Calvin College - Interim 2009  

 

Developing a Christian Mind (Intellect, Feelings, Will and Heart)

CS Lewis: Integrating Reason, Imagination and Faith

IDIS-150-37

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought...” Rom. 12:2-3

"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date"


Instructors:
Paulo F Ribeiro, PhD, MBA and Adriana Schalkwijk Ribeiro, MD , MPH

 

Links

Dynamic Schedule - Syllabus

Developing a Christian Mind: Integration, by Rev. F.L Schalkwijk (adpated by Adriana Schalkwijk RIbeiro)

Creation / Cultural Mandate - - - - - - -Fall - - - - - - Redemption - - - - - Vocation

 

Student Blogs - An Educational Experiment

(Wrestling and Exploring with a Christian Worldview on the WWW)

 

= "You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content." — C.S. Lewis (Prince Caspian)

 

received a vote for a blog which was inspiring, provocative, artisitc, thoughtful or prolific.

 

DCM Level of Learning - Students Response

(Survey by SurveyGizmo)

 

chart

 

" . . . somehow what he thought about everything was secretly present in what he said about anything."

Owen Barfield when describing Lewis's writing style and attractiveness:

 

Lewis Premise:

The imagination when kindled by a beam of sacramental longing, encounters holiness.

 

Sample of Reading Assignments

 

Bulverism - - - - Our English Syllabus - - - The Sermon and the Lunch - - - The Four Loves: Affection, Friendship, Eros and Agape

We Have No Right to Hapiness - - - Poison of Subjectivism - - - The Abolition of Man - - - Engaging God's World

God in the Dock - - - Meditation in Toolshed - - - The Inner Ring - - - Evil and God - - - Christianity and Culture
Religion: Reality of Substitute - - - The Decline of Religion - - - Myth Became Fact - - - The Fall of Man - - - Human Pain
Man or Rabbit? - - - Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism - - - On Three Ways of Writing for Children - - - On Science Fiction
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe - - - The Four Loves - - - The Weight of Glory - - - Learning in War-Time - - - The Inner Ring

Mere Christianity - - - Heaven Is Not My Home - - - Engaging in God's World - - - Screwtape Letters, etc - - - Shawdowlands.

 

The Logical Song

Eleanor Rigby

Bridge Over Troubled Waters

 

Narnia by Jack

Shawdowlands

As The Ruins Fall

C.S. Lewis

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you
I've never had a selfless thought since I was born
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through
I want God, you, all friends merely to serve my turn

Peace, reassurance, pleasures are the goals I seek
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin
I talk of love, a scholar's parrot may talk Greek
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin

Only that now you have taught me, but how late my lack,
I see the chasm and everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge, by which I might get back
From exile and grow man; and now the bridge is breaking

For this I bless you as the ruin falls; the pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

 

Final Project Presentations

Class Pictures

"He took in more, he felt more, he remember more, he invented more … His writings record an intense awareness, a vigorous reaction, a taking of the world into his heart … His blacks and whites of good and evil and his ecstasies and miseries were the tokens of a capacity for experience beyond our scope." Austin Farrer on C.S. Lewis

“There was one candle on the coffin as it was carried out into the churchyard.  It seemed not only appropriate but also a symbol of the man and his integrity and absoluteness and his faith that the flame burned so steadily, even in an open air, and seemed so bright, even in the bright sun.”
Peter Bailey at Lewis’s funeral