A challenge to C.S. Lewis

by Peter Milward

From the many-sided genius of C. S. Lewis two main facets stand out. The first is the creative imagination of the storyteller, deriving from Teutonic and Classical sources. The other is the sturdy rationalism and erudition of the medieval scholar. Author Peter Milward emphasizes the latter in his latest book, A Challenge to C. S. Lewis. As a young Jesuit, Milward was one of Lewis's students who heard the eminent medieval scholar draw upon the dim recesses of Northern learning and Greco-Roman mythology to make his subject lucid for his listeners. After himself becoming a professor at Sophia University in Tokyo, Milward continued a dialogue with his former lecturer through a lengthy correspondence. With this book Milward challenges some of the presuppositions of Lewis's scholarship. With all the medievalist's talent as a scholar, Milward maintains, there remains the defect that, as a Protestant with roots in Northern Ireland, Lewis was unable to enter sympathetically into the Catholic mi