But C.S. Lewis was, and remains to be, a controversial guy. Why would these respected pastors, authors, and scholars host a whole conference and write a whole book about the merit of Lewis?
"[In] this fiftieth year since [Lewis'] death, it seemed to many of us that a book like this would be a small expression of our thankfulness to God for him, and our admiration of him, and our desire that his gifts to the world he preserved and spread."
These men respect Lewis' writing and his thinking and they wanted to worship God by expressing that respect for others to see. And being a personal fan of a lot of Lewis' writing (despite our disagreements), I was ready to jump right in to The Romantic Rationalist and see what it had to offer.
First things first: this book is a dizzying whirl. There are moments of sharp intellectualism and literary complexity (there is a lot, not surprisingly, of Lewis quoted in this book, and Lewis was a smart guy). Most of The Romantic Rationalist was pretty easy to follow, though - despite the dozens of Lewis works that are referenced and quoted from.
The first chapter finds Piper giving the definition of "romantic rationalist" and explaining how C.S. Lewis was saved and how that shaped his writing. Piper writes,
"My thesis is that [Lewis'] romanticism and his rationalism were the paths on which he came to Christ, and they are the paths on which he lived his life and did his work. They shaped him into a teacher and writer with extraordinary gifts for logic and likening. And with these gifts, he spent his life pointing people beyond the world to the meaning of the world, Jesus Christ."
In the next chapter, Philip Ryken dealt with Lewis and his doctrine of Scripture (in "Inerrancy and the Patron Saint of Evangelicalism: C.S. Lewis on Holy Scripture), on which, Ryken points out, Lewis had some serious shortcomings. Ryken went so far as to call Lewis "suborthodox." Nevertheless, Ryken contends that Lewis was mostly right on all the really essential stuff.
Douglas Wilson wrote about Lewis on salvation in what I found to be a very jumbled, often confusing chapter. I was not a little disappointed as this was the chapter I had looked most forward to, to ease my previous confusion on Lewis' soteriology. Instead I came away even more confused.
The last three chapters were as such: Kevin Vanhoozer covered Lewis on imagination in the context of discipleship and theology; Randy Alcorn wrote about Lewis on the New Heavens and the New Earth; and Piper closed it up on Lewis on the use of creation. Appendix 1 is Randy Alcorn on Lewis' doctrine of hell, something that, Alcorn admits, like his view of Scripture, had errors. But Alcorn still finds Lewis a worthwhile voice on the matter. There is a transcript of this panel discussion (which was easier to listen to than read) in Appendix 2 that covers the authors answering some general questions about the merit of Lewis and so forth.
Would I recommend this book? To someone who is interested in C.S. Lewis, absolutely! Despite the confusing parts, someone who enjoys Lewis, has read Lewis, and wants to digger deeper into Lewis' beliefs will enjoy this. To someone who isn't especially interested in Lewis, I think there might be better books to read. Nevertheless, I enjoyed The Romantic Rationalist.
Buy The Romantic Rationalist here.
*I received a copy of this book from Crossway through their Beyond the Page review system. I was not required to give a positive review
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