When the Eternal Can Be Met excavates the philosophy behind the theology of the twentieth century's most prominent Christian writers: C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, and W.H. Auden. These three literary giants converted to Christianity within little more than a decade of one another, and interestingly, all three theological authors turned to the theme of time. All three authors also came to remarkably similar conclusions about time, positing that the temporal present moment allowed one to meet the eternal. The prominent philosopher Henri Bergson wrote about time's power to transform an individual's emotional and spiritual state decades before Lewis, Eliot, and Auden sought to creatively construct a fictive or poetic theology of time. When the Eternal Can Be Met argues that one cannot fully understand Lewis, Eliot, and Auden's theology of time without understanding Bergson's theories. From the secular philosophy of Bergson dawned the most important works of literary theology and treatments of time of the twentieth century, and in the Bergson-influenced literary constructs of Lewis, Eliot, and Auden, a common theological articulation sounds out - time present is where humans meet God.

Functioning Fantasies explores the functionality as well as the ideological underpinnings of C. S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Perhaps more than any other genre of literature, fantasy texts attempt to represent, challenge, and even modify individual and cultural ideologies. As the classic works of Lewis and Tolkien demonstrate, fantasy literature allows for a multidimensionality of personal and social meanings meant to work against and alongside one another. Both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien demonstrate the social and conceptual functions of fantasy literature. Lewis presents a theological fantasy, in which he depicts foundational tenets of Christian doctrine through a fantastic narrative. Tolkien's children's text, The Hobbit, also reflects and recasts aspects of childhood against the backdrop of a specific social context-a post World War I society.