Monday, September 14, 2009

C. S. Lewis on Love, Desire, and the Demonic - two audio lectures by Ralph Woods
(Online at Humanitas.org) [2008]

Lecture #1 The Screwtape Letters I: Why Does the Devil Have No Sense of Humor?
Lecture #2. The Screwtape Letters II: Why God Wants Us to Grow Up

I found these lectures interesting and challenging. I recommend them, with certain reservations. (Woods says a couple things I disagree with rather strongly. e.g. his support for the coercive government education system.)

A few comments;
- Woods calls 'Love among the Ruins' (by Walker Percy) the funniest novel ever written.

- Lewis claimed that there was no real Christianity possible outside the church.

- Christians in previous times thought sloth was not caring about godly things, about God, etc. (That seems strange; but this came from the monasteries... where it was the 'work' of people to be about godly things.) As far as I can tell, sloth just means slow. One can be slow to look to godly things I suppose. (e.g. 'slow' to get to our prayers; and so slow we sometimes don't get there at all.)
- He gives as examples of sloth; 'Brideshead Revisited' by Evelyn Waugh, and 'The Power and the Glory' by Graham Greene (a whiskey priest gone back on his vows)

- One comment that bothered me greatly occured when he was talking about tradition... and that we need tradition... not just the bible... He went on to say, "that's what David Koresh did... and he fried over a hundred people." I could barely believe my ears. David Koresh didn't 'fry' them (what is this, barbecue theology?) the government 'fried' them. A rather large difference there. .