The C. S. Lewis Society Newsletter
In This Issue (Winter 2018):
- Renowned Christian Philosopher Alvin C. Plantings Wins Templeton Prize
- The Silver Chair: Further Update on the Next Chronicles of Narnia Film
- Shadowlands: The Unlikely, True Love Story of C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman: New Stage Production
- Pope Francis and the Caring Society: Acclaimed New Book on How Liberty Creates a More Caring World
- The Lord of the Rings: New TV Series
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C.S. Lewis Society Book and Film Club of the Bay Area
Meetings are held bi-weekly at 7:30 p.m. to read and discuss books by C. S. Lewis and others. To attend or inquire with questions, please phone 510-635-6892 or email to info@lewissociety.org. 2018 Schedule.
Wednesday, April 4 and 18: Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis; leader/moderator, Paul Ashby, Ph.D.
Fascinated by the ancient Roman story of Cupid and Psyche throughout his life, C. S. Lewis wrote Till We Have Faces, his last novel, to retell their story from a woman’s perspective—the Psyche’s jealous, older, and ugly sister, Orual: “I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer . . . Why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?” As a consequence, Lewis’s retelling of the story is characterized by a highly developed character, the narrator, with the reader being drawn into her reasoning and her emotions. This was his last novel, and he considered it his greatest..
The book revolves upon the threat and hope of meeting the Divine face to face. It has been called Lewis’s “most compelling and powerful novel.” The first part of the book is written from the perspective of Orual, as an accusation against the Divine. The story is set in the fictive kingdom of Glome, a pre-Christian city-state whose people have occasional contact with more civilized Hellenistic Greece. In the second part of the book, Orual undergoes a change of mindset (Lewis would use the term conversion) and understands that her initial accusation was tainted by her own failings and shortcomings, and that the Divine is lovingly present in all humans’ lives.
“A brilliant reworking of the legend of Cupid and Pscyhe.”
—The Atlantic Monthly
“The most significnt and triumphant work he has yet published.”
—The New York Herald Tribune Book Review
“I read Lewis for comfort and pleasure many years ago, and a glance into the books revives my old admiration.”
—John Updike
“Lewis, perhaps more than any other twentieth-century writer, forced those who listened to him and read his works to come to terms with their own philosophical presuppositions.”
—Los Angeles Times
For 2016, we invite you to join with us as a Member of the C.S. Lewis Society with a tax-deductible contribution and participate in the Society while supporting our unique, very timely and far-reaching Christian educational program. And with your gift now of $100 or more, you can receive a FREE book or DVD!
In its November 7, 2005 issue, Time magazine noted the following about the world-renowned Oxford/Cambridge scholar and best-selling author C.S. Lewis:
“In 1947, a Time cover story hailed Lewis as ‘one of the most influential spokesmen for Christianity in the English-speaking world.’ Now, 58 years later (and 42 years after his death, in 1963), he could arguably be called the hottest theologian.”
Indeed, C. S. Lewis’s books sell at an astounding rate worldwide, and in his extensive and immensely popular work, he very effectively champions objective truth, goodness, natural law, literary excellence, reason, science, individual liberty, personal responsibility, and Christian faith. In his professional writings, Lewis was a literary critic, novelist, poet, essayist, and man of letters. His work captures a grandeur, precision, wit, imagination and insight seldom matched by others, and in the process, he articulately critiques the materialism, reductionism, scientism, collectivism, nihilism, statism, and de-humanization of the modern era.
For background information on the images to the left, please click here.
Of his many works, Lewis is probably best known for his book series, The Chronicles of Narnia, which have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide and are now the subject of a major new series of films. With the enormous success of the first three Narnia films, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair is scheduled for release in 2015. In addition, other novels by Lewis are being made into films, including The Screwtape Letters which is underway, and efforts are being pursued for a film based on The Great Divorce.
And with the significant increase in sales for Lewis’s books (many of which are also available on CD)—which were already selling 6 millions copies annually—many people are discovering Lewis for the first time while others are rediscovering the unique magic and relevance of his work.
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, Out of the Silent Planet, 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.
Your Invitation to Join the C. S. Lewis Society of California:
As a result, we welcome those who may be interested in C.S. Lewis to become a Member and participate in the program of the C. S. Lewis Society of California. The Society is interested in events, articles, interviews, publications, and other developments that advance deeper understanding of the life, works, and ideas of C. S. Lewis and others who are addressing the enduring philosophical, cultural, historical, literary, theological, social, and economic issues of mankind.
“For the last thirty years of his life no other Christian writer in this century had such an influence on the general reading public as C.S. Lewis.” —The Times Literary Supplement (London)
“Lewis gives us permission to admit our own doubts, our own angers and anguishes, and to know that they are part of the soul’s growth.” —Madeleine L’Engle, author, A Wrinkle in Time and other books
“I read Lewis for comfort and pleasure many years ago, and a glance into the books revives my old admiration.” —John Updike, novelist and poet
“C.S. Lewis, the greatest Christian apologist of the twentieth century . . . The Screwtape Letters. I love it.” —Harper Lee, author, To Kill a Mockingbird
“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, perhaps more than any other twentieth-century writer, forced those who listened to him and read his works to come to terms with their own philosophical presuppositions.” —Los Angeles Times
“C. S. Lewis was a genius.” —Thomas S. Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, State University of New York Upstate Health Science Center
“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
“Lucid, urbane, modest, and humorous. . . Lewis writing on the aspect of fiction called Story has to be listened to, since he was himself a superb story-teller.” —Anthony Burgess, author, playwright, and composer
“If wit and wisdom, style and scholarship are requisites to passage through the pearly gates, Mr. Lewis will be among the angels.” —The New Yorker
“A powerful, discriminating and poetic mind, great learning, startling wit, and overwhelming imagination. ” —Saturday Review
“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