Will Vaus

At the very end of the last book C. S. Lewis wrote, during the last year of his life on earth, he said to his fictitious correspondent Malcolm: ". . . but don't run away with the idea that when I speak of the resurrection of the body I mean merely that the blessed dead will have excellent memories of their sensuous experience on earth. I mean it the other way round: that memory as we now know it is a dim foretaste, a mirage even, of a power which the soul, or rather Christ in the soul (He went to 'prepare a place' for us), will exercise hereafter. It need no longer be intermittent. Above all, it need no longer be private to the soul in which it occurs. I can now communicate to you the fields of my boyhood--they are building-estates to-day--only imperfectly, by words. Perhaps the day is coming when I can take you for a walk through them." Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer , Letter XXII Let me go on record here as saying that I want to be one of the first t

Here are the discussion questions on the chapter on "The Fall" from Mere Theology: How does Lewis's view of the Fall story in Genesis 3 as myth affect your view of the doctrine of the Fall? What do you think of Lewis's view that political equality is necessitated by the Fall? How does Lewis's view of death as punishment, mercy and/or safety device impact you? Do you agree or disagree with Lewis's arguments against total depravity? Why? How did you appreciate Lewis's treatment of the Fall in Perelandra and The Magician's Nephew ? I look forward to hearing your thoughts. . . .

My second book is now in print and may be ordered from most of the online booksellers or your favorite bookstore. To read more about it visit: http://www.willvaus2.blogspot.com/ or www.willvaus.com/my_father_was_a_gangster .

On October 26, 2007 I delivered a paper at a C. S. Lewis conference at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. The title of that paper was: C. S. Lewis Meets N. T. Wright: The Trilemma Re-Visited. In that paper I considered Lewis's statement in Mere Christianity about the divinity of Christ: "I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon;