SECTION X
Chapter 3. Clive Staple Lewis (1898-1963)

  "If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other 
religions are simply wrong all through.  If you are an atheist you do 
not have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the 
world is simply one huge mistake.  If you are a Christian, you are free to 
think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at 
least some hint of the truth.  When I was an atheist I had to try to 
persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the 
question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was 
able to take a more liberal view.  But of course, being a Christian does 
not mean thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, 
Christianity is right and they are wrong.  As in arithmetic - there is 
only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong: but 
some of the wrong answers are more nearer being right than others."   -- 
C.S. Lewis, Other Religions - THE BUSINESS OF HEAVEN

  C.S. Lewis represents an individual who went from belief to disbelief 
(ie agnosticism) and then back to belief!  Although brought up in a 
strictly religious home, C.S. Lewis was on the road to agnosticism by the 
age of thirteen.  He reconverted back to Christianity some twenty years 
later, and is most remembered as the author of the CHRONICLES OF 
NARNIA, an endearing children's classic that contains strong underlying 
Christian themes.

Drift Towards Agnosticism in his Early Teens

   Lewis described his first transformation towards agnosticism, which 
had started when he was around thirteen years ole:  As a child, he had 
been told that he must "not only say one's prayers but think about what 
one was saying."  He found that saying his prayers became a "burden", 
as he was haunted by PERFECTLY focusing his mind on his thoughts.

  "One had no sooner reached 'Amen' then it [the false conscious] 
whispered, 'Yes.  But are you sure you were really think about about what 
you said?"...the answer, for reasons I did not then understand, was 
nearly always No.  'Very well', said the voice, 'hadn't you, then, better 
try it over again?' And one obeyed; but of course with no assurance that 
the second attempt would be any better."  (C.S. Lewis, SURPRISED BY 
JOY, from THE INSPIRATION WRITING OF C.S. LEWIS, Inspirational Press, New 
York, 1987, p 34-5)

   C.S. Lewis also believed his religious foundation faltered, due to 
his friendship with his school matron, a woman who believed strongly in 
the Occult and Spiritualism (along with Theosophy and Rosicrucianism.):

   "The vagueness, the merely speculative character, of all this 
Occultism began to spread... to the stern truths of the creed.  The whole 
thing became a matter of speculation: I was soon (in the famous words) 
altering 'I believe' to 'one does feel'.  And oh, the relief of it!  From 
the tyrannous noon of revelation I passed into the cool evening of 
Higher Thought, where there was nothing to be obeyed, and nothing to be 
believed except that was either comforting or exciting." (Ibid, p 34.)

  During this time, C.S. Lewis began reading the Greek-Roman classics:

  "...[E]specially in Virgil, one was presented with a mass of 
religious ideas; and all teachers and editors took it for granted from the 
outset that these religious ideas were sheer illusion.  No one ever 
attempted to show in what sense Christianity fulfilled Paganism or Paganism 
prefigured Christianity.  The accepted position seemed to be that 
religions were normally a mere far ago of nonsense, through our own, by a 
fortunate exception, was exactly true.  The other religions were not even 
explained, in the earlier Christian fashion, as the work of devils.  
That I might, conceivably, have been brought to believe.  But the 
impression I got was that religion in general though utterly false, was a 
natural growth, a kind of endemic nonsense into which humanity tended to 
blunder.  In the midst of a thousand such religious stood our own, the 
thousand and first, labeled True.  But on what grounds could I believe in 
this exception?  It obviously was in some general sense the same kind 
of thing as all the rest.  Why was it so differently treated?  Need I, 
at any rate, continue to treat it differently?  I was very anxious not 
to."  (Ibid, p. 35)

  His readings around the age of fourteen also affected him by 
conveying upon his "imagination the vastness and cold of space, the littleness 
of Man."  He felt the "universe to be a menacing and unfriendly place."  
He read Lucretius, finding in his words the most powerful case ever for 
atheism:
Had God designed the world, it would not be a world so frail and faulty 
as we see."

  At the time this saying seemed in tune with C.S. Lewis' own feelings.  
A "pessimism" had settled in and he saw the universe as a "rather 
regrettable institution." (Some friends had suggested to C.S. Lewis that his 
feelings were precipitated by his mother's early death, although C.S. 
Lewis thought his childhood clumsiness might have had as much to do with 
it.)  Lewis wrote that his new attitude of his was of an "intellectual" 
as opposed to emotion nature, for according to Lewis he was now "by no 
means unhappy."

C.S. Lewis continued:

  "You may ask how I combined this directly Atheistical thought, this 
great 'Argument from Undesign' with my Occultist fancies.  I do not 
think I achieved any logical connection between them.  They swayed me in 
different moods, and had only this in common, that both made against 
Christianity.  And so, little by little, with fluctuations which I cannot 
now trace, I became an apostate, dropping my faith with no sense of loss 
but with the greatest relief."  (Ibid, p 37).

Conversion Back to Christianity

   C.C. Lewish' autobiographer and good friend, George Sayer, traced 
C.S Lewis' conversion to Christianity to a September 19, 1931 dinner with 
JRR Tolkien and Hugo Dyson.  The three men had taken a late evening 
stoll after dinner, when C.S. Lewish shared how he loved reading about 
myths, but could not believe them to be be true.  

   Tolkien answered that he belied that all myths originated from God.  
As Such, although frequently distorted through man's retelling, they 
still retained something of their original truth.  Tolkien continued on 
to explain that "the Christian story was a myth invented by a God who 
was real, a God whose dying could transform those who believe in him."  
If Lewis wanted to experience this transformation Tolkien urged, then he 
must open himself up to this, in the same spirit as one would use their 
imagination to understand, say a Wagnerian opera. (George Sayer, JACK, 
CS LEWIS AND HIS TIMES, Harper & Row, 1988, p 134-5).

  Tolkien left around 3 o'clock that morning.  Dyson continued talking 
with CS Lewis, stressing "that Christianity works for the believer.  
The believer is put at peace and freed from his sins.  He receives help 
in overcoming his faults and come become a new person." (Iid, p 135).  A 
few days later, Lewis wrote on his decision to believe in Jesus Christ:

  "I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing 
in Christ... My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a great deal 
to do with it." He went on to say that it was not an emotional 
conversion nor could he remember how he had arrived at this conclusion.  "It 
was more like when a man, after long sleep, still lying motionless is 
bed, becomes aware the he is now awake."  (Ibid)

  Still, per his biographer, Lewis at first had some doubts and found 
church services and gospel reading unappealing.  Gradually he was drawn 
in more into the church, and received communion for the first time 
since childhood on Christmas of that year.  From then on, he became a firm 
believer.
   
   In 1934, Lewis wrote OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET, a science fiction 
book with strong Christian overtones.  The book was met with only limited 
initial success and the failure of the critics to understand its 
spiritual messages gave Lewis the idea of writing stories that had even more 
powerful Christian themes within them.  According  to Lewis, "an amount 
of theology can now be smuggled into people's minds under cover of 
romance without their knowing it." (Ibid)
By 1945, C.S. Lewis had clearly formulated his strategy of this when he 
lectured to a group of Anglican priests and youth leaders on this 
subject:

  "The difficulty we are up against is this.  We can make people attend 
to the Christian point of view for half an hour of so; but the moment 
they have gone away from the lecture orlaid down our article, they are 
plunged back into a world where the opposite position it taken for 
granted.  Every newspaper, film, novel, and textbook undermines our work.  
As long as that situation exists, widespread success is simply 
impossible.  We must attract the enemy's line of communication.  What we want is 
not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by 
Christians on other subjects-with their Christianity latent."  (Ibid)

   When war broke out in England with Germany, C.S. Lewis spoke out 
eloquently why his Christian beliefs did not make him a pacifist.  True, 
the Christian case for pacifism was based on verses such as Matthew's 
"Resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on they right cheek, 
turn to him the other also." (Matthew 5:39).  Still, Lewis argued that 
this verse applied towards individual behavior against personal anger-and 
NOT against fighting a just and necessary war!

  Lewis gave a series of talks on the BBC on the topic of "Christian 
Behaviour" during the war effort.  Some of his lectures were collected 
under the title BROADCAST TALKS which became a best seller.  C.S. Lewis 
was popular for his practical, down to earth approach to Christianity, 
such as the following:

  "...moods will change, whatever view your reason takes.  I know that 
by experience.  Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the 
whole thing looks terribly improbably... The first step is to recognize 
that your moods change.  The next is to make sure that, if you have 
once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be 
deliberately held before your mind for some part of every day.  That is why 
daily prayers and religious reading and churchgoing are necessary parts 
of the Christian life... (Ibid, p 169)

and regarding becoming a Christian:

 "Give up youself, and you'll find your real self.  Lose your life and 
you'll save it... submit with every fibre of your being, and you will 
find eternal life... Look for youself, and you will find in the long run 
only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay.  But look for 
Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in."

  C.S. Lewis had his critics, notably among them Alistair Cooke.  Yet 
he was rewaded by such men as Winston Churchill-who saw to it that Lewis 
was decorated after the war, for his help in keeping British morale 
high.

Champion of Christianity

C.S. Lewis returned next to writing books.  He wrote the SCREWTAPES in 
1942, and PERELANDRA in 1943.  He set out in 1944 to write on the 
impact of the Renaissance in the sixteenth century.  Lewis concluded from 
his research that the Renaissance was a misnomer:
 "I think I have succeeded in demonstrating that the Renaissance, as 
generally understood, never existed...There was nothing whatever humane 
about humanism.. The humanists were intolerant and Philistine.  There is 
no humanist philosopher of any importance."

  To Lewis, the humanists brought a return to the study of Graeco-Roman 
classics, but these times were characterized by dull unimaginative 
commentaries.  Their over-concern with the form of language, made it devoid 
of substance.  Because they hated the Middle Ages, they produced a 
literature lacking in romantic chivalry and scholastic philosophy.  To 
Lewis, "the new learning created the new ignorance."  (Ibid, p 196)

  Lewis also believed that the Puritans had been given bad press.  The 
Protestant doctrine of salvation, a joyous concept, was instead 
presented as gloomy and terrifying.  After all the Puritans praised marriage.  
It was the Catholics who extolled virginity.  As for Calvin, his "was 
the creed of progressives, even of revolutionaries... The fierce young 
don, the learned lady, the courtier with intellectual leaning were 
likely to be Calvinists.  He was a dazzling figure, a man born to be the 
idol of revolutionary intellectuals."  (Ibid)

  During this time, C.S. Lewis became an active champion of Christian 
values in debates a the Socratic Club-where he was largely concerned in 
combating the argument that there is no such thing as objective 
morality-meaning all values are not absolute but instead resulted from 
social-economic conditions with society.

   Lewis agreed that Christian ethics is NOT unusual, but indeed is 
common to almost all religions and embraced by high level men throughout 
all civilization.  He supported this view by identifying what he felt 
were natural laws (which he called Tao) that were common to various 
civilizations - including Chinese, Sanskrit, Babylonian, Roman, Greek, 
American Indian, and Australian philosophies and religions.  (Ibid, p 182-3) 
Thus, Lewis argued, Christianity was not a "new" ethics, but instead a 
special way of obeying an old ethic.

  Lewis ran into trouble when he tried to prove that human reason had 
no meaning unless it came from a supernatural reality that could be 
called God (a subject he had written on in his booked MIRACLES).  In 1948, 
Elizabeth Anscomb, who was later to become a professor of philosophy at 
Cambridge University, debated C.S. Lewis on this subject.  After a 
vigorous exchange, Lewis felt he had lost the debate.  This was a serious 
matter to him, because he was concerned that simple people would 
misinterpret  his failure to prove the existence of God as actual proof  He 
did not exist.  Humbled by the experience, Lewis was to later state the 
he would never again write another book like MIRACLES.  (Ibid)

  The change in focus turned out to be to his good fortune, though, 
because C.S. Lewis now turned his attention towards writing his most 
famous stories - comprising the NARNIA CHRONICLES

Narnia

   C.S. Lewis began writing on his most famous works, THE NARNIA 
CHRONICLES in 1939.  THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE was finished in 
1948.  Lewis asked his good friend Tolkien to read this book before it 
was published.  However, instead of praising the works of his good 
friend, Tolkien attacked the story.  According to Lewis biographer, George 
Sayer, Tolkien criticized the story as:

  "almost worthless, that it seemed like a jumble of unrelated 
mythologies.  Because Aslan, the fauns, the White Witch, Father Christmas, the 
nymphs, and Mr. And Mrs. Beaver had quite distant mythological or 
imaginative origins, Tolkien though that it was a terrible mistake to put 
them together in Narnia, a single imaginative country."

  Lewis defended his work by saying these cute imaginative characters 
exist happily together n our minds.  To which Tolkien retorted, "Not in 
mine, or at least not at the same time." (Ibid, p 189)

  Tolkien never changed his views on the NARNIA CHRONICLE stories.  
C.S. Lewis was greatly distressed by is friend's judgment, as he held 
Tolkien in such high regard.  It was other friends of Lewis that encouraged 
him of the story's merits, and urged him to get it published.

  Once published, the books were a tremendous success.  And Lewis 
followed up with other sequels on NARNIA.  Christian themes (although not 
directly named) were purposely interwoven into his novels.   As his 
biographer, George Sayer explained:

  "It is possible to extract from the Narnia stories a system of 
theology very like the Christian.  Thus the theological content of the 
MAGICIAN'S NEPHEW is the story of creation.  Aslan sings it into being.  The 
temptation in the Garden of Eden and the Fall are there.  In the story 
he wrote nextwe have death, judgment, hell and heaven.  But [C.S. 
Lewis] almost certainly did not want his readers to notice the resemblance 
of the Narnian theology to the Christian story.  His idea, as he once 
explained to me, was to make it easier for children to accept 
Christianity when they met it later in life.  He hoped that they would be vaguely 
reminded of the somewhat similar stories that they had read and enjoyed 
years before. 'I am aiming at a sort of pre-baptism of the child's 
imagination.'" said Lewis. Ibid, p 192)

  The most important character in the NARNIA CHRONICLES of Aslan, was 
meant, no doubt, to symbolize Jesus himself-including his death and 
resurrection.  According to George Sayer, the magic of C.S. Lewis' NARNIA 
CHRONICLES was evident with his own granddaughter, who after reading 
them declared. "I don't want to go on living in this world. I want to live 
in Narnia with Aslan."

  Sayer was greatly touched by this, and remembered happily thinking... 
"Honey, someday you will."  (Ibid, p 193)