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Title: C. S. Lewis and the Catholic Church by Joseph Pearce ISBN: 0-89870-979-2 Publisher: Ignatius Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Different from Other Books on C. S. Lewis
Comment: Many people have had an experience of C. S. Lewis similar to mine. I have read all of his popular works - the space trilogy, Narnia, theological works, essays and letters - several times. However, I have found practically no value in books that attempt to explain Lewis. No one could make him any clearer than he already is.
Joseph Pearce's book is the first exception I have encountered. Pearce focuses on an aspect of Lewis' writing which is genuinely ambiguous - his relationship to the Catholic Church. Reared in the Ulster Protestant milieu, he had a revulsion to Roman Catholicism, which never completely left him. Yet, "papists" (e.g., Chesterton and Tolkien) played a major role in his conversion. And he embraced distinctively Catholic doctrines such as purgatory, the Blessed Sacrament and the impossibility of female priests.
Pearce asks why Lewis never became a Catholic - and whether, like many of his disciples, he would have, if he had lived longer. Although the questions cannot finally be answered, Pearce's lively attempt sheds light on a major aspect of Lewis' thought.
Rating: 3
Summary: Terribly slipshod in places
Comment: I'll start by saying in all fairness that if I only graded based on interestingosity {g}, this book would cap five stars.
Pearce essentially engages Lewis in debate, not over whether Christianity is true, but whether Rome's Catholicism is the truest/only Christianity. Pearce as advocate for this position sometimes uses Lewis to defend this claim, and sometimes criticises Lewis for dissenting.
Pearce's book works best when he is actually _engaging_ Lewis personally, bringing out the tensions and occasional inconsistencies in Lewis' theological positions in relation to traditional Roman Catholicism.
However, Pearce falls short in analyzing Lewis' theology itself, per se--and this is why I've rated his book only three stars.
The gravest fault would probably be a total lack of attention given (not only by Pearce but by the authors of his two introductions) to George MacDonald's theology, as Lewis learned and then applied it. Not that GMcD is absent from the book; Pearce dutifully drops him in at both the usual places (Lewis' overt comment about _Phantastes_, and Lewis' use of GMcD as his spiritual guide in _The Great Divorce_). But aside from quoting (and requoting) a brief selection of McD's (fictional) speech from TGD, Pearce never touches what Lewis learned from MacDonald's teaching, aside from an obvious belief of Purgatory. When Pearce tries to position Lewis' understanding of Purgatory, acquired from GMcD, as being essentially Roman Catholic in doctrinal character and implication--well, one only has to compare Dante's Purgatory (and Hell) with McD's (and with McD's decisive comments _against_ certain principles Dante is using), to figure out that Pearce's claim on this simply doesn't add up. (Pearce invites this comparison by mentioning Dante several times within this context, at least once with positive approval.)
Furthermore, McD's (and Dante's) understandings on such topics are derived from primary theological understandings, which McD definitely applies across the board in his theology--and which Lewis clearly judged to be a proper and useful understanding of Christian truth (though not without a couple of tensions with his "Teacher"--which the _Divorce_ itself brings out on occasion). By never including these theological principles in his arguments (pro or con), Pearce ultimately presents a terribly slipshod picture of Lewis' own understandings.
This type of oversight spills into other parts of Pearce's work. For instance, he asserts, at the end of his book, that Lewis believed he had found his true home within Anglicanism--when any even moderately thorough reading of Lewis' corpus would show Lewis' use of the Anglican church to be lukewarm at best (as Pearce himself adequately spends much of his book demonstrating). But Pearce's _real_ job is apologist for conservative Roman Catholicism, and so a main secondary theme is to demonstrate Anglican Catholicism (even the 'high' sort, much moreso the modernist liberal sort) to be deficient as an alternative to the RCs. This is quite possible to do, I think; and Lewis can be a good source for doing it. But to position Lewis as the _defender_ of Anglicanism, slowly being pulled toward the RC against Reformationistic elements that he cannot quite bring himself to reject ('bowing down to them' in Pearce's phraseology), is untenable. Along with the many Catholic authors and friends whom Lewis admired and learned from, Pearce should be accounting for the _other_ main sources of Lewis' chosen theology: including MacDonald's virtually unique anti-Calvinism. (Notably, Pearce never really devotes any time to demonstrating obvious affinity by Lewis for the Reformers, either, settling for innuendo. At least with McD he could have worked directly with the material.)
There are plenty of other nits I could pick--but again, in fairness, I _did_ enjoy the book. Readers already familiar with Lewis' work should be able to safely appreciate Pearce's study, taken in context (especially in the comparison of Lewis to today's Anglicanism--which frankly doesn't seem much different from what Lewis had to deal with in his own day, at least according to Lewis' own criticisms of it).
And perhaps Pearce will turn his attention next to demonstrating how Catholic George MacDonald was... {g!}
Note: readers interested in Lewis' theological sourcing from MacDonald, may buy copies of _Unspoken Sermons_ (three volumes collected in one hardback), _Hope of the Gospel_ and _Miracles of Our Lord_ (collected in one hardback) through amazon.com; or go to johannensen.com for free online copies of the texts or direct ordering.
Rating: 5
Summary: Insightful answer to "why didn't Lewis convert" and more
Comment: C.S. Lewis surrounded himself with Catholics at Oxford, immersed himself in literature written by Catholics and accepted Catholic teachings that Protestants are not supposed to (like the doctrine of purgatory). So many have wondered why he never converted to Catholic Christianity as did many of his peers. To point to his "Ulster Protestant prejudice" is a natural, but somewhat overly-simplistic, explanation when applied to this remarkable former atheist turned premier Christian apologist. This well-researched and insightful book shows both the points of convergence and divergence between Lewis's brand of Christianity and Catholic doctrine and seeks to unravel the reasons why Lewis never went the way of Newman and Chesterton. Speculative at times but always cogent in his arguments, the Catholic author always deals with C.S. Lewis and his "Mere Christianity" with great respect, demonstrating his vast knowledge of the circumstances Lewis's life and great familiarity with his writings.
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Title: Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship by Colin Duriez ISBN: 1587680262 Publisher: Paulist Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Literary Converts: Spiritual Inspiration in an Age of Unbelief by Joseph Pearce ISBN: 0898707900 Publisher: Ignatius Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Lewis Agonistes: How C.S. Lewis Can Train Us to Wrestle With the Modern and Postmodern World by Louis Markos ISBN: 0805427783 Publisher: Broadman & Holman Publishers Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.99 |
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Title: Tolkien: Man and Myth by Joseph Pearce ISBN: 0898708257 Publisher: Ignatius Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: THE UNMASKING OF OSCAR WILDE by Joseph Pearce ISBN: 0002740516 Publisher: HarperCollins (UK) Pub. Date: February, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.99 |
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