C. S. Lewis: A Mere Christian - John McGrew's Web Page

1 C. S. Lewis: A mere ChristianThe Life and Work ofThe 20 Century s Premier Christian AuthorthIntroductionSignificance. CA renowned lecturer and tutor in literature at Oxford and Cambridge universities. COne of the 20 century s most gifted and prolific of the great Christian thinkers of the 20 2000 christianity Today voted mere christianity the most influential Christian book of the20 <The Screwtape Letters was #2. CDr. Armand Nicholi s Harvard seminar, Sigmund Freud and C. S. lewis : TwoContrasting Worldviews. <PBS documentary, The Question of God (2004). CThe movie versions of The Chronicles of Narnia. CCharacter and personality. <A first-rate lecturer and tutor. <A controversial figure among his academic colleagues.

2 <A tenacious collections:<The Wade Collection at Wheaton College (curators: Clyde Kilby and Lyle Dorsett).<Oxford University (curator: Walter Hooper). A mere Christian . CThe Everyman of the modern age. CA spiritual journey through many of the ideological themes of the 20 century:th<Nominal christianity - Materialistic Skepticism;<Materialistic Skepticism - Romantic Idealism;<Romantic Idealism -Theosophical Occultism; <Theosophical Occultism - Pantheism;<Pantheism - Manichaeanism; <Manichaeanism - Theism;<Theism - Christian Theism. CA scathing critic of modern secular humanism. CA Great Tradition Christian . <Emphasis on the core defining doctrines of the Christian inspiring example.

3 1C. S. lewis : A mere Christian2A Most Reluctant ConvertBreaking Down Christian influence.<CSL: All the books were turning against me. Indeed, I must have been as blind as a batnot to have seen, long before, the ludicrous contradiction between my theory of life andmy actual experiences as a reader. George MacDonald had done more to me than anyother writer;.. Chesterton had more sense than all the other moderns put But the most alarming of all was George Herbert. Here was a man who seemed to me to exceed all the authors I had read in conveying the very quality of life as weactually live it from moment to moment; but the wretched fellow, instead of doing it alldirectly, insisted on mediating it through what I called the Christian mythology.

4 On theother hand, most of the authors who might be claimed as precursors of modernenlightenment seemed to me [quite puny by comparison] and bored The only non-Christians who seemed to me really to know anything were the Romantics; and a goodmany of them were tinged with something like religion, even at times with christianity . [Iwas drawn to the conclusion that] Christians are wrong but all the rest are bores. CAn anti- Christian reality of the supernatural. <William Butler Yeats. < A ravenous, erotic lust for the Occult.<Dr. Askins. Spiritual Checkmate. CSpiritual deadends. CIs christianity true?CThe influence of friends and acquaintances. <Arthur Greeves. <Owen Barfield. <Alan Griffiths.

5 <Nevill Coghill. <J. R. R. Tolkien.<Hugo Dyson. <Paul Victor Mendelssohn Benecke. CG. K. Chesterton s The Everlasting Man. CImmersion in a medieval worldview<CSL: A young atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him onevery side. CA random thought: <T. D. Harry Weldon: Rum thing, that stuff of Frazer s about the Dying God. It almost looks as if it really happened once. CInvestigating the to the church. CThe turning point. < Wilson: He began to feel himself approached by God, and in the summer of 1929went through a mystical experience. < lewis unbound. C. S. lewis : A mere Christian3CA life-changing confession:<CSL: Remember, I had always wanted, above all things, not to be interfered with.

6 I hadwanted to call my soul my own. I had been far more anxious to avoid suffering than toachieve You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelentingapproach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to [Finally,] I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. Jesus Is the Way. CStruggling with church. <CSL: My churchgoing was a merely symbolical and provisional practice. If it in facthelped to move me in the Christian direction, I am unaware of this. CA perplexing question. CA nighttime conversion with Tolkien and Dyson.

7 CThe Christian myth. CLewis imaginative failure. CThe Christian story as true myth. <The fundamental difference: It really happened! <CSL: What flows into you from myth is not truth but and therefore every mythbecomes the father of innumerable truths on the abstract level. CChristianity works. CLewis magical motorcycle ride:<CSL: When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and whenwe reached the zoo I did. <CSL: I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ. CJoy fulfilled. <CSL: The man who has passed through [a profound conversion experience] feels likeone who has waked from a nightmare into ecstasy. Growth and Discipleship.

8 CPracticing the spiritual disciplines. <Thomas a Kempis Imitation of demonstrable effect. <George Sayer: Jack s conversion to christianity made him a different person. Hissearch for belief was over; he now had a strong platform on which to He devotedhimself to developing and strengthening his belief, and almost from the year of hisconversion, he wanted to become an evangelist for the Christian faith. <An exemplary : Mrs. Moore s reaction. < Wilson: lewis was not a man to say one thing and do another. He meant hisChristian commitment to be total. C. S. LewisBibliographyJohn Beversluis, C. S. lewis and the Search for Rational Religion (Eerdmans, 1985). John Beversluis, Beyond the Double-Bolted Door.

9 Christian History (Vol. 4, No. 3, 1985), pp. 28-31. John Beversluis, Surprised by Freud: A Critical Appraisal of A. N. Wilson s Biography of C. christianity and Literature (Vol. 41, No. 2, 1992), pp. 179-95. Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings (Allen & Unwin, 1978).Christopher Derrick, C. S. lewis and the Church of Rome. Derrick, Putting C. S. lewis On the Couch. New Oxford Review (May, 1990). CA critical review of A. N. Wilson s C. S. lewis : A Biography. David C. Downing, Into the Region of Awe: Mysticism in C. S. lewis (IVP, 2005). Paul Holmer, Xxxx. brilliant study of lewis Holbrook, The Skeleton in the Wardrobe. CA skeptical psycho-biography by an atheist. Walter Hooper, C.

10 S. lewis Companion and Guide (HarperCollins, 1998).Thomas Howard, Xxxxx. Xxxx. Clyde Kilby, The Christian World of C. S. lewis (Eerdmans, 1995).Peter Kreeft, C. S. lewis For the Third Millenium (Ignatius Press, 1994).Art Lindsley, C. S. lewis s Case For Christ: Insights from Reaon, Imagination and Faith (IVP,2005).Louis A. Markos, Myth Matters. christianity Today (April 23, 2001). Victor Reppert, Taking C. S. lewis Seriously. Books & Culure (Sep/Oct 2003), pp. Reppert, C. S. lewis s Dangerous Idea (Inter-Varsity Press, 2003). George Sayer, Jack: C. S. lewis and His Times (Harper & Row, 1988).CSheldon Vanauken: This is the best book written about lewis . CLyle Dorsett: Of all the lewis biographies, this one by Sayer is superior to all the others forseveral reasons.