C.S. Lewis, John Calvin and Christian Joy

C.S. Lewis, John Calvin and Christian Joy

C.S. Lewis

We’ve been dipping into CS Lewis’s wonderful work, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (excluding drama) and have discovered some fascinating insights on the Protestant believers of the 16^th Century and the Puritans that followed them in the 17^th.

Lewis was never one to hold back his opinion and therefore readers of a variety of theological persuasion will find his views both illuminating and challenging. He has argued that our view of the early Protestant believers and our understanding of the Puritans needs some revision if we’re to understand what really drove their thinking forward:

C.S. Lewis on Protestant Joy: Too glad to be true!
‘It follows that nearly every association which now clings to the word puritan has to be eliminated when we are thinking of the early Protestants. Whatever they were, they were not sour, gloomy, or severe; not did their enemies bring any such charge against them. On the contrary, Harpsfield (in his Life of More) describes their doctrines as ‘easie, short, pleasant lessons’ which lulled the unwary victim in ‘so sweete a sleepe as he was euer after loth to wake from it’. For More, a Protestant was one ‘dronke of the new must of lewd lightnes of minde and vayne gladnesse of harte’ (Dialogue, III.ii)…Protestantism was not too grim, but too glad to be true.’[i]

Calvin’s freedom to enjoy God’s creation
‘Even when we pass on from the first Protestants to Calvin himself we shall find an explicit rejection of ‘that vnciuile [uncivil] and forward philosophy’ which ‘alloweth vs in no vse of the creatures saue that which is needful, and going about (as it were in enuie [envy]) to take from vs the lawful enjoyment of God’s blessings, yet can neuer speede vnless it should stoppe vp all a man’s senses and make him a verie block’.’[ii]

Lewis commends Calvin
‘When God created food, ‘He intended not only the supplying of our necessities but delight and merriment (hilaritas)’.

Clothes serve not only for need but also for ‘comelinesse and honesty’; herbs, trees, and fruits, ‘beside their manifold commodity’, for ‘goodlinesse, brauery, and sweete smelling sauour’.

The right mistake: Protestantism too earth-bound, enjoyable, ‘sensual’
A comparison of the whole passage (Institutio, III.x.2) with, say, the sermons of Fisher, will correct many misapprehensions. When Newman in his Letter to X Y professed an ‘abstract belief in the latent sensuality of Protestantism’, he was, in my opinion, dreadfully mistaken; but at least, like More and Harpsfield, he was making the right mistake, the mistake that is worth discussing. The popular modern view of the matter does not reach that level.’[iii]

CS Lewis on the freedom of the Protestants
‘To be sure, there are standards by which the early Protestants could be called ‘puritanical’; they held adultery, fornication, and perversion for deadly sins. But then so did the Pope. If that is Puritanism, all Christendom was then puritanical together. So far as there was any difference about sexual morality, the Old Religion was the more austere. The exaltation of virginity is a Roman, that of marriage, a Protestant, trait.’[iv]

More next time…

To read the first post in this series on CS Lewis click here

©2013 Lex Loizides / Church History Blog

---

[i] CS Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1954), p.34

[ii] ibid p.35

[iii] ibid p.35

[iv] ibid p.35

CS Lewis on Predestination

English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama by CS Lewis 

CS Lewis does not take a hostile view of predestination. He merely refuses to engage with what he calls its ‘darker’ side, and is skeptical of those who assert it apparently without feeling.

As you’ll see at the end of this post, he is far more comfortable declaring its pastoral strength to the believer and leave it there. I note also that both here and in his letters he uses Luther’s pastoral advice to provides assurance rather than allow a believer to sink into gloom.

Reformed Doctrine marked by joy and hope rather than heaviness
He writes, ‘It must be clearly understood that they [i.e. Protestant doctrines] were at first doctrines not of terror but of joy and hope: indeed, more than hope, fruition, for as Tyndale says, the converted man is already tasting eternal life.’

CS Lewis on Predestination
The doctrine of predestination, says the XVIIth Article[i], is ‘full of sweet, pleasant and unspeakable comfort to godly persons’.

But what of ungodly persons? Inside the original experience no such question arises. There are no generalizations. We are not building a system. When we begin to do so, very troublesome problems and very dark solutions will appear.

But these horrors, so familiar to the modern reader (and especially to the modern reader of fiction), are only by-products of the new theology. They are astonishingly absent from the thought of the first Protestants.

Relief and buoyancy are the characteristic notes. In a single sentence of the Tischreden[ii] Luther tosses the question aside for ever. Do you doubt whether you are elected to salvation? Then say your prayers, man, and you may conclude that you are. It is as easy as that.’[iii]

It is certainly true that modern novelists have written from a perspective of absolute abandonment, but is it true that the first Protestants didn’t wrestle with the apparent downside of the idea of predestination?

Your thoughts?

More next time…

For the first post from Lewis’s thoughts on Reformed Doctrine and the Puritans from English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama click here

©2013 Lex Loizides / Church History Blog

---

[i] Lewis is referring to The 39 Articles of Religion (1563), the doctrinal statement of the Church of England.

[ii] I.e., Table Talk – a collection of anecdotes, quotes and humourous sayings of Martin Luther recorded by some of his students

[iii] CS Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1954), pp 33-34

The Enthralling, Inspiring Life of George Whitefield

George Whitefield

enthral (verb) = to captivate, hold spellbound, by pleasing qualities. (OED)

When God plans to bless a region or nation with the Gospel, He seems to begin by calling and preparing His chosen instruments.

George Whitefield, along with the Wesley brothers and many others were key figures in a mighty, sweeping, nation-changing season of God’s blessing.

Changing Society
The effect of what took place in England following their preaching and church planting has been described by historian J.R. Green:

‘A religious revival burst forth…which changed in a few years the whole temper of English society.

The church was restored to life and activity.  Religion carried to the hearts of the people a fresh spirit of moral zeal, while it purified our literature and our manners.

A new philanthropy reformed our prisons, infused clemency and wisdom into our penal laws, abolished the slave trade, and gave the first impulse to popular education.’  (Green, A short history of the English People, Harper, p. 736-7)

Breathtaking Service for God
Before we get into the details of Whitefield’s incredible life let me outline a few facts:

•    he was a tireless preacher – estimates are that he preached/taught 30,000 times during his relatively short life (he died aged 56)
•    during the summer of 1739 in England the outdoor crowds are estimated to have been up to 1 million – all without amplification, obviously
•    he invested much of his time in America
•    something like 80% of the American population heard him preach
•    Whitefield became the prototype Evangelist
•    he continually emphasised the need for the new birth
•    he passionately appealed for people to come to Christ immediately
•    it wasn’t unusual for him to stop in the middle of a sermon and join the crowd in weeping at the revelation of Christ’s love
•    he often coughed up blood after preaching
•    he became the first transatlantic ‘celebrity’ – and therefore was widely ridiculed in the papers!
•    he was genuinely non-denominational, choosing to be buried in the crypt of the Presbyterian Church he had planted!
•    he was able to effectively reach both poor and rich
•    he was, by all accounts, a happy Calvinist!

It is difficult to read about Whitefield without becoming increasingly passionate for God, and passionate to see the gospel breaking into the lives of those around us.

To read more about Whitefield click here

© 2009 Lex Loizides

Shaping the Culture – The Literary Legacy of Puritanism in English Life

English Literature
Exactly why has England produced such a feast of literature? Why does literature, plays, novels, books, poetry, journalism remain England’s primary artistic expression?

While acknowledging the massive influence of British creativity in the rock and pop scene since the 1960’s, it is still literature that is the primary artistic bestowal of the Brits to the English speaking world.

Jeremy Paxman, BBC journalist and author, in his brilliant and fascinating study of ‘the English’ suggests it was the impact of the Reformation which was then diligently applied, as we have seen already, by the Puritans that led to this phenomena.

Replacing the visual with the written word
He writes,
‘If this was the moment when the English cultural tradition cut itself off from the rest of Europe, you could not find a more striking signal of the new direction in which English creativity was to turn than the tearing down of altar screens and their replacement in many churches by bare boards listing the ten commandments.

Here, literally, was the replacement of the visual by the verbal…The English not only came to a new way of appreciating the Word, they came to an appreciation of words.

We cannot know whether there would ever have been an English Titian, Raphael of Michelangelo. But we are sure that the Reformation and its aftermath threw up William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, John Donne, John Bunyan and John Milton.

The literary tradition that followed them has become the most sustained and distinguished in the western world…the English certainly became a people obsessed with words…

The contrast [between their relative lack of English enthusiasm for great classical composers like Handel and Elgar] with the English love of words could not be starker.

It shows itself in the absurdly over-productive British publishing business, which turns our 100,000 new books a year – more than the entire American publishing industry.’ (Jeremy Paxman, ‘The English, A Portrait of a People’, Penguin, p.109, 110)

The Puritans in a very direct way influenced English culture around the preaching, teaching and reading of the gospel. And, at least in some measure, we have them to thank for the rich literary heritage England enjoys.

Read the next post, ‘Puritan Priorities – a Passion for Souls’

© 2009 Lex Loizides