The Inklings

War in Heaven begins with this glorious opening sentence: “The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.” After this fantastic opening, Williams romps into a bizarre tale of the Holy Grail, black magic, and demon possession. However, from such an auspicious opening to a murder mystery, Williams goes on to overturn most of the standard procedures of that genre. He strays so far from convention, in fact, that War in Heaven is either a really bad murder mystery—or a really good something else.
In this paper, I intend to discuss the ways in which Williams departs from the rules that traditionally govern the mystery, show how he affirms certain essential premises, and illuminate his ultimate purpose. This purpose is quite different from the raison d’être of the mystery story proper, and leads into a discussion of how, and to what extent, a mystery can incorporate Christian themes.
An online interlocutor of mine, after reading War in Heaven, complained that “you begin the book with that perfect, fantastic opening sentence, expect this to be a page-turning murder mystery, and then it turns out to be a metaphysical drama and the poor murdered guy isn’t really all that important.” Her frustration is apt, and can be subdivided into three cogent arguments against the success of this book as a murder mystery. First, the opening leads the reader into generic expectations which are overturned by subsequent developments. Second, the characters are not developed as reader of fiction expect. Third, both plot and characters are subordinated to philosophical concerns.
While this reader’s concerns are both recurrent and justifiable, they illuminate important aspects of Williams’ purpose in rewriting the mystery’s standard operating procedure. First, the plot fails to meet the expectations set up in the opening. Surprising features include a very early (and disbelieved) confession by the murderer, the introduction of an important plot that has (apparently) nothing to do with the murder, and the fact that the real mystery to solve is not ‘Who murdered this victim?’ nor even Why or How he was killed.
Second, Williams’s characters are not developed as are those in standard fiction; but does Williams suffer from “a total inability to write credible dialogue; a total lack of interest in the depicting and development of character” (Barclay 99)? Williams’s theological purpose led him to depict characters, in Platonic terms, as copies of absolute spiritual realities. In other words, he sacrificed the psychological and emotional complexities of characters to the eternal realities they represent.
This leads to Williams’s ultimate purpose in War in Heaven. The final accusation he faces is that this book is “too intellectual.” I will approach this charge by discussing his theology and mysticism, especially as they relate to his ideas governing human relationships and interaction with the Divine. In the end, I hope to show that he wrote this book as a metaphysical thriller to communicate doctrine, not (primarily) as a mystery to entertain.
Which leads me to question the amount of philosophy or theology a mystery is capable of supporting. In the final analysis, War in Heaven is not a mystery primarily because it is designed to, if you like, ‘preach’; does it logically follow that pure mysteries cannot preach or teach at all? Hillary Waugh wrote: “The mystery novel does not contain the equipment to carry messages. It is too frail a box to hold the human spirit” (Waugh ‘Mystery vs. Novel’ 75). Yet many Christian mystery writers do communicate messages. Indeed, that is just the purpose of this conference; to examine how, and to what extent, each Christian author manages to write a good mystery that is also a strong enough box to hold the human spirit—and divine spirituality.

C. S. Lewis, renowned Christian apologist and beloved author of children’s novels, is rarely thought of as a “philosopher” per se despite having both studied and taught philosophy for several years at Oxford. Moreover, Lewis’s long journey to Christianity was essentially philosophical — passing through seven different stages. This journey, as well as every philosophical topic Lewis discussed, including metaphysics, natural theology, epistemology, logic, psychology, ethics, socio-political philosophy, and aesthetics are explained here in detail. Barkman incorporates previously unexplored treasures from Lewis’s unpublished philosophy lecture notes, lost philosophical essays, and hand-written annotations from copies of his philosophical books, such as Aristotle’s Ethics and Augustine’s City of God

“I myself,” stated C. S. Lewis to his fellows during his inaugural address at Cambridge University, “belong far more to that Old Western order than to yours.”  In the same speech, Lewis went further to identify himself as a “dinosaur” and “an Old Western Man.” Prima facie these comments seem straightforward enough, but under close scrutiny, does Lewis’ identification of himself as an “Old Western Man” mean anything, and if so, what?

The purpose of this study is to explore how artists are able to expose secular audiences who inhabit the ‘immanent frame’ to the plausibility of transcendence while avoiding the pitfalls of propaganda. To combat the Western church’s unprecedented cultural disdain, it needs a convincing re-articulation of the faith, for which Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age provides essential insights. The arts have a crucial role to play in this, but the church has a poor record of harnessing them well.
This study employed a basic qualitative research design, using semi-structured interviews to gather data. Eight creative professionals from a range of artistic fields were interviewed, focusing on four areas: their personal experiences of secularism; their view of the arts’ potential for communicating transcendence; their creative processes; their navigation of the problems of propaganda.

The literature review focused on four key areas: biblical narratives of a transcendent God’s involvement within the immanent frame; how the arts challenge and change worldviews; the relationship between the arts and the reality of transcendence; how propaganda exploits and abuses the arts.

This study concluded that the arts’ apologetic importance derives from their ability to be truth-bearing outside rationalism. They provide the means for helping people of faith to subvert the norms of prevailing secularism while drawing outsiders to consider a reality beyond closed immanence. Artefacts result from a process of creative exploration driven by an innate curiosity. This penetrates facades and superficiality, with the best of the arts resisting the propagandist’s instinct for assertion and manipulation.

If the church is to harness the arts, it must learn to avoid the propagandist’s easy answers and controlling assertions. At the local church level, this will entail leaders listening to and learning from creative professionals to understand how they work and how they can contribute to the life and witness of the people of God.

This volume offers essays on a variety of aspects of the inter-related topics of “hiddenness” and “discovery”: literary, biographical, philosophical, and source study. The Inklings that are examined in this anthology are C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Owen Barfield, with two of their literary predecessors and influences that are included under the term “Inklings” in this anthology: G. K. Chesterton and George MacDonald. Readers will find new territory for further exploration of C. S. Lewis and the Inklings in the areas of 1) creative collaboration among the Inklings; 2) genres (for example, the penny dreadful, Christian liturgical poetry); 3) literary influences (H. G. Wells, Dante); 4) linguistics (Tolkien’s “web of words”); and 5) the convergence of literature and theology. Other areas, which readers would find interesting, are medieval cosmology, classical mythology and Nordic mythology in Lewis’s and Tolkien’s works (the pagan mythology of the Greeks and Romans, and the Nordic myth of Ragnarök). Consequently, Lewis’s A Discarded Image was studied by several contributors to substantiate his knowledge on the medieval cosmos.

C. S. Lewis considered his novel Perelandra (1943) among his favorite works. A triumph of imaginative science fiction writing, Perelandra—part of Lewis’s “Space Trilogy”—is also theologically ambitious. C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra: Reshaping the Image of the Cosmos argues that point and also how the novel synthesizes the three traditions of cosmology, mythology, and Christianity. The first group of essays considers the cosmological implications of the world Lewis depicts in Perelandra while the second group examines the relationship between morality and meaning in Lewis’s created cosmology of the world of Perelandra.

This work brings together a world-class group of literary and theological scholars and Lewis specialists that includes Paul S. Fiddes, Monika B. Hilder, Sanford Schwartz, Michael Travers, and Michael Ward. The collection is enhanced by Walter Hooper’s reminiscences of his conversations with Lewis about Perelandra and the possible provenance of the stories in Lewis’s imagination.

C. S. Lewis scholars and devoted readers alike will find this volume indispensible to the understanding of this canonical work of speculative fiction.

The First World War scarred human history.  On the bloody battlefields of France, a generation of soldiers died.  Those that survived rose from the ashes as new men, transformed by witnessing the hatred of nationalism and the horror of men slaughtered by machines.  It was this war, one of the worst in human history, which J. R. R. Tolkien witnessed firsthand.  It forever shaped his view of life and death, of man and technology.
To understand the influence that this war, and in particular this battle, had on Tolkien, we must examine the historical account of the war itself.  To that end, this chapter offers a cursory history of World War I, in particular the Battle of the Somme in 1916, at which Tolkien fought, contracted “trench fever,” and lost two dear friends.  Tolkien’s life in the context of the war is also examined.

C.S. Lewis, an eminent medievalist and Renaissance scholar, is known for his eclectic and intertextual fiction, which is particularly true in the case of The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56). The famous cycle of Christian fantasy draws heavily on the literature of the world, coming forth as a tangled net of allusions, references, transpositions and calques, providing a rich source for novel re-readings. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, besides reposing on Odyssey as a master story, is also alluding to the imaginative tradition of the English Renaissance, among others utilizing the elements of The Tempest (1611). Lewis scatters his characters over the Eastern seas much like Shakespeare has the Italian noblemen wander around Prospero’s island. In the paper, I look more closely into the remaking of Prospero, as he appears in the third of the Narnian Chronicles, and consider the interpretive implications.
Analysis revealed the existence of Prospero’s traits in multiple characters. The most obvious ones are stars: Coriakin and Ramandu, proliferating the aspect of Prospero as a magician, wiseman and alchemist. Eustace and Governor Gumpas replay the original’s negative behaviours, e.g. spying on people or enslaving them. One also has to ask the question about the possibility of equating Aslan or Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea with the Shakespearean character, which poses a number of difficulties, but is supported by evidence from the text.
These instances of the intertextual links provoke profound questions about the concepts fundamental to the narrative. Prospero has been interpreted as an image of a colonial master, a Renaissance prince, God, or the author. All of these readings can be relayed to Lewis’s re-creations of the magician, which will allow deeper understanding of how the author of The Chronicles presented the ideologies of power (Machiavellism, Westonism, absolutism), his vision of God (Angry God vs. the Saviour), his vision of Art and finally how he might have portrayed himself as a writer. In general, the elements of The Tempest, utilized in the narrative, do not compromise the general message of the Narnian stories, and reinforce the conclusions in the existent state of research. However, the analysis revealed a problematized image of God in the story and confirmed the contemporary reception of Lewis as a controversial thinker and writer.

This was a dissertation for a BA in Christian Studies from Hillsdale College in MI, USA in the year 2014.

C.S. Lewis in his work "The Four Loves" wrote about the Greek love Philia, or friendship love. He often quoted the greek philosophers in this work, and thus showed that he had ancient and classical influences on his understanding of this very important type of love. In this short thesis the topic of friendship is first explored from the perspectives of some key ancient philosophers and church fathers, then theses views are discussed in light of C.S. Lewis's writings on the subject in,  "The Four Loves", and then concludes with a few thoughts on how this subject has impacted modern culture and how friendship can positively impact individuals today.

C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) was one of the most influential Christian thinkers of the twentieth century with continuing relevance into the twenty-first. Despite growing academic interest in Lewis, many fields of inquiry remain largely unmapped in Lewis scholarship today. This compilation dissertation, consisting of an introductory overview together with four stand-alone but connected essays, extends critical understanding of Lewis’s contribution to the theology of love.

In three of the four essays, Lewis’s theology of love is compared to and contrasted with that of Anders Nygren (1890–1978); and in one, that of Augustine of Hippo. Using systematic textual analysis, the essays evaluate Lewis’s key concepts, argumentation, and presuppositions.

Nygren, the Swedish Lutheran theologian and bishop of Lund, has virtually dominated modern theological discussion of love. His antithesis between selfless and gratuitous “Christian love” and self-seeking and needful “Pagan love”, or agape and eros respectively, became enormously influential in twentieth century theology. Lewis was initially shaken up by Nygren’s work, and it took him decades to formulate his own model, above all in Surprised by Joy (1955) and The Four  Loves (1960).

It is shown that Lewis constructed not only his theology of love, but also his theology of spiritual desire as a form of love, in conscious opposition to Nygren. Lewis’s theology of love challenges the denigration of eros and its separation from agape. Nygren’s predestinarianism is also rejected. Lewis devises his own vocabulary, avoids the use of eros and agape in Nygren’s sense, and hardly ever mentions Nygren by name. All this suggests a deliberate apologetic strategy to bypass certain defences of his readers and to avoid Nygren-dependency.

Despite their incommensurate love-taxonomies, Lewis’s need-love/giftlove and Nygren’s eros/agape have often been treated as parallels. This longstanding assumption is shown to be in need of greater nuance. The study demonstrates that Lewis’s concept of spiritual longing, which he calls Joy, is relevant to the “Nygren debate” and serves as a potent variant for Nygren’s eros. However, no one thing in Lewis’s mental repertoire can serve as a perfect translation of Nygren’s eros, because for Lewis it is an abstract caricature cut off from real life. In Lewis’s theological vision, contra Nygren, spiritual longing, far from obfuscating the Gospel, is a God-given desire that prepares the way for it.

Lewis is not free from the occasional hyperbole or blind spot. For instance, his argument that romantic love is not eudaimonistic is shown to be somewhat convoluted, and his famous disagreement with Augustine is possibly based on a misunderstanding.

A perennial feature in Lewis’s understanding of love, reflected in all four essays, is the ambiguity of love. Love is not something pejorative, but neither is it an infallible moral compass. God is love, but love is not God.

Relatively little critical attention has been paid to Charles Williams’s ten year involvement in the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross (F.R.C.), despite the possibilities for interpretation and understanding of the often obscure imagery derived from this experience and applied to his novels and poetry. This paper reviews the F.R.C.’s rituals and meeting minutes in order to gauge the level of Williams’s involvement with the FR.C. and the mystical concepts communicated by its founder, Arthur Edward Waite. It also explores the order’s organizational, symbolic and philosophical roots, particularly the links shared with its parent order, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Having identified the historical and experiential contexts of Williams’s F.R.C. participation, the paper offers examples of the possibilities for interpretation created by greater awareness of the order’s ideas and practices. A number of Williams’s novels are explored in light of several occult concepts important to the F.R.C.—the ‘middle pillar’, the ‘higher self’, and the ‘end of desire’. This analysis indicates that comprehensive interpretation of Williams’s fiction and poetry is impossible without a thorough understanding of the ideas and symbols that he encountered in his ritual experiences. This analysis also demonstrates the importance of the modern occult context to Williams’s life and work.

The Ḥôṯam Toḵnît or Seal-ring of Proportion described in Ezekiel 28:12-13, is considered as an archetype of magic rings. Its pattern with three rows and-three columns based on the simplest magic square, which was described as a child-bearing charm since its first literary appearances in the woks of Jābir ibn Hayyān (fl. c. 721– c. 815) and al-Ghazālī (1058–1111). This connection with the female reproductivity makes this signet a precursor of a series of literary examples, like the Draupnir and the Andvaranaut of the Edda and their modern literary interpretations in the works of de la Motte-Fouque, Richard Wagner and J.R.R. Tolkien, who connected it with the invisibility ring mentioned in Plato's Politeia 359d-360b and also with the seal of Solomon (mentioned first in Josephus Flavius, Antiquitates Judaicae 8, 46-49, and in the Testamentum Solomonis, elaborated in Jewish, Islamic and Christian traditions), which gives power over the spiritual beings. They were not pioneers at all, because from the late Antiquity there were several author (e.g. Josephus Flavius, ibn Ezra, Eleazar of Worms, Pliny, the Church Fathers, Marsilio Ficino, H.C. Agrippa, Éliphas Lévi, the various writers of the Antique and medieval lapidaries, kabbalistic works, astro magical tracts and beau-letters, including the Welsh and French Arthurian romans and the Arabian Nights) who provide for this the necessary theological, philosophical as well as literary draw matters. The main aim of this study, which is written in an exceptional form as a last will of a fictional Kabbalist, is to demonstrate a concept of the Ḥôṯam Toḵnît as the Šegal described in Psalm 45, and its erroneous literary interpretations.

Situates the life and fiction of Inkling Charles Williams in the network of modern occultism, with special focus on his initiatory experiences in A.E. Waite’s Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. Roukema evaluates fictional projections of magic, kabbalah, alchemy and ritual experience in Williams’s seven novels of supernatural fantasy. From this specific analysis, he develops more broadly applicable approaches to the serious expression of religious experience in fiction. Roukema shows that esoteric knowledge has frequently been blurred into fiction because of its inherent narrativity and adaptability, particularly by authors already attracted to the syncretism, multivalence and lived fantasy of the modern occult experience.

What did Tolkien think about the possibility of intimate non-romantic friendship love between the sexes? Did any of his many relationships with women rise to the level of close relationships? This article argues that there is an interesting tension between his theory and practice.

NOTE: Please excuse the jarring quotation marks. The publisher insisted on following the Scandinavian style.

This is a unique collection of two of the Inklings and their literary associates’ views on the negative impacts of technology in various areas of life and the resolution of these impacts through fellowship with others and faith in the Creator. Some of these essays offer suggestions on how ensnarement by social media and surrender to modern technology can be countered by surrender to God. Other essays also demonstrate how the significant literary craft of these authors can enchant readers and invite them into fairylands from which they return empowered and with a keener spiritual vision to tackle universal and present concerns.

This talk, given at the annual meeting of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion, considers an objection the Inklings would likely have made to Girard's mimetic theory and suggests some avenues of mutual illumination with regard to myth, the value of literature, and the evolution of consciousness.

This essay looks closely at the relationship between British authors J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis particularly regarding Tolkien's rejection an disapproval toward Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe". Many authors attribute Tolkien's rejection of Narnia to that of jealousy or an overly critical nature on Tolkien's part. However this essay argues that Tolkien's disapproval what eventually lead to the chilling in Tolkien and Lewis' friendship can be traced to their profound denominational differences and a growing lack of sympathy on C.S. Lewis' part.

At first glance, the worlds (sub)created by Tolkien and Martin may seem to have a number of crucial features in common. Both are meticulously crafted, with various, often deeply incompatible, layers of cultural identity and ethics (Gondor vs Mordor, Starks vs Lannisters etc.). Likewise, despite sometimes markedly different approaches in their worldbuilding strategies, the writers' indebtedness to medieval literature, history and values has been repeatedly examined by many a scholar, providing fertile grounds for cross-cultural explorations and evaluations. There are, however, certain vital, perhaps even fundamental, issues where the worlds of The Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire are as distinct from one another as the proverbial chalk and cheese. One such issue clearly discernible to every Christian (or, at least, Christian-raised) reader of Tolkien-is the intriguing spiritual disparity between the characters living in Middle-earth and those that inhabit Martin's Westeros. The world of the former is almost practically devoid of any explicit manifestations of the divine (at the time of its first publication the readers were not yet aware of the (pre) existence of Eru Illúvatar), yet, at the same time, it is suffused with numerous Christian values and underpinnings which cannot be ignored if one seeks to get a fuller (and thus more meaningful) picture of Tolkien's fiction. The latter, on the other hand, appears to be resplendent with all sorts of gods-greater and lesser, "real" and imaginary, more or less merciful and forgiving-yet in the long run it fails (in most cases it seems to fail all along the line) to even partly comply with the Christian (or, as for that matter, any religion-based) ethics, perhaps in some ways implying that all religions (or theologically-based systems of beliefs) are equal, and therefore equally false (or, at least, uncertain) in their nature and moral direction. The following paper seeks to examine some of these differences, juxtaposing Tolkien's Catholic worldview with that of evidently agnostic (or even atheist) Martin. D espite the fact that, over the past two decades or so, the genre of fantasy has enjoyed a substantial resurgence of interest amongst the readers, 1 and, consequently, captured the critical attention of literary scholars, thus leading 1 Here, the word 'readers' encompasses, by extension, both the people who read fantasy novels and short stories and those who come into contact with the genre by means their various cinematic and televisual adaptations (as well as, less frequently, the original productions in the fantasy field).

While traditionally, critical consideration of the Chronicles of Narnia center on the Chronicles being “written to familiarize a body of people, especially children, with certain ideas, namely the Christian faith and the way of life that goes with that faith” (Ford xxvii),  this paper addresses Lewis’s intention to familiarize his readers with “certain concepts” centered on ways of reading and, more explicitly, what to read.  Toward this end, I place Lewis in the context of scholarship of children's literature that focuses on use of the “intrusive” narrator in literature for children--criticism that has often designated the intrusive narrator as distancing and “preachy.” While citing Lewis’s own work as a negative example, critics have held his goal of not “writing down” to the child reader as an ideal.  This paper seeks to reconcile this contradiction in criticism of Lewis by analyzing Lewis’s use of the intrusive narrator and his frequent literary allusions, using theories of orality and literacy to demonstrate how these techniques work together to parallel and influence the development of the child reader from one who participates in reading as a communal activity shared with an adult or older reader to a more mature, “fully literate” reader who will make his/her own decisions about reading material based on implicit “suggestions for reading” in the Chronicles.

Abstract:

This essay examines the Internet – and digital media at large – as a form of dreaming, trance, or imaginal experience. It examines electronic media's role, since its inception, in retrieving and re-constellating the role of fairy tales and myth in popular consciousness. The ancient world of myth and lore finds an uncanny match with the binary brainchild of Western Civilization. Arguably, we are entering into a period of digital-imaginal renaissance: through popular television shows like True Blood, Game of Thrones, or Once Upon a Time; or video games routinely partaking in the act of world-building; and Role Playing forums that encourage the co-creation of imaginal worlds. To conclude, I argue that the implications for such a world hold the promise and potential for a resurgence of mythological understanding, and most of all for "soul-making" in the sense of James Hillman and Carl Jung's understanding. The realm of Images has resurged – this time incarnated as a Digital Anima Mundi – and doesn't appear to be going away any time soon. In this century, both students and scholars of myth are required, more than ever, to trace the interstices between electronic media and the realm of imagination.

Presented at LeTourneau University, Longview Texas, March 21st-23rd 2013

Submissions are normally 5,000 to 7,000 words and must be previously unpublished and not under consideration elsewhere. Submissions are preferred as email attachments in Microsoft Word. Manuscripts should follow the most recent MLA Style Manual using in-text citations and endnotes. Please italicize rather than underline, use wide margins, and double-space throughout. The author's name should appear only on a removable cover sheet. All unsolicited submissions are blind-reviewed. Decision time is normally four to six months.

The lay begins with a dialogue between Óðinn and Frigg (Vm 1-4), where Óðinn declares his desire to have a contest of wisdom with Vafþrúðnir, while Frigg warns her husband of the dangers of such an endeavour and wishes him good luck. Vm 5 sees Óðinn move from his world to the giant world of Vafþrúðnir, and the protagonists exchange greetings in Vm 6-10. Then the giant decides to test the knowledge of the newcomer and does so in Vm 11-18, while Óðinn gives answers, so that in Vm 19 Vafþrúðnir expresses his satisfaction and proposes exactly the contest that Óðinn desires, with the prize for the winner being the head of the loser. Óðinn then begins, in his turn, to question the giant, and does so in two series of questions that differ in the first halfstanzas, the refrains. The refrain of the first part, Vm 20-42, is a slightly varying pattern with numbered questions; the refrain of the second part, Vm 44-54, is uniform, and questions remain unnumbered. Vm 54