Since his death in 1963, many collections of remembrances of C. S. Lewis have been published. Among the best are Jocelyn Gibb's Light on C. S. Lewis (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1965), James T. Como's C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table (New York: Macmillan, 1979), and Stephen Schofield, In Search of C. S. Lewis (South Plainfield, N.J.: Bridge, 1983). This delightful anthology of memoirs and essays is a late but notable addition to the genre.

Since its founding in 1982, the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society has provided a lively forum for the discussion of Lewis, his fellow Inklings, and a number of Christian authors often linked with Lewis, including Dorothy Sayers, George MacDonald, and G. K. Chesterton. The Society meets every Tuesday evening during full term, and usually features a talk by an invited speaker, followed by questions and discussion (often continuing, after the formal adjournment, at the Eagle and Child or another nearby pub). More than 200 of these addresses have been recorded by the Society. In this volume, Lewis scholars Roger White, Judith Wolfe, and Brendan Wolfe have collected nineteen talks that they believe will be of particular interest to Lewis scholars and fans.

Among the many noteworthy speakers featured in the collection are Rowan Williams (former Archbishop of Canterbury), Stella Aldwinckle (founder of the Oxford Socratic Club), Owen Barfield (friend and fellow Inkling), George Sayer (student and friend), Walter Hooper (editor and biographer of Lewis), John Wain (student of Lewis and fellow Inkling), Ronald Head (Vicar at the Church Lewis and his brother attended in Headington Quarry), and Peter Bide (priest and friend who married Lewis and Joy Davidman).

One reading that will be of special interest to Lewis scholars is Elizabeth Anscombe's talk on “C. S. Lewis's Rewrite of Chapter III of Miracles.” As is well-known, Lewis and Anscombe engaged in a famous debate in 1948 over Lewis's claim that naturalism is self-refuting (his so-called “argument from reason”). Controversy has swirled over who won the debate and whether Lewis largely abandoned rational apologetics as a result of his perceived defeat. What we know for sure is that Lewis substantially revised and expanded his original argument in the second edition of Miracles (London: Collins-Fontana, 1960), and that Anscombe stated in the early 1980s that Lewis's revised argument was a substantial improvement over the original formulation. What we have not known until now is whether Anscombe believed that Lewis's revised argument was substantially correct.

We can now see that she did not. Anscombe examines Lewis's argument in detail, and finds it to be rife with confusions, ambiguities, and false assertions (16–22). Lewis argues that naturalism undermines itself, because naturalism can only be justifiably believed if it can be rationally inferred from good evidence, and naturalism excludes the possibility of rational inference by claiming that all human mental processes are wholly determined by non-rational causes. In other words, naturalism can be rationally believed only if reasoning is possible. But if naturalism is true, then reasoning is impossible. So if naturalism is true, it cannot be rationally believed (and neither can much else).

Anscombe suggests that this argument rests on a confusion. The fact that a belief or statement is fully determined by non-rational causes has no bearing on whether it is true or rationally justified. Consider, she says, the analogy of a printed book. Every word in such a book is wholly determined by the machinery that printed the book. Yet no one would suppose that this casts any doubt on whether the things said in the book are true or rationally defensible (16). As Anscombe sees it, the whole issue of causal determination is a red herring; even strict, reductionistic naturalists can consistently recognize the existence of reasoning and the possibility of rational beliefs. But Anscombe does find something of real value in Lewis's discussion. Lewis raises the important and deeply puzzling question of how logical grounds can cause a conclusion to be drawn (18). As Anscombe sees it, Lewis's “damnably obscure” claim that an inferred conclusion can be “determined only by the truth it knows” (22) does not do much to solve this problem, but Lewis was right in pointing to the deeply puzzling nature of mental causation.

In the final chapter of this collection, Michael Ward lists some of the well-known figures who have addressed the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society over the years. These include two of J. R. R. Tolkien's children (John and Priscilla), Douglas Gresham (Lewis's stepson), Laurence Harwood (Lewis's godson), Lord David Cecil, Mary Midgeley, John Finnis, Humphrey Carpenter, Basil Mitchell, John Beversluis, and Peter Van Inwagen. One unnamed speaker, we are told, “maintained with unblinking seriousness and against all objections, that Lewis was very definitely now an occupant of hell” (251)! With such illustrious names and tantalizing themes, one can only hope that the archives of the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society will someday yield further published riches.