C.S. Lewis: Mythologically Speaking

***Lewis modeled the retention of myth and story as fit instruments for Christian expression, entertainment, inquiry, and instruction. He did so against the backdrop of the deadening, spirit-evacuating tendencies of the higher critical approaches to history and the Bible so dominant at the time. Lewis did so earlier, more impressively, and with more faithfulness to orthodox Christianity than some of those influenced by the Yale-based Narrative School shaped by Hans Frei and George Lindbeck more than three decades after Out of the Silent Planet appeared.

For example, where some students of the Narrative School sit loose with regard to the historicity of the resurrection and its necessity for orthodox Christian confession, Lewis could not. Partly because, as Lewis himself put it in Surprised by Joy, “ I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myths.” Appreciation for the uniqueness, power, and beauty of story as an indispensable vehicle for Christian expression, instruction, and worship need not and ought not to require either the neglect or the despising of doctrine. Retention, acknowledgement, and enjoyment of propositional truth and the recovery of Biblical narrative are not mutually exclusive quests. Just ask C.S. Lewis.