Editor’s note: Part one of this installment can be read here. It defined fairy-stories and expressed that they can be a potent defense of Christianity in a postmodern age. It discussed three important preliminary points: a defense of Christianity through…
Teaching allegory is always a bit of an uphill battle. I used to think that allegory was difficult for students because they simply weren’t used to reading complex texts; this was certainly the case for most of my undergraduates. But…
Imagination and reason: how do they relate to each other? Working in the field of cultural apologetics, and specifically in imaginative and literary apologetics, I am beginning to see a growing interest in the role of the imagination in communicating…
Editor’s Note: In this second response to Michael Ward’s post, “The Next C.S. Lewis? A Note on Austin Farrer,” Professor Ann Loades gives a contrasting perspective. Whilst delighted that some attention is being given to one of the finest Anglophone philosopher-theologians of…
Editor’s Note: In this post, Robert MacSwain responds to fellow St Andrews alum Michael Ward’s 14 February 2014 post: “The Next C.S. Lewis? A Note on Austin Farrer.” MacSwain and Ward co-edited The Cambridge Companion to C. S. Lewis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,…
It was sometimes said after C.S. Lewis’s death that his apologist’s mantle had fallen on the shoulders of Austin Farrer.[1] The two men knew each other well,[2] and Lewis’s respect for Farrer’s work[3] was warmly reciprocated.[4] This post aims to give…
One of the stumbling blocks that held C. S. Lewis back from embracing Christianity was his inability to understand how the death of an obscure Jewish rabbi two thousand years ago could have any impact on his life. Lewis found…
My interest in evangelism/apologetics, natural theology and metaphysics has its roots in the soil of the Midwest; more specifically, two courses that I took at Cedarville University. The first was Dr. Daniel J. Estes’ course on “Wisdom Literature,” and the second,…
In the apocryphal book of 1 Esdras 3-4, the author says that three bodyguards who guarded King Darius wanted to know: what is the strongest (or the most powerful)? If Plato had answered this question, he would have included the…