Tag: Lewis

Two Errors: Privatizing & Collectivizing the Faith

  

“No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as ‘what a man does with his solitude,” began C. S. Lewis in his “Membership” essay. “It was one of the Wesleys, I think, who said that the New Testament knows nothing of solitary religion.” Why is that? “The Church is the Bride of Christ. We are members of one another.” Lewis continues by pointing out that modern society tries its best to confine religious beliefs and… Read more »

Many False Routes to the Only Well

  

“It is not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God demands,” wrote C. S. Lewis in the essay, “A Slip of the Tongue.” But he went further: “It is not even all our time and all our attention.” What else could there be? “It is our selves.” That’s one step deeper. You see, we can assiduously carry out our spiritual “responsibilities,” but even all of those, carefully observed, might be little more than external… Read more »

Lewis: Knowing the Past for the Sake of the Present

  

Politics. Is there anyone else besides me who wishes he/she could turn it off for a while? I’m a professor of American history, though, so it’s important for me to keep up with political developments and provide analysis—for my students, of course, but I also feel a responsibility to help others understand the principles we need to follow. There is a temptation, though, to be so immersed in politics that one sees it as all-consuming. C. S. Lewis recognized that… Read more »

C. S. Lewis Loses His Joy

  

On this day, July 13, 1960, C. S. Lewis lost his wife, Joy, to cancer. It was a devastating loss for him; their very short marriage he considered the apex of his life. Here’s how I wrote about it in my book, America Discovers C. S. Lewis: His Profound Impact: “The blow has fallen,” Lewis informed [his friend Chad] Walsh in October 1959. News that Joy’s cancer had returned was a shock. Prior to receiving this bad news, they had… Read more »

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 »