OK, this will offend some of you, but please understand, as we approach the 50th anniversary of the death of C. S. Lewis, that while he was the first writer who opened the door of the Faith to me, and not to begrudge him in any way, still something needs to be said. I wrote to a friend of mine, whose admiration for Lewis knows no bounds …
I’m sorry I get a bit defensive about my writers. Lewis is certainly very gifted, and as I say in my video interview from the conference, makes the best use of analogy of any apologist in modern times.
But he stopped short. For understandable reasons, his Ulster background perhaps foremost among them, his squeamishness, his too precious and peculiar sensitivity. He stopped at the doorway gazing in. Ahead of him passed giants – there are things in Chesterton, Belloc, Tolkien and O’Connor that tear into the very fabric of existence. Lewis catches a glimpse and plays around and gives us a share – but farther, deeper, richer go the others.
Kevin, I agree. Much as I love him, I agree. And I agree that it wasn’t just his Ulster background–it was more. It was also Joy Davidman, and I even think it was an unacknowledged masculine competition on a psychological, perhaps Freudian, level too deep to see–with his friend and spiritual mentor, “Tollers.”
I believe Lewis hurt Tolkien much more than Tolkien ever acknowledged.