| THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF C. S. LEWIS STUDY QUESTIONS Lecture One 1) Why do you think Lewis’s works are so widely and avidly read? 2) What incidents in his life do you think had the profoundest impact on his work? 3) What are some of the questions that Christians often divide over? 4) Are you “turned off” by more academic theologians? Why? 5) How is Lewis different than other Christian celebrities? 6) How did Lewis’s upbringing prepare him to be a good apologist for Christianity? Lecture Two 1) Share a moment of longing/desire/joy that you have experienced in your own life? 2) Does the fact that we desire things no natural object can fulfill prove God’s existence? 3) Are our spiritual longings merely sublimations (from below) of baser desires or reflections (from above) of some higher reality? What do you think? 4) Do you sense a “God-shaped vacuum” within yourself, a need for some higher joy? 5) Define what you think an idol is and how it can pull us off track in our search for joy? 6) CAN good things (like an appreciation for art) pull us off track? Lecture Three 1) Do you accept Lewis’s belief that the Tao is universal and cross-cultural? ARE there standards that are higher than any one given time or culture? 2) Is Lewis right that we often appeal to higher standards (the Tao) in our arguments? 3) WHY do we have the continual sense that our world is unjust? What does this suggest? 4) What is the greatest problem of man: sin or ignorance; rebellion or poverty? 5) Is it true that we all feel that we should follow the Tao but find that we cannot? 6) Do you find Lewis’s argument of Liar, Lunatic, or Lord convincing? Why or why not? 7) Is our modern system of education producing men without chests? Are Lewis’s fears that we will abolish man justified? Lecture Four 1) Why, if our world is full of pain, do we persist in believing in a good God? 2) Are you convinced by Lewis’s argument that naturalism is self-refuting? 3) Could human reason have been evolved or does is suggest a supernatural source? 4) Why are we afraid of ghosts? What does Lewis mean by the uncanny/numinous? 5) Is Lewis’s answer to the problem of pain (that God had to create a neutral, stable playing field to ensure free will) a plausible one? 6) Does the modern world reject miracles out of hand? If so, why do they do so? 7) Do miracles violate the laws of nature? Why or why not? Lecture Five 1) Can persistent narcissism reduce our humanity? Have you noticed this process in yourself? If so, is it a process over which you have control? 2) Does your conception of heaven mirror Lewis’s? Is heaven just pie-in-the-sky? 3) Have you met people like Lewis’s garrulous old woman (the grumbler)? 4) Why does the modern world tend to reject the notion of hell and of devils? 5) Is it psychologically true that we can turn a good love (like mother love) into an idol? 6) If God DID grant us free will, does this gift necessitate the reality of hell? 7) Lewis suggests that the most petty sins are often the most dehumanizing. Do you agree? Lecture Six 1) Why do educators continue to propagate misperceptions about medieval Europe? 2) How does the fact that Lewis was an English Prof. make his apologetics unique? 3) Do you find the medieval view of the cosmos more appealing than our own? 4) Have you ever been guilty of chronological snobbery? Give an example. 5) Has our science/technology made us feel superior? Is this a problem? 6) Has our modern world lost its moral compass, its ability to discern good from evil? 7) Have you read critiques of your favorite author that you felt were “un-genial.” Lecture Seven 1) Is Lewis’s depiction of Weston’s creed simple caricature or is there truth to it? Do his beliefs mark the highest form of humanism or the final denial of humanism? 2) Do the ends justify the means when we are doing something for the sake of humanity? 3) Discuss how Ransom’s chronological snobbery is shattered in Out of the Silent Planet? What impact would such an experience have on your beliefs and attitudes? 4) Are we ignorant of spiritual realities in our modern world? Is this a bad thing? 5) Is it possible there are other world whose inhabitants still live in grace (have not fallen)? 6) If you were a novelist, how would you describe an unfallen world? 7) Have you ever experienced the temptation to seek an encore? How bad is this desire? 8) Is there something real behind our myths and our archetypes? Are masculinity and femininity real things or just products of social forces? Lecture Eight 1) Are men and women tempted in different ways? Are Lewis’s views sexist? 2) How would you counter the temptations of Weston if you were Ransom? 3) Are Mark and Jane Studdock recognizable characters? Are you like them in any way? 4) How important are our choices? Do they really have cosmic consequences? 5) How great an evil is the “inner ring”? Have you ever been part of such a group? 6) Can hierarchy be a good thing? Is submission a good thing or a bad thing? 7) What do you think of the notion that there are 2 Englands? Are there two Americas? 8) Is the threat of a totalitarian, 1984-like state still a real one in our day and age? 9) Are the modern arts nihilistic/anti-human? Are we living in Belbury’s lop-sided room? Lecture Nine 1) What do you think of the process by which Lewis wrote the Chronicles. Can a work of literature be both a work in its own right and a Christian allegory with a message? 2) Why does Lewis insist that Aslan is not tame? Is this a message that we need today? 3) Must a Christian believer reject all the pagan myths, or can he learn from them? 4) DOES Lewis embody the true nature of evil (anti-life, anti-joy) in the White Witch? 5) What do you think about Lewis’s decision to bring Bacchus into Prince Caspian? Lecture Ten 1) How important is it that a child have a strong imagination? 2) Is the “undragoning” of Eustace an effective metaphor for salvation? 3) Have you ever been on a pilgrimage like that of Eustace? Of Jill? Of Shasta? 4) How important is that young people learn that choices have consequences? 5) Is it plausible that the Emerald Witch could make the children believe that there is no such thing as the sun and a lion? Has modernism convinced US of such things? 6) Why do archetypal stories like The Horse and His Boy speak so strongly to us? Have you ever felt that you were in reality the child of a King? Have you ever sought freedom? 7) Have you ever had an experience like Shasta where God met you on the road? Lecture Eleven 1) Does our world still have much to fear from people like Andrew and Jadis? What happens when we try to move beyond good and evil? 2) Is it plausible that Andrew and Jadis hate the song of Aslan? Have you seen examples of this in your own life? CAN we cut ourselves off from beauty, life, and joy? 3) Were you taught morality in school as was Digory? Were you taught that there are standards of good and evil? How vital is it that we teach these things to children? 4) Should the Magician’s Nephew be read sixth (as in the original order of publication) or first (as it is now published)? 5) Lewis would argue that relativism leads finally to nihilism? Would you agree? 6) Is spiritually a 100% good, or is there good and bad spirituality? 7) What do you think about what happens to Susan? Is Lewis “fair” here? 8) What is Lewis trying to say through the character of Emeth? Do you agree or disagree? Lecture Twelve 1) Does paganism find its fulfillment in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ? 2) Can you imagine reacting to Psyche’s joy the way Orual does? Be honest. 3) Why exactly does Orual refuse to see the palace that Psyche describes? Do modernists do the same thing when they refuse to see miracles? Is seeing believing? 4) “How can the gods meet us face-to-face till we have faces? Do you agree? 5) Rent the movie Shadowlands. How well does the film capture the relationship between Lewis and Joy? What does the movie teach us about pain and suffering? 6) Compare/contrast The Problem of Pain (Lecture 4) with A Grief Observed. Does Lewis change his views from one book to the other? 7) Are you satisfied with the “answers” Lewis offers in A Grief Observed? Louis Markos Houston Baptist University Summer 2001 | ||