July 27: Mere Christianity: Book IV, Chapters 1-4
On Sunday, July 27, 4:00-5:30 p.m., we'll continue our discussion of Mere Christianity with Book IV, "Beyond Personality: or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity," Chapters 1-4. Here is a selected passage from each chapter:
BOOK IV: Ch 1 : Making and Begetting: paragraph 10:
Now the point in Christianity which gives us the greatest shock is the statement that by attaching ourselves to Christ, we can "become Sons of God." One asks, "Aren't we Sons of God already? Surely the fatherhood of God is one of the main Christian ideas?"
BOOK IV: Ch 2: The Three-Personal God, paragraph 9:
You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying—the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on—the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers.
BOOK IV: Ch 3: Time and Beyond Time: paragraph 2:
In the last chapter I had to touch on the subject of prayer, and while that is still fresh in your mind and my own, I should like to deal with a difficulty that some people find about the whole idea of prayer. A man put it to me by saying "I can believe in God all right, but what I cannot swallow is the idea of Him attending to several hundred million human beings who are all addressing Him at the same moment."
BOOK IV: Ch 4: Good Infection: paragraph 8:
Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die.
Houston Christian University will host C. S. Lewis: Reason and Imagination on Oct. 9-10, 2025. Michael Ward will speak on "Aslan at 75: Reflections on C. S. Lewis's Christological Imagination" and on "What has Anscombe to do with Narnia? From Miracles to Chronicles." Don King will speak on "C. S. Lewis's Nature Poetry: Yearning for Eden." Lou Markos will talk at the banquet.
J. R. R. Tolkien is interviewed by the BBC in this 1962 video that was shared by the Tolkien Society on Facebook recently (the link I'm providing takes you to the same video on the BBC Archive YouTube channel).
Central Texas C. S. Lewis is a reading group that meets in Austin, Texas.
For meeting details, please send a request through our Contact Form. Thank you.