Exercising Faith
I am very honored to be here. Today has special meaning for me because two years and ten days ago, a month after my 19th birthday, I underwent open heart surgery. I suffer from Marfan Syndrome, a genetic disorder which causes aortic aneurysm. Growing up with a keen awareness of my mortality led me to pursue religious virtue and academic Read More ›
Jack Meets Gen X:
The Achievement of C.S. Lewis:
Address delivered at the C.S. Lewis Centennial Celebration, Seattle, Washington, June 1998 There I was, halfway through writing a bad lecture that I thought was a good one for occasion, when I misplaced it down my computer’s infinitely voracious memory hole, while Raphael, the guardian angel for absent-minded professors and travelers, was distracted by my dog. (Raphael has a Thing Read More ›
Lewis, Wordsworth, and the Education of the Soul
When Lewis first read Wordsworth’s Prelude in 1919, at the age of 21, he was not very impressed by it. He reported the following to Arthur Greeves: "You will perhaps be surprised to hear that I am reading ‘The Prelude’ by way of graduating in Wordsworth-ism. What’s even funnier, I rather like it! I’m coming to the conclusion that there Read More ›
C.S. Lewis, H.G. Wells, and the Evolutionary Myth
For a long time literary snobs have sneered at science fiction, considering it something other than serious literature. C. S. Lewis knew better. Coming of age early in this century, his generation was as captivated by H. G. Wells’s stories of space and time travel as today’s generation is by movies and television programs on those same themes. In his Read More ›
C.S. Lewis and the Case for Responsible Scholarship
It is increasingly difficult to say anything new about C. S. Lewis; perhaps you have noticed. And to say that he was a responsible scholar appears to be among the least interesting things to say; but no statement is truer. By "scholar," I refer to one whose vocation is academic inquiry, one who marshals evidence in the pursuit of theses Read More ›
Common Ground in the Uncommon Apologetic of Chesterton and Lewis
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. –G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World Now theology is like the map… Consequently, if you do not listen to theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of Read More ›
From joy to Joy
Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) is a monumental figure in understanding the nature of religious experience. In Naturalism and Religion (1907) he attacks the materialistic views of Charles Darwin and tries to open up a place for religious experience as something that cannot be understood in materialistic terms. He develops these themes in The Idea of the Holy (1917, trans. 1923), a Read More ›