Customer Reviews

Seeing Eye and Other Selected Essays from Christian Reflections

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This is a completely dispensable work. It is "Christian Reflections", with "On Church Music" left out. To be sure, "On Church Music" isn't much of a work, but it hardly seems worthwhile to put out a new collection with no other purpose than to omit it.

So what should you get instead?

If you are interested in Lewis's shorter works, my best advice is to get "Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces", which, as of the time of this writing, is available from Amazon UK but not Amazon US. That collection consists of about 130 short works by Lewis. The works in that collection are mostly, but not exclusively, Christian.

If your interest is restricted to Lewis' works on Christianity, and your budget or enthusiasm does not run to "Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces", then my second-best advice is to get any or all of the following (they don't overlap significantly, and between them they include most of Lewis's shorter Christian writings):

"God in the Dock - Essays on Theology and Ethics"*

"The World's Last Night and Other Essays"

"Christian Reflections"

"The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses"

* Be careful - there is a UK Fontana paperback lurking about called "God in the Dock - Essays on Theology" that is substantially shorter than the "God in the Dock - Essays on Theology and Ethics" collection. A full version of "God in the Dock - Essays on Theology and Ethics" was published in the UK under the title "Undeceptions - Essays on Theology and Ethics".

While this collection may be much the same as God in the Dock, as the reviewer below says (several essays seemed fresh to me), it has been out for almost 40 years. Since the publishers have probably retired, and the statute of limitations on greed has run out by now, I'll review the book on its own merits. (If it's novelty you're looking for, try the brilliant, humorous, and sometimes quirky Lewis letters collections that Harper San Francisco printed last year. Practically no one seems to have read them, and they delighted me for a month or two.)

Seeing Eye is not a New Age revision of C. S. Lewis, as the title might make you think, but a motley collection of thirteen mostly thoughtful, deep, and iconoclastic essays. Some sound as if they began as a school assignment -- "Can we have something on ethics or Christianity and culture?" and then Lewis attacks the assigned topic with his usual clarity of thought and erudition, usually taking it, and us, somewhere unexpected and deeply revealing. "The Funeral of Great Myth" gives a (possibly premature) encomium, with measured appreciation and skepticism, on the myth of evolution (in the trans-scientific sense) that dominated late 19th and 20th Century thought. "Historicism" is a highly useful analysis of the meaning of history, or whether history has a meaning. Lewis' essay on the Psalms is included; though I think it better read with his book on the subject. (Lewis was not a fideist, and gives the Psalms what some might feel is rough treatment.) The essay "Petitionary prayer: a problem without an answer" considers two types of request to God in Scripture: those that add "your will be done," and those that do not. Lewis considers whether our timidity in prayer derives from true humility, or lack of faith, and whether the Bible promises more than God delivers from prayer, and decides (with commendable honesty) that he doesn't know. Lewis also writes "on futility," on Christianity and culture (another foundational piece of thinking), subjectivism (an early defense of what he calls the "tao" in his prophetic Abolition of Man), and religious language (scattering insight and understanding like my yellow lab scatters river water after a swim).

"Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism," elsewhere called "Elephants and Fernseed," in which Lewis attacks skeptical New Testament scholarship, may be the most brilliant and (for some) helpful piece of all. If you haven't read it, this essay alone is worth the price of several heftier volumes. As I show in my new book, Why the Jesus Seminar can't find Jesus, and Grandma Marshall Could, modern critics continue to repeat the errors Lewis describes. His essay therefore continues to be not merely useful, but indespensible, if you find yourself bamboozled by the likes of John Crossan, Elaine Pagels, Marcus Borg, or Bishop Spong. (Though of course I also recommend my own book.)

If you haven't read these essays and feed deeply on the truth herein, and this is a convenient edition for you, be sure to acquire a copy.

This collection C.S. Lewis' essays contain many deep thoughts on some very specific subjects. In this collection, essays spend time comparing Christianity and Culture, Christianity and Literature, and many more of the less than fundamental aspects of Christianity. He proves his depth of knowledge in the works by citing numerous references in each essay. This book was not intended for the pleasure reader. The content is very specific and Lewis refers to a plethora of people and works that may be unknown to many people.