**Links**: > [!NOTE|no-title] > [[CS Lewis on Philosophy]] > [CS Lewis on Love]([[Love]]) # C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) > [!summary] In one sentence C. S. Lewis was an Oxford and Cambridge scholar who went from confident atheist to the most widely read Christian writer of the twentieth century, defending the faith with reason, imagination, and clear, everyday language. --- # Quick Facts | | | | --- | --- | | **Full name** | Clive Staples Lewis, known to friends as "Jack" | | **Born** | November 29, 1898, Belfast, Ireland | | **Died** | November 22, 1963, Oxford, England (the same day President Kennedy was assassinated) | | **Church** | Church of England (Anglican) | | **Career** | Fellow and tutor in English at Magdalen College, Oxford (1925-1954); Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge (1954-1963) | | **Best known for** | *Mere Christianity*, *The Screwtape Letters*, *The Chronicles of Narnia* | --- ## His Life ### Childhood and loss Lewis grew up in Belfast with his older brother, Warren ("Warnie"), who would be his lifelong companion. When Lewis was nine, his mother died of cancer. He later described that loss as the moment his settled happiness disappeared. He had prayed for her healing, and when she died, his childhood faith began to fade. ### Atheism and war At boarding school and under a brilliant, rigorously logical private tutor, William Kirkpatrick, Lewis became a committed atheist. He served in World War I and was wounded in the Battle of Arras in 1918. After the war, he studied at Oxford and earned top honors in classics, philosophy, and English. ### The reluctant convert As a young Oxford professor, Lewis found his atheism harder and harder to defend. Writers he admired, such as George MacDonald and G. K. Chesterton, kept pointing him toward God, and so did some of his closest friends. - **1929:** He came to believe in God. In his autobiography, he describes himself as perhaps the most reluctant convert in all of England. - **1931:** After a long late-night conversation with his friends **J. R. R. Tolkien** and Hugo Dyson about myth and truth, Lewis began to see the story of Jesus as the one "true myth," the story that actually happened in history. Within days, he believed that Jesus is the Son of God. ### The Inklings Lewis was at the center of the **Inklings**, an informal group of writers and friends who met in his college rooms and at an Oxford pub called The Eagle and Child. They read their works in progress aloud and critiqued them. Members included Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and Warren Lewis. Much of _The Lord of the Rings_ was first heard in those meetings. ### The war years and the radio talks During World War II, the BBC invited Lewis to give a series of radio talks explaining the Christian faith to a nation at war. Millions listened. Those talks later became _**Mere Christianity**_ (1952). ### Love and grief Late in life, Lewis met the American writer **Joy Davidman**, a former atheist who had become a Christian. Their friendship grew into love. They married in 1956, shortly before she was diagnosed with cancer, and had a Christian marriage service at her hospital bedside in 1957. After a period of remission, Joy died in 1960. Lewis wrote about his grief with raw honesty in _**A Grief Observed**_, first published under a pen name. He raised her two sons, David and Douglas Gresham. ### His death Lewis died at his home near Oxford on November 22, 1963, one week before his 65th birthday. In 2013, on the 50th anniversary of his death, he was honored with a memorial in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey. --- ## His Major Works |Category|Works| |---|---| |**Apologetics**|_The Problem of Pain_ (1940), _Mere Christianity_ (1952), _Miracles_ (1947)| |**Christian living**|_The Screwtape Letters_ (1942), _The Four Loves_ (1960), _Reflections on the Psalms_ (1958), _Letters to Malcolm_ (1964)| |**Culture and ethics**|_The Abolition of Man_ (1943)| |**Allegory**|_The Pilgrim's Regress_ (1933), _The Great Divorce_ (1945)| |**Children's fiction**|_The Chronicles of Narnia_ (seven books, 1950-1956)| |**Science fiction**|The Space Trilogy: _Out of the Silent Planet_, _Perelandra_, _That Hideous Strength_ (1938-1945)| |**Novel**|_Till We Have Faces_ (1956), often considered his finest fiction| |**Autobiography and grief**|_Surprised by Joy_ (1955), _A Grief Observed_ (1961)| |**Scholarship**|_The Allegory of Love_ (1936), _English Literature in the Sixteenth Century_ (1954)| --- ## His Key Ideas ### 1. "Mere Christianity" Lewis wanted to explain and defend the core beliefs that Christians of nearly every tradition have held, rather than the points that divide them. He compared the Christian faith to a large house with a central hallway and many rooms. The hallway is where you enter, but the rooms are where you live. He encouraged readers to find a room, a church, and to treat those in other rooms with kindness. ### 2. The moral argument Every human being, Lewis observed, appeals to a standard of right and wrong that they didn't invent. We quarrel about fairness, expect others to keep promises, and feel guilt when we fail. This "law of human nature" points to a Lawgiver behind the universe (Romans 2:14-15). ### 3. The trilemma: Lord, liar, or lunatic Lewis argued that Jesus' claims about Himself leave us only a few options. A man who claimed to forgive sins and to be one with God could not simply be a good moral teacher. He would either be deceiving people, deeply deluded, or exactly who He said He was. We have to decide. ### 4. The argument from desire Lewis described a deep longing, which he called **Joy** (and sometimes by the German word _Sehnsucht_), that nothing in this world fully satisfies. He reasoned that natural desires correspond to real things: hunger to food, thirst to water. If we find a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the best explanation is that we were made for another world (Ecclesiastes 3:11). ### 5. Myth became fact Many ancient stories feature a dying and rising god. Lewis, a scholar of myth, didn't see that as a threat to Christianity. He saw those stories as echoes and longings that finally came true in history in Jesus, the true myth that actually happened (John 1:14). ### 6. Pain and suffering In _The Problem of Pain_, Lewis argued that God permits suffering partly to get our attention and draw us to Himself. In _A Grief Observed_, written after Joy's death, he showed the other side: what it feels like to suffer when theological answers seem to fall silent. Together, the two books offer both reason and honesty (Psalm 13; Romans 8:18). ### 7. Objective values In _The Abolition of Man_, Lewis warned that if a culture teaches that right and wrong are just personal feelings, it will produce people without moral convictions, and then be surprised when they lack courage and virtue. He argued for objective moral truth that every culture has recognized. ### 8. "Chronological snobbery" Lewis coined this phrase for the assumption that older ideas must be wrong simply because they are old. He encouraged reading old books, because every age has blind spots that other ages can help correct. --- ## Why Lewis Still Matters - **He makes deep truths clear.** Lewis could explain complex ideas in plain language without dumbing them down. - **He engages both the mind and the imagination.** His arguments convince, and his stories, like Narnia, make readers long for what is true. - **He has led many people to faith.** Countless believers, including public figures like Chuck Colson and scientist Francis Collins, have credited _Mere Christianity_ with helping bring them to Christ. - **His books still sell.** _The Chronicles of Narnia_ alone have sold over 100 million copies. --- ## Reading Lewis With Discernment Lewis is a gift to the church, but he was a twentieth-century Anglican, not a modern evangelical, and he held some views that many evangelicals question: - **Purgatory:** He believed in a form of purification after death. - **Inclusivism:** Some passages, such as the character Emeth in _The Last Battle_, suggest that sincere followers of other religions may be saved by Christ without knowing Him. - **Scripture:** He held a high view of Scripture's authority, but did not hold to inerrancy in the way many evangelicals define it today (see _Reflections on the Psalms_). - **The atonement:** He affirmed that Christ's death saves us, but he didn't insist on any single explanation of how, including penal substitution. - **Evolution:** He was open to God working through evolutionary processes, while strongly rejecting evolution as a godless worldview. None of these overshadow the enormous good of his work. They simply remind us to read every teacher, even great ones, in light of Scripture (Acts 17:11). --- ## Where to Start |If you want to...|Read...| |---|---| |Understand the basics of the faith|_Mere Christianity_| |See temptation from the enemy's side|_The Screwtape Letters_| |Think about heaven and hell|_The Great Divorce_| |Wrestle with suffering|_The Problem of Pain_, then _A Grief Observed_| |Answer skeptics about miracles|_Miracles_| |Think about truth and culture|_The Abolition of Man_| |Hear his conversion story|_Surprised by Joy_| |Enjoy a story with your family|_The Chronicles of Narnia_, starting with _The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe_| ## For Further Reading - Alister McGrath, _C. S. Lewis: A Life_ - Alan Jacobs, _The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis_ - Michael Ward, _Planet Narnia_