Over the last several weeks I've been asked on a couple of occassions to come ot the defense of C. S. Lewis. First of all, Ales Rarus (aka my favorite papist) pointed me to this post from Rand at "A Pattern of Sound Words" who questions whether or not C. S. Lewis was a good Christian apologist, and who also questions whether or not he was even a Christian. Ales gives Rand a good fisking here.
More recently my buddy Adrian has challenged me to come to the defense of Lewis in this post. Adrian points to this post on Destruction of Gog wherein Lewis is quoted as denying the doctrine of penal substitution. In doing so, Adrian admits that Lewis sure sounds like what he calls a "neo-liberal" and he invites me to come to Lewis's defense.
In receiving these challenges from Adrian and Ales Rarus I feel like I am being exposed as a fraud. Because my blog takes its name from a C. S. Lewis quote I am giving off the impression that I am a great lover of C. S. Lewis and maybe even someone who knows alot about Lewis.
The truth is that I do love Lewis, but I am far from being a scholar of his works. I have read the Chronicles of Narnia, Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity and the Four Loves. Other than that I have merely dabbled in his writings. I have enjoyed many of his essays, particularly God in the Dock and the one on Learning War Time. But having read those things hardly qualifies me as an expert on Lewis.
Which makes me think I need to change my little blurb about where I got the inspiration for "Jollyblogger." I think it was Michael Spencer from the Boars Head Tavern who thought I had taken my inspiration from the Jolly Roger, and he once encouraged people to say "Jollyblogger" in a real piratey voice. So, maybe I should replace my C. S. Lewis quote with a quote from Captain Jack Sparrow or something. But if I do that, people will start asking me questions about Johnny Depp and pirate stuff and then I'll be in real trouble. My only expertise in piratey stuff is that, when my kids were young I used to know all the words to "We are the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything."
So, I'll just go back to the whole C. S. Lewis thing. And while I don't feel that Lewis needs me to defend him I do think there are a few things we can learn from this whole discussion.
First of all, Rand's comments were not the first time I have heard someone say that Lewis wasn't a Christian. Several years ago my wife Lynette spent some time with a lady that we were both acquainted with and she came home and said "Mrs. So and So says that C. S. Lewis isn't a Christian." Mrs. So and So were the local conspiracy buffs, they had a son who said that they could find a conspiracy on a trip to the 7-11. Sure enough, this lady had been in some kind of new age bookstore, probably doing some research on how the new age conspiracy dovetailed with the activities of the Illuminati, the Tril-Lateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, and how they were all working together to establish a one-world government. While she was in the bookstore she saw that they were selling the Chronicles of Narnia. She spoke with the proprieter about this and he confirmed that he was not only into the new age, but also witchcraft, and (here's the kicker) C. S. Lewis was his doorway into this. It was the magic in Chronicles of Narnia that got him pointed in that direction. So, Mrs. So and So concluded that Lewis wasn't a Christian.
Such a line of thought isn't too far off from Rand's reasoning, just the details are changed:
Let me also add that a believer really doesn't need to read C.S. Lewis to see that there is something fishy going on with his books. Notice that every faith, from the Roman Catholic to the Mormon, from the Anglican to the Pentecostal, all these groups are perfectly okay with Lewis' writings. Am I really one of the few who finds this to be a bit weird?
As far as I'm concerned, the only way an author can get away with pleasing such a large variety of faiths is to write fluff and stuff (nothing concrete), or to be everything to everyone; neither being very profitable to the Christian, or honoring to God.
In one sense you could see these as examples of fallacious ad hominem reasoning, where these folks assume Lewis to be a false prophet or non-Christian simply because certain people like him. In another sense these are non sequitors because it doesn't follow that, if lots of different people like someone then the one they like must be writing "fluff and stuff." It doesn't follow that, because one person turned to the new age through C. S. Lewis's writings he must be a non-Christian. Mormons, Catholics, Anglicans, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, atheists, new agers and neo-pagans all believe that there was a historical person named Jesus (though they understand him differently), that the sky is blue, that pigs can't fly and that water is wet. Must we assume therefore that anyone who believes these things is suspect because so many of the wrong people believe them?
Moving on to Adrian's challenge, I have no problem admitting that Lewis was a neo-liberal, if that is the label we want to use. I'm even willing to take the neo- off of the label. In that respect, Rand is right - Lewis did not hold to many of the key doctrines that evangelicals hold to. I have known for years that Lewis had a weak (in my own opinion) view of Scriptural authority and that neither he, nor many of his proponents, nor many evangelicals would claim him as an evangelical, at least in the sense that we 21st century Americans understand evangelicalism.
But that doesn't diminish his value to evangelicals and anyone else who reads him. George Grant quotes G. K. Chesterton frequently, in fact rarely does he get through a speech where he doesn't quote Chesterton. Grant is a dyed in the wool Presbyterian-Reformed-Calvinist-thank-you-very-much and sometimes people will hear him quote Chesterton and will pull him aside and try to edumacate him. He says it usually goes like this. They pull him aside and very quietly whisper to him, "psst, George, don't you know that Chesterton's a Catholic!" George gets a kick out of this. Of course he knows Chesterton's a catholic. When he quotes Chesterton he's not trying to get him ordained in the PCA, the man is just full of wisdom and insight that is beneficial to anyone from any tradition. I see the same thing as true with Lewis. No, he probably wouldn't get ordained in my presbytery. But if he were alive and I had access to him, would I try to spend as much time with him as I could? Absolutely. His writings are just too good to pass by.
I would hope that most of us are to the point where we can read people who are different from us and take the good from their writings and discard the things we disagree with. For now, we still see through a glass darkly. Because of that, Lewis got alot of things wrong. But do any of us really think we are going to get to heaven and not be in for a big surprise about the things we ourselves have gotten wrong?
There is a story, it may be a legend, but its a good story nonetheless involving John Gerstner and Karl Barth. Gerstner was one of the leading defenders of reformed orthodoxy in the last century and Barth was the leading proponent of neo-orthodoxy. Most of those in the "paleo-orthodoxy" crowd argued against Barth vociferously, and Gerstner was no exception. Yet, many also had a great respect for Barth and were very careful to argue against his ideas, not him as a person. One day in class, an impudent young student (of which seminaries are full) asked Gerstner if he thought Barth had reconsidered some of his theological positions now that he had time to think them over in hell. Gerstner was not pleased in the least with such a question and he let the student know. It's one thing to engage in vigorous debate with someone, its another to arrogate to oneself the ability to discern the eternal state of that person. There may be much we can criticize in people like Barth and Lewis, but let's use the hermeneutic of charity when reading them (and anyone else for that matter).
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