C. S. Lewis, the New Atheists, and the Failure to Disprove God with Alister McGrath

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0:00:00 – (Alister McGrath): To me, most significantly, I think, is that we’ve moved away from what I might unfairly call kind of hyper rationalist approach. You prove things are true to a realization that everything in life that you really value. The belief in God, for example, is not something you can absolutely prove to be true, but is nonetheless absolutely transformative.

0:00:37 – (Collin Hansen): Alister McGrath remembers life as an atheist back in the late 1960s. He believed only what could be proven to be true and he judged religion and religious believers for trusting in an irrational fantasy. Looking back, though, he can see an emotional basis for what he thought were purely rational conclusions. He didn’t want God to exist because God would then threaten his freedom. As an atheist. He could do whatever he wanted. He could be the center of the universe.

0:01:08 – (Collin Hansen): Now, as a Christian and one of the most well known apologists in the world, McGrath sees how much desire determines what we believe about the universe. And he says this, the human desire for unaccountability leads to the metaphysical conclusion that there should not be a God. Well, last summer McGrath and I caught up when he was the keynote speaker at a Beeson Divinity School conference on persuasion preaching.

0:01:36 – (Collin Hansen): I was invited to engage and respond to his presentation. And Alistair is a theologian and Christian apologist with a particular interest in the relationship between science and faith. And in fact, he recently retired as a professor of science and religion at Oxford University. I’ve known him as a godly encourager, a kind interlocutor. I’ve learned a lot from him on various subjects, especially C.S. Lewis. In fact, I was listening to him at Lanier Library in Houston when he inspired me to begin work on a book about Lewis and Winston Churchill.

0:02:08 – (Collin Hansen): So I’m excited to talk with him again about atheism and apologetics and a heavy dose of Lewis. Alistair, thanks for joining me on Gospel Bound.

0:02:17 – (Alister McGrath): It’s great to be with you. Thank you for having me.

0:02:19 – (Collin Hansen): Alistair, many but not all, will know your story. Briefly recount for us how did you move from atheism to Christianity in 1971?

0:02:29 – (Alister McGrath): Well, you’ve very kindly begun to tell that story, but I think I’d want to expand a little bit. I think that if I can put it like this, in my late teenage years I began to realize that. That although I believed passionately, there was no God and didn’t want there to be a God. You’re quite right. Desire played a very big role in this. I had this embarrassing experience of realizing I couldn’t prove there was no God. So I was in this dilemma.

0:02:56 – (Alister McGrath): I wanted to live in the world where I only believed stuff I could prove. And yet one of my core beliefs, there is no God. I couldn’t prove it. And so if you like, it left me very, very uncomfortable because supposing there were other things I couldn’t prove to be true that might actually be rather exciting and possibly even were true, even though I couldn’t prove they were true. So I arrived at Oxford thinking, I’ll sort myself out in Oxford. There are lots of clever atheists here, which there were, but there were lots of clever Christians as well.

0:03:25 – (Alister McGrath): So they helped me really discover what Christianity was all about. They began to deal with my intellectual questions and to cut a long story short, I began to realize Christianity was brilliant and embraced it and was very, very excited. And then began this wonderful process of exploring it, trying to go deeper. And that’s when I began to read C.S. lewis. And Lewis really spoke to me very, very powerfully and helpfully.

0:03:52 – (Alister McGrath): And really since then I’ve just kept on reading him because he keeps repaying you in a big way.

0:03:58 – (Collin Hansen): Even since you and I have last talked, I’ve been writing and reading a lot about Lewis. So a lot of different directions we could go here. One question be then based on Louis. Did your conversion then follow in stages as his did, or was it rather sort of an overnight transformation, if you like?

0:04:19 – (Alister McGrath): It was not quite instantaneous, but it was this growing realization. This makes an awful lot of sense. This is very exciting. I can see this. I can’t prove it, but hey, I can’t prove anything that really matters. Why don’t I take a leap? Not a leap into its darkness, but a leap into a reality that everything within me said, it’s there, you know, go. So I decided I would go and see if the reality turned out to be what I hoped it was.

0:04:50 – (Alister McGrath): And it did. So if you like, it was a process, but quite a quick process and then a longer process once I’d decided to embrace Christianity, of really appreciating what it was and beginning to develop it, many, many facets and think them through.

0:05:07 – (Collin Hansen): Your work, Alistair, is so wide ranging. It’s one of the things that makes you similar to Lewis in many ways. Was there a particular work of Lewis’s at that time that especially resonated with your story when you found that to be. Oh, I recognize that, yeah, that’s a really good question.

0:05:28 – (Alister McGrath): I think the first book I bought by Lewis and read by Lewis was they asked for a paper and it included an essay called Is Theology Poetry? Which was a lecture that Lewis gave to the Socratic Club at Oxford back in. I think it was 1945. But anyway, this was all about Christianity as a big picture of reality. And once I saw what Lewis was saying, as if someone turned a light on in my mind, suddenly I thought, that’s it. I get it.

0:05:57 – (Alister McGrath): And it was this final sentence. I believe in Christianity is. I believe that the sun has risen not only because, but because by it I see everything else. I thought, that is right. I can work with that. It corresponds to my experience, and I can see where I can go with this. And so that was a. The beginning of my reading of Lewis intensively, and also my beginnings of realizing that actually I might be able to help other people who are atheists like me discover Christianity, possibly helped a little bit by C.S. lewis.

0:06:30 – (Collin Hansen): Now, here’s a quote from your Beeson presentation. I’d love for you to expand on it. Christianity is a about aligning ourselves with the deep truths of our universe. In other words, Christianity is compelling to us because it’s true, because it makes sense of everything else. You’ve already just alluded to that to Louis. How would you expand on that? How have you built on that reflection as you’ve expanded in so many different ways in terms of your writing and speaking and teaching career?

0:06:58 – (Alister McGrath): Yeah, I like that question a lot. I think the first thing to say is, we are making this stuff up. This is not, in effect, saying, oh, I would feel so much better if there was a God. Oh, oh, oh, I like the idea of God. No, no, no. It’s much more. If this is the way things are, then we align ourselves with the way the universe really is. That’s all about faith. It’s discerning that there is this deep structure, there is this God, that we can, in effect, step into that picture and make it our own. So it’s truthfulness.

0:07:29 – (Alister McGrath): It’s about responding to the way things are and then having responded, to begin to explore and inhabit this rich landscape that Christianity opens up. Partly because it helps us find out who we are and what we meant to be doing, but also, I think, because it really enables us to think, how might I help other people discover this landscape and step into it as I once did myself? So if you like. I think I had this sense that I was going to be an apologist even before I knew what the word meant.

0:08:00 – (Alister McGrath): I love that.

0:08:01 – (Collin Hansen): And you also helped to explain there why this new curriculum we’ve done at the Gospel Coalition and the Keller center on Cultural Narratives, it’s called Making Sense of Us. Christianity is what makes sense of us reveals God and makes sense of everything else as well. Long standing pursuit within apologetics and evangelism. Let’s jump ahead then to the early 2000s. One way that a lot of people got to know your work then was you’re engaging and debating the New Atheists.

0:08:33 – (Collin Hansen): What is it that stands out most to you? What did you learn during that era of engaging the New Atheists?

0:08:39 – (Alister McGrath): Well, I think I learned a lot. Let me just run a few things past you. One of the things, I realized very, very quickly that the New Atheism was largely based on rhetoric. This is the obviously right view for an intelligent person. You don’t think we’re right, you’re stupid. It was that kind of highly rhetorical, slogan driven approach. And I thought, this is intellectual nonsense. But here’s what I noticed.

0:09:05 – (Alister McGrath): Yes, it was intellectual nonsense, but there was influential intellectual nonsense because of the stridency, the certainty with which they asserted it. And Christopher Hitchens was very, very good at this. And you know, in one of his books, Aristotle says, you know, nothing persuades like certainty. In other words, if you project this order of being, absolutely certain, people will trust you. That was really very, very important thing to realize for me because it gave me a way of beginning to challenge this and saying, look, you have subjective certainty, but there’s no object of certainty in what you’re saying at all. That was the first thing.

0:09:42 – (Alister McGrath): The second thing was this. The New Atheism was terribly, terribly good at demanding that Christians prove that their views were right. But there was this kind of epistemic asymmetry here. When you said, well, can you prove your views are right? They would say, no, no, we don’t need to, and we’re just right. It’s obvious any intelligent person would think that. And so I think that one of the things I began to realize is that you could play a little game which is called being fair.

0:10:08 – (Alister McGrath): I’ll try and prove my position, but listen, you’ve got to prove yours as well. And that proved to be very, very difficult for them because of course it can’t be done. So I think that was another thing. But here’s the third thing I’ve learned, which is really, over the many years since then, as I have done, met more and more people who come to me and say, alistair, I read your book on Dawkins, and actually it moved me away from New Atheism. Thank you so much.

0:10:33 – (Alister McGrath): What I see is many, many people, some of whom now are good friends, who in effect came to faith through Dawkins by realizing that Dawkins was talking nonsense, but that Christianity seemed to be saying something a lot more interesting. So I think it’s very important for us all to say, look, when some influential cultural opinion begins to develop, let’s engage it and show Christianity is able to say something significant response, but also offer something even better as an alternative.

0:11:06 – (Collin Hansen): Well, Christianity is still here. You’re still doing your apologetics and evangelism work, but the New Atheist movement has come and it’s gone. What was it about the New Atheism that failed to appeal, especially to younger generations?

0:11:21 – (Alister McGrath): Well, I think there were several things. Let me list the ones that people have mentioned to me, and I’ve got some of these. But some of these are observations others have made to me. One of them is they were very, very good at fighting among themselves. I mean, we tend to think of Christians being very good at that. But actually, I’ll tell you, the New Atheism is even better. And really, you have some very significant political, cultural and spiritual disagreements within the New Atheism. For example, Sam Harris is into Indian spirituality, and many of his fellow atheists were saying, this is terrible. You are implying that atheism isn’t good enough. You have to have something else to meet these spiritual needs. Why do you have spiritual needs?

0:12:04 – (Alister McGrath): It’s weird. So I think that first of all is this fragmentation of the movement. Secondly, there was this growing realization that these guys simply could not prove that their beliefs were right. And people noticed that. I think that was very, very important. The third point, which is made by many, many New Atheists, is if you were choosing people to lead a movement, the kind of people you wouldn’t want to lead, it would be Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

0:12:30 – (Alister McGrath): In effect, these guys had their own agendas, and in many ways the movement simply became their reflection. And that, I think, was a very, very bad mistake. But I think most people who come out of the New Atheism saying, we were in there for a while, but we realized it was really a big mistake, would say that they were looking for something that was rationally compelling and also that met their deep existential needs.

0:12:57 – (Alister McGrath): And the problem they had with New Atheism is, well, if this is right, so what? What difference does it make to the way you feel about the world, to your views about morality? And really, if I can put it like this, the New Atheism delivered a worldview which was, in their view, completely rational. But they could not meaningfully engage questions like what is good? What is meaningful? And I think many people Said, well, look, these are big questions. If you can answer them, we’ll go somewhere else and talk to other people.

0:13:26 – (Collin Hansen): Let’s bridge between that point of your conversion into the new atheism. In decades of apologetics, ministry and work and teaching and writing, would you identify as the biggest ways apologetics has changed?

0:13:40 – (Alister McGrath): Well, I think what has changed to me most significantly, I think, is that we’ve moved away from what I might unfairly call kind of hyper rationalist approach. You know, you prove things are true to a realization that everything in life that you really value. The belief in God, for example, is not something you can absolutely prove to be true, but is nonetheless absolutely transformative. And the point I always make now is, look, if the belief matters, you won’t be able to prove it’s true. And that’s true of atheists as well. That’s a key thing.

0:14:18 – (Alister McGrath): Once you see this, then atheism is a belief system, it’s a faith, it’s not a self evidently true place. So I think, if you like, I’m a scientist, so this is a very natural way for me to think. It’s about which of the many explanations of our world is the best. And Christianity stands out brilliantly in that way. CS Lewis does this very, very well in Mere Christianity, especially that chapter on hope which says, look, there are lots of ways of explaining things, but I think this one’s best and here’s why.

0:14:51 – (Alister McGrath): So if you, like, Christians are being very realistic, we can’t absolutely prove this. We can give lots of good reasons, but in the end, the guy who convinces people is me. It’s the Holy Spirit. And my role as an apologist is to help God convert people. I have a role to play, but God has an even more important role to play, which is opening people’s minds, enlightening them, changing their hearts, and finally bringing them home.

0:15:17 – (Alister McGrath): So as apologists, we’re playing a really important role, but actually God’s in there as well. I think that brings me to the final point I want to make, which is that certainly, you know, about 20, 25 years ago, apologetics was taught as a technique. Here is how you do things. I didn’t like that really, because where’s God in all of this? You know, I just felt that really you had to be open to God in every respect.

0:15:42 – (Alister McGrath): And so I tend to see apologetics now as me doing my bit, doing my best, but then handing over to God. And that means you pray before you give your talks and you realize you can’t do everything. But nevertheless, you, you’re giving God the bricks. You’re in effect opening people’s minds. And there’s an analogy by a 12th century theologian called Alan of Leal who’s talking about the way grace works. And he says it’s like being inside a room where there are shutters everywhere.

0:16:10 – (Alister McGrath): And if you open the shutters, the light floods in. What you’re doing is removing barriers to light. I find that helpful. The apologist is somebody who helps remove barriers to grace. So in effect, God can get in there and transform people’s lives. But there are things we can do that help that process.

0:16:29 – (Collin Hansen): Well, during the rise of the new atheists, there was another apologist who emerged, and that’s somebody you and I have collaborated with or talked about quite a bit, and that’s Tim Keller. What was it about Tim Keller that helped him to stand out among apologists from that era, especially in the 21st century?

0:16:50 – (Alister McGrath): Well, I think that there are many things I’ll go through what I think are the chief things about Tim Keller that made him, I don’t say so successful because that implies he’s kind of a technique driven by, but made him so good at doing this role. And here’s what I think. First of all, he had a very strong foundation on which he built. He built on a rigorous biblical anthropology. You know, he’s absolutely orthodox.

0:17:14 – (Alister McGrath): But he also draws on a very strong tradition of apologetics which you find in Francis Schaeffer, which is in effect critiquing alternative worldviews, if you like. It’s presuppositionalism, but Keller uses it very, very powerfully to undermine the plausibility of alternative ways of thinking. And I think the one thing that Keller does terribly, terribly well is in effect to undermine seclist worldviews and leave people wondering, well, where do I go now? Because you’ve shown me that I’ve got some big problems with what I think.

0:17:49 – (Alister McGrath): And I think one of the things that Keller does very, very well is to draw on some more recent writings by people like the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre or indeed Charles Taylor, who are giving some very penetrating analyses of why it is that culture fastens on to certain ideas and says, these seem to be great, these seem to be obvious, these seem to be self evidently true, when in fact they’re simply influential opinions.

0:18:18 – (Alister McGrath): And I think that MacIntyre and Taylor in the different ways really help us to realize this. What Tim Keller did was really to say, building on this foundation, I’m going to say to my audiences what you Think is self evidently true is simply an opinion. It’s simply what our culture thinks at the moment. It won’t think this tomorrow. And what I’m saying to you is there are alternatives available, and I want you to think about them.

0:18:44 – (Alister McGrath): So I found Keller really very, very good at, in effect, without drawing attention to it, really building his approach on a rigorous intellectual cultural analysis, which allowed him then to really speak powerfully to audiences. But here’s the next thing I noticed about Tim Keller, and I really valued this at Redeemer. Keller would regularly talk about the Gospel to kind of focus groups and would listen to what they said. He listened before he spoke.

0:19:18 – (Alister McGrath): And that’s one of the reasons why I value him so much. He isn’t just randomly generating ideas. He’s listened to people, he’s listened to their concerns. He’s figured out how to engage these. And the fact that he has listened to his audience before he goes on to speak, so to speak, really means he is connecting with where they are and helping them to move on. And finally, and this is my final point, he does speak very well. He’s a good speaker. So, you know, you put all of those things together and you have a very, very effective apologist for whom I have lots of admiration, as I think you’ll have gathered.

0:19:54 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah, I think, Alistair, no surprise here. I think you did a better job of explaining cultural apologetics than I do as the director of the Keller center for Cult Apologetics. But I love the way you’re putting it within that broader context of Schaeffer, of presuppositionalism, and then combining it with some of the more recent intellectual developments at kind of high critical theory of cultural change, especially amid a significant de churching across the west and especially in the United States last 25 years.

0:20:25 – (Collin Hansen): You mix up all of that and you get a pretty good example of what we’re trying to do at the Keller center now and going forward. One of the things at the Keller center that we try to do, of the things where you and I connected here at Beeson, was trying to help integrate this apologetics into preaching and teaching in the church. Let’s just talk about preachers specifically here. What would be a way that preachers can grow in their skill as apologists?

0:20:51 – (Alister McGrath): I think the skill we all have to learn. I’ve had to learn this the hard way because I’ve made lots of mistakes, is to really find a way of incorporating apologetic themes into your regular preaching. So it’s always part of what you’re doing, but you don’t actually use the word apologetics. And you don’t make it obvious what you’re doing. You want to be a natural part of what you’re doing. So you’re not saying now something like, you know, I’m going to talk about apologetics. And I was talking to Fred Smith the other day, and Fred has a big problem. He can’t really figure out how to get. How to understand sin. Well, Fred, this is for you and for anybody else. And then you talk about sin.

0:21:30 – (Alister McGrath): No, no, you listen. Do exactly what Tim Kell did. You listen to your congregation. You figure out the difficulties they’re having. And you would generalize. You’d say, now, I’ve been preaching about redemption. Let’s just talk about a problem I know many people have with this idea of sin. You don’t mention any names, but you begin to say, I find it helpful to think about like this. And you begin to give a good defense of what this idea of sin is, why it’s important, why it’s essential. And then you say, hey, but you know, they’re really great. Great thing is, however important sin is, redemption’s even better. And here’s why the Gospel is so significant.

0:22:07 – (Alister McGrath): So my own approach is really to say, let’s just make a sort of understated apologetics, not mentioning the name regular part of our preaching. Preaching on Easter. You say something like, look, I know there are many people, you may know them too, who won’t believe in the resurrection. Here’s something we can say to them. Try this on. In other words, you’re doing apologetics without actually using the word or highlighting that, trying to normalize it as a kind of thing that congregations would do themselves without having to sort of press a button and flip into apologetics mode.

0:22:41 – (Alister McGrath): So I think, if you like, the thing I think we need to do is try and normalize apologetics in regular church preaching. And I think that will help because, you see, if you think about who’s doing apologetics, sure, pastors do it, but actually, in your congregations, there’ll be people who can speak to people that the pastor will never meet. And if you help them to explain the gospel, to meet common objections, you are extending your ministry enormously to these people who will take the ideas you’re giving them and use them themselves. So there are lots of ways we can do this. This is just some thoughts I have on how we can move this ahead.

0:23:22 – (Collin Hansen): If I could summarize, Alistair, see if I’m accurate with this, of a couple different ways that you’re going here. One, I was just taking notes on this and just as you were saying that there’s an encouragement from you not to over promise in apologetics, an understated approach. And then that combines with a sort of the attack on the other side is simply to say that they cannot be as decisive as they would purport to be. So basically there’s also a leveling of both sides.

0:23:56 – (Collin Hansen): You’re not trying to over promise on the Christian side and you’re pointing out that the other side cannot follow through on their convictions to a level of certainty as well. Is that an accurate description of how you’re trying to approach things rhetorically?

0:24:11 – (Alister McGrath): I think it is rhetorically. What I’m trying to say is it’s always presented as faith versus fact. What I’m saying is, no, it’s this faith versus that faith. Let’s line them up and see which ones are better. And one of them certainly is much more realistic. No prizes for guessing which one that is.

0:24:28 – (Collin Hansen): Right. Give us a little bit of that genealogy. Intellectually we can read a lot of books on this, but not everybody is going to know the intellectual heritage of that faith fact distinction. And then I wanted you so as you talk about that though also help to address another common view, just a common belief to make this world a better and safer place, we simply need to eliminate beliefs such as religious faith. So again, let’s start with the faith fact distinction first and then let’s jump to that Taylor subtraction story of modernity. So let’s start with the faith fact distinction.

0:25:06 – (Alister McGrath): This goes back to the Enlightenment, to the age of reason when it was very, very obvious to certain people that there were certain things that were simply factually correct. And these did not require proving they were to quote from familiar American document. These were self evident truths. I include like that. And I think that is really something that really became very, very influential. But here’s what I would want to say.

0:25:34 – (Alister McGrath): I would want to say simply that all of us actually believe. Because when you start thinking about it, the kind of things that we can prove are true. For example, 2 and 2 make 4. Or to give a British example, Queen Victoria died in 1901. Well, sure, you can prove those, but so what? They don’t make any difference at all. And the key thing I want to say is that when it comes to the big truths of lives, what really matters? Is there a God?

0:26:03 – (Alister McGrath): And what is the meaning of life? How do we live a good life? We’re all on the same level playing field. None of us can prove these things are right. And that’s why I think we really do need to challenge people when they say, it’s obvious that there is no God. You can say, that’s really good. You’ve got five minutes. Prove there’s no God. They can’t do it. You say, look, I think what you mean, meant to say is I really believe very, very strongly there’s no God, but I’m not sure you can do that.

0:26:33 – (Collin Hansen): And then on the subtraction story of modernity, that’s also enlightenment, we can see a pretty clear connection there. From Voltaire to Nietzsche. Would that be accurate in the question? But it’s going after the goodness of Christianity and religion more broadly.

0:26:47 – (Alister McGrath): Well, they’re going after the goodness of religion, particularly Christianity. And again, you have to say, look, where are you getting these moral values by which you judge things from? You can’t just be like Christopher Hitchens say, religion is evil. By the way, I don’t believe anything. I just buy into stuff that’s absolutely, obviously true, because any moral value rests on a belief system. And my point is that actually Hitchens is presupposing a belief system in making that judgment.

0:27:15 – (Alister McGrath): So my point is, again, I’ve got to reiterate this. It’s not faith versus fact. It’s one belief system versus a different belief system. It’s a level playing field. The argument is which one has the better rational case, which one makes more sense, and what about the outcomes? Because Christianity has this remarkable ability to make sense of life and to give us this deep sense of purpose and meaning.

0:27:40 – (Collin Hansen): Would it be accurate to say, Alistair, not even just two belief systems, but two versions of Christianity, one the real thing, the other a secularized Christianity? Because his moral views are coming from Christianity, right?

0:27:53 – (Alister McGrath): Well, that’s right, because they can’t prove them. They have to kind of way borrow them from Christianity, then claim they were theirs all along. Whereas in fact, Christian values actually rest on gospel foundations. You can’t just assume that people will be able to sustain these moral values without those underlying presuppositions. And that’s one of the reasons why I think it’s so important to emphasize that the moral values of our culture don’t just happen.

0:28:21 – (Alister McGrath): They aren’t just rational. They come from a long tradition of reflection deeply rooted in Scripture. And if you start removing that, you lose this altogether.

0:28:31 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah. So really, that would also be reflected in the work of Glenn Scrivener, Air We Breathe. One of our fellows at the Keller center, as well as then, Tom Holland’s work in Dominion. I think this is also what you’re getting at. But let’s just put a finer point on this. Explain the difference between truth and meaning. I assume that’s what you’re saying about Queen Victoria dying in 1901. That’s true, but is it meaningful?

0:28:57 – (Collin Hansen): Not in terms of the big questions of life. Right.

0:28:59 – (Alister McGrath): I think the big questions in life really aren’t so much truth versus falsity. It’s very important not to believe things that are false. There are an awful false worldviews in circulation. I mean to challenge those when it comes to truth. I mean, the key point I want to emphasize this factuality does not equal relevance. That’s a really important point because what Christianity is doing is not talking about two and two makes four. It’s talking about life changing truths which give meaning and dignity and purpose to your life, which are transformative and those really are deep truths.

0:29:37 – (Alister McGrath): So my point is that one of the things we can do as Christians is not simply say, here is why I believe in Christianity, but also here is the difference that it makes. To me, it’s a transformative truth. It’s something that in effect gives me meaning and purpose. And let me explain to you how that’s happened to me, because people will be interested in that. It’s moving from simply saying this is right to and here is why this is transformative.

0:30:04 – (Alister McGrath): This is able to change my life and make it better.

0:30:07 – (Collin Hansen): Another quote that you had in the Beeson presentation I really appreciate was this bleakness is not an indicator of truth.

0:30:15 – (Alister McGrath): No, that’s true.

0:30:16 – (Collin Hansen): Tell us a little bit more about that.

0:30:17 – (Alister McGrath): Well, you see, well, I was an atheist myself when I was 16 years old. I thought this is actually terribly, terribly dark and bleak and grim and horrible. But hey, it’s true. So therefore I’m glad it’s bleak because no one’s going to believe in this stuff because they like it. The only reason they’re going to believe it is because it’s true. So there, if you like. I was almost saying that if it’s bleak and discouraging, that’s great.

0:30:44 – (Alister McGrath): I mean, it was weird. But what I was trying to do was to say to myself, look, I know this atheism is not good news at all, but hey, that is good news in one sense because it means you don’t make this stuff up. You don’t want to believe this stuff, therefore you believe it because it’s true. Now built into that is just a load of circularity and stupidity. But that’s the way I was when I was 16.

0:31:10 – (Collin Hansen): But also arrogance, right?

0:31:11 – (Alister McGrath): Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:12 – (Collin Hansen): The sense that I alone or I and my merry band are the only people who are able to confront the bleak reality of the universe. Only we are mature enough and intellectual enough and smart enough to be able to confront real reality instead of living with all these fantasies and looking forward to this future fantasy land. Is that part of it too?

0:31:34 – (Alister McGrath): That’s part of it too. It’s like you’re kind of an ego trip, you know, I would look down at my religious friends, say, ha, ha ha, they haven’t thought about these things. They’re fools, they’re idiots. They are living in an age of superstition, unaware that I myself was living in a. A different age of superstition. It was just that my superstition was atheism, which I couldn’t prove to be true.

0:31:53 – (Collin Hansen): Okay, so the last part of this interview, talking here with Alistair McGrath, just fascinating. Could listen and talk with you for hours and hours, but for the last three questions, I want to just turn to CS Lewis. And again, since you and I last talked, and when we first talked, you just sent me on a whole new intellectual journey that I have so much gratefulness to you for. Did not see it coming at all. And then like a flash, just sitting there listening to you, all these interesting thoughts were coming together and I’ve been working on them ever since, for a couple years since.

0:32:34 – (Collin Hansen): And what I’ve noticed about Louis, and as you were talking about Louis and you were talking about the Second World War, and I was thinking about Churchill, I thought a lot of times we think of Churchill as purely a historical figure. He’s always in black and white. Whereas in an odd way, we always think of Lewis as a contemporary figure because his writing still is so vivacious, it’s still so relevant, his insights are still so penetrating.

0:33:02 – (Collin Hansen): And so a lot of what I’ve been trying to do is to help illustrate how so many of Churchill’s perspectives on civilization are relevant for the big questions that we’re facing today. And also of how much of Lewis views are rooted in the concerns of his time. Not in a way that makes them time bound, but ways that they remain timeless. Now, of course, I think if anybody knows about Lewis’s context as an apologist, they’re going to know about mere Christianity and the BBC broadcasts during the war.

0:33:37 – (Collin Hansen): I’m wondering about this, especially as you sit in Oxford. And famously Oxford was not targeted for bombing, supposedly because Hitler wanted Oxford to be his British capital. So Louis didn’t experience in the same ways now, when he traveled to London, different story for those BBC broadcasts. But what was it about the circumstances, especially in those early years, 40 and 41 in particular. So problem of pain, of course, comes out then and then. So beginning of his apologetic career publicly, which then leads to mere Christianity.

0:34:12 – (Collin Hansen): What difference did that setting make? Did it sharpen his apologetics? Did it focus them? Did it draw something out that brought our context? And I’ll stop rambling after one more point here. What strikes me as so salient about these two men in that context is that especially in 1940 and 41, especially in the months before Barbarossa, the attack on the Soviet Union and then Pearl harbor, the attack on the United States, they didn’t have a lot of reason to think that what they were advocating would be successful.

0:34:45 – (Collin Hansen): Not politically, not culturally. You had fascism, you had communism. Britain was on its own. It was a tough situation. So shed a little bit of light specifically on Mere Christianity, the development of those works, how they affected Lewis and why they seemed to land a certain way at that time on the British public.

0:35:03 – (Alister McGrath): Well, I think that’s a great question. And you mentioned the problem of pain, and that’s a jumping off point for Lewis because Lewis didn’t decide to write that book. He was asked to write it by a man called Ashley Sampson, who, in effect, Lewis might be a very intelligent lay voice who could articulately talk about the problem of pain to a wider readership. I think Lewis really saw that as a validation of his growing perception he was going to be an apologist.

0:35:31 – (Alister McGrath): It was an external recognition of what I think had been a growing. A growing internal realization on Lewis part. But was this simply him thinking that when somebody outside him said, this is what you could do, he did it. Did very well. And as you rightly point out, the BBC read that book and thought, we want this man. And I think one of the things that is really interesting, and you talked about the comparison with Churchill, which is really helpful here, is that both Churchill and Lewis found their voice during the Second World War.

0:36:01 – (Alister McGrath): They learned to speak to. To the British people in a time of need. Churchill very, very good at dealing with the political and military situation, but Lewis also of trying to open up those deeper questions about sin, about the fear of death, about the lack of hope, and beginning to build a connection with the British people through his broadcasts, which were clearly very successful because BBC kept asking him to do more and more of these.

0:36:30 – (Alister McGrath): So if you like the r maketh the man that actually this was Very much. Lewis rising to a challenge very, very successfully and learning, I think, enormously from it, with the result that Lewis no longer seems like a period figure of the 1940s. He seems to just have a. Almost like a perennial quality. You read him and he speaks to you right.

0:36:52 – (Collin Hansen): Now, how did Lewis’s conversion affect his academic career? And then how then did his successful apologetics affect his academic career? Because in the Oxford of the 1930s and 1940s, I can’t imagine those were two things that were positive. His faith and then his popular apologetics.

0:37:12 – (Alister McGrath): No, I think it’s fair to say that Lewis was regarded as slightly off centered, that he encountered opposition partly because he was a Christian. But I think there was another reason which was that Lewis had been hired to teach English language and literature at Malden College, Oxford, Oxford University, and write some decent books on English literature. And actually what he did write tended to be mainly things like the Screwtape letters, which were great but not really very academic. And I think that people really felt Lewis hadn’t quite realized the obligations placed on him by being an academic. So there was a concern there. But Lewis’s conversion as a.

0:37:52 – (Alister McGrath): As to Christianity, I think if anything, gave a new animus to his scholarship because he began to realize, I can use this scholarship to develop my presentation of Christianity. I think that that was part of the reason why he enjoyed reading people like George Herbert and others so much because they in effect spoke to him at a spiritual level and he was able to use some in his apologetic writings. So Lewis, I don’t think, saw tension between his apologetic writings and his academic career.

0:38:24 – (Alister McGrath): But the difficulty was he spent so much time on his apologetic writings that he didn’t really do what he was meant to do. And Lewis realized that. And actually there is that moment in the late 1940s when Lewis finally realizes, I’ve got to write this big book for Oxford University Press. And that of course re established him as a serious academic scholar and that’s why he got the chair at Cambridge University.

0:38:51 – (Alister McGrath): So he recovered from that. But I think he may have misjudged the academic politics of his day at Oxford in the 1940s.

0:38:59 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah, part of the thesis of my book is that the 1930s were essential in the ability for Churchill and Lewis to find their voice in the 1940s because both of them were cutting so far against the grain, Great Britain simply was not ready for the conflict that they were going to face in the 1940s. But Lewis and Churchill were preparing themselves in their very different ways to be key figures in that, but precisely because they were doing, in many ways the opposite, or because they were in the wilderness in different ways during those years. And of course, both of them still had close colleagues even as Lewis’s faith was emerging and developing and as he becomes a public figure, of course, he has the inklings along with him during that time, which is why people go back so often to those special friendships.

0:39:53 – (Collin Hansen): Let’s talk about Way to Glory. You mentioned earlier a significant message that Lewis had written that really shaped so much of your conversion. Way to Glory is one of those. June 8, 1941. In my book, I’m looking at the context there. Not that Lewis would have been especially mindful of those things. But you have then the invasion of the Soviet Union. You have that also. Almost immediately following the worst night of the Blitz.

0:40:22 – (Collin Hansen): Lewis was famously disdainful of newspapers. That comes out in the Screwtape Letters early on, even though he published the Screwtape Letters in the Guardian Anglican newspaper. What is it about the context that helps to shape the Way to Glory as such a timeless and powerful lecture?

0:40:43 – (Alister McGrath): Well, you’re right, it is very, very special. And it’s one of the things I keep going back to. I have to say it’s one of my favorite works by Lewis. I think it’s partly because of the quality of the argumentation, the attractiveness of the way he leads me through these things, and also the sheer fact it’s written during the Second World War. And there are points, you can see connections. But really, Lewis is, in effect, raising people’s thoughts upon from not just can we survive this physically, but can we flourish spiritually?

0:41:19 – (Alister McGrath): And in this, Lewis really is bringing out what we need to do as people to become what God wants us to be, to achieve that greater vision of things which really enables us to flourish as human beings. It’s one of my favorite works by him. I think that I often wonder what would the audience on that evening have made of this? I just don’t know. But Lewis was a very good public speaker and I’m sure that he carried them along. Even though it’s a long lecture, I think that they were able to follow the steps. And happily, it was published soon afterwards, so you could read it through.

0:41:56 – (Alister McGrath): But for me, it’s a remarkable lecture because he uses very, very ordinary illustrations, use some beautiful turns of phrase to lead you from simple things like how do I learn Italian or something like that, to, in effect, a deeper understanding of who we are. And I think for me, my favorite bit is this glorious realization There’s a door. There’s a door into a greater picture of reality. There’s a door into who we are really meant to be as human beings, and we’re going to get in there.

0:42:31 – (Alister McGrath): It’s a message of hope which lures Dangles in front of his audience. But it’s so powerful that I just feel overwhelmed when I read that.

0:42:39 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah, speaking of being overwhelmed, I wanted to share this with you. I was looking through the third installment of Mere Christianity lectures and I ran into the back to back broadcasts, I should say back to back broadcasts on marriage and then on forgiveness and of course in marriage. He says the Christian teaching on sexuality is the hardest thing for the world to be able to confront. But then you’ll probably recall that in the next one he turns around and says, you know, I’m not sure I was right about that because there’s only one aspect of Christianity that I’m aware of that makes people absolutely angry, and that’s forgiveness.

0:43:24 – (Collin Hansen): And he talks a little bit bit further and then he says, can you imagine being a Jew or a Pole forgiving the Gestapo? And of course, I had read this before, but I went back to see what night did he broadcast this. And I just had not put two and two together. 1942. It’s in the immediate aftermath of a Royal Albert hall protest led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Catholic Church in Great Britain, as well as the head of the Free Church, organized by a Jewish council. Winston Churchill sends letter.

0:43:58 – (Collin Hansen): It’s at the end of the three months of the height of the Holocaust. Two million of the six million Jews have been killed in the preceding three months. And I thought, now I’m seeing this totally differently now. He wouldn’t have known all that, but there were things that were swirling at the time, but what seeing it in the context does is you see what he’s doing as an apologist, as in a teacher. He’s grabbing from this incredibly heightened sense of reality and pointing people to and guiding people to the critical questions and then pointing them to what hope looks like and beyond.

0:44:38 – (Collin Hansen): Am I on the right track there? That’s what I’m finding, at least as I go back through these.

0:44:43 – (Alister McGrath): Well, that’s very interesting. I had not made that connection myself and I’m very glad you’ve told me about it because I’ll follow through on that. But. But if you’re right, that actually really helps us to understand why Lewis felt he had to say forgiveness is so difficult because so often it’s trite. I forgive You. But when you look at the harsh reality, I mean, it’s very, very difficult to forgive things like that.

0:45:08 – (Alister McGrath): And that’s why, for me, it makes me look at God and say, well, you managed to do that. And somehow I’ve got to try and be like that. Even though I don’t feel like forgiving this, I realized there’s something deeper here. I think Lewis is then making a very powerful point in doing so, but I just wasn’t aware of that context. That’s really helpful.

0:45:29 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah, I’ll send you the chapter afterwards. We can talk about it. But that’s what I. I’ve been undertaking this exercise thinking I did not know any of these connections. I didn’t look at these. In fact, I’ll. I’ll end on this question. So there is no archive in the United States of the Guardian newspaper, of course, the Anglican newspaper that Lewis published with. And he jokes later about how it’s out of print, and he hopes that it wasn’t his fault that it went out of print.

0:45:59 – (Collin Hansen): There’s no archive in the United States. So I had to work with a place that digitizes and they were digitizing the Lambeth archives of the Guardian. And of course, what I’m doing there is to go back to find the Screwtape letters more than anything else. You have Great Divorce in there. Then you had the Screwtape letters I’m writing currently on Great Divorce, but looking there, I wanted you to comment on this.

0:46:22 – (Collin Hansen): It makes this format of the Screwtape letters, it’s often imitated, never duplicated. It makes sense. We look back and we say it makes sense. He’d write about the demonic world amid a world war and the evil Nazis. But it’s not actually the approach that he takes. He says the war is a distraction from the real battle. Real battle is, is this spiritual, this cosmic warfare There help explain for us the continuing relevance of the Screwtape letter is clearly one of Lewis most popular works.

0:46:53 – (Alister McGrath): Well, I think it continues to be relevant for I think, many reasons. One is the humor is really, really engaging. It shows that Lewis is able to use humor very often to make points that otherwise might be difficult. Humor is a way of creating gateways to the soul, if you like. It breaks down barriers, makes easier to say difficult things. And Lewis is very, very good at doing this. For example, his description of a typical British congregation of very, very ordinary people. You know, I mean, what Lewis is saying is, you know, Christians aren’t special. If there’s anything special about them, it’s what God has made them. And I really like the way he does that.

0:47:31 – (Alister McGrath): I think the other thing which I really appreciate is the way he almost like inverts the traditional framework for thinking about how do you, how do you be a good Christian? You try and imagine somebody who’s trying to stop you being a Christian at all. And again, I appreciate that very much. But again, we do need to remember the Second World War context for this. And I think that one of the things that Lewis is really doing is to try and try and help people to see that actually there are some rather dark aspects to human nature which we are becoming aware of through the war.

0:48:02 – (Alister McGrath): And maybe that means that we’re not quite as good as we think we are. But the thing, this is something slightly different. I have to say that the thing that I take away from the writing of the screwtape letters, and this doesn’t speak very well about me, is as far as I can see, Lewis got the idea for this during a rather boring sermon. And. Now I suspect some of my sermons may have been rather boring as well. And so my hope is that maybe it inspires people to have great thoughts like that one that got Lewis’s screw tape letters out.

0:48:37 – (Collin Hansen): The way the Lord can use any means.

0:48:40 – (Alister McGrath): Exactly, Exactly.

0:48:44 – (Collin Hansen): Well, Alistair McGrath, you have been a wonderful guest. Again, you can see why everybody can see and hear why so many people love to hear you lecture, love to read your writing. There’s so much of that verve and vigor in your own storytelling and storytelling. Apologetics is such a big part of what you’ve done, and you’ve been an inspiration to us at the Keller center with cultural apologetics and engaging with cultural narratives. So thanks for your encouragement. Thanks for your support. Thanks again just personally for the way that you’ve inspired me, the way you’ve instructed me, and just the example that you’ve set. Just wanted to say thank you to that and thanks for joining me on this episode of Gospel Bound.

0:49:25 – (Alister McGrath): Well, thank you for a wonderful discussion and I love what you’re doing. Please keep doing it. And thank you again.

0:49:38 – (Collin Hansen): Thanks for listening to this episode of Gospel Bound. For more interviews and to sign up for my newsletter, head over to tgc.org gospelbound rate and review gospel Bound on your favorite podcast platform so others can join the conversation. Until next time, Remember, remember, when we’re bound to the gospel, we abound in hope.