It is unclear which was lost first, the cosmos or God. With hindsight it appears they came as a package, lose one and you lose the other. People still speak of the cosmos, but they either do not know what they are talking about or they mean something very different than what people used to [...]
The contrast between heaven and earth is one of the most pervasive concepts in religious language, a commonplace so common that we rarely stop to think about its meaning. What does it mean, in mythopoetic terms and in literal terms? To put it plainly, what is heaven and what is earth? I was blessed to [...]
All nations need reminders that even their best ideals, though worth defending, do not earn them chosen nation status. Reading C.S. Lewis’ “That Hideous Strength” and Langston Hughes’ “Let America Be America Again” in light of each other could rouse those in need of both a restoration of confidence in the goodness of the American [...]
C.S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity” is a model work in the muddled and subjective world of ideologies, state-led terrorisms, gulags, holocausts, and killing fields. Sprinkled with timeless wisdom and profound insights, it is about fundamental aspects of Christianity and seeks to go beyond denominational differences without creating yet another new denomination. After C.S. Lewis converted to [...]
Reading "The Screwtape Letters" can be a creepy and unsettling experience because C.S. Lewis does not merely take us into the head of the human who is experiencing temptation, but into the malevolent mind of the devil himself. This same psycho-dramatic technique is employed by the directors of the recently released horror film, "Nefarious," in [...]
We are wired for stories, to make them, to know them, and to be formed by them. Story is everywhere, and is always the way out for meaning, especially the Ultimate Meaning, so that we may, though dimly, know Him who composes the tale, its main Character, and the One who continues to tell it. [...]
I have always been a keen walker, or “hiker” in the American idiom. I have ambled, rambled, scrambled or otherwise perambulated across large swathes of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland; I have roamed around Europe; and I have even ventured, since my arrival on this side of the Pond fourteen years ago, to traipse through [...]
The answers to the errors of modern times need to be given in philosophy and theology, but it is essential that we also experience the truth imaginatively. Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. —Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” These famous lines of Keats [...]
Joseph Pearce’s “C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church” presents a compelling case in suggesting that its subject evolved “into a very Catholic sort of Protestant.” Though C.S. Lewis never became a Roman Catholic, his later works betray a growing affinity for Catholic teaching. C. S. Lewis and the Catholic Church, by Joseph Pearce (220 pages, [...]
Let’s look at themes of resurrection in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," one of the greatest and most popular children’s stories ever written. Almost exactly a year ago, during last year’s Easter Octave, I wrote an essay focusing on themes of resurrection to be found in classic literature. Beginning with Tolkien’s invention of [...]
C.S. Lewis' obscure essay, ‘A Note on Jane Austen,’ shows that it is Austen’s humor and humility that captures Lewis’ fancy and that directs us to a Lenten lesson. In his rule Saint Benedict advises that each monk should have a holy book to read during Lent. When searching for a holy book, we are [...]
It is critical to remember that the meeting times as well as the membership of the Inklings were always and ever fluid. The group of friends never pretended to be a formal club, and they never desired it to exist as a sort of ideological cell. Over the years from roughly 1931 to 1949, the [...]
C.S. Lewis would most certainly have remembered the interest in fairies from the 1920s, and his fascination with other realms, and with fantasy, myth, legends and folklore would guarantee a continued interest in the possible existence of fairies. Cottingley Fairies “If you believe in Fairies… clap your hands.” Or so you are encouraged [...]
Stan Mattson was a Christian culture warrior who has now fought his last battle. He has died but he is not dead. He lives not merely in the minds and hearts of those who knew and loved him but in the “heaven-haven of the Reward.” Stan Mattson It is a little more than [...]