Reviews

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  By Nathaniel Kidd - April 6, 2019 9:12 am Log in to Reply

  CS Lewis’s clear and soft-spoken presentation of the core doctrines of the historic Christian faith for a 20th C audience has rightly gained a reputation as a modern classic within Christian literature. Unfortunately for readers in our circle, Lewis’s doctrine and memory has been appropriated primarily by the rather tasteless form of the Christian faith that easily and uncritically accommodates the Powers and Principalities of postwar capitalism, and that may taint the force and appeal of his argument.

  A partial remedy, perhaps, may lie in appreciating Lewis within his historical context. We should remember, after all, that Mere Christianity began as a series of radio broadcasts on the BBC during WWII, endorsed by the British government as a way of consolidating national morale in an especially dark and difficult time. In this view, I like to think of Lewis as resourcing a theology of resistance: hiding out in underground bunkers during Nazi air-raids to proclaim that there is a ground for hope, and that the resistance is not in vain. You won’t get that from a superficial reading of MC, but it’s there, just beneath the surface.

  That said, I think that our readers might better appreciate some of Lewis’s other works: his fiction, in particular — his Space Trilogy, for instance, and his famous, young reader oriented fantasy, the Narnia series. His retelling of an ancient myth in “Till We have Faces” is also extraordinary, although somewhat subtle. It is in these contexts where the scope and power of his imagination are more readily at play, although the theological engine articulated in MC and some of his other prose works is always present.

  It has become extremely unpopular in modernity and postmodernity to root one’s social and artistic imagination in the historic, canonical orthodoxy of Judeo-Islamo-Christianity. In most circles, being a heretic is almost a prerequisite for being taken seriously — it is, in effect, the new orthodoxy. But the ongoing interest in Lewis and his works stands as an icon of the enduring power and appeal of theology in its classical form — as well as its continuing fecundity in underwriting imaginative alternatives to the oppressive and horrific systems of modernity. We are empirically justified in expecting, after all, that a story that proved capable of sustaining the human soul through the convulsive terrors of the first half of the 20th C, will likewise prove to be of value anticipating the apocalyptic terrors that await us in the first half of the 21st.