S5E50 – Severe Mercy Month (Part III): “Merciful Love”
Matt and Andrew wrap up their discussion of “A Severe Mercy”.
Matt and Andrew wrap up their discussion of “A Severe Mercy”.
Andrew and Matt continue their discussion of “A Severe Mercy”. In the previous episode, they spoke about the “Pagan love” between Van and Davy, and in this episode they examine how “Divine Love” enters into their relationship.
While David is taking the month off to write his book about “The Four Loves”, Andrew and Matt discuss “A Severe Mercy” by Sheldon Vanauken. In this episode, they focus on the earlier part of the story and the “Pagan love” between Sheldon and his wife, Davy.
We wrap up “Apologetics Month” today by talking to former guest of the show, Dr. Holly Ordway. For most of this month we’ve focussed on specific apologetics arguments, but today we speak more broadly about the subject of “Imaginative Apologetics”.
Although it didn’t originate with him, one of the arguments which C.S. Lewis is best known for is his “Trilemma”. Who is Jesus? A good teacher or something else? Apologist Jimmy Akin walks us through the various options.
When Matt and David went through “Mere Christianity” in Season 1, Matt said that he struggled with “The Moral Argument for God”, so in today’s episode he sits down with apologist Trent Horn to hash it out.
Today we talk with Dr. Victor Reppert, a name intimately associated with The Argument From Reason, which Lewis puts forth most famously in his book, “Miracles”.
At the beginning of “Apologetics Month” we looked at science and scientism. Today with apologist Peter S. Williams we consider the related ideas of “Logical Positivism” and “Verificationism” which were popular in Lewis’ day and which are still alive and well today.
Lewis said that before he was six years old, he was “a votary of the Blue Flower”. The Blue Flower symbolized a life-long longing, “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction”. Lewis used this idea in Mere Christianity to build The Argument From Desire, which Joe Heshmeyer discusses on today’s show as part of “Apologetics Month”.
Continuing with “Apologetics Month”, we turn to what is probably the most powerful argument in favour of atheism, what Lewis called “The Problem of Pain”. David interviews Oxford Professor, Dr. Bethany N. Sollereder about her book, “Why is there suffering?”