Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) achieved an international reputation during his lifetime as an outspoken opponent of Liberal Christianity. Con­verted from atheism at the age of thir­ty-one, he wrote a number of books and articles between 1930 and 1940, al­though none were a notable success. He catapulted to international fame with the publication of The Screwtape Letters in 1942; by the time Miracles was published in 1947 his reputation as an orthodox Christian speaking for the defence of "central" doctrines was firmly established. Liberals did not hesitate to attack his views as hopelessly out of date and a surrender to fundamentalism; much of this criticism was bitter and abusive. Such fanatic opposition, however, did not diminish his popularity in the least but was regarded as tangible proof of his orthodoxy.

There is no doubt that in many ways C.S. Lewis was a remarkable man. He was a respected scholar it the field of Medieval and Renaissance literature. He not only wrote a number of widely acclaimed scholarly works but also managed to produce an as­tonishing number of religious essays sermons, novels, science fiction, po­etry and fantasy including the famous Chronicles of Narnia for children. Lewis weaves a spell in his books which is difficult to resist. He was able to project just the right amount of apparent expertise balanced by obvious humility:

I write for the unlearned about things in which I am unlearn myself.¹

He presented himself as mere layman speaking to other laymen and so managed to forge a bond with ordinary churchgoers in every denom­ination. The combination of an unpre­tentious style, the avoidance of dif­ficult theological terms, a reticence in raising doctrinal issues, and the variety of compelling pictures imparted to the reader's imagination served to give the impression that here, at last, was the man who speaks for the ordinary Christian in everyday terms. This was no high-minded clergyman making con­fident pronouncements on religious doctrine but a layman who not only admitted his ignorance but had also struggled with the important questions of Christianity.

Since his death in 1963 his popu­larity has not diminished; in fact, it has now been transformed into a venera­tion of Lewis as a cult figure. Is there the possibility that all this admiration might be obscuring the real nature of his beliefs? Perhaps we, too, readily assume the truth of his reputation as a spokesman for orthodox Christiani­ty; perhaps the popular conception of Lewis does not reflect reality at all. Were his beliefs truly orthodox, that is, in accord with God's Word?

Lewis has long been regarded as one who adhered to a literal interpreta­tion of the Bible and assented to the doctrines of Scriptural infallibility and inerrancy. This consensus is largely based on his vigorous defence of mir­acles and the existence of the super­natural, as well as such doctrines as the virgin birth and the divinity of Christ. Yet he denied that he was a fundamen­talist adhering to a literal interpretation of the Word² and declared that he had no difficulty in accepting the modernist view that much of the Old Testament was derived from pagan myths which had been turned into a vehicle for ulti­mate truth by God Himself.³ His view was that the Bible "carries the Word of God" ⁴ and is only "in some sense — though not all parts of it in the same sense — the Word of God."⁵ Further, we should not expect God to provide "an unrefracted light giving us ulti­mate truth in systematic form."⁶ Since Scripture is neither infallible nor iner­rant, he had no qualms about criticizing various portions as "anti-religious," containing "a silly dash of Paganism," "terrible," "hideously distorted by the human instrument," "self-righteous," and "devilish."⁷

In addition, he also held to the view that pagan myths com­plement Scripture and can even be edi­fying for the believer. According to Lewis, it is possible to find a prefigured account of Christ's birth in Virgil's poetry, Christ's suffering in Plato's story of the Righteous One, and His resurrection in the death and rebirth stories of Balder and Adonis.⁸ He held that the writings of such pagans as Akhenaten, Plato, and Socrates anticipated Christian theology and spec­ulated that, since these men had unknowingly professed Christ, perhaps they now enjoyed eternal life.⁹God's revelation, then, could be "read" ev­erywhere, accomplished through a pro­cess which only gradually came into focus.

The earliest stratum of the Old Testament contains many truths in a form which I take to be legendary, or even mythical..., but gradually the truth condenses, becomes more and more historical... Finally you reach the New Testament and history reigns supreme, and the Truth is incarnate.¹⁰

If Lewis held to such an impover­ished view of Scripture, on what basis did he defend such doctrines as the virgin birth and the divinity of Christ? Aside from the fact that he regarded the New Testament as more historical­ly reliable than the Old Testament, the real reason he accepted a story contain­ing the account of a miracle as histori­cal was that he had never found any philosophical grounds for the idea that miracles do not happen.¹¹This criteri­on, however, was applied only to ac­counts of miracles in the New Testa­ment, while Old Testament accounts were relegated to the realm of myth. This is not to say, however, that myths are simply to be dismissed as "non-truths"; indeed, as Lewis wrote: "myth is the father of innumerable truths" and "the mountain whence all the different streams arise which become truths down here in the valley."¹²He described Christianity as the marriage of "Per­fect Myth" with "Perfect Fact" and urged Christians not to be "ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology."¹³

He willingly paid lip ser­vice to some Biblical doctrines on the basis that it was reasonable to assume that, at some time in history, the events prefigured by pagan myth would be­come reality. Since Christianity has been the only religion to produce suf­ficient historical evidence for the actual occurrences of such prefigured events, it follows that Christianity is the highest development of religion and must be accepted as true. Lewis was completely enthralled with the sweeping grandeur and bold heroes of epics and myths. His friend, Neville Coghill, observed that "the mystically supernatural things in ancient epic and saga always attract­ed him."¹⁴Another friend, Arthur Greeves, puzzled about his intense attraction for pagan myths even after his conversion.¹⁵ Not surprisingly, on a trip to Greece with his wife he wrote that he "had some ado to prevent Joy and myself from relapsing into Paganism in Attica! At Daphni it was hard not to pray to Apollo the Healer. But some­how one didn't feel it would have been very wrong — would have only been addressing Christ sub specie Apollo­nis."¹⁶ Even more important was the special emotion he experienced when he was absorbed in reading myths: an almost unbearable longing for the un­known. He believed that this bitter­sweet longing was actually a deep desire for union with God and the hope of attaining infinite happiness. Neither Lewis himself nor his biographers deny that the longing for ultimate fulfill­ment, coupled with his conviction in the basic unity between Christianity, paganism, and myth, were the moti­vating factors which pushed him into conversion to the Christian faith.

He placed great stress on the role of man's reason in the process of con­version. The premise of The Problem of Pain, Miracles, and Mere Christian­ity is that reason properly employed in an open-minded investigation of the facts without the hindrance of prior assumptions should lead to the conclu­sion that God exists. This discovery goes hand-in-hand with the observa­tion that there is a "Moral Law" in the universe "urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong."¹⁷

The next step for the potential convert is to try to keep this Moral Law:

Now we cannot ... discover our failure to keep God's law except by trying our very hardest and then failing. Unless we really try, whatever we say, there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder next time we shall succeed in being com­pletely good... A serious moral ef­fort is the only thing that will bring you to the point where you throw up the sponge.¹⁸

Yet he also made allowances for the possibility that Christianity could be rejected even after an open-minded investigation:

ts account of the universe may be true, or it may not, and once the question is before you,' then your natural inquisitiveness must want to make you know the answer. If Christianity is untrue, then no hon­est man will want to believe it, how­ever helpful it might be: if it is true every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all.¹⁹He claimed that honest rejection of Christ, however mistaken, will be for­given and healed. ²⁰

Lewis explained that no one should "accept Christiani­ty if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it."²¹In fact, he presented two exam­ples of rejection:

We all know good men who were not Christians; men like Socrates and Confucious who had never heard of it, or men like J.S. Mill who quite honestly couldn't believe it... If their intentions were good..., the skill and mercy of God will remedy the evils which their ignorance, left to itself, would naturally produce for them and for those they influenced.²²

The determining factor in conversion is the use of reason in an honest and objective manner, facing the facts square­ly "like a man." Only to such honest men is God enabled to reveal Himself: "...it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition... God can show Himself as He really is only to real men..."²³ 

Not only is God limited by human character but also by man's free will:

What He is watching and waiting and working for is something that is not easy even for God, because, from the nature of the case, even He cannot produce it by a mere act of power... Will they, or will they not, turn to Him and thus fulfill the only purpose for which they have been created?²⁴

On this shaky foundation of man's reason and free will, Lewis erected his own version of Christianity — a com­bination of Anglo-Catholicism, mysti­cism, modernism, and paganism. The Word of God was not acknowledged to be inerrant, infallible, and necessary for fallen mankind. The sovereign God was relegated to the sidelines, forced to watch and wait for men to apply Christ's sacrifice to themselves. The trinitarian character of God was de­stroyed, for, although the Father was acknowledged as God, the Son was reduced to being the expression of the divine potential of humanity and the Holy Spirit diminished to the role of "the spirit of love" between Father and Son. Salvation consisted of freely participating in a process in which men advanced from being mere crea­tures to being taken right up out of nature and turned into "gods." Faith was not regarded as the free gift of God given by grace to certain totally depraved and undeserving sinners, but a state to which men may aspire through their own efforts.

His artificially constructed faith failed him in the end. The death of his wife in 1960 left him bereft of all com­fort. The brave words he had penned in The Problem of Pain some twenty years earlier rendered him no solace. Suddenly, God did not seem so "reasonable" after all; now Lewis called Him the "Cosmic Sadist" and the "Great Iconoclast."²⁵ The last three years of his life give evidence that Lewis had come to have grave doubts about the faith he once so vigorously defend­ed²⁶— doubts which, tragically, he was never to resolve. ²⁷