God is glorious in his saints!
Welcome to the Christian Saints Podcast. My name is Darren Ong, recording from Sepang in Malaysia. In this podcast, we explore the lives of the Christian saints, from the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions. Today we will be discussing the writer and apologist, Saint Clive Staples Lewis, better known as C.S. Lewis.
C.S. Lewis is the first modern saint covered in this podcast. C.S. Lewis passed away in 1968, and was commemorated in the calendar of saints of the Epsicopal Church of the USA in 2003 I thought it was important to include a 20th-century saint, to affirm that sainthood is not just a relic of the past, but rather God’s transformative power is working in peoples’ lives even today.
C.S. Lewis is best known for the childrens’ fantasy book series, the Chronicles of Narnia. This series is a phenomenon, having sold more than a 100 million copies worldwide. But he is also known for his forceful and eloquent religious writings, with titles such as Mere Christianity, the Great Divorce, the Problem of Pain, the Four Loves, and Miracles which have become classics of Christian literature. He has even produced Science fiction, with his “Space Trilogy”.
Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland on the 29th of November 1898, baptised in the Church of Ireland (which is a member of the Anglican communion). In his teenage years he fell away from the faith, and considered himself an atheist. In his autobiography, surprised by joy he writes thus about his time at his prep school, where he first started questioning his faith:
I remember summing up what I took to be our destiny, in conversation with my best friend at Chartres, by the formula, "Term, holidays, term, holidays, till we leave school, and then work, work, work till we die." Even if I had been free from this delusion, I think I should still have seen grounds for pessimism. One's views, even at that age, are not wholly determined by one's own momentary situation; even a boy can recognise that there is desert all round him though he, for the nonce, sits in an oasis. I was, in my ineffective way, a tender-hearted creature; perhaps the most murderous feelings I ever entertained were towards an under master at Chartres who forbade me to give to a beggar at the school gate. Add to this that my early reading--not only Wells but Sir Robert Ball--had lodged very firmly in my imagination the vastness and cold of space, the littleness of Man. It is not strange that I should feel the universe to be a menacing and unfriendly place. Several years before I read Lucretius I felt the force of his argument (and it is surely the strongest of all) for atheism--
Nequaquam nobis divinitus esse paratam
Naturam rerum; tanta stat praedita culpa
Had God designed the world, it would not be
A world so frail and faulty as we see.
C.S. Lewis entered Oxford University in 1917, but was soon shipped to France to fight in the First World War, where he experienced the horrors of trench warfare and was wounded in action. Upon his return to Oxford, he embarked on a highly successful academic career. In 1925 he was elected a Fellow and Tutor at Magdalen college, in Oxford University.
C.S. Lewis developed a friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic, and this friendship with C.S. Lewis, along with the writings of G.K. Chesterton and George MacDonald led to his eventual return to the Christian faith. Lewis writes about his conversion in Surprised by Joy:
“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words “compelle intrare,” compel them to come in, have been so abused be wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.”
C.S. Lewis was too old to serve in the Second World War, and instead from 1941-1943 spoke on religious radio programmes hosted by the BBC. . Air Chief Marshal Sir Donald Hardman wrote about the impact these broadcasts had on his men.
"The war, the whole of life, everything tended to seem pointless. We needed, many of us, a key to the meaning of the universe. Lewis provided just that."
These radio broadcasts were later adapted to his book, Mere Christianity. Mere Christianity contains some of his most famous defenses of the Christian faith, for example, the argument now known as the “Lewis trilemma”:
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I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.
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Another persistent theme of Mere Christianity is that we must be made for another world, because the things of this world don’t seem to give us lasting satisfaction. Therefore, the material world cannot be all that is. Here is another famous argument from that book:
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“The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.”
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He returns to this theme in his other books too. For example, in the “Problem of Pain”, which primarily reconciles the existence of the loving God with the existence of human suffering, he offers this analogy:
“The mold in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions.
Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it -- made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.”
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Mere Christianity also explains the core concepts of the Christian faith very well. I especially like this passage, which clarifies the meaning of what it means to follow Christ.
“To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”
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C.S. Lewis became chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge University in 1954, a position he occupied for the rest of his career. He married American author Joy Davidman Gresham in a few years later, but she was suffering from terminal cancer and had not long to live: the wedding ceremony was conducted by her hospital bed. Lewis raised her two sons, his step-children after he death. Lewis himself passed in 22 November, 1963.
Let us now discuss his writings. We shall of course, begin with the Chronicles of Narnia. This is a series of children’s fantasy book set in the land of Narnia, a realm full of talking animals and mythological creatures accessible from our own through various magical means, such as the iconic magical wardrobe of the first book. The central character of this series is Aslan, the talking lion, who is very clearly Narnia’s version of Jesus Christ. The first book, the lion, the witch and the wardrobe is a retelling of Jesus’ crucifixtion and resurrection. In order to save the of a boy who wanders into Narnia and is entrapped by the evil witch ruling there, Aslan agrees to be put to death, but is resurrected soon after and defeats the witch. C.S. Lewis writes of Aslan:
“If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality however, he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, "What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?" This is not allegory at all.”
C.S. Lewis weaves seamlessly deep and profound Christian ideas into the Narnia books. Interestingly, a form of the Lewis trilemma appears in the Chronicles of Narnia. Two of the main characters, Peter and Susan Pevensie initially don’t believe their little sister Lucy when she tells them about Narnia, and ask the character of the Professor for advice. His response is:
Logic!" said the Professor half to himself. "Why don't they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn't tell lies and it is obvious she is not mad. For the moment then, and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume she is telling the truth.
Let us address his more explicitly Christian writings. One focus of his work is in reconciling the idea of a good and loving God with human suffering. This is most explicitly addressed in “the Problem of Pain”, but appears also in his other works. This is understandable, given how much suffering he saw and experienced in his early life, with the death of his mother when he was a child, and the horrors he experienced as a World War 1 veteran. Here is an excerpt from the “Problem of Pain”
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“The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with out friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”
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Another favourite is the “four loves”, which contains very meaningful meditations on C.S. Lewis on the nature of love, toward each other and toward God. This excerpt is one of my favourites:
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
Also worth a mention are the Screwtape letters, which is a rather clever piece of fiction, consisting of a collection of letters from a master demon to an apprentice, giving advice on how to corrupt and ensnare humans, or the Space trilogy, where C.S. Lewis dabbles into science fiction with the story of a philologist, (probably inspired by his friend JRR Tolkien) having adventures in other planets. The breadth and depth of his collection of works speaks to his creativity, and his ability to convey Christian truths in many different forms and genres.
But let us also share a little bit about the character of the man. Given the immense talents his possessed, I am very impressed by his humility, and his awareness of his own sin. He practiced often the Anglican rite of confession, confessing his sins to a priest as often as once a week. This story, told by his stepson Douglas Gresham also highlights this part of his character. Douglas refers to C.S. Lewis by his nickname, Jack:
Douglas recalls a story where Jack and a friend were walking to a meeting one day when they were approached by a beggar. The beggar asked them for some spare change whereupon Jack gave him everything he had. Once the beggar had gone, his friend said, "You shouldn't have given that man all that money Jack, he'll only spend it on drink." Jack's reply - "Well, if I'd kept it, I would have only spent it on drink."
https://www.ncronline.org/news/media/cs-lewis-couldnt-touch-anything-without-illuminating-it
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Thanks for listening to this episode of the Christian Saints Podcast. You can find me on Twitter, at podcast_saints, or on facebook, at Facebook.com/christiansaintspodcast (no spaces). You can also go to my personal website www.drong.my for my other contact information. The music in this episode was composed by my friend James John Marks, of Generative Sounds.
I think it is most fitting to end this episode by reflecting on how Saint C.S. Lewis ended the Chronicles of Narnia. The last book of the series is the Last Battle, and in it C.S. Lewis looks toward the final victory over evil, and the final destiny of all who follow Christ.
And as Aslan spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
