The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind by Jason M. Baxter

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind by Jason M. Baxter Ronald A. Hoyum The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind. By Jason M. Baxter. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2022. 165 pp. This is a beautifully-written examination of the literary influences that shaped C. S. Lewis's understanding of the Christian faith. [End Page 222] Lewis is well known as a powerful Christian apologist and the gifted author of the Narnia Chronicles. But another side to Lewis shaped the way he understood his faith as a Christian. Jason Baxter calls this the "Third Lewis." Baxter writes, "In addition to the Christian apologist, whose sagacious words delivered over radio waves had been so comforting during England's darkest hour, and in addition to Lewis the mythmaker, the creator of Narnia and fantastic tales of space travel, there was Lewis the scholar, the Oxford (and later Cambridge) don who spent his days lecturing to students on medieval cosmology and his nights looking up old words in dictionaries" (2). Each chapter is devoted to an examination of how Lewis's devotion to medieval literature shaped his Christian worldview. In the first chapter, "The Lost Cathedral," Baxter describes how Lewis embraced the beauty and majesty of the medieval vision of the cosmos. For Lewis, "the medieval universe was not just a system of exploded scientific beliefs, but the natural icon of transposition, the greatest example of the spiritual world expressing itself in the limited vocabulary of the physical, natural world" (22). Topics discussed in subsequent chapters include ethics, science, psychology, and how language influences our ideas of the world around us. In each chapter, Baxter draws upon Lewis's literary and apologetic writings to show how Lewis introduces us to a different way of looking at God's presence in the world and in our lives. One of Lewis's greatest gifts was his ability to "use his imaginative talent to create a feeling in which the ideas under consideration were no longer dead opinions sitting on the dissection table of the mind … but rather to live again" (37). Baxter points out that Lewis's view of the medieval period was quite expansive. "Lewis thought an ancient Roman had more in common with human beings from the eighteenth century … For this reason we can loosely think of Lewis's medieval period as the 'Long Middle Ages,' which extended from Plato to Samuel Johnson, and sometimes even to Wordsworth" (11). That is why Lewis could be thought of as a modern Boethius, whose works remind us of the lost wisdom of a previous age. "Lewis did something analogous to the late medieval writers (like Chaucer) who had translated Boethius from Latin into Middle English or French or Italian. He, too, [End Page 223] was a "popularizer" of ancient wisdom for a barbarian age. He was following in Boethius's footsteps" (15–16). Lewis never considered himself an original thinker. He simply wanted to retrieve insights and wisdom from the great writers of previous ages. Baxter examines the deep influence that writers as diverse as Plato, Cicero, Virgil, Dante, Donne, Rudolf Otto, and Martin Buber had on Lewis's apologetic works. Baxter argues with great force and conviction that Lewis's devotion to the past makes him all the more relevant today. Lewis believed that we suffer from "chronological snobbery," the belief that our modern view of the world is in all respects superior to previous ages. By reading great literature from the past we can break free from the "evil enchantment of the modern world" (69) so that we might breathe pure "Narnian air" (35). Lewis did not reject the modern world but felt that our view of life would be enriched by the wisdom of previous ages. Indeed, that is the secret to the power and enduring popularity of C. S. Lewis. And that is the overarching message you will discover in this wonderful and insightful book. Ronald A. Hoyum Port Madison Lutheran Church Poulsbo, Washington Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.