I.
Paulette Sauders: “Through the Lens of The Four Loves:
The Idea of Love in Till We Have Faces”
Redival:
eros, lust, sexuality without love. No room for affection. No room
for the gods.
Orual:
perverted affection, need-love.
Psyche:
sacrifice and gift-love.
{ This
wasn't a paper: it was just a useless plot summary of Till
We Have Faces. Basically this
person just stood up and retold the entire book for 20 minutes. Sigh.
}
II.
Michael Muth: “A Wild Hope: Resurrection
Bodies, Creaturely Integrity, and Lewis' Platonism.”
Goldthwaite's
and Pullman's accusations against The Last Battle.
Saying that Lewis hates women, prefers death to life, and condemns
the life of the body. Philip Pullman is a third-rate Nietzsche
ventriloquist; or maybe he's the dummy. References Michael
Ward's response.
Lewis
does not hate the body. The whole of us, soul and body, will be
saved. The bodyliness or corporeality of the resurrected person is
taught in Scripture. Continuity: My resurrected body comes from the
present one—and change: It will be somehow different. We are
raised; not something else in our place. Spiritual body? Isn't that
an oxymoron?
Lewis
reflects the continuity of the resurrected bodies (and landscapes) in
The Last Battle.
Christian
thinkers have long been obsessed with having all the matter that
composed the body to be brought back together in the resurrected
body. Related to the healing power of relics. Images of reassembling
the body. Augustine et al
wanted to preserve the matter to preserve the wholeness of the
person. If a lion eats a person's arm, then a person eats the lion,
who gets the arm at the resurrection?
Hugh St.
Victor: The harmony between flesh and spirit will be so restored that
the body can be called “spiritual.” We will not be our own
enemies within. The estrangement of soul and body will be healed.
Perfect spiritual state. Will be suited for the translunar realm,
above and outside the realm of the Four Elements. Soul having perfect
mastery of the body; body responding perfectly to the soul.
Thus,
bodies are strange in The Last Battle.
Metonym: Puzzle's simulacrum/parody of transformation into a lion.
Later: bodies that are youthfully whole, can see distances, run as
fast as a unicorn, swim up waterfalls. Even the topography is
resurrected: like, yet not like.
The body
of Christ, resurrected, is the only example we are given. Moves
through walls. Disappears. Is hard to recognize. Yet is very
physical. Can be touched. Has flesh and bones. Eats fish. His body
was strange even before the resurrection: looked backwards to the
Adamic corporeality and forward to the resurrection. Can walk on
water, heal, transform water to wine, etc. His body disturbs our
metaphysical assumptions about bodies. Jesus' body insists upon
extending beyond its skin: the Last Supper. Just symbolic? Or a real
extension? A metaphysical absurdity. It inCORPorates other bodies
into itself. It violates our expectations of bodies.
The end
of The Last Battle
embodies our wild hope as believers.
Pullman's
reality is only natural. He cannot recognize these desires. The best
he can imagine is two teenagers having sex in a garden. A parody of
Eden. Almost a parody of the body of Christ. Lewis has a much better
imagination: by being incorporated into the larger body of Christ.
III.
Jim Stockton, “Chaplain Stella Aldwinkle: A Biographical Sketch of
the Spiritual Foundation of the Oxford University Socratic Club.”
Aldwinkle
founded the club as the philosophical side of religion. (also girls
could bring their boyfriends to this chaperoned event, so that was a
plus!) First meeting standing room only. After the second meeting,
she wrote CSL to ask him to be president.
413
meetings
603
scholars spoke
legendary
debates
Two
sources:
set of
papers at the Wade; Dorsett's 1985 audio interview with Aldwinkle.
Stella
Aldwinkle's life:
1907 b.
Johannesburg
raised
in a conventional Anglican middle-class family
adventurous
youth
school
in England
back to
South Africa
began a
tobacco farm on the edge of the wilderness on the Crocodile River
25th
birthday: use life to help people find God
St.
Anne's college, Oxford; read theology
tutored
by Austin Farrer
understood
difference between philosophical and theological approaches to
religion
taught
theology at various schools
1941,
became a chaplain with Oxford Pastors
1941-66
chaplain for women students
1942
founded the Socratic Club
asked
Eliot and Sayers to help start a London branch of the Club (they
couldn't)
members:
Jean Iris Murdock, Margaret Anscombe
1966
retired
1969
last lecture to the club
1989 d.
Summary
of the Lewis-Anscombe debate
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