Why Host a Conference on C. S. Lewis?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | This fall Desiring God will be hosting a national conference titled, "The Romantic
00:00:09.080 | Rationalist, God, Life, and Imagination in the Work of C.S. Lewis." The conference
00:00:14.320 | will be held in Minneapolis on September 27, 28, and 29, and speakers will include
00:00:18.680 | you of course, Pastor John, along with Phil Reichen, Randy Alcorn, Doug Wilson,
00:00:23.360 | Kevin Van Hooser, and others. So Pastor John, why a national conference this year
00:00:29.240 | in honor of C.S. Lewis's legacy?
00:00:32.000 | November 22, 2013 marks 50 years since C.S. Lewis died in 1963, same day that John Kennedy
00:00:43.480 | died, same day that Aldous Huxley died, and that is the reason for this particular year.
00:00:53.200 | But behind the occasion is the man and his extraordinary influence in so many different
00:01:02.640 | ways. This fall, in November, on the 22nd, he will be honored by having a memorial put
00:01:10.560 | in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, along with the likes of Geoffrey Chaucer,
00:01:17.280 | Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, William Shakespeare, Herbert Spencer—an extraordinary
00:01:22.760 | thing for a 20th century Christian apologist, writer of fiction, scholar of medieval literature
00:01:30.760 | to receive. J.K. Rowling, who of course wrote the Harry Potter series, if you go to her
00:01:37.080 | Wikipedia website, she talks about the influence of Lewis on her as a child, and then on her
00:01:43.440 | writing of those phenomenally popular works. And everybody today now, amazingly, because
00:01:49.680 | of the movies, has heard of J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and Tolkien
00:01:56.400 | was an inveterate perfectionist who never could get anything published, and Lewis recognized
00:02:04.160 | the skills, the power of his storytelling ability. He recommended him for a Nobel Prize
00:02:11.040 | and he encouraged him along, and so in a sense you could say that Lewis is kind of the grandfather
00:02:17.920 | of the Tolkien Lord of the Rings series that everybody loves these days. He was a writer
00:02:25.720 | of fiction in his own right because of the Chronicles of Narnia, 100 million copies sold
00:02:33.600 | in 47 languages, three successful movies, not as successful as The Lord of the Rings,
00:02:39.160 | but still remarkable influence in the 21st century of a man who considered that his work,
00:02:45.640 | he thought his works would be forgotten within five years. So not only was he a writer of
00:02:51.920 | fiction and has an ongoing legacy that way, but he was probably most known for the past
00:02:59.040 | 60, 70 years as a Christian defender of the faith, an apologist for ordinary folks. His
00:03:06.920 | book Mere Christianity has sold in the millions. CT, Christianity Today, ranked it third among
00:03:14.080 | the most influential Christian books since 1945, I think. He made famous that liar, lunatic
00:03:21.800 | Lord trilemma, it's called, where Jesus Christ cannot be viewed as merely the ordinary, upright,
00:03:30.360 | moral teacher minus divinity because he said so many crazy things so that he was either
00:03:37.640 | a liar when he said before Abraham was I am, or he was a lunatic, Lewis said, on the level
00:03:44.120 | of a man who thought he was a poached egg. And so let's have none of this nonsense about
00:03:48.320 | how we love the moral teachings of this wonderful man when he in fact should be in a sane asylum
00:03:53.800 | or in prison because of his lying immorality or his lunacy if you don't think he's Lord.
00:04:01.680 | That was the amazing impact that he had in Christian apologetics. And it was an enormous
00:04:07.760 | influence on Christians, people like me. I mean, I would put Lewis in the top five people
00:04:17.200 | on the planet who have influenced me. And the folks that are coming to this conference,
00:04:22.240 | I don't know if they talk like that. I think Doug Wilson talks even more lavishly. He said,
00:04:26.760 | I heard him say that C.S. Lewis has had a greater impact on him than the sum of all
00:04:34.600 | the other writers he has ever read. I mean, that's just stunning when you think what Wilson
00:04:40.200 | has read. And then I know Randy Alcorn in his fiction is profoundly influenced, and
00:04:47.040 | Kevin Van Hooser, we're going to hear some surprising things from him, I think, with
00:04:50.560 | regard to the theological way that imagination works that come over from Lewis, and Phil
00:04:55.480 | Ryken as a president of an institution loves C.S. Lewis. So we're doing this conference,
00:05:03.720 | Tony, because we have a love affair with this man, and we have a debt to pay.
00:05:09.240 | Thank you, Pastor John. The date, again, for the conference is September 27, 28, and 29
00:05:14.680 | here in Minneapolis, so save those dates. The conference is titled "The Romantic Rationalist,
00:05:19.800 | and Life and Imagination in the Work of C.S. Lewis." More details and registration information
00:05:25.560 | will be available soon at DesiringGod.org on the blog and under the events tab. I'm
00:05:30.720 | your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.
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