The Socratic Method

“On this day in 1942, the first official meeting of the Socratic Club took place at Oxford. At this club, sponsored by C. S. Lewis, he often defended the Christian faith in lively debates.” Around the Year with C. S. Lewis and Friends compiled by Kathryn Lindskoog

"We never clamed to be impartial. But argument is. It has a life of its own. No man can tell where it will go. . .. In any fairly large and talkative community such as a university there is always the danger that those who think alike should gravitate together into coteries where they will henceforth encounter opposition only in the emasculated form rumour that the outsiders say thus and thus. The absent are easily refuted, complacent dogmatism thrives, and differences of opinion are embittered by group hostility. Each group hears not the best, but the worst, that the other groups can say. In the Socratic all this was changed. Here a man could get the case for Christianity without all the paraphernalia of pietism and the case against it without the irrelevant sansculottisme [ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/522646/sansculotte ] of our common anti-God weeklies. At the very least we helped to civilize one another." C. S. Lewis in his preface for the first issue of the Socratic Digest http://www.scriptoriumnovum.com/l/club.html

During our first campus ministry at Tarleton State University, my husband (a former athiest) and I decided to attend an organizational meeting of “The Atheist Club”. He was invited to speak at their second meeting. After that meeting, we spent several hours talking with one of the participants. The young man was baptized that night.

Acts 17:16-34
While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” At that, Paul left the Council. Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.

Transformation

J. R. R. Tolkien spent the night of January 17, 1944 in an air-raid post with Cecil Roth, a renowned Jewish scholar and historian. The next morning, Roth roused Tolkien from sleep so he would not miss Communion. Tolkien remarked of Roth’s gesture, “It seemed like a fleeting glimpse of an unfallen world.”
It is almost a cliché to mention the impact that the two world wars, especially the second, had on British literature. In the case of fantasies written by the Inklings, (Tolkien, Lewis, Williams) one should recognize the transformaion of earthly warfare and helplessness into Christian victory and glory.

1 Corinthians 15:44-49 NIV
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.

1 Corinthians 15: 54-56 NIV
When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Singing in the Dark

On this day in 1873, George MacDonald went to hear a group of freed slaves called the “Jubilee Singers” in New York. He wept with joy throughout the concert. After the show, while he and his wife were chatting with one of the performers, the lights went out and the singer called, “All the same color now!”
Around the Year with C.S. Lewis and His Friends

Even in the dark, we can sing and we can dream.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
"I have a dream today.
"I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
"I have a dream today.
"'I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.' (Isaiah 40:4-5)
"And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'"
Martin Luther King, Aug. 28, 1963

The Last Syllable

“On this day in 1873, George MacDonald lectured on Shakespeare’s Macbeth to 500 students and faculty members of Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey." Around the Year with C.S. Lewis and His Friends
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time . . .”
Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5.

It is fitting that a writer should refer to the passing of time as the recording of syllables. When I write, time leaves to reappear much aged thousands of syllables later.

1 Corinthians 15:24-26 NIV
Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

1 Corinthians 15:51-54 NIV
Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

Not Keen on Tolkien

“J. R. R. Tolkien’s writing became so popular that on this day in 1966 the New York Tolkien Society’s December meeting was described in the New Yorker. Among those present at the meeting was the poet W.H. Auden.” Around the Year with C. S. Lewis and Friends compiled by Kathryn Lindskoog.

The Hobbit, the prequel to Tolkien’s Ring Trilogy, was recommended to me at the height of its popularity by my very first beau. I did not read it. I’m not sure why, but I have some ideas. Since I categorized The Hobbit as fantasy, I associated it with fairy tales and childish things. And it was popular. That always made a book unappealing to me.
I lost the beau.
But The Hobbit is one of my husband’s favorite books. He read it and C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia to our daughter every night for years. I still have not read it. Maybe I should.

1 Corinthians 13:8-13
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a woman, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Slithy Toves

On this day in 1938, J. R. R. Tolkien spoke on BBC Radio about Anglo-Saxon Verse.

An excerpt from Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll’s 1855 parody of Anglo-Saxon verse. (It is far better known than any real Anglo-Saxon verse.)

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsey were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

The popularity of Carroll’s parody speaks volumes concerning the difference between poetry and prose. Prose can be melodious, but it must carry meaning to be valid. Poetry, by contrast, can simply feel good on the tongue.
The Bible is full of magnificent poetry inspired by the Holy Spirit, but in the book of Acts the apostle Paul quotes from an unnamed Greek poet: ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ Acts 17:28

The End is Near

On this day in 1914, G. K. Chesterton and his friends spent four hours as amateur actors improvising a trial based upon Dicken’s unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Chesterton played the judge.
Around the Year with C. S. Lewis and Friends, compiled by Kathryn Lindskoog

“I wish Dickens had finished Drood and left others to begin it.” Leon Garfield, foreword to his own 1980 version of the Dickens mystery.”

When we leave this earth, we leave unfinished business. When Christ died he was able to say, “it is finished” because he had accomplished all that his father had given him to do. I pray that I will be able to accomplish whatever God created me to do before I go home.

Hebrews 9:27, 28
Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

By Faith

“No, a glimpse is not a vision. But to a man on a mountain road by night, a glimpse of the next three feet of road may matter more than a vision of the horizon.” C. S. Lewis, in a letter to Sheldon Vanauken.

Bruce and I, like most of the nation, are not financially prepared for retirement. I would like to say that we have given so much of ourselves and our goods to others that we have not saved for our own future. To a certain extent this is true, but the main reason we have reached this pass is a combination of poor stewardship and acquisitiveness. I pray the next portion of our lives does not bring all of our misdeeds home to rest. I pray God sees fit to continue to bless us in spite of our poor judgment.

II Corinthians 5:7 – “We live by faith and not by sight.”

2012 - The Year of the Dragon

Sunday January 1, 2012
Daily quotes are taken from a “Book of Days” entitled “Around the Year with C.S. Lewis and His Friends” compiled by Kathryn Lindskoog and published by the C.R. Gibson Co.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations if you live near him." J. R. R. Tolkien, "The Hobbitt.
 Never discount the reality of the supernatural.
Job 41:1-34  New International Version (NIV)
1 “Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope?
2 Can you put a cord through its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook?
3 Will it keep begging you for mercy? Will it speak to you with gentle words?
4 Will it make an agreement with you for you to take it as your slave for life?
5 Can you make a pet of it like a bird or put it on a leash for the young women in your house?
6 Will traders barter for it? Will they divide it up among the merchants?
7 Can you fill its hide with harpoons or its head with fishing spears?
8 If you lay a hand on it, you will remember the struggle and never do it again!
9 Any hope of subduing it is false; the mere sight of it is overpowering.
10 No one is fierce enough to rouse it. Who then is able to stand against me?
11 Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me.
12 “I will not fail to speak of Leviathan’s limbs, its strength and its graceful form.
13 Who can strip off its outer coat? Who can penetrate its double coat of armor[b]?
14 Who dares open the doors of its mouth, ringed about with fearsome teeth?
15 Its back has rows of shields tightly sealed together;
16 each is so close to the next that no air can pass between.
17 They are joined fast to one another; they cling together and cannot be parted.
18 Its snorting throws out flashes of light; its eyes are like the rays of dawn.
19 Flames stream from its mouth; sparks of fire shoot out.
20 Smoke pours from its nostrils as from a boiling pot over burning reeds.
21 Its breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from its mouth.
22 Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it.
23 The folds of its flesh are tightly joined; they are firm and immovable.
24 Its chest is hard as rock, hard as a lower millstone.
25 When it rises up, the mighty are terrified; they retreat before its thrashing.
26 The sword that reaches it has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.
27 Iron it treats like straw and bronze like rotten wood.
28 Arrows do not make it flee; slingstones are like chaff to it.
29 A club seems to it but a piece of straw; it laughs at the rattling of the lance.
30 Its undersides are jagged potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge.
31 It makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.
32 It leaves a glistening wake behind it; one would think the deep had white hair.
33 Nothing on earth is its equal— a creature without fear.
34 It looks down on all that are haughty; it is king over all that are proud.”