Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963. Walter Hooper

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СКАЧАТЬ the Immaculate Conception with the Virgin Birth. The former is a doctrine peculiar to the Roman Catholics and asserts that the mother of Jesus was born free of original sin. It does not concern us at all.

      (2) The Virgin Birth is a doctrine plainly stated in the Apostles Creed that Jesus had no physical father, and was not conceived as a result of sexual intercourse. It is not a doctrine on which there is any dispute between Presbyterians as such and Episcopalians as such. A few individual Modernists in both these churches have abandoned it; but Presby-terianism or Episcopalianism in general, and in actual historical instances, through the centuries both affirm it. The exact details of such a miracle—an exact point at which a supernatural force enters this world (whether by the creation of a new spermatozoon, or the fertilisation of an ovum without a spermatozoon, or the development of a foetus without an ovum) are not part of the doctrine. These are matters in which no one is obliged and everyone is free, to speculate. Your starting point about this doctrine will not, I think, be to collect the opinions of individual clergymen, but to read Matthew Chap. I and Luke I and II.

      (3) Similarly, your question about the resurrection is answered in Luke XXIV. This makes it clear beyond any doubt that what is claimed is physical resurrection. (All Jews except Sadducees already believed in spiritual revival—there would have been nothing novel or exciting in that.)

      (4) Thus the questions that you raise are not questions at issue between real P. and real Ep. at all for both these claim to agree with Scripture. Neither church, by the way, seems to be very intelligently represented by the people you have gone to for advice, which is bad luck. I find it very hard to advise in your choice. At any rate the programme, until you can make up your mind, is to read your New Testament (preferably a modern translation) intelligently. Pray for guidance, obey your conscience, in small as well as great matters, as strictly as you can.

      (5) Don’t bother much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them: when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you, but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behaviour. (I hope all of this is not very dull and disappointing. Write freely again if I can be of any use to you.)

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      P.S. Of course God does not consider you hopeless. If He did He would not be moving you to seek Him (and He obviously is). What is going on in you at present is simply the beginning of the treatment. Continue seeking with cheerful seriousness. Unless He wanted you, you would not be wanting Him.

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

      [The Kilns]

      16/6/51

      My dear Arthur

You’re right. Not that I shall be tired of hotels, still less of you, by then, but that I shall be feeling like getting down to a little work. Also I think you wd. find it a waste both of Lily¹¹⁹ and of me to have us together.

      Love to the Unbelievable and to yourself.

      Yours

      Jack

      

       TO WARFIELD M. FIROR(BOD):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford 22/6/51

      Dear Firor

      I sympathise with you about my handwriting. I used to have a v. good one but no efforts will now recover it. I say! nothing could be nicer than the Hams. If it is not troublesome I’d like you to cancel the new order about Beef & Eggs and revert to the Hams. (We keep poultry and are alright about Eggs).

I don’t know about Deadlines. I somehow can’t quite believe in myself going to Wyoming¹²⁰–perhaps this is a case for psychoanalysis. Your patient who actually wants his Red Lizard¹²¹ fattened up is of course a disgusting old brute but is he also mad? By what sort of transaction did he propose to transfer his soul? And what value did he suppose it wd. have?

      My brother is away so I have all the mail to cope with by hand. Therefore in haste.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      

TO ROBERT C. WALTON (BBC): ¹²²

      04/SB/RCW

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford 10/7/51

      Dear Mr. Walton

I am afraid I couldn’t. The route by which I actually became a Theist (viâ subjectivism and as an escape from Solipsism, almost in Berkeley’s manner) could not be used for such a dialogue as you have in view. And also, like the old fangless snake in The Jungle Book,¹²³ I’ve largely lost my dialectical power. I am really very sorry. It sounds an excellent series and I wd. like to have been in it if I could.

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

      Magdalen College

      Oxford 14/7/51

      Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

      Yes: GEORGE HERBERT, Seventeenth Century religious poet: his book is called The Temple and is available in many modern reprints.

      Yes: by Reason I meant ‘the faculty whereby we recognise or attain necessary truths’ or ‘the faculty of grasping self-evident truths or logically deducing those which are not self-evident’. I wd. not call the truths Reason any more than I wd. call colours Sight, or food Eating.

      Yes: Christ is the eternal, unique 2nd Person of the Trinity: sharing His Sonship we can become sons of God in a real, but derived, manner.

      I am v. sorry your husband is going through a bad time. You are all in my prayers. Thanks for the charming photos.

      Yours very sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford 17/7/51

      Dear Miss Pitter

      Very many thanks for reading the MS. The idea that you should also thank [me] is to me fantastic: I was ‘making use of you’, you were a thermometer. The thermometer reading (print the good ones because they’re good and the bad ones because they’re bad) is intriguing: a line more easy to take about other people’s work than СКАЧАТЬ