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Jacob Schriftmans latest book the C.S Lewis book on the bible has been an insightful, thought provoking and truly enjoyable read. It’s one of those books I will return to, and enjoy again. Schriftman gives us a carefully-reasoned yet entertaining read. His writing style is superb and clear.

The book centers around two parts. The first part is a critique and a defense on how we know whether the Bible is from God (epistemology) and the second part centers around; the study of the general principles of biblical interpretation. (hermeneutics)

Both of these parts are then divided into two parts a critique and a defense. My favorite parts were the critique presented throughout the book. The arguments were clear and well presented. Only the critique parts are a must read for anyone interested in apologetics, or a student of religion and faith in general.

Schriftman critiques, and explores the arguments used in a big part of the evangelical (it would be good with a definition of what is meant by evangelical) part of Christianity. An evangelical Christian could say; the Bible must be inspired by God because of how the bible changes lives or fulfilled messianic prophesy to name a couple examples Schriftman critiques.

In each case the argument falls short to justify the bibles claim to be from God.

Schriftman tells the story of how C. S Lewis came to accept the Bibles inspiration not as a starting point but as the final conclusion. An important part of the book follows Lewis argument and Journey towards the acceptance of the Bible as inspired by God.
A part of that journey consisted of understanding the Bible differently from for example Francis Schaeffer. Schaeffer viewed the first eleven chapters of Genesis, the same way as the rest of Genesis. Lewis on the other hand read the first eleven chapters as myths.
Schriftmans is at his best in this part of the book, and shows a deep understanding of Lewis when he takes us on a journey of thought with Lewis.

The second part of the book is also a gem waiting to be uncovered, explored and thought through. I enjoyed the parts where Schriftman gives examples of how the Bible fails to live up to the perfection many Christians demand from it. Part of the conclusion in this part is as follows.

”The above should be sufficient to show in what sense the Bible cannot be from God. It cannot be a kind of divine encyclopedia, a catalogue of”thus-saith-the-lord” articles on various topics.” Then how can it be from God? Scriftman ends the book by answering that precise question.

The book is not only a dive into the mind of C. S Lewis and his student mister Schriftman. It is a critique against a Christianity that is afraid to lose its faith by asking difficult questions. Schriftman puts it like this.

” Many denominations, movements, and individual Christians hold to a certain position not because they have honestly examined all possible viewpoints and then arrived at their conclusion; they simply believe what they believe because they have never heard anything else. Or, if they heard of an alternative, they immediately dismissed it without serious consideration – because they felt threatened in their beliefs and were perhaps frightened that their strong fortress would turn out to be a house of cards.”

This book deserves a wide audience, and is certainly a starting point not only for C. S Lewis fans but also anyone wanting to explore faith, God and the bible from a different perspective than what is the norm in a big part of western Christianity. The 12 dollar price tag is a bargain considering you actually get two books in one. An engaging, liberating and highly recommended read.

You can buy your copy here.

Jacob Schriftman is the pen name of Jokim Schnoebbe. I first met Jokim a few years back in South Africa and we traveled together for a teaching tour in the far east. We also lived together here in Sweden for a few months where we both were involved in a course with YWAM. He is a talented speaker,artist,teacher,author,father,husband and fotball player (and a few other things).

Written by my friend Jokim Schnoebbe. He is an expert on C.S. Lewis and Narnia.You can find more info about him on his blog.

The new Narnia movie, Prince Caspian, is coming out this week and is sure to attract new readers to C. S. Lewis’ books. This is a fitting opportunity to address one of the confusions that exist about the literary type of the Chronicles of Narnia.

Time and again, it is referred to as a “Christi an allegory

,” a tag with which C. S. Lewis would not have been happy. As he explains in some of his essays and letters, an allegory is a work in which immaterial realities are represented by imaginary physical objects. For example, the immaterial faculty of Reason may be allegorically represented by someone we call Lady Reason. This Lady—because Reason is clear, undefiled, swift, cold, hard, and sharp like a sword—we could picture as a “sun-bright virgin clad in complete steel,” riding on a horse “with a sword naked in her hand.” This, C. S. Lewis has actually done in his only allegorical work, The Pigrim’s Regress, from which the example of Lady Reason is taken.

Is Narnia, then, an allegory? After all, C. S. Lewis loved allegorical literature, and it is obvious that elements of his Christianity flowed into the Narnian storyline, such as the concepts of Incarnation and Redemption.

Were C. S. Lewis alive, I think he would be very glad if readers were told about his view that the books are not an allegory. C. S. Lewis did not say to himself, “Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia.” His original inspiration was much less theological than that—nothing more than a mental picture. Long before he became a Christian, he had a picture in his head of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. Decades went past, until one day he said to himself, “Let’s try to make a story about it.” At first he had very little idea how the story would go. “But then suddenly,” he later wrote, “Aslan came bounding into it,” and “once he was there he pulled the whole story together, and soon he pulled the six other Narnian stories in after him.”