C.S. Lewis

The Weekly Wrap: January 18-24

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The Weekly Wrap: January 18-24

The Next C. S. Lewis?

No, this is not an announcement. Rather, I’ve encountered a few writers of late who have aspirations to write the next Mere Christianity (one even admitted it). And it is a discussion item that comes up periodically in Christian circles. It’s been nearly one hundred years since Lewis began writing and I cannot think of a single figure who was an educated public spokesperson for the Christian faith. The closest to come to this in my mind was the late pastor, Timothy Keller. He spoke publicly and winsomely about his faith. And his books enjoyed a circulation beyond Christian circles.

Keller underscores why so many of these Lewis-wannabes have a hard time achieving this status, if it even ought to be sought. Lewis, through his wartime broadcasts came to the notice of a public hungering for spiritual substance. Keller, based in New York gained access to media that gave him something of a similar platform. These days, especially in our diverse and Balkanized media, that kind of wide recognition is increasingly difficult. In addition, Lewis as an academic who read widely and deeply and remembered everything had an incredible store on which to draw in writing and speaking.

However, Lewis paid professionally for his public influence. Despite first-rate scholarly writing, he was not considered “serious” and only was granted the equivalent of tenure late in his academic career. Someone aspiring to the work of a “public intellectual” needs to be willing to jettison hopes for academic accolades.

Finally, I wonder if our different time requires something different. I have no idea what that is. However, I expect that if someone emerges who may someday be described as the “C.S. Lewis of our time,” it won’t be because they were trying to be like C.S. Lewis in up to date garb. More likely, I suspect it will be a person or persons who is simply faithful to their calling with their particular training, talents, and situation in life. And I suspect that the only one they will have been trying to be like is Jesus.

Five Articles Worth Reading

As I write, a winter storm is barreling toward us that most are saying it is the largest snowfall in at least five years. We’ll see. But for readers, “snow days” are reading days. And just in time for that, Calum Marsh has recommendations of “10 Long Books for Long Winter Nights.”

I thought Mark Carney’s speech at the Davos World Economic Summit was an epoch-defining speech, particular in light of the turn in foreign policy of the United States. If you haven’t heard the full speech or read a transcript you can listen to or “Read Mark Carney’s full speech on middle powers navigating a rapidly changing world.” The speech clocks in at under seventeen minutes.

I’ve long maintained that when people ban books or governments restrict what books can be read, they send a message that reading is undesirable. This seems to me something we don’t want to do in an age when reading is declining (unless we don’t want people to read). It turns out that research supports this contention. Teens read more when they can freely choose, according to “The Generational Impact of Book Bans on Teens: Book Censorship News, January 23, 2026.”

“I am lovable and capable.” This was a mantra for a generation of children. Todd Shy, a headmaster, challenges the focus on “You” in progressive education. He suggests that a focus on “Not You” might be far more important in “You and Not You.”

Finally, Bonnie Tsui explores why so many writers are athletes, or at least exercise regularly in “Why So Many Writers Are Athletes.” It turns out there is a connection between movement and creativity. Maybe that’s why our instructor in an art class this fall always began classes by having us get up and dance or at least move to music.

Quote of the Week

Poet Derek Walcott was born January 23, 1930. He remarked:

“If music goes out of language, then you are in bad trouble.”

I wonder if we are in bad trouble, given the coarseness of our public discourse.

Miscellaneous Musings

Want to learn a new language? Have you considered Akkadian? In 2011 University of Chicago scholars completed a 21-volume dictionary of Akkadian, our oldest written language. Now that dictionary is available as a free download as a ,pdf document. Open Culture offers this information in this article: “Dictionary of the Oldest Written Language–It Took 90 Years to Complete, and It’s Now Free Online.” There is also a link to listen to the Epic of Gilgamesh read in Akkadian. There’s something for your winter evenings!

However, I won’t be doing that anytime soon. My big book for winter is Israel’s Scriptures in early Christian Writings which comes in at 1166 pages. One thing that makes it easier is that each chapter includes a lengthy bibliography. If I read 50 pages a day, I can count on 12-15 pages to be bibliography, which I just skim.

I came across an article that was an excerpt of a book by Josiah Hesse titled On Fire For God. Drawing on both personal history and cultural analysis, he traces how the Jesus Movement of the 1970’s morphed into the Religious Right. That caught my attention as a product of that movement and still religious, but not part of the Religious Right. As a side note, I wrote the publicist for the book upon seeing the article at the beginning of this week, requesting a copy. It landed on my doorstep Thursday. Very impressed with the folks at Pantheon Books!

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Norman Lock, Eden’s Clock

Tuesday: Terence Lester, PhD, From Dropout to Doctorate

Wednesday: Gerhard Lohfink, Jesus and Community

Thursday: Jason Jensen, Formed to Lead

Friday: Beth Macy, Paper Girl

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap  for January 18-24.

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.

The Weekly Wrap: August 10-16

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The Weekly Wrap: August 10-16

Reading Like Terry Gross

I’m a very different reader than Terry Gross, who has interviewed hundreds of authors on her Fresh Air program. She recently dropped a video on Facebook describing her process. Our biggest difference is that she destroys her books and I don’t. The video shows a shelf of her books with probably a third of the pages dog-eared. She dog-ears a page with quotes or ideas she wants to remember, which she circles. Gross dog-ears the bottom of pages she wants to use in her introduction. She notes key themes of the book on the frontispiece. I sell many books after she reviews them. She obviously doesn’t.

We do have some things in common. We both read the books we are reviewing or discussing in interviews. I don’t have the luxury of a staff to do this for me, but Gross reads the books herself. I read any book I review beginning to end. And I also pay attention to acknowledgements and prologues. They often set out what the author is trying to do. I’m always thinking as I read–“are they succeeding in their aim?”.

Where we differ is that I may bookmark or use a post-it note for quotes. I keep up a mental dialogue with the plot or argument. Because I re-sell many books, I don’t mark them up. And because I do daily blog posts rather than longer interviews, I try to keep my reviews between 500 and 1000 words. I’d be tempted, I think, to go much longer with Gross’s method.

However, Gross is a master at the craft and it never hurts to learn from a master!

Five Articles Worth Reading

Most of us think of MIT as a center of technology. However, this week’s Atlantic includes an article from a professor, Joshua Bennett, on “Why So Many MIT Students Are Writing Poetry.” And it’s not even for a class!

C.S. Lewis was no fan of existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, whose writing he described as  “walking in sawdust.” Nevertheless, James Como argues that there is a congruency between the two of them in “On His Existential Way.” 

Most of us have lived our whole lives under the shadow of the atom bomb. For example, I was born on the somber anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Thus, on the recent eightieth anniversary of that bombing, Peter Hitchens article, “The Empire of the Atom” seems appropriate.

When you think of road trip books, does Jack Kerouac’s On the Road come to mind? I’ll be honest and say I’m not a fan. Thankfully, there are some other road trip books that are better. Here are “18 Great Road Trip Books That Aren’t ‘On the Road’“.

We bibliophiles are lovers of words. The only thing that could be better is a list of words about bibliophiles. And that’s what we have in “22 Perfect Words About Books and Reading.”

Quote of the Week

I loved this “pungent” insight from poet Robert Southey, born August 12, 1774.

“If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams – the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.”

Miscellaneous Musings

This week, I reviewed a theological memoir by Gerhard Lohfink, a book he completed shortly before his death in 2024. In short, I loved his testimony about his belief in God and how he sought to live his scholarship. As a result, I ordered a couple more of his books, something I reserve for authors I really love.

Terry Gross also mentioned she prefers books under 300 pages, which she thinks is enough for any author to say his or her piece. She notes, interviewers have to sleep too! I laughed, because I had just finished Ron Chernow’s 1000+ page account of Mark Twain. I know he writes really long books, but I think this could have been shorter.

Finally, I’ve been delighting in J.R.R. Tolkien’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. If you ever wanted a crash course in chivalry, it’s all here. He even resists seduction by his host’s wife three times without turning her into “the woman scorned.”

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man

Tuesday: Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

Wednesday: Regin V. Cates, The Real Conversation Jesus Wants Us to Have

Thursday: Ron Chernow, Mark Twain

Friday: Rachel Joy Welcher, Charlie Can’t Sleep!

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for August 10-16!

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page

Review: The Last Romantic

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Cover image of "The Last Romantic" by Jeffrey W. Barbeau

The Last Romantic (Hansen Lectureship Series), Jeffrey W. Barbeau with contributions from Sarah Borden, Matthew Lundin, and Keith L. Johnson. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514010518) 2025.

Summary: The influence of Romanticism on C.S. Lewis in terms of imagination, subjectivity, memory and identity, and the sacraments.

As a young Christian, the logical arguments of Mere Christianity were helpful in confirming me in my own Christian conviction. They also served as a source of “reasons to believe” that i could share with my friends. So I went on to read other works by Lewis including the Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy. These works captured my imagination and evoked both fear and love for the Lion who was on the move. Then I read Surprised by Joy, and how joy served as a signpost for Lewis in his journey to faith.

Jeffrey W. Barbeau helps me understand the subjective experience and Christian imagination I found in Lewis and its connection to the objective, logical arguments Lewis made for the Christian faith. What Barbeau develops in this book, a transcript of three Hansen Lectures, is the influence of nineteenth century Romantics on the thought of C.S. Lewis. He begins, though, with a debate during 1967 at his own institution, Wheaton College. Was Lewis’s thought infused with “the Romantic heresy”? The principles were Clyde Kilby, who obtained Lewis’s papers for Wheaton and introduced many in this country to Lewis, and Morris Inch, who took Lewis’s subjectivity to task.

Studying the marginalia in Lewis’s books, Barbeau traces interaction with Schleiermacher, Hegel, Marx, and Kant. He also shows the profound influence of Wordsworth, and especially Coleridge upon Lewis. While Lewis recognized that subjectivity could mislead, it could also evoke and mirror objective reality and point toward it. He shows how often in Lewis’s work, he begins with the personal to point toward the general, objective truth.

In the second lecture, Barbeau turns to what he calls “the anxiety of memory.” He observes that Lewis, in Surprised by Joy and A Grief Observed, draws on nineteenth century spiritual biography. He parallel’s Lewis to Sarah Eliza Congdon or Elmira, New York and the Journal she kept of her spiritual journey. Lewis didn’t know of Congdon but possessed a copy of John Wesley’s Journal. Again, for Lewis, Wordsworth and Coleridge released him from concerns about the “suffocatingly subjective” character of his own experience. Rather, Coleridge’s ability to connect spiritual intuition with objective theological truth was critical in the lead-up to Lewis’s conversion.

Finally, the third lecture focuses on how Romanticism influenced Lewis use of symbol. He unpacks Lewis’s view of nature, imagination, and of experiences of God. Barbeau shows how Lewis differed with figures like Nietzsche and Emerson, distinguishing nature’s power from nature worship. It is actually in the commonplaces of food and drink, and with our neighbors that we may most deeply encounter God, as in the bread and cup of the sacrament.

A distinctive contribution of Barbeau’s scholarship is his study not only of Lewis’s works but of his library. Lewis’s marginalia points to what he was thinking as he read philosophy, theology, and the works of the Romantics. Not only that, Barbeau retrieves Romanticism from the dustbin of evangelical thought as he elucidates the influence of figures like Coleridge on Lewis. It turns out the personal, the subjective, and the imagination may well point us to objective truth. Both cannot help but be inextricably involved in the Christian journey.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis

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The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis, Jason M. Baxter. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022.

Summary: An exploration of the great medieval writers whose works helped shape the mind and the works of C. S. Lewis.

Many of us who are Inklings lovers have heard the rule C. S. Lewis proposed that “after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in-between.” This was not mere scholarly pontification on the part of Lewis. As Jason Baxter observes, when asked about recommendations, Lewis would turn to a Kempis, Hilton, Theologica Germanica, Lady Julian, Dante, Spenser, Boethius, Milton, and the poet George Herbert. Rudolf Otto was the one relatively contemporary exception. Surprisingly, he read little or nothing of what many of us consider the great modern theological writers like Barth, Brunner, Tillich, or Niebuhr. This was Lewis the medieval scholar, the “third Lewis” lesser know to most of us who know him by his children’s stories and other fiction or his apologetics.

In this work, Jason Baxter contends that this third Lewis, in addition to scripture and ancient mythology, profoundly shaped all that Lewis thought or wrote. Lewis not only devoted himself to medieval scholarship, it was his native land, according to Baxter, and he was determined to bridge the chasm between the medieval and modern worlds, so convinced was he that even as there are things we understand that they did not grasp, there were things they understood that we have lost–and at times, we have slighted them in our understanding. The ancients also understood our smallness in the cosmos even though their models of the spheres were faulty.

He examines the cathedral of Salisbury and the writings of Augustine and Dante to capture the awe with which the ancients viewed the cosmos. It was his “medieval apprenticeship” that trained him that literature enables us to look, not at, but “along the beam” of light. The medieval sense of the world as a symphony reminds us of the chasm that has opened when we see the world, indeed all of life, as a form of machine. He was convinced of the need of a renewed chivalry that combined courage and civility in an age of “flat-chested” beings devoid of moral sentiments.

Baxter explores Lewis’s love of Dante, the wonder and weightiness of the Divine Comedy and the ways he drew upon this as he described the substantial weightiness of heaven in The Great Divorce. In Lewis we find both the apophatic of The Cloud of Unknowing and Otto’s “wholly other” and the incredibly intimate cataphatic of Nicholas of Cusa, captured in Lucy’s encounter with Aslan in Prince Caspian. In the unveiling of the pilgrim in Dante at the end of Purgatoria, we see Lewis’s own understanding of unveiling of our false selves when we stop hiding from God and are converted, portrayed in the concluding scene of Till We Have Faces. The final chapter explores the chasm between modern science and ancient myth and makes explicit that the ancients understood more of the world than we credited. We also discover the sources of Oyarses and the personalities of the planets.

We often say the Old Testament illumines the New. Likewise, the medieval writers and what Lewis gained from them illumine his writing and make our understanding of his works richer. Indeed, reading Baxter inclines me to pull Boethius off the shelf and determine to read all the way through the Divine Comedy, having not read past Inferno. I do have to admit, I’ve read Otto and fail to see Lewis’s attraction. In this case, I might choose Barth instead.

What Baxter also reminds me of regarding Lewis is how his voice stood out from the many clerical voices of his day. I can’t help but wonder if it was that he spoke from a different time, though living in ours, and hence from a different perspective. He brings “Narnian” (or perhaps Boethian) air into our modern, stale atmosphere. It also makes me wonder if so many who seek the mantle of Lewis miss something crucial–the startlingly different worlds of scripture, mythology, and ancient theological and literary figures with whom Lewis lived. He dared to speak from a different time rather than seeking to baptize the present with a veneer of Christianity. Perhaps we might begin, as this book models, with interspersing those old books with our new ones. Today we are encouraged to read diverse books. Lewis reminds us that the greatest diversity may be found in the writers from another time.