“The Timeless Writings of C.S. Lewis”

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…]

Hermann Diem, “Kierkegaard: An Introduction”

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…]

Harold Bloom, “The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible”

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…]

Terence E. Fretheim, “The Pentateuch”

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…]

Dorothy L. Sayers, “The Mind of the Maker”

Sayers was a British contemporary of C.S. Lewis’s, and a Christian fellow traveler who is well thought of by many conservatives and Christians. This book is all right, but I have to say that based on it I’m not so impressed that I’m inclined to read her systematically.  She is sometimes obscure, and sometimes overreaches. … [Read more…]

James T. Como (editor), “C.S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table and Other Reminiscences”

This book is a series of vignettes by people who knew C.S. Lewis personally.  What a wonderful man:  generous, talkative, unpretentious, positive — a real role model.  And there is material of interest beyond his personality in here:  Jacques Barzun was a fan, Lewis accepts original sin because Paul seemed to (159), Lewis did not … [Read more…]