C. S. Lewis

Review: The Fellowship

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The FellowshipThe Fellowship, Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2015.

Summary: This traces the literary lives of the four principle Inklings (Lewis, Tolkien, Barfield, and Williams) the literary club they formed and its impact on literature, faith, and culture.

This is a magnificent book for any Inklings lover! It serves at one and the same time as a quadruple biography of the four principle Inklings and traces the formation, life and impact of this literary gathering of scholars (all men) and their wider impact on many others, including women like Dorothy L. Sayers.

As biography, it brings to life these four figures as well as biographies I’ve read on any individual Inkling. Lewis has been written on the most, and yet I thought the Zaleskis teased out more about his relationship with Warnie (who submerged his own career to a certain degree for that of his brother, and who in turn was cared for by Lewis as he struggled with alcoholism), as well as Lewis’s relationship with Mrs. Moore. We see Tolkien as a deeply devout Catholic often concerned over the spiritual lives of his sons, and his lifelong struggle to bring forth the tale of Middle Earth. We learn of Owen Barfield’s obsession with anthroposophy, and the often affectionate, sometimes not relationship with Lewis as his most significant sparring partner (he later, for a time, had an influence on the American writer, Saul Bellow). And last, we learn of the mystical romantic Charles Williams, the Oxford University Press editor who wrote “supernatural shockers” and had “interesting” though chaste relationships with a number of women attracted to his romantic vision, and whose early death in 1945 was deeply grieved by Lewis.

We also learn of the formation and inner life of this all-male discussion group. Serious discussions occurred on Thursday evenings, usually in Lewis’s rooms in Oxford. Often these consisted of the reading and critique of works in progress. It was here that Barfield’s works on language, Lewis’s Space Trilogy and Tolkien’s Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring first made the light of day. If it weren’t for the encouragement of this group, as well as Tolkien’s publisher, this latter work may never have been published during Tolkien’s lifetime. More informal conversations took place on Tuesday mornings at the Eagle and Child (the “Bird and Baby” as it was known) and was marked by rollicking male laughter and repartee. It was also fascinating to see the critical role Williams, one of the later to join, had on the vitality of this group. When he died, something died among them as well and the gatherings began to dwindle.

We also have briefer portraits of other Inkling members: theatrical producer and Chaucer scholar Nevill Coghill, biographer Lord David Cecil, poet and scholar Adam Fox, the classicist Colin Hardie, and the scholar, who along with Tolkien labored for Lewis’s return to Christian faith, Hugo Dyson. There are others as well, like novelist John Wain, and those not in the circle, but who contributed and were inspired as well, like Dorothy L. Sayers and Sister Penelope Lawson.

The Zaleskis also explore key episodes in the lives of these different figures. Perhaps most striking was Lewis’s debate with Elizabeth Anscombe. The Zaleskis are more nuanced than some, seeing this both as a serious challenge to Lewis’s ideas on Miracles (he later re-wrote portions in response) and yet not as the utterly devastating setback to his apologetics that turned him to writing children’s stories. They observe that he continued to publish numerous articles on apologetic themes and that the greater concern for Lewis was the effect of apologetic argument on the soul of the apologist.

What was most significant to me was the tale of how this informal gathering sparked literary scholarship, literature in a variety of genre, and for Lewis to a greater extent, and others to a lesser, a Christian intellectual presence at Oxford. This did not so much seem by design, but rather the recognition of these men in each other a vision for such things that they fueled and refined through their weekly discussions. I think of other such groups, like the “Clapham Sect” who gathered around William Wilberforce and brought about both religious renewal and social reforms including the abolition of slavery in early nineteenth century England. What particularly marked the Inklings, it seems to me, was a combination of intellectual rigor and personal affection (sometimes tried and tested) that contributed both significant scholarly work (such as Lewis’s preface to Paradise Lost, or Barfield’s work on language and poetic diction) and works of great popular impact.

This is a book to be savored both by Inklings lovers and a newer generation that may wonder about the world that gave us the likes of Lewis and Tolkien. It is sympathetic without indulging in hagiography. It is real about the shortcomings of the principle Inklings without descending into a hatchet job on their lives. In it we see mere humans (and some mere Christians) whose fellowship birthed an ethos and enduring works that have touched the lives of many.

Review: Reading C. S. Lewis: A Commentary

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Reading C.S. LewisReading C.S. Lewis: A Commentary, Wesley Cort. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016 (review based on pre-publication galley).

Summary: This book provides an undogmatic look at C.S. Lewis, considering the influences upon his life and writing, and a commentary on Lewis’s major Christian works. 

Fans of C.S. Lewis are legion and they have generated a plethora of books on aspects of Lewis’s work. Critics, who, at root, believe Lewis Christianity fatally compromised his work, are also out there. What Wesley Cort tries to do is consider Lewis’s major works from a more neutral perspective, examining the personal and scholarly influences that informed his writing, and giving us a commentary on the major works that made up his Christian writing.

Apart from a Preface that explains his aims, the book is organized around three sections that correspond to what Kort sees are the three major aspects of Lewis’s “project.” The first of these concerned Lewis’s philosophical anthropology and moral theory and includes commentaries on Surprised by Joy, The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, and a concluding chapter titled “Some Reasonable Assumptions”. We see in this Lewis at his reasoned best, but also the role experience and imagination play in his conversion and life, themes Kort repeatedly teases out.

The second part concerns Lewis’s cultural critique of modernity, which includes the Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength), along with his prose work outlining similar ideas, The Abolition of Man. The third part then turns to the working out of Lewis’s ideas as applied principles of moral action, in The Chronicles of Narnia (he considers four of seven of these), and The Four Loves.

Kort interweaves outlines of these texts and their major themes and exploration of the thought currents in Lewis’s time that shaped these works–romanticism, philosophical idealism, the rise of scientism, and an early form of post-modernism, which Lewis presciently anticipated in The Abolition of Man and the Space Trilogy.

It was tempting to want to read Lewis’s works side by side with Kort’s commentary, which is probably the best use of any commentary. I found Kort’s work illuminating in various ways (for example Lewis’s spatial orientation and love of big sprawling houses). The themes he used to group Lewis’s books were interesting as was his delineation of the place of reason, experience, and imagination in Lewis’s writing.

Perhaps for reasons of themes and space he focuses on Lewis’s most popular works. But does this give us the truest reading of Lewis? It seems particularly striking that works like his commentary on the psalms, Letters to Malcolm, and A Grief Observed are excluded, as well as the work Lewis considered his best, Till We Have Faces. Nor do we really have any consideration of Lewis’s scholarly work, and its connection to these more popular works. Perhaps that is too large a “project”.

For the person wanting to know more of Lewis, I would urge reading his work first. Had I read Kort first, I might not have read Lewis. Kort is prosaic where Lewis sparkles. Perhaps this is the danger of all such works, and particularly one striving for a certain distance from adoration or vituperation. Yet perhaps what Kort’s work marks is a critical reappraisal of Lewis, neither adoring or denigrating, but understanding and weighing his ideas both for their impact in his time and our own. No matter what one thinks of Lewis, he occupied a significant place in twentieth century letters and scholarship and as a public intellectual. And perhaps such careful treatment might lead to more balanced assessment by both his fans and critics.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher as an ebook via Netgalley. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

The Month in Reviews: July 2015

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This has been a month of vacationing, of bookstore crawling, and even a trip to Mexico. So squeezing some reading in has been a bit of a challenge. But I finished a couple longish books and a total of nine this month. I read about walking labyrinths, searching for Sunday, pursuing the road to character, dwelling with God, and heeding the warning, “here be dragons”! I considered C. S. Lewis’s view of God, and that of seven American liberals in the 18th to 20th centuries. Along the way, I even managed a literary stay, as it were, at Bertram’s Hotel. Intrigued? I’ll keep you waiting no longer…

Walking the Labyrinth1. Walking the Labyrinth, Travis Scholl. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014. The book consists of a series of reflections over the forty days of Lent intermingling thoughts on the gospel of Mark, life, and the daily walking of a labyrinth in the churchyard of a neighborhood church.

At Bertram's Hotel2. At Bertram’s Hotel, Agatha Christie. New York: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2011 (reprint). Bertram’s is a quietly elegant hotel from the Edwardian era that seems utterly respectable from the outside and yet is the center of a nefarious crime syndicate and a murder late in the story that Miss Marple and Chief Inspector (Scotland Yard) Davy attempt to unravel.

Is Your Lord Large Enough3. Is Your Lord Large Enough?, Peter J. Schakel. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2008. This book looks at the contribution Lewis made, particularly through the way his books engage the imagination, to the spiritual formation of Christians, exploring a number of the matters crucial to their growth in Christ.

Searching for Sunday4. Searching for Sunday, Rachel Held Evans. Nashville: Nelson Books, 2015. As the subtitle suggests, this is a narrative of the author’s struggle between loving and leaving the Church, only to find her loved renewed through the sacramental practices that she sees at the heart of the Church’s life.

Here be Dragons5. Here Be Dragons, Sharon Kay Penman. New York, Ballantine Books, 1985. The first of the Welsh Princes Trilogy set in the early 13th century, this book explores the conflict between John, the King of England, and Llewelyn, who sought to unify a divided Wales against the English threat. Their lives are intertwined by the daughter of John, Joanna, who becomes the wife of Llewelyn, finding herself torn between loves for father and husband, then husband and son.

The Religion of Democracy6. The Religion of Democracy, Amy Kittelstrom. New York: Penguin Press, 2015. This book traces the “American Reformation” of Christianity through the lives of seven key figures spanning the late eighteenth to early twentieth century, in which adherence to creed shifted to the dictates of personal judgment and the focus shifted from eternal salvation to ethical conduct reflecting a quest for moral perfection and social benefit.

dwell7. Dwell: Life with God for the World, Barry D. Jones. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014. A focus on mission and a focus on spiritual formation are often divorced from one another. This book argues for a missional spirituality rooted in the incarnation of Jesus, his dwelling among us to restore broken shalom that is revealed in spiritual practices that herald the vision of the kingdom that is both present and to come.

Why Christian faith8. Why Christian Faith Makes Sense, C. Stephen Evans. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015. Against the contemporary challenges by the New Atheists, this book explores why the Christian faith makes sense, even though the existence of God may not be proven, through the consideration of both “natural signs” and the self-revelation of God.

The Road to Character9. The Road to Character, David Brooks. New York, Random House, 2015. David Brooks explores the issue of character development through the hard-won pursuit of moral virtue, exemplified in the moral quests of people as diverse as Augustine and Bayard Rustin, Frances Perkins and Dorothy Day.

Best book of the month: David Brooks The Road to Character is my choice for this month’s best book, both for the quality of writing and for the conversation he attempts to provoke with regard to the moral ecology of our country.

Best quote of the month: This from Rachel Held Evans in Searching for Sunday, which is an example of her exquisite writing:

“…Sunday morning sneaks up on us — like dawn, like resurrection, like the sun that rises a ribbon at a time. We expect a trumpet and a triumphant entry, but as always, God surprises us by showing up in ordinary things: in bread, in wine, in water, in words, in sickness, in healing, in death, in a manger of hay, in a mother’s womb, in an empty tomb. Church isn’t some community you join or some place you arrive. Church is what happens when someone taps you on the shoulder and whispers in your ear, Pay attention, this is holy ground, God is here.” (p. 258).

Today begins a week on jury duty. Needless to say, I’ll have some books in my bag along with other work. One I won’t be carrying because it is a thick book but one I’m thoroughly enjoying is Brenda Wineapple’s Ecstatic Nation, a chronicle of the spirit of the times in ante- and post-bellum America. Strikes me as eerily similar to today.

Hope you get some good summer reading in during these last days of summer!

[Links in this post are to the full reviews in Bob on Books. In those reviews, you may find links to publishers websites.]

Review: Is Your Lord Large Enough?

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Is Your Lord Large EnoughIs Your Lord Large Enough?, Peter J. Schakel. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2008.

Summary: This book looks at the contribution Lewis made, particularly through the way his books engage the imagination, to the spiritual formation of Christians, exploring a number of the matters crucial to their growth in Christ.

Peter J. Schakel has written a number of fine books on C.S. Lewis including one on Till We Have Faces (Reason and Imagination in C.S. Lewis: A Study of Till We Have Faces) that I found incredibly helpful as a book group I was in was struggling to make sense of this greatest but most challenging fiction works of Lewis. So when I noticed this on one of my stacks of unread books, I thought I would give it a read.

In this book, Schakel turns to the writing of Lewis on topics concerning the formation of Christians and what he does is provide a “digest” of Lewis’s writing around each topic from his letters, fiction, and non-fiction books and essays. The topics are:

  • Is Your Lord Large Enough?
  • God’s Time and Our Time
  • The Meaning of Prayer
  • What Can We Pray For?
  • God’s Grace and Our Goodness
  • Keeping Love Alive
  • Why We Need The Church
  • Keeping Things Under Control
  • Making Sense Out of Suffering
  • Room for Doubt
  • Coming to an End
  • Picturing Heaven

In one sense, like so many books on the writing of C.S. Lewis, you can get all these things simply by reading Lewis, which I wholeheartedly recommend. Yet this work is a helpful one both for the person who has never read Lewis who wants to consider what he has to say on these topics as well as for one like me who has read Lewis but is happy to be reminded of things I’d seen and surprised by the things I’ve missed.

The chapters on prayer I found to be among the most insightful. The longer I go, the more true I find Lewis’s statement on truly praying: “May it be the real I that speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.” So many problems I’ve had in prayer come of speaking from a “false self” and speaking to false perceptions of God. Perhaps the most challenging in his chapter on what we can pray for are his words on praying for enemies. Lewis prayed for Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini as well as more personal enemies as a regular practice.

“Keeping love alive” distills the wealth of insight on the “four loves” that one finds in Lewis both in the work by this title and in Till We Have Faces which explores what happens when we love inordinately. In his chapter on the church, Lewis anticipates contemporary authors like Rachel Held Evans in writing of his struggles to embrace the church only to discover that he needed both the sacrament and his neighbors in the pews. It is also here that Schakel discusses Lewis’s warnings about seeking to be part of “inner rings”.

Schakel summarizes Lewis’s attempts to address some of the hardest challenges we face in terms of suffering and doubt. He calls attention to Lewis’s belief that suffering in fact is God’s way of getting our attention and breaking our illusions of self-sufficiency. He wisely counsels in terms of doubt that we should never try to make ourselves think or feel in a certain way, but simply to continue to live in the Way, both pursuing the questions honestly that we wrestle with and continuing to act in obedient faith in the things not in question.

His final chapters explore the matters of death and our everlasting hope. We see here perhaps more than anywhere how totally converted Lewis is in his unblinking and even joyous acceptance of the reality of death and the hope of resurrection beyond. And with this is the vivid reality of heaven, a world more real than our own, for Lewis.

Each chapter concludes with reflection questions. The book concludes with a brief biography of Lewis as well as a topical and chronological listing of Lewis’s work and an extensive bibliography of other works on Lewis and his writing.

This book is currently out of print, according to the publisher, although available in e-book formats, or used via your bookseller or online. Given the spate of books on Lewis and his work, I can see how this one may be overlooked. I found it helpful for its insights into the work of Lewis, as well as into the life to which Lewis bore witness.

Doubt. . . And Belief

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"C.s.lewis3". Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.

“C.s.lewis3“. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.

One of the most troubling experiences for those of us who are people of faith comes when we face serious questions and doubts about that faith. Most often, these come unbidden. It may simply be that life happens and we wonder, “how can this be true and yet there be a good God?” It may be that we are pursuing a line of intellectual inquiry related to our calling and suddenly come smack up against something that poses questions about what we believed to be true–whether this concern the origins of life, or the nature of human freedom, or the rightness of certain convictions and the ways in which we have lived these out.

I think there are at least two aspects to what troubles us in these situations. One is that something, or even Someone, we have cherished as true and real is called into question–perhaps even the very existence of what we have loved is questioned. We do not want to lose what we have so loved, and has so made sense of our lives. The other troubling aspect for many of us, I think, is that we suspect that it is wrong, or there is something wrong in us, to have these questions and doubts.

In a book on C. S. Lewis, I came across some statements I find very helpful on this topic of doubt and belief. Lewis held that, “If it’s not true, God does not want you to believe it.” Clearly belief to him was not “believing in that which you know is not true.” Lewis rather believed in the thoughtful but not frantic effort to resolve the questions and doubts we face. He wrote, in a letter to Rhona Bodle:

“I don’t mean by this that you should cease to study and make enquiries: but that you should make them not with frantic desire but with cheerful curiosity and a humble readiness to accept whatever conclusions God may lead you to, (But always, all depends on the steady attempt to obey God all the time. ‘He who does the will of the Father shall know the doctrine.’)”

At another point he also writes her:

“No one can make himself believe anything, and the effort does harm. Nor make himself feel anything, and that effort also does harm. What is under our control is action and intellectual inquiry. Stick to that.”

From this I draw several insights that I have found helpful:

1. Implicit in all this is that doubt for Lewis is part of the life of faith, not antithetical to it. The antithesis of faith is unbelief, a refusal to act upon what one is convinced is true.

2. We cannot make ourselves not doubt and the frantic effort to do so only makes things worse, not better.

3. Nor should we go to the other extreme and make doubt a fashionable way station, something to be celebrated. Sometimes I fear that it is more preferable these days to talk about what we doubt and question, than what we believe and embrace, as if the latter person must always be a bit narrow-minded lacking in intellectual acuity or sensitivity.

4. Intellectual honesty is important. This means an openness to the truth, whatever that turns out to be, whether it confirms, re-shapes, or overturns what we have believed. Lewis never wanted people to believe if the evidence against their faith was stronger than that for it. At the same time, Lewis thought we should continue in our beliefs unless we were presented with cogent reasons to change them, even when we have questions and doubts.

5. For Lewis, part of the answer is disciplined intellectual work–meeting the doubts head on. Rarely do we come upon a question that others have not wrestled with, often deeply. No where is this more true than in the Bible itself. Philip Yancey makes the observation in a very thoughtful post on this subject that none of the famous atheists of the past or present raise questions that have not been raised and wrestled with in the pages of scripture. Beyond this, there are thoughtful people who have written on most of the questions that we face. To search prayerfully looking for God to give illumination about the things we struggle with is not to force a resolution but rather to express faith that God may meet us in our search.

6. The other part is disciplined obedience in what we know. The great command to love God and love our neighbor is not suspended by our doubts. Continuing in our own reading and prayer, our worship, our community with others and service are all ways we walk in the way of God who ultimately is the one to address our doubts.

What Lewis’s counsel emphasizes is that faith and doubt are not mutually exclusive. By “action and intellectual inquiry” we are expressing a trust that God rewards those who seek and who come to God with their questions. What I also appreciate is the recognition that belief is not merely a matter of intellectual assent but rather a deepening relational trust–a movement from believing “in” God to believing God, as we would a spouse or friend we trust deeply because of all we’ve shared together. What Lewis commends is an approach to doubt meant to take us into the knowing and being known that is the deepest longing of human beings, something never easily won, but worth the effort.

The Month in Reviews — December 2014

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One last look back to 2014! I finished and reviewed a number of books in December, heavy on the religious side because the books tended to be shorter than the third volume of Teddy Roosevelt’s biography or the Jeff Shaara account of the fall of Vicksburg which took longer to read. This month’s books included both a theology of racial conflict and reconciliation from an Asian American perspective and a novel set in Mississippi during Freedom Summer in 1964. I reviewed a new book on the life of C.S. Lewis looking at it from the light of life crises Christians might face. In the thought-provoking category was a new apologetic approach by Universe Next Door author James Sire, and Ken Bailey’s take on the nativity story in the form of a play. Maybe one of my “last reads” from 2014 will make your “to be read” pile in 2015. So here’s the list with links to my reviews:

1. Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear, by Scott Bader-Saye. This is a thoughtful book on the ways fear can hinder us, how various entities exploit our fear, and how we might live with courage and faith in a fear-filled culture.

Culture of FearCrisis of a ChristianChain of ThunderEastern Orthodox2. C. S. Lewis and the Crisis of a Christian, by Gregory S. Cootsona. This book takes the unusual approach of considering what we might learn from the life of Lewis as we confront life crises related to coming to faith, confronting challenges to faith, and facing the ultimate crises of suffering and death.

3. A Chain of Thunder, by Jeff Shaara. The fall of Vicksburg is the subject of this historical fiction account of this turning point of the Civil War. Shaara helps us understand what seige warfare was like for both armies and for the civilians of Vicksburg.

4. Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology, by Andrew Louth. This book gives us an outline of Eastern Orthodox theology as it shapes the practice of Eastern Orthodox worship and life.

5. The Cross of Christ, by John R. W. Stott. John Stott considered this his most significant work and it is indeed a model of rich theological reflection that explores the nature and significance of Christ’s atoning work.

Open HeartsGospel MarketplaceCross of Christ

6. The Gospel in the Marketplace of Ideas, by Paul Copan and Kenneth D. Litwak. The authors explore the relevance of Paul’s Mars Hill message in Athens to communicating the Christian message with faithfulness and relevance in our own day.

7. Open Hearts in Bethlehem, by Kenneth E. Bailey. This play will revise your ideas of what happened in Bethlehem and our “no room in the inn” narrative.

8. The Autobiography of Saint Therese: The Story of a Soul, by Therese de Lisieux. The “story” here is one of Therese’s intense love for Christ from childhood to pleading with bishop and pope to enter the cloister to her death at 24.

Saint ThereseApologetics beyond SeeingColonel Roosevelt9. Apologetics Beyond Reason, by James W. Sire. This book maps a different apologetic approach from most rational apologetics, arguing for “signals of transcendence” throughout creation and in literature that point us to God, if we will see this.

10. Colonel Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris. The third and final installment of Morris’s biography covering the last decade of Roosevelt’s life, how difficult it was for him not to be president, and his harrowing journey down the River of Doubt.

11. Freshwater Road, by Denise Nicholas. Set in small town Mississippi in Freedom Summer, this novel narrates the journey of a young black woman from Detroit and the choices she must make to face both her own family story and the vicious, entrenched racism of the South in the 1960s as she runs a Freedom School and seeks to prepare local residents to register to vote.

Peace CatalystsRacial ConflictFreshwater Road

12. Racial Conflict and Healing: An Asian-American Theological Perspective, by Andrew Sung Park. The author explores the reality of painful experiences of racism using the Korean concept of han and develops a theology of seeing rooted in the Korean concepts of hahn, jung, and mut that envisions a new reconciled community.

13. Peace Catalysts, by Rick Love. The author, who leads an organization committed to “just peacemaking” between Muslims and Christians maps the biblical principles and practices that an individual, organization or community can take to pursue peace.

The Christmas holidays afforded some extra time to curl up with a good book, a warm drink, and some good music. I hope you have opportunities like that in the winter months ahead. If you read one of these let me know what you think. And if you find something else good, I’d love to hear about it!

Review: C. S. Lewis and the Crisis of a Christian

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C. S. Lewis and the Crisis of a Christian
C. S. Lewis and the Crisis of a Christian by Gregory S. Cootsona
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book does something different from most books about C. S. Lewis or his works. The purpose of this book is neither biography, nor an exposition or critique of part or all of the writing of Lewis. Rather, the writer seeks to introduce Lewis through the lens of the existential crises of life, as Lewis experienced them, as the author experienced them, and as we may experience them, either as atheists or Christians or in our common humanity.

Cootsona summarizes the life of Lewis around crises he experienced as an atheist, apologetic crises he grappled with as a Christian, and the existential crises of suffering, evil, and death that every human being must face and that Lewis faced in his own losses of mother and wife, as well as in his own final decline.

But this is not simply biography. Around these three major types of crises, Cootsona introduces us to what Lewis said and wrote about these matters. Thus, this book could serve as an introduction to the relevance of Lewis’s writing for a new generation of reader.

First of all he concerns himself with “crises” of atheism. One of these is the self-contradictory and self-defeating nature of naturalism–if there is no design, if all is random, and if rationality is an epiphenomenon, then our certainty about these assertions, and this very sentence are up for grabs. Naturalism can offer no real sense of meaning, yet we act as if life is meaningful. Finally, even though we can posit no basis in naturalism for any transcendent moral law, we act as if it is so, that there are things that are really wrong.

Then he moves on to crises peculiar to embracing Christian faith. One of these is the crisis of pluralism: how may we believe in the uniqueness of Christ when there are so many alternatives. Isn’t this simply one myth among many? In this context, Coosona introduces us to Lewis’s famous “liar-lunatic-Lord” trilemma. Secondly, he explores the question of authority and the nature of biblical authority. Here he “outs” Lewis as not among the inerrantists. Yet Lewis believed the Bible was authoritative because of Christ and the Church’s witness, because, for its human faults, it carried the Word of God, at even sections Lewis might consider “mythical” (such as the creation accounts) were not fictional but true, and that the Bible forms the lives of those who read it, including Lewis. Lewis believed the miracles that were recorded as historical facts, including the miracle of the resurrection. Thus, Lewis challenges both fundamentalists and liberal skeptics in the way he reads and understands the scriptures.

The final section explores existential questions. One is the question of emotivism. Ought I base my decisions simply upon feeling or are there moral standards that I might live by regardless of feelings? Second, how do we make sense of suffering? He explores not only the arguments in The Problem of Pain but also those in the more intensely personal A Grief Observed that explore both where purpose may be found in suffering and yet the fundamental mystery we face in much suffering. Finally we see how Lewis regarded death, including his own approaching death.

Throughout, Cootsona weaves together his own experiences, Lewis’s life and writing, as well as how this has proven helpful to others. Cootsona introduces us to some of his own archival research along the way where this illumines how Lewis might approach a question. Yet his priority focus is to demonstrate how the works of Lewis that are available to most readers address these crises of life.

That begs the question: do we need this book if we have Lewis’s books on our shelves? Strictly speaking, the answer is no. But for the skeptic or young believer who is not well-acquainted with Lewis, this book can serve as a helpful doorway into the works of Lewis. The book also serves as a basic apologetic for Christian faith for a person who is asking the questions or wrestling with the crises the book explores. I do think the book would be helped with recommended readings of Lewis at the end of each chapter relevant to the chapter discussion. There is a bibliography at the end that includes some material on where to start in reading Lewis and includes a lists of his works, biographies, and other scholarly work on Lewis.

[This review is based on a complimentary e-galley version of this book provided by the publisher through Netgalley. I have not been in any other way compensated for the review of this book.]

View all my reviews

On “Children’s” Books

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As you’ve probably noticed, I haven’t said much about children’s books in this blog nor reviewed any children’s books. A search of my posts came up with one post where I used the phrase, “children’s books”, a post on C. S. Lewis from last fall. In my post September 2014: The Month in Reviews, I even noticed the serious tone in the books I’ve been reading of late.

At one time, this would have been a very different story! One of my treasured collection of memories are all the “read aloud” times when our son was growing up. We read lots of “children’s” stories together and found that the ones that were the most special were the ones we both liked best. We learned early on that good children’s literature is simply literature that is both age appropriate to the child and engaging for “children of all ages.”

I still remember our shared delight as we read I Am a Bunny by Ole Risom with exquisite artwork by Richard Scarry. It’s the board book we buy whenever we learn of friends who have recently had a baby. Jane Yolen’s Owl Moon was a favorite later on with its evocative story of a young boy and his dad walking in the woods on a snowy, moonlit night to go “owling”. We read all the “Little House” books (which I had never before read) and the Narnia Chronicles (which I first discovered as a college student).  We read several of Madeleine L’Engle’s science fiction/fantasy books, which probably helped awaken my son’s love of science fiction. One summer, when my son was laid up with a broken leg, we read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy aloud as a family (probably my third or fourth time through these books). A special find was Jean Lee Latham’s Carry on, Mr Bowditch which tells the story of a young boy, Nathaniel Bowditch, who is taken on as a ship’s boy and begins to study navigation, which stimulates a love of mathematics and results in him later writing one of the foremost books on navigation of his day.

Goblin

Of course, our son went on to high school, college and now marriage and with that, our “read aloud” times have gone by the wayside. And one of the losses I’ve recently noticed as well, is the loss of reading those books that are good for children of all ages. And so as I was looking for my next book to read, I picked up George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin, one of those children’s fantasies probably suitable for children grades 3 to 6 or so, that I had never read.

I’m about midway through so I don’t know (nor want to know) how it ends. But one thing I’ve noticed is that while this is a much easier book to read than some of the “dense” works I’ve reviewed recently, that doesn’t mean it is by any means “light”. Already, the book has explored the line between courage and foolhardiness, the fears of the night that don’t go away with adulthood (are there goblins or other dangerous things out there?), the power of light to dispel evil, our conceptions of age (with the great-great grandmother), and the question of warranted belief. How does Princess Irene know that there actually is a great-great grandmother?

I think one of the things that makes this and other good children’s books great is that they are like life. I think there are “layers” of understanding in even the most every day events. Both children and adults fear “goblins” but the ones we fear may be different. A children and a grandparent can read the same story and the child identifies with the princess, and the grandparent with the great-great grandmother. Both children and adults wrestle between believing the trustworthy promises and listening to the voices of cynicism. As adults, however, we may be the one’s who have learned that cynicism, which is questioned in the “children’s” story. Will we be so guarded against deception that we miss out on wonder?

Perhaps it is time to revisit some of those stories I’ve loved and to discover new ones.

What are the children’s stories that have continued to speak to you into adulthood–the one’s that are good for “children of all ages?”

 

 

Review: The Pilgrim’s Regress

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The Pilgrim's Regress
The Pilgrim’s Regress by C.S. Lewis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Most don’t consider this one of Lewis’s best, and truthfully, neither did I. But even “inferior” Lewis is better than much that is out there.

The book is a pilgrimage narrative that reflects Lewis’s journey from early religious instruction (humorously portrayed by the Steward who presents the law both seriously behind a mask, and with a wink and a nod). John, the pilgrim in this story subsequently sights a beautiful island, and eventually strikes out in quest of the island moving successively through instances of sensuality portrayed in the southern lands, and arid science and philosophy in the northern lands. He is joined be Virtue, refusing the help of Mother Kirk until they stay in the Valley of Wisdom. What happens then and their further adventures, I will leave to the reader.

The value of the book is the chronicle of the inadequacies of the different places John (and Lewis) explored before coming to faith. Some of the figures he encounters offer pointed commentary on the thin fare of the day (Mr. Sensible and Mr. Halfways in particular). Some of the references are more obscure and assume you are as familiar with theological, literary and philosophical currents of the day as was Lewis. He later admitted in a preface to the third edition of the book that some of this was needless obscure.

The ending after his decisive encounter with Mother Kirk seemed unsatisfying. This book was written shortly after Lewis came to faith and may reflect his own lack of experience in post-conversion pilgrimage. His later works are certainly richer in this regard.

I would not recommend this as the first book of Lewis’s to read. But for those who love Lewis, you will appreciate the light this sheds on his spiritual journey that will sound familiar if you are acquainted with Surprised By Joy. You will also appreciate the survey of the other prevailing thought currents Lewis engaged in his day, and the nascent forms of many ideas that come to fuller expression in later works.

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Review: In Search of Deep Faith

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In Search of Deep Faith
In Search of Deep Faith by Jim Belcher
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jim Belcher and his family were at a crossroads. He’d spent ten years pastoring a church from its very beginnings into a thriving congregation. He made the bold decision to resign. His wife needed a respite from the bubble of pastoral ministry. And he was facing a significant question as a parent: how do I help my children come to own a “deep faith” in their own lives, not just an inherited faith that disappears when one is removed from a Christian social context, but an enduring faith?

Belcher’s answer was a pilgrimage through England and Europe revisiting the sites where thoughtful and courageous Christians he had looked to as heroes lived, and sometimes died for, their faith. This book is a kind of travel or pilgrimage narrative of that year.

The first part of the book follows their journeys in England exploring the martyrdom of Thomas Cranmer, Sheldon Van Auken’s struggle for a meaningful faith, the life and places of C. S. Lewis, and the conversations that changed the life of William Wilberforce, who changed the course of British history with regard to slavery.

The second half of the book (Parts Two and Three) recount their journeys through Europe. He begins, interestingly enough with the life and art of Van Gogh, and his struggle between despair and belief. They move on to the French village of Le Chambon, where Andre Trocme and a village of Protestant Huguenots hid and saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust. We shift then to Holland and the German prison camps where Corrie Ten Boom lost her sister but held fast to her faith for the same courageous act of protecting Jews. Then we consider the life and death of Bonhoeffer, and the equally courageous decisions of the von Trapp family, both like, and unlike their Sound of Music counterparts. We end with Heidelberg, and Martin Luther, and finally the soldier’s cemetery at Normandy.

Belcher interweaves the narrative of his travels and interactions with family with the narratives of each of his heroes. And this also seems to have two major parts to it–the challenge of ordinary obedience in things like home school lessons and our Jekyll-Hyde struggle with sin during their stay in England. In Europe, and particularly as they witnessed the sites of courageous acts and even martyrdom, they wrestle with what constitutes a deep faith that sustains one through despair, danger, suffering, resistance, and in the face of death. It does seem that when Belcher realizes that the education in faith of this pilgrimage is more important than math and writing and grammar lessons that they all are opened up more to what God had for them on this pilgrimage.

I’ve read other narratives of many of the lives he profiles but I found Belcher wrote with a concise freshness that brought people like Lewis and Bonhoeffer to life in new ways for me. Perhaps it was the act of inhabiting their places. And I appreciate that Belcher “kept it real” with regard to the struggles as well as the moments of insights his family faced on this pilgrimage. One of the best books I’ve read so far this year.

[I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through a contest hosted on Goodreads.]

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