Searching in vain for a favorite old novel the other day, I stumbled across Dr. Jerry Bergman's excellent book C. S. Lewis, Anti-Darwinist: A Careful Examination of the Development of His Views on Darwinism (Wipf and Stock, 2016). And what a happy time I had paging through it again, reviewing the case Dr. Bergman made that super-intellectual Lewis had rejected Darwinism in all its forms. This, in spite of the fact that anti-Darwinism was far from conventional wisdom in his day, before the modern creation-science movement had begun amassing evidence that the Genesis account of our origins is true.
Dr. Bergman has done a masterful (and highly entertaining) job of documenting Lewis’s unfolding thoughts on the subject, and proving that he was indeed an increasingly belligerent opponent of evolution theory. In the process, he has peppered his report with fascinating facts to address virtually any readers’ interests.
We learn, for instance, that Arthur J. Balfour (whose Balfour Declaration paved the way for the restoration of the nation of Israel in 1948) was a Christian apologist and anti-Darwinist whose ideas “permeate the first five chapters of Lewis’s book Miracles.”
We find that Lewis posed an important question long before the oft-cited “you can’t figure out where a PC came from by examining it” advice of modern apologists: “You have to go outside the sequence of engines, into the world of men, to find the real originator of the Rocket,” he wrote. “Is it not equally reasonable to look outside Nature for the real Originator of the natural order?”
We see that Lewis understood only too well the motives of evolution theory’s original champions: “Does the whole vast structure of modern naturalism depend … simply on an a priori metaphysical prejudice?” he asked. “Was it devised not to get the facts but to keep out God?”
And we learn that Lewis’s hostility towards evolution theory grew over the years, to the point where he released a public attack on it, albeit pseudonymously, in the form of a mocking poem entitled “Evolutionary Hymn” (1957).
Ever since I stopped studying Lewis and started studying the Bible what seems like a lifetime ago, I have had major problems with certain aspects of Lewisian soteriology. But Dr. Bergman's book made me appreciate Lewis’s writing once again – and, for the first time, his view of our origins.
Intrigued? You'll find C. S. Lewis, Anti-Darwinist wherever books are sold, as they say -- including here at Amazon.
Dr. Bergman has done a masterful (and highly entertaining) job of documenting Lewis’s unfolding thoughts on the subject, and proving that he was indeed an increasingly belligerent opponent of evolution theory. In the process, he has peppered his report with fascinating facts to address virtually any readers’ interests.
We learn, for instance, that Arthur J. Balfour (whose Balfour Declaration paved the way for the restoration of the nation of Israel in 1948) was a Christian apologist and anti-Darwinist whose ideas “permeate the first five chapters of Lewis’s book Miracles.”
We find that Lewis posed an important question long before the oft-cited “you can’t figure out where a PC came from by examining it” advice of modern apologists: “You have to go outside the sequence of engines, into the world of men, to find the real originator of the Rocket,” he wrote. “Is it not equally reasonable to look outside Nature for the real Originator of the natural order?”
We see that Lewis understood only too well the motives of evolution theory’s original champions: “Does the whole vast structure of modern naturalism depend … simply on an a priori metaphysical prejudice?” he asked. “Was it devised not to get the facts but to keep out God?”
And we learn that Lewis’s hostility towards evolution theory grew over the years, to the point where he released a public attack on it, albeit pseudonymously, in the form of a mocking poem entitled “Evolutionary Hymn” (1957).
Ever since I stopped studying Lewis and started studying the Bible what seems like a lifetime ago, I have had major problems with certain aspects of Lewisian soteriology. But Dr. Bergman's book made me appreciate Lewis’s writing once again – and, for the first time, his view of our origins.
Intrigued? You'll find C. S. Lewis, Anti-Darwinist wherever books are sold, as they say -- including here at Amazon.
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