For the Love of C. S. Lewis
By Shafer Parker
I hope you are as excited about C. S. Lewis as I am. Why? Because he is arguably the supreme apologist of the second millennium, and because, as many of you already know, starting next Monday and continuing through Friday (Nov. 23-27, at 7:00 p.m. each evening) Faith Beyond Belief guest speaker David Haines will be teaching the life and ministry of C. S. Lewis online. For more information, and to register for these five free sessions, you can go here. You must register so we can send you the Zoom link for each session.
Despite the previous paragraph, please be advised that this blog is much more than an announcement. Instead, I want to spend a few moments revelling in Lewisiana and hopefully whetting your appetite for what is coming next week.
I grew up in a very conservative Baptist home. My parents were amazing, godly people, and I owe them much, but the fact is, our lifestyle was only a few steps short of outright fundamentalism. The result? Although we were fairly bookish people, I had never heard of C. S. Lewis until my second year in university. At Thanksgiving that year my brother and I (we attended the same school) brought home a friend to celebrate the season and give him some mom cooking. Over that weekend he fell head over heels for my Grade 10 sister. (I must admit, the idea that a normal guy could be attracted to my sister came as a total surprise.) So, at Christmas he sent her a gift that turned out to be The Last Battle, the seventh book in C. S. Lewis’ Narnia series.
Why he gave my sister the last book in the series and not the first, I will never know. But I remember idly picking it up one day and starting to read. I was immediately gripped by the machinations of the evil ape Shift and wanted desperately to know what would happen to the false Aslan (a donkey named Puzzle dressed in a lion skin), even though at the time I had no idea who Aslan was. But it was clear from the outset that Shift’s creation of a false Aslan was the same as creating a false god, and that no good could come from it. As the story continued it became obvious that Lewis’ novel was his way of making believable the Biblical book of Revelation. I was captured and simply had to read through to the end. Books rarely fulfil their initial promise, but this one did, and more. Long before I finished that first/last book I was addicted to Lewis. I quickly figured out that The Last Battle was the seventh in a series (The titles were listed on the back cover, duh!) and I knew that as soon as I was back at university I would find and read the rest of the series in the right order.
Back at school I was raving to someone about my literary discovery, only to find him unimpressed. “Oh yeah,” he said, “I read Narnia when I was a kid, and later some of his other more serious works like Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain.” When I heard there was even more to be had from Lewis I felt like Pippin in The Fellowship of the Ring when he visited The Prancing Pony and learned about human-sized beer servings: “It comes in pints?” “You mean, there’s more?” I said. “And the other stuff is even better?” I know I passed my university courses that spring semester, but how remains a mystery because every free moment I had was spent absorbing all the Lewis I could find, some of it purchased (I still have the paperbacks of the Narnia series.), and the rest borrowed from the school library. My interest in Lewis continued long after I married and began raising a family. I even read The Great Divorce aloud to my brand-new bride while we were on our honeymoon. (Irony much? Not really. The book is about heaven and hell, not marriage.) But she was already aware of my love for Lewis. Part of courting her involved visiting her Grade 3 class weekly to read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to her students.
The miracle of Lewis the writer is that somehow he manages to make his pedagogical books as interesting as his novels, but not by telling stories. The secret is that he is the master of the perfect illustration. I think I can say categorically that no one illustrates theological and philosophical ideas better than Lewis. I could be wrong, of course, but I will go so far as to say I would never risk such a statement about any other author. When it comes to the craftsmanship of writing, Lewis is the best.
Perhaps Lewis’ illustrations are so apt because his mind is so comprehensive. When Lewis has finished examining a subject one feels there is little left to be said, or that could be said. His ability to penetrate to the heart of a problem is second to none. Take, for example, a talk he gave to a pacifist society at Oxford during the Second World War entitled “Why I Am Not a Pacifist.” Indeed, he was not. He fought in France toward the end of the Great War and was wounded in the Somme Valley by a shell that took the lives of two of his companions.
But now to get to Lewis’ argument against pacifism. He begins by defining the issue: “whether to serve in the wars at the command of the civil society to which we belong is a wicked action, or an action morally indifferent, or an action morally obligatory.” I daresay not many pacifists have so clearly identified the real underlying question.
But Lewis does not stop there. He goes on to examine an even deeper question, how does anyone decide what is good or evil? By the time he has answered that question and then gone on to deal with the relationships between facts, intuition, and the art of decision making, his listeners have received a university course in the right uses of logic and philosophy, and all of it done in about five pages of a rather small-sized book. Then, when Lewis uses his examination of decision making to address the issues related to pacifism, I think even old Menno Simons himself would be hard-pressed to say anything in reply.
Nobody condenses and summarizes complicated concepts more adequately, or more attractively than Lewis. I was involved in pulpit ministry for more than 40 years, and even though I earned a master’s degree and have done the course work toward a doctorate, I do not believe I could have lasted without Lewis’ books. He was undoubtedly the supreme human teacher in my life. We differ on many theological points, he and I, but to this day when I defend my theological positions I try to do it using Lewis’ lessons on how to think.
Here is another way to judge the quality of Lewis’ writing. When I pick up one of his books 40 or more years after I first read it, I find it as fresh and powerful now as I did when a much younger man. Not many authors can lay claim to such power.
There’s so much more to be said, but let me stop here with a short list of Lewis’ books that I believe are must-reads for those who want to make a difference in the spiritual wellbeing of 21st Century people. Naturally, you will want to read Lewis’ better-known books such as Mere Christianity or The Problem of Pain. But be assured, there are no bad Lewis books. There aren’t even any so-so Lewis books. So besides the books that will be mentioned in Prof. Haines’ lectures, let me urge you to read The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, which contains “Why I Am Not a Pacifist” and other must-reads, including “On Forgiveness,” one of the richest short essays you’ll ever read on the subject.
A lot of people apparently do not know that Lewis also wrote adult novels. But his science fiction/fantasy series (often called the Space Trilogy), stands up today, not because the science is so amazing, but because his exposure of the war in the heavenlies (spoken of by St. Paul in Eph. 6:12) draws back the veil to show us the continuing influence of the spiritual world on all of world history. Other books have been written on the subject, but no other books do it better than Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and the grand finale, That Hideous Strength. (Eat your heart out Frank Peretti!) In my opinion That Hideous Strength’s revelation that today’s information age would lead directly to government abuse and the loss of freedom, not to mention its exposition of today’s weird blend of science and the occult, means it can proudly take its place alongside such classics of English prognostication as Brave New World and 1984. Moreover, Strength was published in 1945, which means Lewis’ foresight preceded Orwell’s.
Just now my wife and I are reading through the Biblical book of Proverbs as part of our daily devotions, and I’ve been struck by the recurring admonition to “get wisdom.” I can hear some of you now. “I agree,” you say, “we should. But how?” Well, my answer is, “Get Lewis and you will be well on your way.”
C. S. LEWIS: HIS LIFE AND APOLOGETICS - NOVEMBER 23 - 27, 2020 AT 7 PM MST
Join FBB guest scholar David Haines as he introduces the life of C. S. Lewis and explains Lewis’s approach to defending Christianity. Haines will begin by describing Lewis’ life, his upbringing in a Christian family, his teenage rejection of Christianity and embrace of atheism, and his eventual return to Christ and kingdom service as a world-class scholar and apologist. Haines will then examine Lewis’ defense of the Christian faith, highlighting important issues such as his argument from reason, his famous trilemma supporting the divinity of Christ, and much, much more.
Classes will run from Monday November 23 - 27 at 7PM MST daily.
Registration is free, but limited, please register as soon as possible to reserve your spot.