The present book is something of an experiment. The translation is intended for the world at large, not only for theological students. If it succeeds, other translations of other great Christian Books will presumably follow. In one sense, of course, it is not the first in the field. Translations of the Theologica Germanica, the Imitation, the Scale of Perfection, and the Revelations of Lady Julian of Norwich, are already on the market, and are very valuable, though some of them are not very scholarly. But it will be noticed that these are all books of devotion rather than of doctrine. Now the layman or amateur needs to be instructed as well as to be exhorted. In this age his need for knowledge is particularly pressing. Nor would I admit any sharp division between the two kinds of book. For my own part I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that “nothing happens” when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.
C. S. Lewis | “Introduction” in St Athanasius on the Incarnation: The Treatise De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, trans. and ed. A Religious of the C.S.M.V. (A. R. Mowbray & Co., 1963), 7–8.
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I am so glad to find this, as someone with a pentecostal backgrounf always felt a little guilty for loving to study and not “feeling anything” in devotions
“…I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books…” 100%
This exceptional Introduction to Athanasius’s work is loaded with additional word pictures illustrating the virtues of studying great books and ideas. For example, as an antidote to doctrinal and cultural myopia: “The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing thru our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.” Lewis attributes the phrase “mere Christianity” to Baxter, which he says is “no insipid interdenominational transparency, but something positive, self-consistent, and inexhaustible.”
Then this paragraph, which comes just before the one in the post above:
“We are all rightly distressed, and ashamed also, at the divisions of Christendom. But those who have always lived within the Christian fold may be too easily dispirited by them. They are bad, but such people do not know what it looks like from without. Seen from there, what is left intact despite all the divisions, still appears (as it truly is) an immensely formidable unity. I know for I saw it; and well our enemies know it. That unity any of us can find by going out of his own age. It is not enough, but it is more than you had thought till then. Once you are well soaked in it, if you then venture to speak, you will have an amusing experience. You will be thought a Papist when you are actually reproducing Bunyan, a Pantheist when you are quoting Aquinas, and so forth. For you have now got on to the great level viaduct which crosses the ages and which looks so high from the valleys, so low from the mountains, so narrow compared with the swamps, and so broad compared with the sheep-tracks.”
I find that whole Introduction amazing. Of course, Lewis would have us reread and treasure ON THE INCARNATION as well, “a very great book.” Thanks for posting this, and many other excellent reminders thru the year.