Get Into "The Mind of the Maker" This Week

The next book study starts this week--Thursday, August 2nd @ 7pm in the Cafe at New Life Lakeview. The book we are diving into is Dorothy Sayers' The Mind of the Maker.

Dead Theologians Society wrestles with works by, you guessed it, dead theologians. While we will typically deal with classic, well-known writers like C.S. Lewis and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (our last two studies), I think it's worthwhile to occasionally throw in an author we're less familiar with, someone who will stretch our discussion a bit and someone whose perspective we may not already know by osmosis through living in Christian community.

The following is a summary from the back cover of the 1987 version published by Harper San Francisco (this is the cheaper of the current paperback versions, by the way, at roughly $11):

This classic, with a new introduction by Madeleine L'Engle, is by turns an entrancing meditation on language; a piercing commentary on the nature of art and why so much of what we read, hear, and see falls short; and a brilliant examination of the fundamental tenets of Christianity. The Mind of the Maker will be relished by those already in love with Dorothy L. Sayers and those who have not yet met her.

A mystery writer, a witty and perceptive theologian, culture critic, and playwright, Dorothy Sayers sheds new, unexpected light on a specific set of statements made in the Christian creeds. She examines anew such ideas as the image of God, the Trinity, free will, and evil, and in these pages a wholly revitalized understanding of them emerges. The author finds the key in the parallels between the creation of God and the human creative process. She continually refers to each in a way that illuminates both.

Ch. 9: A Slip of the Tongue

This final chapter of this book, and a long-overdue post, is about Lewis' struggle to live out his faith. In it, he begins with a prayer that he prayed. "I had meant to pray that I might so pass through things temporal that I finally lost not the things eternal; I found I had prayed so to pass through things eternal that I finally lost not the things temporal." He adds shortly thereafter, "I thought that what I had inadvertently said very nearly expressed something I had really wished."

On some level, if we are Believers (Christians, the Saved, however you want to put it), we truly want to live lives completely sold-out to God. We want to not even blink an eye when He calls us to do something outside of our comfort zone but to jump up and do it. We want long, intimated conversations with Him where we draw close to Him and allow Him to strip away the things that hinder our walk or make us to attached to this world.

And yet, we are attached to this world, and we do resist getting too close to Him. "I come into the presence of God with a great fear lest anything should happen to me within that presence which will prove too intolerably inconvenient when I have come out again into my 'ordinary' life," writes Lewis.

"Our temptation"--one that we've been looking at during New Life's "Revolutionary" series about the Sermon on the Mount--"is to to look eagerly for the minimum that will be accepted." If I go to church every Sunday, that should be enough, right? If I am charitable to the fellow at the Irving Park exit from Lake Shore Drive, I don't need to be charitable to my neighbor. If I see a woman stranded in a parking lot with a flat tire and it's really hot out, it's sufficient for me to offer up an earnest prayer for someone to help her.

The kicker, though, is that doing the minimum is not enough but neither is doing the maximum. "For it is not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God demands; it is not even all our time and all our attention; it is ourselves. For each of us the Baptist's worlds are true: 'He must increase and I decrease.'"

Lewis goes to address those living "good" lives without God. "He cannot bless us unless He has us...If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God, it will make in the end no difference what you have chosen instead...Does it matter to a man dying in a desert by which choice of route he missed the only well?"

In closing, he acknowledges the struggle that this Christian life presents but exhorts us. "We may never, this side of death, drive the invader out of our territory, but we must be in the Resistance, not in the Vichy (the French who cooperated with the Nazis) government. And this, so far I can yet see, must be begun again every day. Our morning prayer should be that in the Imitation: Da hodie perfecte incipere--grant me to make and unflawed beginning today, for I have done nothing yet."

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Thanks to everyone who joined us for these past 9+ weeks. It's been a true pleasure both growing as an individual through our study and growing as a little family together. I look forward to diving into this next study with you.

Ch. 8: On Forgiveness

A reminder to start off--the Thursday, June 21st, meeting of DTS will conclude The Weight of Glory (but not DTS). Please see the prior post and weigh in on which book/author you'd like to read next. We will be taking 2-3 weeks off, then beginning the next work. A schedule will be posted as soon as I nail down details.

In Matthew 6:12, Jesus says/prays, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." In this chapter, Lewis looks at the difference between forgiving and excusing, the giving of forgiveness and the asking of the same. What is stated plainly in the Apostles' Creed, "I believe in the forgiveness of sins," is not really so simple, according to him.

While I didn't feel that Lewis' treatment of forgive vs. excuse was breaking any new ground, it was very interesting to me that he felt that we may well be guilty of fewer sins than we realize and not more. "Often He must know many excuses that we have never thought of, and therefore humble souls will, after death, have the delightful surpise of discovering that on certain occasions they sinned much less than they had thought." Hmm... He adds that we often likely make excuses because we don't fully understand forgiveness.

"Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it. That, and only that, is forgiveness, and that we can always have from God if we ask for it."

On giving forgiveness, he continues.

"To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."

"[T]o forgive the incessant provocations of daily life--to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son--how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand..."

Book Possibilities for Next Round of DTS

The following are some ideas for the next book to be read by the Dead Theologians Society. Feel free to add to the list or you can simply let me know if any of these grab you.

Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton

The Mind of the Maker, Dorothy Sayers

The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan

Mysticism, Evelyn Underhill

Others???

Keep in mind that we're looking for classics--tried and true works--but preferably not those we've already read individually. Also, while we want to avoid heresy, we may well read some books that we disagree with. Hopefully this will sharpen us and make for some lively discussion.

Ch. 7: Membership

In this chapter, Lewis looks at the trend toward collectivism and the elimination of true solitude (a trend which has continued, obviously). He addresses the paradoxical nature of faith, in that it is both public and private, and encourages us to not simply allow cultural trends to dictate our spiritual lives. He also looks at the true nature of membership for believers and discusses the sentiment that people are equal.

On collectivism:

"Even on those rare occasions when a modern undergraduate is not attending some such society he is seldom engaged in those solitary walks, or walks with a single companion, which built the minds of the previous generations. He lives in a crowd; caucus has replaced friendship."

"There is a crowd of busybodies, self-appointed masters of ceremonies, whose life is devoted to destroying solitude wherever solitude still exists."

"We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence , and privacy, and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship."

On true membership:

"The society into which the Christian is called at baptism is not a collective but a Body. It is in fact that Body of which the family is an image on the natural level."

"We are summoned from the outset to combine as creatures with our Creator, as mortals with immortal, as redeemed sinners with sinless Redeemer."

"The sacrifice of selfish privacy which is daily demanded of us is daily repaid a hundredfold in the true growth of personality which the life of the Body encourages. Those who are members of one another become as diverse as the hand and the ear. That is why worldings are so monotonously alike compared with the almost fantastic variety of the saints."

"Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality."

On equality:

To be continued...

Ch. 6: The Inner Ring

If you missed this discussion, you also missed sundaes at Margies' Candies on Western. (Let that be a lesson to you!) You also missed the induction of Dr. Robert Webber, a former professor of mine, into the Dead Theologians Society.

This chapter was a talk Lewis gave to a group of college students. He set out to tell them about the World (as opposed to the Flesh, which he felt they should understand full well already, and the Devil, whom he believed he was too closely aligned in the public eye) and focuses on the phenomena of the "Inner Ring."

This inner ring is neither good nor bad but is something we all strive for at one point or another, according to Lewis. It suggests belonging, value, possessing secret knowledge and other things. But Lewis warns at against pursuing the Inner Ring for the sake of itself and encourages a truer, more satisfying pursuit.

"The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will be no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know."

He continues...

"And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside, that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric, for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it."

Ch. 5: Is Theology Poetry?

Lewis expands the question initially asked of him to be "Is Theology merely poetry? Does Theology offer us, at best, only that kind of truth which, according to some critics, poetry offers us?"

I underlined nearly a third of this chapter. The discussion ran long on this one, and we didn't even get to the end. I regret that this is a hasty post as there were many great passages. I'll just leave you with the very last line of the chapter: "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I have seen everything else."