Before Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew hits the screens, the story behind the movie will be hitting the pages. A veteran film critic and author will release a book based on the production of Greta Gerwig’s adaptation, according to NarniaWeb.

The twists and turns of making this movie has certainly been a rollercoaster ride for Narnia fans. I will be fascinated to read a behind-the-scenes look at all that happened to bring this movie to us.

The book will be written by Tom Shone. He was the film critic for the Sunday Times in the U.K. and has written for numerous publications including Vogue, The New York Times, The Guardian, and The New Yorker.

He is also the author of several books about movies. Most have been focused as retrospectives or explorations of filmmakers full work. I’m especially interested in The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries, and Marvels of Christoper Nolan.

Perhaps more relevant to this project, Shone wrote The Irishman: The Making of the Movie, which features photographs and information about Martin Scorsese’s Netflix film. It’s seems to serve as a table book and collector’s item.

Earlier this year, NarniaWeb learned that Shone spent time on the set during 2025.

Shone also happens to love the Narnia books. Telling The Creative Adventure that his life was “altered” after reading the series. “I just wanted to live in that world,” he told the podcast in 2023.

Also, as a random aside, I love that Shone had a blogspot site that he kept running for over a decade (2008-2019). As a former blogspot blogger myself, I appreciate the dedication.

There, among other things, you can discover that Gerwig’s Lady Bird was his second favorite film of 2017.

Not Safe But Good

C.S. Lewis quote of the week

In reality, Christianity is primarily the fulfillment of the Jewish religion, but also the fulfillment of what was vaguely hinted in all the religions at their best. What was vaguely seen in them all comes into focus in Christianity—just as God Himself comes into focus by becoming a Man.

“Answers to Questions on Christianity” God in the Dock

The Problem of Printers

Bad C.S. Lewis book covers that are unfortunately real

This is either The Abolition of Man or the opening of a Medieval soap opera. “Like sands through the hour glass, so are ye knights of our lives.”

Behind the Wardrobe

Sneak peek at the bonus articles

• All the Rings of Power news from Comic-Con

• Narnia royalty set to star in movie about a famous missionary

• Marvel actor opens up on possible return to Narnia on the big screen

• Lewis and Tolkien’s works appear on numerous lists

• Thrift shopper finds old edition of The Hobbit

• A classic Tolkien adaptation is returning for the first time in decades

• And more!

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C.S. Lewis only saw a few movies and most likely never owned a television. Despite that, he gave principles for criticism that we can apply to film, TV, or any type of art in his book An Experiment on Criticism.

In it, Lewis distinguishes between two ways of engaging with art—using and receiving. He say using is the path of the many, but the proper way, the way of the few, is to receive the art. Using can do things to our lives, but only receiving can add to our lives.

Understanding Lewis’ two approaches to engaging art can help us understand how people can watch a movie like The Odyssey and come away with such wildly different opinions.

Divergences can come from significant works of art with numerous themes. Different viewers may resonate with one idea put forth, while someone else may be put off by another equally present concept.

But much of the public rhetoric surrounding movies that capture the cultural consciousness like The Odyssey flows from people using it. In one sense, this is an understandable reaction. You filter art through your experiences and how it speaks to you.

“It is very natural that when we have gone through the ordered movements which a great play or narrative excites in us—when we have danced that dance or enacted that ritual or submitted to that patter—it should suggest to us many interesting reflections,” Lewis writes.

Those reflections aren’t wrong in and of themselves. Often, when I review a movie or a show, I’ll instead call it a reflection because I’m not reviewing the work based on its inherent worth.

Rather, I’m sharing how this work reveals or rejects some truth about God and His creation. That revelation may often exist without the knowledge or intent of the artist, so I’m using their art to speak to something else.

When we do that, however, we should be careful about what we credit to (or blame on) the artist. Lewis says, “We may thank Shakespeare or Dante for that muscle, but we had better not father on them the philosophical or ethical use we make of it.”

So, if we want to move beyond using, how do we receive art as Lewis would? These three steps, drawn from An Experiment on Criticism, are a good start.

Surrender yourself

Lewis is clear. Surrender must be your first step in engaging rightly with art. “The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way,” he writes. You have to give yourself over to the artist and enter their world according to their rules.

For Lewis, you do this out of humility and curiosity. First, you recognize that you aren’t omniscient. You can learn from others, even those you may disagree with. Second, you want to gain new perspectives. “We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own,” Lewis says.

When we refuse to surrender and go in determined to force ourselves onto the work, we shouldn’t be surprised that all we see is our own reflection. “We are too busy doing things with the work that we give it too little chance to work on us,” Lewis says. “Thus increasingly we meet only ourselves. But one of the chief operations of art is to remove our gaze from that mirrored face, to deliver us from that solitude.”

This is more difficult than we often expect. We come into a show, book, movie, or any piece of art with assumptions about the artist and their work. But to fully and fairly engage with any work, we must start with surrender.

That doesn’t mean you must engage with every work. Obviously, there are more shows, movies, and books than anyone could possibly read. But if you choose to engage, you must do so in a posture of surrender.

Reject suspicion

It is difficult to surrender at all, but it is impossible when you begin from a culture war perspective. As Lewis’ writes, “You cannot be armed to the teeth and surrendered at the same time.”

The skeptical viewer is one with their eyes closed. “No poem will give up its secret to a reader who enters it regarding the poet as a potential deceiver and determined not to be taken in,” Lewis writes. “We must risk being taken in, if we are to get anything.”

This viewer is like the dwarves from The Last Battle. Surrounded by beauty in Aslan’s Country, they refuse to be “taken in” and thus miss all that could be theirs.

If you begin a show with the assumption that it will be bad (or “woke” or “right-wing”), you’ll find all the evidence you need to support your assumption. But you’ll also miss anything else the show has to offer.

This is why Lewis describes the philosophy that encourages young readers to approach every work with skepticism as “especially poisonous.”

“The armed and suspicious approach which may save you from being bamboozled by a bad author may also blind and deafen you to the shy and elusive merits—especially if they are unfashionable—of a good one.” Lewis writes.

As Lewis wrote in The Four Loves, “To love at all is to be vulnerable.” He would apply the same logic to engaging with art. We have to start from a place of vulnerability.

Even after you’ve surrendered and put aside your preconceptions, some shows will still be disappointing, but that shouldn’t change our starting point. “There is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out,” he writes.

Evaluate fairly

This becomes even more difficult because the culture war allows no neutral ground. Every piece of art is judged purely based on whether we feel affirmed in our perspective by the artist. But our criteria must be more than, “Do I agree with the artist?”

“A true lover of literature should be in one way like an honest examiner,” Lewis says, “who is prepared to give the highest marks to the telling, felicitous, and well-documented exposition of views he dissents from or even abominates.” Elsewhere he writes, “We delight to enter into other men’s beliefs … even though we think them untrue.”

Leaving aside our opinion of the creators, is the movie good? Is it creative? Does it do well what it intends to do? Did it cause me to think and consider a new perspective?

The question is not: Is there a bad interpretation of the show? What fault can I find? You will always be able to draw out a bad interpretation, to discover flaws. Lewis says we must go deeper.

“In calling the book bad we are claiming not that it can elicit bad reading, but that it can’t elicit good,” he writes. “This negative proposition can never be certain. I may say ‘If I were to take pleasure in this book it could be only the pleasure of transitory thrills, or wishful reverie, or agreement with the author’s opinions.’ But others may be able to do with it what I can’t.”

What do we gain?

You may think this increases the likelihood a viewer will be had by propaganda. In a world full of conspiracy theories, AI-composed “art,” and individuals and groups who benefit from ensnaring people and stoking controversy, we will undoubtedly encounter propaganda.

But the solution is not to avoid all art or to keep a perpetually skeptical mindset. “The best safeguard against bad literature is a full experience of good,” Lewis writes.

In fact, Lewis contends that “no novel will deceive the best type of reader. He never mistakes art either for life or for philosophy. He can enter, while he reads, into each author’s point of view without either accepting or rejecting it, suspending when necessary his disbelief and (what is harder) his belief.”

As you repeatedly engage with art in the way Lewis advises, you are more able to identify propaganda. You’ll also find all types of unexpectedly good art. You’ll gain new insights and new wisdom because you were humble enough to listen to others.

“The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison,” he writes in An Experiment in Criticism. “My eyes are not enough for me, I will see through the eyes of others.”

The C.S. Lewis way to watch a movie is to do so not with our eyes only, but through the eyes of the filmmaker and all the artists who helped craft the film. Their eyes, their perspective, even when we disagree with it, expands our vision to better see God, the world He made, and the people He created in His image.

This post is an adapted summary of a series of articles I wrote a few years ago going deeper into An Experiment on Criticism.

• How Should Christians Evaluate TV Shows?

• The Most Popular Way to Watch a TV Show Is Wrong

• The Hidden Dangers for the Skeptical Viewer

• Why C.S. Lewis Says We Should Watch TV Differently

• 4 Steps to Watch Television How C.S. Lewis Would

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• Fewer Churches Aim for Racial Diversity

• Americans’ Confidence in the Church Falls Back Near Record-Low

In the first two seasons of The Rings of Power, we’ve seen some rings, but we haven’t seen the ring. That’s about to change. The One Ring will be forged in the fires of Mt. Doom during the upcoming season three.

From an exclusive story in Empire magazine:

Yes, a pivotal piece of Middle-earth history is imminent. “This is the season,” co-showrunner Patrick McKay confirms to Empire, “where Sauron makes the One Ring in the volcano.” Charlie Vickers’ menacing Sauron is no longer in disguise, done with lurking in the shadows. And as he gets on with the business of corrupting Men, Elves, Orcs, and anyone else who steps his way, the stakes of The Rings Of Power are raising considerably. “We have a full-on villain this season, in a way that was quite different before,” says McKay’s fellow co-showrunner J.D. Payne. Sauron’s emergence “changes the tone of the show,” McKay adds. “This third season is darker, more dangerous. No-one is safe.”

Vickers said he cried when he walked on the set because of the “amazing privilege and honor to be able to tell that story.”

The casting will seemingly take place over two episodes because “the sequence is so long.” McKay said it was “the single most ambitious, technically challenging sequence we’ve ever done on the show.”

The show will be part of Amazon MGM’s presentation at San Diego ComicCon later this week. On site promotion has revealed featured Vicker’s Sauron with the One Ring.

Some of the advertisements also give us a new look at Gandalf. Hopefully, we’ll get even more information about season three later this week.

Not Safe But Good

C.S. Lewis quote of the week

“The sure mark of an uliterary man is that he considers ‘I’ve read it already’ to be a conclusive argument against reading a work.”

An Experiment in Criticism

The Problem of Printers

Bad C.S. Lewis book covers

I’m not sure exactly what is happening in this book. Maybe excerpts from Mere Christianity turned into a devotional? But they didn’t even go to the trouble of stealing an image of Lewis himself for the cover. They used a photo of Max McLean portraying Lewis, which is probably appropriate for the book.

Behind the Wardrobe

Sneak peek at the bonus articles

• An actors who was almost Aslan and one who turned down Gandalf

• Lots of Lewis writing in conversation with AI discussions

• Understanding a Grammy-award winning rapper through Lewis

• More on the upcoming Rings of Power season, including visuals

• First look at the set of the Hunt for Gollum

• What Andy Serkis had to say about the lack of cast ethnic diversity

• Video on the newly discovered Tolkien translation

• And more!

Read more

Spoiler-free reflections on The Odyssey

Homer’s The Odyssey is often cast as the epic poem in Western Civilization. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey cannot reach such epoch-defining heights, but it does stand out as an epic film for our time.1

The Odyssey, much like Nolan’s most recent film Oppenheimer, is an apocalyptic film. It is the story of man who achieves victory through his ingenuity but also his hubris and must deal with all he has unleashed on the world.

The key to understanding Nolan’s latest cinematic masterpiece is Tom Holland—not the actor who portrays Odysseus’ son Telemachus, but the historian who wrote Dominion, the exploration of how Christianity reshaped Western morality.

Nolan’s The Odyssey is a modern retelling and reshaping of the classic Greek epic, but it is not best seen and understood through a 21st century progressive lens. Rather, the story comes to us by passing through the moral sensibilities of the 1st century church.

C.S. Lewis came to understand the great myths as symbols and foreshadowing of Christ as the True Myth, thanks to J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson. Nolan, whether he entirely realized it or not, has given us one of those myths reforged in the fires of Christianity.

Spoilers (Yes, for a story that is thousands of years old)

Before you see any of the stellar visuals of The Odyssey, you read the words: “A time of apparent magic” and someone telling the tale of Odysseus. From the beginning, Nolan attempts to move viewers beyond themselves and into the narrative.

This story will not make sense from a secular, progressive framework. You have to give yourself to the existence of the supernatural. Hero of the Trojan War, Odysseus may try to defy the gods, but as the film’s audience, we cannot deny the gods.

Though they are not visible, they are present. Everyone, except Odysseus who occasionally interacts with Athena, must accept them solely on faith. But even he is forced to take his own leap of faith in his long journey home.

If you are coming to Nolan’s Odyssey for a strict retelling of Homer’s Odyssey, you will be disappointed.2 Constructing an almost three hour movie, the modern filmmaker includes many classic scenes from the poem, but much is left out by shortening some adventures, combining other moments, and ignoring still more completely.

But Nolan, who never met a story he wants to tell in a straightforward linear fashion, relishes Homer’s unusual structure. The film cuts between three timelines: Telemachus and Penelope fending off the suitors on Ithaca, Odysseus on Calypso’s island, and his recollection of the events of the Trojan War and subsequent attempt to return home.

Like in Homer, much of the film’s action occurs in Odysseus’ retelling of his exploits both at Troy and along islands across the Mediterranean. The cyclops and the witch Circe allowed Nolan to bring more horror elements to his filmmaking.3 Those scenes also demonstrate Odysseus’ pride, which becomes his undoing.

His men and eventually Odysseus himself come to understand the gods are against them. They are being kept from home, and it is precisely because they have challenged and undermined divine commands.

Odysseus must stop fighting and surrender himself to the gods. They will not be mocked. We only understand this fully at the film’s climax.

When Odysseus returns, he is a changed man arriving to a changed place.4 None of his men survive the journey home. He walked to the literal doorstep of hell to escape, only to be confronted with his lies.

In Ithaca and around the Greek cities, rumors spread of a “people from the sea,” who are invading lands, looting villages, and violating all that the gods command. Much of the anxiety in Odysseus’ homeland comes from the fears stoked by these unknown assailants.

In reality, Odysseus and his men were the sea people. By exploiting the Trojan’s trust, their welcoming in a statue to honor the gods, Odysseus has brought an end not only to Troy but all of civilization. No one can practice the hospitality of Zeus any longer because they fear being tricked.

Homer’s poem may have some small echoes of regrets. The Odyssey certainly has a more skeptical view of war than does The Iliad. But Nolan’s version reverberates with Odysseus’ regret. The Trojan Horse becomes like Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb. The hero is praised for his achievement but haunted by its results.

In doing this, the film most removes itself from the classic Greek perspective and causes us to look at the hero’s actions through a modern perspective, one that has been shaped by Scripture. In Nolan’s Odyssey, Christian morality holds sway over Greek mythology.5

Through a stellar action scene, Odysseus does reclaim his wife and home in the film, but only after he confesses his mistakes and looks into the weeping face of Athena.

In the poem, Athena comes down, in all her glory, to stop the cycle of violence after Odysseus kills all of his wife’s suitors. In the movie, however, the Athena Odysseus sees is not all all-powerful goddess arrayed in golden splendor. Instead, she bears the face of a young priestess slaughtered at Troy.

She died because of his sins. But yet, victory was won through the god who was slain and returns to offer hope and new life.

Describing his conversion, C.S. Lewis wrote:

Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call “real things.”

Not being Christopher Nolan, I don’t know his intentions in making The Odyssey, but I agree with Lewis. God worked through ancient myth makers to prepare people’s hearts for Christ. I believe he works through modern myth makers in much the same way.

The Odyssey, be it the ancient poem or the modern film, is God providing glimpses of Himself. Let him who has eyes see.

Miscellaneous thoughts

• While watching the movie, I couldn’t help but think of Jesus’ parable of the vineyard owner in Matthew 12. The ungrateful tenant farmers kill the servants and eventually the son of the vineyard owner before he returns to set things right.
  Other parallels between Odysseus and Jesus come from both being a king who has been gone to the point that some mock and dismiss his eventual return. But at his inevitable return, he will bring justice for faithful servants and judgment for the wicked.
  Odysseus lays himself with outstretched arms on boards of wood and surrenders himself to take the wrath of the gods. He undergoes a type of death before rescuing his people.

• Critics bent on controversy castigated the movie for months prior to its release, not only divorced of context but absent of seeing the film at all. In doing so, they inadvertently proved one of the film’s thesis correct.
  Dishonesty and deceit, even for ostensibly good aims, will undermine those good aims. And, if left unchecked, bring about the ruin of civilization.

• Much has been made of the casting, most of it by people who had not seen the movie. The actors who dominant the screen time carry the film and deliver Oscar-worth performances, especially Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway.
  Only one actress in a fairly minor role (Mia Goth as one of Penelope’s maidservants) threw me out of the film for a second because I wasn’t prepared for her to show up in the movie.
  Unless a particular ethnicity is central to a character, I’m not going to get upset over choosing to cast someone of a different racial background. But neither will I lose sleep over a predominantly white cast when that suits the story.
  Obviously, these decisions are across a spectrum. Some don’t change anything about the character or the story, but some fundamentally reshape everything. Since it depends on the context, I will always try to reserve my judgments until seeing the character in the role. With The Odyssey, I never had an issue.

• Ostensibly conservative commentators, mostly on Twitter, have harped on Ellen “Elliot” Page’s role in the film. Rumors were that she was portraying Achilles. Instead, she plays Sinon, in a role that seems deeply ironic.
  Sinon is a young boy sent into the Trojan War because cowardly Antinous (Robert Pattinson) manipulates him to take his place in the draft. Sinon dies at Troy because Odysseus lies to him.
  Again, I have no idea Nolan’s intentions, but casting Page as a character who is exploited by those stronger than him and lied to by those that should protect him seems like cultural commentary those criticizing Nolan as “woke” would appreciate.

After all of the controversy surrounding the film, Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey is finally in theaters this week. I hope to write my own review and reflections after seeing the film.

Part of the reason for the controversy, besides online provocateurs needing something to fight about, is the foundational place Homer and The Odyssey have in Western Civilization. They are discussed because they are important.

J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis certainly knew and appreciated Homer’s epic. Both would’ve been required to translate portions of Homer during their Oxford exams. One visitor to an Inklings meeting described the back-and-forth conversation: “Latin tags flying around. Homer quoted in the original to make a point.”

Lewis said the similarities between his own work and Tolkien’s were due to a similar temperament and common sources. “We are both soaked in Norse mythology, George MacDonald’s fairy tales, Homer, Beowulf, and medieval romance. Also, of course, we are both Christians.”

We can’t be sure what they’d think about a modern cinematic adaptation of the work, but, judging by other comments, we could take a guess.

Lewis: Listening to the Music of Homer

During his early tutoring, he developed a deep love for Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey in the original Greek. Speaking of The Odyssey in Surprised by Joy, Lewis wrote that “the music of the thing and the clear brightness that lives in almost every formula had become part of me.”

But it wasn’t just a youthful joy for Lewis, Homer came to mind when Lewis looked on the horrors of World War I. In Surprised by Joy, he wrote about the devastation he witnessed and the feeling he had when he heard the first bullet. “This is War. This is what Homer wrote about.”

The Odyssey and Homer remained with Lewis through his academic career and writing. His academic work, A Preface to Paradise Lost, often draws on The Odyssey as an example of an epic poem.

In his early notes for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, he compared the journey to various islands to Homer’s. He said the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is connected to Circe from The Odyssey as they are the archetype.

Lewis spent his life reading The Odyssey. Friends would often come to his house and read the work together. He knew the book word-for-word.

Once, Lewis bet a fellow Oxford professor that one particular Greek word was not in the text. Later in the records, the other professor records that he paid off the bet with a bottle of port. Lewis was, of course, right.

A few years after his conversion to Christianity, Lewis explained why he initially distrusted his contemporary T.S. Eliot. One of his primary reasons: the famous poet never praised Homer.

He described the epic poem as “part of our common heritage.” When he wanted to particularly praise a book, Lewis compared it to The Lord of the Rings and The Odyssey, works he repeatedly reread.

Perhaps, his review of Robert Fitzgerald’s translation gives an indication of how he would regard a movie adaptation. He frequently criticizes the work for not fully capturing Homer, but he sums up his review by saying:

On the whole, this version has much to commend it. As a substitute for Homer, tolerable—and what substitute was ever more than that? As a book to send the old back to Homer and goad the young on to Homer, it is very well worth while.

Tolkien: Homeric heroes

For the author of The Lord of the Rings, what would spark his love for reading? The epic poems of Homer. “I was brought up in the Classics,” he wrote in a 1953 letter, “and first discovered the sensation of literary pleasure in Homer.”

In 1954, he wrote how he drew on works “like Homer, or Beowulf, or Virgil, or Greek or Shakespearean tragedy” for his own writing. In his letters, Tolkien uses “Homeric” to describe the good men of Middle-earth during the time frame detailed in The Lord of the Rings.

Because of his immense appreciation of the original, Tolkien would probably hate any film adaptations, but he did actually talk once about the possibility of an Odyssey movie and bringing Middle-earth to the big screen.

In an interview with The Telegraph in 1968, he said a teenage girl had written to beg him not to allow The Lord of the Rings to be adapted into a movie. “It would be like putting Disneyland into the Grand Canyon,” she said.

In 1957, Tolkien said he was open to the idea of an animated Lord of the Rings adaptation “with all the risk of vulgarization.” But that next year, he confronted what he considered a disastrous attempt at adapting his story.

In 1958, Tolkien responded to the script of a proposed Lord of the Rings film by Morton Zimmerman. He wrote several pages of criticisms on the first two parts of the movie. When he arrived at the final section, he said it was “totally unacceptable to me, as a whole and in detail.” He concluded the letter by saying, “The Lord of the Rings cannot be garbled like that.”

Probably with that experience in mind, Tolkien told The Telegraph, “It would be easier to film The Odyssey [than The Lord of the Rings]. Much less happens in it. Only a few storms.”

If Peter Jackson can make Tolkien’s trilogy a modern cinematic masterpiece, despite Tolkien’s own likely displeasure, maybe Nolan can successfully adapt the Greek epic with a “few storms.”

Sources:

• Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life — C.S. Lewis

• “Odysseus Sails Again” reprinted in Image and Imagination — C.S. Lewis

• Becoming C.S. Lewis: A Biography of Young Jack Lewis — Harry Lee Poe

• The Making of C.S. Lewis: From Atheist to Apologist (1918-1945) — Harry Lee Poe

• C.S. Lewis: The Companion and Guide — Walter Hooper

• The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings — Philip and Carol Zaleski

• The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien — ed. Humphrey Carpenter

• JRR Tolkien interview: ‘It would be easier to film The Odyssey than The Lord of the Rings’ — The Telegraph, March 22, 1968

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Men and Women Have Unique Discipleship Strengths, Weaknesses — Lifeway Research

An Impossible Rescue: The sermon I recently preached at my church

If anyone was going to ruin Narnia, it would be Lucius Malfoy, the patriarch of the evil magical family in the Harry Potter series.

In 2024, years before Netflix officially confirmed The Magician’s Nephew as their first Narnia movie, actor Jason Isaacs shared his favorite books and included the Narnia prequel “because Greta Gerwig is about to make a film of it, which I can’t wait to see.”

He had no idea this was anything more than recommending books he loved and encouraging a friend’s work.

I just know one of the people working on the production team and I know they are working on The Magician’s Nephew, I think. So when I did a collection of ‘best books,’ I picked it; I thought my friend would like it. I didn’t know I was blowing some terrible secret.

The man who has played some iconic screen villains, including Malfoy in the Harry Potter films and Col. William Tavington in The Patriot, said the Narnia books were his favorites growing up.

I do think the Narnia books deserve slightly better treatment than they’ve had because they captivated me so much as a kid. I learned so much about life from them. I can’t wait to see what [Gerwig] does with them.

Isaacs has said he faced bullying and antisemitism growing up in a Jewish family, which he harnessed for his villainous roles.

I’m glad to see Lewis’ writing encouraged him during what was sure to be a difficult childhood and continue to captivate him today.

He said flatly that he is not currently involved in Gerwig’s adaptation. But with his love for the source material, I hope he’s attached to a future adaptation.

He could be a great Telmarine lord in Prince Caspian, voice a giant in The Silver Chair, or maybe even let him play a good guy for once.

Not Safe But Good

C.S. Lewis quote of the week

Mellontolatry, or the worship of the future, is a fuddled religion.

“Evil and God” in God in the Dock

I hope to write about our culture’s obsession with “mellontolatry” soon.

Tumnus’ bookshelf

Books by or about Lewis or Tolkien

Yours, Jack is a collection of spiritual advice from Lewis’ letters.

Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C.S. Lewis (ebook) — $9.99 (50% off)

Other books:

• A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis (ebook) — $7.99 (39% off)

• All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis, 1922-1927 (ebook) — $7.99 (39% off)

• The Personal Heresy: A Controversy (ebook) — $6.99 (50% off)

• The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings (ebook) — $5.99 (43% off)

• Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics (ebook) — $5.99 (50% off)

Behind the Wardrobe

Sneak peek at the bonus articles

• One place that won’t see Narnia on the big screen

• Good signs about the Digory Kirke actor

• The latest on The Hunt for Gollum and Rings of Power season 3

• Recently sold Tolkien letters reveal insights into a late-life friendship, feelings on Lewis’ death

• And more!

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If you need to preach a sermon, I wouldn’t advise choosing Judges 3:12-30. It’s the story of Ehud stabbing fat King Eglon in the gut.

Now, it would easily work as part of a Boys’ Storybook Bible that contains all the craziest and most gruesome stories from Scripture that may make us squirm but keep the attention of hyperactive little boys.

Still, that’s the passage I felt led to preach earlier this week.

I’m most comfortable sharing my thoughts by typing on a keyboard and delivering them via the written word, but I do enjoy teaching opportunities.

I don’t preach often. Occasionally, however, I’ve been asked to preach at my church, including on Wednesday.

I enjoy sermon prep much more than sermon delivery. Digging through a biblical text to see more of God and His character is an exciting adventure. Preaching that text is more of an anxious adventure.

But I always welcome the chance to share truth from God’s Word with His people. Still, this passage is a challenge.

Below, I’ll share a summary that will, hopefully, be an encouragement to you. If you’d like to watch the full sermon, I’ll also include the YouTube video at the end.

An Impossible Rescue — Judges 3:12-30

On the surface, this seems like a random (even crude) story about a random event that happened thousands of years ago in the Middle East with no relevance to our lives today. But once you spend time with it, you see that it showcases God’s character, our dependence on Him, and Jesus being the point of it all.

In this impossible rescue, we see an unexpected deliverer, an unbelievable plan, and an unchallenged victory.

Unexpected deliverer (v. 12-15)

When we think of the deliverers in Judges, people like Samson come to mind. A supernaturally strong man. But most often, the judges are people no one else would choose.

The Bible describes Ehud here as a left-handed man from the tribe of Benjamin. What makes that so unusual? Benjamin means “Son of the Right Hand.” The right hand signified power and authority. Ehud is left-handed.

Out of all the people, Ehud, the left-handed man from the tribe of the Son of the Right Hand, was chosen to deliver the tribute to King Eglon. He’s a walking contradiction.

But isn’t this what God loves to do? He delights in using the unexpected, the small, the weak. All through Scripture, we see Him choosing to use people like that. People like you and me.

God uses the weak to show His power, the foolish to show His wisdom, the small to show His majesty.

In 2 Corinthians 12, God tells Paul that His power is perfected in weakness. Perfected in weakness. The perfect display of God’s power comes through our weakness.

What do you contribute to God’s work? Your weakness and that’s exactly what God wants from you and that’s exactly what we need to give Him.

As Paul continues in 2 Corinthians 12, when I am weak, then I am strong.

Unbelievable plan (v. 16-25)

You can feel the tension rising in the text as this well-armed left-handed man takes the tribute with several other men to the oppressive king. But Ehud presents the tribute, dismisses the people who carried it, and leaves himself. Nothing happens.

It would seem like this was the perfect moment for some action movie battle between Ehud and his men and fat Eglon and his bodyguards. But everyone leaves, and Ehud heads back himself. Until he reaches the carved images at Gilgal (v. 19).

Those carved images likely were markers to proclaim the power and deeds of Moabite god Chemosh. A false god who demanded human sacrifices.

And these markers were at Gilgal, where the people of Israel had crossed the Jordan, taken stones from the bottom of the river, and set them up so that “all peoples of the earth may know that the Lord’s hand is strong” (Joshua 4:24).

After seeing these idols, Ehud returns to Eglon, somehow gains a private audience with the king, and stabs him. Eglon was so fat, his stomach enveloped the entire sword.

When he was stabbed, “waste” came out that caused the room to smell and led his servants to think he was using the bathroom. While they waited, Ehud escaped.

Nothing about that plan seems to make sense, but, again, that’s how God often operates. His plans often don’t make sense to us.

Yet, we trust that even though the tapestry looks terrible from our perspective, when we see it from eternity, from God’s vantage point, it looks like the beautiful masterpiece He intends.

When God works through the unexpected deliverer with an unbelievable plan, finally, He accomplishes an unchallenged victory.

Unchallenged victory (v. 26-30)

When Ehud returns to Israel, he passes right by those markers again, those idols to Chemosh. What do they do? Absolutely nothing.

Idols have no power to save. They didn’t stop Ehud from killing Eglon in the throne room, and they can’t stop him from escaping past them now.

Ehud calls the Israelite army to him and they conqueror Moab. God’s people have peace for 80 years.

But if we rewind the story, the Israelites were in their situation because of those idols. Israel let false worship take root in the land, and it led to them being trampled on by their enemies. The same idols that couldn’t stop Ehud could ensnare the Israelites because they let them.

If we allow idols to take root in our lives, they will work to enslave and destroy us. We have to be aggressive and go on the attack. As John Owens said, “Be killing sin or sin will be killing you.”

Idols we ignore become kings we have to kill. When we allow even just the smallest sin leeway in our lives, it will spread like cancer and become a much bigger issue.

The Impossible Rescue

But ultimately, this passage isn’t a call for us to work harder in our strength. It’s not a reminder to be brave like Ehud.

All of Scripture is about Christ, including this passage about swords and guts, idols and kings. It foreshadows and reminds us of our impossible rescue by Christ.

Who is a more unexpected deliverer than Jesus in His first coming? In Isaiah 53, the prophet tells us that the Messiah wouldn’t have an impressive form or desirable appearance.

What is a more unbelievable plan than God dying in our place to defeat sin and death? It’s such an unbelievable plan that only God could’ve come up with it. No other religion or worldview bases salvation on God sacrificing Himself for humans.

And finally, what is a more unquestionable victory than what Jesus has accomplished and will finalize one day?

In the last verse of our story in Judges, verse 30, the Bible says the Israelites had “peace” for 80 years. When we see “peace” in the Bible, we often think of shalom, but this is a different word. This is sheqet.

It means quietness, settled, idleness. It is the removing of strife. That’s the peace that God brought through Ehud and other human leaders.

But in Christ, we don’t just have sheqet. We have shalom. We have wholeness. We aren’t just physically at peace. We are fully at peace because of what Christ has done.

Israel’s peace, their sheqet, ended when another nation oppressed them. In Christ, our peace, our shalom, transcends our circumstances. And the victory we have in Christ is so unquestionable, so far-reaching, it won’t last 80 years. It will never end.

God used Ehud to accomplish an impossible rescue. Through Jesus, God accomplished the impossible rescue and we can live in that victory today and for all eternity.

Here’s the full sermon if you’d like to watch.

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A 400-year-old pastureland in England said to have inspired Narnia was set to be sold by the charitable trust that owned it until a passionate campaign saved it from the auction block.

The Countryside Regeneration Trust purchased the Herefordshire meadows in 2003, as it was described as one of the most historically important farms in the U.K., according to the BBC.

The land has been farmed since 1130 and is home to many declining species such as skylark, yellowhammer, spotted flycatcher and water voles.

The farm includes a series of 16th-century stone sluice gates, one of the earliest water management systems ever recorded in England.

It sits in the Golden Valley in Herefordshire, between Hereford and the Welsh border and an area said to have inspired Lewis in coming up with the fictional Narnia.

The author said the landscape was what he imagined heaven would look like.

The Neolithic burial mound Arthur’s Stone is on the hill above the village.

Lewis was believed to have used it as a reference for the stone table, on which Aslan is sacrificed.

In May, the charity placed 247 acres of land and farm buildings for sale without any protections or restrictions. They wanted to use the money raised to “reduce operational costs and reinvest in its core nature friendly farms.” They reversed course after hearing from the community.

I was unable to find where Lewis credited the area with inspiring Narnia or compared it to heaven. If someone knows where that’s located, please share in the comments.

But even without the Lewis connections, it is certainly a beautiful piece of land with historical and natural significance.

Sources:

• BBC

• Premier Christian News

Not Safe But Good

C.S. Lewis quote of the week

There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human’s mind against the Enemy [God]. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.

The Screwtape Letters

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Books by or about Lewis or Tolkien

The Screwtape Letters, the book that first brought C.S. Lewis to global prominence, remains a book brimming with insight into humanity and our temptations.

• The Screwtape Letters (ebook) by C.S. Lewis: $2.99 (80% off)

• Tales Before Narnia: The Roots of Modern Fantasy and Science Fiction (ebook) edited by Douglas Anderson: $4.99 (38% off)

• The Hobbit (ebook) by J.R.R. Tolkien: $2.99 (75% off)

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• A New York Times Q&A with a Christian poet who quotes Lewis

• “Edmund” star walked away from acting into public service

• Someone donated a copy of The Hobbit that sold for $50,000

• Anya Taylor-Joy felt like an elf her whole life so she’s excited to play one in Middle-earth

• New Lord of the Rings game releases this month

• And more!

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As the United States of America celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, many of its citizens are not in a celebratory mood.

According to Gallup, just 33% of U.S. adults say they are extremely proud to be an American. The percentage expressing the greatest pride in their nationality is a record low.

Another 20% say they are “very proud.” Others are “moderately proud” (22%), “only a little proud” (15%) or “not at all proud” (9%).

If you were to ask the 2 in 3 Americans without extreme pride what’s holding back their patriotic pride, many would likely list what they consider the sins, both past and present, of our nation.

To be sure, America, like every other nation, has flaws. Obviously, there were great evils condoned at our founding and other great evils allowed or even encouraged today.

But what exactly should a Christian do about those sins? And should they prevent the Christian from expressing patriotism?

To answer the second question first, loving your home country can be a rightly ordered and practiced love.

In The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis directly addresses patriotic admiration. While acknowledging patriotism can become idolatrous, Lewis first establishes that it can be healthy and doesn’t require a sinless country because we see proper patriotic love in Jesus.

In Matthew 23:37, Christ laments over Jerusalem while acknowledging the people of that place kill the prophets. He also knows they will soon kill Him. Yet, Jesus says He wishes He could gather the city up as a loving mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings.

If we reject all patriotism as evil, Lewis says, “We cannot keep even Christ's lament over Jerusalem. He too exhibits love for His country.”

This means we are to love our nation despite its flaws, but not because of them. We will be confronted by evil acts committed by our government and its leaders. In these moments, Lewis would encourage introspection but likely not repentance.

In “Dangers of National Repentance,” a 1940 essay republished in God in the Dock, Lewis addresses a mood prevalent in post-World War I Great Britain.

Even recognizing the wrongs committed by the Nazis, there was still some soul-searching by many outside of Germany for the role their nations played in creating an environment that allowed or even encouraged the rise of fascism.

In response to what he sees as a growing tendency toward national repentance among younger Britons, Lewis argues that such a decision is both too easy and too dangerous.

National repentance allows us to express remorse and contrition over actions that we had no real control over. In reality, we are repenting for the sins of our neighbors, those governmental leaders who made the decisions. Lewis writes:

By a dangerous figure of speech, he [the one repenting of national sins] calls the Government not ‘they’ but ‘we’. And since, as penitents, we are not encouraged to be charitable to our own sins, nor to give ourselves the benefit of any doubt, a Government which is called ‘we’ is ipso facto placed beyond the sphere of charity or even of justice. You can say anything you please about it. You can indulge in the popular vice of detraction without restraint, and yet feel all the time that you are practicing contrition. A group of such young penitents will say, ‘Let us repent our national sins’; what they mean is, ‘Let us attribute to our neighbor (even our Christian neighbor) in the Cabinet, whenever we disagree with him, every abominable motive that Satan can suggest to our fancy.’

This type of repentance, Lewis saw, was attractive to a certain group of people, often educated young adults, who were least likely to need it. They have been distrustful of their nation almost since birth.

Asking these individuals, those 9% who are not proud at all to be an American and perhaps some of the other more hesitant patriotic citizens, to repent of America’s sins is to ask them “not to mortify, but to indulge, their ruling passions.”

There may indeed be “communal sins” for which we need to repent but those are the sins most common and most approved of our “own age and class,” what we might call our subculture.

Look around at those who share your politics and cultural perspective, what actions and attitudes do you them condone that the Bible condemns? Those are the sins for which repentance may be necessary or at least beneficial.

For some, repenting or even acknowledging the sins of their country may be a worthwhile exercise because it costs them something. Those who actually have immense pride in their nation could not repent “without a struggle.”

So if you were to ask C.S. Lewis if you need to repent of America’s sins? He would probably say, “Only if it hurts to do so.”

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• Gen Z Churchgoers Attend More But Often Lag in Application — Lifeway Research

• Americans Less Likely to See the Religious as Positive Influence on Society — Lifeway Research

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As he thinks about artificial intelligence, Pope Leo XIV has been reading the Inklings. In his first papal encyclical, Leo quoted Gandalf from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Now, in speaking with writers, the pope cited C.S. Lewis’ under-appreciated An Experiment in Criticism.

In his remarks to the authors, Pope Leo quoted C.S. Lewis’s observation that reading a literary text puts us in a position to “see through the eyes of others,” broadening our perspectives and fostering empathy.

“When we delve into the very depths of our humanity, we are not far from God; for there, in the midst of very human stories, God reveals himself,” said the Pope.

Leo XIV is not the first pope to quote Lewis. His papal predecessor, Pope Francis, also referenced Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism, and quoted that specific line.

In his letter encouraging those training to be Catholic priests, Pope Francis directly quotes this portion:

In reading great literature, I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.

He then references Lewis’ work again:

In terms of the use of language, reading a literary text places us in the position of “seeing through the eyes of others,” thus gaining a breadth of perspective that broadens our humanity. We develop an imaginative empathy that enables us to identify with how others see, experience and respond to reality. Without such empathy, there can be no solidarity, sharing, compassion, mercy. In reading we discover that our feelings are not simply our own, they are universal, and so even the most destitute person does not feel alone.

Obviously, the deeply Catholic Tolkien would’ve loved being quoted by the pope. Earlier in his life, the Irish Protestant Lewis probably would’ve had more complicated feelings about it. Later in life, the Lewis who defended the idea of mere Christianity would’ve surely felt honored.

As for me, a very low-church Protestant, I appreciate that both myself and the pope himself can draw from the Inklings in the mid-1900s to address issues in the 2020s.

If you haven’t read An Experiment in Criticism, you are missing a work that can inspire people across the theological spectrum to think more deeply about art, technology, humanity, and theology.

A few years ago, I wrote a series of articles applying Lewis’ work to better critique and understand television.

Not Safe But Good

J.R.R. Tolkien quote of the week

Since we had the Catholic pope quoting the Protestant Lewis, I figured I would return the favor and quote the Catholic Tolkien this week.

This weekend, I finished The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams. In it, the authors quote a beautiful line from Tolkien in a letter to his son Michael.

Perhaps, this can serve as an anecdote to much of the modern cynicism and social media’s tendency to encourage us to think the worst of others.

For myself, I find I become less cynical rather than more — remembering my own sins and follies; and realize that men’s hearts are not often as bad as their acts, and very seldom as bad as their words.

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien: Revised and Expanded Edition

The Problem of Printers

Bad C.S. Lewis book covers

This is the very real cover of the copy of An Experiment in Criticism that I own. Several academic works by Lewis published by Cambridge University Press have similar uninspiring covers. This is certainly an instance where you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

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• Updates on the upcoming Narnia and Middle-earth movies

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• Revelations from a newly discovered Tolkien letter

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Amazon has manufactured its own “holiday” with Prime Day, but it does provide an opportunity for those looking to grow their library of Inkling books. The online retailer has several books from C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien on sale, as well as some volumes written about the two authors.

Here’s the best ones I’ve seen so far.

Lewis books

• The Chronicles of Narnia box set: paperback ($38.46, 50% off)

• The Chronicles of Narnia deluxe edition: 7 books in one hardcover ($41.29, 45% off)

• The Pilgrim’s Regress: ebook ($2.99, 60% off)

• Till We Have Faces: ebook ($2.99, 69% off)

• Into the Region of Awe: Mysticism in C.S. Lewis by David Downing: hardcover ($13.15, 64%)

• A Family Guide to Narnia: Biblical Truths in C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia by Christin Ditchfield: paperback ($9.71, 43% off)

Tolkien books

• The Lord of the Rings deluxe edition, illustrated by the author: hardcover ($105.14, 58% off)

• The Lord of the Rings, illustrated single volume: hardcover ($39.46, 56% off)

• The Lord of the Rings, 3-book box set: paperback ($21.04, 56% off)

• The Hobbit deluxe edition, illustrated by the author: hardcover ($80.94, 58% off)

• The Hobbit collector’s edition: hardcover ($18.62, 47% off)

• The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, deluxe pocket boxed set: hardcover ($24.92, 67% off)

• The Adventures of Tom Bombadil: Poetry and Stories About the Beloved Lord of the Rings Character: paperback ($8.84, 53% off)

• The Fall of Númenor: And Other Tales from the Second Age of Middle-earth: hardcover ($16.61, 58% off)

• The Maps of Middle-earth: The Essential Maps of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Fantasy Realm from Númenor and Beleriand to Wilderland and Middle-earth: hardcover ($14.18, 53% off)

• Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century: The Meaning of Middle-earth Today by Nick Groom: hardcover ($8.97, 72% off)

• The War for Middle-earth: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933–1945: hardcover ($13.94, 53% off)

Not Safe But Good

C.S. Lewis quote of the week

How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshiping an imaginary God.

Mere Christianity

The Problem of Printers

Bad C.S. Lewis book covers

I’m not sure if this is a book of devotions inspired by Mere Christianity, but they’re seemingly fans of Max McLean’s portrayal of Lewis (pictured on the cover).

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• Tolkien’s criticisms of the first Lord of the Rings adaptation

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Toy Story 5 is quintessential Toy Story: a heartwarming story about the innocence and inevitable loss of childhood. Young viewers share in the joys and smiles, while their parents laugh at the inside jokes and secretly wipe away tears.

But as the story pushes into its third decade and electronics invade the play space, cynicism has finally reached the se…

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You likely have been moved to tears by something you’ve heard, something you saw, or something you read. Have you ever started crying over something you’ve said?

By the mid-1940s, C.S. Lewis had become a popular speaker. In 1941, he delivered what would be his most famous sermon, “The Weight of Glory.”

That same year,…

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Leading up to his return to the alien movie genre, Stephen Spielberg asked what he believed to be a fundamental question about the potential discovery of actual intelligent alien life:

“What does this do to the fundamental beliefs that many of us have? Is God our God only on this planet, or is God a God for every system where there’s civilization, intelligent life, and even developing life?”

Spielberg seemingly made Disclosure Day as part of his answer to that question. I hate to tell the acclaimed director, but C.S. Lewis already answered it.

Within a year of the U.S.S.R. sending Sputnik 1 orbiting around the Earth, Lewis wrote his essay “Religion and Rocketry,” reprinted in The World’s Last Night and Other Essays.

In short, Lewis’ answers would be “nothing,” “no,” and “yes.”

The discovery of alien life would do nothing to the fundamental beliefs of Christians. No, God is not limited to our planet.1 Yes, God is God for not only every system where there is any type of life, but He is God for all of creation, spanning every inch of the universe.

Lewis argued that every “new discovery, even every new theory, is held at first to have the most wide-reaching theological and philosophical consequences.”

But after serious thinkers have worked through the ramifications, everyone essentially remains where they were before. “So it was with Copernican astronomy, with Darwinism, with Biblical Criticism, with the new psychology,” Lewis writes. “So, I cannot help expecting it will be with the discovery of ‘life on other planets’ — if that discovery is ever made.”

In his essay, Lewis actually poses five questions that better cut to the heart of the theological issues at play with alien life.

1. Is there animal life somewhere other than Earth?

2. Do these creatures possess a rational soul?

3. Are aliens, like humanity, fallen?

4. If they are fallen, did Christ die for them?

5. Is the mode of redemption we know the only possible way for Christ to redeem them?

If we want a movie wrestling with those issues, we’ll need Spielberg or someone to adapt the Ransom trilogy.

Sources:

Geeky Stoics

C.S. Lewis and the aliens

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a month ago · 3 likes · 2 comments · Stephen Kent

Not Safe But Good

C.S. Lewis quote of the week

The classic expositions of the doctrine that the world’s miseries are compatible with its creation and guidance by a wholly good Being come from Boethius waiting in prison to be beaten to death and from St Augustine meditating on the sack of Rome. The present state of the world is normal; it was the last century that was the abnormality.

“Evil and God,” God in the Dock

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The Reading Life: The Joy of Seeing New Worlds Through Others’ Eyes (ebook) — $1.99 (87% off)

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• Made for Heaven: And Why on Earth It Matters (ebook) — $1.99 (80% off)

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• Digory actor shares about time on Narnia set for the first time

• Lewis on the importance of play

• Elijah Wood details his role in upcoming Hunt for Gollum movie

• Amazon still working on Middle-earth video game

• And more!

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Our culture is obsessed with discovering the “real you.” We’ve internalized so many platitudes like “follow your heart,” “find what makes you happy,” or “do what feels right.” You’ve got to be true to yourself, after all.

The idea feels like accepted, unquestioned wisdom, but C.S. Lewis challenged this line of thinking,…

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While we are still months away from the February 2027 theatrical release of Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, Director Greta Gerwig has already shown a rough cut test screening of the film in New Jersey, according to Jordan Ruimy at World of Reel.

The reporting contained very little information about the film itself outside of this:

One interesting creative choice: despite the story being set in the 1950s, Gerwig reportedly uses rock music throughout the film. The soundtrack is intentionally anachronistic, echoing the approach Sofia Coppola took in “Marie Antoinette,” where modern music was used to create a contemporary emotional connection with a period setting.

In their reporting, NarniaWeb confirmed at least two test screenings: one in New York and one in New Jersey. They also note that these screenings are not always the best indication of what will be in the final film, according to both Ruimy and Gerwig herself.

Ruimy recently wrote about how several highly acclaimed movies had early screenings that left audiences confused and underwhelmed, but that feedback led to a better final product.

In an interview with Deadline, Gerwig said screenings of her previous film allowed her to hear patterns in the comments from audiences to know if changes were needed.

There’s no word yet on whether any patterns have emerged from Narnia test screenings.

Not Safe But Good

C.S. Lewis quote of the week

I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.

The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950-1963

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The Dark Tower and Other Stories contains several unfinished pieces of stories and previously unpublished material from Lewis discover later.

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Below paid subscribers will find articles on:

• Previously unknown Tolkien manuscript discovered (picture included)

• Narnia might not be changing Netflix after all

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• Rare Tolkien books failed to sell at auction

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Occasionally, new criticism of old works emerges. Often, however, modern critics rehash already rebuffed talking points. Few critiques of Middle-earth and Narnia say anything new, which is why much of what was written around their publication responds to many modern criticisms.

Two popular objections in particular are directly stated and dismantled in L…

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In Pope Leo XIV's first papal encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (“magnificent humanity”), the head of the Catholic Church focused on “preserving the human person in the age of artificial intelligence.”

The encyclical seemingly marked the first time a pope has quoted Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in his official writing.

The twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.” The civilization of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization. For this reason, it is worthwhile pausing to reflect on some aspects of how we, each in our own way, can cooperate in building the civilization of love. Without presuming to exhaust this theme, I would like to propose five paths toward daily and public responsibility: the need to disarm words, building peace through justice, adopting the perspective of victims, cultivating a healthy realism and reviving dialogue and multilateralism.

For the devout Catholic Tolkien, I’m not sure there could be a greater honor than the pope quoting Gandalf.

Specifically, the Gandalf quote comes from The Return of the King. Denethor and Théoden have died. The two great kingdoms of man, Rohan and Gondor, are in disrepair. All while Sauron is still in power and seeking to destroy them all.

Gandalf addresses the gathered leaders at Minas Tirith to both warn and encourage them.

Concerning this thing, my lords, you now all know enough for the understanding of our plight, and of Sauron’s. If he regains [the Ring], your valour is vain, and his victory will be swift and complete: so complete that none can foresee the end of it while this world lasts. If it is destroyed, then he will fall; and his fall will be so low that none can foresee his arising ever again. For he will lose the best part of the strength that was native to him in his beginning, and all that was made or begun with that power will crumble, and he will be maimed forever, becoming a mere spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but cannot again grow or take shape. And so a great evil of this world will be removed.

Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

This is a great example of why the Ring wasn’t the atomic bomb. But neither is the Ring AI. The Ring is the Ring, but the Ring reminds us of all that seeks to undermine and destroy humanity.

“Other evils” will undoubtedly come. Our calling is to uproot evil “in the fields that we know.”

Sources:

• Pope Leo Put Gandalf in His First Encyclical: A Tolkien Quote in Magnifica Humanitas — EWTN

• Pope invokes Gandalf as he issues AI warning — The Telegraph

• Gandalf, Picasso and MLK: Cultural references ground Pope Leo’s AI warning — NBC

• Pope Leo Quotes Gandalf From The Lord of the Rings as He Issues Stark AI Warning — IGN

• Pope Leo Schooled the Tech Bros on Tolkien — WIRED

• Tolkien, Beethoven, MLK Jr., and Hannah Arendt: The voices that resonate in Magnifica Humanitas — EWTN

Not Safe But Good

C.S. Lewis quote of the week

Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.

Mere Christianity

Tumnus’ bookshelf

Books by or about Lewis or Tolkien

Lewis’ major academic work provides insights into Spenser, Shakespeare, Tyndale, Knox, Donne, Cranmer and more.

English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama) (ebook) — $1.99 (85% off)

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• New Narnia books coming

• John Lennox on his secret life and C.S. Lewis

• Lewis on gender

• ‘Rings of Power’ season 4 production begins as season 3 premiere nears

• Tolkien, Lewis, and the “stories that saved the West”

• And more!

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Of all the Narnia books, The Magician’s Nephew might be the most deeply personal to C.S. Lewis. At the heart of the story is a little boy facing the death of his mother. This was a grief Lewis knew all too well, having lost his mom, Flora Hamilton Lewis, when he was just 10.

Unfortunately, this grief became real for me during m…

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C.S. Lewis made his opinion of church hymns well known. He didn’t like them before he became a Christian, and his opinion didn’t magically change after conversion. But unlike many modern churchgoers, he came to view his preferences as unimportant. He may hav…

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