C.S. Lewis

Yesterday I found a book at the library that I started to dig into last night. Mere Theology: A Guide to the Thought of C.S. Lewis by Will Vaus is a reminder of why Lewis remains one of my favorite Christian authors. Ok, Lewis may be Arminian in some of his leanings (and even the staunchest Calvinist has Arminian errors in his/her own thinking that will be weeded out at death), but when he says something that is right, he says it like no other can

As one who is somewhat familiar with Van Tillian pre-suppositional apologetics, one of the things that I recognized in Lewis was the fact that he never tried to prove the existence of God. "The reasoning process is based as much upon intuition as it is upon logic, and you can't manufacture rational intuition by argument." There are certain things that must be "seen." Furthermore, if Christianity is true there comes a time when "you are no longer faced with an argument which demands your assent, but with a Person who demands your confidence." Arguments fall away in the reality of Christ.

I think one of the things that I loved about Lewis is his way of putting his finger upon obvious things that we miss because we take them for granted, but when looked at from the right direction, they provide an evidence of the fact that we are made in God's image and they provide evidence of God's existence. One example is the way we respond to the passing of time. We exclaim "How time has flown!" in great surprise. Why are we surprised by the passage of time? Because there is something in us that is not temporal. Time binds and frets us now, but it won't always be that way. Immortality, either as the wonderful creation we were intended to be, or as the eternal horror we will have made of ourselves when left to ourselves, is our eternal destiny, and at some level we know this.

Lewis, more than any other Christian author, has the ability to make me long for the things that he continually points to. Lewis said that the goal of theology was practical. God doesn't want us talking endlessly about Him. He wants us drawn to Him as a result of theology. Lewis invariably does this for me. I admire and love him, but the admiration and love doesn't stop with him, it leads me beyond him to the One he is trying to direct us to.

Ultimately, our lives, like Lewis', should all be signposts pointing others to God.