Lewis the Augustinian?

AS MUCH AS I respect Ralph Wood and profit from his reflections on C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Flannery O'Conner and others, I must question his description of Lewis as a "thoroughgoing Augustinian" ("Good and terrible," Dec. 27). It is certainly true that Lewis took sin seriously and in that sense was, I suppose, an Augustinian--as well as an Athanasian, a Thomist, etc. Lewis did not, however, accept any of Augustine's (or Calvin's) ideas about predestination. To the contrary, Lewis affirmed his belief in free will and in that sense was a thoroughgoing Arminian.

Philip Wise

Second Baptist Church, Lubbock, Tex.

Ralph C. Wood replies:

My friend Philip Wise needs to inquire more deeply into Calvin's and Augustine's teachings on freedom. Like Paul and Athanasius, like Aquinas and Luther, Calvin and Augustine both understood the central paradox of the Christian faith to lie in the mystery that God's prevenient grace enables all true freedom.

There is no room for that chimera called autonomous freedom anywhere in the central Jewish-Christian tradition as it can be traced from the original calling of Abraham to the return of C. S. Lewis to the church in 1931: "I could open the door [to God] or keep it shut; I could unbuckle the armor [against the Holy] or keep it on. Neither choice was presented as a duty; no threat or promise was attached to either, though I knew that to open the door or to take off the corslet meant the incalculable.... I chose to open, to unbuckle, to loosen the rein. I say, 'I chose,' yet it did not really seem possible to do the opposite.... Necessity may not be the opposite of freedom."

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