Published July 19, 2026
C.S. Lewis can’t fix everything.
It is tempting to try, though. Lewis was a wise and learned man with a knack for expressing philosophical and theological truths in ways that were both comprehensible and memorable. He had much to say about many things, and so looking up what Lewis said about something is often an express lane to insight.
This is the impetus for Joshua Herring’s new book, Sons of Adam, Daughters of Eve: C.S. Lewis’ Images of Gender, which looks to Lewis for help with our culture’s gender troubles. As Herring notes, the “consensus on human anthropology has shifted,” leaving our age confused about matters such as what a woman is. And so he looks to Lewis for answers and believes that he finds them, and in them a guide to living well (or at least better) in this world. In Herring’s words, “By articulating a strong understanding of the human person as gendered, and of gender as a complex yet unavoidable part of reality, Lewis equips a confused modernity to recover wisdom in the face of technological possibility.”
And this equipping is as much an imaginative one as it is philosophical or theological. Our views of ourselves and reality are formed as much, or more, by stories and images as they are by reasoning. Of course, Lewis wrote wonderful stories for both children and adults, and so Herring sets about rebutting the false philosophies of the likes of Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler not just with facts and logic, but with the better stories Lewis told, which fire our imaginations and instruct our hearts. These tales, Herring argues, can teach us how to understand and embrace the realities of sex and gender, viewing them as good gifts from God: “Lewis invites his readers to discover the goodness of gender, and in so doing his myth making re-enchants the mind to perceive the complexity and wonder of being made imago dei.”
Click here to continue reading.
Nathanael Blake, Ph.D. is a Fellow in the Life and Family Initiative at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. His first book, Victims of the Revolution: How Sexual Liberation Hurts Us All, was published by Ignatius Press in Spring 2025. As a cultural commentator, Dr. Blake has published hundreds of articles at outlets including Public Discourse, World Opinions, The Federalist, Catholic World Report, and the University Bookman.
