Tag: Lewis

Why Read Old Books? C. S. Lewis Tells Us Why

  

“Every age has its own outlook,” C. S. Lewis instructed. “It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes.” Amen to that. “We all, therefore,” he continued, “need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.” Was Lewis saying that only old books are worthwhile? Was he so anti-modern that he believed nothing written in the last century could conceivably offer us wisdom? After… Read more »

On Venomous Discourse: A Lewis Caution

  

I just finished reading C. S. Lewis’s Studies in Words, which I found fascinating and sometimes confusing simultaneously. The latter was due more to my lack of knowledge of various languages, but the former was good enough to keep me going to the end. When I got to the last chapter, I was struck by how Lewis’s last few paragraphs dealt with what we are experiencing currently in our nation’s politics. Lewis, of course, was not thinking of politics when… Read more »

Lewis Conference Nuggets

  

The C. S. Lewis conference I attended last week, sponsored by the C. S. Lewis Institute (CSLI) and held at Wheaton College’s Marion E. Wade Center, was a thoughtful, challenging event. The theme was how to communicate the Gospel with guidance from the writings of Lewis that show how he did it. I hadn’t been back to the Wade Center since 2014, when I first investigated whether anyone had written extensively on Lewis’s contacts with Americans and why America was… Read more »

Back at the Wade Center: Focusing on God’s Love

  

It’s nice to be back at the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College for a C. S. Lewis conference this week. Because of that, I didn’t intend to write any blogs for the week, but the instruction has been so invigorating that I would like to share a little bit of what we’re receiving here. It’s been four years since I came here to investigate Lewis’s connection to Americans, an investigation that led to my book, America Discovers C…. Read more »

Lewis & Sayers Wordsmithing: The Mind of the Maker (Part 3)

  

Dorothy Sayers’s The Mind of the Maker, as I’ve pointed out in two previous posts, has a lot in common with how C. S. Lewis thought. Here are two more examples of why Lewis liked what Sayers had to say. Sayers focused 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 »

Great Minds Think Alike: The Mind of the Maker (Part 2)

  

In my previous C. S. Lewis-centered post, I lauded Dorothy Sayers’s book The Mind of the Maker, which I had intended only to peruse for overarching themes but wound up instead reading every word (even to the point of using it as part of my morning devotions) because I loved the writing so much. It was a Lewis-centered post due to my emphasis on why Lewis appreciated her writing style and substance. I’d like to continue that analysis today. Sayers’s… Read more »

Lewis on Sayers’s “The Mind of the Maker” (Part One)

  

In a previous post, I wrote about why C. S. Lewis liked the writings of Dorothy Sayers, and I focused on her radio plays The Man Born to Be King, which she turned into a book. There was another Sayers book that Lewis read prior to that one: The Mind of the Maker. It was published in 1941; Lewis wrote a short review of it in the journal Theology. He introduces the theme immediately: “The purpose of this book is… Read more »