C.S. Lewis’ Baptized Imagination:
Past Watchful Dragons
“Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything.”
~Gregory of Nyssa
C.S. Lewis was perhaps the best-known defender of the Christian faith in the English-speaking world in the second half of the 20th century. An Oxford don and formidable medieval scholar, he wrote prolifically on matters of Christian theology and doctrine. Also a keen debater, he delighted in his nonfiction apologetics in polemic and conceptual rigor.
In his fiction however, particularly in the Chronicles of Narnia, which he wrote for children, he seems to have allowed God to “creep past the watchful dragons” that guarded his imagination, discovering and offering to the reader a deeper, wider sense of wonder: a more intuitive appropriation of the mysteries.
This course explores the way situation and character in Lewis’ fiction (the Narnia Chronicles, the Perelandra trilogy, and Till We Have Faces) not only explicate but model a God-ward life.
Specifically, we will examine Lewis’ treatment of themes of transformation and community, sacramental theology and the meaning of magic, as well as the nature and practice of prayer.