AN ‘AMATEUR OF GENIUS’: C.S. LEWIS ON THE RISKS OF PROFESSIONAL THEOLOGY

Abstract

ABSTRACTAbstract: Six decades after his death, there is still no scholarly consensus regarding whether C.S. Lewis should be considered an important theologian of the twentieth century. This paper investigates where the belief that Lewis was not a theological writer worth taking seriously originated. Then it evaluates two approaches that have been introduced in recent scholarship, by P.H. Brazier and Alister McGrath, that seek to affirm Lewis as a modern theologian of distinction. The final and central part of this paper nuances McGrath's argument by surveying seven reasons Lewis had for not doing theology the way academics did – reasons that have often been overlooked in the relevant literature. I argue that Lewis's decision to remain ‘outside the inner ring’ of academic theologians was based on a set of risks he perceived were involved in doing theology professionally. In so doing, I suggest that Lewis's writings about religious topics deserve to be taken seriously by professional theologians and other readers. Besides Lewis scholarship in particular, this discussion matters for Christian theology in general because it explores what it means to be a theologian in an era of professionalisation and the conditions under which religious writers like Lewis can become theologians, both of which cast light on how we understand the nature of theology.