In "very many ways" ... I would say in almost every way. (even more so than when it was written). Wilson is correct to say that the book seems "prophetic" , although I know that Lewis would reject the title of Prophet , but I think Lewis was an amazingly perceptive man.
@@CapraCorn2006 “Have you ever noticed,” said Dimble, “that the universe, and every little bit of the universe, is always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point?”His wife waited as those wait who know by long experience the mental processes of the person who is talking to them.“I mean this,” said Dimble in answer to the question she had not asked. “If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family - anything you like - at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder." I'm bringing politics into this (Sorry) Culturally, Politically seeing less & less room for live and let live...lose today, there another battle tomorrow. The tribes are sorting themselves out. The Tribes are not Left/Right, Rich/Poor/Republican/Democrat, Minority/Majority, Religious/Non-Religous. Not sure how to describe Our Side from Their Side, but of this I am sure there is an US & THEM. I am fairly sure who is an US and who is a THEM. The way I have been looking at politics/culture may not be valid anymore, or are becoming Less Valid. One mans thoughts, freely give and worth ALMOST that much. BTW PRAY Really Really Hard For America. Because the next couple of weeks/months will be...interesting...and not in a good way. Could very well be we are at a point Prof. Dimble is talking about.
@@stevenwiederholt7000 As an amillennial, post-trib believer this all makes perfect sense. Things become more polarised. The "world" becomes more hostile to Christianity but God also blesses and grows His church seeing His Kingdom growing. We need to remember that the war is already won, Jesus is the victor, but I think we should expect more and more hostility to the Christian faith. It will sort out real and nominal believers as it becomes less comfortable to follow the Master. But our enemies are not those with differing ideologies but the Devil and his cohorts.
@@RichardBragg Occasionally I stumble across a genuine thought. Don't worry, I won't let it go to my head. :-) As for End Times. My answer (now) generally is Or Not. Reason being, When Jesus came the 1st time the Old Testament laid out in some detail how The Messiah was going to come Who he was, What he was going to do. All the Scholars Knew how it was going to play out...and they were Wrong. I have a sneaking suspicion we're looking at something similar. (But As Always I...Could...Be...Wrong)
I actually enjoyed the slow parts describing the incentives leading people down the garden path. The pursuit of the inner circle and how that allowed Mark to justify worse and worse actions to himself. The political positioning for influence in pursuit of some future good which will never come. I remember the old professor who stood up to speak out against the sale of the college's wood and how Feverstone cut him short and insulted the quiet old reactionary. Mark later calculates that it would be beneficial for him to raise his slight disapproval of this treatment as it may earn him respect by showing Feverstone that he is his own man. Feverstone then privately explains that by cutting the old reactionary short, he was actually being kind. It allowed the old man to feel he was fighting against something even though his efforts were futile (this seems to describe conservative politics). The old man would also be glad to know that he had been proven right about the schemes and degeneracy of the younger generation about which he was warning and speaking out against for decades. This made me feel a little sick because so much of the complaining I see from right-wingers and conservatives seems to take this form: fighting but not seriously enough to actually stop your opponents and then a form of relief when you were shown to be right - although the wider society still considers you insane! It should be scant consolation to have been proven right in your dire predictions. Another problem is that the predictions are pretty much inevitably incorrect in that the way things progress will be slightly different and those implementing them will laugh at how foolish the predictions of doom were. By this I mean that the downfall takes a slightly different form and it's not catastrophic in the same way it was predicted to be. It seems you need to make dire predictions in order to motivate yourself and others to action. An example, dire predictions about mass immigration and voting patterns. I see people saying Republicans, Conservatives or right-wingers will never win again, but that's not what will happen. If immigration does lead to shifting the country "left", then the parties of the right will simply shift left with this. Then in 15 years a "Conservative" will win a huge electoral victory and those who predicted doom will be laughed at even though they were just proven correct. Because even though a Republican may have just won a massive victory, it would be a Republican that a right-winger of a generation earlier would have called a socialist or immoral. Apologies for bringing this down to politics, but the college and the N.I.C.E are full of this horrible political manoeuvring.
If it is any consolation for you, the left believe exactly the same thing, that they fight for their beliefs but not seriously enough to stop their opponents and then, where their opponents’ (conservatives) agenda does in fact make things worse, they take a perverse pleasure in saying “well I told you so”, even though society is now objectively worse, and even though people don’t listen to them any more than before they were proven right, despite having been proven right. (The increasing frequency of mass shootings as an America-only phenomenon is a good example.) Or, to use a British example, when Thatcher was elected the Labor Party thought for sure they would never win another election ever again, and so were laughed off and ignored when Blair became PM. But Blair had moved his party so rightward that a Labor man of the 1970s or earlier *would not have recognized him as one of them*, so in a larger view the prediction of doom was right but no one noticed or cared. So both sides do this, and both sides cannot be right. This opens the possibility that both are wrong, which is a relief.
Thanks, Pastor Doug, for your historical and Biblical insight into C.S. Lewis's three sci-fi novels, that are relatively unknown three-quarters of a century after he published them. I agree that "That Hideous Strength" has much to say about our current time, some of a prophetical nature, that our society needs to heed...
I wonder what Lewis would have said about the 2700 evangelical scholars who said trust the science, wear a mask and take the vaccine (Biologos letter).
It's the Cosmic Trilogy. Three of the most compelling novels ever. If you know a child who needs to read more, read them the first chapter of Out of the Silent Planet, then refuse to tell them what happens next.
Yes this is a prophetic book! The mixture of technology with the spiritual just like the tower of Babel. The government wanting to take control in the name of science and because "they know better". I've read 20 X and will read at least 20 times more but will now look at the additional papers/books for deeper understanding.
Yes, and the scene in which all the members of the n.i.c.e. are having a banquet and Merlin confuses their speech was also reminiscent of the Tower of Babel.
Thanks for a very interesting talk. I enjoyed the first two books in the series but struggled with 'That Hideous Strength' as it is quite different from the other two, but pastor Doug has given me some good insights into it.
Regarding the final point about Mark becoming the next Pendragon, it’s ironic that he would be finally included in an inner circle when he finally accepts that he doesn’t deserve it!
I understand some of the themes in this book, and I'm glad to have heard this lecture to put many other things in perspective that I did not otherwise catch. That said, it was extremely boring compared to the first two books. The first was great, and the second, Perelandra, which i finished last week before reading this one, was amazing at every level. I was absolutely enchanted by the planet, moved by the themes, intrigued by the conversations, and I could feel everything Ransom felt. The inadequacy, the primordial rage, the longing for what could have been if we had only rejected the serpent in our own world. We never know our own father or mother, please take me as your child! I found everything in this just so compelling. And then there's this book. It is my opinion that the themes in this book could have been compressed into much smaller sections. I tried reading and rereading other parts and I still missed many of the things this lecture covered. Largely due to my disinterest in expecting a similar enchanting tale and a follow up to the great dance that Tor mentioned, among many of the other mysteries God revealed to the Adam and Eve figures of Venus. I'd argue that this book served as more of a thought experiment of Christian themes than the first or second by a large degree. I'm also looking at this from a more sci fi lens. This was technically sci fi, but in terms of pacing and plot, That Hideous Strength was a static departure from the other two books of the series.
One of the best books I ever read. If yoh like it, get the books from Charles Williams too. War in heaven. Many dimensions. All Hallows Eve. Stunning and prophetic. And God reigns, so Jesus is glorified.
Although you state that LORD OF THE RINGS’ Faramir is the only one unaffected by the Ring, note that Tom Bombadil is DEFINITELY unaffected by it. He doesn’t want to take it, and it doesn’t even turn him invisible.
These three novels are better than the entire catalog of Pureflix. Why are they not films, is there not a Christian billionaire willing to bankroll the Trilogy or @ least a Kickstarter.
I see what you mean... If I could have any book turned into a movie, it's That Hideous Strength. If well done... it would probably be one of my favorite movies ever.
Yeah, and you really wouldn't have to change very much. I think it might work well as an animation. The floating islands on Perelandra would be difficult, but a talented animator could probably pull it off.
For much of Perelandra (Voyage To Venus), Ransom and the Green Woman are in the nude. This is important theologically so putting some clothes on the woman especially would strike a false note... but how do you do a Christian movie with two of the three protagonists nude most of the time? Out Of The Silent Planet might be very cinematic, though...
It is sad when someone I thought was so in-tuned with global craziness appears to miss how easy it would have been for CS Lewis to predict the future like he did. Lewis lived in the waters of Malthusianism (eugenics), Fabianism (slow march social control), secret societies, Tavistock (social engineering), to name a few. HG Wells negatively reviewed this book, and of course Lewis would have read Brave New World by Huxley. Watch Jay Dyer's review of the Space Trilogy. Don't get me wrong, Doug Wilson is a great, which is why I would have expected him to get this.
No, they did not think merlin would be on their side. I think lewis choked at the crucial moment here. when ransom met merlin the air was so thick you would have had a hard time cutting it with a knife partially because merlin massacering them was not off the cards and Merlin's magic remains a point of contention for the remainder of his story there.
Any conspiracy against God’s people is destined to fail, no matter how intelligent are those who want to exercise dominium over the innocent , each one of us have to choose on what side he is, Jesus said that it’s the meek who shall inherit the earth, therefore it’s better to give up the desire of exercise dominion on others to obtain our goals
@45 We need to get over our childlike restrictions. God was the darkest magician of all! And let us remember his son, Jesus: he pulled innumerable fish from a basket. But yeah, don't dabble in the mysterious. Just read about it. But let's be grown up and look beyond the problem of good and evil.
If you're looking at what C.S. Lewis is really promoting, he's saying to be the monkey! Don't be so heavenly-minded that you're no earthly good. For the heavenly-minded lose their earthly bearings. There's a very real chance of losing one's sanity by detaching from your earthly presence.
@argenti vulpes Given Warrie was an alcoholic you may be on to something. :-) Actually if you read Surprised By Joy, that's what pretty much happened. When they started their trip to the zoo he didn't believe Jesus was God, when they got there He Did. To the best of my (limited) knowledge Lewis never explained exactly what happened.
