Letters to Malcolm -.A Commentary /Journal by Anthony Foster

I find it interesting to read this in the light of the fact that in this work Lewis emerged from the shadowlands of grief and despair to a restored and invigorated faith that energized this last authored and perhaps most reassuring volume.

I will meditate on these passages this week...

"We must lay before [God] what is in us, not what ought to be in us... It may be that the desire can be laid before God only as a sin to be repented; but one of the best ways of learning this is to lay it before God... If we lay all the cards on the table, God will help us to moderate the excesses... Those who have not learned to ask Him for childish things will have less readiness to ask Him for great ones."

"In the Incarnation, God the Son takes the body and human soul of Jesus, and, through that, the whole environment of nature, all the creaturely predicament, into His own being. So that "He came down from Heaven" can almost be transposed into "Heaven drew earth up into it," and locality, limitation, sleep, sweat, footsore weariness, frustration, pain, doubt, and death, are, from before all worlds, known by God from within. ".

Letter one

This letter deals with litugical prayer and the affectations that accompany its performance. Indeed Lewis treats it as almost a perfornmance art, which in my mind invalidates it as true prayer. It may be an element utilized in worship, but the use and abuse of liturgical prayer has done much to undermine the proper understanding of personal prayer.

I deny that corporate prayer can be simply cast off as "litugiology". Indeed that is an abuse of corporate prayer. But there is a binding together of saints who pray together in praise and petition.

the comment that we as laymen are to make the best of what we are given is tagic. If I had depended upon that I would be poor indeed. Is Lewis too tied up in seeking form that relates to function?Novelty of form can be quite distracting, but you can worship
God while listening to a jackhammer if you are willing.

I like the Feed My Sheep quote.

Lewis says that consistency of worship style is what would help him most. I think progress in the art of worship has everything to do with progress in private worship.(The habit of attributing to God the worth He in TRUTH possesses).That is an inexhaustible well.

The Liturgical Fidget must be some kind of Anglican affectation. Sounds like the latest dance craze.

Doctrine must unify the body- internally; not liturgy, which is outward form. Liturgical churches have historically turned the ACT of worship into an ART of worship- precisely ascribing spiritual worth to a formal aesthetic. Surely the ACT can have aesthetic qualities that draw our spirits upward, but the form cannot do this alone.

Lewis says that language itself is living and changes with time so archaisms should be disposed of .

Letter two

Lewis disdains the propensity for priests to inhibit worship services by their machinations.
It takes all kinds to make the body .

Lewis posits that prayers without words are best. I don't see a hierachy of prayer commended to us in scripture though.Words are the anchor,or the cadence but not the music itself. We can abuse words badly in prayer if we fall into repetition or twisting meanings.

We pray ifferently as different individuals. Ready made forms cannot suffice in interpersonal communication nor with God.

Positive things ready made prayers yield:
1. Keeps us in touch with sound doctrine,
2. reminds us of what one ought to ask.
3. Provides an element of the ceremonial.

The paradox of prayer- at the same time our relationship to God is more intimate than we can experience with any creature, yet we are far removed from God in another sense.

Letter three

Lewis answers issues Malcolm has apparently raised with the preceding correspondence- Lewis call them Red Herrings: Sex can be to the glory of God, Devotion to the saints, and posture of prayer.

Lewis believes the posture we take with our body is an aid to the spiritual posture we take before God. I agree. - Our body and soul should pray holistically.

More important however is a concentrated mind. Perfect silence and solitude can leave one open to more internal distractions than outward moise. This is indeed the case with me.

Letter Four

Is it an absurdity to make requests known to God? Father knows! The peace of God will fill our hearts and our minds when we do this though.

Do not give God advice when you pray!

Being aware of God's mindfulness towards us and giving assent to be known unveils our nakedness before God.

We are invited to pour ourselves out and put ourselves on a personal footing WITH God.

All Biblical anthropomorphisms speak of a deeper reality and are legitimate for the edification of believers.

What is WORTHY of petition? We must lay before him what is IN us! Distracted?> Tell it to The Father. You cannot conceal anything from Him at any rate.

We should pray for an ordinate frame of mind- if we lose our dignity before God, we will be free to ask as a child asks!

Letter five-

The letter turns to an exposition of the meaning Lewis derives from the Lord's Prayer.

Thy Kingdom Come.- As in the sinless world, in the beauty of nature, so in my heart.
As in the best human lives we have known, the true believers, and among the blessed dead, so in my heart, my college, my country, the world.

Thy will be done-Out of obedience, and out of a will embodied in sufferings and submission, but of volitional fulfillment in and through the lives of believers.As agent as well as patient, by me, NOW.

We miss blessings by trying to categorize or label them.

Many long for mountaintop experiences and miss the new landmarks on the journey by looking backwards.

Our daily bread...-our physical as well ad spiritual and mental needs for the day- we have holistic needs and God is concerned with the whole person.

Forgive us as we forgive...To persevere in forgiveness is difficult over time for repeated offences.

Lead us not into temptation- this shold not conjure up a fiendlike image of God. Lewis points out that peirasmos means trial- as in spare us from crisis situations of all sorts.

Lewis thinks of the addendum the church has added to Jesus's words here as a de jure/de facto proposition.

Letter six

Religion as a dangerous concept- Lewis stops short of calling it manmade.He sees that it has been substitued for God as the end and not the means. Religion can be in the main a natural taste, not a substantive, abundant life.Departmentalizing life into sacred and secular can end in idolatry.The propensity to substitute signs for the real seduces man.
We are left to conjecture on a text without a context as Lewis repeatedly quotes a speech we have no access to and inference becomes our only recourse.
Contentedly departmental religion is not Christian behaviour. Pet doctrines of those who want to question traditions will go unchallenged.

Forgiveness and guilt- one should feel the full weight of guilt if indeed one is guilty!
Much of so called therapy so many we encounter subscibe to is merely a denial of moral transgression (sin) and the rightful guilt associated with it. The only recourse for one who will not confess is to rationalize away the guilt, for there is no confronting it headon- we cannot even discern the level of the transgression without the light of the Holy Spirit.

Lewis seems to realize that we are totally depraved when he states that we cannot rightfully examine ourselves- we have flawed eyes to view ourselves with.But God is greater than our limitations.I remember someone once telling me to do that which my limited understanding told me to do in obedience and God would be faithful to open up the next vista and to proceed again to complete the cycle of doing/seeing afresh.

Letter seven

Lewis denies Malcolm's idea that Christian prayer should exclude petitions. Jesus prayed a petitionary prayer in Gethsemane and we are not better than our Master.

Arguments against the logic of petitions before the Lord.:

1.Determinism is inherent in a scientific world view.It rejects that we have a volitional will.
2. If God answers petitions, the world is unpredictable.Natural law has no hold.Science will never give us a map to the future that is reliable.Good scientific method requires a contolled experiment-which this world does not offer.

Letter eight.

In time of crisis, false reassurances and presumptuous identification seem utterly superficial and inane. The real issues- can God hear and grant my petition in my time of need? shine through.Temptations in times like these abound- looking for omens, worry.Anxieties in times of crisis are afflictions, not sins or defects in faith.

Lewis wades into the deep mystery of Gethsemane, but not very deeply. While the imponderable nature of the Son of Man coming to full realization of the reality of the full contents of the cup of wrath before him should mystify us,Lewis seems to miss the entirely. Lewis seems to allude to death by crucifixion as holding the supreme horror to Jesus. Surely I am misreading this?

Lewis then looks at the PASSION in terms of Christ identification with us and vice versa.

Petitions denied, slumbering, out of touch friends,condemnation, injustice, mob mentality.
These are all representative of humanity's plight. What does not follow is the forsakeness Christ endures, the great obscenity of obscenities does not seem to me to have a human parallel.

I believe the crucifixion that is inherent in the creative act is real.It is not a contingency. When the Godhead determined to create moral creatures, whose choices would be real choices,, the cost was surely considered, and the propitiation determined. The plan of redemption was never "Plan B". How great a Love it is that still created in the light of omniscience!

Letter nine

Lewis focuses on dispelling a perceived incongruity relating to the recording of Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane. Then he proceeds to critique Luke's account of the prosecution of Paul in Acts 24.

Then to the problem of prayer- Since God is outside time, Can prayer be a causal agent? Do our prayers have real meaning?

The phrase : "at the frontier, at the mysterious point of juncture and separation where absolute being utters derivative being." shows us the inadequacy of our attempts to grapple with the question.Our presuppositions make divine paradox seem nonsensical.

Personality implies the possibility of interactivity. This should color our understanding of impassibility.

Letter ten.

I have been hearing from many fronts the proposition that God's spiritual nature and eternity precludes his real responsiveness. I think it is oversimplifying to categorize God's wrath, pleasure or displeasure, jealousy, and grief as merely analogical.

God's arrangements do not imply unforseen or undesired events.

Letter Eleven

The topic turns toward reconciling the seeming paradox between the command/ promise that we are to ask, believing and we will receive it on the one hand and the prayer in Gethsemane and observable facts on the other.

How can ask with faith with no doubting and also say "if it be thy will? We can understand why petitions are not granted, but why is the opposite so lavishly promised?

This is the worst place to start instruction for a child or new convert or a pagan. removing mountains is a deep place. It is also to attribute unanswered prayer to a lack of faith in the petitioner.

Lewis guesses that when we pray on our own behalf we forfeit the assurance of and affirmative answer.

Letter twelve

Lewis reiterates that the nature of this work we are reading is dicussion and pondering, not answers or instruction.

I don't discern what it is that Lewis is calling the "higher level" What could be higher than a proper estimation of our prayers as a conversation, intimate communication on a personal level with God before the throne of grace? I do not find St. John of the Cross to be so far removed from my own experience.

If it is easier to pray for others than ourselves, why is this? Because we are made for intercession?Do we substitute a prayer for a good work done for the person? When we pray for others, is all that is required of us met? No.

If you kep your mind fixed on god, you will think of the one you pray for.

Letter thirteen

Prayer is no soliloquy. Even when the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, giving us words for groans, it tis not soliliquy. Interpersonal communication requires a being to being act. Being In Christ does not annihilate our personality. Union of wills is a submission, not an obliteration.Separation from God is possible from the point of view of the spiritually blinded. God is no ventriloquist and we are not wooden men.

"In the Incarnation, God the Son takes the body and human soul of Jesus, and, through that, the whole environment of nature, all the creaturely predicament, into His
own being. So that "He came down from Heaven" can almost be transposed into "Heaven drew earth up into it," and locality, limitation, sleep, sweat, footsore
weariness, frustration, pain, doubt, and death, are, from before all worlds, known by God from within. "

God was content before creation and did not need to create. It is for his good pleasure that He created and it is for his good pleasure that he accepts supplications from his creatures.

Letter fourteen

Lewis explores the differences between the creator and the creature. He does not sufficiantly elucidate on the fact that God is Spirit and has no extension in space and time physically or geographically. He is rather, supradimensional.Therefore it is necessary to apply concpts our limited minds can grasp, if not exhaustively, then, truly.

This letter ponders the imponderable- the meaning of being "In Christ" and of omnipresence.I do not see that imagining the presence of God in particular objects is all that helpful.They are abstractions of the real and we are bound by some dimensional imagery in any case. all truth by its nature will reprove, rebuke,and instruct us .

Any watered down version will fail to compel us for this very reason- if it fits into our comfort zone it will stagnate.Aslan is not safe- he is good but dangerous.

I think that the mind that wakes to the desire of God will hunger and thirst for him and seek him earnestly. Fear of losing him is to live beneath our privilege.

Letter fifteen

It is pointed out that one can make the simple profound thing quite complex by argumentation. If the issue is unlearning of what the world has taught, I contend that this is no more difficult a renewal of mind than anyone else has to go through. The "But it depends on who one is" statement is particularly bourgeois and offensive. What about the intent of the heart? That is what God looks upon and any attempt to complicate the real issues is what makes the idol. If it is the real Thou that I speak to, I will be undone and I won't have to address whether it is the REAL I or not. He has spoken to us of his character and we can really know him, not by our own facility, but by the Holy Spirit that illumines us.

Letter sixteen

Lewis's estimation of the problems with using mental images seems to me to disdain the very images Jesus utilised in His teaching. They are not satisfactory for Lewis- how is this any different than those given over to enthusiasms and to seeking signs. why are the biblical images not enough? I am beginning to disregard much of what Lewis says in the framework of speaking of "people like us". He even focuses on the physical horror of the crucifixion, not the eternal obscenity and reality of it. seems Lewis might be the one cutting himself off from the simple profundity of it. He is not a special case- and God is not a respector of men.Where is childlike faith in this?

Mental images are not mediators of anything. our mind itself by God's grace is the mediator, if you must insist on it.

Letter seventeen

Views on prayer as worship or adoration.

Begin where you are, with manifest blessings. Gratitude gives praise for the gift. Adoration focuses on the giver. We must learn to give God adoration in the small circumstance to expect to be able to glorify him accordingly on high occasions. Joy is the serious business of heaven. That is a mouthful!

Letter eighteen

Lewis places a caveat on what he has said about pleasures and diqualifies guilty pleasures.

This takes Lewis into the category of penetential prayer. This can range from placation of the gods to restoration of personal fellowship with God "against You alone I have sinned".The analogy to human wrath when we speak of the wrath of God fall apart quickly. His is Holy wrath for which he himself has provided a propitiation.

Lewis plays with the idea of total depravity in Whyte.I think he is rebelling against worm theology for he understands some of the issues well.

Letter nineteen

Adoration should be communal - in public worship or in private with the hosts of heaven-

Then digresses into the aesthetic qualities this time the mean, not the high) of worship services being what touches him.

It is refreshing to hear the honesty with which Lewis declares he does not understand explanations of mystery.The letter is very gracious in its tone. It is good to remember this is autobiography, not theology. As such it can be helpful.

Letter Twenty

This letter is so problematic to me that I cannot critique it with grace. As I have stated in an earlier paper, I believe this does not do justice to the finished work of Christ or the doctrine of sanctification. At best a transitional state in the presence of God is still a blessed hope.I am not declaring that life before the throne is static. An interesting question.

Letter twenty one

I really do not understand the basis of the contention that prayer is irksome. Are we not to pray without ceasing- perhaps if we are a stranger to it that may be the case- for it, of course convicts us first of all. Why look at it as a duty or ration it to ourselves? Whatever is real involves some cost and pain. It truly is akin to altar building.

Letter twenty two

Belief in the supernatural is prerequisite for a Biblical view of prayer. The hope of Glory is not a bribe. The resurrection of the body is the capstone in the arch of Christianity- it all falls without it. Memory of ones loved ones who have died are real.

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