The First World War lingers in the memory as humanity’s first encounter with industrialized killing on a mass scale. New weapons of the machine age obliterated forests, villages and fields—an entire way of life. This new type of war also deeply shaped the thinking of men who experienced it . . . . Continue Reading »
The name they chose for their group was, J. R. R. Tolkien self-effacingly recalls, “a pleasantly ingenious pun . . . suggesting people with vague or half-formed intimations and ideas plus those who dabble in ink.” The description conjures a picture of “donnish dreaminess,” a rag-tag band of tweed-clad writers who met for a pint from time to time. Continue Reading »
David Mills has found himself in trouble—for making the stunning claim that conservative Catholics are not conservative Protestants, and conservative Protestants are not conservative Catholics. Continue Reading »
I am an avid reader and an occasional contributor to the magazine Touchstone, a periodical that describes itself as “a journal of mere Christianity.” Touchstone provides a forum where Christians of various backgrounds—Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox—can speak candidly with one another on the basis of a shared commitment to the Great Tradition of Christian faith as revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the classic creeds of the early church.The term “mere Christianity,” of course, was made famous by C. S. Lewis, whose book of that title is among the most influential religious volumes of the past one hundred years. Since 2001, more than 3.5 million copies of Mere Christianity have been sold in English alone, with many more translated into most of the world’s languages, including Chinese. We think of C. S. Lewis as an apologist, but he was also an evangelist. Many sceptics and unbelievers have come to faith in Jesus Christ by reading C. S. Lewis. One of these was the late Charles W. Colson. “I opened Mere Christianity,” Colson said, “and found myself face-to-face with an intellect so disciplined, so lucid, so relentlessly logical that I was glad I never had to face him in a court of law. . . . As I read, I could feel a flush coming to my face and a curious burning sensation. . . .Lewis’s words seemed to pound straight at me.” Continue Reading »
Yesterday I took a glorious walk with my wife on one of the ridges of the Appalachian Trail. Jean reminded me, as we smelled the Christmas-like pines and gazed at the rippling rows of mountains stretched out on the other side of valleys below us, that there are only two creatures who disobey God. The angelic (or one third of them at least) and human creatures. Continue Reading »
Christopher W. Mitchell was a scholar of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien who directed The Wade Center at Wheaton College for many years. Wesley Hill remembers him as a good friend. Continue Reading »
C. S. Lewis writes, “Friendship (as the ancients saw) can be a school of virtue; but also (as they did not see) a school of vice. It is ambivalent. It makes good men better and bad men worse.” The same could be said of Twitter. Continue Reading »
C. S. Lewis once offered advice to a soon-to-be-married man on why he ought to avoid masturbation. But his rationale speaks to celibate Christians as well. Continue Reading »
If Billy Graham is the great evangelist of our age, we can number Lewis, Tolkien, and Disney among the greatest of our pre-evangelists. Continue Reading »
Back to where our world begins, the 1960s. The English word “love” can refer to a number of different sorts of love that other languages, classical Greek particularly, kept more distinct in their vocabulary. The distinctions between agape, philos, and eros, for example, are fairly . . . . Continue Reading »
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