In 2008, I began to consider the idea of writing a new biography of Lewis, which would try to do justice to his Irish roots, get the institutional complexities of his Oxford period right and explore how he initially discovered Christianity and then became one of its leading public advocates. I decided to do the job properly, and spent fifteen months reading everything Lewis had published in chronological order – including the vast collection of letters recently assembled and edited by Walter Hooper. This, I thought, would help me understand the flow and development of both Lewis’s ideas, and allow me to choose some good quotes to include in the text. After a few months, I began to realize that something was wrong…
[Alister McGrath] Memory and grace: Redating the conversion of C.S. Lewis
Posted in * Christian Life / Church Life
See also here http://booksbycslewis.blogspot.com/2013/02/new-finds-about-lewiss-conversion.html
My question is – does Alistair McGrath have more hours in the day – he is wondrously productive. I took some classes with him back in the day and I recall he was astonishingly organized.
I wonder if any other person in the history of Oxford has earned a DPhil in a hard science area (molecular biophysics) and taken a First in Theology, in the same year.
I praise God in wonder when he calls people of such amazing brilliance like Lewis and McGrath to be his disciples. He does not call junk–even not-so-brilliant folks like me!
I’m comforted to discover that Lewis couldn’t remember past dates. I share that mental lapse and am blessed with a wife who keeps a calendar diary and can remember such things. As I get older I depend more and more on my date book – one of the additional benefits of the Church Pension Fund.