The Christian Mind of C. S. Lewis

According the Walter Hooper, the man who became the executor of C. S. Lewis’s literary estate, Lewis did not expect to have his books read for long after he died.

That is, of course, the way of it for even many good writers and careful thinkers. During their lives, when they are writing essays and giving lectures, their books sell because they are on trending topics and there are regular reminders that a certain book exists.

People continue to find C. S. Lewis helpful for several reasons. Unlike many academic writers and moralists, Lewis wrote children’s books that are enjoyed by a wide swath of people, both those inside and outside his ideological camp. This means that Lewis’s other works have a fighting chance of being picked up, even if someone wasn’t initially very interested in an essay entitled, “Religion and Rocketry.”

In his intellectual biography of Lewis, McGrath explains Lewis’s ongoing popularity by three reasons:

1.       The continued value of his apologetic work.

2.       His religious appeal.

3.       His use of imagination in defense of the faith.

I think these three are valid, but one needs to go a little further to get at the heart of the reason for the continued sales of the works of C. S. Lewis. Michael Travers noted another reason beyond those offered by McGrath:

In addition to these reasons, there is an underlying reason for Lewis’s ongoing important: he wrote about things of first importance, timeless truths that he thought we needed to hear. In his writings, Lewis taps into the essential human condition in such a way that we catch glimpses of truths we had forgotten or perhaps suppressed, especially in our modern, Post-Enlightenment culture. One of these truths is that everyone is on a journey, hoping for heaven, even when we do not know it or refuse to admit it.

Travers’s explanation gets at the concept of the Christian mind of C. S. Lewis.

Lewis remains fascinating to many Christians at varying levels of education and experience, and across denominational boundaries, primarily because he gets at the heart of what it means at piece to live with the Mind that imagined the universe, set its boundaries, and controls the course of history. The Christian mind provides evidence of the truth of reality and how to live within that truth.

Lewis is one of a number of Christian thinkers who had the Christian mind. In his own time Dorothy L. Sayers and Francis A. Schaeffer had a deep understanding of reality and were able to point people toward it. Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck overlapped with Lewis, but also had the Christian mind. As we look back in Church history, the number grows: Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo both thought and wrote with the Christian mind.

At a most basic level, the Christian mind is one that recognizes the enduring truth, goodness, and beauty of God. It is therefore drawn perpetually to asking questions about the true, the good, and the beautiful. This is a vision of reality that sees integrity in the universe because God himself, the eternal Three-in-One, is perfectly simple and without division. Comprehending this reality, even to the limited degree possible, entails looking at the wonder of reality outside of our own minds. Truth is discovered by observation, not introspection. The Christian mind is, therefore, one that is more interested in the world around than in itself.

I recently edited a collection of essays in honor of a friend and mentor, Michael Travers. In that volume, eleven authors from different fields of study consider the Christian mind of C. S. Lewis as it was presented in his work and as it applies to other significant topics of interest.

The book contains an essay by Michael Travers on Lewis’s apologetic of hope, which opens the book with a grand view of C. S. Lewis’s vision of the world. There is also a delightful chapter by Michael’s daughter, Elizabeth, on Desire and Love in The Chronicles of Narnia.

Aside from personal connections, there are several essays by well-known Lewis scholars in the book. James Como contributed an essay on C. S. Lewis as a master builder, demonstrating Lewis’s rhetorical genius. There is also a chapter from Leland Ryken who gets at one of Lewis’s sources: John Milton. Ryken’s chapter shows how the Christian mind understands all of life to be a stewardship before the Lord.

Heath Thomas contributed a chapter correcting C. S. Lewis’s writings on the Psalms of Lament and demonstrating that Lewis appears to have grown in his understanding of lament later in life, particularly in his Letters to Malcolm. Daniel Estes explains the significance of the integration of faith with all of life, something at which Lewis excelled. There are also essays in Lewis’s ethics in That Hideous Strength and The Abolition of Man, his concept of the “Inner Ring,” disinterested love in Screwtape and The Great Divorce, and an essay that puts Lewis and Schaeffer in dialogue on apologetics and epistemology.

In each of the diverse essays attempts to show readers where Lewis was pointing, since Lewis himself viewed his work as less significant than the one to whom he was pointing. This is a book with a heart attuned to both evangelism and doxology, concepts that are deeply intertwined and vitally important to the Christian life.

If you are fan of C. S. Lewis, or looking for an introduction to the wide range of work he did, this volume would be a good place to start.

The Christian Mind of C. S. Lewis: Essays in Honor of Michael Travers

Wipf and Stock

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NOTE: I edited this volume. If you buy a copy, I might get a tiny fragment of the money, which might eventually bring the hourly rate of my efforts up from deeply negative to zero dollars lost per hour. My more significant motivation is that Michael Travers was a dear friend and some of the essays in this volume are just plain good.

Branches to Heaven - A Review

In the process of editing a volume of essays on The Christian Mind of C.S. Lewis, I’ve had the opportunity to read most of Lewis’s published works in the past year or so. I’ve also needed to read the secondary literature about Lewis to better understand his work and how it has influenced contemporary Christianity and even non-Christian literary interpretation.

Lewis is so popular among Christians that there are literally dozens of books broadly interacting with his work. This started even during his life and has continued unabated for the fifty years since his death. Many of the books are formulaic to a fault. They tell the story of Lewis’s early life, show how he was converted, then relate how his fiction was a form of apologetic, etc. A lot of these books are critically banal and biographical hagiographic. That works for a handful of introductory volumes, but it gets really boring to read when the differences between one book on Lewis and another are a few nuggets that someone identified along the way.

For those looking for an insightful introduction to the life and work of C. S. Lewis, I heartily commend the 1998 volume, Branches to Heaven: The Genuises of C. S. Lewis, by James Como. (I should note that Como is one of the contributors to the volume of essays I’m editing, but I commend the book on its merits, not based on personal connection.) Como has also published, Remembrances of C. S. Lewis, an early collection of first-person accounts from those who knew Lewis well. Como has stood as a bridge for those of us later scholars interested in Lewis who did not know the man and have not had opportunity to engage with those who met with and lived with a figure who has now risen to be a folk hero.

Como’s Branches to Heaven, manages to critically celebrate the life and work of Lewis. There is no question that Como is a fan, after all, the subtitle includes the word “geniuses.” However, Como critically engages with Lewis to show the strengths and weaknesses of his work, and points to some of the ways that Lewis, particularly in his early life, fell short of the Christian ideal. In particular, Como deals carefully with the obscure relationship between Mrs. Moore and Lewis, in a way that is respectful and simultaneously non-hagiographic. There is little question that Lewis was saved from sin and that his sanctification was progressive.

The most unique aspect of Como’s book is that he approaches Lewis’s work as a rhetorician. Como was professor of rhetoric and public communication. He situates the non-fiction, prose fiction, and poetry of Lewis within the context of classical rhetorical disciplines. This is exceedingly helpful because there is obviously a lot more going on in all of Lewis’s work than modern literary analysis tends to uncover, and that something has a great deal to do with Lewis’s own rootedness in the classical tradition. Como helps to explain the enduring draw of the work of C. S. Lewis because he helps to answer the question why Lewis’s work is so compelling, aside from its general agreement with orthodox Christianity. In other words, many other faithful Christians have done political commentary or fiction, but I can think of none that have been as enduringly effective as C. S. Lewis. Como’s analysis shows why that enduring popularity exists and why it is warranted.

For those casually interested in Lewis, Como’s book will be informative and engaging. For serious students of the legacy of C. S. Lewis, Branches to Heaven is essential reading.

Branches to Heaven: The Geniuses of C.S. Lewis

By James Como, Silence

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