I once led a preaching workshop for pastors in Minnesota at which one pastor remarked that he never interprets scripture. His remark startled me, and when I pressed him on it, he replied, “I just preach the truth.” The serious business of rightly dividing the word of truth demands that we develop a profound awareness of our own opinions, or worse, unexamined assumptions.

When he prepared the radio broadcasts that later became Mere Christianity, Lewis went through the exercise of distinguishing between the foundational articles of faith (such as, Christ died for my sins), and theories about how the atonement works. He clearly had strong views on virtually everything about which he had views at all, but in his evangelism he did not want to press as gospel something that was intended for discussion by more mature Christians.

In addition to recognizing the assumptions that the interpreter brings to the text, Lewis also insisted that the reader understand what kind of literature is being interpreted. Fifty years before “postmodernity’ became a catch word, Lewis recognized and predicted the looming problems that threatened the discipline of interpretation. He began A Preface to Paradise Lost by insisting, "The first qualification for judging any piece of workmanship from a corkscrew to a cathedral is to know what it is — what it was intended to do and how it was meant to be used."6 It does no good to ask who 666 might be if the form of literature of Revelation has not first been understood.

An alarming number of modern pastors have little or no literary training, so it is not unusual to hear a pastor give an allegorical interpretation to a text that is not allegory or to hear an allegorical text interpreted as literal history. Lewis reminds us to take seriously the literary forms in which God has spoken. When we fail to take these matters seriously, we misrepresent what the LORD God has said, a truly dangerous enterprise.

Forty years after his death, C. S. Lewis still offers preachers a model for how to approach the serious task of bringing the word of God to a congregation of believers or an audience of unbelievers. The attitude toward preaching that Lewis represents does not produce dull or boring sermons. Rather, it engages people in a way that they must come to grips with what God has said.

________________________________

Harry L. Poe is Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union University, and is a member of the board of the C.S. Lewis Foundation.

________________________________

1 C. S. Lewis, “Rejoinder to Dr Pittinger,” God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1979), 181.
2 Ibid., “Before We Can Communicate,” 256.
3 W. Norman Pittenger, “A Critique of C. S. Lewis,” Christian Century, vol. 57 (October 1, 1958), 1104-1107.
4 Lewis, “Rejoinder,” 183.
5 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), ix.
6 C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), 1.