Category: Books and Film

My recent trip to Ireland has gotten me interested in Irish history and culture. I recently picked up Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization. Cahill’s thesis is that the Irish monks of the 6th-8th Centuries saved Western Civilization by preserving latin and greek literature through the discipline of the scriptorium. If all you know of early Irish Christianity is St. Patrick, this book provides a lively introduction to key figures such as Columcille and Columbanus.

The book’s central thesis, however, seems overstated, and at times the author’s prejudices show through, as in this passage:

It is a shame that private confession is one of the few Irish innovations that passed into the universal church. How different might Catholicism be today if it had taken over the easy Irish attitudes toward diversity, authority, the role of women, and the relative unimportance of sexual mores.

Well, yes, and how different it might have been if Roman Christianity had simply adopted the mores of pagan Romans. Different, but not better.

On the whole, then, this is an engaging introduction to some important aspects of early Irish Christianity, but not a text to be taken too seriously.

I re-read C.S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles every few years. There’s something about Lewis’ portrayal of Christ in the Lion, Aslan, that rings truer than any other description save those in the Bible itself. The same is true of Lewis’ dramatization of how Christ relates to us, either as people of faith or of unbelief. There’s a triumphant scene in “The Last Battle,” for example, in which Aslan leaps joyously from one hilltop to the next, leading his followers deeper and deeper into his new creation with shouts of “further up and farther in!” Aslan’s subjects experience the new creation as more “real” than the England and Narnia they’ve recently departed, and realize that they’ve been longing for this country all their lives. When I read this scene I experience those very pangs of longing for that brighter country, along with the thrill of realizing Christ’s love, broader and deeper than I can comprehend, longs even more deeply to fellowship with me in that country.

If, like me, you’re a fan of Narnia — or of any of Lewis’ work — you’ll relish Wayne Martindale’s wonderful volume, “C.S. Lewis on Heaven and Hell — Beyond the Shadowlands.” Martindale serves as an experienced and loving guide to the landscapes Lewis painted of heaven and hell, primarily in fiction such as the Narnia and Perelandra books and the allegorical Great Divorce and Screwtape Letters.