CS Lewis - An Introduction

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Lewis
C.S. Lewis: An Introduction
Biography - Childhood
Introduction
C.S. Lewis (29 November 1898 - 22 November 1963) was a prolific writer, poet,
scholar of English literature and defender of Christianity. His most famous book is The
Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first published of his Chronicles of Narnia. This
article explores more of Lewis the man, the storyteller and the Christian.
Lewis's childhood
C.S. Lewis's own account of his early years reads like a list of books, along with a
few people, that shaped his life. Lewis was born in Belfast in 1898, the younger of two
sons. His parents Albert and Flora were both keen readers. In his autobiography,
Surprised by Joy, Lewis describes himself as "a product of long corridors, empty sunlit
rooms, upstair indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling
cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books."
Born Clive Staples Lewis, he announced when he was three years old that his
name was Jack, and Jack he was to family and friends for the rest of his life. His older
brother was Warren, nicknamed Warnie.
Jack Lewis's childhood was "humdrum, prosaic happiness". He and Warren were close
friends, and would spend long hours drawing and writing together. Warren's interest was
in trains and steamships, while Jack liked "dressed animals" and tales of knights and
chivalry. Jack diplomatically combined the modern and mediaeval themes into a
continuing history of the imaginary country Animal-Land, later combined with Warren's
kingdom of India and christened Boxen. Chronicling the adventures of the Boxonians
kept both brothers occupied for years to come.
Jack's parents were Ulster Protestants and he grew up being taken to church every
Sunday. He found the services uninspiring. They were Christianity with the life leached
out of it: more a political statement than a statement of faith; a weekly demonstration that
they were not Catholics. They formed in Jack a distaste for Christianity that lasted into
adulthood.
"No more of the old security"
The children's lives changed after the death of their mother in August 1908. Jack
said that "all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my
life". He and Warren became more reliant on each other, but their relationship with their
father became increasingly distant.
Soon afterwards Jack was sent to a boarding school called Wynyard. The school,
which in Surprised by Joy he tellingly nicknamed Belsen, was by all accounts a dreadful
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place. Lessons consisted of learning by rote or being left with a slate and made to do
sums. The headmaster, Robert "Oldie" Capron, seems to have been a cruel man who
would flog the boys with little provocation. His neighbours believed him to be insane.
It was at Wynyard that Jack first tried to be Christian. He made a list of

resolutions and tried to pray each night, but allowed himself to be distracted by worries
about whether he was praying correctly.
It is clear that Albert Lewis did not know what life was like for his sons at
Wynyard. Jack stayed there until the school closed down from lack of pupils. After half a
term at another school, after which he was withdrawn with an illness, Jack attended a
prep school called Cherbourg. Here he was happy - thanks in part to discovering the
music of Richard Wagner, but also by comparison to Wynyard - and his academic
standards quickly improved. He also began to associate with what he later considered to
be bad influences. Warren was becoming rebellious at the same time: he eventually was
expelled from college and joined an army academy. Jack went on to secondary school at
Malvern College.
Biography - Education
Northmen and Joy
Wagner meant more to Jack than good music. The epic operas of the Ring cycle
introduced him to Norse mythology, the beginning of his lifelong love of 'Northernness'.
The music and mythology caused momentary but intense feelings in Jack that he could
not describe, and later called 'Joy'. His description of Joy sounds like a desire for another
world: "the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing".
Jack realised he had felt Joy a few times before; he experienced it again in the
years before his conversion to Christianity. Jack threw himself into studying Norse
mythology, hoping to experience Joy again. Reading and writing about his Northern
myths kept Jack sustained through his time at Malvern College, which he otherwise
found very difficult.
Northernness even helped Jack to find his first close friend, apart from his
brother. Arthur Greeves lived near the Lewises but the boys had never spent time
together. Then one day towards the end of his time at Malvern Jack was invited to visit
Arthur, who was sick in bed. He spotted a copy of Myths of the Norsemen in Arthur's
bedroom and soon they were firm friends, writing to each other and exchanging
confidences.
Malvern was a shock to Jack. An elite group of older pupils, usually members of
sports teams, ruled the roost. They were called Bloods and were hero-worshipped by the
younger boys. A Blood could corner a younger boy and make him do odd jobs - tea-
making, boot-blacking, cleaning his sports kit or his study. This was called 'fagging' and
Jack said it made his life miserable, coming as it did on top of a heavy load of
schoolwork.
Jack was upset, too, by rumours of homosexuality between pupils at Malvern, and
wrote an exaggerated and disapproving chapter about the college in Surprised by Joy.
Warren later said that the school had not been as bad as Jack claimed. The brothers grew
distant for a while as a result of that disagreement. Jack had certainly lost his Christian
faith at this point too.
The bright spot at Malvern apart from his Norse mythology was an inspirational
teacher nicknamed Smugy. Jack portrays Smugy as the essence of courtesy in the midst
of a loutish school. He was also much taken with Smugy's melodious method of poetry-
reading: he tried to imitate it himself from then on.
Kirkpatrick and college
An examiner had remarked that Jack was the sort of boy who could gain a
Classics degree at Oxford. But if Jack was to attend university, he needed a scholarship.
Albert decided to send him to a tutor to prepare him for the scholarship examination, and
Jack went to stay with his father's friend William Kirkpatrick in Great Bookham in
Surrey.
Kirkpatrick was an imposing man who dressed like, and was, a gardener. From
him, among other subjects, Jack learned Greek, Latin, a broader appreciation for
literature and an exacting method of debate.
His days at Kirkpatrick's were the young Lewis's happiest. They provided the
routine he followed for the rest of his life: rise at half past seven for an early walk;
breakfast at eight; work from a quarter past nine until lunch at one; freedom during the
early afternoon until tea at a quarter past four; work from five until nine, interrupted by
dinner at seven. After nine Jack could write independently, often stories or lyric poetry
inspired by whatever mythology he was enthralled by at the time.
Biography - War and Mrs. Moore
Lewis came to university in 1916 during the First World War. Although as an
Irishman he would not have had to serve in the army, he wanted to do his part. He signed
up and was sent to the front. Lewis's time as an army officer affected him profoundly, as
it did most soldiers, but one friendship changed his life. Edward Moore was a fellow
Irishman with whom Lewis served. The two young men seem to have made an agreement
that if either of them did not come home, the other would support his family. Lewis was
sent home with shrapnel wounds. Moore was killed and left behind his mother Janie and
sister Maureen.
True to his word, Jack lived with Mrs Moore until her death. He was always
reticent about his private life and many people suspected that he and Mrs Moore were
lovers. It has not been proved. What is known is that Lewis saw her as a maternal figure.
His own mother had died while he was young and Mrs Moore, above everything else,
seemed willing to be a surrogate mother. Albert disapproved of Jack's relationship with
her, and may also have been a little hurt by the implication that his parenting had not
been enough for Jack. Jack, in turn, resorted to lying in his letters home to conceal the
closeness of their relationship.
Jack and the Moores stayed in a series of rented houses in Oxford while he
attended university. He seems to have been worried about money for most of the time: he
was receiving a little money from Albert, but was concerned that their strained
relationship might cause his father to cut him off. Jack was lying to his father, who
thought he was still Christian. Although poor, Mrs Moore was determinedly hospitable.
She had a positive influence on Jack, teaching him generosity and giving the reclusive
scholar a taste of normal family life.
After four years of study Lewis ended up with three first-class degrees from
Oxford: Greek and Latin literature, classical philosophy and English language and
literature. His father sponsored him to continue his studies because it was difficult for
classics students to find a job. He took a lecturing position while applying for a
fellowship, a financial grant for university teaching. He was turned down for several
positions before being awarded a fellowship teaching English at Oxford's Magdalen
College. He began work there in October 1925.
In 1926 he submitted Dymer, a long mythological poem, for publication. It is a

tale with a moral about fantasy and self-deception: like Lewis's other books, it was
written from experience. It was favourably reviewed and may have met with more
success if the fashion at the time had not been for free, non-rhyming poetry.
It was at Oxford that Lewis met Owen Barfield, who formed a literary discussion
group called The Inklings. The members, who included Lewis himself, J.R.R. Tolkien,
Adam Fox, Hugo Dyson, Charles Williams and Lewis's brother Warren, met during the
1930s at a pub called the Eagle and Child (known to them as the Bird and Baby). Many
of them were Christian; some were atheists; some were followers of Anthroposophy, a
philosophy that was quite popular at the time. The purpose of the group was to hear and
criticise members' writings-in-progress. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings stories were first
aired at Inklings meetings, as were some of Lewis's stories.
Biography - Conversion
Checkmate At Last
Lewis's conversion to Christianity was not a sudden experience. He always claimed

it was logical and rational, not emotional. His influences were, as always, books and a
few close friends.
Inspired by his reading, Lewis's personal philosophy had been slowly approaching
theism (belief in a god) under another name: he came to believe in a universal spirit
without yet calling it God. He knew that his position was confused. In Surprised by Joy
he likens the following process to being hunted down by God, or even being defeated by
him in a game of chess.
Lewis had several Christian friends at Oxford, including Hugo Dyson and the
Catholic J.R.R. Tolkien, with whom he often argued philosophy and religion. A chance
remark by another acquaintance, T.D. Weldon, caused Lewis to rethink what he still was
calling "the Christian myth": Weldon, known for his cynicism, thought that the evidence
for Jesus's life and resurrection was remarkably good. Lewis read the Gospels and was
struck by the thought that they did not sound like fiction: the writers seemed too
unimaginative to have made the whole thing up; the Gospels read more like reports than
stories.
Albert Lewis died in 1929. His death caused Jack to feel guilty about deceiving
him. Jack also believed he could feel Albert's presence after his death. At this time
Warren and Jack were both thinking of becoming Christian, although the idea of
churchgoing was still unappealing to Jack and he did not accept many aspects of the
Christian theology.
On September 19, 1931, Lewis, Dyson and Tolkien took a night-time stroll and
began a conversation about myth. They walked and talked until morning. Tolkien
convinced Jack that myths were God's way of preparing the ground for the Christian
story. The stories of resurrection throughout history were precursors to Jesus's true
resurrection: Christianity was the completion of all the mythology before it. Dyson's
contribution was to impress upon Jack how Christianity worked for the believer,
liberating them from their sins and helping them become better people. His remaining
arguments were being demolished. Jack Lewis was about to be checkmated.
The final stage in Jack's conversion to Christianity took place three days later and
was typically unconventional. He and Warren were travelling by motorcycle to
Whipsnade zoo: "When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God,
and when we reached the zoo I did." Jack wrote a book called The Pilgrim's Regress that
told the story of his conversion in allegorical form.
Lewis also realised that his old experiences of 'Joy' had been pointers, reminding
him that he was made for another world: he now reinterpreted them as longings for
heaven, for God. He felt 'Joy' again many times in his life, but no longer attached the
same importance to the experiences.
It was after his conversion that Lewis began writing his Christian apologetic books.
Biography - Home Life and Writing
Kilns and Ink Spilled
Jack and Warren inherited a little money after their father's death. Together with
Mrs Moore, they bought a house in Oxford called The Kilns. Jack was teaching at the
university and writing his books on the history of English literature. In 1937 he wrote the
first of his science fiction books, Out of the Silent Planet.
During the Second World War Jack, wanting to do his part, joined the Home
Guard. Warren was still in the army. The Kilns received several evacuees, who were an
early inspiration for the Chronicles of Narnia.
The Problem of Pain was published in 1940 and The Screwtape Letters in 1942. Jack
began to get a large volume of post from admirers. He had recruited Warren to type his
handwritten manuscripts: now he relied on him to act as a secretary too.
Jack also gave a series of talks about Christianity on BBC radio between 1941 and
1944. After the first set of talks was well received he also presented some lectures to
soldiers, which he considered war work. His broadcasts resulted in many people
converting to Christianity - and a lot more letters for Jack to answer. The text of his talks
was published in a book called Mere Christianity.
Lewis's literary output in these years was considerable. He divided his time
between academic writing, popular apologetics and fiction. By 1948, when a debate with
Elizabeth Anscombe convinced him he had been arguing the case for God in the wrong
way, Mrs Moore was becoming ill. Jack spent much of his time looking after her.
The seven Chronicles of Narnia were written and published between 1948 and
1956. Jack had been writing his autobiography Surprised by Joy at around the same time.
Meanwhile, Mrs Moore's health continued to deteriorate; she went to a nursing home and
died there in 1951. Warren was not overly distraught. Her death gave the brothers more
freedom; Jack was relieved from some of his household duties, but he was also free to
marry.
Biography - Marriage and Later Years
Surprised by Grief
In 1952 Joy Gresham came to England. Joy was a New York teacher of English
literature, a former communist and a recent convert to Christianity: her parents had been
Jewish, though her father was secular and her mother was not very religious. Joy had a
husband, though at the time their marriage was in trouble. They had two sons, Douglas
and David.
Joy had been corresponding with Lewis for two years before her visit. She was a
sharp, outspoken and witty woman, just the sort to appeal to Lewis. When, on her return
to America, she found her husband committing adultery and their marriage beyond repair,
she moved to England with her sons.
Lewis had taken a teaching job at Cambridge university, spending weekends and
holidays at home. Joy and her sons moved into a house not far from the Kilns. They were
frequent visitors. In 1954 Joy's husband divorced her. In 1956 her work permit expired
and she faced having to move back to America. Lewis decided to marry her.
Lewis claimed the civil marriage ceremony, quietly performed in a registry office,
was a purely legal measure to allow Joy to stay in the country. Nobody is quite sure of
their feelings for each other at that stage, but shortly afterwards some news arrived that
changed everything. Joy was diagnosed with advanced cancer and did not have long to
live. Lewis realised he loved Joy and decided to make their marriage public. The
ceremony was performed around Joy's hospital bed. When she was able to leave hospital,
Joy, Douglas and David moved into the Kilns.
Her health improved. Lewis prayed to be allowed to take some of her pain on
himself. It seemed to work. His health deteriorated for a few months while Joy recovered:
an occurrence he happily described as a miracle. Married life seemed to suit Jack even at
his late age (he was in his 60s). He enjoyed more than three years with Joy before her
cancer returned and claimed her life in July 1960.
The story of Jack and Joy's marriage is told, with some liberties taken with
chronology, in a play and film called Shadowlands.
Joy's death was hard for Lewis to cope with and tested his Christian faith. He kept a
record of his thoughts and feelings throughout the grieving process, and published it,
using a pseudonym, as A Grief Observed. (So many people recommended the book to
Lewis to help in his own grief that at last he was forced to admit he wrote it.)
"No one ever told me grief felt so like fear," reads the opening sentence of A Grief
Observed. "I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in
the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing." It is an honest
account from a mourning widower: Lewis did not flinch from recording the times when
his faith was tested. By the end of the book he had made his peace with God.
C.S. Lewis died on the 22nd November 1963. He never wanted his death to be
widely acknowledged, and he got his way. John F Kennedy, president of the USA, was
assassinated on the same day. The author of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, also died
on the 22nd.
The last book Lewis published, and one he considered his best, was Till We Have
Faces, an unusual retelling of the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche.
Fiction Books
Lewis the Storyteller
"This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!" thought Lucy, going still further in
and pushing the soft folds of the coats aside to make room for her. Then she noticed that
there was something crunching under her feet. "I wonder is that more mothballs?" she
thought, stooping down to feel it with her hand. But instead of feeling the hard, smooth
wood of the floor of the wardrobe, she felt something soft and powdery and extremely
cold. "This is very queer," she said, and went a step or two further.
Thus begins the first adventure into the land of Narnia, the setting for C.S. Lewis's
most famous series of books. Although the Christian subtext to the books is an open
secret among adult readers, generations of children have loved the stories without
noticing the parallel between Aslan the lion and Jesus Christ.
C.S. Lewis converted to Christianity while teaching at Oxford University, but his
love of books and myths had been present since his childhood. Soon after his conversion
he wanted to evangelise, and it was not long before he thought of combining religious
enthusiasm with imagination in his works of Christian fiction.
The First Frontier
Lewis's first Christian fiction was Out of the Silent Planet, a science fiction novel
written for adults, which was the first in a trilogy.
In Out of the Silent Planet Lewis imagined a world, located on Mars, in which the
Fall of humanity had never happened and the inhabitants lived without original sin. He
returned to this theme in the sequel, Perelandra, which followed the temptation of the
first woman on a new world, this time set on Venus.
Lewis, a professor of English literature, was also busy writing nonfiction. His first
major work of criticism, The Allegory of Love, was published in 1935 and very well
received. Out of the Silent Planet, two years later, attracted mixed reviews, many of
which compared Lewis to H.G. Wells. More surprisingly to Lewis, out of about sixty
reviews, only two seemed to notice the Christian subtext.
That prompted Lewis to write: "[I]f there was only someone with a richer talent and
more leisure I think that this great ignorance might be a help to the evangelisation of
England; any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people's minds under cover
of romance [heroic fantasy stories] without their knowing it."
The third book in the 'Space Trilogy' is called That Hideous Strength and set on
Earth. It describes and extrapolates what Lewis saw as the evil ideas in contemporary
science, personified in an organisation called (with heavy irony) N.I.C.E.
All three Space books included themes from various different mythologies, but
That Hideous Strength was particularly criticised because of it: Professor Chad Walsh, an
American authority on Lewis, disliked the Arthurian themes in the book. George Orwell
thought it would be better without any supernatural elements at all. Readers, however,
enjoyed the trilogy.
Narnia
Fantasy in Fur Coats
The very first element of Narnia came to Lewis when he was sixteen. He saw in his
imagination a faun (a mythological creature like a man with goat legs) carrying parcels in
a snowy wood. The image stayed with him, and many years later it found a place in one
of his stories.
Lewis began writing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1948. The
inspiration is not difficult to guess. A few years earlier, during the Second World War,
Lewis's household had played host to a group of children evacuated from London and
other cities: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe begins with four evacuees staying in
the house of an old professor.
One of the girls provided another piece of inspiration when she asked to play in a
wardrobe in Lewis's house. He soon set out to write a story for the children, who, he
thought, did not read enough. One can detect the author's own voice behind the
professor's repeated cries of "What do they teach them at these schools?"
Narnia gave Lewis an opportunity to indulge his love for animals and mythological
creatures. In Narnia there are both normal animals and intelligent, talking ones; valiant
Mice and proud Horses live alongside giants, unicorns and satyrs.
It may surprise readers who imagine that Lewis set out from the beginning to re-tell
the Christian tale to find out that Aslan, the Christ-like lion, was not even thought of until
some way into the story. Then, as Lewis put it, he "came bounding into it" and brought
with him all the ideas Lewis needed to finish the book.
Lewis's friend J.R.R. Tolkien did not like the finished work. He disapproved of the
mixture of mythological creatures inhabiting Narnia and did not care much for the quality
of the writing. Lewis's publisher had doubts about whether it would sell, and thought
there was more chance if the book were part of a series. Lewis soon obliged, and wrote
one Narnia book a year until the seventh brought the series to a definite end.
At the time of publication, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe went against a
trend towards realism in children's stories. Reviews of the books were not sympathetic;
many were highly critical. This did not discourage its intended readership, who loved the
books: they remain popular today.
Christian Allegory
Allegory or Shaggy Lion Story?
Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say
something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument,
then collected information about child psychology and decided what age group I'd write
for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out 'allegories' to embody
them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn't write in that way. It all began with images; a
faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn't
anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord.1
Are the Chronicles of Narnia allegorical? Lewis, a professor of English, was well
placed to debate the exact meaning of allegory. He said they were not: they were
"supposals". As he explained in a 1954 letter to some schoolchildren in Maryland:
You are mistaken when you think that everything in the books 'represents'
something in this world. Things do that in The Pilgrim's Progress [a 1678 allegory
by John Bunyan] but I'm not writing in that way. I did not say to myself 'Let us
represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia': I said, 'Let us
suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as he became a
Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.'2
Lewis was not aiming to teach children Christianity with the Narnia books. He wanted to
introduce similar ideas that would make it easier for children to accept Christianity: what
he called "a sort of pre-baptism of the child's imagination." (George Sayer, Jack: A Life
of C S Lewis)
Each of the Chronicles focuses on a different part of the Christian story and
theology. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe draws on themes of sacrifice and
resurrection. In The Magician's Nephew, the first book in chronological order, Narnia is
sung into being by Aslan but corrupted by original sin. The Last Battle is an apocalyptic
culmination. Other books feature pilgrimages, "the restoration of the true religion after a
corruption" and the foiling of many evil schemes.
In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, along with Aslan as Christ figure, one
character fulfils a Judas role by being tempted to betray the others, while the White Witch
herself plays the role of the tempter. The role of Father Christmas has been compared to
the Holy Spirit, as has Aslan's magical breath. The name of the oldest child may even
have been a reference to Saint Peter.
Other characters in the books reveal Lewis's attitudes to different peoples and ideas.
The Calormenes are a dark-skinned race living south of Narnia. They carry scimitars,
keep slaves and worship barbaric false gods: they are, all told, rather reminiscent of the
worst Western portrayals of the Middle East. Lewis satirises the modern schools and
parenting practices of his time in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Among other themes,
The Last Battle features a scorching attack on syncretism, the practice of combining
religions.
1
C.S. Lewis in Of This and Other Worlds, an essay collection edited by W Hooper.
2
C.S. Lewis, quoted in Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide
Christian Apologetics
Lewis the Christian
Before writing his Christian fiction books, C.S. Lewis was known as an apologist: a
writer who defended his faith using logic.
Lewis saw his books as a layman's view. He tentatively advanced many unorthodox
ideas, showing imagination and new approaches. His most famous apologetic works are
The Problem of Pain, Miracles and Mere Christianity.
A student called Elizabeth Anscombe criticized Miracles in February 1948 at a

meeting of the Oxford Socratic Club. Anscombe, a Roman Catholic, was not trying to
disprove Christianity or attack Lewis's faith, but she did find errors in his logic.
Lewis's friends later described this debate as deeply humiliating for him and said it
stopped him writing more books on theology. Anscombe does not remember the debate
that way: quoted in George Sayer's biography of Lewis, she said it was a "sober
discussion" and that Lewis accepted her criticisms. He rewrote a chapter of his book
following Anscombe's criticisms.
Whatever the effect on Lewis, it is true that he was chastened. He was concerned
that the public might confuse the disproof of a logical argument for God with a disproof
of God himself. He realised that trying to prove God's existence through reason had been
a mistake, and from then on his Christian writings were more concerned with intuitive
faith and feeling.
It was not long after this time that Lewis wrote his series of classic children's
books, beginning in 1948 with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
I do not think there is a demonstrative proof ... of Christianity, nor of the existence
of matter, nor of the good will and honesty of my best and oldest friends. I think all
three (except perhaps the second) far more probable than the alternatives.3
Atheism and Pessimism
All these were rosy visions of the night, The loveliness and wisdom feigned of old.
But now we wake. The East is pale and cold, No hope is in the dawn, and no
delight.4
Lewis described himself as a pessimist in his early years. His experiences as a child,
whether his physical clumsiness or the death of his mother, taught him to expect things to
go wrong. Some years before converting to Christianity, the young Lewis wrote a series
of poems published as Spirits in Bondage. Although at this time he was calling himself
an atheist, the poems show that he was greatly concerned with the idea of God's cruelty
3
C.S. Lewis, from a letter of 23 December 1950.
4
C.S. Lewis, Spirits in Bondage I,VII.
or indifference. "The sky above is sickening, the clouds of God's hate cover it" he wrote.
(Spirits in Bondage I,VIII)
He later wrote in Surprised by Joy that he "was living in a whirl of contradictions. I

maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was
equally angry with Him for creating a world."
After becoming a Christian, Lewis's outlook seems to have been transformed and
he became more positive, even extroverted. "I had been, as they say, 'taken out of
myself.'"
Merely Christian
Merely Christian
Though his parents were Irish Protestants, when Lewis converted later in life he
joined the Church of England. He aimed to reach as many people as possible with his
apologetic books, which meant that he was anxious to avoid points of disagreement
between the different Christian denominations and focus on the ideas they all agreed on:
the core of Christianity.
That was what Lewis did when he gave the radio talks that were later published in
book form as Mere Christianity. He sent part of the text to clergymen of the Church of
England, the Roman Catholic Church, Methodist and Presbyterian denominations to
make sure his representation of 'mere Christianity' was one that they could all agree on.
He did not intend 'mere Christianity' to be an alternative to the other denominations:
It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring
anyone into that hall I shall have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not
in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a
place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in.5
Analogy
The hallway illustration is only one example of Lewis's penchant for analogy. He
broke down complicated questions for an audience with little or no religious knowledge.
In a memorable example, when explaining the meaning of 'numinous' Lewis asked

the reader to suppose they had been told there was a tiger in the next room: "you would
probably feel fear". If, however, they believed there was a ghost in the next room, they
would feel "fear, but of a different kind ... with the Uncanny one has reached the fringes
of the Numinous". (The Problem of Pain)
In facing quite a complicated question about the idea that God lives outside time,
Lewis used another clever analogy:
5
C.S. Lewis, in the introduction to the reprint of Mere Christianity.
Suppose I am writing a novel. I write "Mary laid down her work; next moment
came a knock at the door!" For Mary who has to live in the imaginary time of my
story there is no interval between putting down her work and hearing the knock.
But I, who am Mary's maker, do not live in that imaginary time at all. Between
writing the first half of that sentence and the second, I might sit down for three
hours and think steadily about Mary ... and the hours I spent in doing so would not
appear in Mary's time (the time inside the story) at all.6
Piano keys, playwrights, megaphones and horses: Lewis recruited all these and more to
explain his points. They are one of the chief factors in his lively and accessible writing
style.
Trilemma - Lord, Liar or Lunatic?
The 'Trilemma'
One of the arguments Lewis uses in his books has grown particularly famous. It is
referred to as the 'trilemma' or the 'lord, liar or lunatic' problem, and it is a response to
people who believe Jesus was a great human teacher but was not really divine.
Look at Jesus's words as recorded in the Bible, Lewis said: he claimed to be the Son
of God and to have the power to forgive sins. They are not the sort of claims a good
human being would make.
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a
great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with a man who says
he is a poached egg - or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice.
Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You
can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.
But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human
teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.7
The passage displays Lewis's overall attitude towards his faith: he felt Christianity was an
all-or-nothing affair. Half-heartedness was not to be tolerated. There was no middle
ground.
Screwtape Letters
Knowing One's Enemy
My dear Wormwood,
So you "have great hopes that the patient's religious phase is dying away", have
you? I always thought the Tempters' Training College had gone to pieces since they
put old Slubgob at the head of it, and now I am sure.8
The Screwtape Letters consists of a series of letters from a senior demon to a junior
6
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.
7
8
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters.
tempter, advising him in his pursuit of a human soul. The Letters had originally been
published weekly in a Church paper called The Guardian (not the same as the British
national newspaper), before being collected as a book.
The humour in Screwtape stems from its reversal of values: for example, the
bureaucracy of Hell is called the Lowerarchy, and the persons referred to as "Our Father"
and "the Adversary" are not who a Christian would normally expect. Lewis returns to
themes he discussed in Surprised by Joy and Mere Christianity, this time from the
opposite point of view; and although writing entertainingly, he lays into weighty spiritual
problems. Screwtape advises his nephew on "the routine technique of sexual temptation"
and "the painful subject of prayer", and Lewis's own views are plainly visible beneath the
satire.
Lewis found The Screwtape Letters unpleasant to write. He felt that placing himself
in the mind of a demon had been dangerous for his own character.
Animal Theology
Animals
We may find it difficult to formulate a human right of tormenting beasts in terms

which would not equally imply an angelic right of tormenting men.9
C.S. Lewis loved animals, as his earliest writings show. He felt the question of animal
suffering was a significant problem for Christianity: so important that he dedicated a
chapter of The Problem of Pain to it.
Lewis believed that humans were absolutely separate from animals, but he
considered animals conscious - or some animals to be more conscious than others. It
would be unhelpful to group apes with earthworms: "Clearly in some ways the ape and
man are much more like each other than either is like the worm". There was a difference
in complexity from 'lower' to 'higher' animals.
"At some point ... sentience almost certainly comes in, for the higher animals have
nervous systems very like our own." (The Problem of Pain) This was by no means an
accepted view. It would have been a potentially expensive one, because vivisection -
damaging or fatal experiments on animals - and other exploitative uses of animals were
commonplace, and acknowledging animal sentience would mean admitting that these
practices were cruel.
Cruel Men
Lewis condemned vivisection absolutely, and said so in a 1947 essay. He deplored

the popular arguments in favour of experiments on animals, calling them "easy speeches
that comfort cruel men". He pointed out that the same ideas could be used to justify
9
C.S. Lewis, Vivisection.
experiments on humans, and explicitly drew a comparison with the Nazis.

This would be emotive language at any time, but it was shocking in context: this
was 1947, two to three years after the liberation of the concentration camps.
The Christian defender ... is very apt to say that we are entitled to do anything we
please to animals because they 'have no souls'. But what does this mean? If it means
that animals have no consciousness, then how is this known? They certainly behave
as if they had, or at least the higher animals do. I myself am inclined to think that
far fewer animals than is supposed have what we should recognize as
consciousness. But that is only an opinion. Unless we know on other grounds that
vivisection is right we must not take the moral risk of tormenting them on a mere
opinion. On the other hand, the statement that they 'have no souls' may mean that
they have no moral responsibilities and are not immortal. But the absence of 'soul'
in that sense makes the infliction of pain upon them not easier but harder to justify,
for it means that animals cannot deserve pain, nor profit morally by the discipline
of pain, nor be recompensed by happiness in another life for suffering in this. ...
'Soullessness', in so far as it is relevant to the question at all, is an argument against
vivisection.10
Lewis's love for animals shines through all his writings, and it made him especially
concerned with finding a meaning behind animal suffering.
Nature Red
Lewis's concern did not end at animal pain that was inflicted by humans. He saw
the whole of nature as cruel, with animals killing and eating others to survive. His
theology explained human pain by way of humanity's fallen state, but animals had
committed no sin. Lewis reasoned that humanity's fall had brought animals down to a
fallen state too.
In examining the problem of wild animals' pain, Lewis's thinking involved a

hierarchy: from plants, the 'lowest' form of life, to animals, humans, angels and finally
God. Lewis saw conflict in the world of plants, where the competition for light and
nutrients caused some plants to succeed and some to die, but he didn't think this was
cruel: plants are not sentient, so they don't feel pain or suffering.
The idea of animals preying on other animals presents more of a problem, at least
where the prey is sentient. Lewis, along with other theologians, felt that this could not be
the natural way of things and that an evil power had altered nature in order to cause more
misery. (As The Screwtape Letters shows, Lewis believed in Satan.)
If it offends less, you may say that the "life-force" is corrupted, where I say that
living creatures were corrupted by an evil angelic being. We mean the same thing:
but I find it easier to believe in a myth of gods and demons than in one of
hypostatised abstract nouns.11
In The Problem of Pain Lewis presented an imagined glimpse of un-fallen humanity, as
10
C.S. Lewis, Vivisection.
11
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.
he had previously done in the fictional settings of Out of the Silent Planet and
Perelandra. He believed humans had fallen to a lower state, so that they were much more
like animals. Taking this idea further, he ventured the idea that animals had fallen back to
"behaviour proper to vegetables" - that the behaviour of preying on each other was
something natural to plants and not to animals.
Despite these ideas, Lewis does not seem to have believed that humans should be
vegetarian: indeed, he was known to poke fun at 'fashionable' vegetarians. Vegetarianism
was not widespread in the 1950s, nor was the knowledge that a vegetarian diet can be
healthy, so Lewis's attitude is hardly surprising.
Pet Heaven
Lewis, very unusually for the time, thought that there ought to be some provision in
Christianity for resurrection or heaven for animals.
Resurrection would be meaningless for some animals: "If the life of a newt is
merely a succession of sensations, what should we mean by saying that God may recall to
life the newt that died to-day? It would not recognise itself as the same newt". If the newt
was not aware enough to be made miserable or happy by pain or pleasure, there would be
no way to reward it or compensate it for its life on earth.
Domestic animals, though, obviously had something like a personality. Lewis

thought that when humans tamed animals, in accordance with their God-given dominion
over them, the animals became more themselves.
To Lewis the practice of taming animals, and making them more humanlike, was an
obvious parallel to God's way of making believing Christians more Christlike. He
suggested that domestic animals might somehow achieve immortality in the context of
their masters' immortality. It is a comforting thought for anyone who has hoped to see
their beloved pet in heaven, though not much use to a dog belonging to a non-Christian.
The talking animals of Narnia are a different case. They have humanlike
personalities and free will of their own and seem to be responsible for their own actions.
Quotations
Quotations
I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not
least.12
Of course you're right about the Narnian books being better than the tracts; at least,
12
C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy.
in the way a picture is better than a map.13
Being Christian
Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.
Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for
yourself, 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.14
'Joy'
Only a moment. O! but we shall keep Our vision still. One moment was enough,
We know we are not made of mortal stuff.15
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most
probable explanation is that I was made for another world.16
There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find
myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we desire anything else.17
All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -
tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as
they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest - if there ever came an
echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself - you would know it.
Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made
for".18
Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It
must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing.19
It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or
still "about to be".20
13
C.S. Lewis, from a 1953 letter to a child.
14
15
C.S. Lewis, Spirits in Bondage, I,XV.
16
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
17
18
19
20
Conversion
My own position at the threshold of Xianity was exactly the opposite of yours. You
wish it were true; I strongly hoped it was not. At least, that was my conscious wish:
you may suspect that I had unconscious wishes of quite a different sort and that it
was these which finally shoved me in.21
He is not proud ... He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer
everything else to Him, and come to him because there is "nothing better" to be
had.22
'Good news'
When the apostles preached, they could assume even in their Pagan hearers a real
consciousness of deserving the Divine anger ... It was against this background that
the Gospel appeared as good news. It brought news of possible healing to men who
knew that they were mortally ill. But all this has changed. Christianity now has to
preach the diagnosis--in itself very bad news--before it can win a hearing for the
cure.23
Problem of Pain
Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is
going well with us ... While what we call "our own life" remains agreeable we will
not surrender it to Him. What then can God do in our interests but make "our own
life" less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?24
I am not arguing that pain is not painful. Pain hurts. That is what the word means. I
am only trying to show that the old Christian doctrine of being made "perfect
through suffering" is not incredible. To prove it palatable is beyond my design.25
Being Part of God's Plan
Lewis saw different kinds of good in the world. There was "simple good" performed by
good people; but Lewis believed that God is also able to exploit "simple evil" for his own
purposes, which turns it into "complex good".
A merciful man aims at his neighbour's good and so does "God's will", consciously
co-operating with "the simple good". A cruel man oppresses his neighbour, and so
does simple evil. But in doing such evil, he is used by God, without his own
21
C.S. Lewis, in a letter of 14 December 1950.
22
23
24
C.S. Lewis, The Problem Of Pain.
25
knowledge or consent, to produce the complex good--so that the first man serves
God as a son, and the second as a tool. For you will certainly carry out God's
purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like
Judas or like John.26
Love vs. Kindness
By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness ...
by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness -- the desire to see others than
the self happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy. What would really
satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, "What
does it matter so long as they are contented?" We want, in fact, not so much a
Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven -- a senile benevolence who, as they
say, "liked to see young people enjoying themselves" and whose plan for the
universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, "a good time
was had by all".27
Aslan
"He'll be coming and going," [Mr Beaver] had said. "One day you'll see him and
another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down - and of course he has other
countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press
him. He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion."28
26
27
28
C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

CS Lewis - An Introduction

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CS Lewis - An Introduction

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BBC - Religions - Christianity: C.S.

C.S. Lewis: An Introduction

"No more of the old security"

It was at Wynyard that Jack first tried to be Christian. He made a list of

Northmen and Joy

Kirkpatrick and college

Biography - War and Mrs. Moore

In 1926 he submitted Dymer, a long mythological poem, for publication. It is a

Lewis's conversion to Christianity was not a sudden experience. He always claimed

Biography - Home Life and Writing

Kilns and Ink Spilled

first of his science fiction books, Out of the Silent Planet.

Biography - Marriage and Later Years

Lewis the Storyteller

The First Frontier

Fantasy in Fur Coats

Allegory or Shaggy Lion Story?

Lewis the Christian

A student called Elizabeth Anscombe criticized Miracles in February 1948 at a

Atheism and Pessimism

He later wrote in Surprised by Joy that he "was living in a whirl of contradictions. I

In a memorable example, when explaining the meaning of 'numinous' Lewis asked

Trilemma - Lord, Liar or Lunatic?

Knowing One's Enemy

We may find it difficult to formulate a human right of tormenting beasts in terms

Lewis condemned vivisection absolutely, and said so in a 1947 essay. He deplored

experiments on humans, and explicitly drew a comparison with the Nazis.

In examining the problem of wild animals' pain, Lewis's thinking involved a

Domestic animals, though, obviously had something like a personality. Lewis

in the way a picture is better than a map.13

Being Part of God's Plan

Love vs. Kindness

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