LEWIS, C. S. (CLIVE STAPLES)
(1898–1963)

C. S. Lewis was a British teacher, writer, and critic. He was born and raised in Belfast but spent most of his academic career at Oxford. After having volunteered for the army and subsequently getting wounded, in 1917, he returned to Oxford and took first class honors in "Greats" (philosophy and classics). Shortly thereafter he taught philosophy at Oxford as a substitute for Edgar Carrit, his former tutor in philosophy while Carrit was on leave as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan. Finding no opportunity for teaching in classics or philosophy, and having also gotten first class honors in English, Lewis was elected to a fellowship in English at Magdalene College, where he taught for thirty years. Toward the end of his academic career he was appointed to a newly created Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge. His strictly academic work was concentrated on the ideas rather than the literary forms of medieval and renaissance English writers.

Early in his career at Oxford Lewis became a convert, first to theism and then to Christianity. During World War II he was asked to give lectures about Christianity on the BBC: Printed in book form, these were the basis of his most famous popular work, Mere Christianity (2001 [1942]). Other popular works were The Problem of Pain (2001 [1940]), Miracles (2001 [1947]), and The Screwtape Letters (2001 [1942]). In 1945, Lewis argued with G. E. N. Anscombe about a claim in Chapter 5 of Miracles that naturalism is self-refuting, for it says that all our thoughts are ultimately traceable to the blind working of chance and that no thought is valid if it can be fully explained as the result of irrational causes. Anscombe distinguished between "irrational" causes and "nonrational" causes and argued that being the result of "nonrational" causes does not make our reasoning invalid. Lewis, in reply, says the "valid" in the logician's sense is not the correct word for what he meant and distinguished between "reasons" and "causes" (Hooper 1979). Some have thought that he lost that argument. He revised the chapter of Miracles which Anscombe had criticized, and Anscombe, at least, felt that the revision answered much of her original objections (Purtill 2004). Late in his life (in 1957), Lewis married Helen Joy Davidman, who was dying of cancer. She surprisingly (and perhaps miraculously) recovered and they spent three happy years together.

After her death, Lewis wrote (anonymously) A Grief Observed (2001 [1961]), which some scholars have held demonstrates that he had lost his faith, or at least his belief in the rational justification of Christianity. However, a more careful reading shows that his own description of Christianity to a friend is true: "It ends in faith, but begins with the blackest of doubts en route" (unpublished letter quoted in Purtill 2004, p. 25). It is useful to compare this book with two of his later works: Till We Have Faces, a fictional account of a woman who began writing a book as a complaint against the gods (the account is set in classical times) and "ends in faith"; and Letters to Malcolm (2002 [1964]), which touches on some of the same themes.

Lewis was, in this author's judgment as well as the judgment of other critics, a great master of English prose and a powerful writer of fiction with underlying religious themes: the seven books of the Chronicles of Narnia, the "space" trilogy, and Till We Have Faces.

Philosophically speaking, Lewis's work, both nonfiction and fiction, has a number of characteristics:

(1) He argues for his points on the basis of reason and experience. As he says in an essay, "There is, of course, no question … of belief without evidence … or in the teeth of evidence … if anyone expects that, I certainly do not" (Lewis 2001 [1955], p. 17);

(2) He thinks of faith as a rational acceptance and of "temptations against faith" as emotional reactions when we find it would be much more convenient not to believe;

(3) He accepts miracles and uses them as evidence for Christianity, first refuting the arguments of Hume and others against the possibility of miracles or the possibility of knowing them, and then arguing historically that miracles have occurred;

(4) Miracles, as Lewis defines them, depend on the existence of God. Lewis argues for God's existence using variations of the moral argument and the argument from design, especially a version of what Victor Reppert has called "the argument from reason" which argues that to really trust our reason we need the existence of God. For the moral argument, Lewis agrees with other philosophers that "if God does not exist anything is permitted" and by contraposition that "if not everything is permitted [as he argues from our moral experience] then God must exist."

(5) Lewis contrasts Christianity with other forms of belief—such as naturalism, Hinduism, and so on—and argues that Christianity explains the facts of experience better than other forms of belief.

(6) Lewis grants that the problems of moral and natural evil are the most powerful against a belief in a loving, omnipotent God, and addresses both in The Problem of Pain and elsewhere.

Professional philosophers may find many of Lewis's arguments oversimplifications; Lewis would probably grant this for his more popular works, which were intended for intelligent nonprofessionals. However, this leads to a situation where philosophical argument can begin. What are the alleged oversimplifications and how can they be repaired? Lewis's experience with Anscombe showed he was capable of doing this, as does his work in less popular works addressed to academic or clerical audiences.

The talent that made him a good writer of fiction carries over to his nonfictional works; he is a poet, as well as a logician, and employs a gift for metaphor and analogy in his statements of arguments. Lewis has been called "perhaps the twentieth century's most popular proponent of Faith based on reason" (Nicholi 2002, p. 3). Many opponents of Christianity have taken Lewis's arguments seriously, especially those scholars who, such as Antony Flew, wish to be fair to Christianity and try to refute its best arguments. Many supporters of Christianity, both nonprofessional and academic alike, would give Lewis major credit for beginning the process that led them to Christianity.

See also Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret; Experience; Evil, The Problem of; Hume, David; Immortality; Miracles; Reason.

Bibliography

works by lewis

The Problem of Pain (1940). San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001.

The Screwtape Letters (1942). San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001.

Mere Christianity (1943). San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2003.

The Great Divorce (1945). San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001.

Miracles (1947). San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001.

"An Obstinacy in Belief." In The World's Last Night (1955). New York: Harcourt Harvest Books, 2002.

Till We Have Faces (1956). San Diego, CA: Harcourt Harvest Books, 2002.

A Grief Observed (1961). San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001.

Letters to Malcolm (1964). New York: Harvest Books, 2002.

works on lewis

Green, Roger Lancelon, and Walter Hooper. C. S. Lewis: A Biography. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1995.

Hooper, Walter. "Oxford Bonnie Fighter." In C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table, edited by James T. Como. New York: Macmillan, 1979.

Kreeft, Peter. C. S. Lewis for the Third Millennium: Six Essays on the Abolition of Man. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994.

Nicholi, Armand M. The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life. New York: Free Press, 2002.

Purtill, Richard. C. S. Lewis's Case for the Christian Faith. New York: Harper Collins, 1981. New. ed., San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004.

Purtill, Richard. "Did C. S. Lewis Lose his Faith?" In A Christian for All Christians: Essays in Honour of C. S. Lewis. London: Hodder and Staughton, 1990.

Reppert, Victor. C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: A Philosophical Defense of Lewis's Argument from Reason. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1998.

Richard Purtill (2005)