How many “old” people have said, “I can’t believe so many years have passed”? While I continue to harbor the illusion that I’m not really old, when one realizes that one has been married for 50 years, it can be a stunning epiphany. It definitely called for a celebration, especially considering how fragile marriage has become in our society. A friend who I’m sure wishes to remain anonymous to the world at large offered us a gift we couldn’t refuse:… Read more »
I’m currently working on a video series for my church (which will eventually go worldwide via YouTube) on world religions. As I survey the various belief systems—and end with the Christian faith, of course—I hope the audience will excuse me for quoting C. S. Lewis continually throughout the series. He just has so many relevant comments that I find it hard to omit some of them. For instance, the first religious system I examine is paganism. Lewis’s views on that… Read more »
What does the title of this blog post mean? It sounds kind of contradictory, doesn’t it? Yet it expresses what is happening in my thinking and reflections on God, man, the church, our society, and the political ramifications that flow from our beliefs about all of those. If you have been a regular reader of my blog over the years, you probably already know some of the thought processes I’ve been experiencing, especially in the last six or seven years…. Read more »
I’ve waited many years for the opportunity to say that Roe v. Wade is no longer the law of the land. That day has finally come via the Dobbs Supreme Court decision last Friday that overturned Roe. We are now, thankfully, a post-Roe nation. Wonderful as that is, it does not mean we are a post-abortion nation. What the Court did was correctly conclude that Roe was constitutionally unsound. There is no right to abortion in the Constitution—not explicitly, not… Read more »
This week I received the happy news that the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College has awarded me the Clyde S. Kilby Research Grant for 2022. As explained on the Wade’s website, “In 1982, the Clyde S. Kilby Research Grant was established by Wheaton College’s class of 1939 in honor of their former professor and faculty class sponsor. This endowed award is presented annually by the Board of the Marion E. Wade Center to a scholar engaged in a… Read more »
That Hideous Strength is a complex book. It’s not merely one story-line that carries through the work: there are many such lines, along with many themes that C. S. Lewis wanted to implant in his readers’ minds. One such theme is the lure of the “inner ring.” Mark Studdock, the academic who longs for acceptance into what he considers the “real” power group in his college and at the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments—the N.I.C.E.—is a prime example of how… Read more »
I have been working consistently—and joyfully, I might add—on my course on C. S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy. As I prepared to tackle the longest, most intricate, and, in my view, the best book of the series, That Hideous Strength, I had to be sure that those taking the course have a grounding in the philosophy Lewis was exposing in the novel. Thus, an overview of The Abolition of Man was essential before delving into the final book. As Lewis himself… Read more »