C. S. Lewis was one of the Language and literature good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
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The following issues have been extensively discussed and there is strong consensus for the status quo. Although consensus can change, we kindly ask that you familiarize yourself with previous discussion on the following topics before raising any of these issues again.
Resolved That C.S Lewis's birth place is not Northern Ireland, which did not exist at the time of his birth.
Wikipedia talk pages are not forums, nor are they social media. If you have something to add to the article, produce your source. If not, find somewhere else to chat about it. —VeryRarelyStable00:14, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have reverted out information restored in a perfectly good faith edit here [1]. I reverted under WP:ONUS and because I think the initial removal has a point, although perhaps more under WP:DUE than fringe. So the challenged material has:
The Pluralist theologian John Hick claimed that New Testament scholars do not now support the view that Jesus claimed to be God.
The statement is sourced and probably correct inasmuch as Hick said it, but the page is about Lewis, not Hick. If Hick is claiming that as phrased there, we could criticise Hick, but Hick's criticism is not particularly representative of criticism of Lewis. I don't see what it is doing there. Now if Lewis specifically addressed Hick, that would be due, but this, phrased in this way is not a criticism of Lewis' argument per se. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 08:30, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Reading Hick, I think there may be something we could say here that does quote Hick, but what we have is not right. Hick specifically does attack Lewis on page 29, and does base this on his own view that NT scholars do not believe Jesus claimed divinity (but his evidence includes quoting authors that simply dismiss the historicity of the claims in the gospels - a move that does not criticise the argument per se). I think the nub of the argument is that if Jesus did not claim to be God, then the trilemma fails. Hick is not alone in claiming that Jesus did not claim to be God, but he doesn't have the near unanimity he claims either. I think this could be written more clearly and then go back in. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:09, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hick's central argument is that Jesus' apparent claims to be God in the Gospels are now generally accepted by scholars to be later additions; that the earliest Christian belief was that Jesus became divine, by the gift of God, upon his resurrection – a view he supports with quotes not only from other scholars but also from the Book of Acts and St Paul's epistle to the Romans. He then addresses Lewis's argument in one sentence:
All this rules out the once popular form of apologetic which argues that someone claiming to be God must be either mad, or bad, or God; and since Jesus was evidently not mad or bad he must have been God (e.g. Lewis 1955, 51-2).
Calling this an attack is a bit of a stretch, I feel. It is a cogent answer to Lewis's argument, but only mentions Lewis himself in passing. I feel we should still mention it, but I do agree it would be better to find someone specifically criticizing Lewis's formulation of the argument on similar grounds.
Recent edits have added a political views section that tells us some thought he was a classical liberal, that he believed in a small state but did not oppose a welfare state, and that he was not an egalitarian but a democratic monarchist. His views on class and gender were essentialist and ultimately he was therefore a conservative. This is perhaps on the back of the attempts to add Lewis as a leading light of political conservatism with a certain template that was added.
I find the whole focus of this section to be wrongheaded, sorry. I think we are starting with a modern set of partisan ideas and concepts and trying to shoehorn Lewis into these. If that is just to claim him for the conservatism template, that would be quite wrong. But in any case, we are starting at the wrong end. We can't take questions like the small state one and try to make those fit with Lewis' thinking based on comments he has made. That looks like WP:OR. Instead we should start with Lewis, and what he said and what he wrote. And on that, there are very few sources on his political thought, because Lewis did not regard himself as a great philosopher - certainly not a political philosopher, and he absolutely eschewed partisan politics, and politicians in general. Every single person who knew him well was perfectly clear that he eschewed politics. His objective in his writings, and his focus, was as a Christian apologist. His beliefs began with a Christian worldview. And note: that does not equate to conservatism, regardless of any modern conception in the US of a religious right.
There is one very good source, however, that does look at his writings and attempts to discern his underlying political views - because yes, every person has some of those. That work is C.S. Lewis on politics and the natural law.[1] Whilst we could make use of that work to describe Lewis' political views, this section would then look quite different. We would have to begin (as they do) with how he disliked partisan politics and politicians and eschewed the political sphere, and thus refused a knighthood. And note the title: the only thing on which he really has a lot to say is the concept of natural law. Not as a partisan viewpoint but grounded in his apologetics. His contributions on the subject, according to Dyer et al, were on Natural law, the importance of moral education and individual freedom. Inasmuch as these are political, we could say that. But they are not partisan, and should not be described as such.
References
^Dyer, Justin Buckley; Watson, Micah Joel (2016). C.S. Lewis on politics and the natural law. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN1107108241.
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Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the 