Download e-book for iPad: Reasoning beyond Reason: Imagination as a Theological Source by J. T. Sellars

there's a seeming dichotomy in C. S. Lewis's writing. at the one hand we see the author of argumentative works, and however we have now the resourceful poet. Lewis additionally chanced on this dichotomy inside himself. whilst he was once a rationalist and atheist he discovered that those aspects of him have been pulling in several instructions: he believed that his rationalist aspect couldn't be reconciled along with his ingenious aspect. as soon as he turned a Christian, he ultimately discovered a way of marrying the two--principally, via tale and myth.

Within C. S. Lewis reviews, there's additionally a typical belief of Lewis as a contemporary rationalist thinker, i.e., a rationalist who thinks arguments (and his arguments specifically) are the final solution at the questions he undertakes. Reasoning past cause makes an attempt to take this view to job by way of putting Lewis again into his pre-modern context and exhibiting that his assets and impacts are classical ones. during this method Lewis is seen throughout the concept that mind's eye and cause are attached in an intimate manner: they're various expressions of a unmarried divine resource of fact, and there's an mind's eye already current upon which cause works. Lewis's "transpositional" view of mind's eye implicitly pushes in the direction of a slightly radical place: the mind's eye is to be visible as theological in its reliance upon whatever greater than the in basic terms fabric; it unavoidably depends on a transcendent investment for its use and which means. In different phrases, the mind's eye is a well-source for what we'd ordinarily label "rational."

"To the trendy brain, cause belongs to the chilly, goal stare of technology. mind's eye and tale are mere 'culture,' of worth purely as escapism or leisure. J. T. Sellars's awesome ebook indicates how certainly one of Christianity's such a lot discovered yet enduringly well known defenders, C. S. Lewis, belonged to a richer, classical international the place cause is imaginitive and the mind's eye is rational. I warmly welcome its publication."
--Simon Oliver
Department of Theology and spiritual Studies
University of Nottingham

“Every severe pupil of C. S. Lewis may want to learn this booklet since it is simple and correct. by means of 'basic' I suggest that it exposes the underlying assumptions and helping constitution of Lewis' paintings. by way of 'right' I suggest that it locates Lewis the place regularly he's to be came upon, specifically, neither on one or the opposite part of divides, equivalent to among rationalism and fideism, yet in a mediating place among them, simply because, as Sellars makes transparent, for Lewis family precede, undergird, and go beyond distinctions.”
—Wesley A. Kort
Department of faith and the Graduate college of Religion
Duke University

J. T. Sellars, PhD, is an teacher of philosophy and arts in Northern California and Southern Oregon.