Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal: Volume 9, 2015

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Table of Contents

Title Page

Contributors

General Editor’s Note

In Memory: Christopher W. Mitchell

Articles

How Much Does That Hideous Strength Owe to Charles Williams?

Traces of Transcendence: C. S. Lewis and the Ciphers of Being

Nothing Beautiful Hides Its Face: The Hiddenness of Esther in C. S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces

The Weight of Glory:C. S. Lewis’ Most Pathetic Sermon

Review Essays

C. S. Lewis and His Circle

Poetry

Diving Lessons

Dante’s Epiphany

Prayer

Book Reviews

P. H. Brazier. C. S. Lewis: Revelation and the Christ

John Bremer, C. S. Lewis, Poetry, and The Great War, 1914-1918

Gregory S. Cootsona, C. S. Lewis and the Crisis of a Christian

Colin Duriez, The A-Z of C. S. Lewis: An Encyclopedia of His Life, Thought, and Writings

Elizabeth Baird Hardy, Milton, Spenser, and The Chronicles of Narnia: Literary Sources for the C. S. Lewis Novels

Jomo K. Johnson, The Lost Letters of Cornelius Van Til to C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis, The C. S. Lewis Collection

David C. Downing, ed., The Pilgrim’s Regress: The Wade Annotated Edition

C. S. Lewis, A Year with Aslan

Joseph Loconte, A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-18

Paul McCusker, C. S. Lewis & Mere Christianity: The Crisis That Created a Classic

Paul McCusker, C. S. Lewis at War: The Dramatic Story behind Mere Christianity

Sandy Smith, C. S. Lewis and the Island of His Birth

John G. West, The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society

Judith Wolfe and Brendan Wolfe, C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra: Reshaping the Image of the Cosmos

Miscellaneous

Internet Links: Updated

Submission Guidelines

Copyright

Subscription Form

Contributors

Toby F. Coley (Ph.D., Bowling Green State University) is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, Belton, Texas, where he teaches courses in religion and literature, advanced composition, advanced rhetoric, and principles of literature. He has authored essays in Rhetoric Review, Computers and Composition, Computers and Composition Online, and published a book titled Teaching with Digital Media in Writing Studies: An Exploration of Ethical Responsibilities (2012) with Peter Lang Publishers. He is currently working on a book-length study of Lewis’ The Four Loves and he is the founder of the C. S. Lewis Index (cslewisindex.com), a site that works to index all of Lewis’s published work for scholars, teachers, and readers. He also writes poetry, creative nonfiction, and short stories. His work has been featured in the venues such as the Windhover: A Journal of Christian Literature, Black & White, and The Fiction Week Literary Review.

John Anthony Dunne (Ph.D. Candidate, University of St Andrews) is currently finishing his doctoral project on Paul’s letter to the Galatians under the supervision of Prof. N. T. Wright. He has written several articles on topics within biblical studies, is the author of Esther And Her Elusive God: How A Secular Story Functions As Scripture (2014), and is the co-editor of Reactions to Empire: Sacred Texts in Their Socio-Political Contexts (2014), Insiders Versus Outsiders: Exploring the Dynamic Relationship Between Mission and Ethos in the New Testament (2014), and Ecclesia and Ethics: Moral Formation and the Church (forthcoming).

Andrew N. Hunt (Ph.D., University of Limerick) studied theology at Man-chester University before undertaking research theses in philosophy through Liverpool University. A former Richard L. Hills scholar at St Deiniol’s Library, in Hawarden, North Wales, he is currently preparing a manuscript, Cords of Longing: C. S. Lewis and the Ciphers of Being for a publisher in the United States. He has authored various essays on a range of topics examining epistemology, philosophy of religion and spiritual reflection: Ciphers of Transcendence: Cognitive Aesthetics in Science, Heythrop Journal (2008); On Being Still: Reflections on Psalm 46:10, Spirituality (2009); and American Beauty, The Tablet (2004).

Charles A. Huttar (Ph.D., Northwestern University) is Professor of English Emeritus at Hope College. He has published extensively on Lewis, Williams, Tolkien, and Barfield (as well as a variety of other subjects, especially in medieval and early modern literature and art). Before moving to Hope, he taught for eleven years at Gordon College. He is the editor of Imagination and the Spirit (1971) and coeditor of Word and Story in C. S. Lewis (1991, 2007) and The Rhetoric of Vision: Essays on Charles Williams (1996), both of which received the Mythopoeic Society’s Scholarship Award. His photographs of Lewis and Tolkien have also been published. His primary book project currently is a study of the mythography of metamorphosis in C. S. Lewis’s writings. He is a founding member and past president of the Conference on Christianity and Literature.

Bruce R. Johnson (D.Min., Fuller Theological Seminary) is Pastor of Scotts-dale Presbyterian Church in Scottsdale, Arizona, and President of the Arizona C. S. Lewis Society. He has lectured on C. S. Lewis in Britain and the United States, and written on Lewis for SEVEN: An Anglo-American Literary Review, The Journal of Inklings Studies, CSL: The Bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis Society, and Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal, as well as contributing a chapter to C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra: Reshaping the Image of the Cosmos (2013). The focus of his current research is the work of C. S. Lewis with the Royal Air Force Chaplains’ Branch during World War II. He is the General Editor of Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal.

David Russell Mosley (Ph.D. candidate, University of Nottingham) recently passed his Viva for a Ph.D. in Theology. His work focuses on several areas including, but not limited to, deification, poetry, fantasy, fairy tales, patristic theology, medieval theology, liturgy, and sacramental theology. He is currently finishing his thesis on deification and human creativity. David is also the author of the forthcoming novel On the Edges of Elfland. He is the husband of Lauren Mosley and the father of twins Theodore Nicholas George Mosley and Edwyn Arthur Russell Mosley. David loves to read and write poetry and fairy tales, drink craft beer, smoke pipe tobacco, take notes with pen and paper, and generally live at a slower pace of life.

Arend Smilde (M.A., Utrecht University) studied history in Utrecht and then worked in the second-hand book trade for twenty years until 2008, gradually extending the freelance translating and editing work which is now his main occupation. He began translating or re-translating C. S. Lewis into Dutch in the late 1980s and has now eighteen published Lewis translations to his name, in addition to George Sayer’s biography and more books about Lewis. He also published several essays, both scholarly and popular, on Lewis-related subjects in Dutch and English, and co-edited, with Norbert Feinendegen, The Great War of Owen Barfield and C. S. Lewis (2015). His website, www.lewisiana.nl, started in 2004.

General Editor’s Note

Since the publication of our last volume, a double issue marking the fiftieth anniversary of the death of C. S. Lewis, Sehnsucht has undergone a period of transition. Our founding General Editor, Grayson Carter, resigned in order to devote more time to his own academic writing. His generous skills as an editor, improving the prose of a great many writers, will be sorely missed. The resignation occurred only five months after the sudden death of Associate Editor Del Kehl. The editorial body, which had remained stable for seven years, was suddenly at half strength and in acute need of reorganization. Fortunately, very capable help would soon be found. So, it is with a profound sense of gratitude that I acknowledge all the members of the collaborative team who have made the publication of the present volume possible.

Three accomplished Lewis scholars, Bruce L. Edwards, Diana Pavlac Glyer, and Arend Smilde, were each approached to serve as new Associate Editors. Each has brought along his or her own unique strengths and areas of expertise to our common effort. Two recent graduates of the University of Arizona, Megan Johnson and Christopher Ludwig, were recruited to help with proofreading as Assistant Editors. Returning Associate Editor Jim Helfers encouraged me to assume the role of General Editor while Book, Film, and Play Review Editor Sørina Higgins and Poetry Editor Brett Foster also offered their support and wisdom. Late into the process, our formatter for the past three years, Paul Brazier, stepped away in order to focus on pressing matters. The designer and formatter of our original Volume 1, former Associate Editor William Gentrup, was kind enough to step in at the last moment and finish the task. Victoria Carr continued to handle subscriptions and fulfillment for the journal’s readers. Financial donations from Steven Beebe and Greg Anderson covered extra expenses incurred during the transition process. Finally, Grayson Carter agreed to accept another role and fill the void on our advisory Editorial Board caused by the untimely death of Christopher Mitchell.

Years earlier, on 4 June 2008, Chris Mitchell had delivered an un-published address to the Arizona C. S. Lewis Society entitled, The Undiscovered C. S. Lewis: New Thoughts and Directions in Lewis Studies. The categories Chris spoke about that night were (1) Unpublished material by Lewis (such as his Elizabethan play Lewis the Bald), (2) Reassessments which clarify previous misreading of his work or misunderstandings of his biography (such as the Anscombe debate), (3) Explorations of his lesser known material, (4) Comparative studies of Lewis and other thinkers and writers of his own day or earlier, (5) Historical studies which set Lewis in his own time, since he is no longer a contemporary writer, and (6) Assessing what Lewis wrote and thought in light of current trends in post-modern and post-Christian thought. This assessment by Chris guides the efforts of Sehnsucht to this day.

The four articles which appear here represent less than twenty percent of the essays which were submitted for our consideration. Among other things, this indicates a commitment by the editors to maintain a high level of scholarship for the journal. In turn, it is hoped that this will encourage all who write on C. S. Lewis to strive for excellence.

Bruce R. Johnson

October 2015

Feast of William Tyndale

In Memory:

Christopher W. Mitchell

(1951-2014)

Bruce L. Edwards

I first met Chris Mitchell amidst the scattered Lewisiana in the basement of the Buswell Library at Wheaton College, Illinois, in 1988. This occurred before he had become the third Director of the Marion E. Wade Center, and before the Wade inhabited a beautiful building of its own in which to house its glorious seven-author collection of rare manuscripts and memorabilia, as well as its expansive library of scholarly monographs and periodicals for visiting researchers to consult. Chris was already established as an astute and eloquent theological scholar, having earned his doctoral degree from St Andrew’s in Scotland, and he would soon become important to Lewis scholars everywhere. And indeed he was.

What I was most impressed with during my first encounter with Chris was that he happened to be with his children, and I got to see a dad who was kind and attentive to his kids even in the presence of guests. He introduced each of them to me with a tenderness and pride that told me more about his character and priorities than any scholarly endeavor could have. Quite frankly, I don’t remember much about what business we may have discussed that day; what got my attention was this gentle and truly thoughtful person, one who clearly loved what he was doing—enough to share it with his family.

Chris knew a lot about a lot of things, including the Wade authors, but especially C. S. Lewis. Scholarship seems to make some academics proud or haughty, hungry for publicity, and, even more so, eager for control. Chris’s erudition made him the opposite: humble, reflective, considerate, and playful. He was always precise, always standing a safe distance from anything that could be construed as exaggeration. Quick to listen, slow to speak. His ambition for the Wade, as those who came to know him quickly realized, was to use his appointment as Director to heal wounds and build bridges, understanding early on there were fractious feelings on both sides of the Atlantic to soothe and relationships to restore.

Sometimes, people sought out the Wade not knowing exactly what they wanted to know or track down. Chris offered every inquirer, whether in person, by phone, or via email, the brand of practical counsel that would help them to illuminate—maybe even to discover—their subject matter. He did this with a serenity of spirit that put people at ease. As the curator of a unique, treasured collection, he realized that for the many people who would come to the Wade, perhaps for their first and only time, their pilgrimage fulfilled a lifelong desire to visit the sacred space where these seven cherished authors were enshrined. Chris conveyed with appreciative warmth how valuable their time spent in the Wade would be, urging them to drink deeply while in this reservoir of godly wisdom that the Center’s library offered.

I got to know Chris during my short, but always rich, visits to the Wade, at some of the international conference programs on which we found ourselves, but most importantly through long and engaging phone calls we had over nearly twenty-five years. Many of our conversations turned on the future direction of Lewis Studies: what would be valuable to pursue and to elucidate in order to extend Lewis’s legacy? As Director of the Wade Center, Chris served also as Consulting Editor for SEVEN: An Anglo-American Literary Review, a journal published annually by the Center on its seven authors. Chris’s editorial instincts were impeccable, for he knew the large and ever growing population of worldwide scholars were best served by encouraging and by publishing only the best, only the most rhetorically incisive essays and reviews. He was not interested in promoting novelty or originality for their own sake, only scholarly depth and breadth, by writers well-informed from spending hours upon hours in the company of the Wade’s authors.

As we had now moved into the fourth generation of Lewis scholars, Chris was increasingly concerned by the rise of younger scholars attempting to leapfrog some of the important, original scholarship that had preceded their appearance on the scene. The internet, he opined, had been a contributing factor, providing a forum—free of meaningful peer-review—that convinced otherwise well-meaning, but not deeply grounded, readers of Lewis to share their brash, unfounded judgments without the due diligence that responsible scholarly endeavor demands. We cannot be satisfied, he urged, with becoming pundits instead of scholars, insinuating ourselves inside conversations for which we lack both the gravitas and the knowledge to speak. One must be vigilant, Chris insisted, not only for the sake of our own reputations, but for Lewis’s, too. If not, we succumb to the contemporary tendency toward mereness, the reductiveness that scales Lewis down to elliptical excerpts and selected pithy quotations instead of the whole cloth, the full reach of his accomplishments. No one unfamiliar with Lewis’s wide canon of multiple genres and subject matters could possibly be enlisted to issue assessments upon his legacy.

The last time I saw Chris face to face was more than four years ago. He and our mutual friend Jerry Root were headed for a weekend to my home (then) in Ohio, an encounter set up ostensibly to discuss the status of current Lewis scholarship and to project something of a wise agenda to promote. What, in fact, they brought me was something even more wholesome and therapeutic: a bracing sympathy for the very recent loss of my father. Chris, in his most personal, consoling, but straightforward way, prayed for my clear vision and urged my stalwart way forward, continuing the journey my late father had set before me. Both Jerry and Chris instinctively knew what I most needed to hear. The evangel was true. Press on toward the high calling of Jesus. I would see my father again. It was a treasure to my soul.

What I always discerned in Chris’ presence was the winsome character of Christ, an enduring patience and empathy. An experience I dare say was quite common to everyone who had the honor of spending time with him during his too, too short sojourn in this world.

Articles

How Much Does That Hideous Strength Owe to Charles Williams?

Charles A. Huttar

The reappearance of Elwin Ransom in That Hideous Strength in 1945, seven years after he first walked into C. S. Lewis’ fictional world in Out of the Silent Planet, alerted readers to the development in the author’s mind, over that period, of his myth of cosmic warfare. That myth, together with the presence of Ransom as protagonist, made it reasonable to speak of the three novels (with Perelandra in between in 1943) as a trilogy, although it appears that Lewis did not at the outset foresee that the first book would have two sequels. ¹ Several elements in the last of the three show Lewis’ care to tie the series together, ² but there were striking differences. That Hideous Strength is set in provincial England rather than out on the planets; it has a more complex plot, with two threads running concurrently in interspersed scenes and intertwined to a degree, finally coming together only at the end. In addition, there have been some remarkable developments in the protagonist’s personality.

Considering these differences, it seems natural to ask whether Lewis’ friendship with Charles Williams, eight years or so in duration, contributed, either consciously or not, to the making of the novel. Lewis famously deplored critics’ speculating about such matters. He reported observing, with respect to his own books, that critics’ guesses, however plausible they might seem, were often wide of the mark. As a literary historian with a considerable range of reading, he knew that resemblances a reader might casually take to indicate direct influence, even (to use a stronger term) derivation, could instead reflect a common debt to a larger tradition that was no longer well known, or to ideas and expressions that were in the air at a particular time, things that once went without saying and therefore left little documentation. There can be, he knew, instances of demonstrable influence. There are others in which a good case may be made, though lacking complete proof; critical arguments then must rely on