Into the Region of Awe: Mysticism in C.S. Lewis - Downing, David C. InterVarsity, 2005. 207p. $17.00, Hardcover. ISBN 083083284X.
248.2’2’092 Lewis, C.S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963. Mysticism.
In a recent issue of The Bulletin of the New York C.S. Lewis Society, editor Robert Trexler reports that in 2005 at least 36 Lewis and Narnia-related books are coming off the presses. For librarians facing that onslaught of titles, a wise choice would be the book under review. It scintillates while it instructs.
David Downing, the Ralph W. Schlosser Professor of English at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, has scoured Lewis’s writings, including his voluminous letters, to discover where and how "his faith always displayed a distinct mystical coloring, an iridescence of rich and glittering hues." The author devotes a chapter each to exposition of this coloring in Lewis’s space trilogy and the Narnia series, but not until he has shown the effect of mystical experience on the shape of Lewis’s life and his attitude toward Christian mysticism. In so doing, the professor teaches a basic course on mysticism, the sources being those over which Lewis poured with great interest and to which he applied his remarkable critical skills. As supplemental aids for this engrossing "course," the author provides a brief timeline of Christian mystics, chapter notes, a bibliography, and both a subject and a Scripture index.
Professor Downing’s clear and concise treatment of "the region of awe" can open that dimension to those who have never explored it in Lewis, themselves, others, or the universe.
Reviewed by:
Carolyn Keefe
Proclamation Presbyterian Church
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
