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Abstract

C. S. Lewis wrote extensively about gender in both nonfiction and fiction works. In nonfiction, he lays out a specific understanding of gender with logical clarity; in fiction, Lewis develops a series of poetic images magnifying the depth of meaning found in being masculine and feminine. In both forms of writing, Lewis celebrates the goodness of God’s gift of gender, and summons his readers to receive the gift with gratitude. Reading Lewis’s works on gender functions as an antidote to gender ideology. Rather than a severing of felt experience and bodily reality, Lewis calls his readers to see the ideas of masculinity and femininity as the higher realities which express themselves in physical form. Such a view invites each human being into the larger story of God’s creation, enabling gratitude for being made imago dei: “male and female created he them.” His essays on gender are occasional in that certain moments prompted Lewis to bring forth his reasoning with logic and clarity. In “Priestesses in the Church?” Lewis considers gender as part of God’s creational order and argues that only a male priest can represent God to the congregation. Lewis’s ideas about gender fit within the theory of natural law and human nature outlined in The Abolition of Man. In The Four Loves, Lewis considers the question of friendship between the sexes; in that context, he makes an argument both about what is required for friendship, and how the sexes relate within that matrix. Because men and women share in the imago dei, friendship between the sexes is possible; Lewis contended that such friendship was highly unlikely because men and women lacked the common activities, interests, and intellectual preparation to form the matrix from which friendship grew. In this respect, Lewis’s conclusion would most likely change in the present given the rise in female participation in aspects of life previously only available to men. Today, men and women have a great deal of common activities, and more women are attaining the highest academic levels of study than men. Both of these changes enable a greater potential friendship between men and women.

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