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I’ve never read his work, so I couldn’t say.Chesterton was good at creating straw men.
Read it and also read The Screwtape Letters....the latter was better....and of course the Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy....that one was disturbing.C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity" is stunning in my opinion, and this passage is one of my favorites. Remember that Lewis (1898-1963) was an atheist before converting to Christianity. This passage addresses the question of why God does not make Himself blatantly know via "invasion":
Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil? Why is He not landing in force, invading it? Is it that He is not strong enough? Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely.I do not suppose you and I would have thought much of a Frenchman who waited till the Allies were marching into Germany and then announced he was on our side.
God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realize what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else—something it never entered your head to conceive—comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing; it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever. We must take it or leave it.1
https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/webfm_send/95
They were good friends. Tolkien took it personal when Lewis elected to be a Protestant. Tolkien teased Lewis for being to over the top with his books. He thought he should have been more subtle with his infusion of Christianity into his works.the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”
I think you're confusing this with 'Game of Thrones'.
No surprise there. GRR Martin described Tolkien as his “Great Model”. And Lewis credited Tolkien with assisting him in his conversion to Christianity. The two met regularly for a theological discussion group.
I read an Ann Barnhart piece on the reason why men must be priests. Her explanation was thought provoking and made a lot of sense.They were good friends. Tolkien took it personal when Lewis elected to be a Protestant. Tolkien teased Lewis for being to over the top with his books. He thought he should have been more subtle with his infusion of Christianity into his works.the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”
I think you're confusing this with 'Game of Thrones'.
No surprise there. GRR Martin described Tolkien as his “Great Model”. And Lewis credited Tolkien with assisting him in his conversion to Christianity. The two met regularly for a theological discussion group.
CS Lewis was buried Anglican but he was very High Church Anglican. I do believe he was working towards reconciliation back before the Anglican Church apostasied...which he never got to see thankfully. He did write of what would happen if women priests were ever invented and how it would shatter the ties between Anglicanism and Christianity.
“to cut ourselves off from the Christian past and to widen the divisions between ourselves and other Churches by establishing an order of priestesses in our midst, would be an almost wanton degree of imprudence.”
Not only does this question have an answer, it is an incredibly beautiful answer that needs to be shouted from the mountaintops in this time like never, ever before. The answer involves the concepts of gender, marriage and sexuality; the very areas of culture under profound, direct demonic attack; the very areas of culture upon which civilization lives or dies. And the answer resides, as it has for 1980 years, in the Mass. First, let’s talk about gender.
God, in Himself, contains both masculine and feminine. GASP! God contains a feminine nature? Of course He does. Goodness. If God possessed no feminine nature, then that would mean that women contained a nature that was completely outside of God. How could God create something which He Himself did not contain? Well, you might say, God doesn’t have an evil nature, but evil exists. No. Evil is merely the absence of good. Evil is not extant, just as cold is the mere absence of heat, and darkness is the mere absence of light. Femininity is an extant nature. Femininity is NOT the absence of masculinity. Femininity is an existential reality unto itself, and therefore God contains it in Himself.
Let’s define masculinity and femininity with two axioms:
The essence of masculinity is INITIATION.
The essence of femininity is RESPONSE.
In all aspects of life, from sociology to courtship to sexual intercourse itself, men are vocationally the initiators – or at least they SHOULD BE. Men lead. Men make decisions. Men command armies and wage war. Men initiate courtship. Men are the head of the household. Even the male anatomy is initiatory. The man introduces his body into that of his wife.
Females are the receptors and responders in human existence. Females listen, and respond. Females follow. Females render assistance and are responsive helpmates. Females respond, in the affirmative or the negative, to the courtship advances of men. Females receive the love of their husbands and respond by submitting themselves to their husbands. The female anatomy is a physical receptacle for the body of her husband, which then returns to him from the same physical space the fruit of their mutual love – a child.
God the Father gives Himself fully to God the Son. God the Son fully receives the love of God the Father and then fully returns it. This intercourse of infinite love being perpetually given, received and returned yields a third – God the Holy Ghost. Thus, God, in His infinite capacity as both INITIATOR and RECEIVER/RESPONDER within Himself, clearly contains BOTH masculine and feminine nature. God isn’t like men and women. Men and women are like God – created in His image, both male and female.
So why do we call God “He” exclusively? Because in the God-man relationship, God is the INITIATOR and mankind is the RESPONDER. The relative disproportion here is so great that it can be said to be practically infinite. God created and perpetuates in existence the entire universe JUST SO MAN CAN EXIST. God became incarnate JUST SO THE BROKEN RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GOD AND MAN COULD BE RESTORED. God died on the Cross JUST SO HIS LOVE FOR MAN COULD BE MANIFESTED TO THE MAXIMUM POSSIBLE EXTENT. God comes to us in the Eucharist SO THAT WE NEED NEVER BE SEPARATED FROM HIM. Initiation, initiation, initiation.
Every man’s life is nothing more than responding to desperate, pleading love overtures and nuptial initiation of God. We either say yes, or we say no. And like the Gentleman He is, He never coerces. He is there, infinitely powerful, infinitely virile and infinitely reaching out to us, but at the same time infinitely meek (meekness is power under control, remember), infinitely gentle and patiently persistent in His advances.
BUT, there is exactly ONE MOMENT wherein God, so utterly consumed and infinitely condescending in His love for mankind, actually goes so far as to permit man to take the role of initiator (masculine), and God Himself voluntarily, for just a moment, RESPONDS TO THE INITIATING ACT OF MAN. Yes, God makes His feminine nature manifest before mankind. That moment of total condescension of God to man is in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, specifically at the moment of consecration of the Host and the Chalice.
In the traditional, pre-Vatican II rites, such as the Tridentine, Ambrosian, and Dominican rites, at the moment of consecration, when the priest, in an act of masculine initiation, is calling God to the altar, both at the consecration of the Host and at the consecration of the Chalice, the priest MUST bend over the altar, stare intently at the Host or the Chalice, and rest his elbows on the altar. In this posture, and this posture only, does the priest then say the words that actually effect the change of the bread and the wine into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ.
