C.S. Lewis: The Man
Most Americans, when they hear the name “C.S. Lewis,” immediately think of “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” from his children’s series The Chronicles of Narnia. Beyond that, though, many don’t really know how influential C.S. Lewis has been over the past century. He was an English professor at both Oxford and Cambridge, and he was probably the premiere Christian apologist of the 20th Century.
As a young man in the first few decades of the 20th Century, he was an atheist who was enthralled with the “modernism” that was sweeping across Europe. Eventually though, he came to see that thoroughly Enlightenment-minded idolization of science as the sole arbiter of truth as woefully inadequate, and ultimately came to embrace Christianity. Not too many people know that the man brought him in to the Christian faith was none other than J.R.R. Tolkien, another professor who wrote something you might have heard of: The Lord of the Rings.
C.S. Lewis, along with his close friends (known as The Inklings) believed that imagination and creativity played an important role in how we come to see and understand truth. Most people, I believe instinctively know this: it is through art and literature that we find ourselves most moved by truth. We see it creatively displayed before our eyes (or ears) in a way that strikes a much deeper chord within us than if we simply read a textbook definition.
As highly creative as he was, though, Lewis was also one of the sharpest intellectual minds of the 20th Century. Not only could he pick apart complex philosophical ideas and arguments with ease, he also had the gift of explaining very difficult concepts in very easy to understand language.
Mere Christianity
His book Mere Christianity hold a special place in my heart. It was after my junior year in high school that I realized, even though I had grown up in a Christian home and went to a Christian school, that I really had no clue what Christianity was. And so, in the summer between my junior and senior years in high school, I was decided I was agnostic—and I proceeded to read Mere Christianity to see if Christianity, in fact, was reasonable enough to put my faith in.
C.S. Lewis convinced me that it was. Now, Mere Christianity doesn’t explain everything about Christianity. But what Lewis succeeds in doing is that he shows that there is enough to Christianity to be taken seriously. His goal in the book was not to argue for any particular “brand” of Christianity, but to rather explain the “heart and soul fundamentals of the Christian faith” that all Christians throughout all time have largely shared.
I have been able to actually teach Mere Christianity for 11 of my 16 years in Christian schools. It still doesn’t disappoint. Now that I am an Orthodox Christian, I read Mere Christianity and now see that Lewis, even though he was Anglican, really was quite Orthodox in much of his thinking.
What I am going to start doing, once or twice a week, is to take you through Mere Christianity—giving brief summaries of chapters and sharing my thoughts and reflections as well. Here’s why: in light of my posts about Ken Ham, it is very easy to get side-tracked into issue that are not fundamental to the Christian faith. Ham’s entire organization is devoted to a sideshow.
For that matter, when I do discuss Ken Ham, I want everyone to be clear: it’s not that I’m trying to “argue for evolution” as opposed to “young earth creationism”—even though I think that’s true. My major point with Ham is that his whole “evolution vs. creation controversy” is a farce in and of itself: whether or not the universe is 14 billion or 6,000 years old is completely irrelevant to Christianity and the trustworthiness of the Bible. Why? Because the Bible doesn’t address that modern scientific question in the first place, and because at no time in Church history was it ever considered a primary issue.
It is quite easy to become fixated on that whole issue—but that is not where the Christian faith lies. A good place to start in that regard is C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. The book is divided into four sections. The first section, “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe,” isn’t really about Christianity at all. In it, Lewis simply reasons through what we as human beings, by simply observing the world around them, can conclude about the world around us and the possibility of a “greater being.”
In the second section, “What Christians Believe,” Lewis explains the fundamental Christian belief regarding God, Jesus, and the atonement.
The third section, “Christian Behavior,” then takes the reader through a whole slew of topics regrading behavior and morality.
In the final section, “Beyond Personality,” Lewis introduces the reader to the basic concept of the Trinity, and the implications it has for our understanding of reality itself.
If it sounds a bit dull, or “out there”—well, some of it certainly will stretch your mind, but it certainly won’t be dull. I am willing to bet that many Evangelicals, even though they say they love C.S. Lewis (primarily because of his Narnia series), have never actually read Lewis’ more apologetic works. If they do, they might be a little shocked to find that Lewis was not an American Evangelical. He was and Anglican—he smoked, he drank, and he was a brilliant Christian thinker. So let’s see what he has to say. Check back tomorrow…
