Those who know me readily recognize my great debt to C.S. Lewis. Another time I must write about the many writers he has introduced me to, including George MacDonald, G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, Charles Williams, Austin Farrer, and others.
But for now I will write once again about C.S. Lewis. I have posted various items related to C.S. Lewis before. Today I discovered the website of the The C.S. Lewis Society of California. There I learned the schedule of "Chronicles of Narnia" film production. I only knew it vaguely before.
With the enormous success of the first of these new Narnia films, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has grossed more than $740 million worldwide. The next film, Prince Caspian, is scheduled for release in mid-2008, with Voyage of the "Dawn Treader" planned for a mid-2009 release and The Silver Chair scheduled for release in mid-2010. In addition, other novels by Lewis are being made into films, including The Screwtape Letters which is underway for release in theaters for Christmas 2008, and efforts are being pursued for a film based on The Great Divorce. . .
For those unfamiliar with Lewis's work, the website offers a useful list of some of his books.
The scope of Lewis’s work is quite remarkable, including philosophy and theology—The Abolition of Man, Christian Reflections, Mere Christianity, The Four Loves, The Problem of Pain, Miracles; literary history and criticism—The Discarded Image, The Allegory of Love, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century; fiction—The Screwtape Letters, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength, The Great Divorce, Till We Have Faces; autobiography—Surprised by Joy, A Grief Observed; current affairs—God in the Dock, Present Concerns; poetry—Narrative Poems, Poems; and much more.
Not mentioned in the list above (among others) I note the omission of Reflections on the Psalms, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, and A Preface to Paradise Lost -- all of which have been important to me.
The website offers a list of interviews with a great variety of people (not always about C.S. Lewis) including Francis Collins, Dallas Willard, Armand Nicholi, Jr., J.I. Packer, Rodney Stark, and many others. Particularly stunning are the essays and articles. Again, many are about CSL, but many others are on a variety of subjects. The number, scope ,and quality of these articles blew me away. I will return to this webpage again and again. Do check it out!
Finally, the C.S. Lewis Society of California has collected comments on C.S. Lewis from various notables. I offer a sample from a much longer list.
“Rarely is so much learning displayed with so much grace and charm.” “Lewis combines a novelist’s insights into motives with a profound religious understanding.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Lewis’s words appear often in my Mitford stories—where would the Christian thinker be without Lewis? He is pivotal.”—Jan Karon, author of The Mitford books
“Somebody pointed me towards C.S. Lewis's little book called Mere Christianity, which took all of my arguments that I thought were so airtight about the fact that faith is just irrational, and proved them totally full of holes. And in fact, turned them around the other way, and convinced me that the choice to believe is actually the most rational conclusion when you look at the evidence around you. That was a shocking sort of revelation, and one that I fought bitterly for about a year and then finally decided to accept.”—Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., Director, Human Genome Research Institute; author, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
“Learned, brilliant and lively, Lewis was always an artist with words, whether as a professional academic writing for colleagues in his own field; as an author of novels, fantasies and tales for children; or as a composer of didactic expositions, apologetic discussions, and journal and newspaper articles by the bushel, all seeking to commend and consolidate Christian faith. He was fastidious and fair-minded (while sometimes satirical), probing and thoughtful, logical and magisterial, orthodox and arresting, and clear and compelling. . . . In short, he was never less than a first-class read. . . . The two lobes of our brain, left for the logical and linear and right for the romantic and imaginative, were both thoroughly developed in Lewis, so that he was as strong in fantasy and fiction as he was in analysis and argument. There is always a didactic dimension to his spiritual-life writing, just as there is always a visionary dimension to his apologetics. The combination made him in his day, and makes him still, a powerful and haunting communicator in both departments.”—J. I. Packer, Board of Governors' Professor of Theology, Regent College