Scott Freeman

On July 4th I picked up the first published C.S. Lewis work, a collection of poems entitled Spirits in Bondage. Over the last 5 weeks I have read the first 19 of his published works with the exception of his Broadcast Talks which would ultimately be released in 1952 in America under the title Mere Christianity.

I pause here for a moment of reflection because I view this as the mid-point in his Christian writings. Lewis’s first Christian work was the Pilgrim’s Regress in 1933. He died in 1963 giving us 30 years of publication. The Narnia writings begin the second half of that career.

I know more now of Lewis than I ever have. I have been able to trace his progress as a writer and see his developing thought. I’ve come to some preliminary conclusions:

1. Lewis was a fantastic literary critic. He has helped me to have a greater appreciation for allegory and epic. He has enlightened Paradise Lost and Beowulf beyond what I thought imaginable. Despite being a chore his books of criticism have been great opportunities of learning for me.

2. He would always be a frustrated poet. His first two published works would be poems but they were lackluster. However, he continued to work verse into a lot of his writings.

3. His major contribution was as a novelist. Throughout the first 31 years of his publishing life far and away the most memorable books were those that were fictional. The Pilgrim’s Regress, The Space Trilogy and The Great Divorce were far and away the high points so far.

4. Lewis, to this point, was NOT a great theological writer. I would be hard pressed to classify him as a very good one. Shoot me if you want but his expressly theological works thus far are more apologetic in nature and largely disappointing. I’m not sure how much that will change.

I’m blogging about this because I have every other Lewis work. In my mind, this successfully wraps up the first half of Lewis’s writing career. It is a series of essays that he gave through his life including the title sermon.

By and large the essays are hit and miss. I won’t go into much detail because I don’t think anyone really cares all that much.

The titles of the addresses are as follows:

The Weight of Glory
Learning in War-Time
Why I Am Not a Pacifist
Transposition
Is Theology Poetry
The Inner Ring
Membership
On Forgiveness
A Slip of the Tongue

Grade: B-

The other night I went to Hastings to feed my used-book addiction. While there I noticed a huge display of “Harry Potter Moves To Jonestown” or whatever the latest entry in that series is.

Upon closer inspection I noticed that the audio version of “Harry Potter Spikes the Punch” was selling for 80 bucks. That’s 80 US dollars. As my mom would say, “think of the number of mouths that could feed.”

I can’t imagine anyone choosing to pay that much to hear someone read to them but here is my offer:

I will read, over web-cam, “Harry Potter and the Mass Immolation” or any book of your choosing for 15% less than the list price. In other words, I will read “Harry Potter and the Angry ATF Agents” for only 68 dollars.

You can’t beat that anywhere.

I know that I have tested the patience of my blog audience by talking so much about C.S. Lewis in recent weeks. Trust me, I haven’t said 10% of what I want to say. Thus far, being about half-way through his living published works, I’ve come to some rather startling conclusions that I wasn’t prepared for. But more about that on Monday.

Next up in my chronological quest is the Chronicles of Narnia. At this point I have to do it a little bit differently. If I read them in the order they were published I wouldn’t be able to read them in the order that Lewis intended. For instance, the first book in the series was the 6th of the 7 to be published. So I will pull the Chronicles out of the process and read them in the order that Lewis intended. I will not stop throughout to read his other works that were published during this time. After reading through Narnia I will come back to Mere Christianity, English Literature in the 16th Century, and Surprised By Joy. I don’t think doing it this way will mess up the process.

My question is this: Is anybody interested in reading through the Chronicles of Narnia with me? Maybe you would like to read them again and discuss the wonder and allegory of Lewis’s greatest work. Or maybe you have always intended to and never taken the time.

I will take some time off from Lewis while I see if anybody is interested in this. Let me know and we could have some fun discussion on Digory and Aslan, of wardrobes and magicians. We will begin sometime next week.

Here is the order that Lewis intended with the publication order in parenthesis.

1. The Magician’s Nephew (6th)
2. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (1st)
3. The Horse and His Boy (5th)
4. Prince Caspian (2nd)
5. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (3rd)
6. The Silver Chair (4th)
7. The Last Battle (7th)

Yes, I know I have read 6 C.S. Lewis books in the last 3 days. Does that make me a geek? Important to know is that these works are relatively brief.

George MacDonald: An Anthology

Lewis did not write this book. Instead he provided a preface and assembled 365 excerpts from the writings and preaching of the great 19th century writer George MacDonald. If there has been any benefit to me reading the works of Lewis like I have the further exposure to MacDonald would be at or near the top of that list.

This is a book that everyone should read. Better yet, it’s good to own and go back to again and again. It’s brevity is surpassed by its depth and richness. Rather than a review, here are some great sayings of George MacDonald:

A man may sink by such slow degrees that, long after he is a devil, he may go on bein a good churchman or a good dissenter and thinking himself a good Christian.

The notion that the salvation of Jesus is a salvation from the consequences of our sins is a false, mean, low notion…Jesus did not die to save us from punishment; He was called Jesus because He should save His people from their sins.

When we say that God is love, do we teach men that their fear of Him is groundless? No. As much as they fear will come upon them, possibly far more…The wrath will consume what they call themselves, so that the selves God made may appear.

But Herein is the Bible itself greatly wronged. It nowhere lays claim to be regarded as the Word, the Way, the Truth. The Bible leads us to Jesus, the inexhaustible, the ever unfolding Revelation of God. It is Christ “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” not the Bible, save as leading to Him.

I could go on but I will be coming back to MacDonald soon. Grade: A

Essays Presented to Charles Williams

To be able to read these next two works I had to take a trip to the Baylor library and dig in their archives. It made for a pleasant afternoon of reading is some mighty comfy chairs.

This book was intended to be a gift to Charles Williams from several noted authors on the occasion of his return home to Oxford after WW2. Instead, his surprise death led it be serve as a tribute and memorial instead. Lewis wrote the preface and a tremendous essay “On Stories.” Author authors included Lewis’ brother Warren, J.R.R. Tolkien and Dorothy Sayers. I will comment further about “On Stories” when it is re-released posthumously in 1982.

The Arthurian Torso Containing the Posthumous Fragment of The Figure of Arthur

When Williams died he left uncompleted a treatment on the legend of King Arthur. Because so much of the surviving work was read during the weekly meeting of the Inklings Lewis was able to publish what was left including his commentary on the work. If interested you can read the entire text online here.

I opted against taking a break from reading C.S. primarily because I am anxious to get to his Narnia series and secondly because the majority of these books are brief allowing me to read through them rather quickly. And with the wife and kids out of town all week I have even more time to sit and read.

The Great Divorce

This book is Lewis’ classic allegory on heaven and hell. In the book, which can be read in a couple of hours, Lewis takes a bus ride from hell into heaven along with several other passengers. Lewis is then able to witness the interactions between those souls in heaven and those who have the opportunity to change their fate. Ultimately, this is a fantasy and a tremendous read and is not to be taken as a position on soteriology by Lewis.
However, as Lewis often does, he is reacting to beliefs that he feels are prominent in his time. In this case it is the view that all roads lead to God. It is the authors belief that our eternal destination is one of choice and as these souls encounter their moment of decision we see many of them defying reason and opting to return to that gray city that stands in for hell. It is one of Lewis’ finest works:

There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself…as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.

There is something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there’s also something which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil.

Grade: A

The Abolition of Man

This work is from a series of lectures that Lewis gave in 1943 but not published until 1947. So, although the production date was after That Hideous Strength the material predates the final installment of the Space Trilogy. As a result, it serves as a perfect companion to Lewis’ Science Fiction and shows the motivation for writing that final book.
The subtitle is a lengthy one: Or Reflections on Education With Special Reference to the Teaching of English In the Upper Forms of School. The purpose of Lewis here is not explicitly Christian but is more a defense of Natural Law. Although it’s not necessarily leisurely reading there are several profound nuggets that make it a worthwhile investment. In addition, as noted, it is the inspiration behind That Hideous Strength.
The first lecture, titled Men Without Chests (not to be confused with “The Safety Dance” guys), is more of a reaction to an English textbook that Lewis had discovered. He viewed the textbook of devaluing an external and objective truth in favor of individual feelings. Lewis was concerned about the subjugation of “value” to individual “feelings.” For Lewis there is a moral law that engulfs all of life and education is not to eradicate that but instead to inform. One of his best quotes:

For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.

In the second section, The Way, Lewis tries to illustrate the false dichotomy of the aforementioned English Text by pointing out that the authors, in trying to stamp out an external “value” propagate a competing and likewise external “value.”

The true weight of the book, however, is in the final lecture “The Abolition of Man.” Here we see first hand the “attack” on the “moral law”, or what Lewis would call the Tao, that would drive so much of Lewis’ ire and writing. In it, just as in Hideous Strength, he fears that the onslaught of eugenics will result in the creation of a new humanity, or a post-human.

To some it will appear that I am inventing a factitious difficulty for my Conditioners. Other, more simple-minded, critics may ask “Why should you suppose they will be such bad men?” But I am not supposing them to be bad men. They are, rather, not men (in the old sense) at all. They are, if you like, men who have sacrificed their own share in traditional humanity in order to devote themselves to the task of deciding what “Humanity” shall henceforth mean. “Good” and “bad,” applied to them, are words without content: for it is from them that the content of these words is henceforward to be derived.

One of the questions before them is whether this feeling for posterity (they know well how it is produced) shall be continued or not. However far they go back, or down, they can find no ground to stand on. Every motive they try to act on becomes at once a petitio. It is not that they are bad men. They are not men at all. Stepping outside the Tao, they have stepped into the void. Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men. They are not men at all: they are artifacts. Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man.

Ultimately, for Lewis, to proceed with science by dismissing or marginalizing the Tao is a huge mistake. He will passionately write against this throughout his works. Not an easy read but a highly enjoyable one. The appendix is a great addition laying out many sources of moral law from a wealth of traditions. Grade: A-

Miracles

I remember now why I quit reading C.S. Lewis. After writing so many wonderful works in a row he was bound to let me down. In my memory I had that I had read this book. I knew that it was assigned to me in one of my undergrad courses. However, in looking at the copy I had from those days my underlining, highlighting and notes in the margins ended at about page 8. I guess I knew then what was to be, for me, an insufferable work.
I view Miracles as a series of false dichotomies and strawmen that are dismissive of naturalism altogether. Although I am naturally disposed to agree with Lewis that there is a presence of the supernatural in this world, his dismissal of naturalism is tenuous and weak. He takes an a priori assumption that reason must be supernatural and works it back into his argument without sufficient explanation. If you want to start with the premise that there is that which can only be classified as supernatural that is fine. Lewis is a Christian and that is his prerogative. But to make your starting point a look at Nature and then so matter of factly dismiss the possibility that reason can stem from nature is second-rate apologetics.
In addition he makes the false conclusion that those who adhere to naturalism must believe and assent to the notion of a rigid determinism.
I know I might be unduly harsh on Lewis here (not like anybody is still reading at this point) but apologetics in the first place is tricky business and, ultimately, unsatisfying. Regardless of the approach you take the ultimate conclusion for any Christian must be “I can’t prove it, I will never prove it in this life. Yet, I believe.” That does not mean that apologetics is fruitless. However, it is fruitless to hang your theological and evangelistic hat on the missing pages of proof.
In the final analysis if this was the first book of Lewis’ I had endeavored to read it would also have been the last. Grade: C-

In 1945 Lewis would conclude his space trilogy closing out the tale of Ransom begin with Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. Despite the fact that the reviews of this book were the weakest of the three I think that I enjoyed this one the most.

Although Ransom does return in this, he is no longer the main character, nor is it set in outer space. The locale this time is the planet Earth. One of the reasons I loved this one more than the others is the dystopian bent that it has.

The fallen eldila have taken over a British university town. The changes that wreaks on the community and their desire to leave behind all traces of subjectivity are at the heart of this novel. Once again, I won’t go too much into plot details because I whole-heartedly and unreservedly encourage you to read this trilogy.

This book is most likely Lewis’ most forthright political work pointing out in turn the dangers of materialism, nihilism and Imperialism. In addition, there is a tremendous debt that is owed to Arthurian legend, the tower of Babel (from whence comes the title) and the dystopian thrillers of that era.

Two select excerpts:

“Theology!” said Mr. Straik with profound contempt. “It’s not theology I’m talking about, young man, but the Lord Jesus. Theology is talk–eyewash–a smoke screen–a game for rich men. It wasn’t in lecture rooms I found the Lord Jesus. It was in the coal pits, and beside the coffin of my daughter.

You do not fail i obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience.

I’m not always comfortable with Lewis’ conclusions and his poorly painted egalitarian picture of St. Anne’s fails to overcome his somewhat oppressive portrait of the book’s heroine, Jane. In addition, I think the book somewhat flounders in the last third.
Overall, however I give the book a solid A

I’m now trying to decide how long a break to take on Lewis before I begin the final push of 7 books until Narnia.

I include these two works in one entry for two major reasons:

1. I procrastinated in writing about Lewis’ Preface to the point in which I had finished Perelandra
2. Preface is essential in understanding Lewis’ motivation for writing Perelandra.

A Preface to Paradise Lost

Prior to reading this academic work I thought that a good judge of the merits of this book would be whether or not Lewis could stir within me the desire to read Milton’s famous work. Although he failed in that regard, however, the book does possess some tremendous insight and value that goes beyond Paradise Lost itself.
Lewis begins by giving an in-depth introduction to the genre of Epic literature. If you have a love for Epic poems than Lewis’ description of Primary and Secondary epics, the technique of repetition and the transition from the individualistic style of Epic during the early period of writings such as Beowulf to the more grand epic brought in my Milton, et al then this book would be a worthwhile read.
In addition, Lewis hits on some themes that play a large role in his writings, most notably that of Hierarchy. As evidenced in the comments to Out of the Silent Planet and JTB’s observations Lewis is a tremendous proponent of order and hierarchy and that plays into his writings.
The greatest impact of this work when considering my intent to read through Lewis’s writings is the impact and influence that Paradise Lost had on his next work.

Perelandra
Readers of Lewis’ first entry in this science fiction trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, would have to wait for several years before Ransom and Weston marked their return.

In this work, Ransom is dispatched to Perelandra (Venus) for some mission that at the outset is not fully explained to him. He knows that the Maleldil (devil) of this world has his eyes set on expanding and imagines being used in a divine plan to prevent that.

Perelandra is a beautifully written book, almost pitch-perfect in its tone and prose. It would be one of Lewis’ favorite writings. The book imagines a Paradise Kept, where Adam and Eve resisted the Evil One. This book is a re-imagining of that dark day. However, this time the results are quite different.

I don’t want to say too much about the plot in and of itself because I encourage everyone to pick this book up (after OOTSP, of course) and enjoy first-hand the rich telling of this story. However, it is important to note the themes that are prominent through the book. Again, Lewis sees a natural order of things in the universe. For good or bad, there is a hierarchy in Lewis’ mind that informs his writing.

In addition, this isn’t straight forward science fiction. There is a deep element of religious allegory and meaning to his work. The theology is thinly veiled and powerful in its resonance.
Read this book.

‘But this is very foolish,’ said the Un-man. ‘Do you not know who I am?’

‘I know what you are,’ said Ransom. ‘Which of them doesn’t matter.’

‘And you think, little one,’ it answered, that you can fight with me? You think He will help you, perhaps? Many thought that. I’ve known Him longer than you, little one. They all think He’s going to help them — till they come to their senses screaming recantations too late in the middle of the fire, mouldering in concentration camps, writhing under saws, jibbering in mad-houses, or nailed on to crosses. Could He help Himself?’ — and the creature suddenly threw back its head and cried in a voice so loud that it seemed the golden sky-roof must break, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.’

And the moment it had done so, Ransom felt certain that the sounds it had made were perfect Aramic of the first century. The Un-man was not quoting; it was remembering. These were the very words spoken from the Cross, treasured through all those years in the burning memory of the outcast creature which had heard them, and now brought forward inhideous parody; the horror made him momentarily sick.

Grade: A

Where I am the only one left in the world who hasn’t read a single Harry Potter book.

Seriously, am I the only one left? Are there any hold-outs left to form some kind of disaster plan when these people take over?

And for those of you who have read it, what am I missing?

I don’t really know what I can say about this work that hasn’t already been said. I’m not really sure if anybody is reading these post about Lewis’ works anyway.

Surely, while I don’t think it is Lewis’ best work by a country mile, it is among his best known and loved. It was published in 1942 as a series of 31 letters written by one demon, Screwtape, to his pupil and rookie tempter, Wormwood. The works actually began appearing in 1941 as individual entries in The Guardian. Lewis was paid 2 pounds per letter by the newspaper that he had donated to war widows.

Although the book is short, I think a reader does a disservice if he reads through them quickly as i did this time around. Each letter is rich in content with a probing insight to the nature and corruption of man as well as the lure of temptation.

Screwtape proposes to Wormwood a series of sins and temptations to seduce and entice his “patient.” The depth of understanding of that Lewis displays of the inner workings of the mind and the lusts that plague us all is staggering.

Lewis never ceases to engage. I don’t always agree with his conclusions but I can’t help but be intrigued by his arguments as mired in modernity as it might be.

Some excerpts and morsels:

Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s (God’s) will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

In modern Christian writings, though I see much (indeed more than I like) about Mammon, I see few of the old warnings about Worldly Vanities, the Choice of Friends, and the Value of Time. All that, your patient would probably classify as “Puritanism”–and may I remark in passing that the value we have given to that word is one of the really solid triumphs of the last hundred years? By it we rescue annually thousands of humans from temperance, chastity, and sobriety of life.

…the parochial organization should always be attacked, because, being a unity of place and not of likings, it brings people of different classes and psychology together in the kind of unity the Enemy desires. The congregational principal, on the other hand, makes each church into a kind of club, and finally, if all goes well, into a coterie or faction.

Again, I find myself disagreeing with Lewis from time to time. In this book I most took issue with his dismissal of pacifism and historicism. However, every Christian should read this book at some point or another. Grade: A