What Did C.S. Lewis's Works Say About His Religious Views?

"A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading," said C.S. Lewis, famous author and converted Christian convert. Clive Staples Lewis - known as Jack to his family and friends - was born in 1898 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Albert and Flora Lewis, Ulster Protestants, took their sons to church every Sunday.[1] C.S. Lewis found these services vapid, souring his taste for Christianity, a feeling compounded by the death of his mother in August 1908 and his experiences from his active duty tour in World War I. [2] Lewis received a degree from Oxford University in classics and philosophy in 1922. He accepted a fellowship at Magdalen College and in 1926 sought publication for his poem,

Dymer, a piece that described God as a seductive illusion. It was in this academic atmosphere that Lewis mingled with other scholars interested in theology. Throughout the 1930s Lewis was part of a group that called themselves "The Inklings" that met regularly to discuss Christianity and the developing threat of science to faith. Such Inklings included Owen Barfield, J.R.R Tolkien, Adam Fox, Charles Williams, and Hugo Dyson.[3] Conversations with his peers and his own reading of the New Testament gradually convinced Lewis to convert. Lewis described his own conversion, having decided upon abandoning atheism after a motorcycle ride with his brother, "When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did."[4] C.S. Lewis would become widely known as an apologetic Christian and for his allegoric writing. Owen Barfield observed of his fellow Inkling that there were three Lewises: the lauded academic, the well known novelist, and the Christian apologist. It was possible to meet one Lewis without any knowledge of the other two.[5]

Lewis's writings were saturated with allegory and Christian symbolism and not in a subtle way. He explored religion and faith in different fictional settings and did not see it as his job to convert or to create controversy. He wanted to "tell the outside world what Christians believe."[6] Building his stories on his experiences and normal circumstances he circumvented arguing for Christianity and focused on showing what Christianity is. He did this in his widely acclaimed BBC theology broadcasts and in his writing.[7]

This goal was most exemplified in his

Mere Christianity which started out as a fifteen minute broadcast series for the BBC which later published the transcripts.

Mere Christianity lays out Lewis's interpretation of the Christian Moral Law, the Christian personality, and among other things explaining the nature of faith as it pertains to Christian behavior, "Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods."[8] He concludes in Chapter IV, "But what man, in his natural condition, has not got, is Spiritual life-the higher and different sort of life that exists in God."[9]

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One of his more famous fiction novels, the children series

The Chronicles of Narnia, is strewn with blatant Christian symbolism though Lewis claims the origin of the story was not to preach. He explained that his approach to the Narnia series was not written with the solitary intention of being allegorical. Rather, he imagined a world - Narnia - in which the son of God appeared as a lion (a known representation for God) and then imagined what would happen. The characters were simply exploring the nature of God in a parallel universe. Each of the seven books was a timeline beginning with the introduction of evil to Narnia in

The Magician's Nephew and the judgment and coming of the Antichrist in

The Last Battle.[10] Aside from the overarching allegorical plot symbolism permeates the scenes and characters. For example, in

The Lion Witch and the Wardrobe, the Christ character is a lion, Aslan. Four children who find their way into Narnia discover it in the clutch of an evil White Witch. Throughout the story the children must fight to save Narnia with the help of Aslan who returns to the land. In the story Father Christmas, a symbol for God or the Holy Spirit, gives the children weapons and supplies - tools to fight the evil intruders. The White Witch lures one of the children, Edmund, to her castle and he is manipulated into betraying Aslan and his siblings just as Judas betrayed Christ. Aslan deals with the devil (the White Witch) and agrees to sacrifice himself for Edmund's life. Aslan however is "resurrected" and he and the children defeat the witch.

A more forward allegory, Lewis's autobiographical The Pilgrim's Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and Romanticism,chartered the main character's path to conversion sparked by his dream of a beautiful land, Puritania, and his subsequent journey to find it. [11]In The Screwtape Letters a young demon apprentices to learn how to pursue the human soul. Lewis noted that he found writing The Screwtape Letters distasteful because he felt it put his own soul in jeopardy. [12]In 1960 Lewis compared divine love of Christianity (affection among friends and family) to love of the Freudian kind (sex and sexual fantasies, eroticism, and lust) in his book The Four Loves. [13] Lewis describes the power of a pure divine love - Christian charity - and concludes that if we understand this love we are more likely to find the love we look for. [14]

Through his writing, reading, and friendships Lewis also develops a love of astrology. He denounces the Copernican theory that the sun was the center of the universe and believed that the pre-Copernican universe was more Christian. Now, we look up and see a vast black vacuum. In the middle ages - precopernican - we saw planets and beyond them stars and beyond that we understood that there was the home of God. Lewis was particularly attached the divine quality of stars and planets. His notion that the heavens were divine appears in his trilogy Out of the Silent Planet in which the main character becomes enlightened, "Space was the wrong name. Older thinkers had been wiser when they named it simply the heavens..." The trilogy is Lewis's bid that the Copernican theory vacuumed all spirituality out of the heavens and now the planets were regarded only materialistically as rocks and gas rather than having spiritual significance. The bible refers to the stars divinely and Lewis regurgitates this idea in Out of the Silent Planet.[15]

C.S. Lewis is a renowned writer today due to and perhaps despite of his ability to insert Christian themes into an engaging plot. He did not force his faith on people but displayed it for them to see clearly. He allowed us to examine the relationships between God and humans in so many different angles (and parallel universes). As a child I devoured The Chronicles of Narnia and did not recognize it as Christian product placement. I saw it was a story. A favorite line, "Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you." It did not convince me to be religious, but it established morals nonetheless. Storytelling is the most ancient way to get across God's meaning. C.S. Lewis is among the many famous writers that took God's message to the next level and interpreted it - and left it for the interpretation by the masses.

[1] M. Packer, "C.S. Lewis: Biography,"

BBC: Religion & Ethics, 30 Nov. 2005, 14 May. 2008

< http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/people/cslewis_print.html >.

[2] "The Life of C.S. Lewis,"

PBS: The Question of God, 2004. 13 May. 2008

< http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/twolives/lewisbio.html >.

[3]

PBS: The Question of God 1 of 2.

[4] Packer 4 of 19.

[5] Bruce L. Edwards, "C. S. Lewis: A Modest Literary Biography and Bibliography,"

Bowling Green State University, 25 May. 2008 < http://personal.bgsu.edu/~edwards/biobib.html >.

[6] Sarah Macdonald, "C.S. Lewis: Christian Apologist,"

AD2000, Dec. 2000. 14 May 2008

< http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/2000/decjan2000p8_279.html >.

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[7]Joseph Leconte, "A Mind that Grasped Both Heaven and Hell,"

The New York Times: Opinion, 22. Nov. 2003. 16 May. 2008

< http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9803E6DE123BF931A15752C1A9659C8B63 >.

[8] C.S. Lewis,

Mere Christianity (NY: HarperCollins, 1952) 140.

[9] C.S. Lewis 159.

[10] Austin Cline, "C.S. Lewis and Christian Allegory,"

About.com: Atheism/Agnosticism, 2007. 14 May. 2008

< http://atheism.about.com/od/cslewisnarnia/a/chroniclenarnia.htm?p=1 >.

[11] "C.S. Lewis,"

Philosophy of Religion, 2008, 14 May. 2008

< http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/?page_id=112 >.

[12] Packer 11 of 19.

[13]

PBS: The Question of God 2 of 2.

[14] Christine Smolynsky, "C.S. Lewis' 'Four Loves' Defines The Ultimate Love,"

Georgia Bulletin, 4 Mar. 2004, 15 May. 2008 < http://www.georgiabulletin.org/local/2004/03/04/Four_Loves/ >.

[15] Michael Ward, "CS Lewis and the Star of Bethlehem,"

Christianity Today, Jan. 2008, 16 May. 2008

< http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2008/001/15.30.html >.