If you read any of CSL’s
autobiographical writing you will realize that he was raised in private boys
schools with a classical education. He used his typical education in mythology
and applied it to Christian parables. I think that was a brilliant way to
reach people in his culture. I think he brought hundreds or thousands to
Christ, and for that we don’t need to criticize him. He did the best he
had with what he had when he came to Christ, and I’ll be glad if I can do
the same. iz From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Judy Taylor If you want to look like Lewis & Tolkien read them -
If you want to look like Jesus - Selah!! Let them "humanize"
you or trust Jesus to send the Promise and make you part of a "New
Creation" in Him. C.S.
Lewis, the Sneaky Pagan Colin
Duriez is a frequent writer and speaker on topic related to C.S. Lewis and his
Inkling friends. Duriez is most recently the author of A
Field Guide to Narnia. His other books include Tolkien
and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship, Tolkien
and the Lord of the Rings, The
C.S. Lewis Encyclopedia, and The
J.R.R. Tolkien Handbook. Duriez lives in Why do
you think the Chronicles of Narnia are Lewis's greatest achievement and will
last the longest? In the Chronicles, you get the presence of Lewis. You get the
cast of his mind in a way that's unequalled in any of his other books. Lewis
once said that the imaginative man in him was more basic than any other aspect.
In the Chronicles, every part of him was brought into play: the depth of his
intellect, the depth of his knowledge, the richness of his imagination. They
all work organically together and achieved this remarkable series of not one,
but seven connected books. It's
folly to predict the future, but being a fool, I'll say that maybe in 150 years
it will be the Chronicles of Narnia that are the most remembered of Lewis's
work. In order to write to a post-Christian culture, Lewis used pre-Christian,
pagan ideas. C.S. Lewis's
ideas about returning to a paganism before coming to Christian faith still
apply today. He recognized that we live in a post-Christian world, and for him
that was the most basic category when trying to understand present society. We
talk about modernism and now postmodernism, but if Lewis was around I think
he'd still be saying that the fact that we're post-Christian is more fundamental. Contemporary
people have no background at all in Christian faith. They need to be brought to
paganism to prepare the way to become Christians, which is rather a provocative
idea. But it was also part of the way he tried to rehabilitate the old
Christian West. The "Old West" is what he called it. He and J.R.R.
Tolkien tried to rehabilitate the values and virtues of this vast period, which
goes back to the Classical times. I'm not an expert on that period, but it
seems to be a blend of pagan insights that are completed by a Christian
understanding. Lots of pagan things are Christianized like Christmas. That
seemed to be a strategy in the medieval period and before. Lewis and
Tolkien carried on this mentality of fulfilling the insights people have as
ordinary human beings into the nature of reality. Lewis and Tolkien had a kind of natural theology where they felt you could have insights into the nature of
God's reality independent of scripture. He uses
that to sneak Christian theology into the pagan setting of the Chronicles. He self
consciously sneaks in those Christian insights. One of his books, Till We Have Faces, retells the classical
story of Cupid and Psyche. It was a
myth which to him had great meaning and power.
He retold it in the form of a modern novel. It's set in pre-Christian times,
and he explores the insight that it is possible to have within the pagan
imagination that prefigure Christian truth. Lewis's conversion was very much shaped by the arguments of Tolkien
that the gospel narratives fulfill the very best of human storytelling and myth.
They bring into clarity and sharp focus insights that are found throughout the
world, not just in the West but also in the depths of human experience of
reality. [Till We Have Faces] actually has a lot of affinities to Tolkien
because The Lord of the Rings has a pre-Christian setting, a Northern European
setting. There's a wonderful shift in consciousness in [Orual's] part. I'm beginning to get more and more interested
in the way C.S. Lewis tries to change consciousness in the reader, and I think
he was deliberately trying to do this. By
presenting an alternative world imaginatively, you actually can experience a
different kind of consciousness, which gives you a perspective on your own
world. That perspective can bring the reader to being undeceived, as you call
it. That's very evident in Orual in Till We Have Faces. She goes through this
undeception. And there's lots of instances in the Narnia stories of this
experience. It's something that's very important to Lewis because he'd gone
through it himself because for many years he was an atheist. He was halfway
through his life before he became a theist and then a Christian. So there was a
huge undeception on his part. How did
Lewis understand the power of a story to undeceive? Lewis was hugely influenced
by Tolkien. Tolkien saw story as fundamental as language itself. He talks about
language and story being coeval in the human being. Story has huge power to
make what's normally abstract concrete, real. It has this ability to give you
experience that you may have never had before as you imaginatively enter into
the story. I don't know whether Lewis made anything of when after David's
adultery, Nathan tells him a story. David gets caught into the story then
suddenly realizes it's about him. That's a wonderful example. Lewis
doesn't mention that but I imagine that he would say Amen to that. You say that Lewis believed fantasy should change the reader.
What sort of change did Lewis want the readers of the Chronicles to go through?
I think he wanted to create a climate in the reader, an imaginative and
intellectual climate that would make the reader more able to receive the gospel
when they heard it. He was preparing the ground for the gospel because he felt
that the gospel itself was pointing to the deepest reality about
nature—the kind of values and virtues that we were meant to have in order
to be fully human. He was trying to make his readers more human. He was giving them the benefit of his deep
learning to bring them on in this direction. So in a way he was
humanizing his reader. That's
what all parent try to do, isn't it? They try to bring their children on and
give them values to prepare them for life. He was fulfilling some of that role
in his stories. You almost need to have children in order to read them the
Chronicles of Narnia. It's an extra reason for having kids. In the end, children do have to leave Narnia, but they don't
have to leave the love of Aslan. There's one place where
Lucy's quite upset when she discovers she can't go back to Narnia, but Aslan
points out that he's in her world, but under a different name.
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