The Calvinist International
It is well known that C.S. Lewis borrowed the phrase “mere Christianity” from the seventeenth-century Puritan Richard Baxter; Lewis says as much in his book called–wait for it–Mere Christianity. Lewis also uses the phrase with some regularity in other writings, as indicated here. For instance, in his famous essay “On the Reading of Old Books,” […]
An addendum to yesterday: It has already been noted that CS Lewis was not an Anglo-Catholic, for the reasons given here. Further confirmation comes from his comments on John Henry Newman, once the nineteenth century’s premier Anglo-Catholic before he ceased being either, in Letters to Malcolm 6. First, some praise for Maurice, Bonhoeffer, and Establishment: I […]
I’ve written here before of the importance of thinking about posture when we think about prayer, due to the body-soul connection that is fundamental to human being; this connection remains real, even if one demurs from going quite so far as to jump the proverbial shark and plug the sacramental high-five. Those previous posts have dealt with John […]
Consider this an exercise in the the analysis of the evolution of the heroic temper. Lewis and Vergil In his chapter on Vergil in A Preface to Paradise Lost, C.S. Lewis speaks of Aeneas’ “reluctant yet unfaltering search for the abiding city (mansuram urbem)” (emph. orig.). The passage in question comes from the “all-important” Book […]
Many of us are predisposed, I think, to think of the nebulous concept “beauty” in appetitive terms. That is, it answers primarily to desire: the responsional relationship is between our longing and some aesthetic object. Indeed, in most (or, rather, nearly all) popular usage, the concept is drastically (and advantageously) underdetermined, such that it becomes merely […]
I was recently listening to John Webster’s Kantzer Lectures from 2007, “Perfection & Presence: God with Us, According To the Christian Confession,” and was directed to C.S. Lewis’ brief essay “Work and Prayer” from God in the Dock. Leaving aside the knotty issues of sovereignty and free choice (even though this is The Calvinist International!), there […]
In his Reflections on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis implies that modern Christians often miss a crucial aspect of the nativity. In celebrating the peace and joy that the infant Jesus embodies for Israel and for the world it is easy to lose sight of his combined priest-kingly activity of “binding the strong man” and destroying […]
Warren Fahra meditates on the blessing of friendship for society in the case of the Inklings, and offers them as an example of what friendship can be more broadly. He says: If our encounter with the Inklings shows us anything, it must be the fresh, dynamic, creative power of friendship. Yes perhaps all the works […]
C. S. Lewis has been the subject of many posts at TCI, and with good reason. He ranks with the best apologists of the 20th century, if not as the best. But he did not write only as an apologist, at least not if we conceive that term narrowly. He did not contend only for […]
In his well-known attempt to field the question of pacifism, the essay “Why I Am Not a Pacifist”, C.S. Lewis established some preliminary ground rules about moral reasoning applicable beyond his particular concerns. He begins by adverting toward an analysis of Reason in general. Lewis notes that this involves three elements: the facts reasoned about, […]