Reflections on God … Man … Life
On this day fifty-seven years ago, C. S. Lewis died. As many have noted since, his death went relatively unnoticed at the time due to the tragic assassination of President Kennedy that same day. Yet, I ask, which of those two lives had more influence for the Kingdom of God? Which man, through his words and example, has led more people to seriously consider spiritual realities? Walter Hooper first met Lewis in the summer of 1963. They had corresponded over… Read more »
C. S. Lewis gave the Memorial Lecture at King’s College, the University of London, in 1944. It has come down to us in the form of one of his famous essays, “The Inner Ring.” It’s one of my favorites, as it identifies the rather slippery slope from being part of a group to the insatiable desire to belong to the group so that you can feel like you are one of the elite, one of the few chosen who are… Read more »
We’re at the point in my C. S. Lewis course where I am giving the students The Abolition of Man. It’s a harder read than most of what I give them from Lewis, but I’ve never seriously considered dropping it from the course. It’s just too important, and the concepts within it are so significant to their worldview that I believe I would be doing a disservice to avoid it. I do, though, make sure I give it enough time… Read more »
This past week in my C. S. Lewis course, we have been discussing The Screwtape Letters. Every time I return to these letters, I see greater depth than before, and for some of my students, this is their first foray into the infernal world Lewis created to highlight Christian truth in an unusual way. The letters themselves obviously are the focus as we discuss, but I started by reading to them from his preface to the 1961 edition, which came… Read more »
One of my pet peeves is the phrase about being “on the right side of history.” Its corollary is to avoid being “on the wrong side of history.” Both posit an untruth, one that I labor to show students in my classes: these phrases assume an inevitability. They push us to believe that history is something that has a mind of its own and is going down a preordained path—and you had better get on that path or be swept… Read more »
A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another. John 13:34-35 I am a person with strong views, both theologically and with respect to history and government (my specialized field of study). It’s hard sometimes being a person who holds to strong views because whenever you come across contrary views, the temptation is… Read more »
For the fifth time since my 2014-15 sabbatical and the writing of my C. S. Lewis book, I’ll be teaching the course this fall that I developed out of that sabbatical: “C. S. Lewis: History and Influence.” It was a joy to teach this course the first four times, and I don’t expect it to be otherwise this time. Since I’m a history professor, not English literature, the course has a strong historical component as we work through a number… Read more »