You Tube Theology

In this episode of the Catholic Biblical Association (CBA) Unbound Book Review, scholars discuss Prof. Leslie Baynes’s 2025 book Between Interpretation and Imagination: C.S. Lewis and the Bible—a reception-history study of how Lewis read Scripture, how his readers received him, and how late-19th- to mid-20th-century biblical interpretation shaped the conversation.

Baynes introduces the book’s three-part argument:

• Lewis’s life + Scripture (with special attention to Lewis’s engagement with Charles Gore)
• Case studies & controversies (including inerrancy debates and Lewis’s most problematic claims about biblical criticism)
• Beyond Allegory: Narnia and the Bible (Lewis’s most subtle and imaginative biblical work—especially around John)

Panelists Prof. Jason Staples (NCSU) and Dr. Robert Foster (Madonna University) explore how Lewis’s literary imagination and genre sensitivity can challenge modern habits of reading—pressing scholars and practitioners to “read from the inside” before analyzing from the outside, and to attend to metaphor, myth, and narrative as vehicles of meaning.

00:00 – Welcome + introduction to the Unbound Book Review and the book
04:23 – Baynes summarizes the book’s thesis + structure (3 parts)
12:47 – Charles Gore, Lux Mundi, and Lewis’s annotated library
19:07 – Sacred fiction, myth, and “myth became fact” trajectories
21:10 – Staples on literary imagination and “reading from the inside”
42:32 – Foster on imagination, metaphor, and theological propositions

Keywords
C.S. Lewis • Bible • biblical interpretation • hermeneutics • reception history • Charles Gore • Lux Mundi • inerrancy • biblical criticism • Gospel of John • genre • myth • imagination • “myth became fact” • Narnia • Reflections on the Psalms • theology and Scripture • Second Temple Judaism

#CSLewis #Bible #BiblicalStudies #Hermeneutics #ReceptionHistory #Narnia #Theology #NewTestament #SecondTempleJudaism #CatholicBiblicalAssociation