This Side of the Lamppost

A preface to a movie review.

I need to preface my comments on this matter. First, I have seen this movie used as a tool to question anything and everything that C.S. Lewis wrote thought or did. I will not be doing this. If you do not think that Mr. Camp's review is all that bad (because it's not) a look through the posts preceding it you will know what I am heading at. The attack would almost be humorous if it was not so judgmental and pompous. A barely theologian, attacking a great apologist.

I have but three more things to say on that topic before I get to the matter at hand.

1. I myself have barely a laymen's understanding of the ideas of ransom atonement, penal substitutional atonement.... My wife has a little less, my 10 year old daughter has no idea what the conflict is or what the concepts are, and as you can guess my 6 year old daughter is as far away from even knowing the word atonement. That said I find no basis in the movie for Mr. Camp's objections.
2. I read and learn from great Christian Teachers such as Augustine, Calvin, Spurgeon, Lewis and MacArthur. I also vehemently disagree with them all when it comes to certain topics. They all disagree with each other at times too. Do we need a drag him out, throw out all his knowledge diatribe on Augustine? You do know his lifestyle was less than stellar!
3. In direct relation to C.S. Lewis, I believe that John G. Stackhouse said it best in the acknowledgement section of his book 'Humble Apologetics'

   Among authors, I am chiefly indebted to C.S. Lewis, the twentieth century's most popular apologist. After discovering Lewis in my teens, I flattered myself briefly (I am ashamed to say) that I had "gotten beyond him" in graduate school. Returning to his work once I became a professor, I have found over the successive years endless riches in his thought and expression. Lewis isn't right about everything, of course. But he is right about so many things, and suggestive about so many more, that I have found him an inexhaustible resource"

(I have nothing to add to that.)