Addressing Concrete Human Experience: C.S. Lewis’s Theology of Language as an Inspiration for Today

Addressing Concrete Human Experience: C.S. Lewis’s Theology of Language as an Inspiration for Today

10 Iunie 2024

The aim of the paper is to introduce the basic starting points of C.S. Lewis’s theology of language and offer a possible interconnection of his insights in order to sketch the background on which we can search for the language of theology that would be comprehensible and approachable today. Starting with the introduction of Lewis’s understanding of metaphor in line with the contemporary findings of cognitive linguistics, the paper argues for the view of the figurative nature of human language. In the following chapters, it shows how such a view is interconnected with Lewis’s approach towards myth and the doctrine of the Incarnation to suggest that the contemporary language of theology should be based on the interconnectedness between the divine and natural order, body and spirit, concrete action and abstraction.