We Have a Winner!

for the June Giveaway of Lewis Signature Classics

Congratulations to Susan who won the The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics: Boxed Set! We can’t wait to hear about your experience reading Lewis. I hope you fall in love with his work as much as I have—and with Lewis’s God, just as much as his works have helped me to love Him.

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This 7-volume boxed set is a beautiful compilation of some of Lewis’s most beloved works. The set includes:

1. Mere Christianity

2. The Screwtape Letters

3. Surprised by Joy

4. The Four Loves

5. The Problem of Pain

6. The Great Divorce

7. Miracles

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis offers an apology for the universal truths all faithful Christians confess. He distills the essential doctrines of Christianity into a rational, elegant apologetic with that coalesces humility with intellectual rigor. He calls it “mere” Christianity, deriving his adjective from the Latin merus, meaning ‘undiluted’ or ‘pure.’ Thus, Lewis offers a portrait of the Christian life that is largely universal, speaking to the modern mind and ancient soul alike.

The Screwtape Letters is a collection of brilliantly dark satirical epistles in which Screwtape, a senior devil in Hell, instructs his nephew Wormwood in the subtle art of corrupting human souls. The Screwtape Letters is both comic and chilling. In grotesque clarity, Lewis turns moral theology on its head to reveal the nature of spiritual warfare. By exposing various Satanic schemes, he provides his readers with a path toward virtue, repentance, and sanctification in Christ.

Surprised by Joy is Lewis’s spiritual autobiography (and a personal favorite of mine). This work is Lewis’s own confession of his spiritual pilgrimage, the story of his soul’s awakening to Christ. Modeled in part after St. Augustine’s Confessions, Lewis recounts his lifelong quest for a transcendent Joy—a fleeting longing that haunted his soul like an Edenic memory— and shows his readers how he passed through the wilderness of rationalism, romanticism, and despair before being ‘surprised’ by the One he did not seek. Ultimately, Lewis discovers that he can’t find joy in the fleeting aesthetic pleasure that keeps haunting him. He can only find it by surrendering to Christ—the true source of joy.

In The Four Loves, Lewis explores the architecture of human affection and provides helpful distinctions between four specific forms: affection (storge), friendship (philia), romantic love (eros), and divine charity (agape). He draws on classical philosophy, offers personal reflections, and provides scriptural wisdom by examining the way each love either reflects or distorts the image of God in man. This books is really a rich meditation on the dangers and glories of love. It reveals quite beautifully how our natural loves must be ordered since even the most noble human affections have to bow to the cross of Christ to be holy.

The Problem of Pain is Lewis’s theodicy: Why would a good and omnipotent God permit suffering? Drawing from classical theology and his own very personal struggles, Lewis contends that pain, although dreadful, is not meaningless; it’s God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Lewis argues further that divine love is a fierce mercy, and it’s given to us to refine us. With philosophical rigor and pastoral compassion, Lewis insists that we can only find the deepest treasures of our faith within suffering.

The Great Divorce is a theological fable which imagines a fantastical bus ride from the dreary outskirts of Hell to the outskirts of Heaven, where damned spirits are offered a chance at redemption. Through a series of haunting encounters between ghosts and radiant beings, Lewis dramatizes the choices that fix the soul in glory or in damnation. The divorce refers to the chasm between pride and grace, selfishness and surrender. With searing insight, Lewis calls readers to choose the solid joys of Heaven over the gray shadows of selfish ambition, because "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'Thy will be done.'"

Miracles is an apologetic for the reality of the supernatural. In this great work, Lewis dismantles the dogma of scientism and emphasizes the Christian claim that the Incarnation is the grand miracle at the heart of history. From this, he argues that miracles are not intrusions but signs, not violations of nature but fulfillments of nature’s deepest purpose. So whether one is talking about water being turned into wine or Christ’s resurrection, miracles are the invasion of the eternal into the temporal, signposts of a redeemed cosmos. Further, Lewis confronts the modern naturalist worldview and contends that faith is not irrational; rather, it’s the key to comprehending the rational order itself.

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I’ll be announcing the July giveaway before Independence Day, July 4th! Stay tuned.