The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis

Summary: Discussion of how understanding the Medieval world and its books help to understand CS Lewis. 

Over the years, I have read an enormous amount by or about CS Lewis. I am not Lewis scholar, I have not been systemically enough and I certainly haven't read enough to know what the academy thinks of Lewis, but I have read read about 25-30 books by or about Lewis since starting this blog.

One of my complaints about the biographies of Lewis is that they say very little about Lewis' discipleship, including Devin Brown's which is about the spiritual life of Lewis. Part of what Baxter is doing in The Medieval Mind of CS Lewis is suggesting that a significant part of Lewis' discipleship was the result of reading old books. That makes sense to me, although I do think that Lewis' work with a spiritual director likely mattered to making that real.

What is helpful about The Medieval Mind of CS Lewis is the explanations of the references that are missed when we don't know about them. I have read a bit of Dante, but I don't know Dante well. I have never read Boethius and many others referenced here. What I love about reading young adult writer, KB Hoyle, is that she always has references and hints in her books. You can read her books without knowing any of the references and you get a good story. But as an adult reading her books, I get a lot more because I get the references. There is depth to the stories and the depth encourages rereading. That just isn't the case for a lot of current pop fiction. A lot of pop fiction assumes that the reader isn't paying attention, doesn't care about reference and is simply looking for an escape. Reading for escape isn't bad, I read for escape all the time. But I don't want to always read for escape. (It is not surprising that KB Hoyle taught at a Classical school before becoming a full time writer and publisher.)

I found The Medieval Mind of CS Lewis very helpful and if you like CS Lewis and want to understand more, you likely will like it as well. But I do have a concern, not about the book as much as the way that classical education is sometimes used. Recently a number of atheist or agnostics have been calling themselves cultural Christians, this trend seems to not be about Christianity as much as it is about shared culture. I get very wary of arguments for shared culture. I think there is real value in retelling fairy tales and old stories and finding traditional archetypes in those stories. That is part of what a good education should include.

But too often that encouragement to understanding western classics is not about understanding history, but to encourage a particular view of western cultural superiority. Doug Wilson is one of the biggest proponents of the Christian Classical school movement and the publishing company that he started and which publishes a good bit of curriculum for the Christian Classical School movement also published Stephen Wolfe's The Case for Christian Nationalism. Wilson and Wolfe and many others have been strongly influenced by Rushdooney (Christian Reconstructionist movement) and Robert Lewis Dabney (a proponent of white racial superiority as a requirement for being Christian.) The Christian Classical School movement does not need to promote western superiority, and people like Jessica Hooten Wilson (first link in this paragraph) are actively trying to promote a vision for Christian classical schools that is not rooted in western cultural superiority. But people like Thomas Achord are common in the Christian Classical School movement.

My second concern with the way that understanding references to classics goes wrong is when they are stripped of their history and context. Jordan Peterson's new book, We Who Wrestle With God, was reviewed by Rowan Williams and Brad East. I have not read Peterson's books so I am relying on their reviews for context. Peterson's book is about reading the Torah. But his Torah reading is about finding the archetypal stories and reinterpreting them for meaning. East's review suggests that he does that by stripping them of their Jewish context and interplay, which even as a non-christian, ends up promoting a type of supersessionism. Rowan Williams (retired Archbishop of Canterbury), mentions similar concerns, but is more concerned about the way that divinity is stripped from the stories. God is simply a concept for Peterson, not a being. That makes sense since Peterson does not claim to be a Christian or Jewish. However, the result of that is that it is simply stories which we place meaning on. And that meaning is limited by our perspective. Williams' central critique is

“there is a risk of losing the specificity of the narratives, of ironing out aspects that don't fit the template. Every story gets pushed towards a set of Petersonian morals – single-minded individual rectitude, tough love, clear demarcations between the different kinds of moral excellence that men and women are called to embody, and so on.”

Interesting analysis? Sure, in some parts. But also some very bizarre covid takes that ruined the entire thing. The implication that a slave trader would be all for covid restrictions, while Caspian would be against them, was so jaw droppingly silly that I reread the passage at least three times to make sure I got it right!