Clark, David G. C.S. Lewis: A Guide to His Theology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007. 181 pp., $19.95 U.S.
ISBN: 1405158840.
Schakel, Peter J. Is Your Lord Large Enough? How C.S.
Lewis Expands Our View of God. Downers
Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2008. 208 pp., $16.00 U.S. ISBN: 0830834923.
[1] Delving into books on Oxford
don and Christian apologist C. S. Lewis is like entering his fictional
wardrobe. One never knows if one will find a wonderland of ideas and images or
merely old coats and mothballs. Two recent works by noted theologians offer
evidence that there are still more marvelous discoveries to be seen and studied
in the works of Lewis.
[2] David G. Clark modestly offers C.S.
Lewis: A Guide to His Theology, a
deceptively unassuming work that is both substantial and engaging. Clark makes
theology accessible to the laity without compromising either the mystery of
meaning or the nuances of doctrines. He follows Lewis in translating theology
into the vernacular in such a way that one sees the Christian faith in clearer,
more imaginative, and more compelling ways.
[3] Clark excavates the worldview
behind Lewis’s works of fantasy and science fiction, teasing out the mere
Christian orthodoxy of key doctrines of creation, incarnation and redemption,
with a fascinating side trip into purgatory. In so doing, he provides a
comprehensible map of Lewis’s redemptive theology, coloured with the man’s
whimsical British humor, inspired imagination, and fresh perspectives. Lewis
champions the value of historical vantage points of traditional orthodox
theology, from which we can see modern forms of thinking. As such, he warns of
the dangers of “chronological snobbery,” of thinking that what is new and
progressive is better than what is old, as if something on a Thursday is truer
than something on a Tuesday.
[4] Clark’s investigation of
Lewis’s own spiritual journey from atheist to Christian apologist allows us to
see some of the pitfalls and detours of a misguided theology. Lewis’s inaugural
address at Cambridge University, for example, sets the contemporary age against
an historical background to show its unobserved shortcomings. He unravels
Lewis’s cosmology (by pitting our world against his fictional counterparts of
other worlds such as Narnia and Perelandra), inventing parallels to make the
contrasts more vivid. Clark also explores, somewhat mischievously, Lewis’s
angelology and zoology, perspectives on spiritual beings and animals, two
opposite relations of the human being. Finally, he maps out Lewis’s insights
on redemption, sanctification, and seven principles of purgatory, a fresh and
lively and biblical assessment of sanctification after death. Clark provides a
provocative and richly engaging prolegomena to theology through Lewis’s
universe of dwarves, devils and a good, but not tame, redemptive Lion.
[5] Asking the titular question, Is
Your Lord Large Enough?, author Peter J.
Schakel builds on J. B. Phillips’s 1960 classic Your God Is Too Small (published by Macmillan), opening a conversation
with C. S. Lewis that expands one’s view of God and nourishes one’s spiritual
discipline. Schakel is a noted Lewis scholar whose previous works (e.g. The
Way into Narnia: A Reader’s Guide; reviewed in volume XV, Spring 2007) have opened windows
and doors to readers seeking to understand the intellectual and imaginative
works of this Oxford don. Here, Schakel aims at enlarging our conception of
the immense grandeur and grace of God in Jesus Christ. The work, however, is
less theological and more devotional, dotted with potent and relevant
quotations throughout the chapters, and offering thought-provoking questions
for reflection and discussion at the end of each section.
[6] The book addresses such topics
as time, prayer, suffering and doubt, prying into their particular meaning for
the Christian reader. Illustrating Lewis’s concepts with appropriate sections
from Lewis’s fiction, Schakel leads his readers through various conversations,
instructing, nudging, guiding and stimulating them into understanding how glorious
God is. One quotation from Lewis’s chronicle of Prince Caspian captures Schakel’s intent. Aslan, the God figure,
tells heroine Lucy: “Every year you grown, you will find me bigger,” suggesting
that the more we seek God, the greater He becomes in our understanding.
[7] Schakel’s work offers a
genuinely affectionate and devout pilgrimage through concepts that inform
Lewis’s works. It offers nothing new, but does provide the comfort and vision
of that which is true and good. It is a work for the soul seeking chicken soup,
and a tasty cup it offers. In contrast, Clark’s work is stimulating and oddly
topsy-turvy, taking Lewis’s less read, but radically important, works (e.g. The
Abolition of Man and Till We Have
Faces) to make sense of theological
doctrines. Where Schakel engages the heart, Clark tweaks and teases the mind,
and allows the sharp ideas of Lewis to expand one’s view of God, of Lewis, and
of oneself. Both, however, allow one to enter the wardrobe and smell the pine
in the woods beyond.
Terry Lindvall
Virginia Wesleyan
College
tlindvall@vwc.edu
