Book Review: The C. S. Lewis Phenomenon: Christianity and the Public Sphere

Abstract

The C. S. Lewis Phenomenon: Christianity and the Public Sphere. By Samuel Joeckel. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-88146-4375. Pp. 403. $30.00. It can be like discovering a jewel to find a book that is both scholarly and argumentatively sound. It is a rare thing indeed for that same book to offer keen insights into the life of a profound writer, as well as provide organizational categories for that writers work that are both complex and accessible. Samuel Joeckel has shaped such a jewel in his recent book, The C. S. Lewis Phenomenon: Christianity and the Public Sphere. The book is a delight to read, as Joeckel progresses through a carefully constructed series of definitions and assertions toward understanding Lewis as a intellectual. Joeckel's primary claim is that Lewis' persona as a created the ways in which Lewis responded to truth claims and the methods that he used to construct the arguments in his works. With the rise of the sphere that began with Enlightenment presumptions, so Joeckel argues, the place of one type of public became a response to the challenge that atheism offered to Christianity. The introduction to this lengthy book sets up key terms that Joeckel will spend the remainder of part 1 (of three parts) defining, with careful examples from Lewis' culture and works: public intellectual, de-conversion, transcendent character, the genre of and vantage point. Chapter 1 overviews the qualities and role of the who used Enlightenment standards of reasoned argument to assume a neutral, or objective, arguer (de-converted stance in Joeckel's term) who used logical discourse to carefully move through an argument and that by doing so, the argument could be acceded on solely rational grounds. Drawing on Russell Jacoby's (1987) The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe, Joeckel defines a as a figure who defends religious, political, or ideological beliefs in a manner that requires the expertise of a scholar, possessing the learning and critical acumen to engage with proficiency complex issues, and the communicative skills of a journalist, capable of making those complex beliefs understandable to the layperson (7). As is evident from this quote, Joeckel himself writes--at times--in a style that captures key ideas in loaded, but succinct language. Since this laconic language is not always present in the book, the argument is well worth some unnecessary repetition by Joeckel. Defining the allows Joeckel to argue that the or nonconformist role assumed by those taking on the persona is one Lewis assumed in his apologetics, as well as his apologue, which Joeckel argues are works organized as a fictional example of the truth of a formulable statement or a series of such statements (qtd. Sacks Fiction and the Shape of Belief 26, Joeckel 3). Lewis' personality as is upheld by his arguments against modernity and moral relativism, as well as the rise of scientism during the twentieth century. As a defender of Christianity, Lewis assumed the outsider stance to the new atheism that gained support during the twentieth century. As a translator of difficult messages, Lewis assumed a de-converted stance that attempts to reduce (or remove) bias before analyzing ideas, often employing transcendent characters (another Joeckel term as he so fondly and repeatedly reminds the reader through the 400-page book) who adopt Olympian perspectives on truth and reason that transcend the intellectual limitations endemic to the human condition (22). In his second chapter Joeckel argues that the challenge of atheism along with changes in Christian apologetics work together to create a moment perfect for Lewis' rise to popularity--a unique and unrepeatable moment. …