Dr. Charlie W. Starr returns to the show to speak about his latest book, “The Lion’s Country: C.S. Lewis’s Theory of the Real”.
S6E27: “The Lion’s Country” (Download)
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Show Notes
Introduction
Drop-In
Quote-of-the-week
“Truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is.”
C.S. Lewis, Myth Became Fact / Dr. Charlie Starr, The Lion’s Country
Biographical Information
Dr. Charlie W. Starr is an Associate Professor of English at Alderson Broaddus University in West Virginia. He teaches, writes and lectures on Classic and American literature, film, theology, and on the works of C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Dr. Starr is the world’s leading expert on the writing of C.S. Lewis and he is the author of many essays, articles, and books about Lewis including The Faun’s Bookshelf, Light, and the work which we’ll be talking about today, The Lion’s Country.
Biographical Information
Chit-Chat
- The Aurora Gambit: A Tale of Solomon Star by Dr. Charlie W. Starr
- Dymer by C.S. Lewis
- Movie about The Screwtape Letters
Toast
- Matt was drinking Spindrift
- Dr. Starr was drinking southern sweet tea
Discussion
01. “Encountering Lewis”
Q. How did you first encounter Lewis?
–
02. “Till We Have Faces and The Great Divorce”
Q. Do you hang out with Andrew and talk about Till We Have Faces?
It is not merely logos (something said) but poiema (something made)
C.S. Lewis, Experiment in Criticism (Chapter 8)
03. “Background of the Book”
Q. What was the motivation behind writing this book?
Ransom had been perceiving that the triple distinction of truth from myth and of both from fact was purely terrestrial–was part and parcel of that unhappy division between soul and body which resulted from the Fall
C.S. Lewis, Perelandra (Chapter 11)
04. “Tripartite Epistemology”
Q. How was Lewis’ theory of knowledge made up of three elements?
–
05. “The meaning of Reality, Truth, and Myth”
Q. Can you please define “Reality”, “Truth” and “Myth”?
“…to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 5)
“If that were true, and known to be true, how could anyone travel hopefully? There would be nothing to hope for.”
“But you must feel yourself that there is something stifling about the idea of finality? Stagnation, my dear boy, what is more soul-destroying than stagnation?”
“You think that, because hitherto you have experienced truth only with the abstract intellect. I will bring you where you can taste it like honey and be embraced by it as by a bridegroom. Your thirst shall be quenched.”
Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
John 18:38
I ended my first book with the words no answer. I know now, Lord, why you utter no
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Book II, Chapter 4)
answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away
By itself, the abstraction “impassible” can get us nowhere.
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm (Letter #10)
You cannot study pleasure in the moment of the nuptial embrace, nor repentance while repenting, nor analyze the nature of humor while roaring with laughter.
C.S. Lewis, Myth Became Fact
06. “Out of the Silent Planet”
Q. How can we apply the concepts in your book to this Season’s book, Out of the Silent Planet?
For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition. It is, I confess, undeniable that such a view indirectly implies a kind of truth or rightness in the imagination itself
Bluspels and Flalanspheres: A Semantic Nightmare
07. “Life application”
Q. How do we apply the lessons of your book in our lives?
You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday’s paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked”.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #12)
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments…”
John 14:15
He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.
1 John 4:8
08. “Listener question: CSL’s metaphysics”
Q. Listener Question: You do a good job throughout the book avoiding overly technical language (I’m not sure you use the term ‘metaphysics’ once!) which is useful for the lay reader and overall lover of Lewis. Inspired by Lewis’ practice of simplifying for the sake of understanding, how would you describe the importance of Lewis’ metaphysical views to those who would never pick up a book, struggle reading or have never read Lewis?
The Christian says, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 10)
“White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else
C.S. Lewis, Is Theology Poetry?
