Thanks for those additions. I’ll just keep saying that I really look forward to your further posts. On the topic of “correctives about trusting feelings” I am wondering what you have in mind. I have always thought that his essay Transposition is extremely relevant to the Mormon concept of “feeling the Spirit” and to the standard objections made by anti-Mormons.

Quote 1: This comment came during Lewis’s atheistic period. His letters especially to his dad often try to mask his disbelief. This comment about “feelings” is really interesting, as later Lewis had some interesting correctives about trusting feelings, etc. I’m planning a blog post on that since I think it has some interesting implications for Mormons and the concept of “feeling the Spirit.”

Quote 2: Interesting things about what Lewis would appeal to as authority. For instance he would appeal to the creeds and “traditions” most Christians agreed on. (He saw much in Catholicism as being unnecessary additions though). Most often he appealed to the Bible, though he wasn’t an inerrantist by any stretch. He saw the Bible as an inspired construct of particular cultures which includes different genres.

Quote 5: Lots of interesting bits on marriage and love in the letters. Well, mostly love. On marriage he would make jokes about being a bachelor.

Quote 6: This was a recurring sentiment; he mentioned it pretty much yearly at the least.

Quote 7: Strangely enough, Lewis’s own brother, Warnie, had awful struggles with alcoholism and it was one of Lewis’s largest trials in life. This pops up in many letters, when Lewis’s “secretary” is off getting plowed in Ireland, only to wind up in a hospital or nursing home somewhere. Sadly, Warnie even deserted Lewis during his darkest days right after Joy died. A few pretty gut-wrenching letters on this subject.

Quote 8: That’s one of my favorite moments in the letters, when he makes this realization. He brings it up often, and has a lot of interesting things to say about doubt, learning, and conversion as a process.

Steve Graham

The context is a discussion of Christian marriage (it is a fairly long letter so I can’t do the whole thing justice). But, Lewis is in the middle of explaining why “being in love” is not a proper foundation for marriage.

The modern tradition is that the proper reason for marrying is the state described as “being in love.” Now I have nothing to say against “being in love”: but the idea that this is or ought to be the exclusive reason or that it can ever be by itself an adequate basis seems to me simply moonshine. In the first place, many ages, many cultures, and many individuals don’t experience it — and Christianity is for all men, not simply for modern Western Europeans. Secondly, it often unites most unsuitable people. Thirdly, is it not usually transitory? …

I would love context on this.

While I’ve read a lot of Lewis’s religious writings, this is the first literary criticism of his that I’ve read. It made me wish to have been born long ago and far away, so that I could have had him as a teacher. (And I’m a techno-geek not an English major.) His gentle, respectful, but logically relentless takedown of T. S. Eliot for (apparently) saying, in effect, only the best poets can criticize Milton is alone worth the price of admission.

Lewis’s work also inspired me to go out and buy a well-annotated edition of Paradise Lost, which I’m now working through. ..bruce..

Yeah, Brad R., I’ve had that experience a lot. Unlike you, though, I usually just throw in more fustian adjectives.