S1E37 – Bonus – “Aslan’s Country”

Today’s episode will be a little different from usual. This week, I tell Matt about my trip to The Kilns, the home of C.S. Lewis in Oxford. Afterwards, we finish up the episode by responding to some listener questions about God and gender.

S1E37: Aslan’s Country (Download)

The audio quality varies over the course of the episode. We actually recorded this a little while ago and thankfully have improved our recording process quite a bit since then.

Show Notes

• Our quote of the week came from The Problem of Pain:

“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

• Our drink-of-the-week was a simple Stella Artois.

• During my trip back to England, I went to Oxford with my mother. I visited there on a Tuesday since this is the day when the Inklings would typically meet in the Eagle and Child. This is, incidentally, the reason why our podcast comes out on Tuesday mornings. For some reason, this was news to Matt!

• We first went to the Bodleian Library to see an exhibition by another member of the Inklings, J.R.R. Tolkien. We saw some of the wonderful letters Tolkien wrote to his children from Father Christmas. Matt and I shared a few family Christmas stories. You can hear more of our Christmas memories in our Christmas Special episode.

• We arrived at the Kilns a little early, so we toured the C.S. Lewis Nature Reserve which used to be part of the grounds. We saw the air-raid shelter which was built by Lewis’ gardener, Paxton. We later found out that Oxford escaped the bombings because Hitler intended to make Oxford his capital after conquering Great Britain.

Before returning to the house, I finished the book I had been reading, The Most Reluctant Convert by David Downing.

• Upon returning to the house, we met the other visitors that day and were greeted by Jenny, a university student who lives in the Kilns.

• We started our tour in the living room. You could see the nicotine stains on the ceiling from all the smoking that went on there! We heard that when Joy married Lewis and moved into the Kilns, she washed the curtains in that room and they disintegrated, being held together by only nicotine and cobwebs!

• We went down the hall to Warnie’s room. Warnie’s return to Christianity came through eastern religions and this is marked in his room with a tiny statue of the Buddha.

• We walked past the Music Room where Mrs. Moore taught music lessons. She was the mother of one of Lewis’ comrades in the Great War whom Lewis had promised to look after in case of his friend’s death.

• When we got to the upper floor, we saw an attic room which had been converted to resemble the sort of room that Lewis and Warnie would have planned in as children in Ireland. If you visit The Kilns, don’t try and enter this room – a Russian tourist tried once and fell through the floor!

• Finally we arrived at Lewis’ study, where I took lots of selfie’s! Lewis’ bedroom was next door. Lewis’ study was formerly Mrs. Moore’s bedroom, meaning that in order to leave his bedroom, Lewis had to walk through hers. The door between the two was eventually permanently locked. In order to give Lewis access to his room, a door was cut into the side of the house and stairs erected outside!

• We returned downstairs to see the Kitchen, where we saw framed pictures of Lewis’ step-son, Douglas Gresham and the gardener and the cat, Tom. 

Our guide asked us for which Narnian character was Paxton, the gardener, the inspiration. It was Puddleglum from The Silver Chair. Matt failed to answer this question correctly since it turns out he has only read Lewis’ “scholarly works”. This is both a disappointment to me and our mutual friend, Kate. In response to this, I quoted Lewis from the dedication to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

…you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (Dedication)

• We “tested” the wardrobe in the corridor but found no fawns 🙁

The tour concluded in the converted garage, where we saw Mrs. Moore’s piano and the original sign for The Eagle and Child Pub!

• Afterwards we went to Holy Trinity Church, which was Lewis’ local parish and afterwards caught a taxi to The Eagle and Child pub!

• We ended the show by answering some questions from a listener, Giovanna, concerning some comments we made in Episode 32: The Good Infection.

Q1. So, I think it was David I heard refer to the Holy Spirit as a “he” in the latest episode. Does the Holy Spirit have a gender? Does God, for that matter? Jesus is definitely a dude, I get that.

God is spirit and therefore has no gender. However, as you point out, the Second Person of the Trinity was indeed incarnate as a biological man. The Holy Spirit has no gender. However, I don’t like calling the Holy Spirit “it” as it seems impersonal. Additionally, the Spirit has historically been referred to using male pronouns.

Q2. But why do we refer to an impossibly large being outside of time as “He”?

Principally this is because of the language used by Sacred Scripture. In the Old and New Testaments, God is generally described using masculine terms, the most obvious of which is when Jesus described God as “Father” (Matthew 6:9-13) and, when speaking of the Holy Spirit, said “He will teach you all things” (John 14:26). Having said that, feminine imagery is indeed used in Scripture to describe God, but only in the minority of cases:

• God described as a mother bear (Hosea 13:8)
• God described as a mother eagle (Deuteronomy 32:11-12)
• God gives birth (Deuteronomy 32:18)
• God as a comforting mother (Isaiah 66:13)
• God as a woman in labor (Isaiah 42:14)
• God as a mother (Psalm 131:2)
• God as a mother hen (Matthew 23:37 and Luke 13:34)

It is important to consider that there is something about the complementarity of man and woman as husband and wife which reveals God to us. It takes a community of love to express the life of the Trinity.

Q3. Why, when we’re talking about begetting, are we talking about fathers and sons instead of mothers and children (which seems a bit more appropriate for the analogy, considering pregnancy and all that)?

Both mothers and fathers beget – they produce something of the same kind as themselves. 

• I closed the episode with my review of Bible History, a podcast by Matt Fradd:

Are you a Christian who feels a bit intimidated by the Bible? Do you not know your Methuselah from your Mephibosheth? If so, subscribe to this podcast! Each week, Matt Fradd releases a short, five minute episode where he reads “Bible History”, a book by Fr. Ignatius Shuster. Over the course of 182 episodes you will hear the overarching narrative of the Bible, from beginning to end. At the conclusion of each episode, Matt asks some questions to test your comprehension and memory of the chapter. Come join the journey each week through the Bible!

iTunes Review for “Bible History” by Matt Fradd