C.S. Lewis was Anglican!

[Contarini]

Dyson was Anglican.

And, indeed, there is good reason to put little confidence in some of Hooper’s declarations of “fact”, in some cases where he is the sole source for it.

GKC

Are you a Lindskoogian?

On the literary matters where Lindskoog has questioned the authenticity of posthumous texts, I find her arguments weak and generally think that the texts in question sound like authentic Lewis (often inferior Lewis, but that’s surely why they were not published, and Lindskoog’s refusal to admit that there could be inferior Lewis is surely a sign of her overly hagiographical approach to the Great Man). But if you’re talking about the apparent exaggerations of the extent of his acquaintance with Lewis on Hooper’s part, then I would probably agree with you.

Edwin

 

[GKC]

Are you a Lindskoogian?

On the literary matters where Lindskoog has questioned the authenticity of posthumous texts, I find her arguments weak and generally think that the texts in question sound like authentic Lewis (often inferior Lewis, but that’s surely why they were not published, and Lindskoog’s refusal to admit that there could be inferior Lewis is surely a sign of her overly hagiographical approach to the Great Man). But if you’re talking about the apparent exaggerations of the extent of his acquaintance with Lewis on Hooper’s part, then I would probably agree with you.

Edwin

I was a Lindskoogian avant le mot. When the DARK TOWER came out I was thrilled. Until I was half way into it. At which point I had reached the conclusion that whoever wrote it, it wasn’t Lewis. And I find some professional writers, one a friend of mine, who are of the same mind. He is RC, and a man whose opinion I value, and whose name you would likely know. His literary judgment is that it isn’t Lewis. And there are the stylistic studies, that indicate that the works in question were not a match for Lewis, but were written by someone whose style was indistinguishable from Hooper’s.

And on the timeline contradictions, I had also reached the same conclusion as Lindskoog, before I read her books. And before I exchanged letters with her.

These are not the only points of contention that she raises (the great bonfire, as denied by Paxford, and others) , but they are the 2 points I had reached on my own, before I heard of Katherine.

In brief, I’m a Lindskoogian.

GKC

 

[Contarini]

I was a Lindskoogian avant le mot. When the DARK TOWER came out I was thrilled. Until I was half way into it. At which point I had reached the conclusion that whoever wrote it, it wasn’t Lewis. And I find some professional writers, one a friend of mine, who are of the same mind. He is RC, and a man whose opinion I value, and whose name you would likely know. His literary judgment is that it isn’t Lewis. And there are the stylistic studies, that indicate that the works in question were not a match for Lewis, but were written by someone whose style was indistinguishable from Hooper’s.

And on the timeline contradictions, I had also reached the same conclusion as Lindskoog, before I read her books. And before I exchanged letters with her.

These are not the only points of contention that she raises (the great bonfire, as denied by Paxford, and others) , but they are the 2 points I had reached on my own, before I heard of Katherine.

In brief, I’m a Lindskoogian.

GKC

Interesting. I would be extremely surprised if the Dark Tower were not by Lewis. I think that stylistic arguments are problematic when we have so few examples of Lewis’s first drafts. (What about the “Lefay fragment” in Hooper’s Past Watchful Dragons? Do you consider that authentic, spurious, or dubious?) And I find the moral/psychological reasons Lindskoog gives for the inauthenticity of the work to be powerful arguments for its authenticity. To me the Dark Tower looks exactly like a story that Lewis might begin because he saw pictures of it and thought something could be made of them, but then abandon for both artistic and moral/spiritual/personal reasons. (It has exactly the same rather nasty tone as parts of That Hideous Strength. Or, for that matter, bits of Screwtape in a very watered down way.) I can’t for the life of me see why or how a sycophantic Lewisolater who has given no other evidence of having imaginative gifts would or could come up with such a weird, disturbing, flawed, powerful fragment.

But of course I may well be wrong.

Edwin

 

[GKC]

Interesting. I would be extremely surprised if the Dark Tower were not by Lewis. I think that stylistic arguments are problematic when we have so few examples of Lewis’s first drafts. (What about the “Lefay fragment” in Hooper’s Past Watchful Dragons? Do you consider that authentic, spurious, or dubious?) And I find the moral/psychological reasons Lindskoog gives for the inauthenticity of the work to be powerful arguments for its authenticity. To me the Dark Tower looks exactly like a story that Lewis might begin because he saw pictures of it and thought something could be made of them, but then abandon for both artistic and moral/spiritual/personal reasons. (It has exactly the same rather nasty tone as parts of That Hideous Strength. Or, for that matter, bits of Screwtape in a very watered down way.) I can’t for the life of me see why or how a sycophantic Lewisolater who has given no other evidence of having imaginative gifts would or could come up with such a weird, disturbing, flawed, powerful fragment.

But of course I may well be wrong.

Edwin

Or I may. But I don’t think so.

I would have to relook at the fragment you refer to. It’s been years.

And that sparks some sort of memory. Have you read all Lindskoog’s books on the matter?

GKC

 

[VociMike]

Why does garbage like this have to be entertained here? He was Anglican, end of story! It amazes me how so many here will assume that if someone lived long enough or if the stars and planets would have lined up just right, they would have somehow miraculously turned Catholic. Here’s the reality and truth of it all in two simple words, “they didn’t!”.

Wow, quite a ferocious reaction to a few innocuous words. What in my post is “garbage”? Please elucidate. I certainly wouldn’t want to pass along any further information in the public domain that might meet with your disapproval.

 

[VociMike]

Overall, Pearce’s book is not bad, certainly better than a couple of others that address this issue, that is a reoccurring one among RCs. And Pearce is following Tolkien in that particular opinion.

This is a subject that comes up regularly and regularly I make a comment. To assume that Lewis made his decisions on a less than rational basis is both to cast doubt on his other points, and to poison the discourse on the matter. We know why Chesterton for example, converted. He said so. We know why Lewis didn’t. He said so.

Hooper is without a doubt, a great world class Lewis scholar, who assisted Lewis for a very few months at the end of Lewis’ life. But there are questions in the Lewisian world about some of Hooper’s claims (see the late Katherine Lindskoog’s books). It is possible that Lewis would have gone to Rome, if he had lived a decade or so longer; no one knows. Certainly he moved from the centrist position he was in, when he rejoined the CoE, to a much more Anglo-Catholic one, over his life, on such issues as auricular confession, the Real Presence and (most likely) Purgatory. Whether he would have become RC, no one knows. Including Hooper.

GKC

Of course. No one knows. As for myself, I don’t need to believe that he would have become Catholic. His writing stands on its own.

I don’t know what kind of a person he was, but reading his “Letters to Children” (correct title?) I’m certainly struck by the impression of a humble, saintly man.

 

[GKC]

Of course. No one knows. As for myself, I don’t need to believe that he would have become Catholic. His writing stands on its own.

I don’t know what kind of a person he was, but reading his “Letters to Children” (correct title?) I’m certainly struck by the impression of a humble, saintly man.

Correct titile.

He will repay further reading. He’s human, but a good example of one.

GKC

 

[Contarini]

Or I may. But I don’t think so.

I would have to relook at the fragment you refer to. It’s been years.

And that sparks some sort of memory. Have you read all Lindskoog’s books on the matter?

GKC

No, only Hoax.

Edwin

 

[GKC]

No, only Hoax.

Edwin

Thought so.

You need to read both.

I’m doing the in and out the house number, and am away from my computer for the rest of the evening. We may talk more.

It’s not only the stylistic issue.

GKC

 

[jediliz]

J.R.R Tolkein is the one who was Catholic. In fact, when Lewis returned to Christianity after a stint as an atheist, Tolkein was disappointed that Lewis did not become Catholic.

 

[Gamera]

I just found out that C.S. Lewis was Anglican. I’m kind of shocked. I always thought he was Catholic. Is anyone else surprised? I wonder what he’d think of the current Archbishop of Canterbury.

Nope, not surprised. Always knew that. Sorry. I liked “The Screwtape Letters,” though.

 

[Lilyflower]

St Paul warns us about allegiances. CS Lewis was Christian. That means he is appealing to all Christians.

Isn’t it great that such a great writer and thinker should appeal to all who profess Christ and identify him with one’s own particular perspective

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

This article should be much more troubling to non-Catholic admirers of Lewis (it certainly is to me) than Pearce’s breezy and truculent polemic. The section of *Pilgrim’s Regress *to which Hutchens alludes is describing the Neo-Platonic, Neo-Hegelian philosophy Lewis adhered to before becoming a Christian. Mr. Wisdom and his nobler children (some of them were mere fakes) are revealed later in the book (through the eyes of faith) as inhabitants of Limbo (as in Dante’s limbo of the virtuous heathen). Because they kept the desire for God alive but refused to allow themselves to hope for a real fulfillment of that desire, they have condemned themselves to live for eternity in desire without hope. I have to wonder what on earth Hutchens was thinking in using this passage to argue for a Protestant ecclesiology.

But here’s the thing: I think Hutchens actually has a point. One could make a case that Lewis’s thought was always influenced by Platonism more than was entirely good for him as an orthodox Christian. Lewis’s congenital pessimism and anti-institutionalism no doubt also played a role. Lewis’s attitude to the Catholic Church may to some extent have been a survival of his pre-Christian attitude toward Christianity as a whole. If someone had tried to convince Lewis of this, I think they would have failed. Probably Lewis would have thought this was just another attempt to psychologize ideas away instead of taking them seriously. But if Lewis had been convinced that Hutchens was right, I think that might actually have made him a lot more likely to convert to Catholicism. I think that Lewis, like me, would recognize the “ecclesiology of limbo” as a temptation rather than an expression of orthodox Christianity. (And yes, the blog post to which I linked does imply an imminent conversion on my part which, as so often before, failed to materialize. I would stand by the last sentence of the post, and the entire question continues to haunt and trouble me. But I am less certain than I was when I wrote the article that being a unity-minded Protestant has to be spiritually poisonous.)

Lewis spoke over and over again of Christian unity as something that must be worked for and that might be achieved at some point in the future. He never spoke of it as something that should be relegated on principle to the “other side of the chasm.”

Edwin

**Thanks for the link - which I look forward to reading. **​

**I don’t think Hutchens has destroyed his argument with his quotation: what he says about “realised eschatology” (might “realised ecclesiology” be a better description ?) can stand without that quotation. Maybe a quotation from “The Horse and His Boy” would have been appropriate; such as the passage where the Talking Horse Bree is told that in Narnia, he will not be anything special. **

**My impression is that Lewis was rather more Evangelical Protestant than is sometimes allowed for - does that seem plausible to you ? (I am no expert on matters Lewisian.) **

 

[GKC]

Edwin,

I’ll be happy when my books and my computer are again under one roof.

I looked over both PAST WATCHFUL DRAGONS and also the place where Hooper originally presented the putative fragment, in IMAGINATION AND THE SPIRIT. On rereading, even with a jaundiced eye (I hadn’t heard of Lindskoog when I first read these) LeFay doesn’t strike me as egregiously wrong, as does DARK TOWER. And in the IMAGINATION essay, Hooper included repros of two manuscript pages supposedly found in the same exercise book (where he often found things), one of LeFay. Both pages look like Lewis’ hand (and I won’t explore the issue of how well Hooper said he could reproduce that). Lindskoog faults one of the “scraps”, a sort of “memo for Narnia” as a little clunky, but let that ride. And certainly it is fortutious that the LeFay fragment contains bits from 4 separate Narnia stories, as realized. But it’s not in the same category as TOWER. For one thing, it isn’t traced to the bonfire. Hooper does add something in DRAGONS, to the effect that Roger Lancelyn Green had said that Lewis had read him the LeFay fragment, in 1949. This was not mentioned in the IMAGINATION essay, but as DRAGONS was apparently written in around 1978-79, and Green died in 1987, that seems to pass muster, unlike some of Hooper’s claims re: deceased persons who supported him. Green also denied Hooper’s assertion that he had seen the manuscript of TOWER, he said he had only seen the typed version, so he was willing to comment.

In brief, I find LeFay plausible.

And TOWER impossible. Not only stylistically (but most certainly stylistically, and tone and content and writing skill). Provenance is part of it. No one can support its exisitence before Hooper produced it. Unlike the other works of the time, Lewis didn’t speak of it to his friends, or read it as a work in progress. Warren disclaimed any knoweldge of it, in writing, and spent some time being ignored by Hooper, when he sought an explanation. The document itself, of course, didn’t appear until after Warren’s death.

And much more (as in Paxford’s total denial of the bonfire story). The 2nd Lindskoog book is LIGHT IN THE SHADOW LANDS; an expansion of HOAX, which contains a lot more footnoted data. I would urge you to read it. Certainly it’s possible to disagree with Lindskoog. But I haven’t found her refuted, in much. As many of those who support her general case (a list is in SHADOWLANDS) have urged, she needed to be engaged, not attacked. Lewisiana now rests on shaky grounds, as to anything produced after his death.

A brief discussion of a complicated topic.

GKC

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Interesting. I would be extremely surprised if the Dark Tower were not by Lewis. I think that stylistic arguments are problematic when we have so few examples of Lewis’s first drafts. (What about the “Lefay fragment” in Hooper’s Past Watchful Dragons? Do you consider that authentic, spurious, or dubious?) And I find the moral/psychological reasons Lindskoog gives for the inauthenticity of the work to be powerful arguments for its authenticity. To me the Dark Tower looks exactly like a story that Lewis might begin because he saw pictures of it and thought something could be made of them, but then abandon for both artistic and moral/spiritual/personal reasons. (It has exactly the same rather nasty tone as parts of That Hideous Strength. Or, for that matter, bits of Screwtape in a very watered down way.) I can’t for the life of me see why or how a sycophantic Lewisolater who has given no other evidence of having imaginative gifts would or could come up with such a weird, disturbing, flawed, powerful fragment.

But of course I may well be wrong.

Edwin

**I like “The Dark Tower” - if Lewis could write pieces as different as “Till We Have Faces” & “After Ten Years”, I don’t see why he should have been incapable of writing “The Dark Tower” - which, like “After Ten Years”, is a fragment; though much longer than “After Ten Years”. It reminds me rather of some of his scientifiction - some of which is very bleak. **​

**The problem with “The Dark Tower” is that it is a fragment, &, apparently, an unrevised one. Some of it is very like “That Hideous Strength” - if I did not know that the horrible vision with which it begins was the work of Lewis, I doubt I would have thought it was his. Maybe he felt that he had said in"That Hideous Strength" all that otherwise he might have said in “The Dark Tower”, & put it aside for that reason: somewhat as Tolkien wrote different versions of parts of the stories he told. **

(I’ve heard of the Lindskoog-Hooper controversy,but know little about it.)

 

[Lion_of_Narnia]

Yes, he was Anglican. Joseph Pearce has written about Lewis’ relationship to the Catholic Church, and, as I remember it, his conclusion was that Lewis had a lot of childhood Ulster Protestant anti-Catholic baggage that would surface now and then throughout his life. There is no question that Lewis’ theology was very Catholic (moreso than a great many actual Catholics today ). Further, his one-time personal secretary and now trustee and literary advisor of Lewis’ estate, Walter Hooper, has stated that he believes Lewis would have come into the Catholic Church had he lived longer and witnessed the disintegration (my word) of the Anglican church. Hooper did come into the Church in 1988.

“Jack’s” (Lewis’s prefered familiar name) anti-Catholic baggage was something I think he fought against, but it could and would surface–and apparently was part of the end of his friendship with JRR Tolkien. However, I am in strong agreement with Walter Hooper if Jack had lived 15, maybe only 10 more years he would have “swam the Tiber”

 

[GKC]

**I like “The Dark Tower” - if Lewis could write pieces as different as “Till We Have Faces” & “After Ten Years”, I don’t see why he should have been incapable of writing “The Dark Tower” - which, like “After Ten Years”, is a fragment; though much longer than “After Ten Years”. It reminds me rather of some of his scientifiction - some of which is very bleak. **​

**The problem with “The Dark Tower” is that it is a fragment, &, apparently, an unrevised one. Some of it is very like “That Hideous Strength” - if I did not know that the horrible vision with which it begins was the work of Lewis, I doubt I would have thought it was his. Maybe he felt that he had said in"That Hideous Strength" all that otherwise he might have said in “The Dark Tower”, & put it aside for that reason: somewhat as Tolkien wrote different versions of parts of the stories he told. **

(I’ve heard of the Lindskoog-Hooper controversy,but know little about it.)

After 45 years of collecting Lewis, I am still of the opinion that DARK TOWER is not from his hand. For explication, Lindskoog’s LIGHT IN THE SHADOW LANDS.

Too detailed to make lucid in a post. It is not that TOWER is bleak. It’s that there is no reason, beyond Hooper’s assertions, to think it is Lewis, much reason to believe it is not.

GKC

 

[GKC]

“Jack’s” (Lewis’s prefered familiar name) anti-Catholic baggage was something I think he fought against, but it could and would surface–and apparently was part of the end of his friendship with JRR Tolkien. However, I am in strong agreement with Walter Hooper if Jack had lived 15, maybe only 10 more years he would have “swam the Tiber”

And again, after 45 years of studying the man, I doubt it.

GKC

 

[Jerusha]

“Jack’s” (Lewis’s prefered familiar name) anti-Catholic baggage was something I think he fought against, but it could and would surface–and apparently was part of the end of his friendship with JRR Tolkien.

I have been reading “The Letters of JRR Tolkien”, and their relationship was quite close, they exchanged their works for review.

I have not completed the book. What do you think was the cause of the breakup of the friendship? Were some of those Lewis works you debate about, actually Tolkien’s?

Tolkien, having done so much of his work during WWII, could get quite bleak in some places in LOTR.

 

[GKC]

I have been reading “The Letters of JRR Tolkien”, and their relationship was quite close, they exchanged their works for review.

I have not completed the book. What do you think was the cause of the breakup of the friendship? Were some of those Lewis works you debate about, actually Tolkien’s?

Tolkien, having done so much of his work during WWII, could get quite bleak in some places in LOTR.

Lewis and Tolkien scholars speculate a number of reasons, none being definitive. Tolkien offers two reasons, himself, found in the letters: Lewis’ relationship with Charles Williams (though Williams died in 1945), and his relationship with and marriage to Joy Davidman. Some also feel that Lewis’ failure to convert to Rome caused Tolkien to distance himself. Whatever the reasons, they seemed to be initiated by Tolkien, and caused Lewis some distress.

When Lewis died, Tolkien was generous with his praise of his friend.

What works are you speaking of, that might be Tolkien’s?

GKC