“For the knowledge of God, we need a humble mind – to know God is to be thrilled by Him, to be enveloped in joy that is closest to that of a child!” – Dr. Jerry Root (April 25, 2025, Osijek)
Yesterday, Dr. Jerry Root, Emeritus Professor at Wheaton College (USA), and visiting professor at three other universities where he teaches C.S. Lewis courses, visited the Evangelical Theological College in Osijek. Dr. Root has been teaching about C.S. Lewis for over forty-one years. With his lecture in Osijek, Croatia became the 20th country where this renowned expert on the author of “The Chronicles of Narnia” has lectured, and our college became the 82nd institution to host him, among many others worldwide.
The event was opened by Dr. Greg Thellman, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs, and Dr. Dalibor Kraljik, Dean of the Evangelical Theological College, who welcomed the guest.
During the two-hour session, Dr. Root spoke to the Osijek audience about theology, history, literature, and film theory. He also demonstrated his storytelling skills and acting abilities, at times reenacting situations from C.S. Lewis’s life and his own, when he had to explain, for example, why he is a Christian and what Lewis means to him in that regard. “Lewis gave me the words I lacked when speaking to others about God. He helped me bring God’s reality, which transcends our own, closer to those seeking the Truth,” Dr. Root said. “To know God, we need a humble mind – to know God is to be thrilled by Him, enveloped in a joy that is closest to a child’s! Before encountering Lewis, I did not understand that what Jesus uses is imaginative communication, storytelling full of metaphors and images, illustrations. That is what Jesus did to bring His disciples then, and us today, closer to God’s reality, which is intuitively accessible to us, but different from everything around us,” Dr. Root explained. “Authors like C.S. Lewis teach us that when we gain the first clarity about God, we need to understand that it is not the whole truth but the beginning of our knowledge of God. Behind that first clarity comes a deeper clarity, and then a third, even deeper one… As we grow older, we get to know God more and more. Our faith grows with us because theology is not a one-time knowledge but an approximation of the knowledge of God,” said Dr. Root.
The event concluded with the premiere performance of the composition “The Horse and His Boy” by composer Vanessa Kovačević, which delighted the audience and Dr. Root himself.
Dr. Jerry Root is currently one of the world’s foremost experts on C.S. Lewis, a renowned popularizer of Christianity and the author of “The Chronicles of Narnia,” “The Screwtape Letters,” “Mere Christianity,” and other books that have also been translated here. If you didn’t know, our college library holds 10 first editions of C.S. Lewis’s works and over 150 books by this author and J.R.R. Tolkien! Come visit us and learn about God with us!
