The last interview (Part 7)

Sherwood Wirt: Do you believe that the Holy Spirit can speak to the world through Christian writers today?

C.S. Lewis: I prefer to make no judgment concerning a writer’s direct ‘illumination’ by the Holy Spirit. I have no way of knowing whether what is written is from heaven or not. I do believe that God is the Father of lights — natural lights as well as spiritual lights (James 1:17). That is, God is not interested only in Christian writers as such. He is concerned with all kinds of writing. In the same way a sacred calling is not limited to ecclesiastical functions. The man who is weeding a field of turnips is also serving God.

Wirt: An American writer, Mr Dewey Beegle, has stated that in his opinion the Isaac Watts hymn, ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’, is more inspired by God than is the ‘Song of Solomon’ in the Old Testament. What would be your view?

Lewis: The great saints and mystics of the church have felt just the opposite about it. They have found tremendous spiritual truth in the ‘Song of Solomon’. There is a difference of levels here. The question of the canon is involved. Also we must remember that what is meat for a grown person might be unsuited to the palate of a child.

Sherwood Wirt interviewing C.S. Lewis, “Cross-Examination,” God in the Dock (Eerdmans: 1970) 264 with appropriate additions from the originally published interview in Decision magazine, September 1963, ©1963 Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

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