Part III. Reflections on Christianity and literature
In these essays, Lewis balances his vocations as a Christian apologist and a professor of English literature. He approaches religious topics obliquely and looks at aspects of Christianity through a literary lens. Within the compass of a review or the foreword to a friend's book, he serves – like Virgil in Dante's Divine Comedy or George MacDonald in The Great Divorce (1945) – as a guide to those looking for a deeper understanding of faith. The voice is unmistakable. In his review of a book of readings for Christians, he writes, ‘I am a little uneasy lest the absence of Plato and the presence of Carlyle may encourage some readers in the false notion that the difference between Pagan and Christian is somehow less important in modern than in ancient times – that no one who wore a collar and tie and trousers could really be a pagan teacher in the same way as a man in sandals and a robe.’ And in his foreword to Smoke in the Mountain by Joy Davidman, whom he married in 1956, he comments on ‘religion’ as a word: ‘How odious . . . how seldom used in Scripture, how hard to imagine on the lips of Our Lord!’