Клайв Льюис – C. S. Lewis Bible: New Revised Standard Version (страница 4)
ADVISORY BOARD
Gayne Anacker is vice president of the C. S. Lewis Foundation and professor of philosophy at California Baptist University.
Sarah Arthur is a founding board member of the award-winning Michigan C. S. Lewis Festival and the author of numerous youth resources on C. S. Lewis, including
Devin Brown is a Lilly Scholar and a professor of English at Asbury University, where he teaches a class on C. S. Lewis. He is the author of
Michael J. Christensen is director of the Shalom Initiative for Prophetic Leadership and Community Development and affiliate associate professor of spirituality and religious studies at Drew University. He is also an ordained United Methodist minister and the author of
Fr. Andrew Cuneo is a priest in the Orthodox Church and has taught English literature at Hillsdale College. He obtained his M.Phil. and D.Phil. in English from Merton College at the University of Oxford.
Lyle Dorsett is the Billy Graham Professor of Evangelism at Beeson Divinity School and was the former head of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College. He is also the author of
Colin Duriez has written several books on C. S. Lewis and the Inklings, including
Bruce L. Edwards is professor of English and Africana studies at Bowling Green State University (Ohio) and has served as a C. S. Lewis Foundation Fellow at the Kilns in Oxford, England. He is also the editor of
Paul Ford is a professor of systematic theology and liturgy at St. John’s Seminary, is an internationally recognized authority on the life and writings of C. S. Lewis, and is the award-winning author of
Garry Friesen is a professor of Bible at Multnomah Bible College, where he teaches a course on C. S. Lewis. His Ph.D. is from Dallas Seminary, where he did a master’s thesis on Lewis’s view of Scripture. Garry mentors six college students at his house, which has a Narnia theme that brings hundreds every year for a tour. He is an elder at Imago Dei Community and has just finished twenty years’ work on a C. S. Lewis Scripture index with ten thousand entries.
Walter Hooper is a trustee and literary adviser of the estate of C. S. Lewis. In 1963 he served briefly as Lewis’s private secretary, and after Lewis’s death he devoted himself to Lewis’s memory, eventually taking up residence in Oxford, England, where he now lives.
Reed Jolley is a pastor at Santa Barbara Community Church and contributor to
Don King is professor of English at Montreat College, editor of the
Art Lindsley is a senior fellow at the C. S. Lewis Institute and is the author of
Marjorie Lamp Mead is associate director of the Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College (Illinois). She is coeditor of
Earl Palmer was the former senior pastor of University Presbyterian Church and is a speaker at the C. S. Lewis Institute.
Jerry Root wrote both his M.A. thesis and Ph.D. dissertation on C. S. Lewis. He has been teaching college and graduate courses on C. S. Lewis for over thirty years. He currently teaches at Wheaton College (Illinois) and is a visiting professor at Biola University and Talbot Graduate School of Theology. He is the author of
Revd. Dr. Jeanette Sears was formerly the president of the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society and is currently a tutor in doctrine and church history at Trinity College, Bristol, England. She has a Ph.D. in theology (Manchester), was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard, and is an Anglican priest, novelist, and author of
Dick Staub is an award-winning broadcaster, writer, and speaker whose work focuses on understanding faith and culture and interpreting each to the other. The Kindlings organization he oversees (www.TheKindlings.com) is inspired by the intellectual, creative, and spiritual legacy of C. S. Lewis and the Inklings.
James E. Taylor teaches philosophy at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. He directed the Philosophy Symposium at the C. S. Lewis Foundation’s Oxbridge 2008 Summer Institute in Oxford and Cambridge.
Dr. Michael Ward is chaplain of St. Peter’s College, Oxford, and author of
WHY A C. S. LEWIS BIBLE?
by Douglas Gresham
It seems to me that many annotated Bibles are exercises in one man, or one committee of men, presenting their own wisdom and the results of their own biblical studies to the public at large, and while I ascribe to them the very best motives in the world, there still seems to me to be just a touch of arrogance attached to such an endeavour. After all, what is being said is “I/We have studied the Bible for years and I/we have achieved such wisdom therefrom that you need to read my/our comments in order to understand the Bible as deeply and as well as I/we do, which it is of vital importance for you to do.”
However, this annotated Bible is very different. This is a case of the understanding of a man who never thought of himself as a theologian but always regarded himself as a rank amateur in such matters, and yet is now, more than forty-five years after his death, regarded as one of the leading theologians of his day. This is a man who never presented himself as any kind of psychologist and yet now is thought of as a man who understood human thinking and humanity better than any other writer of his time. This is a man who never imagined himself to be a biblical scholar and yet who read and memorised a chapter of the Bible every single day. He is a man who left those of us who have read all his works with one everlasting regret, it is that he did not write more, far more, than he did. And it is not he who has put his thoughts and understandings into this work, but a group of fine scholars, many years after his death, for C. S. Lewis, known as “Jack” by his family and friends, has become one of the most studied and respected writers of the twentieth century.
In all of Jack’s published works, again and again we find great gems of wisdom and knowledge; passages keep appearing that leave us stunned and amazed at the great depth of comprehension that this man exhibited. In the thousands of letters of his enormous correspondence, again and again we find words of warm, compassionate advice to people all over the world who had approached him by mail with a problem. Others, desperate under the thrall of some horrific experience, turned to Jack for solace. He responded not with merely trite and easy utterances glibly borrowed from some self-help book found in a library of such dreary tomes, but with cogent and well-thought-out answers to their problems and difficulties, were they spiritual, emotional, or merely mundane. In the pages of the published volumes of his letters1 we find such wisdom on so many matters that in today’s world of specialisation it is hard to believe that one man could be so knowledgeable and so understanding about so many topics of human striving. The truth is that he wasn’t, or at least he wasn’t all by himself.
As Sir Isaac Newton wisely said: “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” And Jack himself would have been the first to admit that much of his almost unbelievable wealth of knowledge and understanding of so many things of the world came from his voracious reading habits. Since his early childhood, Jack would devour books—books of all kinds, shapes, sizes, and content, and he remembered almost all that he had ever read. Jack knew that the wisdom of the world was all to be found within the pages of books, and he sopped it up like a sponge.
However, there was more than merely worldly wisdom in what Jack read, for the Holy Spirit of God is also present in all great literature. Furthermore, Jack had guidance—guidance that he checked and perused every day, and guidance that he sought and entreated every day. For as well as being a man who relentlessly studied the Bible, Jack was also a man who prayed, continually seeking the wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit. He put the problems of others before his maker as often if not more often, and as earnestly if not more earnestly, as he put his own. To seek out the real origins of the godly compassion, understanding, and wisdom with which Jack’s writings are filled would take many years of study and deep thought. We are fortunate indeed that there are scholars today who have been prepared to devote their lives, or at least a goodly portion of them, to just such an endeavour. What you hold in your hands is the assiduous work of many scholars who, with great skill, have brought together hundreds of things that Jack has written from the Narnian chronicles, his scholarly essays, his Christian apologetic works, and even his letters to friends and strangers, to show us how, through the torturous paths of life and literature, they all lead back to the One True Source, the Bible.