The Books #7

I am soooo far behind on this!  And what's more I'm not really doing a book, but books - that is: there are a couple of people whom I have read extensively, and whilst one book on its own may not have revolutionised my life, the cumulative effect of multiple volumes over several years has been huge.  So, apologies out of the way:

I know the verdict has gone from "Beware!" in reformed circles to uber-cool in recent years (ie via Keller, Piper etc) but I have been reading Lewis since...well probably early teens, well before I became a Christian.  In fact, as with many, I suspect some of Narnia will have introduced ideas and concepts which later enabled resonance when reading the Bible for the first time.  Verbal creation ex nihilo, substitutionary atonement, temptation, virtue...

Later, the science fiction trilogy enhanced a feel for a personal universe, good and evil, the Fall.

And then the mountains of essays.  Firstly for the way they were written: clarity, precision, the mathematical dissection of the opposition's contention.  If only we could all express ourselves that way.  Secondly, the content: piercing, relevant, profound, memorable.  And especially when communicating heaven and hell, and the profound simplicity of everyday life.

Of course the warnings about Lewis were also true: too often when encountering a problem in the Bible, he would process it via intellect much more than Scripture, and was prone to wandering off in some very odd directions.

But he could still write nonsense better than most true blue evangelicals can write truth.

And he gave me a sense of warmth in theological writing that seemed absent many other places (especially in my early days), and he said it was OK to have an imagination, and he taught me the power of story, and that the motif of redemption turns up everywhere.  And, by accident, he taught me not to put my Bible down and go off on my own.  And if it were not for fear of cancer, I'd probably buy a pipe too.