March 31, 2025
During Holy Week in 2011, Rowan Williams gave three talks in Canterbury Cathedral on C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. These talks formed the basis of the book recommended here, The Lion's World: A Journey into the Heart of Narnia. Those who attended our year-long monthly discussion group of the Chronicles may want to read this book to keep the flame of their affection for Lewis, and Aslan, alive. Those who were unable to attend may find this a way to ignite or to kindle a flame of interest. Williams champions the works, not as perfect or above criticism---Tolkien, he notes, found them ‘intolerable.’ But the Narnia tales are remarkable, among other things, for their ability to “to still evoke an almost unbearable longing for that fullness of joy which Lewis points to so consistently in his best writing.” And this joy comes on the other side of learning how God, through Christ, deals with our almost endless self-deceptions, our fears, our evasions. The Chronicles really are about redemption.
So characteristically, Rowan Williams brings his considerable powers of analysis and expression to the task here. The book is elegantly written, and crystal clear. For those unfamiliar with Williams, he is now in retirement, but was previously the Archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 to 2012, and before that The Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford University. He doesn’t treat Lewis as the fountain of all truth, but he confesses that Lewis in these works makes it possible to reawaken to the Christian story fresh, “as if for the first time”—and that he himself is astonished again and again that this is so. Another reviewer (N.T. Wright) writes of this work “Those who have loved Narnia since childhood will here discover fresh and sometimes disturbing depths of meaning and power. Those who don't know it will be stimulated to read the stories for themselves. Those who have tried to debunk Lewis and his children's books will find Williams more than a match for them, not as an uncritical apologist but as a wise and humane expositor.'' Be refreshed, be made aware, be invited to yet more joy, by reading this book, available through Amazon and now in our church library.