C.S. Lewis on Belief

C.S. Lewis on Happiness

C.S. Lewis on Theology

C.S. Lewis on Advent

C.S. Lewis on Saints

C.S. Lewis on Religion

C.S. Lewis on Mere Christianity

C.S. Lewis on Faith

C.S. Lewis on Moral Law

C.S. Lewis on Forgiveness

C.S. Lewis on Virtue

C.S. Lewis on Atheism

Divine Friend Request

As he celebrated his underdog win in the 2012 Iowa Caucuses, former Senator Rick Santorum began his remarks by offering a paean to his wife which credited  to C.S. Lewis:

"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words." 

The same sort of qualities certainly ought to be attributed to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

In an effort to modernize the Animus Christi (Soul of Christ), the medieval prayer which was a favorite prayer of St. Ignatius Loyola, David Fleming, S.J. recast the prayer to draw more people into a personal relationship with their messiah.

Jesus .. Best Friend
may your soul give life to me,
may your flesh be food for me,
may you warm your hardened heart.

Jesus .. Best Friend
may your tears now wash me clean,
may our passion keep me strong,
may you listen to my plea.

Jesus .. Best Friend
may our wound take in my hurts,
may your glaze be fixed on me,
may I not betray your love.

Jesus .. Best Friend
may you call me at death’s door,
may you hold me close to you,
may you place me with God’s saints,
may I ever sing your praise.  Amen.

According to James Martin, S.J. Ignatius of Loyola was neither a renowned scholar nor martyr, yet he is remembered as a mystic who loved God with an incredible intensity.  The formal name of the religious order which he help found in Paris in 1534 is the Society of Jesus (La Compagnie de Jésus in French).  The Jesuit charism is to find God in all things.  It is observed that the mainspring of Jesuit spirituality is companionship with Jesus and their confreres.

This divine friendship is not something reserved for just the consecrated religious but for all through our baptism.  To think of it in social media constructs, the question is whether we confirm or ignore that heavenly Friend request and keep up with the daily feeds, or do we ignore the entreaty or effectively negate it through neglect.

C.S. Lewis on Theology

New Bible Translation is Just a Muted Voice

In an officious effort to make the Bible  more “attune to our times”, the Ecclesia Bible Society and Thomas Nelson released “The Voice”.  The Voice proclaims itself as “a faithful dynamic translation done as a collage of collaborative narratives, poetry, song truth and wisdom”. 

Professor David Capes of Houston Baptist University, spent seven years helping translate “The Voice.”  Capes reveals that the methodology for translating “The Voice” was to prepare a Bible that Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards would read instead of considering it deadly boring.

 

What this means for practical purposes is that “The Voice” is a paraphrase of sacred scripture which incorporates scholarly slants within the text of the verses. When the translation uses language which does not correspond to Hebrew or Greek origins, the word is placed in italics and the translators choose not to transliterate anything aside from proper names. 

While many Christians recently celebrated the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible, some readers can be put off by the sonorous archaic sentence structure and lexicon.  Thomas Nelson sought to keep the Word of God real in part by eschewing traditional terms for the Divine.  The Lord is referred to as “the Eternal One”, Jesus is also called “The Anointed One” and angels as “Messenger of God”.

This scriptural paraphrase sounds awkward, especially for a familiar passage like Psalm 23.



Calling the Lord “Eternal” in this instance sounds flip, mistakes the paternally oriented God of creation as just being an eternal being and circumvents the relational subservience and dependence implicit in the label “Lord”. Words do matter.  Perhaps it is educational and accessible to call Christ “the Annointed One”, as that is from the Greek.  However, this hardly touches the significance of Jesus which is “Yaweh Saves”.  So Jesus Christ is actually a two millennia prayer just by uttering His holy name.  But the power of that prayerful moniker has nominal impact when the Lord God is relegated to being “The Eternal One”.

Admittedly, translating sacred texts can be hard.  It took 39 years for English speaking Roman Catholics to faithfully develop a new translation of the liturgy.  Some of the faithful chaffed at changes in the Words of Consecration in the Roman Rite English liturgy. The new translation of the Roman Missal uses a more static translation instead of using a dynamic translation methodology.  For the Anaphora, the term chalice is used for the vessel which contains His Precious Blood  instead of “cup”  because it was in the original translation.  But the Last Supper was no ordinary meal, it was part of the Passover, and it makes sense that the Elijah Cup was used.  The linguistic change “for many” instead of the familiar Vatican II verbiage is keeping with the Hebrew original which does not have any expression “for all”.  

In this age when the Western world has lost its moral moorings and secular society scorns scripture, it is admirable to encourage individuals to read the Bible.  But the Word of God should not be a muted Voice to make it more accessible.  This populist paraphrase of scripture calls to mind the quip by C.S. Lewis: “Odd, the way the less the Bible is read, the more it is translated”.

C.S. Lewis on the Bible