Owen Barfield was a great friend of C.S. Lewis’s, a member of the Inklings who played an important role in bringing the atheist Lewis to belief, and as I recall Lewis praised this book in particular, so I thought I should read it. The bad news, dear reader, is that I got little out of … [Read more…]
This book was originally titled, Jack: C.S. Lewis and His Times, and the author, who headed the English department at Malvern College in Worcestershire, was a friend of Lewis’s and occasional attendee of meetings of the Inklings. He met Lewis in 1934 when the latter became the former’s tutor at Oxford, and remained apparently close … [Read more…]
The author is a transplanted Scot, now a seminary professor and pastor in Grand Rapids, and the book’s secondary title is, “Ten Ways To Be a Joyful Believer in a Gloomy World.” The book’s ten chapters address how to achieve greater happiness as a Christian in different contexts, namely: facts, media, salvation, church, future, world, … [Read more…]
The author of this book also wrote a recent (and excellent) biography of C.S. Lewis, which I note briefly on this blogsite here. (It’s of interest that in this later book’s suggested further reading, he lists — as the three “best biographies” of Lewis — his own and those by Alan Jacobs and George Sayer.) … [Read more…]
I deliberately sought out a book in this series on one of the gospels because I enjoyed its volume on Acts (by a different author) so much. And I’m glad I did: Professor Jeffrey is unfailingly insightful and judicious. I enjoyed, for example, his periodic observations on Luke’s likely source for this or that passage; recall … [Read more…]
This book collects the Christian conversion stories of sixty people, most of them famous and all in his or her own words (with a short introduction to each by the editor). They are fairly short accounts: The book is about 400 pages long, so that’s less than seven pages apiece, minus the intro and page … [Read more…]
There are lots of reasons to believe in God, and I thought a list would be helpful. (Caveat: Whether He is the God of the New Testament is of course a related but distinct question, and some of the reasons below are specific to Christianity and some aren’t.) One could write a book on many … [Read more…]
1. It’s a mistake to see detailed political guidance in the Bible. It seems to give a broad range — allowing us, for example, even to choose a king or not (Deuteronomy 17:14-20), and recognizing that political authority is distinct from religious authority (“Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s”). … [Read more…]
The author is himself a rabbi, and a young one, being only 37 when the book was published. He feels passionately that both Christians and Jews need to pay greater attention to Jesus’ Jewishness. The final paragraph of the book (184) reads: “Victor Hugo once said, ‘All the forces in the world are not as … [Read more…]
This is a book about a book. It recounts how C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity came to be written and its remarkable longevity and influence over the past 75 years or so. Professor Marsden of Notre Dame does a splendid job, and anyone who is a fan of C.S. Lewis’s book — and of course, as you … [Read more…]