Probably the most useful book I read during Season 2 of Pints With Jack was C.S. Lewis Goes To Heaven by David Clark. In today’s episode I interviewed Dr. Clark to discuss his book and wrap up our discussion of The Great Divorce.
S2E29: “After Hours” with David Clark (Download)
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Time Stamps
00:12 – Introduction
01:51 – Brief biography of Dr. Clark
02:58 – Drink-of-the-week and quote-of-the-week
03:33 – When did you first come across C.S. Lewis?
04:35 – How has Lewis shaped your spirituality and teaching career?
07:28 – Is The Great Divorce your favourite of Lewis’ books?
08:34 – Did the book take you long to write?
09:14 – What’s does Lewis want us primarily to take away from his book?
10:31 – What is the structure of your book?
11:54 – What are the sources which influenced Lewis concerning this book?
14:52 – What ideas are covered in Part I, the “Sociology” section of your book?
17:35 – Do you have a favourite ghost?
19:03 – How did you go about identifying the real-life counterparts to some of the ghosts?
21:01 – What are the geographical features you discuss in Part II?
23:00 – What is the significance of Botley?
25:24 – What kinds of things do you discuss in Part III?
30:32 – How should readers read your book in relation to Lewis’?
32:59 – What advice would you give someone reading The Great Divorce for the first time?
34:13 – Where did the pictures in the book come from?
Show Notes
• I explained that Dr. Clark’s book was first mentioned to me by William O’Flaherty from EssentialCSLewis.com and the All about Jack podcast. I had been trying to track down the true identify of “Sir Archibald” in the Great Divorce and he sent me the information found in Dr. Clark’s book. Matt and I immediately bought copies 🙂
• I offered a short introduction to Dr. Clark:
Dr. David Clark received his Ph.D. in Biblical Studies (with minors in Patristics and Liturgy) from University of Notre Dame. He has taught at Notre Dame, Southern California College, Fuller Theological Seminary and Vanguard University. He’s an Ordained minister with Assemblies of God. He is the author of a number of books: C.S. Lewis goes to Heaven and C.S. Lewis: A guide to his theology. Since his retirement he lives in the St. Louis area and serves as theological advisor to doctoral students at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary.
Dr. Clark added that he had just celebrated his 50th Wedding Anniversary with his wife, Sylvia.
• For the drink-of-the-week, I was once again Vat 69.
• The quote-of-the-week was from one of Lewis’ essays:
“The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are”
The Prince or the Poem?
• Dr. Clark talked about his history with Lewis and how he was first introduced to Lewis through The Screwtape Letters. He ended up teaching a very popular module on C.S. Lewis for over thirty years. Since in this course they also read Lewis’ science fiction trilogy which involves trips to Mars and Venus, the course soon became known as “The Lewis and Clark Expedition”!
• Although he loves The Great Divorce, his favourite Lewis book is Perelandra. Dr. Clark once interviewed a lady in Orange County, Kathryn Lindskoog. Back in the 50’s, she was working on an MA thesis in English, loved Lewis’ writings, and actually wrote him to ask if she could meet him while she was in England doing research. He consented and they (including Warren) had tea together at a hotel. When talking about The Great Divorce, Lewis described it as his “cinderella”, the book which he thought was too often overlooked.
Kathryn Lindskoog became a controversial person in the C.S. Lewis community when she claimed that The Dark Tower wasn’t actually written by Lewis.
• Dr. Clark thinks that the central point of The Great Divorce is that we can’t take any sin with us into Heaven.
• We then discussed the structure of his book:
Introduction
Part I – The “Sociology” of The Great Divorce
Part II – The “Geography” of The Great Divorce
Part III – The “Theology” of The Great Divorce
Appendices
In an email he sent me after the interview, Dr. Clark said that it was when he led one of the summer workshops at St. Andrew’s Abbey that he divided the discussion into the people, places and theology format, probably because felt it would be easier for people to focus on one aspect at a time.
I commented that I found the Appendices to be the most useful parts of the book, since Dr. Clark tracks down all the references and allusions found in Lewis’ book.
• Dr. Clark wasn’t sure if he had a favourite ghost, but we spent some time talking about the young poet ghost whom Lewis meets on the bus, whom Dr. Clark identifies as Lewis’ younger, pre-conversion self.
• We spoke about Dr. Clark’s identification of the Artistic Ghost as John Singer Sargent.
• When talking about the geography in The Great Divorce, Dr. Clark compared the bus journey to the chasm found in the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man.
• Dr. Clark also makes the suggestion that Lewis bases the grey town in The Great Divorce on the town of Botley so I asked him to talk about that a little more and we talk about how it related to spiritual apathy.
• In The Great Divorce we see that following Christ results in you becoming more yourself, not less. I compared it to this passage from Mere Christianity:
…suppose a person who knew nothing about salt. You give him a pinch to taste and he experiences a particular strong, sharp taste. You then tell him that in your country people use salt in all their cookery. Might he not reply “In that case I suppose all your dishes taste exactly the same: because the taste of that stuff you have just given me is so strong that it will kill the taste of everything else.” But you and I know that the real effect of salt is exactly the opposite. So far from killing the taste of the egg and the tripe and the cabbage, it actually brings it out. They do not show their real taste till you have added the salt. (Of course, as I warned you, this is not really a very good illustration, because you can, after all, kill the other tastes by putting in too much salt, whereas you cannot kill the taste of a human personality by putting in too much Christ. I am doing the best I can.)
It is something like that with Christ and us. The more we get what we now call “ourselves” out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of “little Christs,” all different, will still be too few to express Him fully.
Mere Christianity, Book IV (Chapter 11)
Inevitably we also smoke about heavenly and hellish creatures and I referenced Lewis’ sermon, The Weight of Glory:
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors… Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.”
The Weight of Glory
Dr. Clark described us as “soul shapers”.
• Dr. Clark’s advice to someone reading The Great Divorce is to read it and then return to it again several times later.
• When Dr. Clark was Senior Editor of The Lamp Post, the publication of the Southern California C.S. Lewis Society and it was at a meeting at St. Andrew’s Abbey that he met Debbie Camp who illustrated his book. Dr. Clark pointed out that, on the cover, the character in the bottom-right with a pipe in his mouth is Lewis himself.
I ended by alluding to something Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain:
“The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with out friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
