Content area
Full Text
Victor Reppert. C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: A Philosophical Defense of Lewis's Argument from Reason. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003. 132 pp. $15.00, ISBN 9780830827329.
Like many of us, Victor Reppert, Professor of Philosophy at Glendale Community College in Arizona, has long been intrigued by the thought of C. S. Lewis, especially his socalled argument from reason (developed by Lewis most fully in chapter three of his book Miracles: A Preliminary Study). C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea, an obvious allusion to Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995), is a title doubtlessly chosen to highlight Lewis's anticipation of the Darwinian naturalists' repackaging of age-old arguments. The author of numerous articles on Lewis's arguments, Reppert provides his readers a fresh, clear, and able exposition and defense of what he calls C. S. Lewis's dangerous idea: that a purely naturalistic account of the world cannot explain the reality of human rationality.
In the first of six chapters, Reppert tackles the unfortunate and misguided tendency of many to dismiss Lewis's arguments as less than serious. This, he observes, is often a result of "the personal heresy," that is, "focusing on Lewis himself rather than what he had to say" (28). For example, given his preoccupation with other matters, Lewis did not offer detailed responses to many of the major philosophical problems of his day (such as absolute idealism and logical positivism), thus costing himself-in the eyes of many, at least-the status of "real philosopher" (20), never mind the success of his arguments. This sentiment is shortsighted indeed; Lewis's thought, Reppert argues, deserves fair and honest consideration.
Before approaching Lewis's argument from reason (AFR), Reppert spends the second chapter discussing how we are to go about assessing apologetic arguments. He frames the discussion in terms of three views on the relationship between faith and reason: fideism, strong rationalism, and critical rationalism. It is fairly obvious, given his eagerness to discuss and defend Christianity's claims, that Lewis was anything but a fideist. Accordingly, Reppert makes quick work of this stance. At the opposite extreme is strong...