Toward the close of Lundin’s book, he offers a number of intriguing criticisms of CS Lewis as a literary critic. He claims that while Lewis recognized the corrosive effects of the Enlightenment and Romantic conception of the self in his theological writings, he adopted a form of romanticism in his critical work, especially An Experiment in Criticism . His distinction in that work between “use” and “reception,” Lundin claims, is based on a post-Kantian ideal of disinterested aesthetic experience, and against this Lundin follows Gadamer in arguing that there is no bright line between interpretation and application, that there is never a reception that is not already some sort of use.
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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