C. S. Lewis

Review: The Screwtape Letters

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screwtape letters

 

The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis.  New York: Macmillan, 1962 (Link is to current edition).

Summary: The classic collection of letters between a senior demon and junior tempter charged with undermining the new found faith of his “patient.”

I am surprised how many I’ve talked with have heard of The Screwtape Letters but have never read this classic by C. S. Lewis. It is a purported collection of letters that has fallen into his hands from a senior demon, Screwtape, to a junior tempter, Wormwood. One of the fundamental insights of this work is that this Infernal Bureaucracy is founded the axiom of consume or be consumed.

Wormwood’s patient becomes a Christian after the first letter. And so Screwtape concerns himself with advice about unraveling the faith of this new convert. Various letters explore the use of subtle distractions rather than frontal attacks. There is the avoidance of matters of truth or falsity, categorizing thing as brave or progressive. Playing on subtle annoyances is far better than tempting to spectacular sin. Don’t let the convert notice he is drifting away. Get him to spiritualize his concern for his mother while detesting her annoying habits, to have noble visions of fellowship while being put off by the neighbor in the pew.

All the tempter can do is twist and distort. Use a new circle who accompany his newfound love, a Christian woman of character, to make him look down on others. There are several letters on sexuality, and the insight that it is often in the valleys when the affections are depressed that temptation may be most effective.

The letters are short and pithy. The apparent love of the “Enemy” (God) for his creatures is incomprehensible and contemptible. At one point, Screwtape becomes so provoked at the Enemy’s designs that he is transformed into a giant centipede. Before this happens, he writes:

    “He is a hedonist at heart. All those fasts and vigils and stakes and crosses are only a facade. Or onlylike foam on the seashore. Out at sea, out in His sea, there is pleasure, and more pleasure. He makes no secret of it; at his right hand are ‘pleasures for evermore.’ Ugh! I don’t think He has the least inkling of that high and austere mystery to which we rise in the Miserific vision. He’s vulgar, Wormwood. He has a bourgeois mind. He has filled His world full of pleasures. There are things for humans to do all day long without His minding in the least–sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. Everything has to be twisted before it’s any use to us. We fight under cruel disadvantages. Nothing is naturally on our side” (pp. 101-102).

Lewis found the letters difficult to write, adopting the mindset of the infernal. Yet he offers numerous insights into the dynamics of spiritual life and the nature of the battles we fight or fail to resist. He resisted pleas to write more, but did write a sequel, included here. In Screwtape Proposes a Toast, he instructs the tempters in the nuances of their trade. He has a fascinating commentary on “democracy” and mistaken ideas of equality this evokes.

Perhaps this is the summer you sit down with this collection of letters. It can be read as a witty diversion. Or it can expand our perception of the realities of the spiritual battle in the midst of which we live.

 

Reflections on C.S. Lewis

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C.s.lewis3

This Sunday, November 29, was the birthday of C. S. Lewis. It’s an easy day to remember because it is also my brother’s birthday and my son’s anniversary. What is interesting to me is why people still pay attention to such things more than 50 years after his death. I kind of doubt people will be remembering my birthday 50 years after I’m gone.

I really can’t speak for anyone else but I will mention a few of the reasons I continue to read Lewis’s works and find his life of interest.

  1. I first discovered C. S. Lewis in college. What he represented to me then, and still, is an example of one who both thought deeply and believed deeply, and that these needn’t be a contradiction in terms.
  2. While Lewis thought rigorously, he was also imaginative. Whether it was creating a world of floating islands as in Perelandra, or one that could be accessed through a wardrobe, Lewis taught me that grown-ups and children could both love imaginary worlds and good stories.
  3. That leads to another reason I have loved Lewis. I shared reading The Chronicles of Narnia with my son and have watched the love of story blossom in his life as an aspiring writer.
  4. There was an amazing seamlessness about Lewis’s thought. Owen Barfield once remarked, “Somehow what Lewis thought about everything was secretly present in what he said about anything.”
  5. Lewis helped me understand the banality of evil in The Screwtape Letters, and that all evil ever does is twist and distort the good.
  6. Likewise The Great Divorce helped me understand that if anyone endures hell, it is largely of one’s own making. He wrote in The Problem of Pain, “I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.”
  7.  I cannot commend all of C. S. Lewis’s attitudes toward women, but I also find quite attractive this group of men who gathered weekly over an “adult beverage” and talked deeply about theology, literature, and whatever they were working on at the moment. Until I learned of the Inklings, I thought all a group of men could ever talk about, especially in a pub, was sports!
  8. Lewis was an amazing correspondent. There are at least two volumes of his correspondence in print in addition to several books of letters (To an American Lady; To Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer; and To Children). But then, he wasn’t on Facebook! What a wonderful thing it must have been to receive such letters.
  9. Lewis not only kindles one’s love for his books, but also for others’ books, particularly old books. In his essay “On the Reading of Old Books” which introduces a translation of Athanasius’s On the Incarnation, he advises reading one old book between our readings of new ones. He, as much as anyone, is my inspiration for a reading group I lead called “The Dead Theologians Society“.
  10. Lastly, I find particularly compelling the fact that Lewis was a first rate scholar, who because of his open espousal of his faith and his popular works, never received the accolades of others and was a “tutor” most of his life. Yet I find no evidence of him grousing about this.

I’ll stop at the convenient number of ten but would love to know what others might add to this list and how Lewis’s works and life have touched yours.

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.