Tag: Lewis

Lewis & the Omnicompetent State (Part 1)

  

C. S. Lewis often protested that he had no interest in or taste for politics. What he really meant by that was the type of politics he imbibed growing up in a Belfast suburb, listening to his father discuss with friends the nature of the local and national politics of his Irish/English homeland. Was it the pettiness that turned him against political discussion or the boredom he suffered from those overheard conversations? Whatever the cause, he normally abhorred purely political… Read more »

The Lewis Retreat

  

What does one do at a C. S Lewis Foundation retreat? One makes new acquaintances that one hopes will become good friends over time. One is immersed in a world of learning, love, and God’s presence. One wants to go back to every future Foundation event, if at all possible. An air of informality infused with a rare combination of seriousness and humor pervaded these four days. I sat down at table with new people at every meal, learning something… Read more »

Lewis: False Presuppositions of the Modern Mind

  

One of the essays I had my students read this semester in my C. S. Lewis course was “Modern Man and His Categories of Thought.” It’s probably one of Lewis’s most overlooked essays. The first time I read it, I wanted to be sure students were exposed to it. In it, Lewis takes aim at the presuppositions that modern men take for granted and then shows why they have accepted unsound reasoning. Modern men have assumed, without thinking it through… Read more »

The Poetic Prose of Whittaker Chambers

  

I arrived in Texas yesterday for the C. S. Lewis Foundation Retreat. Most of the attendees won’t be here until later today. I’m early because I’m taking part in the Academic Roundtable that is held prior to the main events. Already I’ve met some very nice people (this is my first Lewis function, so I don’t really know anyone) and last evening I attended what is called the “Bag End Cafe,” a nod to Lewis’s friend, J.R.R. Tolkien. Everyone was… Read more »

Lewis: A Warning about Nature Worship

  

In The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis issues a warning about love of nature. It’s not that nature is a bad thing; contemplation of nature might lead us to contemplation of the One behind nature. However, we must not be led astray. When we look at nature, we are not seeing God but merely an image of His glory. Here is where Lewis offers a warning: We must not try to find a direct path through it [nature] and beyond… Read more »

Lewis: Nature Is Our Sister, Not Our Source

  

C. S. Lewis, in a number of his works, both books and essays, comments on the nature of Nature. Some people, he says, think that Nature is all there is, and that we simply spring out of this mechanistic, impersonal “thing.” Yet, as he reminds his readers continually, how can one even trust that conclusion if one’s own reasoning ability comes from this mechanistic, impersonal source? In an essay called “On Living in an Atomic Age,” he writes, If Nature… Read more »

The Smiley Face of Totalitarian Experts: A Hideous Strength

  

My C. S. Lewis course is now concentrating on Lewis’s deep concern over the direction he saw society going during WWII and what he feared would happen in the future: a totalitarian government ruled by scientists, psychologists, sociologists, educationalists, and other “experts” who would tell everyone what to do. This concern revealed itself in his essay, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” was more fully explicated in The Abolition of Man, and then put in story form through That Hideous Strength…. Read more »