C. S. Lewis – Ideally Placed To Answer Skeptics
by Robert White

In rumpled clothes, which made him look more like a butcher than an Oxford scholar, C. S. Lewis enjoyed a good drink and smoke which would probably make him less than welcome in the evangelical churches that have beatified him.

Yet Lewis' works – including the allegorical Chronicles of Narnia and his timeless apologetic Mere Christianity – remain ammunition in the evangelistic arsenal.

Clive Staples Lewis, known as "Jack" to his friends, was born in Northern Belfast, Ireland on November 29, 1898. His idyllic childhood, and a brief flirtation with Christianity, came to an abrupt end after two key events: his mother's death when he was nine and his entry into a preparatory school two years later.

"The discovery that there were religious faiths that differed from his own... caused Jack to abandon his own faith, 'with no sense of loss but with the greatest relief,'" writes Brian Sibley in C. S. Lewis Through the Shadowlands.

For the next decades, Lewis ignored God, seeking instead the "Joy" he found in the illustrations of Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods and in the music of Wagner's Ring cycle. During this stage of his life, Lewis earned degrees at Oxford University, was wounded in World War I, and elected as a Fellow of Magdalen College, where he taught English and Literature for 29 years.

At Oxford, Lewis joined the Kolbitars (Icelandic for "coal biters" or men who sat close enough to the fire to "eat" the coals) led by fellow Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. This group evolved into the Inklings, which also included Lewis' brother Warren (or Warnie) and other influential literary figures – including Hugo Dyson who was to have a significant impact on Lewis. Each week the men met at the Eagle and Child pub or in Lewis' room to read from and critique each other's work. Here the first pages of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe were shared.

Lewis was a man of his age, suggests Michael Coren, whose brief biography, The Man Who Created Narnia: the Story of C. S. Lewis, captures the essence of the man.

"Lewis was a heavy drinker, but not a drunk," says Coren. "He smoked and his language was probably risqué."

This was Lewis' "joie de vivre," says Joseph Pearce, author of C. S. Lewis and the Catholic Church. Douglas Gresham describes Lewis, his stepfather, as a man with an enormous humor and vibrant wit. In an interview with New Zealand's Rhema radio and transcribed on www.narniaweb.com, Gresham says "You couldn't be with Jack for more than five or 10 minutes without roaring with laughter."

All the while, Lewis was being influenced by the devout faith of Tolkein and some of the other Inklings, and the apologetics of G. K. Chesterton. In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, Lewis writes how, on a 1929 summer's vacation, "I gave in, and admitted God was God, and knelt and prayed; perhaps the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England."

It took Lewis another two years, and an all night conversation with Tolkien and Dyson, to be converted from theism to Christianity. On a trip to a zoo, traveling in Warnie's motorcycle sidecar, Lewis writes, "When we set out, I did not believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo, I did."

Lewis used his pulpit as a professor at Oxford and then Cambridge (to which he moved in 1954 after being overlooked for promotion) to reach the masses with the Christian message. A series of BBC radio broadcasts became the basis for Mere Christianity. A science fiction trilogy (Out of a Silent Plant, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength), the seven Narnia chronicles, beginning with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and along with a host of books broaching the topics of love (The Four Loves), suffering (The Problem of Pain) and miracles (Miracles) brought Christianity to the masses.

His most poignant book, A Grief Observed, was written following the death of his wife, Joy Davidman. The brief courtship and marriage – the two first corresponded in 1950, met two years later and married in 1956 – was fraught with challenges: Davidman's separation and divorce from an abusive alcoholic, the move with two sons, David and Douglas, to England, and Davidman's battle with cancer that was lost in 1960.

Lewis' health continued to decline until his own death on November 22, 1963 – an event overshadowed by the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Brave New World author Aldous Huxley’s death.

LEWIS' SIGNIFICANCE AS a Christian apologist, especially among evangelicals, has yet to wane. At this year's C. S. Lewis Foundation conference at Oxford, Pearce said about 90 per cent of the attendees were evangelicals.

In the 40_plus years since his death, Lewis has become even more popular than he was during his life, says Coren. "Mere Christianity is a wonderful argument for the Christian faith," says Coren. Lewis’ strength comes from the process of reason by which he arrived at his faith.

"Lewis is ideally placed to answer the skeptics," says Pearce. "He understands the weaknesses and chinks in their Armour."

[Robert White is the managing editor of the ChristianCurrent newspaper network and a freelance journalist specializing in faith based issues.]

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