The Christian Post, ‘Surprised by Oxford’ Film Highlights How C.S. Lewis, Romantic Poets Helped Bring a Skeptic to Faith:

For those who love C.S. Lewis, Carolyn Weber’s conversion story sounds familiar: Like the Chronicles of Narnia author, she was a skeptical Oxford scholar who didn’t see faith as compatible with intellect — until she discovered Christ as the only solution to the “inconsolable longing” every human experience.

“I was very skeptical myself; [Lewis] calls himself ‘the most reluctant convert,’ kicking and screaming,” the award-winning author told The Christian Post. “I really recognized and resonated with that twofold. On one hand, I came from a background of really assuming that intellectualism can’t go hand in hand with faith, and also emotionally from a background in which my earthly father was not dependable, so there was no way I was going to trust in an eternal one.

“There were a lot of metaphysical questions as well as very pragmatic ones. But as I was introduced to the faith and to Christians, and I read the Bible for myself, I was able to sit with those questions and ideas instead of being so distracted: ‘What am I longing for?’ And ultimately the answer to the question, ‘Who do you say I am?’”

It was Lewis’ exploration of joy, longing, and the quest for truth, outlined in his book Surprised by Joy, that deeply resonated with Weber, who today serves as a professor at New College Franklin in Franklin, Tennessee. Her memoir, Surprised by Oxford — the title a nod to Lewis’ book — recounts how, as a young agnostic, she came to faith during her first year at Oxford while studying the Romantic poets and authors. 

It was at Oxford that Weber met her now-husband, Kent, who was the first person to introduce her to the Gospel. The film captures their love story and how Kent pursued Weber despite her initial reluctance, walking alongside her in her pursuit of the truth.

“I think we assume that people know the Gospel in North America, but we don’t,” she said. “I was a perfect example of someone who’s gone through public school and never cracked open a Bible, who has their notion of Jesus through the media or television. Kent articulated clearly the Gospel, and that just sat with me. It was actually very inconvenient. But we were friends for a long time, and one thing that spoke to me was his kindness, his humility, the fact that he was open to questions; he asked me a lot of questions.”

The Gospel Coalition, ‘Surprised by Oxford’ Film Adaptation Is a Pleasant Surprise:

Surprised by Oxford’s story has a heart and a pulse. It’s not just about cerebral arguments. It’s about embodied desire and existential longing. In other words, it’s human. This is why it rises above most in the faith-based film genre. It recognizes that things like romance, comedy, whimsy, beauty, melancholy, longing, and sharing pints with friends are not extraneous to the “more important” goal of communicating truth. Rather, these things are part of how we locate what’s true. This is the discovery Caro makes, as Lewis did. Our unsatisfied longings, restlessness, and divine discontentment—the gut-level feeling of joyful ache, which Lewis calls sehnsucht—can lead us to God. “Maybe we reach for something,” Kent says to Caro, “because that thing is there.”

When someone like Lewis unpacks the “inconsolable longing” of sehnsucht so evocatively, as he does in his narrative of conversion, Surprised by Joy, it becomes a model for how Christians in a secular age might engage unbelievers in faith conversations. We shouldn’t ignore the “head” (logic, debate, rational proofs, defenses of truth)—Lewis certainly didn’t. But we dare not ignore the “heart” either. Truth and beauty needn’t be pitted against each other. They work together to lead us to God, who is, after all, Truth and Beauty.

This is what Surprised by Oxford captures well. It’s a film that values truth and beauty as two sides of the same coin. When we encounter staggering beauty, it bears witness to a truth we can’t deny. And when we encounter truth, it ravishes us like the most beautiful Friedrich painting or Keats poem. Knowledge, as Caro discovers, can only get her so far. She’s made of the same stuff as any of us: both rationality and romance. We are designed not just to know, but also to love.

Humans aren’t emotionless automatons sealed off from the world. We’re porous, deeply relational beings. We’re not just data-crunching machines. We are lovers, worshipers, magnetically drawn to the Lover of our souls. God made us this way.

The brilliance of Carolyn Weber’s book, which the movie captures too, is that the story of God grabbing hold of Caro (conversion narrative) and Kent pursuing her (romance) aren’t vastly different genres smashed together awkwardly. The latter is an earthly picture of the former. If we see beauty in Kent’s old-fashioned, chivalric, persistent, and finally sacrificial pursuit of Caro (and I hope we can, even in our cynical age), it’s because this romance offers a glimpse of a divine reality.

(Hat Tip: Bob Cochran)

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