C.S. Lewis: The Joyful Imagination of a Mere Christian

(Re)Definitions

Imagination: we do not really grasp the meaning of any word or concept until we have a clear image that we can connect with it. Story is a prime way to connect Imagination to Reason.

Joy: a desire for something that nothing in the world can satisfy. The longing is, in and of itself, desirable, as it points to something (or someone) that is utterly beyond us, and which has ultimate meaning.

Myth: a fantastic, though not necessarily completely fictitious, Story that points to foundational truths of reality.

Questions for Discussion 1

1. What genre of stories do you like to read / watch (biographies, sci-fi, true crime, etc)?

2. What kind of stories draw you closest to Jesus?

Biography of C.S Lewis

• Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland on Nov 29, 1898 to Albert and Florence Lewis

• Had an older brother Warren (Warnie) who he was close to early in life, and after his return to Christianity

• His mother died when he was 9, and he was almost immediately sent off to a series of boarding schools, which would affect his entire life

With my mother's death

all settled happiness, all

that was tranquil and

reliable, disappeared

from my life. There

was…no more of the old

security. It was sea and

islands now; the great

continent had sunk like

Atlantis (Surprised by

Joy)

The Atheism of Lewis

• Starting with his mother’s death, and continuing with the problems with his father and boarding school led Lewis to start doubting Christianity and eventually to transition to outright denial

• The horrors of war: he was an officer in the trenches of WW1 and used his “treaty with reality” to both stave off PTSD and deny the existence of a God who could allow such horror

• Religion was a crutch: “I believe in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best.” (The Letters of C.S. Lewis)

The Atheism of Lewis

• Lewis was paradoxically “angry with God for not existing” and “equally angry with him for creating a world.” (Surprised by

Joy)

• He was angry at God for not existing because he desired to appeal to a higher judge, and yet had no reason to believe that judge existed

Had God designed the world, it would not be

A world so frail and faulty as we see (Lucretius)

Lewis’ Problems with Atheism

• Problem with Naturalism: if one depends on one’s thoughts to understand reality, and yet those thoughts are solely dependent on the random movement of atoms that make up the brain, then any thought cannot be understood to be true, including that my brain is made of atoms.

• Literature drew Lewis to Christ. He found Christian writers interesting, and Atheistic writers rather shallow and “tinny”. The atheistic view of life was too simplistic. The best Stories were the Christian ones.

• During army training, Lewis made a friend named Paddy Moore, who died in 1918, and they made a pact to take care of the remaining family if either of them died

• After he was wounded, Jane (Paddy’s mother) took care of Lewis and he essentially adopted her and her daughter as his replacement family

• Eventually Warnie came back into his life, and the three of them purchased a large house called the Kilns in 1930 where Jane, Lewis, and Warnie lived until their deaths

Lewis’ Family

The Slow, Patient Pursuit by Jesus

• One of the key moments was in 1916 with Lewis reading George Macdonald’s Phantastes. Lewis later said “That night my imagination was, in a certain sense, baptized.” (Surprised by Joy)

• Everything that he loved in his life was from his imagination: poetry and myth. Everything “real” was “glib and shallow rationalism” and such was grim and meaningless.

"In reading Chesterton, as in

reading MacDonald, I did not

know what I was letting myself

in for. A young man who

wishes to remain a sound

Atheist cannot be too careful

of his reading. There are traps

everywhere — 'Bibles laid

open, millions of surprises', as

Herbert says, 'fine nets and

stratagems'. God is, if I may

say it, very

unscrupulous.” (Surprised by

Joy)

The Slow, Patient Pursuit by Jesus

• Lewis slowly, reluctantly realized that the existence of a Creator God offered a more plausible explanation of reality than Atheism ever could

"You must picture me alone in that room at 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" (Surprised By Joy)

The Slow, Patient Pursuit by Jesus

• Lewis had been drawn to Theism but didn’t become a Christ follower until after a conversation with J.R.R Tolkien and Hugo Dyson 1931 helped bring him to Christ

• Tolkien mentioned that Christianity was a “true myth”. Lewis’ problem was not with his reason, but that had a failure of imagination to understand the meaning of Christ’s sacrifice.

“The story of Christ is simply a true

myth: a myth working on us in the

same way as the others, but with

this tremendous difference that it

really happened.”

“We pass from Baldur or Osiris,

dying nobody knows when or

where, to a historical person

Crucified under Pontius Pilate”

(The Letters of C.S. Lewis)

Lewis’ Later Years

• Lewis taught at Oxford from 1925 – 1954 and at Cambridge from 1954 - 1962

• He was still an academic, so produced academic works, but he’s most well known for his works aimed at the larger non-academic populace (which lowered his esteem in the eyes of many contemporaries)

• Many of those works came to fruition through the help of the literary group “The Inklings”

Surprised by Joy

• Lewis developed a relationship, friendship at first, with Joy Davidman Gresham in the 1950s

• They entered into a civil marriage so she and her sons could stay in England, but after a year, they were married in a church ceremony

• Gresham had cancer, which went into remission, but which took her life in 1960, after which Lewis wrote “A Grief Observed”

Lewis’ Later Years

• In 1961, Lewis suffered from blood poisoning, which was the start of his health declining

• In July 1963, he had a heart attack, which forced his resignation from Cambridge

• On November 22, he died, his death being overshadowed by the assassination of JFK that same day

Lewis’ published works

• Lewis’ dream as a young man was to be a published poet. Unfortunately, his poetry skills were not to the level of his literary skills

• Among his non-fictional works: Mere Christianity, The Four Loves,

Miracles, The Problem of Pain, A Grief Observed

• Among his fictional works: The Chronicles of Narnia, The Space Trilogy,

The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce

Questions for Discussion 2

1. Not including the Bible, what is your most spiritually impactful work that you’ve read?

2. Has imagination had a role in your walk with Jesus?

The Chronicles of Narnia

• In each book (except for A Horse and his Boy), children from earth are magically transported to Narnia

• There is usually a quest for them to complete, that in doing so teaches them Christian virtues

• Aslan makes an appearance, sometimes to dramatically intervene, sometimes to encourage the children to act themselves

The Chronicles of Narnia

• The theme of imagination runs throughout the book

• Lewis binds the mythological elements to the truth of the gospel. It is especially evident in the character of Aslan

• Themes that Lewis weaves throughout: temptation, divine redemption, faith in Christ (Aslan), courage,

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr Beaver; “don’t you

hear what Mrs Beaver tells you?

Who said anything about safe?

‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.

He’s the King, I tell you.”

The Chronicles of Narnia

• The yearning of Joy is also sprinkled throughout the books

• As the children age and mature, they are no longer permitted entrance into Narnia, but must learn to know Aslan by another name on Earth

• The yearning is fulfilled in the end when all the is best in Narnia and Earth is shown to be in Heaven (the truth Narnia and the true Earth)

Christian Imagery in Narnia

Crucifixion / Resurrection (LWW): Edmund is a traitor, and so his life belongs to the White Witch. Only through the direct intervention and sacrifice of Aslan, is Edmund redeemed. After his death, Aslan is

Creation / Fall of Humanity (TMN): Through the song of Aslan, Narnia is created. Diggory releases the evil of the White Witch into Narnia.

Drawing of the Lost to Salvation (THaHB): Shasta is repeatedly drawn north towards home and protected by Aslan. His mentor is Bree, the talking horse

The Screwtape Letters

• A satirical Christian apologetic, it is written as a fictional series of letters from a senior demon (Screwtape) to his novice tempter “nephew”, Wormwood, as Wormwood tempts a British man (the patient)

• In each letter, Screwtape deals with a different aspect of human life and attempts to give Wormwood good advice on how to keep the patient from first becoming a Christian, and later, being an effective Christian

The Screwtape Letters

• Most terms are reversed from the Christian understanding: Satan is Our Father Below, God is The Enemy, agape love is derided, and humanity itself is objectified

• As such, the yearning of Joy is a problem that Wormwood is exhorted to keep the patient from considering and at the same time is exhibited as a gnawing hunger that the demons cannot satiate

The Screwtape Letters

• Imagination works it’s way into the narrative, because God, the Devil, and the spiritual battle at play are known to be real, and so the idea of the “true myth” is also real

• Wormwood is encouraged to push the patient to either embrace the idea of the mythological, but strip it of anything of God (make him a magician), or to deny all of it and make him deny the supernatural (make him a materialist)

Christian Imagery in The Screwtape LettersOn Spiritual Dryness: Our cause is never more in danger than when a

human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will,

looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to

have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

The Broad, Easy path: Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one

—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without

milestones, without signposts

Christian Imagery in The Screwtape LettersThe Danger of Wealth: Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels

that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.

We are not our own: You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the

curious assumption ‘My time is my own’. Let him have the feeling that

he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours . . . The

man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to

him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his

chattels....

Mere Christianity

• Based on a series of BBC radio talks Lewis did between 1941 and 1944, it’s one of the most popular Christian Apologetics texts of the 20th Century

• It’s split into four books. Book 1 argues for the existence of God from the argument of morality. Ideas like right and wrong, justice and injustice, and fairness are mostly universal, and yet would need to be based on a law created by a being outside the universe.

Mere Christianity• Book 2 talks about some competing views on the nature of God. After

discussing some alternatives, including pantheism and atheism, he ends the book talking about the necessity of the worship of Jesus

• Book 3 is on the ethics of Christianity. He discusses morality, virtues, and how sin impacts them. He also spends a good amount of time on chastity and marriage. He discusses the danger of pride and the importance of charity, hope, and faith.

• Book 4 is Christian theology. Among other things, Lewis discusses the Trinity, free-will, and the idea that God is outside of time.

Mere Christianity

• Lewis uses imagination and the idea of a true myth to explain the existence of so many religions, and that many of them have truth (though only Christianity is both necessarily and sufficiently true)

• In terms of Joy, the yearning that we feel is due to how we are made. We are designed to “run on him”. There is nothing else that will satisfy the yearning we have for the Eternal

“God made us… A car is made

to run on petrol, and it would

not run properly on anything

else. Now God designed the

human machine to run on

Himself. He Himself is the fuel

our spirits were designed to

burn…That is why it is just no

good asking God to make us

happy in our own way without

bothering about religion. God

cannot give us a happiness

and peace apart from Himself,

because it is not there. There

is no such thing.” (Mere

Christianity)