Into the Wardrobe

Interestingly, the full text of the one theological book by C.S.L.'s wife, Joy Davidman, is available online. The site includes Lewis's preface -- which I am glad to have, because my 1954 copy of the book does not contain it:

http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/d ... moke.c.htm

I have read the book and found it surprisingly uncongenial. Davidman's voice seems harsh, her messages simplistic. She declares Christianity "everywhere too difficult for simple black and white thinking" (p. 121, my print edition) but I find her book everywhere full of just such thinking. I find none of the subtlety, gallantry, or warmth here that I find in Lewis's own writings.

Does anyone else have a similar reaction? Or should I re-open my mind and re-read?

Larry

I am currently reading the book for the first time. While it is not CS Lewis I have enjoyed it. She does sound like an all or nothing preacher - so does Jesus - and I have not agreed with everything she has written, and if CS Lewis was not involved this book would probably be out of print, still I have agreed more than one of her points and I am not regretting the time spent.

CKinna,

I have looked into the book again, reading bits here and there, to see if I could understand my original disappointment -- now about a decade old -- and perhaps revise it. I would like to like this book, and, the first time I read it, expected to do so.

I agree that there is a lot deal of sense in it. It's hard to find anything in it that I outright disagree with. But I think I do see what gave me my original, rather negative impression: the tone of absolute certainty throughout. I am unable to find a passage where she expresses any doubt or uncertainty, or points to limits on her (or our, or anybody's) knowledge of these matters: it is all so perfectly figured out, so defined, so clear. Christianity as a perfect, utterly sensible, totally doubt-quenching system with an answer for everything. I find Davidman's tone of unwavering, all-covering conviction, of knowing all there is to know about every topic that is discussed, oppressive and depressing. So my gripe is with theological voice, not so much with specific claims.

Davidman wrote the book before knowing Lewis personally, but was very much a Lewis fan already -- dedicated the book to him and quoted him repeatedly in it. I think she was trying to imitate, not necessarily consciously, an aspect of Lewis's apologetics -- the clarity, the confidence, the freedom from fuzzy pious cliché. A lot of Lewis fans, I think, pick up this aspect of Lewis without picking up the carrier wave, as it were, of intellectual caution or fairness or awareness-of-multiple-possibilities or awareness-of-open-ended-questions that runs through most of Lewis's theological writing. I open up Christian Reflections at random, and after riffling 2 pages find this: "For I am not sure, after all, whether one of the causes of our weak faith is not a secret wish that our faith should not be very strong. Is there some reservation in our minds? Some fear of what it might be like if our religion became quite real? I hope not. God help us all, and forgive us."

Davidman would, I think, have written that as a statement, not a question.

Mostly, though, this difference in style or attitude is hard to pin down. One can say simply that Lewis was a much better religious writer than Davidman --- very true, but that doesn't explain what it was about his writing that was better! .

Regards,

Larry

Follow up, here. I noticed the new offering from Eerdmans Publishing:

Out of My Bone: The Letters and Autobiography of Joy Davidman

I'd much like it, of course. But when does it stop? More books that I'd like to read than I have time to read (or money to buy!).

*sigh* To paraphrase somebody..."Of the reading of books there is no end...."

I've started reading Out of My Bone, it's an excellent book. In addition to her letters, it includes her autobiographical essay from the hard-to-find collection These Found the Way.

Joy's description of her first Christmas with Jack and Warnie is a hoot