Mere Epistemology: Christian Wisdom about Knowing from C.S. Lewis

Justin Barnard—associate dean of the Institute for Intellectual Discipleship and associate professor of philosophy at Union University—has a fun and informative lecture here on what we can learn about knowing from C.S. Lewis:

Barnard makes two “shocking” claims: (1) C.S. Lewis is probably not the greatest Christian apologist of the 20th century, and yet he probably is the greatest Christian epistemologist of the 20th century.

Lewis, he points out, died in 1963, the same year that epistemology as a profession took off. Because Lewis’s most overt epistemological work was done before he was a Christian (in the 1920s), it can be difficult to piece together a full-fledged epistemology. But Barnard argues that Lewis rightly restores knowledge as situated in the context of wisdom and the fear of God, doing this in uniquely Christian though appropriately limited way. Lewis’s epistemology is distinctively eschatological in orientation, focusing on hope as surrendering to the long that the summons of Divine Love is real.

It’s worth watching the whole lecture to see this case made in full.