Barry's Blog

In preparation for a recent talk to a group of business professionals on C. S. Lewis, his life and writings, I came across one of my favorite letters of his that was penned to his brother, Warnie. The occasion was Lewis' report to Warnie of a recent Inkilngs meeting. The Inkilngs, you may recall, was an informal literary  group that gathered at Oxford University around Lewis for nearly two decades, from the early 1930's to the late 1940's. They met for jovial, manly conversation, as well as to discuss the member's literary works in progress. The group included, among others, J. R. R. Tolkien (affectionately known as "Tollers"), Owen Barfield, the novelist Charles Williams, and Christopher Tolkien, J. R. R. Tolkien's son. The members would generally meet on Thursday evenings in Lewis' college rooms at Magdalen College, Oxford, but were also known to gather on Tuesdays at midday at a pub on St. Giles Street in Oxford, The Eagle and Child, also affectionately known as "The Bird and Baby."

Here is an except from one one of those fascinating meetings, found in one of Walter Hooper's magisterial three volumes, including literally thousands of letters of correspondence, for which he has served as editor. Lewis writes to his brother:

"I had a pleasant evening on Thursday with Williams, Tolkien, and Wrenn, during which Wrenn almost seriously expressed a strong wish to burn Williams, or at least maintained that conversation with Williams enabled him to understand how inquisitors had felt it right to burn people. Tolkien and I agreed afterwards that we just knew what he meant: that as some people...are eminently kickable, so Williams is eminently combustible."

"The occasion was a discussion of the most distressing text in the Bible ("narrow is the way and few they be that find it") and whether one really could believe in a universe where the majority were damned and also in the goodness of God. Wrenn, of course, took the view that it mattered precisely nothing whether it conformed to your ideas of goodness or not, and it was at that stage that the combustible possibilities of Williams revealed themselves to him in an attractive light. The general sense of the meeting was in favour of a view on the lines taken in Pastor Pastorum -- that our Lord's replies are never straight answers and never gratify curiosity, and that whatever this one meant its purpose was certainly not statistical..."

Granted, these were educated, even brilliant men. But it should be noted that few of them were clergymen, "men of the cloth." And yet, these men didn't just take the time for such profound theological discussions, for such discussions were a central element of who they were, and an important aspect of their own spiritual understanding. Theological discourse framed not only their identity, but their pursuit of knowing God and serving Him. 

Why do so few Christians today discuss theology? And what does the modern emphasis on being "relevant" in evangelical Christianity really have to do with Truth? Moreover, what does it tell us about ourselves? So what ever happened to theology?

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow