The Romantic Rationalist: God, Life, and Imagination in the Work of C. S. Lewis

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A book that displays the impressive breadth of Lewis’s appeal across denominational boundaries and that helpfully highlights the continuing importance of his example as a Christian who could think both rationally and imaginatively. Altogether an interesting, lively, and thought-provoking read.

Michael Ward, Fellow of Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford; author, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis

For many of us, the writings of C. S. Lewis have been a helpful guide to the nooks and crannies of the Christian life. As noted by a number of the authors of this extremely helpful collection of essays, the rich coloring of all of Lewis’s work has been a tonic in the gray drabness of contemporary life. Although none of the authors would endorse every element of Lewis’s thinking, each is well aware that to neglect Lewis is to miss out on one of God’s surprising gifts in the twentieth century. A great introduction to and reflection on a remarkable Christian!

Michael A. G. Haykin, Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Paints a well-rounded, sharply observed portrait that balances criticism with a deep love and appreciation for the works and witness of Lewis. The writers have all absorbed Lewis into their bones, and they invite us to do the same.

Louis Markos, Professor in English, Scholar in Residence, and Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities, Houston Baptist University; author, Restoring Beauty: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful in the Writings of C. S. Lewis

A warm-hearted, engaging, and thoroughly thought-out appreciation of evangelicalism’s enormous debt to C. S. Lewis that also looks squarely at differences, real and imagined. With well-chosen and varied contributors, it presents a deep understanding and wide reading of Lewis and also reaches toward the secret of Lewis’s profound and health-giving influence on Christianity throughout the world.

Colin Duriez, author, Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship; A-Z of C. S. Lewis; and J. R. R. Tolkien: The Making of a Legend

In order to explore the world that is Lewis, we need faithful guides, explorers who have charted his terrain, both the familiar and the back roads where few have dared to tread. The authors have not just looked at Lewis, as though he were some theological or literary curiosity; they’ve looked along Lewis, laboring to see with the freshness of his vision, and then draw us further up and further in so that we too come to see the real world, and God, and Christ, with new eyes.

Joe Rigney, Assistant Professor of Theology and Christian Worldview, Bethlehem College and Seminary; author, Live Like a Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis’s Chronicles

Lewis fans of all persuasions will enjoy this collection of essays. More than just a celebration of Lewis, the authors celebrate what Lewis celebrated and point to the one he pointed to. The authors don’t always agree with Lewis (itself a good and healthy thing), but they always understand and appreciate him and help us to do so as well. Most of all, in these essays they share Lewis’s ultimate goal—that of kindling and nurturing a desire for God.

Devin Brown, author, A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C. S. Lewis

Other Desiring God conference books

Acting the Miracle: God’s Work and Ours in the Mystery of Sanctification, 2013

Finish the Mission: Bringing the Gospel to the Unreached and Unengaged, 2012

Thinking. Loving. Doing.: A Call to Glorify God with Heart and Mind, 2011

With Calvin in the Theater of God: The Glory of Christ and Everyday Life, 2010

The Power of Words and the Wonder of God, 2009

Stand: A Call for the Endurance of the Saints, 2008

The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World, 2007

Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, 2006

Sex and the Supremacy of Christ, 2005

A God-Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, 2004

THE ROMANTIC RATIONALIST

God, Life, and Imagination in the Work of C. S. Lewis

EDITED BY

JOHN PIPER &

DAVID MATHIS

WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM

Randy Alcorn, Philip Ryken, Kevin

Vanhoozer, and Douglas Wilson

The Romantic Rationalist: God, Life, and Imagination in the Work of C. S. Lewis

Copyright © 2014 by Desiring God

Published by Crossway

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Josh Dennis

First printing 2014

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. 2011 Text Edition. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture references marked NRSV are from The New Revised Standard Version. Copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Published by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

All references marked RSV are from the Revised Standard Version. Copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971, 1973, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the authors.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-4498-9

ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-4501-6

PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-4498-9

Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-4500-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The romantic rationalist : God, life, and imagination in the work of C.S. Lewis / edited by David Mathis and John Piper ; with contributions from Randy Alcorn, Philip Ryken, Kevin Vanhoozer, and Douglas Wilson.

        1 online resource

   Includes bibliographical references and index.

   Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

   ISBN 978-1-4335-4498-9 (pdf) – ISBN 978-1-4335-4500-9 (mobi) – ISBN 978-1-4335-4501-6 (epub) – ISBN 978-1-4335-4498-9 (tp)

   1. Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898–1963. I. Mathis,

David, 1980– editor.

BX4827.L44

230.092—dc23            2014023476

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

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building laborers on the college campus

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to the glory of God

CONTENTS

Contributors

Introduction

Half a Century since C. S. Lewis

David Mathis

 1   C. S. Lewis, Romantic Rationalist

How His Paths to Christ Shaped His Life and Ministry

John Piper

 2   Inerrancy and the Patron Saint of Evangelicalism

C. S. Lewis on Holy Scripture

Philip Ryken

 3   Undragoned

C. S. Lewis on the Gift of Salvation

Douglas Wilson

 4   In Bright Shadow

C. S. Lewis on the Imagination for Theology and Discipleship

Kevin Vanhoozer

 5   C. S. Lewis on Heaven and the New Earth

God’s Eternal Remedy to the Problem of Evil and Suffering

Randy Alcorn

 6   What God Made Is Good—and Must Be Sanctified

C. S. Lewis and St. Paul on the Use of Creation

John Piper

Appendix 1

C. S. Lewis and the Doctrine of Hell

RandyAlcorn

Appendix 2

A Conversation with the Contributors

Acknowledgments

General Index

Scripture Index

A Note on Resources: desiringGod.org

CONTRIBUTORS

Randy Alcorn is author of more than forty books, including bestsellers Heaven; The Treasure Principle; and Safely Home. He served as a pastor for almost fifteen years and is founder and director of Eternal Perspective Ministries. Randy and his wife, Nanci, have two daughters and five grandsons.

David Mathis is executive editor at desiringGod.org, elder at Bethlehem Baptist Church (Minneapolis, Minnesota), and adjunct professor at Bethlehem College and Seminary (Minneapolis). He writes regularly at desiringGod.org and is coauthor of How to Stay Christian in Seminary (2014), and coeditor of Acting the Miracle (2013); Finish the Mission (2012); Thinking. Loving. Doing. (2011); and With Calvin in the Theater of God (2010). David and his wife, Megan, have three children.

John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary. For thirty-three years, he was pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church. He is author of more than fifty books, including Desiring God; The Pleasures of God; Don’t Waste Your Life; and Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ. John and his wife, Noël, have five children and twelve grandchildren.

Philip Ryken is eighth president of Wheaton College (Wheaton, Illinois). For fifteen years he served as senior minister at Tenth Presbyterian Church (Philadelphia). He studied at Wheaton (undergraduate); Westminter (MDiv); and Oxford (PhD) and is author of Loving the Way Jesus Loves (2012) and more than forty Bible commentaries and other books. He and his wife, Lisa, have five children.

Douglas Wilson is pastor of Christ Church (Moscow, Idaho). He is a founding board member of Logos School, instructor at Greyfriars Hall, and editor of Credenda Agenda. He is the author of many books, including Father Hunger: Why God Calls Men to Love and Lead Their Families (2013); Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life (2011); and What I Learned in Narnia (2010). He is married to Nancy and a father of three.

Kevin Vanhoozer is research professor of systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Deerfield, Illinois). He is author of Is There Meaning in This Text? (1998) and The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (2006), among other books. He studied at Westminster (MDiv) and Cambridge (PhD), and is also an amateur classical pianist. He is married to Sylvie, and they have two daughters.

INTRODUCTION

Half a Century since C. S. Lewis

DAVID MATHIS

He went quietly. It was very British.

While the Americans rocked and reeled, and the world’s attention turned to Dallas and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, one Clive Staples Lewis breathed his last in Oxford just a week shy of his sixty-fifth birthday. Strangely enough, science-fictionist Aldous Huxley passed the same day, and in one calendar square, three of the twentieth century’s most influential figures were gone.

It was November 22, 1963—now more than fifty years ago.

C. S. Lewis is known best for his series of seven short fiction books, the Chronicles of Narnia, which have sold over 100 million copies in forty languages. With three of the stories already becoming major motion pictures, and the fourth in the making, Lewis is as popular today as he’s ever been. But even before he published Narnia in the early 1950s, he distinguished himself as a professor at Oxford and Cambridge, the world’s foremost expert in medieval and Renaissance English literature, and as one of the great lay thinkers and writers in two millennia of the Christian church.

Discovering Truth and Joy

Good Brit though he was, Lewis was Irish, born in Belfast in 1898. He became an atheist in his teens and stridently such in his twenties, before slowly warming to theism in his early thirties, and finally being fully converted to Christianity at age thirty-three. And he would prove to be for many, as he was for his friend Owen Barfield, the most thoroughly converted man I ever met.

What catches the eye about Lewis’s star in the constellation of Christian thinkers and writers is his utter commitment to both the life of the mind and the life of the heart. He thinks and feels with the best. Lewis insisted that rigorous thought and deep affection were not at odds but mutually supportive. And as impressive as he was in arguing for it, he was even more convincing in his demonstration.