Issue 2 - Into the Wardrobe and Beyond with C.S. Lewis

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It is Risen Indeed: A Theological History of Bread
To those in Byzantium, leavened bread, like Christ, rose; thus, from the Eastern perspective, unleavened bread simply contained no "soul' and hence no "life"…

Mardi Gras
Mardi Gras itself stems from a religious festival, and to the locals, it represents a letting off of steam (not that, to be fair, New Orleans ever needs an excuse to throw a party) before heading into the 40 days of Lenten deprivation. While it can't be confirmed that most residents do abstain from something or other during this period, New Orleans remains a very Catholic city, and on Ash Wednesday, post-Mardi Gras tourists are often bemused by the vast number of penitent foreheads that bear a telltale smudge…

You Don't Know Jack
Members of almost every organized church have at some time smugly assured me that Jack was secretly moving toward their particular brand of psycho-spiritual neurosis…

Joy Davidman: The Honest Fingers of My Hand
Joy carried herself as a young woman with pluck, promise and enough ego to fill her 5'2" frame many times over…

C.S. Lewis and the Wartime BBC
At a quarter to eight, the bartender turned the radio up for Lewis. "You listen to this bloke," he shouted, "He's really worth listening to…"

Lewis and Tolkien: a Lasting Friendship
That the two were both "mere Christians" did not diminish the stark differences that defined Tolkien's Roman Catholic outlook and Lewis' Anglican mind. Theologically, the two often bickered about issues like cremation and divorce…

C.S. Lewis: A Beautiful Mind
Now who can tell us more than C.S. Lewis about all three things (Truth, Goodness and Beauty)—the only things we need to know? Hardly any other writer had more strings to his bow than Lewis. Can you think of one who excels him in all three areas—who is more intelligent and reveals more truth; and more saintly and reveals more goodness; and more creative and writes more beautifully and stimulates more deep thoughts in the reader? I know of no one since Augustine…

The Quest for Beauty, for Truth and for Goodness
As Lewis says, the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in "consists in our knowledge of a moral law and an awareness of our failure to observe it…

C.S. Lewis and the Pursuit of Truth
Today C.S. Lewis was devoted to the pursuit of truth, and was sure he had captured or been given a great deal of it. His confidence in this respect did not make him arrogant and close-minded, but was, to the contrary, the foundation of his remarkable humility and openness…

Star Trek & Religion
Unlike the rather monolithic belief-scapes codified within the Star Wars legacy by the ever-vigilant George Lucas, with its prominent philosophy of the Force, of good versus evil, of Jedi knights locked in battle against the power of the Sith, Star Trek in regards to religion is a patchwork quilt of ideas, often in direct contradiction to one another and not necessarily in conformity with the expressed ideas of its creator…

Buffy the What?—Is a What?!
Despite the lack of an active present deity, there's a hell and heaven in Buffy. Buffy's town of Sunnydale is in fact a Hellmouth, serving as a revolving door for demonic entities that Buffy must destroy. And Heaven? Buffy goes there when she dies in the sixth season, only to be ceremoniously yanked back to earth when Willow and the Scoobies perform a dangerous ritual…

Experiencing the Great Canon of St. Andrew
A shovel, then a trowel, then at last a brush: archaeologists kneel on the pebbly surface of an ancient mosaic floor and uncover it to the sun, stone by stone. As the dust is brushed away, a message is gradually revealed. Words are strung in a circle around a spacious floor, the words of a prayer. Once more freed from the cloaking dust of centuries, the stones cry out to God for mercy…

Mary and Isis: Two Versions of the Virgin
The question of whether Mary was, effectively, Isis under one of her many names may seem, initially, somewhat disingenuous: the Church Fathers quickly defined a position of exclusive monotheism—the idea that their god was the one true God, and that all others were either fictions or demonic entities. To these Church Fathers and to those who—then and now—accept this orthodoxy, Mary obviously could not be Isis under another name…

When It Comes to Symbolism, Few Things Top the Dreidel
Like all spinning objects, the dreidel revolves around a center point, toppling when that connection is lost. As such, according to some, the dreidel serves as a reminder that life revolves around a central point, God, and losing that connection can cause our lives to collapse…

The Naïve and the Nativity
Jesus is big news, both then and now, and to believe we know something certain about him, as in geographically certain, means to be able to access directly the spot where the story took place, where narrative sweeps across the landscape and pages of texts are transformed into ancient stone walls of churches framing "actual events"…

Who's the Guy in the Red Suit?
He is an annual star of movies; the inspiration of songs; a source of childhood glee and angst; and of early parental dilemma as kids totter on the brink of disillusionment asking, "Is Santa real?"…