Entries that relate to C.S. Lewis and his work.
These are just a few notes I made; as a fan of just about everything Lewis wrote, I’m hesitant to post something so limited on an extended work of his, fearing that someone might think this is all I thought noteworthy. With that caveat, here’s what I happened to jot down: I thought important this … [Read more…]
Here are some thoughts on effective evangelism, from someone who may or may not be an especially effective evangelist: You need to have good answers to obvious questions like: (1) Why does God let children die of cancer? (2) Why are good people who don’t believe in Jesus sent to Hell? On the other hand, … [Read more…]
There can be both selfish and unselfish reasons for wanting to be good and wanting to be godly. They are not inconsistent and may not even be that distinct. *** Faith and love can both be cultivated. Whether we’re considering when they’re beginning or when they’re already extant, it’s romantic but foolish to think otherwise. … [Read more…]
Great title, eh? The book is okay: The basic idea is an intriguing one, namely to be alert to how God is guiding your life to be a story, a coherent narrative with a theme. Cf. C.S. Lewis’s suggested analogy — albeit in the context of God’s being outside of time — between an … [Read more…]
I noted this important exchange (477): When asked, “What Christian writers have helped you?,” C.S. Lewis replied, The contemporary book that has helped me the most is Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man. Others are Edwyn Bevan’s book, Symbolism and Belief, and Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy, and the plays of Dorothy Sayers. [Footnote: “Such … [Read more…]
This 1966 book is only 124 pages; the author — a bravely anti-Nazi Protestant pastor, by the way — acknowledges (89-90) that Kierkegaard is hard to summarize (and I bet not all that easy to understand in the first place). Some notes: Kierkegaard is extremely Protestant and un-Catholic in his insistence on individual grappling and … [Read more…]
This is a very good book, made excellent by the fact that the author is who he is: That makes it worth giving and recommending to others. Some notes: He’s a huge fan of C.S. Lewis and quotes him repeatedly. (No mention of Pascal, though.) There’s a heading in the book (224), “Evidence Demanding a … [Read more…]
Bloom is a traditionalist when it comes to criticism, but he is not a believer. He takes issue with C.S. Lewis a few times; Lewis apparently objected to the whole enterprise of reading Scripture as literature. I read only the introduction and the New Testament part (not the Old Testament or Apocrypha, which are by … [Read more…]
The author is “a Christian and a Lutheran” (37). The discussion in chapter one of ways to read the text is interesting and thought-provoking (some politically correct elements creep in, though). He makes the point that the themes in Genesis cannot be forgotten in interpreting Exodus and the rest of the Pentateuch. Wikipedia, by the … [Read more…]
A very enjoyable and worthwhile book (and by a likely Christian). It’s a biography of the first part of Lewis’s life — that is, through his conversion — that weaves in his contemporaneous and later writings to show his intellectual/faith journey.