My friend Kale Zelden and I finish discussing the second chapter of The Abolition of Man: “The Way.” We discuss the rebellion of the branch against the tree; whether authority can be interrogated from within or without the Tao; addressing moral relativity before making an apologia for faith; and how the end of this chapter of The Abolition of Man echoes the tower of Babel and The Screwtape Letters.
Show notes:
The Abolition of Man – C.S. Lewis
After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man – Michael Ward
The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Books 5-7 – discussed on Barbara Nicolosi’s Mystagogy podcast
The Matter with Things: Peterson & McGilchrist – The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
“It is necessary to recall many to the law of nature before we talk about God. For Christ promises forgiveness of sins: but what is that to those who, since they do not know the law of nature, do not know that they have sinned?… Moral relativity is the enemy we have to overcome before we tackle Atheism.”
C.S. Lewis, letter to Don Giovanni Calabria, 15 September 1953 (Collected Letters, volume 3, 364ff)
“I can actively and methodically investigate material things; I can subject them to my control, because they are inferior to me. But even another person is beyond my understanding if I treat him in this way. On the contrary, I only come to know something of him when I begin to put myself in his place, to get inside him, by some kind of sympathy.
This is more than ever true of God. I can only begin to seek God by setting aside this attitude of domination. In its place I have to develop an attitude of availability, of opening myself, of searching. I must be ready to wait in all humility — and to allow him to show himself in the manner he chooses, not as I would like him to do it.”
God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald, page 106
Paradise Lost by John Milton
The music in the introduction and close of this podcast is provided by Dennis Crommett.