Keeping Book: V. 2

 A virtual commonplace book. (1)

Commonplace books have been kept for centuries as a collection of quotes that are often categorized by topic. I prefer categorizing my commonplace books chronologically, as a kind of favorite lines from the books I’ve read each month. In this virtual commonplace book, I will update each “volume” for every 5(ish) works I read, sharing the passages that I have loved and pondered since reading. This edition holds some quotes from the essays contained in C.S. Lewis' God in the Dock, which I have not completed yet.

A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner

*I listened to this book on audio, so I sadly did not collect any quotes.

"Christian Apologetics" from God in the Dock by C.S. Lewis

But I insist that wherever you draw the lines, bounding lines must exist, beyond which your doctrine will cease either to be Anglican or to be Christian: and I suggest also that the lines come a great deal sooner than many modern priests think. I think it is your duty to fix the lines clearly in your own minds: and if you wish to go beyond them you must change your profession.

We never doubted that the unorthodox opinions were honestly held: what we complain of is your continuing your ministry after you have come to hold them.

Our business is to present that which is timeless (the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow) in the particular language of our own age.

Theology teaches us what ends are desirable and what means are lawful, while Politics teaches what means are effective. Thus Theology tells us that every man ought to have a decent wage. Politics tells us by what means this is likely to be attained. Theology tells us which of these means are consistent with justice and charity. On the political question guidance comes not from Revelation but from natural prudence, knowledge of complicated facts and ripe experience. If we have these qualifications we may, of course, state our political opinions: but then we must make it quite clear that we are giving our personal judgement and have no command from the Lord.

A sense of sin is almost totally lacking. Our situation is thus very different from that of the Apostles. The Pagans (and still more the metuentes) to whom they preached were haunted by a sense of guilt and to them the Gospel was, therefore, 'good news'. We address people who have been trained to believe that whatever goes wrong in the world is someone else's fault — the Capitalists', the Governments', the Nazis', the Generals' etc. They approach God Himself as His judges. They want to know, not whether they can be acquitted for sin, but whether He can be acquitted for creating such a world.

Do not attempt to water Christianity down. There must be no pretence that you can have it with the Supernatural left out. So far as I can see Christianity is precisely the one religion from which the miraculous cannot be separated.

And it should (at least in my judgement) be made clear that we are not pronouncing all other religions to be totally false, but rather saying that in Christ whatever is true in all religions is consummated and perfected.

One last word. I have found that nothing is more dangerous to one's own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that Faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate. For a moment, you see, it has seemed to rest on oneself: as a result, when you go away from that debate, it seems no stronger than a weak pillar. That is why we apologists take our lives in our hands and can be saved only by falling back continually from the web of our own arguments, as from our intellectual counters, into the Reality — from Christian apologetics into Christ Himself. That is also why we need one another's continual help — oremus pro invicem. (2)

Eve in Exile by Rebekah Merkle

You and I have been born into a world that’s at war with boundaries.

True freedom lies in the opportunity to pursue excellence, and that opportunity is dependent on the boundaries that define and restrict the entire field of endeavor...True freedom has to recognize boundaries.

The last instructions that Christ gave to His church before He ascended into Heaven were to go and “baptize the nations.” Those are our marching orders. We’re not supposed to baptize a few people from every nation, we’re supposed to baptize the nations. That involves winning entire cultures over to Christ, not just a few individual hearts.

Adam alone is just Adam. Adam with Eve . . . becomes the human race...Eve is fruitfulness.

We need to figure out what went wrong—not so that we can sit around and criticize our grandmothers, but so that we can figure out how to spare our daughters.

America’s love affair with efficiency was brought into the home.

Getting bored and fussy about God’s blessings is not a small deal, and sometimes when we demand more from God, He gives it to us and we choke on it.

The how and the why questions are important because they reveal the trajectory of the idea, whereas the what question is static.

It is important to note that Eve was provided to Adam as a helper in both of his tasks—in both subduing the earth and in filling it—she was not required for the job of filling alone.

If Adam is the crown of creation, then Eve is the crown of the crown. Women are the glory of the glory. When you read of the Holy of Holies in Scripture, are you on the furthest fringe of the holiness, or are you closer to the center? Obviously the holiness isn’t getting weaker as you go into the Holy of Holies, it’s getting stronger, more distilled. Man was created as the image and glory of God, but then along came the woman—second—in an even more concentrated form. The glory of the glory of God...In fact, that submission itself is what is so glorious, and that is because the willing submission of one equal to another—a submission offered out of love and not out of servitude — is a submission that pictures Christ...That submission ends in exaltation. It ends in glory.

Women need to stop being so offended about being asked to submit to an equal. Christ did not consider it robbery to humble Himself and submit to an equal, and neither should we, because when we picture that submission we are picturing the most potent form of glory that there is. We are enacting the story that is at the very heart of all history, the most glorious story ever told. This is not a weak, watered down, pitiful little glory, the one the furthest away from the center. It is the most powerful, the most magnificent, the most intoxicating, the most concentrated picture of glory that can be found in creation. And we are privileged to be the ones asked to do it.

We embody, we enflesh, we multiply, and we transform cultures. Eve is fruitfulness.

There is never any spring unless there is first a winter. There is never any resurrection unless there has been a death. There is no flower growing that did not first begin as a seed that went into the ground and died, that cracked open, that broke, in order that life could come from it. There is no Easter unless there is first a Good Friday. That is why submission is so essential to our role. Without submission there could be no true glory. Without death there could be no life from the dead. Without a seed going into the ground, no life could come up from that ground. When a woman submits, when she lays herself down, when she, like Christ, offers herself up to the death of humility, in submission to someone who is an equal, that is the field in which glory grows...In Scripture, submission and glory always go together—and in that sequence.

We have tried to cut our feminine glory in half, keeping the beauty but throwing away the fertility, and by perverting the glory in this way we have not removed the submission, but have rather made it demanding, monstrous, and hideous.

True submission, in true freedom, of one woman to one man, results in true glory and true fruitfulness.

"Work and Prayer" from God in the Dock by C.S. Lewis

There were no quotes that stood out to me from this short essay.

"Man or Rabbit?" from God in the Dock by C.S. Lewis

One of the things that distinguishes man from the other animals is that he wants to know things, wants to fid out what reality is like, simply for the sake of knowing.

Christianity claims to give an account of facts — to tell you what the real universe is like. Its account of the universe may be true, or it may not, and once the question is really before you, then your natural inquisitiveness must make you want to know the answer. If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be: if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all.

To the Materialist things like nations, classes, civilizations must be more important than individuals, because the individuals live only seventy odd years each and the group may last for centuries. But to the Christian, individuals are more important, for they live eternally; and races, civilizations and the like, are in comparison the creatures of a day.

The idea of reaching 'a good life' without Christ is based on a double error. Firstly, we cannot do it; and secondly, in setting up 'a good life' as our final goal, we have missed the very point of our existence.

"On the Transmission of Christianity" from God in the Dock by C.S. Lewis (3)

If you make the adults of today Christian, the children of tomorrow will receive a Christian education. What a society has, that, be sure, and nothing else, it will hand on to its young.

As long as Christians have children and non-Christians do not, one need have no anxiety for the next century.

" 'Miserable Offenders' " from God in the Dock by C.S. Lewis

I think that this steady facing of what one does know and bringing it before God, without excuses, and seriously asking for Forgiveness and Grace, and resolving as far as in one lies to do better, is the only way in which we can ever begin to know the fatal thing which is always there, and preventing us from becoming perfectly just to our wife or husband, or being a better employer or employee.

"The Founding of the Oxford Socratic Club" from God in the Dock by C.S. Lewis

It is not here that the honestly of the Socratic comes in. We never claimed to be impartial. But argument is.

Clearly, the Christian members of the Socratic think differently. They know that intellectual assent is not faith, but they do not believe that religion is only 'what a man does with his solitude.' Or, if it is, then they care nothing for 'religion' and all for Christianity. Christianity is not merely what a man does with his solitude. It is not even what God does with His solitude. It tells of God descending into the coarse publicity of history and there enacting what can — and must — be talked about.

For my full thoughts on these books, look forward to my monthly reading wrap ups!

(1) An English teacher from high school used to call our required commonplace books “keeping books,” which I found lovely.
(2) "Oremus pro invicem" is Latin for "Let us pray for each other."
(3) Due to the combined reasons of my being a bit behind in my keeping book posts and having two works I've recently read that I collected no quotes from, you get some bonus works this edition!

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