David C. Downing

The Art of the Thank You Note

  • Nov 11, 2016
  • David C. Downing
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On the subject of thanksgiving, C. S. Lewis believed we should be grateful for all the fortunes that come our way, both good and bad. It is easy, of course, to be grateful for the good things in our lives. But Lewis felt that we should be equally thankful for …

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Grace Made Perfect in Weakness

  • Jul 21, 2013
  • David C. Downing
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Nearly a dozen biographies have been published about C. S. Lewis since his death half a century ago. One wonders how much new there is to say. But there will always be new biographies about cultural icons, not because new facts are uncovered, but because each new generation has its …

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Tolkien vs. Lewis on Faith and Fantasy

  • Nov 14, 2012
  • David C. Downing
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I first read the Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings as a teenager, not realizing at the time that C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien were close friends and fellow Christians. I thought it was obvious on first reading that Lewis was writing …

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C. S. Lewis as Atheist turned Apostle

  • May 02, 2012
  • David C. Downing
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In an introduction to a broadcast given on 11 January 1942, which was later deleted from the published text, Lewis explains why he was chosen to give the talks: “…first of all because I’m a layman and not a parson, and consequently it was thought I might understand the ordinary …

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That Hideous Strength: Marriage, Merlin, and Mayhem

  • Apr 19, 2012
  • David C. Downing
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That Hideous Strength, the third book of the Ransom trilogy, is one of Lewis’s best-loved stories—and also one of his most fiercely criticized. It is a big book, more than twice as long as the two earlier books of the trilogy combined. Admirers of the story find there a literary …

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Perelandra: Re-awakening the Spiritual Imagination

  • Apr 17, 2012
  • David C. Downing
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Perelandra is the first book I read by C. S. Lewis, and the encounter couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. I was a freshman in college, and I was wrestling mightily with all the usual questions so many Christians ponder: how could a good God create a world …

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Out of the Silent Planet: Cosmic Voyage as Spiritual Pilgrimage

  • Apr 03, 2012
  • David C. Downing
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Having already earned a reputation as a formidable literary scholar, C. S. Lewis scandalized his fellow Oxford dons in 1938 when he published a fantasy novel, Out of the Silent Planet. They would have been even more alarmed if they had noticed that he was writing what he called “theologized …

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Word Pictures for the Word Who Became Flesh

  • Dec 12, 2011
  • David C. Downing
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“God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” That concise statement by the apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 5:19a) has kept theologians busy for nearly two thousand years, trying to understand what exactly is being affirmed in the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and the Atonement. C. S. Lewis never …

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Journeys to the Underworld in the Aeneid and The Silver Chair

  • Apr 27, 2011
  • David C. Downing
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One of the characters in Virgil’s Aeneid is named Polydorus, which means “many-gifted.” That epithet might apply just as well to C. S. Lewis. Visitors to this site already know Lewis as the creator of Narnia, as well as a distinguished literary critic, an influential Christian writer, and a gifted …

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A Look at David C. Downing’s New Novel "Looking for the King"

  • Jan 27, 2011
  • David C. Downing
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Anglophiles, mystery lovers (particularly those who prefer the brainy rather than the bloody type), and Inkling fans everywhere are sure to find something to truly enjoy in Looking for the King, the recent novel written by Lewis scholar David Downing. Here’s how the description on the jacket flap begins: “It …

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