I Have An Inkling: Remembering C. S. Lewis scholar Dr. Bruce L. Edwards

Monday, September 5, 2016

Remembering C. S. Lewis scholar Dr. Bruce L. Edwards

Dr. Bruce Edwards at a C S Lewis seminar

at The Little Church in the Vale in Ohio in 2012

Photo by Mark Sommer, October 2012

I was reminded today that Bruce Edwards would have been 64 today. We lost this C. S. Lewis scholar way too early last October. Shortly after his death, I wrote this piece for Examiner.com.

C. S. Lewis scholar Dr. Bruce L. Edwards passes away

Dr. Bruce L. Edwards Jr., well-known C. S. Lewis scholar and author, passed away last Wednesday in Willow, Alaska. He served on the faculty and in various administrative positions at Bowling Green State University in Ohio from 1981 until his retirement to Alaska in 2013. News of Edwards' death had been kept mainly to family and friends until an obituary surfaced on the Bowling Green Sentinel-Tribune website Tuesday. The obituary was also published on Legacy.com. Monday the Bowling Green State University website posted an announcement about the Memorial service, which will be at Bowling Green Covenant Church Thursday.

Edwards served as the general editor of the 2007 four-volume scholarly work, "C. S. Lewis: Life, Works, and Legacy" from Praeger Perspectives. In conjunction with the release of the first Chronicles of Narnia move, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," in 2005, Edwards published two Narnia-related books that same year: "Not a Tame Lion," and "Further Up and Further In: Understanding C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." Previously he had released two other Lewis-related volumes: "A Rhetoric of Reading: C. S. Lewis’s Defense of Western Literacy" (1986), and "The Taste of the Pineapple: Essays on C. S. Lewis as Reader, Critic, and Imaginative Writer" (1988).

Dr. Edwards also lectured frequently on C. S. Lewis at various locations throughout the country, and maintained the C. S. Lewis Review website (under various names) for about twenty years. According to the About page, the website "is an online journal designed to stimulate reflections on the life, work, and influence of Clive Staples Lewis, and other Christian writers and thinkers who represent significant linkages to the tradition Lewis exemplified of Christian scholarship and imaginative writing."

While Edwards may have "retired" in 2013, his love for teaching about C. S. Lewis continued. A video of an Introduction to an eight week course, which can be viewed on YouTube, gives a glimpse of his personality and his love for his topic. There will be no more videos from Alaska like this, but Lewis enthusiasts are grateful Edwards' legacy will live on through his books, audio and video recordings, and those he taught and influenced.

As Narnians would say, "Further up and further in," Bruce.

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Favorite C. S. Lewis Quotes

"Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if their isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.” --Puddelglum to the Witch in The Silver Chair

Some people when they say that a thing is meant "metaphorically" conclude from this that is is hardly meant at all. They rightly think that Christ spoke metaphorically when he told us to carry the cross: they wrongly conclude that carrying the cross means nothing more than leading a respectable life and subscribing moderately to charities. They reasonably think hell "fire" is a metaphor--and unwisely conclude that it means nothing more serious than remorse. They say the story of the Fall in Genesis is not literal; and then go on to say ... that it was really a fall upwards--which is like saying that because "My heart is broken" contains a metaphor, it therefore means "I feel very cheerful." This mode of interpretation I regard, frankly, as nonsense. ---Miracles

Favorite JRR Tolkien Quotes

"If we are indeed the Eruhin, the Children of the One, then He will not suffer [allow] himself to be deprived of His own, not by any Enemy, not even ourselves." spoken by Finrod in "Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth" (The Debate of Finrod and Andreth), found in the book Morgoth's Ring, by JRR Tolkien edited by his son Christopher

"In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory. Farewell!" Aragorn to Arwen at his death [Appendix A The Return of the King]

"Mighty are the Ainur,and mightiest among them is Melkor [Morgoth]; but now that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see that no theme may be played that hath not it uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined." -- JRR Tolkien's "Ainulindalë" [The Music of the Ainur] in The Silmarillion