Lewis is easily my favorite Christian author. I visited his birthplace (Little Lea) earlier this year. I grew up reading Narnia and the space trilogy. I find That Hideous Strength and The Great Divorce to be my favorites and I try to read TGD every few years.
A point to add to Malacandra’s defense: Emeth is “saved” (if you will) not because he believes in Aslan but because he believed in Tash! This was such a radical statement (and Lewis’ biggest influence on me).
We’ll gloss over the facts that the White Witch was very white and very beautiful and that Aslan is a predator. In fiction the dichotomy between good and evil is largely like this. For example in LOTR the good guys are elves, hobbits, men, etc. while the bad guys are ugly orcs or trolls. In fairy tales the witch is often an ugly hag. Flip through early comic books and you’ll be able to differentiate the good from bad just by appearance.
Yes. But the qualities Emeth believed to reside in Tash were actually those inherent to Aslan (and he realized his error the moment he saw Aslan); he believed in truth-speaking, courage, obedience - all the positive qualities which his culture possessed. And when he saw Peter he stated that it would be a privilege to know him as either a noble friend or a noble enemy. You might call him a “righteous pagan”; had he known Tash for the monster he was, it is highly unlikely Emeth would have worshipped him.
(The best you can say about Tash is that he finds his nominal worshippers’ lack of faith disturbing…)
I’m so glad you mentioned Till We Have Faces! Discussions of Lewis seem to invariably center on Narnia, Screwtape, Mere Christianity, or less commonly the Space Trilogy, but many seem to overlook Till We Have Faces. It’s absolutely my favorite of his works of fiction, and Queen Orual is one of my favorite characters.
If you search the Internet, you will likely find the page I found some years ago, which contended that Kennedy, Huxley and Lewis are all in Hell, due to their pagan ways. Sigh…
To be fair, it’s probably time for the Huxley fans to have their turn - all I’ve read of his is Brave New World and I’m more than willing to be educated a little.
It’s by Catholic apologist & college professor Peter Kreeft. It’s not as good as it should be.
The JFK character is a straw man of “Optimistic American humanism with a touch of civic piety”, Aldous Huxley’s character fairs better as there is more philosophical depth & complexity to work with. Of course, both are bested by uber-Christian Lewis & the end implies that he is going on to Paradise, while the other two will receded to lanquish in the Grey City.
I hope Kreeft might someday decide to revisit the idea with the complexity & depth it deserves & with better respect for the actual men portrayed.
FriarTed, I don’t see how one could create a good book about the three men all being together. You could do like Kreeft did and create simplified versions of all of them (indeed, perhaps ones which aren’t even close to the real people) and have them argue the cases for these arbitrarily created philosophical positions, but it would be arbitrary argument. On the other hand, you could have them be close to the real people, but then it would be no more interesting than having any random set of three people thrown together.
I can stomach the Narnia books and such well enough. It’s when Lewis gets into straightforward apologetics/homiletics that he displays what I can only call spiritual corruption. I can’t read a single chapter of The Screwtape Letters without wanting to drag him out of the grave just to scream at him.
That is the cleverest thing I’ve read in a long time…
…partly because I was just thinking “I gloss right over Lewis’s obvious sexism and prejudices because he was an early 20th century upper class BritTwit.”
Oh, almost forgot my second-hand Lewis story. One of the profs at Beloit College (WI) in the 70s had had him as a professor, and quickly learned not to half-ass a paper. Got one back with no grade, just “BALLS!” scrawled across the top.
