C'S' Lewiss Argument

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C.S. Lewiss Argument from Desire
Stuart McAllister Vice President, Training
Special Projects Ravi Zacharias International
Ministries
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Ecclesiastes 311
He has made everything appropriate in its time He
has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that
man will not find out the work which God has done
from the beginning even to the end.
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Romans 118-20
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of
men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
because that which is known about God is evident
within them for God made it evident to them.
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Romans 118-20
For since the creation of the world His invisible
attributes, His eternal power and divine nature,
have been clearly seen, being understood through
what has been made, so that they are without
excuse.
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There is a desire within each of us, in the deep
center of ourselves that we call our heart. We
were born with it, it is never completely
satisfied, and it never dies. We are often
unaware of it, but it is always awakeOur true
identity, our reason for being, is to be found
in this desire. Gerald May
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In every person there is a passionate, driving
desire for moreThe dilemma is that our longings
for material joy are almost always partially
blocked our desires for better health and deeper
relationships are never entirely possible and
the illusion of world peace seems no more
attainable than the gold at
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the end of the rainbow. Our passion is more
than usually stymied. The world simply does not
bend to the desires that roar or whimper inside
us. Our desires from picking the quickest line
at the bank to the overwhelming hope that our
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children will walk righteously with the Lord
are rarely satisfied in a way that relieves the
ache of incompletenessOur heart seems to rage
against the ache. Our typical response to the
heartbreak and sorrow of disappointment is
murderous rageWe want someone to pay. Dan
Allender
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• What is this thing we call desire?
• In Buddhism it is considered to be the central
  problem. Desire drives us to attachment and
  keeps us bound to sorrow. Since desire itself
  is the problem, the solution is to extinguish it
  or to overcome it and attain Nirvana, or
  tranquility.

Editors Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root, The
Quotable Lewis (Wheaton, Illinois Tyndale House
Publishers, Inc. 1989), p. 357
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• In Naturalism (in its various shades and
  forms) desire is viewed as an aspect of our
  chemical, biological and social conditioning.
  It contributes to our survival and extension,
  nothing more.

Editors Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root, The
Quotable Lewis (Wheaton, Illinois Tyndale House
Publishers, Inc. 1989), p. 357
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• For Lewis (and others) it is a signpost of
  something else, a pointer to something
  greater. Lewis wrote, All joy reminds. It is
  never a possession, always a desire for
  something longer ago and further away or still
  about to be.

Editors Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root, The
Quotable Lewis (Wheaton, Illinois Tyndale House
Publishers, Inc. 1989), p. 357
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• Experience in Search of
• an Explanation

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The true nature of the experience was upward
and outward, away from the physical object that
inspired it and the internal feelings associated
with it. The experience of joy was not
Louis Markos, Lewis Agonistes How C.S. Lewis Can
Train Us To Wrestle With The Modern And
Postmodern World (Nashville, Tennessee Broadman
and Holman Publishers, 2003), p. 5
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an end in itself, but a beacon or a signpost
that pointed beyond itself to a richer,
fuller more intense world that was both
supernatural and super-sensible.
Louis Markos, Lewis Agonistes How C.S. Lewis Can
Train Us To Wrestle With The Modern And
Postmodern World (Nashville, Tennessee Broadman
and Holman Publishers, 2003), p. 5
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• Experience in Search of
• an Explanation

• Lewis reflects on his life

It opened up the shocking possibility that his
experiences of joy had a real origin and promised
a real destination.
Louis Markos, p.12
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What is universal is not the particular
picture, but the arrival of some message, not
perfectly intelligible, which wakes this desire
and sets men longing for something East or West
of the world
Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root, The Quotable
Lewis, pp. 351-352
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something possessed, if at all, only in the
act of desiring it, and lost so quickly that
the craving itself becomes craved something
that tends inevitably to be confused or even with
vile
Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root, The Quotable
Lewis, pp. 351-352
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satisfactions lying close to hand, yet which
is able, if any man faithfully live through
the dialectic of its successive births and
deaths, to lead him at last to where true joys
are to be found.
Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root, The Quotable
Lewis, pp. 351-352
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• Experience in Search of
• an Explanation

• Lewis reflects on his life

• A point of contact, the power of
• curiosity

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Just as the fact that we experience thirst
is proof that we are creatures for whom the
drinking of water is natural, so the fact that
we desire an object that our natural world cannot
supply suggests the existence of another,
supernatural
Louis Markos, p. 41
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one. The desire does not guarantee that we
will achieve that other world (if stranded in
the desert, we will die of thirst), but it does
suggest that we are creatures who are capable of
achieving it and who were in some sense made to
achieve it.
Louis Markos, p. 41
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• Experience in Search of
• an Explanation

• Lewis reflects on his life

• A point of contact, the power of
• curiosity

• The role of questions and the
• awakening of desire

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There are two basic ways of challenging
non- believers to embrace Christianity. One
way is to SCARE the hell out of them through
fire-and-brimstone sermons that point
Louis Markos, p. 67
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in lurid detail the punishment for sin and
heresy. The other is to COAX and DRAW them
in by introducing them to the glory of the
Father, the love of the Son, and the communion of
the Holy Spirit.
Louis Markos, p. 67
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The former succeeds by a process of a
division, by swiftly bringing down that
two-edged sword that cuts to the very bone.
The latter appeals to their most intimate
longings and
Louis Markos, p. 67
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yearnings, what Lewis calls the argument by
desire, and fashions a golden pathway
along which the would-be pilgrim can follow the
divine intimations to their proper goal in
Christ.
Louis Markos, p. 67
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• Evaluating the Options

• They will provide some kind of definition of
  reality, the essence of the world and
  existence.
• They will provide an explanation of origins,
  where we come from.

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• They will seek to diagnose what is wrong with
  us.
• They will provide some answer, some solution,
  some way, to resolve the issue (of what is wrong
  with us).

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• Evaluating the Options

• Desire is just a natural thing!

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Someone who wanted to object to this argument
might reply with the modern view that divine
dissatisfaction, a constant search for
something beyond what we have, is a
characteristic
Richard Purtill, C.S. Lewis Case For The
Christian Faith, (San Francisco, California,
Ignatius Press, 2004), p. 39
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valuable for survival. Thus its existence and
persistence can be explained on grounds of
evolution by natural selection. The price one
pays for taking this line is that it makes the
desires in question
Richard Purtill, C.S. Lewis Case For The
Christian Faith, (San Francisco, California,
Ignatius Press, 2004), p. 39
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unsatisfiable in principle. If our infinite
longings do not mean that an infinite object
exists to satisfy them, then they mean that we
shall never be satisfied.
Richard Purtill, C.S. Lewis Case For The
Christian Faith, (San Francisco, California,
Ignatius Press, 2004), p. 39
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They claim that all our highest desires,
whether they are ethical, religious, or
aesthetic, are the material products of a
lower-order desire (one that could have evolved)
that has been first repressed and then sublimated
in
Louis Markos, p. 58
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another form. Great art is, like our
daydreams, just another type of wish
fulfillment. What we call love is merely a
sublimated form of that instinctual lust which
lies buried deep in our unconscious. The lust is
Louis Markos, p. 58
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primary, originary, natural thing love is
but the artificial, socially acceptable
form that lust takes when it is filtered
through our elaborate system of psychological
defense mechanisms.
Louis Markos, p. 58
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Why, Lewis asks, must we say that love is a
sublimation of lust? Is it not equally
possible that lust is a falling away from
love? Why must love be considered a projection
from below, or evolution? May it not be rather an
Louis Markos, p. 58
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incarnation from above, a transposition from
a heavenly key into an earthly one? Is not
the universal human experience that of a search
for higher things that goes terribly astray?
Of a looking for love that goes awry and
devolves into lust?
Louis Markos, p. 58
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• Evaluating the Options

• Desire is just a natural thing!

• The adequacy issue

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Why should a man be scorned if when finding
himself in prison, he tries to get out and go
home? Or, if when he cannot do so, he thinks
and talks about other topics than jailers and
prison walls? The world outside
Art Lindsey, C.S. Lewiss Case For Christ
Insights from Reason, Imagination and Faith,
(Downers Grove, Illinois, InterVaristy Press,
2005), p. 97
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has not become less real because the prisoner
cannot see it. In using escape in this way the
critics have chosen the wrong word, and what is
more, they are confusingthe escape of the
prisoner with the flight of the deserter.
Art Lindsey, C.S. Lewiss Case For Christ
Insights from Reason, Imagination and Faith,
(Downers Grove, Illinois, InterVaristy Press,
2005), p. 97
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• Evaluating the Options

• Desire is just a natural thing!

• The adequacy issue

• Types of arguments

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(No Transcript)
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An approach to knowing that fits life and
experience

• We begin with clues. Intimations of
  something, data, experience that leads us to
  question its meaning.

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An approach to knowing that fits life and
experience

• We search for a pattern. Was this random,
  deliberate, accidental, recurring? Our
  conclusions
• influence decisions. The pattern has to
  integrate the clues and interpret them.

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An approach to knowing that fits life and
experience

• A focus. We find a focus, a solution, a
  possible answer that if right, confirms the
  pattern, supports the clues, and yields ongoing
  insight.

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• Seeking Real Connections

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As Lewis queried, Do fish complain of the sea
for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact
itself not strongly suggest that they had not
always been, or would
Terry Glaspey, The Spiritual Legacy of C.S. Lewis
(Nashville, Tennessee, Cumberland House, 1996),
p. 70
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not always be aquatic creatures? If you really
are the product of a materialistic universe, how
is it that you dont feel at home there. Or
as he suggest in Mere
Terry Glaspey, The Spiritual Legacy of C.S. Lewis
(Nashville, Tennessee, Cumberland House, 1996),
p. 70
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Christianity, If I find in myself a desire
which no experience in this world can satisfy,
the most probable explanation is that I was
made for another world.
Terry Glaspey, The Spiritual Legacy of C.S. Lewis
(Nashville, Tennessee, Cumberland House, 1996),
p. 70
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• Seeking Real Connections

• Making the appeal

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• History, nostalgia, the good old days, where
  life would be great if we could only recover
  innocence, nature, purity, etc. The echo
  pulls, but the direction finder often rests on
  the wrong thing.

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• Live for now. History is bunk the future is
  uncertain, all that matters is today, this
  moment, right now. However, even a little
  probing reveals the inadequacy of multiplied
• experiences to assuage whatever kind of
  hunger this really is!

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• Some day over the rainbow? The f future will
  yield technology, a system, or ways and means to
  set us free.
• The call of Heaven is displaced by Utopia
  (no place).

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• Seeking Real Connections

• Making the appeal

• The role of testimonies

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Here I am in the twilight years of my life,
still wondering what its all aboutI can
tell you this, fame and fortune is for the
birds.
Lee Iacocca
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Exile accepted as a destiny, in the way we
accept an incurable illness, should help us see
through our self-delusions.
Czeslaw Milosz
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The main thing that I sensed in my childhood
was this inescapable yearning that I could
never satisfy. Even now at times I experience
a terrible loneliness and isolationOh God, how I
Jessica Lange
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remember that feeling, though. Sitting on
the front steps on a summer night and hearing
a lawnmower in the distance and a screen door
slamming somewhere. It would actually make my
heart ACHE.
Jessica Lange
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• Seeking Real Connections

• Making the appeal

• The role of testimonies

• The gospel

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Romans 116-17
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the
power of God for salvation to everyone who
believes, to the Jew first and also to the
Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is
revealed from faith to faith as it is written,
"BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH."
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The books or the music in which we thought
the beauty was located will betray us if we
trust to them it was not IN them, it only came
THROUGH them, and what came through them was
Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root, pp. 353-354
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longing. These things the beauty, the
memory of our own past are good images of
what we really desire, but if they are mistaken
for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols,
breaking the hearts
Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root, pp. 353-354
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of their worshippers. For they are not the
thing itself they are only the scent of a
flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we
have not heard, news from a country we have never
yet visited.
Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root, pp. 353-354
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You made us yourself and our hearts are
restless, until they find their rest in Thee.
St. Augustine
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C.S. Lewiss Argument from Desire
Stuart McAllister Vice President, Training
Special Projects Ravi Zacharias International
Ministries