taken to abrogate all moral laws and to justify whatever the unbelieving allies of the 'Christian' Party wish to do. ... On those who add ‘Thus said the Lord’ to their merely human utterances descends the doom of a conscience which seems clearer and clearer the more it is loaded with sin."

He brings up some historical examples of this, but I expect we can all think of some more recent ones. And that is what makes this piece so compelling: It doesn't have to be a "Christian" party; we can always simply baptize a secular one, to the same result.

Both of the major American political parties have benefitted from this. The minor ones would, too, if they had any political power.

Over the years, Christians who side with either party have accused those who side with the other of being bad Christians. They minimize the faults of their party or candidate while decrying those of the other in the strongest terms.

And the world watches. And the Lord's name is dishonored.

So how should Christians think about politics and political involvement? Again, he gets historical:

"Nonconformity has influenced modern English history not because there was a Nonconformist Party but because there was a Nonconformist conscience which all parties had to take into account. An interdenominational Christian Voters’ Society might draw up a list of assurances about ends and means which every member was expected to exact from any political party as the price of his support. Such a society might claim to represent Christendom far more truly than any 'Christian Front'. ... ‘So all it comes down to is pestering [Members of Parliament] with letters?’ Yes: just that. I think such pestering combines the dove and the serpent. I think it means a world where parties have to take care not to alienate Christians, instead of a world where Christians have to be 'loyal' to infidel parties."

A minority like faithful Christians, he says, will only be able to influence politics by "pestering" them over issues about which the Bible directs us. Instead of selling our loyalty cheap, we have to be the most demanding of special interest groups, we have to make them earn our vote.

"But I had forgotten. There is a third way—by becoming a majority. He who converts his neighbour has performed the most practical Christian-political act of all."

So Lewis' prescription for political involvement is to be the conscience of our government and to be evangelists. I think our Lord would approve.

Originally posted at https://homewardbound-cb.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-dangers-of-christian-political-party.html