Wesley Kort’s C. S. Lewis Then and Now is extraordinarily puzzling. It contains many fresh and valuable insights about Lewis, but my overall response is to wonder why Kort would choose to enlist Lewis in a project of cultural restoration that seems thoroughly alien to Lewis’ whole body of work. Again and again Kort downplays, or explains away, those features of Lewis’ thought that have endeared him to his evangelical and conservative Catholic fans; he works fervently to make Lewis’ “mere Christianity” something less robust and (in Lewis’ word) “pungent” than seems at all fair. All this in an admirable cause, in that Kort rightly wishes to claim that Lewis is important and valuable to Christians”and indeed many non“Christians who are concerned with the current direction of “literary culture.” But it simply will not do to enlist Lewis in the armies of either Matthew Arnold or Richard Rorty, and that is ultimately what Kort tries to do.
The fresh insights of this book and its puzzlements both stem from Kort’s determination to “retrieve” Lewis from the relatively small number of enthusiasts who, in Kort’s view, dominate our picture of Lewis: his work’s “appeal remains concentrated in the homes, offices, and institutions of conservative Protestant Americans, academic and lay.” For Kort, “It would be unfortunate if that limited concentration continued.” He repeatedly warns that Lewis cannot properly be enlisted in certain theological causes, especially three: those that emphasize the rootedness of Christianity in communities of the faithful (Kort mentions George Lindbeck, though perhaps Stanley Hauerwas would be a more appropriate figure); Barthian thought, with its rejection of natural theology and therefore of a major role for culture in shaping the Christian life; and evangelicalism.
