Month: September 2018

The Only Question That Really Matters: Lewis’s Final Interview

  

The final interview C. S. Lewis gave was with Sherwood Wirt of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Wirt spoke with him at Cambridge University in May of 1963, just six months before Lewis died. I was re-reading that interview this morning and found it enlightening as to Lewis’s thoughts during that final stage of his life—although, of course, he didn’t realize he was in the final stage. At first, Wirt was interested in drawing out Lewis on the type of… Read more »

Prophet? Priest? Both?

  

As a Christian, what am I supposed to be when commenting on politics? Am I to be the prophetic voice, warning against the dangers of voting wrongly and following wrong policies? Am I to be the compassionate voice that draws people to God by staying away from controversy? Is it possible to be so prophetic in one’s approach that people are turned away from the truth? Likewise, is it possible to be so open and compassionate toward those with differing… Read more »

Lewis the Translator of Christian Truth

  

C. S. Lewis’s writings have been credited with leading many to the Christian faith and with strengthening the faith of countless others. He assumed the mantle of apologist and evangelist primarily because he saw a decided lack of intelligent explainers of Christian truths. Yet he was criticized by some. Oxford colleagues were miffed that he was stepping out of his academic field to write about Christianity, which is one reason why he was denied promotion during his tenure there. Another… Read more »

Not Even a Pretense of Civility

  

David French has an excellent article posted today in National Review detailing the unseriousness of Democrat opposition to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The teaser at the top reads: The sordid spectacle that opened Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings put the lie to left-wing laments about the decline of civility in American politics. I agree with the basic premise that civility is in decline—one might legitimately call it a “collapse”—and that we are at a point where reasoned discourse is virtually… Read more »

Political Saviors & Benevolent Government

  

Sometimes being a history professor is painful, in the sense that one has such an overview of what has happened before that it becomes painful to watch us repeat the same old follies. I communicate that to history majors with this cartoon: What ancient folly are we currently experiencing? Of course, it’s worked so well wherever it has been tried: And now, in the person of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrats have their new “star.” This happens periodically, whenever either party thinks… Read more »

Something in Us Which Is Not Temporal

  

Sheldon Vanauken was an American who went to Oxford in the early 1950s to study literature. He considered himself an agnostic. Although C. S. Lewis was not one of his tutors, he happened to read Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy—Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. Sensing in Lewis someone he might approach with his religious questions, he began sending him letters. Explaining that he had “embarked” on a “voyage that would someday lead me to God,” he was… Read more »