Though C.S. Lewis will always and understandably be identified with popular Christian theology, J.R.R. Tolkien, in a far more private and symbolic manner, promoted Christianity just as deeply and profoundly. Having entered the Roman Catholic Church as a young boy, guided by the conversion of his beloved mother, Tolkien had from his earliest moments embraced [...]
G. K. Chesterton is so full of wisdom and wonder, and sanity and sanctity, that it comes as a surprise to learn of his darker side. Yet there were two particularly dark and bitter periods in his life that should not be overlooked. The first was the unholy and unhealthy darkness that descended during a [...]
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 [...]
Why is it that those who like both G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis almost invariably prefer one to the other? This question is best answered with a sweeping generalization: There are two types of people in the world—hikers and walkers. Readers who are hikers prefer Lewis; readers who are walkers prefer Chesterton. There are two [...]
Though deeply conflicted about Romanticism, C.S. Lewis believed that the Romantics at least asked the right questions and found the right answers. But he also held that they failed to grasp the greater picture of things, which only Christianity truly understands. Somewhat famously, as described in Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis believed that he had [...]
Do we use our increasingly sophisticated gadgetry and expanding knowledge in an elvish, creative, and artful way to foster beauty and truth? Or do we use technology to manipulate, make money, and gain more power in the world? One of the stress points of the modern age is the pace and power of technology. Will [...]
We see, in his poetry and prose, the humour and humility of G.K. Chesterton, but also the extraordinary genius who sees that the ordinary things of life are not merely a matter of life and death but a matter of eternal life and eternal death. The genius of G.K. Chesterton is hard to pin down [...]
Owen Barfield argued that the modern world must readopt the truths of the Logos, should Western Civilization move beyond its current selfish and totalitarian phase. And this rediscovered love of the Logos must express itself throughout culture and the arts. In 1944, over a decade after Lewis’s conversion to Christianity, half a decade after Tolkien’s [...]
The Christian worldview can be characterized as fundamentally comic. This is not simply because the Christian “narrative” starts in sin and ends in salvation, reflecting the ancient definition of comedy. The Christian attitude toward the world also makes him receptive toward and perceptive of humor, because he realizes that nothing in the world is ultimately [...]
The music of Antonin Dvorak's "Stabat Mater" is itself redemptive. By the time we arrive at the last stanza, we comprehend that the words of the hymn through the very grandeur of the music have led us from a most somber and tragic experience with corresponding musical setting to a new hope—that death, though present, [...]
What is it about J.R.R Tolkien that speaks so powerfully? What are the roots of his enchanting genius? In my editorial for the new Tolkien theme issue of the St. Austin Review, I state that the very word “Tolkien” has great power of enchantment. Seeing it, or hearing it spoken, brings to life strange and [...]
Few would dispute the claim that C.S. Lewis was the last century’s greatest Christian apologist, rivaled only by G.K. Chesterton and Pope John Paul II. While all three wrote voluminously, Lewis’s books had the broadest appeal. Even atheists read Lewis’s Christian books, if only for the art of them. Surely, we can do better than [...]
I recognize G.K. Chesterton as a guide who led me from the doldrums of disbelief into the glorious light of the Gospel. Unbeknownst to me, the gloom in my prison cell was the gloaming of a new day in which the Son would rise, Easter-like, in my soul. The debt I owe to him is [...]
In his book “The Year of Our Lord 1943,” writing on Christian humanism, Alan Jacobs considers the fears and desires of five major but seemingly disparate figures in 1943 as they envision a post-war world after an allied victory: W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, Jacques Maritain, and Simone Weil. The Year of Our Lord [...]