C. S. Lewis and Friends: Faith and the Power of Imagination

C. S. Lewis is one of the best-loved and most engaging Christian writers of recent times and he continues to be a powerful defender of the faith. It is in his imaginative fiction that his genius finds its fullest expression and makes its most lasting theological contribution. Famously Lewis had friends who like him employed powerfully creative imaginations to explore the profundities of Christian thought and their struggles with their faith. These illuminating essays on C. S. Lewis J. R. R. Tolkien Charles Williams Dorothy L. Sayers Rose Macaulay and Austin Farrer are written by an international team of Lewis scholars. These essays helpfully remind us how and why imagination should matter to people of faith. The contributors make a compelling case that C. S. Lewis and his circle were not merely tellers of tales but theologians in their own right whose stories and images advance faiths search for understanding. -Kevin J. Vanhoozer Blanchard Professor of Theology Wheaton College and Graduate School In this tidy collection several of the most astute and theologically competent readers of C. S. Lewis and his friends tackle the role and register of the imagination as a theological property of mind. The result is a thoughtful mature and illuminating insight for any serious readers of this group of writers. -David Lyle Jeffrey FRSC Distinguished Professor of Literature and the Humanities Baylor University There are undoubtedly too many books published on C. S. Lewis and his friends so why yet another? In this case four very good reasons indeed: the caliber of the contributors the quality of the chapters the range of figures considered and--perhaps most of all--the consistent and insistent thematic focus on how imagination and reason interact within the life of faith. This book is thus of interest for its theme as much as for its topic. Highly recommended! -Robert MacSwain The School of Theology University of the South Sewanee Tennessee and co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to C. S. Lewis We have much to learn from the authors discussed here all of them faithful practitioners of the imaginative arts. This well-grounded thought-provoking collection of essays helps us to that end and does so in a scholarly yet accessible manner. A book worth owning reading and re-reading. -Michael Ward Chaplain of St Peters College Oxford and author of Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis C. S. Lewis and Friends is particularly strong on the subjects of faith reason and their relation. What members of Lewiss circle have to say on these topics is of contemporary relevance at every turn.... The authors of this book typically strike just the right balance between a survey of the figure at the heart of the particular chapter and a presentation of some specific examples of their theological interests... .The result is an ideal more theological book to put alongside Humphrey Carpenters group biography The Inklings. -The Church Times (London) David Hein is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Hood College Maryland. Edward Hugh Henderson is Professor of Philosophy and Christian Studies at Louisiana State University.