Sons of Adam, Daughters of Eve
C.S. Lewis’ Images of Gender
Joshua Phillip Herring
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About this book
All of reality, gender included, is a gift.
In the modern mind, the individual is a self-created being capable and even responsible for continued re-creation. This has led to a confused culture propelled by an endless striving for personal fulfillment at any cost, most recently exemplified in the transgender movement. While it may be tempting to dismiss this movement as a facet of the world outside the church, it is incumbent upon Christian thinkers to grapple with its complex theoretical underpinnings in order to give a counterargument to a confused culture. The work of C. S. Lewis provides a framework for such a study. In his work, Lewis presents the human person within the doctrine of creation. As with all of reality, gender, he posits, is a gift. The proper response of a gift is first to receive it, and then work out the potential within it. Rather than encouraging humans to re-create themselves in bodily form, Lewis re-enchants the imagination to rightly perceive the complex nature of human beings made male and female.
Paperback | 234 pages | 6×9 | Published August 14, 2025 | ISBN 978-1-949716-69-6
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FROM THE BOOK
“While this book applies Lewis’s thought to the specific area of gender, Lewis’s theory applies much more broadly than to this singular issue. Broadly construed, gender theory in contemporary thought derives from the critical tradition inaugurated by the men Paul Ricouer called the “masters of suspicion”: Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. These thinkers taught their disciples that reality is hidden behind what is perceived, and critique is the method to reveal the real. Lewis begins not with critique, but with receptivity. Reality is not some deceptive prison meant to oppress, but the rich gift of a superabundant Creator whose love overflows into a bountiful reality. In that sense, Lewis’s theory of the given is a theory-of-everything. The attitude of receptivity and gratitude becomes, for him, the proper human response to all aspects of creation. Such an attitude is not naive, but rather the same beginning point Plato articulated in the Theaetetus dialogue: “Philosophy begins in wonder.” Wonder, as Peter Kreeft argues, leads to understanding and evaluation. Critique still has a place, but as a subsequent step following acceptance and appreciation of what something is. Lewis’s approach, therefore, functions as a Christian philosophical response to critical theory in a variety of forms. Rather than beginning in an assumed Marxist dialectic, Nietzschean power dynamic, or Freudian sexual desire, a proper response to encountering reality begins with feminine receptivity towards the gift and then working out the implications of what is given.”
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1
“Ideas Have Consequences”: The Cost of a False Theory of Gender
Chapter 2
“On the Shoulders of Giants”: Lewis’ Debt to Spenser and Milton
Chapter 3
“A Still More Excellent Way”: Receiving the Given
Chapter 4
“Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve”: Images of Gender in The Chronicles of Narnia
Chapter 5
“Further Up and Higher In”: Gratitude for the Gift in The Chronicles of Narnia
Praise for this work
“C.S. Lewis observed and decried the early stirrings of misconceptions about sexual difference and explained those errors in his essays, while giving enduring images of them and of right understanding in his fiction. In prose that is academic but readable, Joshua Herring brilliantly analyzes the essays and demonstrates the ways in which Lewis gives imaginative shape to his insights in the Narnia chronicles and the space trilogy. One of the great strengths of this highly original book is Herring’s exposition of the influence of two great Renaissance poets —Spenser and Milton — on Lewis’s work.”
– Benjamin Lockerd
Research Fellow, Faulkner University
About the Author
Josh Herring earned a BA from Hillsdale College in 2011, an MDiv from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2016, and a PhD in Humanities with Concentration in Literature from Faulkner University in 2023. After ten years in the classical classroom, Josh began teaching at Thales College, where he is now Professor of Humanities and Classical Education.
MORE FROM DAVENANT PRESS
The Davenant Institute endeavors to restore wisdom for the contemporary church. We seek to sponsor historical scholarship at the intersection of the church and academy, build friendships and facilitate collaboration within the Reformed and evangelical world, and equip the saints with time-tested resources for faithful public witness. Below are some of the works we’ve published towards that end.
