Reflections on God … Man … Life
While researching my latest C. S. Lewis book, Many Times & Many Places: C. S. Lewis & the Value of History, I had the opportunity to take advantage of the Wade Center’s collection of books that Lewis himself owned and read. So, in the process of working on the book that was published in 2023, I also realized that the research I was doing for it would make for a good journal article. I’m more than pleased that the Wade… Read more »
I’m currently teaching my university course on C. S. Lewis. We have traversed the Lewis universe by reading Surprised by Joy, Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and his superb sermon/essay, “Learning in War-time.” We are now deeply embroiled in the third installment of his Ransom Trilogy, That Hideous Strength. Coming attractions: The Last Battle, A Grief Observed, and Lewis’s greatest—in my estimation—sermon/essay of all, “The Weight of Glory.” I wish I could have given them even more;… Read more »
Rev. T. R. Milford, rector of Oxford’s University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, wanted an authority to speak on the importance of continued education in a national crisis. That crisis was the Second World War, which Britain entered in September 1939 after the Nazi invasion of Poland. Why was this topic on the rector’s mind? Some would undoubtedly question—and perhaps some already were questioning—why a university such as Oxford should continue to prioritize academics at a time when all… Read more »
I chose the title “Pondering Principles” for my website because I believe that we are called by God to be principled people. I’ve taught hundreds of students the distinction between being principled and being pragmatic. Definitions are essential. Here’s how I have explained what it means to be principled. Principles are what I would call the “big truths” out of which other truths naturally should flow. Truth must be our foundation for all things, and we must not give only… Read more »
I’ve written previously about C. S. Lewis’s appreciation of Dorothy L. Sayers’s works. He was particularly enthused by her new translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. When he first learned she was undertaking that task, he remarked in a letter to her, “I expect I shall find you loud pedaling the comic element more than I approve, but it is much better to have your Dante as your Dante than to have a compromise between it and some one else’s. That’s… Read more »
Ever since my research and writing focus changed to C. S. Lewis during my university sabbatical in 2014-2015, I was hoping for opportunities to teach about this man who has impacted my thinking and life goals so directly. Beginning in 2018, that desire found an outlet at the church where I now worship–All Saints’ Episcopal in Lakeland, Florida. The church has a robust educational ministry [known as Parish Academy], and I have found my place in that ministry. While my… Read more »
This is will be my third and final look at connections I see between C. S. Lewis’s thoughts and what Dorothy L. Sayers wrote in her valuable work, The Mind of the Maker. Chapter eight is appropriately entitled “Pentecost,” as it focuses on the power of words to move men. Lewis was a dedicated wordsmith who knew that the right words used at the right time in just the right way, could spark the imagination and jumpstart the mind. Sayers… Read more »