Reflections on God … Man … Life
C. S. Lewis is just so quotable. Take this one, for instance, from one of his essays, “The World’s Last Night.” Perfect love, we know, casteth out fear. But so do several other things—ignorance, alcohol, passion, presumption, and stupidity. It is very desirable that we should all advance to that perfection of love in which we shall fear no longer; but it is very undesirable, until we have reached that stage, that we should allow any inferior agent to cast… Read more »
Perhaps one of C. S. Lewis’s most engaging and thought-provoking short pieces is the sermon he gave during WWII called “The Weight of Glory.” There are so many wonderful passages in this sermon that it’s hard to pick out the best one. Here is one, though, that certainly stands out as he writes poignantly of the move from this world to the next. If we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give… Read more »
Another of C. S. Lewis’s regular American correspondents was Mary Van Deusen, someone with whom he shared thoughts on deep theological issues and on current events. One of her chief concerns, in the early 1950s, was the knowledge of how communists had infiltrated the American government. In one response to her, Lewis talked about how that issue showcased one problem with the modern concept of democracy: Your question about Communists-in-government really raises the whole problem of Democracy. If one accepts… Read more »
One of C. S. Lewis’s longtime American correspondents was Vera Gebbert, who had written plays with some success in the 1940s. Their exchange of letters had a personal side throughout the years, as Lewis gave advice on her writing career, a painful divorce, and the raising of a son as a single mother. They also commented on the political/governmental issues of the day. Here’s an excerpt from a chapter in my upcoming Lewis book: In one of his first letters… Read more »
I keep writing my C. S. Lewis book. The chapter I’m currently working on highlights some of the regular American correspondents Lewis had for the last decade and half of his life. Warfield M. Firor was one of those. He was fairly famous as a neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins. A Chair in Surgery has been established there in his name. Firor, after WWII, was not only an admirer of Lewis’s books, but one of his most faithful contributors during the… Read more »
Clyde Kilby was a central figure in ensuring that the works of C. S. Lewis were never forgotten. Kilby is largely responsible for assembling the largest collection of Lewis papers and books by and about him in the U.S. He was director of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College for many years. Kilby corresponded with Lewis and was able to sit down and talk with him face-to-face in July 1953. When he returned to America, he wrote an… Read more »
C. S. Lewis developed friendships with a number of American college and university professors. One of them, Nathan Comfort Starr, visited Lewis three times over a period of fifteen years, and kept up a steady correspondence with him. Like Lewis, he was a Christian traditionalist when it came to education: learn the classics, hold students to a standard of intellectual rigor. Starr was teaching at Rollins College in Florida in the early 1950s when a “progressive” president at the college… Read more »