Saturday, January 24, 2015

the universalism of Christianity


The only two systems in which the mysteries and the philosophies come together are Hinduism and [Chris]tianity: there you get both Metaphysics and Cult (continuous with the primeval cults).  That is why my first step was to be sure that one or the other of these had the answer.  For the reality can't be one that appeals either only to savages or only to high brows.  Real things are like that (e.g. matter is the first more obvious thing you meet -- milk, chocolates, apples, and also the object of quantum physics).  . . .  But the weakness of Hinduism is that it doesn't really join the two strands.  Unredeemably savage religion goes on in the village: the Hermit philosophises in the forest: and neither really interferes with the other.  It is only [Chris]tianity wh[ich] compels a high brow like me to partake in a ritual blood feast, and also compels a central African convert to attempt an enlightened universal code of ethics.
 - C.S. Lewis 

Thursday, January 1, 2015

and more divine humility


The same divine humility which decreed that God should become a baby at a peasant-woman’s breast, and later an arrested field-preacher in the hands of the Roman police, decreed also that He should be preached in a vulgar, prosaic and unliterary language. If you can stomach the one, you can stomach the other. The Incarnation is in that sense an irreverent doctrine: Christianity, in that sense, an incurably irreverent religion. When we expect that it should have come before the World in all the beauty that we now feel in the Authorised Version we are as wide of the mark as the Jews were in expecting that the Messiah would come as a great earthly King. The real sanctity, the real beauty and sublimity of the New Testament (as of Christ’s life) are of a different sort: miles deeper or further in.
  - C. S. Lewis