In Reply to: wow... posted by ray on July 09, 2003 at 13:15:18:
You know, I read the first book in Lewis' space trilogy and it was very easy to follow. I got into the second book in the series where he has the Eve/Venus rising out of the sea symbolism. But though I tried to read "That Hideous Strength" for the life of me I couldn't keep my mind in the book; I found it very chewy, airy reading and long and mysterious. Maybe I should try again. It's been two months after all. :c)
I know what you mean about C.S. Lewis' take on worship of the pagan, pre-Christian, Greco-Roman gods and goddesses. He looked at them more as pre-figures or foreshadowings of the true faith in the one God, as you said, "the times of ignorance that God winked at." This is why in the last book of the "Narnia" series Lewis said that worship of Tash, if done with a pure heart, was the same as worship of Aslan.
This is in contrast to Paul who said that "the gods of the pagans are demons" (somewhere in Corinthians). In fact, Milton in his epic poem "Paradise Lost" linked all the pagan gods with specific demons in Lucifer's army. So there are two schools of thought on this topic.
In fact, Lewis describes a ceremony to the greek god Bacchus in the "Chronicles of Narnia", with Bacchus dancing around and worshiping Aslan (symbolic of Jesus). Yet in reality the Bacchilean ceremonies were drunken public orgies, which sometimes involved human sacrifice and were SO debauched that even the pagan Roman authorities had outlawed them, before Jesus' days.
CS Lewis was in love with Greek dying/resurrection mythology, and was converted to Christianity by JRR Tolkien, who told him that Christianity was the pefect myth, the fulfillment of all the Greek stories of dying/resurrection nature gods, who died in winter and were raised to new life each spring. The greeks had the right ideas in their myths, but their stories were made-up whereas Jesus happened in real time on earth.
Lewis was a truly amazing writer and capable of stirring up quite a bit of controversy with his views.