Oxford, 6/17/08

Don June 18th, 2008

Tuesday was a busy day.  Dr. Bauman’s wife, Nicole, introduced the students to Dorothy L. Sayers.  Dr. Bauman talked about the theology of Charles Williams, explaining his ideas on Exchange, Co-Inherence, and Substitution.  We live by exchange and no one is an island; we live in one another; and we can bear one another’s burdens through substitution.  Christ’s exchange of his righteousness for our sins, his substitutionary atonement, and his indwelling of us through his Holy Spirit, are not just isolated spiritual events but flow from the very Trinitarian nature of God and are imprinted by him on all of creation; they are the way the universe works. Calvary then was not a random act but simply the place where these principles are revealed in their greatest purity and profundity.

Then we had a lecture by Lewis’s former secretary and the editor of his many posthumously published works, Walter Hooper.  Hooper described his meeting Lewis as parallel in his own life to Lewis’s meeting Kirkpatrick–only Lewis’s ‘Stop–what do you mean by . . .’ was delivered with more charity and humor and with Christian rather than atheist underpinnings.  Tidbits included Hooper’s opinion that the cooling of the friendship between Lewis and Tolkien in the last decade of Lewis’s life has been exaggerated:  ‘Lewis adored Tolkien, and Tolkien always spoke of Lewis to me with great love.’  Hooper claims to have won one argument [and only one, and even that one only posthumously] with Lewis:  Lewis was sure that after he died his books would gradually fade into oblivion, and Hooper was sure they would not.  ‘I believe,’ he said with mock modesty, ‘that I may have been right on that one.’  And we must honor him as one of the reasons why he was right.  In his first negotiations with Harper Collins to begin his 45-year career of editing and publishing Lewis’s literary remains and collecting his essays, letters, etc., Hooper asked as a condition that for every new Lewis book published they would bring back into print an old one.  ‘All right,’ Lady Collins agreed, ‘which one should be first?’  The Abolition of Man was the reply.  Good choice.  We can be very grateful that we still have so much of Lewis’s work so easily available to us today.  My own life would have been profoundly impoverished without it.

Then we continued the day by visiting nearby Blenheim Palace, the seat of Duke of Marlborough and birthplace of Winston Churchill and topped it off with formal dinner in hall for the students at New College.  A good time was had by all.

From the Dreaming Spires,

Don

Donald T. Williams, PhD, Co-Director
Summit Oxford Summer Studies Program

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