A Well of Wonder: Essays on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the Inklings by Clyde S. Kilby (review)

Insofar this collection of occasional pieces has any one theme, it is the dignity and rationality of mythopoeia in Christian thought, as demonstrated in the Inklings. Loren Wilkinson and Keith Call have lovingly and respectfully edited Clyde Kilby’s various writings on a cluster of writers, not all Inklings, but all connected by Lewis. In introductions preceding each essay or interview, the editors praise how Kilby promoted the Inklings. Kilby showed them to be “wise, holy and imaginative guides” to “beauty, and what it implied about ourselves and God,” wherever encountered, even in fantasy literature or traditional myths with no explicit Christian content (xiv). Clyde Kilby was the founder of the Wade Collection of manuscripts and memorabilia of four Inklings proper (C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams) and three associated figures (Dorothy Sayers, George MacDonald, and G.K. Chesterton). It is housed at Wheaton College, where Kilby taught and where Loren Wilkinson came to know him. Wilkinson’s account of the intellectual excitement and fellowship Kilby conveyed to his students is one of the most touching and happy sections of the book. Wilkinson recalls how both in the classroom and in his home, Kilby welcomed students into “an awed, thankful and joyful stance toward creation and Creator” (xiii). The celebratory atmosphere of the whole collection exudes gratitude for the freshness of Kilby’s vision.

Kilby’s influence as a writer consisted of effectively winning over the Evangelical community to enthusiasm for the works of Lewis and Tolkien during years in which they were regarded with suspicion by the Evangelical subculture. Wilkinson describes that community’s “withdrawal from engagement with the world,” which “tended to devalue both creation and culture” (xiii–xiv). Due to Kilby’s efforts, that frightened withdrawal from literary imagination is almost unrecognizable today. Kilby was keen to counter the scorn with which academics and public intellectuals casually dismissed Evangelicals as incompetent scholars, or, worse, intellectually dishonest bigots serving a disproven opinion. Kilby’s defensiveness is not all-pervasive, but it arises persistently. Enthusiastic to claim the Inklings for Evangelicalism, he sometimes attempts to identify Lewis or the other writers in the Wade Collection with positions that are comfortable to his intended audience but not quite true to the thought of the writers he is praising. For instance, in a 1964 essay, “On Scripture, Myth and Theology,” Kilby downplays as “merely theoretical” the very serious objections that C.S. Lewis held against the doctrine of total depravity (29). Kilby goes on to praise some of Lewis’s apologetic arguments, such as those based upon the universal recognition of sin, which lose validity if reason and conscience are totally depraved.

As he seeks to disarm his readers’ suspicions of other Inklings, Kilby overestimates the degree to which friendship with Lewis could be a guarantee of Christian orthodoxy. For instance, Kilby expresses uncritical warmth toward the eclectic reincarnation cult of Rudolf Steiner, which Owen Barfield embraced: “I won’t try to tell you about Barfield’s theory of life and the world, but it’s a very substantial idea called ‘anthroposophy.’ He claims that he’s a Christian, and I think he is a Christian” (300). Neither is Kilby wary to distinguish between moments when Charles Williams is reimagining venerable Christian dogmas and those in which he flirts with the demonic in “white magic” (his “white magic” influenced Lewis’s That Hideous Strength). Academic or cultural cachet can blind Kilby to dangers that are far more evident now. For instance, in 2014 Harvard’s last president (fittingly named Dr. Faust) defended an attempt at a public Satanic Black Mass in Harvard’s Memorial Hall; no one in Kilby’s position could have predicted how triumphantly, in both popular and high culture, occultism has emerged...