Walter Unger At the recent C.S. Lewis centennial celebration, Lewis's former secretary Walter Hooper shared how he had won an argument with the famous British author. Lewis was worried that upon his death, his books would stop selling, leaving his brother Warnie without an income. "That will never happen," exclaimed Hooper. "Why not?" retorted Lewis ."Your books will continue to sell because they are just too good and people aren't that stupid to ignore them," was the reply. Time has proven Hooper right. One hundred years after his birth and 35 years after his death, the works of Lewis are in bookstores the world over, having have been translated into the major languages of the world. For example, Lewis is very popular in Japan, and recently his Chronicles of Narnia have been translated into Russian .I attended the C.S. Lewis Summer Institute at Oxford University, July 19-24 and Cambridge University July 26-31. Having participated in two previous Institutes, I have seen the event develop into a first-rate international conference. The `98 centennial celebration was the best in the series, with 600 registrants. The speakers and seminar leaders were outstanding, ranging from British Lewis specialists Walter Hooper, Douglas Gresham, James Packer and Elaine Storkey to Americans Peter Kreeft, Thomas Howard, Philip Yancey, William Willimon, Tony Campolo, Madeleine L'Engle, Luci Shaw and Chuck Colson. The conference was dominated by Americans in terms of attendance and presenters. Questions for debate At the Oxford Royal Mail launch of a C.S. Lewis commemorative stamp, Institute director J. Stanley Mattson warned against forming a cult around Lewis led by a ring of intellectual elites--the very thing against which Lewis spoke and wrote. Yet it wasn't until late into the first week of the conference that the near idolizing of Lewis was corrected by some perceptive critiques by Elaine Storkey, Philip Yancey, Douglas Gresham and especially Tony Campolo. (Such realism is necessary to answer Lewis critics such as A.N. Wilson, who has charged "the rather stupid fundamentalists" at Wheaton College with having made C.S. Lewis into a god.) Elaine Starkey noted that Lewis wrote from a male, white, British, patriarchal perspective. For example, his essay on friendship does not have universal appeal. It deals with friendship among males, is based on argument and logic and lacks the female perspective of feeling, sentiment and heart-to-heart communication. Philip Yancey stated that Lewis's view of pain as God's megaphone is a very dangerous concept when taken at a personal level. It can be used to blame God for all kinds of things which are really the consequence of human acts of foolishness. Furthermore, said Yancey, pain was not the result of the Fall, as Lewis taught. Scripture states, "Your pain will be multiplied" (Genesis 3:16), but pain was part of God's original intention--a gift to keep us from hurting ourselves, as Yancey and Brandt point out in their book The Gift of Pain. Tony Campolo, in his own dramatic fashion, declared that C.S. Lewis was weakest in his arguments against pacifism. Campolo said that "Lewis was a Medievalist and didn't read anything prior to 300 AD. If he had, he would have discovered that Tertullian and Origen were pacifists and the early church was pacifist." He added that Lewis had also not read George Fox or the Anabaptists. William Willimon and Myron Augsburger also reminded the conferees of that other Kingdom under whose values believers are to live while they exist as resident aliens on this earth. C.S. Lewis is commonly held to have believed in Purgatory, but Douglas Gresham took strong exception to this. Gresham said it is invalid for Walter Hooper to build this case based on Lewis's letters to Sister Penelope, a friend in the Anglican Community of St. Mary. In these letters, stated Gresham, Lewis was satirizing purgatory, not affirming it. My own read of Lewis, particularly in The Great Divorce and Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, is that he did indeed believe in a form of Purgatory. Three presenters, all converts to Roman Catholicism, raised a few evangelical eyebrows by refashioning Lewis into the image of Roman Catholicism. Thomas Howard, Peter Kreeft and Walter Hooper portrayed Lewis as "a spy for Rome". Hooper's commemorative address at the Oxford Royal Mail launch of the Lewis stamp was devoted largely to a defence of purgatory. At his seminar, Douglas Gresham took great exception to this, disagreeing strongly with all interpretations which put Lewis into a Roman Catholic camp--or any other. Lewis, he said, was the champion of mere Christianity, i.e., core Christian beliefs, not any particular denomination, although he was a loyal member of the Church of England. An enduring legacy Why does Lewis endure? Lewis endures because of the relevant and creative way he presents the central truths of Christianity. He teaches orthodox views of the person of Christ, the necessity of conversion, the cost of discipleship and the absolute centrality of the work of Christ for salvation. His descriptions of heaven are probably the best in the English language. Lewis is considered by many to be the most able Christian apologist of the 20th century. His apologetic regarding Christ as "liar, lunatic or Lord" has enormous evangelistic force. Indeed, Lewis wrote in God in the Dock, "Most of my books are evangelistic." Lewis presents Christian doctrines in incredibly creative and compelling ways, through fantasy, science fiction and apologetic books. He always holds up Christian truths as realities the unbeliever can give honest assent to. He presents a Christ Who is not tame, but Who demands growing allegiance from the believer. "Every year you grow, you will find me bigger," says Aslan to Lucy in Prince Caspian. The Lewis legacy is alive and well at 100. Truth always endures. Truth conveyed through a sanctified imagination becomes brighter and clearer, leading those who follow "further up and further in" to God's glorious presence. Walter Unger is President of Columbia Bible College in Abbotsford, B.C. He was a tutor at the first C.S. Lewis Institute in the summer of 1988.
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