Last year’s major teaching project was the Ransom Trilogy. I’m now embarking on another one for the coming fall semester for my church’s Parish Academy program. I have no title for it yet, but the substance is set: an examination of key authors in C. S. Lewis’s life and circle. They are George MacDonald, G. K. Chesterton, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Dorothy L. Sayers. Lewis knew two of these writers by their works only; the other two he knew… Read more »
While I have known for many years that C. S. Lewis died on this day, November 22, back in 1963, I only just today found out that the Episcopal Church in 2003 created a Feast of Clive Staples Lewis for this day. The Collect for the day reads as follows: “O God of searing truth and surpassing beauty, we give you thanks for Clive Staples Lewis, whose sanctified imagination lit fires of faith in young and old alike. Surprise us… Read more »
One of Lewis’s comments in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, came to mind recently as I thought about the path my own life has taken. Lewis was an intensely rational person, a trait drilled into him by his tutor, William Kirkpatrick. At the same time, he was a person who reveled in imaginative works of literature. At various times in his life, one or the other would come to the forefront. There was a time, though, as a young man… Read more »
I have just this week completed teaching Out of the Silent Planet to a dedicated small group in person at my church while a larger number watch on Zoom, and a much larger number than the first two groups watch the video later. It’s a privilege that I don’t take for granted. Now that I have finished that book and will enter into Perelandra next, I would like to take a few moments to note that one of the benefits… Read more »
This is a very interesting and productive time in my life. Normally, that isn’t the case for someone who has passed the 70 mark, but I don’t know when I’ve felt more in tune with what the Lord has me doing. And a lot of that centers around C. S. Lewis. At the university where I taught full-time for thirteen years and now serve as an adjunct professor, I’m teaching my Lewis course to twenty-one students. Most of these students,… Read more »
In my quest to write a book about C. S. Lewis’s views on history, I’ve laid out potential chapters for the proposed book. The very first chapter, I believe, needs to establish Lewis’s credentials as someone whose views on history should be taken seriously. Some, I know, would say that since he primarily taught English literature that this might be a hill too steep to climb. Yet, as a historian myself, I know quite well that history and literature are… Read more »
When I was 25, I pretty much knew everything. If you didn’t think so, all you had to do was ask me. Theology, for instance, was all figured out. No need to revisit that. Yet, in the years that followed, I came to the realization that I had a lot to learn. Let me offer a few examples of the rethinking I have had to do. As a young and budding historian, beginning my studies toward a doctorate, I came… Read more »