in memoriam

Tony Snow's second-to-last Parting Thoughts commentary ever, on Fox News Sunday yesterday:

Very few people took immediate notice of a great man's death on November 22, 1963. Even so, C.S. Lewis almost certainly will leave a larger legacy than John F. Kennedy, who died the same day, or Aldous Huxley, who also died on November 22.

Lewis was a literary scholar who set out on a painstaking, lifelong trek from agnosticism to Christianity. He conducted himself like a curious tourist, looking carefully and curiously at the world around him, at the good, the bad, the seamy, the saintly, the noble and, of course, the despicable.

He asked simple questions, such as, “Where does moral truth come from if not from God?” and “Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic or the Lord. Which is it?” …

And he was brutally honest. He refused to evade tough questions or concoct easy excuses, as many churchmen do these days, and became arguably the most effective Christian writer of the 20th century because he wrote as a seeker, not a preacher.

Lewis was indeed a great writer and communicator, though not as accomplished a theologian. Which is fine: part of his enduring appeal is the way his message addresses the core of Christianity, transcending the Catholic/Protestant divide. Some of my more extreme Reformed acquaintances, however, regard him as nearly a heretic on grounds of his (supposed) barely-closeted universalism. I certainly do not share those opinions, although it does seem that his legendary status amongst evangelicals is not based upon a close reading of his books.

My personal favorite: Till We Have Faces. Hauntingly beautiful, but an acquired taste for most.

(And for the record, I second Snow's claim of a greater legacy for CSL than for that JFK guy—in part to really piss off liberals.)

Happy Thanksgiving, all.

UPDATE: Just so there's no confusion, the title of this post refers to Lewis, not Snow. (The latter is still very much alive.)