An Apologist's Evening Prayer:
Reflections on the Psalms and Lewis’s Legacy


This essay is a draft of an article for Lion and Logos: The Life and Legacy of C. S. Lewis, ed. Bruce L. Edwards, Jr., 4 vols. (Greenwood/Praeger, 2007), and appears here by permission.

Abstract

Reflections on the Psalms is one of C. S. Lewis’s least read but most controversial books. Two issues it raises deserve critical reflection.

First, commentators on this book have had a role in perpetuating what Victor Reppert calls “the Anscombe legend”: that Lewis was so embarrassed by Elizabeth Anscombe’s critique of the argument for the self-refuting character of naturalism in Miracles that he gave up rational apologetics. Critics of Reflections often mention that it was Lewis’s first work of popular theology since Miracles in a way that seems to support the myth. Reppert set the record straight in C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea (Downers Grove, Il.: InterVarsity Press, 2003). Further consideration of the claims often made about Reflections forms a footnote that supports Reppert’s case.

Second, in Reflections Lewis has his most extended treatment of the nature of Scripture and its inspiration. In it he satisfies neither theological liberals nor conservatives. A fresh examination of his argument reveals both its strengths and its weaknesses.

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Updated 07/05/2006