Tag Archives: Letters of C.S. Lewis

What is the Word?

Picture credit: aaronburden. Unsplash license.

Here’s a quotation that shows up on my Basefook feed from time to time:

It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, which is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers will bring us to him. When it becomes really necessary (i.e. for our spiritual life, not for curiosity or controversy) to know whether a particular passage is rightly translated or is Myth (but of course Myth specially chosen by God from among countless Myths to carry a spiritual truth) or history, we shall no doubt be guided to the right answer. But we must not use the Bible (our fathers too often did) as a sort of Encyclopedia out of which texts (isolated from their context and read without attention to the whole nature and purport of the books in which they occur) can be taken for use as weapons.

[From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis: Volume III, p. 246.]

Of course the person who posts this snippet feels that they’ve laid down a trump card – look here, you Bible-thumper! Even your hero C. S. Lewis didn’t think the Bible was the Word of God! What do you say to that?

All right, let’s talk about it.

First of all, I already knew Lewis wasn’t an inerrantist. This is not news. As I’ve often said, when a man is ten feet away from you, it makes all the difference in the world whether he’s walking toward you or away from you. Ten feet is almost here for the first, almost gone for the second. I think Lewis was walking toward me (us). That’s my subjective opinion, but a pretty well-informed one.

And of course, in an important sense, Lewis is entirely right. Christ is and always has been the uncreated Word of God, a Person of the Trinity: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1, ESV)

But I don’t think Lewis would have ever claimed that Christ was God’s Word in an exclusionary sense – that God could not also speak words that weren’t the Son. I’m pretty sure Lewis accepted that God had spoken all kinds of words – to the prophets, to visionaries, to the evangelists and apostles. I don’t think he’d have denied that the canon of Scripture is the inspired Word of God, while being distinct from the Person of Christ.

The question I always ask when I read this passage is, “Who is this Christ that you think you can find anywhere else than in the Bible?” If you quote the Lewis passage to argue that you have a Christ of your own who’s a little different than the one the Bible shows us, I think, frankly, that you’re worshiping yourself. And I suspect Lewis would agree.

If you spend time in the Bible, does it bring you closer to Christ, or further away? What better place is there to draw near to Him?

Now, Lewis was a sacramentalist (as I am, being a Lutheran). We believe that Christ is especially present in Holy Communion – that He comes to us in a physical way in and under the bread and wine. So I’ll stipulate to that as a place where we meet Him truly.

And Christ Himself emphasizes that we can also meet him in our neighbor – especially our neighbor who’s poor and sick and suffering. “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’” (Matthew 25:40)

So that’s most certainly true as well.

But where do I learn these things?

I learn them from Scripture.

It is my experience, and my observation, that any “Christ” that people talk about, who is separate from the Christ of Scripture, does not come from God.

New Letter from C.S. Lewis Reveals Intolerance of Unexamined Convention

We know C. S. Lewis wrote a lot of correspondence to readers, strangers, children, and women’s study groups. To that last group, a previously unpublished letter offers an example of one of things that could set the author off.

“Dear Ladies,” Lewis wrote, “Who told you that Christians must not go to the theatre, dance, play cards, drink, or smoke?”

Who these ladies were is unknown and they apparently annoyed Lewis with their letter, but he wouldn’t ignore it. He responded to it with a duty few of us share today.

Stephanie Derrick, author of The Fame of C.S. Lewis: A Controversialist’s Reception in Britain and America, explains some of what we do about this letter and our favorite Oxford don’s habits of correspondence.

First, it appears they parroted some tired, theologically unsound notions about Christian behavior—i.e., good Christians don’t drink, smoke, or otherwise enjoy themselves—and if Lewis had intolerance for anything it was the touting of unexamined tenets. This was partly a matter of personality—Lewis once described himself as “by temperament, an extreme anarchist”—but it was also an effect of his training in logic and philosophy. And he was particularly irked by the addition of perfunctory requirements to the Christian faith, once saying, for example, “How little I approve of compulsion in religion may be gauged from a recent letter of mine to the Spectator protesting against the intolerable tyranny of compulsory church parades for the Home Guard.” Lewis hated to see the joy of hope and faith—or of everyday living, for that matter—diminished by dogmas that were shaped more by social convention than sound religion.

Do We Need Another C.S. Lewis?

People have often suggested a popular Christian fantasy author is the next C.S. Lewis. I don’t think that’s an appropriate question. Few people strikes us as the same as another person only better, so why should we look for a living author to replace a dead one? That would make the dead one mostly obsolete, wouldn’t it?
Steve Harrell doesn’t think so. He says we need a new Lewis. “When we try to insert Lewis’ cultural observations into our culture today,” he writes, “we become like Indiana Jones—still fighting the Nazis through the 1980s. The Modernist war between reason and theology is over…. We live in a postmodern, post-secular age that doesn’t respond well to the intellectual arm-twisting and large-scale historical criticism that Lewis excelled at.”
Joel Miller argues Harrell is missing the point. “A vibrant intellectual life includes thoughts that span millennia. They’re not so foreign as some insist, and their differences might just keep us from going off the rails.”
Rowan Williams, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, notes Lewis’s blessing to us is “in what you might call pastoral theology: as an interpreter of people’s moral and spiritual crises; as somebody who is a brilliant diagnostician of self-deception; and somebody who, in his own book on bereavement after his wife’s death, really pushes the envelope – giving permission, I suppose, to people to articulate their anger and resentment about a God who apparently takes your loved ones away from you.”
In related a post, Jeremy Lott notes the angst many have had over Susan’s absence from The Last Battle. Many readers think Lewis condemns her life choices by appearing to keep her out of Narnia when everything comes falling down, but Lott quotes from Lewis’ letters to show that the author simply believed Susan’s story was longer and more adult than the one he wanted to tell. “Why not try it yourself?” Lewis asked a reader, to which Lott replies, “Who has tried to tell Susan’s story?” He hopes someone will attempt to pick up the life of Susan Pevensie and finish at least part of her story.

"Men must endure their going hence…"

In their way, these last weeks were not unhappy. Joy had left us, and once again—as in the earliest days—we could turn for comfort only to each other. The wheel had come full circle: once again we were together in the little end room at home, shutting out from our talk the ever-present knowledge that the holidays were ending, that a new term fraught with unknown possibilities awaited us both.

(Warren Lewis, on the last days of his brother C. S. Lewis, from his Memoir published in The Letters of C. S. Lewis [1966].)

Every year at this time I note the anniversary of the death of C. S. Lewis in 1963. There’s been a lot of speculation in recent years as to exactly when it was that Western Civilization began to collapse. Some choose the year 1968, the year the Counterculture came into its own in America, but others fix the date in 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated. I tend to go with 1963, but because that was the year we lost Lewis, not Kennedy.

One way or the other, it’s been downhill ever since.

From the University of Notre Dame, this article on recent scientific findings that indicate there’s a genuine physiological reason why we so often forget what we’ve come for, when we go from one room to another.

New research from psychology Professor Gabriel Radvansky suggests that passing through doorways is the cause of these memory lapses.

“Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an ‘event boundary’ in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away,” Radvansky explains.

“Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is difficult because it has been compartmentalized.”

I expect passing through Wardrobes has a similar effect.

Allegory and Why Narnia Is Not One

Jared has the goods on how allegory is defined and why Narnia really isn’t one despite what you may have heard.

How then does he define Allegory? Perhaps the clearest definition in the most common language comes via a letter to Mrs. Hook (found in Letters of C.S. Lewis, 12/29/58):

By an allegory I mean a composition (whether pictorial or literary) in which immaterial realities are represented by feigned physical objects, e.g. a pictured Cupid allegorically represents erotic love (which in reality is an experience, not an object occupying a given area of space) or, Bunyan, a giant represents Despair.

C.S. Lewis, a Writer of Pulp Fiction?

Writer Rod Bennett believes “[C.S.] Lewis was heavily influenced by his many early experiences with ‘trashy’ literature.” He calls him a pulp fiction writer and lays out his case in four posts, quoting from Lewis’ letters where he confesses his enjoyment or exposure to Amazing Stories and Astounding, both pulp sci-fi rags, and many other works considered “trashy” by critics. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, Bennett says. In fact, it was through Narnia that Bennett found interest in Mere Christianity.

[This series is no longer on Bennett’s blog. This is a recycled post from 2006].

If Bennett’s premise raises the eyebrows of any Lewis fans, I think the trouble may be in the words “pulp” and “trashy.” I don’t think Bennett thinks Lewis’ science trilogy is trashy, but influenced by mass market stories of his day which were thought to be trashy by those who claimed to know what good and bad literature should be. But calling Lewis’ stories “pulp” may be the same as calling them “trashy” for some. Pulp fiction is lurid, tantalizing material written for commercial gain or cheap entertainment–nothing of lasting value. Again, I don’t think Bennett is arguing that Narnia and The Space Trilogy are cheap little thrillers, but that may be what comes across in the word “pulp.”

Letting Lewis be interesting in my place

Pretty good weekend. My big project Saturday was to take a plane to the tops of a couple doors. The bedroom doors in my house haven’t closed properly since I’ve been here. I suspect it has to do with their being painted at some time in the past, while most of the woodwork in the place is original finish (and beautiful). I, being me, was willing to live with it, but my renter asked to get it fixed, and I could hardly deny the justice of that request. It was a little more work than I expected, and I never got his door completely right. I’ll have to take it off the hinges to do that. Maybe one day. For now, both doors will close and latch, which is a major improvement.

Sunday was a Viking occasion, at the annual Danish Day at Danebo Hall in Minneapolis. Because of weather we had to set up inside the building, which cramped our style a bit. Our combat was a scheduled portion of the program, so we only got one set of three fights in (it was just Ragnar and me, and I got one kill, which is as good as it gets for me). I sold a total of four books, two of them to members of our own group.

I also finished The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Vol. III, another accomplishment not to be sneezed at, even in allergy season. Here’s a few more excerpts, which attentive readers will recognize as a pretty good sign that I’m in a vegetative mental state today:

From a letter to Joan Lancaster, Aug. 11, 1959:

I’m all for the Gauls myself and I hate all conquerors. But I never knew a woman who was not all for Caesar—just as they were in his life-time.

From a letter to Father Richard Ginder, Aug. 18, 1960:

I wonder do we blame T.V. and the Comics too much? Was not a certain sort of boy in a certain sort of home wasting his time just as badly in other ways before they were invented? It annoys me when parents who read nothing but the newspapers themselves—i.e. nothing but lies, libels, poppycock, propaganda, and pornography—complain of their children reading the Comics! Upon my soul I think the children’s diet is healthier than their parents’.

From a letter to Mrs. R. E. Herman, Oct. 10, 1960:

The queer thing is that this horror of the [mentally] deficient is quite modern. Our ancestors don’t seem to have felt it at all. On this, as on many other subjects, we have grown odiously and wickedly ‘refined’.

From a letter to Mary Willis Shelburne, July 31, 1962:

Yes, it is strange that anyone should dislike cats. But cats themselves are the worst offenders in this respect. They very seldom seem to like one another.

That’s all for tonight. Now scroll down and watch the Sissel clip again.

O frabjous day!

This has been a good day. I’ll say it openly, knowing it’s entirely contrary to my idiom, and throwing myself open completely to all kinds of joshing from commenters.

The air conditioning guy came today to do the warranty work. I had to take the afternoon off work to be here.

The first pleasant surprise was that, instead of just replacing the condenser (as I’m sure the woman on the phone said) he replaced the whole unit.

The second pleasant surprise was that he asked for no more than the regular deductible in payment. The woman on the phone had said there’d be extra charges for parts.

Oh, I expect the other shoe will drop in a couple days, and some kind of horrendous bill will hit me like a cosh to the back of the head, but for today life is good.

More snippets from The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Vol. III:

From a letter to Mary Van Deusen, July 7, 1955:

Don’t let anyone bully you into avoiding sentences with a preposition at the end! It’s an arbitrary rule that most great writers took no notice of. The Authorized Version and E. Burke thought a preposition a very good word to end with. So there!

From a letter to Mary Willis Shelburne, Sept. 8, 1956:

…(that journalists can be saved is a doctrine, if not contrary to, yet certainly above, reason!).

From a letter to Martin Kilmer, Jan. 22, 1957

The (Narnia) books don’t tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get into Aslan’s country in the end—in her own way.

From a letter to Clyde S. Kilby, Feb. 10, 1957:

The children (in Till We Have Faces) made mud pies not for symbolic purposes but because children do.

From a letter to Francis Warner, July 15, 1959:


So many people, when they begin ‘research’, lose all desire, and presently all power, of writing clear, sharp, and unambiguous English. Hold onto your finite transitive verb, your concrete nouns, and the muscles of language (but, through, for, because etc.).

A good weekend to all of you.

Lewis-ly translated

It isn’t every day I get a cartoon dedicated to me. Thanks, Phil.

Now try and get your comment utility fixed.

Haven’t live-blogged The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Vol. III, for a few days. I’m still at it. I’ve gotten through Lewis’ death, thinking dark thoughts of mortality, and now I’m in the resurrection land of the Supplement section, where Hooper prints some letters he left out of the earlier volumes, then decided he wanted to include after all. After this comes the “Great War” supplement, in which all Lewis’ letters to Owen Barfield, arguing about Theosophy, are gathered in one place.

Anyway, here are a few excerpts that interested and/or amused me:

From a letter to Mary Van Deusen, Oct. 3, 1953:

It is hard, when difficulties arise to know whether one is meant to overcome them or whether they are signs that one is on the wrong track.

From a letter to Dom Bede Griffiths, Jan. 30, 1954:

The trouble with Thackeray, is that… all his ‘good’ people are not only simple, but simpletons. That is a subtle poison wh. comes in with the Renaissance: the Machiavellian (intelligent) villain presently producing the idiot hero. The Middle Ages didn’t make Herod clever and knew the devil was an ass. There is really an un-faith about Thackeray’s ethics…. No conception that the purification of the will… leads to the enlightenment of the intelligence.

From a letter to Katharine Farrer, Feb. 3, 1954:

The bearings of this are wide, as you’ll see if you reflect on the difference between drawing a nude and verbally describing it, or the impossibility of mentioning Cheko-Slovakia (is that how you spell it) at the apex of a lyric however deeply one may feel about that country.

From a letter to Chad Walsh, Dec. 3, 1955:

I’ve often thought that if I wrote a play I’d do it in verse but type it as prose. In the present state of the human ear no publisher, manager, actor, or audience wd. recognize it, not even if it was in heroic couplets or the metre of Hiawatha.

One thing that constantly exercises my limited powers of charity throughout these books is the fact that Lewis consistently spells “all right,” “alright.” I personally consider “alright” an atrocity against the English language. However, as one quickly learns in reading the letters, Lewis wasn’t a very good speller.

In relation to that, it’s often been said that Lewis had a photographic memory. Someone who knew him wrote somewhere (I can’t find it; I can never find the Lewis reference I want. No photographic memory here) that if you named a page number from any book Lewis had ever read, he could recite the contents of that page verbatim for you. This would seem to be an exaggeration. He uses many quotations in the letters, and the notes show that they’re only approximately correct, like his spelling. His memory was obviously phenomenal, but it wasn’t exact.

Irony defined

I can’t find a reference in The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Vol. III right now, but in a couple of the letters Lewis expresses his deep dislike for the “modern” fashion of printing book titles sideways on book spines, so that you have to tilt your head to read them on the shelves.

He likes his titles printed so they’ll read horizontally, straight across.

The current volume of this series features a spine over 2 ½ inches wide. If they’d called the book The Collected and Edited Letters of the Immortal Clive Staples Lewis, Copiously Annotated and Furnished With Supplements Containing Previously Unknown Letters As Well As the Entire Body of the “Great War” Correspondence With His Friend Owen Barfield, they still could have almost fit that title in one line across such a massive spine.

But they print the title sideways, so you have to tilt your head to read it on the shelf.

“There’s glory for you,” as Humpty Dumpty would say. Even if you’re C. S. Lewis, world renowned and up on a pedestal only a little below St. Paul’s level in the eyes of many Christians, you still can’t get a publisher to print your covers the way you want them to.