C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis, 1947.

C.S. Lewis (full name: Clive Staples Lewis) (1898-1963) Christian apologist and intellectual known for taking complex theological issues and writing about them plainly for the masses to follow. He was raised in the Church of Ireland before becoming an atheist as a teenager. Only as an adult when he was already a professor at Oxford and Cambridge did he come "kicking and screaming" to understand that God did exist. From there it was an easier step to embrace the realization of Christianity. He and J.R.R. Tolkien were friends, both belonging to the group known as "the Inklings." and Lewis credits Tolkien with influencing his conversion. He fought in the trenches during World War I, and was extremely sceptical of those who did not either smoke or drink.

Lewis' fictional works include seven books for children known collectively as The Chronicles of Narnia, and three books for adults that fall broadly in the science-fiction genre: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. Like Tolkien's fiction, these works have a Christian subtext, but it is more noticeably apparent in Lewis than in Tolkien.

C.S. Lewis also wrote The Screwtape Letters, Miracles, The Problem of Pain , The Abolition of Man , The Great Divorce and Mere Christianity. Over 200 million copies of his books have sold and they continue to sell many millions of copies a year.^{[Citation Needed]}

C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity,

"All that we call human history - money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery - is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.^{[Citation Needed]}"

C.S. Lewis also wrote in Mere Christianity,

"That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. ... is a religion you could not have guessed. ... [I]t is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have."

Although not an ardent anti-evolutionist, he wrote on the futility of materialism:

If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents—the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts—i.e. of materialism and astronomy—are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milkjug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.

Lewis died the same day that John Kennedy was assassinated, cutting down on the press of his passing. More than ever he is still considered a pillar of Christian thought.

External links

• C.S. Lewis Society of California
• Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College
• "C. S. Lewis: A Modest Literary Biography and Bibliography," by Bruce L. Edwards
• "Finding the Permanent in the Political: C. S. Lewis as a Political Thinker," by John G. West
• "Still Surprised by Lewis," by J.I. Packer
• C.S. Lewis Foundation
• Into the Wardrobe
• "C. S. Lewis and the Materialist Menace," by John G. West
• New York C.S. Lewis Society
• The Question of God, PBS series
• C.S. Lewis and the Inklings
• "C. S. Lewis on Mere Science," by Michael Aeschliman
• "Truth in the Fire: C. S. Lewis and Pursuit of Truth Today," by Dallas Willard