Shared Witness of C. S. Lewis and Austin Farrer

Irving Mitchell Philip

Description

A comparative study of a literary friendshipC. S. Lewis and Austin Farrer were friends and fellow academics for more than 20 years, sharing both their Anglican faith and similar concerns about their modern world. Lewis, as Christian apologist and popular novelist, and Farrer, as philosophical theologian and college priest, sought to defend a metaphysically thick universe in contrast to the increasingly secular culture all about them, and this defense was one they made both within and without the Church.The Shared Witness of C. S. Lewis and Austin Farrer explores a number of areas that demonstrate the ways in which Lewis and Farrer both intersected and influenced each other's thought. Both insisted that myth, while human in origin, also prepared the heart for a sense of divine glory and even had a place in the Christian scriptures. Both also argued that analogical language was necessary if human beings are to relate to the divine, for it draws us near to God even as it teaches the limits of our understanding,Farrer and Lewis prized virtue ethics as a key to human character and ethical problem solving, and they explored the relationship of nature and grace, as well as defended the human anthropology necessary for ethical living. In regard to the problem of evil, the two men shared much but also disagreed how best to account for an all-powerful loving God and a world full of suffering, and both writers were engaged with apocalyptic thinking-not only in Farrer's commentaries and Lewis's fiction but also in essays and sermons that addressed the eternal end and purpose of humanity.Finally, as Mitchell shows, the worldview espoused and explored by Lewis and Farrer still speaks to our contemporary world, a post-secular society in which the supernatural may again be taken seriously.

Sujets

• Idioma inglés
• English
• Church of England
• Anglais

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 27 avril 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781631014437
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE SHARED WITNESS OF C. S. LEWIS AND AUSTIN FARRER
Friendship, Influence, and an Anglican Worldview

PHILIP IRVING MITCHELL
© 2021 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-60635-417-9
Manufactured in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced, in any manner whatsoever, without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of short quotations in critical reviews or articles.
Chapter 5 includes material from a previously published article wih Mythlore . “‘Written by the Finger of God’: C. S. Lewis and Historical Judgment,” Mythlore 38, no. 2 (2020): 5–23.
Cataloging information for this title is available at the Library of Congress.
25  24  23  22  21      5  4  3  2  1
CONTENTS
  List of Abbreviations
  Acknowledgments
  Introduction
1 Modernity
2 Myth
3 Analogy
4 Virtue
5 History
6 Theodicy
7 Apocalypse
  Coda
  Notes
  Works Cited
  Index
ABBREVIATIONS
AUSTIN FARRER
BM
The Brink of Mystery
CF
A Celebration of Faith
CY
The Crown of the Year
EM
The End of Man
FI
Finite and Infinite
FO
A Faith of Our Own
FOW
The Freedom of the Will
FS
Faith and Speculation
GND
God Is Not Dead
GV
The Glass of Vision
IB
Interpretation and Belief
LA
Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited
LIB
Lord I Believe , 2nd ed.
Light
“The Christian Apologist”
RF
Reflective Faith
RI
A Rebirth of Images
RJD
The Revelation of St John the Divine
SB
Saving Belief
SMSM
St Mathew and St Mark, 2nd ed .
SSM
A Study in St Mark
TV
The Triple Victory
WL
Words of Life
C. S. LEWIS
AL
The Allegory of Love
AM
The Abolition of Man
CR
Christian Reflections
DI
The Discarded Image
EC
An Experiment in Criticism
ELSC
English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama
4L
The Four Loves
GD
God in the Dock
GO
A Grief Observed
HB
The Horse and His Boy
LB
The Last Battle
Letters
Collected Letters , 3 vols.
LM
Letters to Malcolm (Chiefly on Prayer)
LWWR
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
MN
The Magician’s Nephew
MX
Mere Christianity
OS
On Stories and Other Essays on Literature
OSP
Out of the Silent Planet
PC
Prince Caspian
PP
The Problem of Pain
PPL
Preface to Paradise Lost
PR
The Pilgrim’s Regress
RP
Reflections on the Psalms
SBJ
Surprised by Joy
SC
The Silver Chair
SIW
Studies in Words, 2nd ed .
SL
The Screwtape Letters
SLE
Selected Literary Essays
SMRL
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature
THS
That Hideous Strength
TWHF
Till We Have Faces
VDT
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
WG
The Weight of Glory
WLN
The World’s Last Night, and Other Essays
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Early versions of this book were presented in the Friday Symposium at Dallas Baptist University. I am grateful to audience interest, patience, and pointed questions, especially those from Karen Alexander and Michael E. Williams. I am also grateful to Robert McSwain and Curtis Gruenler for their reading of the manuscript and many helpful suggestions for improving it, as well as to Anna Shearn, Anna-Marie Wells, and Jenderia Santos, all who played a role in proofing and preparing the chapters.
My family has continued to offer me encouragement and love through every step of the process. I’m deeply blessed to have Noelle and Grace as my daughters, but above all Kristin, my companion and friend for over twenty-five years. Words pale before how much I owe her.
INTRODUCTION
In 1965, Reverend Austin Farrer wrote in “The Christian Apologist” that C. S. Lewis “was a bonny fighter,” and insisted that, as far as intellectual debate went, the late scholar and popular writer had the virtue of being both theologically orthodox and imaginatively engaging. “You cannot read Lewis and tell yourself that Christianity has no important moral bearings, that it gives no coherence to the whole picture of existence,” that it has no ethical or aesthetic or metaphysical implications ( Light , 25–27). A few years earlier, Lewis, in his own preface to the American edition of Farrer’s sermon collection, Said or Sung , had observed of his friend’s work that “because he writes with authority, he has no need to shout.” Perhaps this was a nod to Farrer’s quiet, quirky, and intense personality. Lewis noted that Farrer’s sermons were clear and precise and ones that any reader could approach easily. The irony was that they were by “not only one of the most learned theologians alive but by the theologian whose critics most often accuse him of excessive subtlety” ( FO , 8, 9–10). Farrer’s humility, Lewis wrote, was priestly in that, being self-effacing, he exalted Christ and drew others to God, “but this is one of heaven’s jokes—nothing makes a man so noticeable as vanishing” ( FO , 10).
Lewis and Farrer spent their adult lives voicing, publishing, and debating ideas, and each carried out his various intellectual roles—the one as apologist, literary historian, and popular novelist; the other as philosophical theologian, exegete, and priest—within contexts that were contested. Lewis (1898–1963) needs little introduction. He is best known for his children’s series, The Chronicles of Narnia, and by many for his work as a Christian apologist, which included not only nonfiction books like Mere Christianity or The Abolition of Man , but also fictional ones, such as The Screwtape Letters . In turn, Lewis’s friend, priest, and sometimes confessor is far less known, yet he, too, is of no mean reputation. Farrer (1904–68), often called the greatest mind of twentieth-century Anglicanism, published works of philosophical theology, scriptural interpretation, and spiritual formation, as well as wrote and delivered numerous sermons, these judged (not by Lewis alone) as works of wit, clarity, and authority. Theologian J. I. Packer, for example, described Farrer as “an independent, lucid, agile, argumentative and articulate mind, fastidiously whimsical, witty in the manner of a metaphysical poet, Newmanesque in sensitivity, incantatory in expression, and committed to a rational creedal orthodoxy” (1988, 253).
Despite their differences in calling and personality, Farrer and Lewis shared a number of things in common. Both were converts—Farrer from Baptist to Anglican; Lewis from atheist to theist to Anglican, and both stood against theological modernism. Farrer was decidedly more Anglo-Catholic than Lewis, though Lewis’s devotional practice was open to sacramentalism and purgatory. Educated respectively at University College, Oxford, and at the prestigious Balliol College, Oxford, Lewis and Farrer were trained under tutors who had been shaped by Philosophical Idealism; 1 and in such environments, both encountered the argument that myth became history in Christ.
Both men taught at Oxford for much of their careers. Farrer, after four years at modest St. Edmund’s Hall, served as tutor and chaplain at Trinity College for fifteen years, while Lewis was a fellow of Magdalen College for almost twenty, and each participated regularly in the intellectual discussion groups that marked university life. The Inklings now form an important aspect of Lewis’s mythos. Farrer, likewise, participated in the theological discussion group called the Metaphysicals, which included such luminaries as Eric Mascall, Basil Mitchell, Iris Murdoch, and Helen Oppenheimer. But Lewis and Farrer were not limited to these. Lewis’s Oxford Socratic Club became a shared venture for the two, and many thought Farrer might assume its leadership after Lewis (Ward 2014).
Lewis and Farrer were both known as demanding tutors who, nevertheless, bolstered the courage of many a student. Lewis was remembered for “his magnanimity, his generous acceptance of variety and difference” (Brewer 2005, 125), while one student recalled Farrer as having a “keen and penetrating mind” and an approach to others “informed by holy wisdom” (Curtis 1985, 84). Each man, too, after suffering disappointment, in his last decade made an academic transition—Farrer, after being passed over for the Regius Professorship of Divinity, became warden of Keble College, while Lewis, unable to obtain a professorship at Oxford, accepted an appointment as chair of Medieval and Renaissance literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge. As public writers and apologists, each achieved a measure of popular success in Britain and later in the United States. Each man also had family members who suffered from alcoholism (Lewis’s brother, Warnie, and Farrer’s wife, Katherine), and each experienced the death of loved ones and the emotional struggle that accompanies it.
Surprisingly, not much has been written of their shared witness. Partly this is because the paper trail is a thin one. There are few letters, for instance. When Lewis and Farrer spoke of each other in print, it was either to praise each other, or in the case of their work in theodicy, Farrer chose to politely critique Lewis. But they certainly read each other. For example, in 1957, Farrer drew the attention of the congregation gathered at Westminster Abbey to Lewis’s recent autobiography Surprised by Joy and offered it as an example of an atheist coming to faith ( EM , 30), while Lewis read Farrer’s Bampton Lectures, The Glass of Vision , and recommended them highly ( Letters , 2.961). This was also the case with at least one manuscript, possibly more. Farrer critiqued drafts of Lewis’s Reflections on the Psalms , and Lewis, in turn, dedicated the volume to Austin and his wife (Sayer 1994, 390–91). 2
While their mutual influence goes back to the 1940s, biographers, in speaking of their friendship, have tended to focus on the role Farrer played in Lewis’s later years. The Farrers were close to Lewis and to Joy Davidman, once she entered Lewis’s life, and some think it was Joy’s friendship in particular with the Farrers that strengthen