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e1cfbc2
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For Tolkien, a myth awakens in its readers a longing for something that lies beyond their grasp. Myths
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Alister E. McGrath |
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88bc34d
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The stories of Narnia seem childish nonsense to some. But to others, they are utterly transformative. For the latter group, these evocative stories affirm that it is possible for the weak and foolish to have a noble calling in a dark world; that our deepest intuitions point us to the true meaning of things; that there is indeed something beautiful and wonderful at the heart of the universe; and that this may be found, embraced, and adored.
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Alister E. McGrath |
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78a4ed6
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Mere Christianity allows us to understand Christian ideas; the Narnia stories allow us to step inside and experience the Christian story and judge it by its ability to make sense of things and "chime in" with our deepest intuitions about truth, beauty, and goodness. If"
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Alister E. McGrath |
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b3abff6
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John Polkinghorne (born 1930) comments on this point as follows: We are so familiar with the fact that we can understand the world that most of the time we take it for granted. It is what makes science possible. Yet it could have been otherwise. The universe might have been a disorderly chaos rather than an orderly cosmos. Or it might have had a rationality which was inaccessible to us. [...] There is a congruence between our minds and the ..
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Alister E. McGrath |
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77fea6d
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Lewis had discovered the calming and coping impact, not merely of reading literature, but of putting his feelings into his own words. It was as if the mental process of forging sentences tempered and tamed the emotions that originally inspired them.
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Alister E. McGrath |
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62d01e5
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Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago."["
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Alister E. McGrath |
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d7a8c54
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Literature--above all, poetry--was Lewis's firewall, keeping the chaotic and meaningless external world at a safe distance, and shielding him from the existential devastation it wreaked on others.
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Alister E. McGrath |
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8d00d8a
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Yet the triumph of the King James Bible was not limited to Great Britain (within which the translation continues to be known as the "Authorized Version")."
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Alister E. McGrath |
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1ced8d2
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village." The scholar, Lewis declares, has "lived in many times" and can thus challenge the automatic presumption of finality inherent in present judgements and trends: We need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much w..
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Alister E. McGrath |
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de42788
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Apologetics aims to convert believers into thinkers, and thinkers into believers.
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Alister E. McGrath |
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71ab431
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In the end, Christianity stands or falls with the trustworthinss and reliability of the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead. By meditating on that first Good Friday, we can remind ourselves of the unreliability of our own judgment on one hand, and the faithfulness of God to his promises on the other- and thus we can put doubt in its proper perspective. For, seen properly, doubt is not a threat to faith, but a reminder of how fragile a..
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Alister E. McGrath |
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93accd9
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helped Lewis along in the final stage of what the medieval writer Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1221-1274) describes as the "journey of the mind to God."
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Alister E. McGrath |
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65e9352
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In the end, Christianity stands or falls with the trustworthiness and reliability of the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead. By meditating on that first Good Friday, we can remind ourselves of the unreliability of our own judgment on one hand, and the faithfulness of God to his promises on the other- and thus we can put doubt in its proper perspective. For, seen properly, doubt is not a threat to faith, but a reminder of how fragile ..
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Alister E. McGrath |
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ccd0919
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As Lewis later put it, "All that is not eternal is eternally out of date."
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Alister E. McGrath |