Mere Lewis, Vol. 126
Arthur V. Chadwick (chadwicka@swac.edu)
Sat, 19 Aug 1995 20:59:44 -0700>I found this report from Prof. J. M. Reynolds, of Biola University
>(CA), from a July conference of national evangelical
>academics interesting, especially for its juxtaposition of CSL with his
>one-time encounter w/B Graham and his interview with DECISION magazine.
>The "Philip Johnson" referred to in the report is the author of DARWIN ON
>TRIAL, and is a leading critic of naturalism.
>
>I pass it along for comment and interaction. I am still digesting it myself.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Bruce Edwards
>
>Attachment
>
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>| Dr. Bruce L. Edwards edwards@bgnet.bgsu.edu |
>| Professor of English fax: 419-372-0333 |
>| Bowling Green State University office: 419-372-6864 |
>| Bowling Green, OH 43403 WWW Site: www.bgsu.edu/~edwards/home.html |
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>Billy Graham and C.S. Lewis Talked:
>Is there hope for another Meeting?
>
>
>(These are my reflections from the C.LM. Conference in July of
>this year. These thoughts are mine alone and do not
>necessarily reflect the opinions of Phillip Johnson, C.L.M., or
>C.C.C.--John Mark Reynolds)
>
>It will be a comfort to me all my life to know that the
>scientist and the materialist have not the last word: that
>Darwin and Spencer undermining ancestral beliefs stand
>themselves on a foundation of sand; of gigantic assumptions
>and irreconcilable contradictions an inch below the surface.
>
>C.S. Lewis to his father on the fourteenth of August 1925.
>
>
>. . . The real function of religious faith is practical. We
>should try to discern God's hand in nature, so far as our
>constitution permits for the sake of attaining a happy life ,
>I.e. To make us what we ought to be, to lead to the salvation of
>our souls, not as a mere gratification of speculative curiosity.
>We study natural science as an aid to this, because we cannot
>discern God s way of dealing with His creatures except by
>loving and minute study of the whole system of nature. But the
>ultimate end of this study of natural science, too, is not the
>mere gratification of curiosity, but growth in grace.
>
>A.E. Taylor in his Commentary on Plato's Timaeus, 1928.
>
>The very rocks do cry out to those who have found God through
>the higher medium of His Book. It is because of this
>incontestable fact that science is the handmaid of Scripture.
>The two must ever be in perfect harmony, where science is
>correct and truly scientific and not purely theoretical. So
>evident was this in the thinking of the eminent Sajous, that
>this great man of science cried out in delighted interest,
>Science is doing even more for religious thought today; it is
>acting as a beacon for the great pathway to God, which is the
>Bible.
>
>Harry Rimmer in his Harmony of Science and Scripture, 1936.
>
>Critics of Darwinism multiplied in the twenties and thirties.
>Indeed, it must have seemed at a certain point that they would
>sweep all before them. At the time, C.S. Lewis was an Oxford
>student and agnostic. His letters take for granted the death of
>scientific naturalism in the smart set within the academic
>elite. A.E. Taylor was one of the world s leading Plato scholars
>in an endowed chair at the University of Edinburgh. Harry
>Rimmer, a minister and back yard scientist, spoke for many in
>the traditional religious community who were concerned about
>the theological claims implicit within modern science. Henry
>Morris calls him undoubtedly the most influential of the
>fundamentalist creationists before the Darwin Centennial.
>His books sold thousands of copies around the world.
>
>By the year of the Darwinian centennial, all of that had
>changed. Lewis, now a Christian, called himself an academic
>dinosaur. His Christian writings, even with his careful
>refusal to assault Darwinism openly, had cost him an endowed
>chair at Oxford. He would be dead in four years and no one of
>like stature would replace him. A.E. Taylor was dead. His
>seminal work on Plato was criticized for its Christian bias and
>used only as a foil for more modern ideas. Harry Rimmer and
>the fundamentalists of the United States had been
>marginalized. Their main-street evangelical children were
>hurrying to make their peace with Darwin, if not with Herbert
>Spencer. Wheaton College had given Rimmer an honorary
>doctorate before his death in 1952. Forty years later, it is
>doubtful that someone with Rimmer's views could even be
>invited to speak there.
>
>Wheaton College is a good gauge for measuring the changes in
>the conservative Christian world. The most famous alumnus of
>the college is Billy Graham. A huge shrine and study center
>have been erected on campus with his name attached to it. The
>irony here is great. The early Graham, with his association
>with the arch-fundamentalist William B. Riley, would not be
>welcome on the contemporary Wheaton campus. He has become
>an icon and a good tool for getting older alumni to continue
>giving to a school. In practice his actual ministry is almost
>forgotten except for the later world statesman period. Some
>current faculty members seem less than enthusiastic about the
>presence of the Billy Graham Center on the Wheaton campus.
>
>Wheaton is also well known in Christian circles for being the
>home of the Wade Collection, which includes many of the
>personal papers of C.S. Lewis. Wheaton thus has the
>distinction of being the home to the papers of the most famous
>Christian intellectual of the century and its most famous
>evangelist. Most people are not aware the connection goes
>even further, though not by much. In a little known interview
>with the Billy Graham Association in 1963, just before his
>death, C.S. Lewis says of Graham, I had the pleasure of
>meeting Billy Graham once. We had dinner together during his
>visit to Cambridge University in 1955, while he was
>conducting a mission to students. I thought he was a very
>modest and a very sensible man, and I liked him very much
>indeed.
>
>Here is a moment of great promise in Church history. A
>Christian Cambridge don meets with a man who would have a
>world wide megaphone. What came of it? Almost nothing. . .
>Graham may have talked with Lewis, but Lewis' approach had
>little impact on Graham's message. The rest of the interview
>is revealing. The reporter from Graham s Decision magazine
>keeps trying to get Lewis to talk about a born again moment.
>He even presses Lewis on his own conversion story, looking for
>a sinner's prayer somewhere in Surprised By Joy. Lewis
>does not give the reporter what he wants to hear. Both men
>spend most of the interview talking past each other. For
>example, Graham's man is concerned about the smut in modern
>literature, Lewis with the spiritual collapse that was behind
>it. Decision wanted a smart person to say that books with
>naughty parts were not great literature. Lewis would then
>become a chip in the cultural argument of the day on the side
>of the prudes. Lewis saw the problem in a totally different
>light. He was concerned about the state of an academy that
>could produce rubbish, not so much with the pathetic results.
>
>Billy Graham and C.S. Lewis could have lunch at Cambridge in
>1955, but they could not really unite their efforts. Their
>worlds were too far apart. The combined assault on
>naturalism that could have been never came. Billy Graham
>never changed his basic message, and eventually dropped any
>pretense at an intellectual challenge to the academy.
>
>What went wrong? Why did the early anti-Darwinists fail?
>Phillip Johnson made this clear to the members of the
>Christian Leadership Ministries at their meetings this July. He
>based his lectures on his latest book, Reason in the Balance.
>C.L.M. met on the campus of the University of Colorado.
>
>Christian Leadership Ministries is composed of a staff of
>campus evangelists with faculty affiliates at mostly secular
>universities. C.L.M. is a part of Bill Bright s Campus Crusade
>for Christ. It has an evangelical and conservative flavor.
>There were also sessions critical of multi-culturalism and
>gay-rights political initiatives. If many evangelicals have
>made their peace with modernity, these are the remnants that
>have been more faithful to their spiritual roots. In short, this
>was the home field for any Christian critical of Darwinism and
>the secular university of the late twentieth century.
>
>These folk are intense about their faith. There is no fading,
>too polite, Christian accomodationism here. To attend a
>general session with three thousand Campus Crusade workers
>is to stare into a bright flame. To come to it the first time is
>to be like a man coming out of a dark cave only to be dazzled by
>the brightness of the light. It was a new world, difficult to
>understand at first. Repentance from sin and a heart turned
>toward total commitment were the hallmarks of the main
>meetings. Revival burst out in these meetings. Crusade
>workers said some sessions were without parallel in past
>meetings. Spurred by a riveting sermon on the Prodigal Son
>and the Elder Brother, Crusade staffers wept and turned
>toward the Cross. The connection between these meetings and
>what happened at the college leadership meetings became
>clear later.
>
>Johnson spoke mainly to the CLM staffers and faculty
>affiliates. A planned session for the rest of the Campus
>Crusade staffers did not occur as scheduled due to the fervor
>of the revival that was sweeping through the assembly. Some
>sessions in the huge auditorium, a converted basketball arena,
>lasted hours past their scheduled time. In the heat of the
>summer, barely mitigated by large blowers, one was reminded
>of the tent revivals in the South at the turn of the century.
>The Holy Spirit was there in an old-fashioned way, dealing
>with modern problems. At the same time, Campus Crusade was
>doing some hard thinking about the means and methods of
>relating to the secular college campus in the twenty-first
>century. It was in this context that Johnson gave his main
>talks to the professors of the Christian Leadership Ministries
>Monday, July 24. He also gave a successful presentation to a
>group of seminarians that I was unable to attend.
>
>Johnson spoke with unusual intensity to the gathered faculty
>and staff. This was a friendly crowd, but not a passive one.
>Faculty members felt free to interrupt, and did so frequently.
>Most of all, one could feel the defensive posture that many had
>been forced to adopt in their questioning. These were folk who
>wanted to make a difference, had been on the front lines of the
>battle, but were somewhat dispirited about their chances. The
>presentation, and the meetings themselves, provided the first
>hope for eventual victory.
>
>The first presentation laid out the issues. Johnson described
>the grand metaphysical story of science, the story of how
>unintelligent matter formed itself into life and mind. This
>myth is the modern explanation for reality. Science explains
>everything and leaves nothing to philosophy or theology. It
>gains credibility by pointing to the technical achievements of
>modern civilization. Given such stunning success, small
>amounts of supporting evidence like that found in the finch
>beak experiments, are all that is need to sell the creation
>portions of the myth to society.
>
>Johnson used Hawking as the best example of this new myth
>maker. Johnson linked Hawking's attempt to get rid of an
>ultimate beginning, leaving the Creator nothing to do, to the
>destruction of meaningful theism. The cardinals of the modern
>scientific establishment believe that they have already buried
>any role for God in the cosmos. Hawking himself admits that
>his analysis is not so much a scientific program as a
>metaphysical project. He wishes to know the mind of God,
>which means in effect to take on God's omniscience, to know
>
Art
WWW: http//chadwicka.swac.edu/chadwick.html