One of my frustrations as a pastor is that with everything else I need to do, I can’t do the reading I wish I could do. As Ecclesiastes says, “Of the making of many books there is no end,” and while many that come out each year are of great value, I have neither the time nor the energy to read as many as I’d like to read–or indeed, arguably, as many as I need to read.
It’s not a problem unique to me, of course; which is why, I think, God invented journals and review essays. There are a number of periodicals to which I subscribe, and a handful in particular which I find critically important in keeping up with things and highlighting the books I need to make time to read. The most important are First Things and Books & Culture, which you’ll find linked over on the left side of the page; not far below them is Touchstone, which describes itself as “a Christian journal, conservative in doctrine and eclectic in content, with editors and readers from each of the three great divisions of Christendom — Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox . . . [designed to] provide a place where Christians of various backgrounds can speak with one another on the basis of shared belief in the fundamental doctrines of the faith as revealed in Holy Scripture and summarized in the ancient creeds of the Church.”
Personally, I find Touchstone a bit more erratic than First Things (and also shorter), but the editors find (or write) and publish some wonderful pieces. In the latest issue, perhaps the best is a review essay on C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity by the Anglican Bishop of Durham, England, the incomparable N. T. Wright. Bishop Wright might just be the perfect person to do this, since like Lewis he’s an Englishman, an Anglican, a scholar (though his field is New Testament rather than Renaissance literature) and a writer who recently wrote a small work of popular apologetics, Simply Christian, which can be profitably compared with Lewis’ book. (I know this because it’s been done.) What’s more, Bishop Wright also happens to be extremely good at what he does, and a man of real grace and humility. (I know that from people I know who are friends of his.)
As one would expect, then, he offers an excellent and quite thorough appraisal of Lewis’ work, pointing out its great strengths and not sparing its weaknesses. There’s no need to recapitulate his points here–go read the article (and give Touchstone some page hits); but I do want to call attention to Bishop Wright’s closing paragraphs:
[Despite the book’s flaws,] the bee flies, and gets the honey. Credit where credit is due. Lewis himself would have been the first to say that of course his book was neither perfect nor complete, and that what mattered was that, if it brought people into the company, and under the influence (or “infection”) of Jesus Christ, Jesus himself would happily take over—indeed, that Jesus had been operating through the process all along, albeit through the imperfect medium of the apologist.And, as another imperfect apologist, I salute a great master, and can only hope that in sixty years’ time children yet unborn will say of me that, despite all my obvious and embarrassing failings, I too was used, in however small a way, to bring people under the influence and power, and to the love and kingdom, of the same Jesus Christ.