C.S. Lewis remains, more than six decades after his death, a bestselling author of Christian spirituality, fiction, and popular theology. For this reason, publishers find ways to present his writings in new ways. This book is a creative and helpful example of this, that will appeal to fans of Lewis’ wisdom. It will also rightly take its place as a fresh offering in the Lewis canon.
Editor David Downing has curated selections from letters that Lewis wrote to various recipients — mostly people who wrote with a question or asked for advice — giving each letter a heading to explain the topic being discussed. Some recipients are well-known in their own right, such as Sheldon Vanauken and Bede Griffiths, and others will be names familiar to those familiar with Lewis’ biography, such as Clyde Kilby and Walter Hooper. But the recipients are never what’s featured, rather, the advice of Lewis.
Letter snippets are organized loosely into twelve chapters including “On Prayer,” “Questions About the Bible,” “Questions About Narnia,” and “Putting Faith into Practice.” Here’s a sampling from two letters.
Heading “Differing definitions of ‘Christian,’” with Lewis writing to Genia Goelz on March 18, 1952:
“Don’t bother at all about that question of a person being ‘made a Christian’ by baptism. It is only the usual trouble about words being used in more than one sense. Thus we might say a man ‘became a soldier’ the moment that he joined the army. But his instructors might say six months later ‘I think we have made a soldier of him.’ Both usages are quite definable…. Would something of this sort be any good?: Almighty God, who art the father of lights and who has promised by thy dear Son that all who do thy will shall know thy doctrine: give me grace so to live that by daily obedience I daily increase in faith and in understanding of thy Holy Word, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Heading “Pain as punishment vs. pain as palliative,” with Lewis writing to Mary Van Deusen on January 31, 1952:
“That suffering is not always sent as a punishment is clearly established for believers by the book of Job and by John 9:1-4. That it sometimes is, is suggested by parts of the Old Testament and Revelation. It would certainly be most dangerous to assume that any given pain was penal. I believe that all pain is contrary to God’s will, absolutely but not relatively.”
See also the excerpt accompanying this review for Lewis’ advice 80 years ago to a recipient concerned regarding “Worrying about the state of the world.”
(The same publisher has reissued some Lewis classics in hardcover editions designed for gift-giving, with gold leaf on the jackets. These include Lewis favorites The Screwtape Letters and A Grief Observed.)
