C.S. Lewis | Reluctant Apologist

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down trees but to irrigate jungles

- C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Three men walked along a tree-covered path in the early hours of a Sunday morning. Their conversation mixed with the sound of water flowing over rocks in a small river and the crunch of leaves beneath their booted feet. The words they spoke were steeped in deep knowledge of literature and philosophy as they wrestled with the nature of the universe and man’s place in it. The two Englishmen believed that God had created the world and sent His Son to die for mankind’s sins, while their Irish friend was a skeptic who did not believe in anything beyond this life. Then, as their talk turned to myths and the great stories of humanity’s past, a strong autumn wind came up suddenly and sent leaves scattering across the path. The sheer power of the gust filled their hearts with wonder, and they stopped and stood in its midst, as one of them put it, “appreciating the ecstasy of such a moment.”

Then, they turned aside and walked through the gate onto the college green, went up to the Irishman’s rooms in the newest building on the campus, and chatted about poetry and drama until dawn. In a room filled with pipe smoke, they did what academics across history have done: sharing their innermost thoughts and solving the world’s problems. The two Englishmen departed as sunlight streamed through the windows, hoping to get an hour’s sleep before their morning tutorials. But the Irishman sat in his rooms, thinking. Years later, he would write a poem that captured that conversation along Addison’s Walk and the spell that had been undone in his heart:

I heard in Addison’s Walk a bird sing clear:

This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.

Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees

This year, nor want of rain destroy the peas.

This year time’s nature will no more defeat you,

Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.

This time they will not lead you round and back

To Autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track.

This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell,

We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.

Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,

Quick, quick, quick, quick!—the gates are drawn apart.

Clive Staples Lewis is one of the most famous authors of the 20th century. His works, both fiction and non-fiction, have delighted, inspired, and challenged millions of readers for over seventy years. Their scope ranges from philosophical inquiries to apologetic treatises, from fantastic worlds of his own creation to demonic conversations within our own world. Lewis’ writings have been translated into over thirty languages, sold millions of copies across the globe, and been adapted for the stage, television, and film.

Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland, in 1898. He had an older brother named Warren, with whom he lived at Oxford for many years. As a child, he had a dog named Jacksie who was killed when he was four years old. Shortly thereafter, he announced to his family that his name was now “Jack,” and for the rest of his life his friends addressed him thus. Lewis was educated at a private boarding school north of London before returning to Ireland for university at Campbell and Malvern colleges. In 1917, he left school and volunteered in the British Army, where he served at the Somme and was wounded the following year. Like many who survived the war, Lewis two childhood friends in the trenches. After returning home in late 1918, he completed his studies and became a professor.

Mere Christianity

Lewis had been raised in the Church of Ireland but became an atheist at the age of fifteen. He later wrote that at this time in his life he was “very angry with God for not existing.” However, his study of various mythologies laid the foundation for his eventual return to faith. In September 1931, Lewis was strolling with his friends J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson along Addison’s Walk at Magdalen College, Oxford (the same path I trod many times when I was a student there). It was early in the morning, and the three men were discussing the idea of a myth, not in the sense of a fairy story but an ancient tale that conveyed a moral truth. Lewis later recounted that this conversation was the beginning of his journey toward a belief in God:

Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all; that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself…I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: again, that the idea of the dying and reviving god…similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even though I could not say in cold prose “what it meant.” Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth.

Lewis came to embrace theism, and he soon re-converted to Christianity. Again, in his own words:

I know very well when but hardly how the final step was taken. I went with my brother to have a picnic at Whipsnade Zoo. We started in fog, but by the end of our journey the sun was shining. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and when we reached the zoo I did. I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion. It was more like when a man, after a long sleep, becomes aware that he is now awake.

Lewis joined the Church of England, where he remained for the rest of his life. However, despite his very orthodox Anglican beliefs, he was a strong opponent of denominationalism. In his writings, he made a conscious effort to defend those aspects of Christianity that were held by all communions—whether Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, or Protestant.

After his graduation from Oxford University, he took a teaching position at his alma mater, where he taught for nearly thirty years. His degrees were in Greek and Latin Literature, Philosophy and Ancient History, and English. His studies continued while at Oxford, and he dedicated his time largely to the late Middle Ages and its body of literature. Lewis was especially fascinated by the medieval idea of allegory. His academic writings are still considered by those in his fields as ground-breaking—The Allegory of Love (1936) led to a renewed interest in medieval narratives, and “A Preface to Paradise Lost” (1941) is still seen as the greatest critique of Milton’s classic.

While at Oxford, Lewis developed a close friendship with several of his colleagues, among them J.R.R. Tolkien, Nevill Coghill, Charles Williams, and Owen Barfield. Of his relationship with Tolkien, Lewis wrote in 1966:

When I began teaching for the English faculty, I made two other friends, both Christians (these queer people seemed to pop up on every side) who were later to give me much help in getting over the last stile. These were Dyson…and J.R.R. Tolkien. Friendship with the latter marked the breakdown of two old prejudices. At my first coming into the world I had been (implicitly) warned never to trust a Papist, and at my first coming into the English Faculty (explicitly) never to trust a philologist. Tolkien was both.

Lewis and Tolkien were members of a literary group known as the “Inklings,” who met weekly at a local pub, The Eagle and Child, and in Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College. When they met, the Inklings would read passages from their own works for criticism and review, discuss other literary writings of the days, and generally have a good time. Tolkien read portions of The Lord of the Rings to the group (which Lewis loved), and Lewis read passages from his Space Trilogy (which Tolkien hated). The relationships formed during the Inklings meetings transcended this world and into the members’ writings. C.S. Lewis based the character of Ransom in his Space Trilogy on his friend Tolkien, while Tolkien used Lewis’s mannerisms and method of speech when writing his memorable character Treebeard. 

Miracles

Lewis was a committed bachelor for much of his life. He lived outside Oxford in a home known as The Kilns with his brother Warren and their housekeeper Jane Moore (the mother of his friend Paddy who had died during the First World War). The brothers loved the single lifestyle and were famously disorganized. Mrs. Moore once commented that “Jack and Warnie must have thought cigarette ash was good for the carpet,” when asked what it was like cleaning up after two bachelors. Lewis’ work was his life; he taught, lectured, and wrote. During the Second World War, he produced a series of radio broadcasts for the BBC that outlined the fundamental principles of Christianity. These were later collected and published in his most famous non-fiction work, Mere Christianity.

Yet all this changed in 1952 when Lewis met Joy Davidman Gresham, an American author with whom he had corresponded for two years. Gresham had come to Great Britain after divorcing her husband and wanted to meet the now-famous C.S. Lewis (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe having been published two years earlier with great success). The two authors soon became close, and this friendship eventually turned to love. Jack’s brother Warren wrote of the relationship, “The attraction was at first undoubtedly intellectual. Joy was the only woman whom he had met…who had a brain which matched his own in suppleness, in width of interest, and in analytical grasp, and above all in humor and a sense of fun.”

Joy moved permanently to the United Kingdom in late 1953, and when she encountered financial difficulties, Jack agreed to pay for the education of her two sons, David and Douglas. The two sought each other’s opinions on their writings; Joy’s most famous book Smoke on the Mountain contained a preface written by Lewis, and Jack based the central character of Orual in Till We Have Faces on Joy. When she was denied a visa renewal in 1956, Jack offered to marry Joy so that she could stay in Britain. She agreed, and the couple were united in a civil marriage in April of that year. They lived apart from each other, though in the same city, because their marriage had not been recognized by the Church of England and they felt to do otherwise would have been immoral. Yet their lives were drawn inexorably together as time went on. David and Douglas soon came to see Jack as a father, and Jack began to see the boys as his own sons.

In October 1956, Joy tripped over a telephone wire in her kitchen and broke her leg. While at the hospital, she was diagnosed with incurable bone and breast cancers. The news broke Jack’s heart. She underwent radiation treatment and several operations to remove the cancer while Jack tried his best to provide for her and her sons. During this ordeal, Jack realized that he wanted a Christian marriage to Joy, and the two were united for a second time at her bedside while in the hospital in March 1957. The cancer eventually went into remission, and Joy returned to The Kilns. Soon after, the two went on a honeymoon to Wales and Ireland. Although she had stopped writing by this point, Joy continued to help Jack with his own work as she recovered.

But sadly, these happy times were short, and in October 1959 a check-up revealed that the cancer had returned. Over the next five months Joy underwent more treatment, but in March 1960 it became clear that the disease was terminal. Jack took his wife to Greece on holiday the next month, fulfilling a lifelong dream of hers. Her condition worsened quickly, and Joy died in July 1960.

The Problem of Pain

Joy’s death shattered Lewis utterly. He was now a widower and a father to David and Douglas. After her burial, Lewis adapted a poem he had written years before as an epitaph for his wife and placed it on her gravesite:

Here the whole world (stars, water, air,

And field and forest, as they were

Reflected in a single mind)

Like cast off clothes was left behind

In ashes, yet with hopes that she,

Re-born from holy poverty,

In lenten lands, hereafter may

Resume them on her Easter Day.

In an effort to cope with his loss, Lewis wrote A Grief Observed, a series of diary entries in which he chronicled how he dealt with the grief at Joy’s death and his own journey back from depression.

Less than a year after Joy’s death, Lewis was diagnosed with nephritis, an inflammation of the kidneys, which led to blood poisoning. He took a leave of absence from teaching to recover, and his health gradually improved. However, in July 1963 he fell ill again and was taken to hospital. He suffered a heart attack and spent two days in a coma before awakening. After recovering and returning to The Kilns, he hoped to return to work, but he could not. In the last weeks of his life, he was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure, and he died on November 22, 1963, one week before his 65th birthday.

Despite his fame internationally as an author, Lewis’s death received very little media attention. In an ironic coincidence, he collapsed in his bedroom at home and died less than five minutes before President John F. Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas. Another famous author, Aldous Huxley, also died on the same day. C.S. Lewis was buried at Holy Trinity Church in Oxford. His brother Warren, who died ten years later, is buried alongside him.

Today, Lewis’s legacy as an author and an apologist enshrines for him a place among the great writers of the last century. His works are studied by scholars and laypeople alike, and many of them raise great questions of life and death, of sin and sanctification, of hope and glory. Those who open a book by Clive Staples Lewis will be entertained, inspired, and perhaps challenged to consider the nature of this life and the realities of the next.