C. S. Lewis on Scripture revisited

What can thoughtful Christians today learn from an old, frumpy Oxford don and literary critic--C.S. Lewis--about the Bible as inspired exposition on divine revelation?

Then and Now (what 40 years will do)

I wrote my first book—C. S. Lewis on Scripture—as a senior Honors Project at Point Loma Nazarene University in 1977).  The late 1970's was a time when Evangelicals in America were heatedly engaged in a “battle for the Bible.” Evangelical writers at the time, such as Harold Lindsell and Francis Schaeffer, attempted to make verbal inerrancy a watershed issue.  “He who denies the doctrine of infallibility,” Lindsell declared, “cannot truly be an evangelical Christian.”  In similar fashion, Francis Schaeffer, founder of the influential L’Abri Fellowship in the Swiss Alps, taught young evangelicals (like me) that the church must “draw the line with love and tears” at the point of belief in inerrancy, even if it results in cleavage the ranks.  “The Bible is without error in all that it affirms,” (including science, history, biographical facts, and figures), Schaffer insisted. “Those who cannot affirm the full truth of what the Bible teaches, even when it touches on history and science,” he said, are not being faithful to the Word of God. >I was surprised and pleased that my work contributed to both the popular and scholarly debate about the nature of inspiration, the role of revelation and the question of inerrancy.  Forty years and 30k+ copies later, the book is still in print.  But it needs a tune up.

Walter Hooper, the executor of the Lewis estate at the time, had greatly encouraged me to publish it back in 1978, and was pleased with the final product.  When I saw him again in Oxford three years ago, over tea and cookies at his home, he said that he thought my book was still relevant and useful to the Christian world and strongly urged me to revise and expand it—taking into account the Collected Letters of Lewis and any recent scholarship on Lewis’ view of biblical authority and inspiration.  Recently retired from full-time teaching and administration, I now have time to do this very thing.

As Senior Fellow in the Scholars in Residence program at Lewis’ historic home in Oxford known as the Kilns, I am re-writing my old book this summer—and I finding several gems in the archives to incorporate into the new edition.

For example, I found four new personal letters from Lewis to friends with whom he shared this thoughts about the problematic areas of scripture, and how to interpret difficult texts in light of their intended genres and limitations, and why he did not hold to a Fundamentalist view of literal inspiration and verbal inerrancy, nor a Liberal view of the Bible as ordinary literature.

Most thrilling for me, or for any literary researcher, is to troll through archival deposits of famous author and find a fragment or full manuscript of unpublished material that might be interesting to others.  This week at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, alerted by another scholar, I found and transcribed a handwritten chapter from Lewis’s last completed book manuscript intended for publication before he died.  For some reason, one chapter was omitted from the published book, released two months after this death. 

This unpublished material contains Lewis’s most mature, considered, and undoubtedly controversial thoughts on the nature of divine revelation, biblical inspiration and historical criticism.  In it he explains why he disbelieves in biblical inerrancy and yet believes in miracle stories in the Gospels.  And what he thinks about Liberal Christianity and Fundamentalism (and how to find a middle path).

Combined with the four personal letters from Lewis that touch on the subject of verbal inspiration, the unpublished chapter of new material may change the way C.S. Lewis fans read their Bible; and may in fact move him out of the conservative Christian camp to be shared with those closer to the middle of the theological spectrum, at least in regard to his view of inspiration.

I’m excited about incorporating these new findings into my old book, patching some sections and adding new ones, in what I hope will be published next year as C.S. Lewis on Scripture, revised and expanded for a new generation.

If you've read this far and would like a copy of my paper on this topic (which I presented earlier this month at the Academic Round Table at Oxbridge C.S. Lewis Summer Institute in Cambridge) just drop me a line and I'll send you a pdf.   mchriste@pointloma.edu 

Old Jeffery, Ghost of Epworth

While touring the Old Rectory of Rev. Samuel and Susanna Wesley in Epworth (England) on August 15, 2017, I asked the guide to tell me more about the latched door at the top of the staircase that read “To Jeffery’s chamber.”

“Old Jeffery is what the Wesley girls called the ghost sounds they heard at night coming from the attic,” she said.  “Some tapping… a bit of rattling, and some broken dishes.”

“That’s all?” I asked.  

“That’s was all there was too it, and it only lasted a couple of months,”  she said, obviously minimizing the phenomena John Wesley compiled and published as “An Account of the Disturbances in My Father's House” (Arminian Magazine 7, 1784):

“When I was very young I heard several letters read, wrote to my elder brother by my father, giving an account of strange disturbances, which were in his house at Epworth, in Lincolnshire.  When I went down thither, in the year 1720, I carefully enquired into the particulars. I spoke to each of the persons who were then in the house, and took down what each could testify of his or her knowledge.”

JW then proceeded to detail a series of disturbances over a two month period beginning Dec. 2, 1716 and ending at the end of Jan. 1717: “Dismal groans…strange knockings… and loud rumblings above stairs or below; a clatter among a number of bottles, as if they had all at once been dashed to pieces; footsteps as of a man going up and downstairs at all hours of the night; sounds like that of dancing in an empty room, the door of which was locked; gobbling like a turkey-cock; but most frequently a knocking about the beds at night and in different parts of the house.”—according to Wesley family members.

Distinct tapping’s, knockings, and broken dishes…

At some point after the disturbance began, John returned home from school and took it upon himself to interview friends and family members, and compile family letters and statements in order to thoroughly document what he called the “Supernatural Disturbances “  The kind and quality of the evidence John compiled included four eye-witness accounts and collaborating stories contained in the following documents:

• Mrs. Wesley's letters to Samuel
• Mrs. Samuel Wesley's statement to her son John
• Emily Wesley's account to her brother John
• Molly Wesley's account to her brother John
• Susannah Wesley's account to her brother John
• Nancy Wesley's account to her brother John
• The account of the Rev. Mr. Hoole, Vicar of Haxey
• The account of Robin Brown, manservant to John Wesley
• Summary Narrative drawn up by John Wesley and published by him in the     Arminian Magazine

Given its significance to John Wesley and his readers at the time, and the extraordinary detail of its documentation during his life lifetime, the “Disturbances” at the Epworth Rectory in 1717 became a permanent part of the Wesley Family story and the legacy of Methodism. The Epworth Case, 200 years later, according to biographers and researchers, constituted “one of the best authenticated case studies in history of psychical research” (“The Epworth Phenomenon” by Dudley Wright, 1917).

Here’s a summary of what we know about the Wesley family ghost story, based on  John Wesley’s’s account of the “Disturbances” in this family home in Epworth, and some standard Methodist remarks: http://archives.gcah.org/bitstream/handle/10516/5866/MH-1992-October-Discovery.pdf?sequence=1

Most interesting to me is the political leanings of Old Jeffery which the ghost made known when Samuel Wesley prayed for the King.

You see, John’s parents did not see eye to eye on matters of religion and politics. 

Samuel insisted that the Wesley family pray for the King in their evening prayers at home. Susanna did not believe that King William was the rightful King of England and therefore could not in good conscience say "Amen" to her husbands prayers for the king.  So serious was the disagreement that the couple separated for a year. 

Old Jeffery years later seemed to agree with Susanna Wesley.  Whenever Samuel prayed for the King, the disturbances in the house turned violent, the ghost apparently “knocking loudly and fiercely at the mention of King George.”

When Samuel stopped praying for the King, the hauntings ceased—a possible clue to solving the mystery of the Ghost of Epworth.  “That Samuel labeled the ghost a Jacobit,” writes Wesleyan scholar Kelly Deihl Yates, “suggests that the ghost was a symptom of the family’s anxiety over the Hanover ascension [the succession of an illegitimate German King rather than a legitimate Jacobite King to the English Throne], and perhaps a symbol of the entire country’s angst over the political instability of the times.”  (“Jeffrey the Jacobite Poltergeist: The Politics of the Ghost that Haunted the Epworth Rectory in 1716-17”, Wesleyan Theological Journal  Nov 1, 2015)

Note: A Jacobite in early 18^th C England was a political supporter of James II of Scotland as the rightful King of England, not the German line of the reigning King.

I can't help but think how families are politically divided today in America over whether the current President of the United States is the legitimate leader of the country.  What would Jeffery say?

Oxford's Ancient Streams

For 19^th century English Romantic poets, ancient Greece was the illusive image of their nostalgic quest.  For 20^th century American adolescent romantic spirits like me in College in the 1970’s, especially those of us drank deeply from the well of C. S. Lewis and his Circle, Oxford of the 1930’s was our Romantic ideal.  

The Oxford Inklings--JRR Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams and a dozen other Oxford dons and their friends—who met weekly at the Bird and Baby pub on St. Giles, and in Lewis’ academic rooms at Magdalen College, was my ideal of intellectual friendship focused on poetry, pipes and pubs.  

My first trip to Oxford was in 1979 after graduating from college and before starting seminary.  My first book, C.S. Lewis on Scripture (which I had written as my Senior Honors Thesis), was accepted for publication, and I took my $1,000 book advance and spent it all on a two-month backpacking trip to England and Europe.  I read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings saga on the road, saw the first version of the film in Oxford, and strolled around Addison’s Walk at Magdalen College where Tolkien and Lewis discussed how “myth became fact” in the Incarnation.  I met C. S. Lewis’s companion and friend, Walter Hooper, at the Bird and Baby, and enjoyed tea with Owen Barfield at his home. I imagined myself a graduate student at Oxford University—an illusive, romantic dream. 

25 years later, Rebecca and I took our daughters on vacation to Oxford. One of the highlights of our trip was visiting the Great Hall at Christ Church, which they recognized at Hogwarts’s Hall where Professor McGonagall welcomed Harry Potter and his classmates at the top of the stairs.  Returning a third time to Oxford in 2014 for an academic conference, I took a city tour—in the footsteps of Lewis and Tolkien-- that wetted my appetite for all things Oxford.

Earlier this year, I heard about Oxford University’s Theology Summer School program at Christ Church and applied. Part of my romantic dream come true is being a student again, living in the dorm at Christ Church, and taking two seminars this summer: one on Christian Faith and Modern Though with Professor Keith Ward; and the other on C.S. Lewis and the Christian Imagination with Professor Judith Wolfe.

Both my classes meet in the Lewis Carroll Room (named after the creepy professor who wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland).   

Our cohort of 40 students (including 5 of us with graduate degrees from Drew University) attend classes, study in our rooms, and eat together daily in the Great Hall—the 300-seat pre-Victorian dining room with a hammer beam ceiling and portraits of famous members of Christ Church, including John Wesley.  

I’m totally in awe when a Senior Member at the High Table comes to the lectern, uses an antique gavel to get our attention, and offers grace for the meal in Latin.  

In the middle of Tom Quad, the messenger god Hermes/Mercury seems to have my back. 

Today, the Christ Church crest is flying at half-mast in honor of one of the members of the college or cathedral who has died.

My dorm room is in the relatively new building overlooking Oxford’s oldest pub on Blue Boar Street, and around the corner from the oldest tower in the college where, reportedly, the ghost of a boy with candlelight sometimes is seen in the stairwell.  Tonight’s full moon would be a good time for the boy to show his face…

What a joy and magical experience it is to live and study here this summer.  The former Saxon priory of St. Frideswide (710) was re-founded as Christ Church College and Cathedral by Henry VIII in 1546, finally admitting women as members of the college in 1980. 

Ancient streams flowing into a broader, more modern river...