C.S. Lewis: Revelation, Conversion, and Apologetics

Introduction: C. S. Lewis—Revelation, Conversion, and Apologetics

This is a book about Jesus Christ.

Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, is of central importance to humanity.

Jesus Christ is considered by orthodox Christians to be the unique revelation of God, the God above all gods, the God beyond all gods.

These are strong, dynamic, and assertive claims. There are various ideas and interpretations of who or what this Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, was and is; these theories vary across the churches. However, down the centuries there has been a constant and steady seam of knowledge and understanding as to who Jesus Christ is, how he is God, and how this affects all of humanity.

To talk about Jesus Christ is to speak of revelation—God’s self-revelation, God’s revealedness to humanity. Therefore, God is the one who initiates both in our knowledge and understanding about these most important of matters, but also, crucially, in our salvation.

1. Who or What is the Christ

This is one of a series of books entitled C. S. Lewis: Revelation and the Christ. Like many ancient names that had cultural or religious meanings, the name Jesus—in Hebrew, Yeshua, given to Mary by Gabriel, the angel at the annunciation—was known to those who heard it as signifying God is savior, or Jehovah is savior; Christ means anointed one, messiah. The word Messiah was commonly used in the era between the two testaments, Old and New (i.e., the intertestamental period), the concept of messiahship having developed in later Judaism (from the early Hebrew Mashiach, the anointed one, derived from the ancient Hebrew tradition of anointing the king with oil). Messiah was not necessarily a name, but a label, an attribution, an office, a role, essentially a title. By the time of Jesus of Nazareth the title Messiah was often attributed to someone the people liked, whom they believed could fulfill, they hoped, a role for them. However, the Messiah was to be the one anointed at the end of days. Jesus is therefore taken by those around him to be the Messiah; hence the early attribution that he is the Christ. The word Christ is simply a translation from the Greek (Christos) and the Latin (Christus) for messiah. Therefore Jesus Christ, in name and title, was God’s salvation, the anointed one. This did not necessarily imply that he was the second person of the Trinity. The trinitarian perception is part of the dawning realization in the early church, with ample pointers and examples of Jesus’s trinitarian nature in the books that became the New Testament (texts produced by the earliest church in the years after the resurrection and ascension).

Around the time of Jesus’s birth messiahship carried expectations. Some saw the coming messiah as a political leader who would expel the Romans; others expected a messiah who would be a partisan revolutionary whose aims were unclear; to yet more the messiah would return the Temple religion back to a happier time, he would oversee the restoration of Israel. To an extent these can be seen as purely human offices. During the intertestamental period there were many false messiahs, men raised up to realize a revolutionary, political, or religious role supported by a group or sect to save Israel in some way or other. However, false messiahs lapsed, disappeared, or were killed by the Romans or the Jewish religious authorities. The Jews were left still hoping.

The idea of redemption, salvation, was part of these multitudinous expectations of a messiah figure during the intertestamental period—but saved from what, redeemed to what? The answers to those questions were as varied as the messianic expectations of these false messiahs. As a redeemer figure, expected and foretold, Jesus does not necessarily live up to the expectations of his fellow Jews. However, on reflection, the clues were there all along in Jesus’s life and ministry, and crucially in the Old Testament. The ancient Hebrew priests and kings were anointed, they were messiahs (Exod 30:22–25); later, this messiahship entitled one anointed by God as a leader, a king from the line of David. Therefore, Jesus of Nazareth was perceived by many who saw and heard him to be the long awaited Messiah, with different and often subjective expectations as to his role. What is important is that a posteriori, after the event, the proto early church interpreted this messiahship in the context of Jesus’s role as God descended to earth to judge and forgive humanity, hence the use of the Greek word Christos, Christ, by the writers of the New Testament. Jesus is then the final Messiah of messiahs.

Messiah, Christ, is then revealed to be trinitarian: God anoints God to descend to save his chosen people, in potential, along with all humanity, reascending with them into the divine life. Only in the fullness of the incarnation-cross-resurrection and the ascension is messiahship finally defined by Jesus. Then his life and ministry, his sayings and actions, take on new meaning, a significance and understanding veiled to many during his lifetime. Whatever the expectations of messiahship, Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah (therefore, the Christ), not a messiah, political or otherwise. It is fair to say that some of the Hebrew expectations were blown away by God’s revelation; whatever people expected, it fell short of what was given by God in this Jesus. People couldn’t see or fully understand what Messiah was to be, even though the evidence was there in the Old Testament.

The witness of the apostles, disciples, and the early church is then a form of revelation equal to Scripture. The early church tradition replaces the old Hebrew categories of messiahship; the expectations of Jesus’s contemporaries were fulfilled by God’s revelation, but not necessarily in accordance with what they desired or expected. This divergence also extended to the interpretation of messiahship that the Jewish religious authorities held to in Jerusalem. For many years the Western church concentrated only on the early church tradition and the conclusions of the church councils in the fourth and fifth centuries, often, in effect, ignoring the Hebrew tradition that Jesus of Nazareth was born into. In recent years many theologians and Bible scholars, for example the orthodox Christian N. T. Wright, derive most of their conclusions about Jesus of Nazareth from an understanding of the New Testament’s Jewish background, a setting in the life of the times in some ways. Perhaps the answer is to hold in balance the Hebrew tradition and categories, the perceptions of the earliest church, and also the conclusions of the later church councils, about the person and nature of Jesus. This is how to see and understand the term Messiah, the Christ.

This is a work, in many ways, of Christology; that is, the work and person of Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. Christology is thinking about Christ; explaining using the faculty of reason, mostly in written form, so as to explicate who and what Jesus Christ was and is. Lewis’s work was very much in the context of the developed understanding of who and what Christ was; an understanding that took shape in the first seven centuries of the Christian era. As with the Bible, this understanding became something of a compass as to what counts as sound doctrine about Christ and what does not. This body of understanding of what is a traditional and orthodox understanding of Jesus Christ developed gradually during the early church, and then through the following centuries, and was complete by around the year 750 AD. Christology is therefore seen to be the study of the person and work of Christ, fully human and fully divine, historical and universal, and his significance for humanity: this systematic study is therefore the doctrine of Christ, but it must always understand the Hebrew roots into which Jesus of Nazareth was born and lived.

2. Why C. S. Lewis

This is a book about one man’s understanding of, and his encounter with, Jesus Christ. That man is Clive Staples Lewis—C. S. Lewis, Jack, at his insistence, to all he knew—who wrote many, many books to defend Christianity and the witness of the churches. Lewis’s aim was to defend Christianity itself, not Anglican or Roman Catholic, not Methodist or Baptist, not Presbyterian or Evangelical. Why? He sought to defend what he famously called Mere Christianity, which was not his own personal religion, or his own personal selection from Christian theology and church history, but the faith set out in the creeds and explained by the church fathers living more than fifteen hundred years ago, the faith that originated with the apostles who knew this Jesus of Nazareth. Lewis sought to defend the faith that the martyrs died for. Being a Mere Christian for him represented the distilled basics of the faith rooted in the God-man Jesus Christ. This was to be distinguished, for Lewis, from watered-down Christianity, from human-centered religion.

Lewis’s Mere Christianity was, therefore, polemical in its assertiveness. This Mere Christianity was there to a greater or lesser degree in all the churches of Lewis’s day, but had been compromised by disputes between the churches; indeed the very fragmentation of the church into so many denominations or groupings weakened the basic core of the faith. Games of one-upmanship and power politics between bishops from competing denominations, or arguments over the finer points of worship, or in some instances a wholesale rejection of the beliefs set out in the creed, this all weakened the gospel: that God became incarnate as a human being in Jesus of Nazareth and died for our sins to open up a way for us into heaven. This was at the heart of the Christian faith. This Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, did not simply live two thousand years ago leaving us alone in the world: the Holy Spirit of this Christ is active, alive, presses on us, seeks to convert us, to save us.

Lewis believed strongly in a basic core to the faith, a mere Christian core. All else could be considered to be an embellishment, details that are to a greater or lesser degree important to individual denominations, and are valid to a greater or lesser extent before God, but nonetheless these details and differences are culturally relative, they are in many ways subjective religion. Lewis therefore distinguished what he called Mere Christianity from this subjective religion. Lewis was an Anglican; he saw this Mere Christianity in the Church of England of his day, that it was at its strongest in the Catholic and Evangelical wings, as distinct from the liberal, modernist, central ground, which he believed marginalized this core of Mere Christianity: Lewis could therefore be fairly described as a Catholic-Evangelical, indeed he described himself as such.

This book then is written for students and theologians, but also general readers familiar with Lewis’s works. Because Lewis was an Anglican this is a work written to be appreciated by Anglicans; however, it can also be appreciated by Roman Catholics who in recent years have developed an interest more and more in the writings of C. S. Lewis; it is also aimed at Evangelicals who have long had a love of Lewis’s work, but have been selective about what they agree with and disagree with in Lewis’s presentation of the basic core of the Christian faith. Evangelicals may not like the way Lewis subscribed to what can be considered a traditional Catholic position on the sacraments and on purgatory, but he held these beliefs for good reason. And Evangelical readers would do well to think why he did. Likewise Roman Catholic readers would do well to see how Lewis could get beyond the external structure of religion to appreciate the immediacy of relationship any believer can have with the Lord Jesus, which in some ways by-passes the structures and authority of the church(es).

3. Aims and Objectives

This series, C. S. Lewis: Revelation and the Christ, is a study of C. S. Lewis’s Christology, and his doctrine as such of revelation: that is, his understanding of the person and the work of Jesus Christ, and how this is God’s self-revelation. This study includes Lewis’s conversion, his acceptance of what Jesus Christ had done for him, but also his understanding of the church, which is to be seen as the body of Christ. Therefore this book is about how he put that understanding into words, but it is also about his encounter with Jesus Christ, how Christ revealed of Christ’s person, Christ’s self, to Lewis, and therefore brought him to the one true trinitarian God. This is, in effect, what this book is about: who and what Jesus Christ is, and what he does.

The aim of this book is to show what C. S. Lewis understood about Jesus Christ. The objective is to examine what he then wrote, but also how he came to know and to believe in the God behind and in the Christ. This book is–

A systematic study of the person and work of Christ Jesus in the writings of C. S. Lewis, and the place this understanding has in the wider church, contemporary and historical.

A systematic study of Lewis’s understanding of revelation—God’s self-revelation to humanity—and with it humanity’s salvation.

This is therefore a work about Lewis’s doctrine of Christ (including his understanding of the church—the body of Christ), his doctrine of salvation, and his doctrine of revelation (including the respectful criticism he had for religion).

A presentation of the personal God in Christ, which is central to understanding C. S. Lewis himself, both child and adult, public and private, and how this relates to his work as a philosopher and theologian, and his personal salvation.

A work that presents an understanding for thinking Christians and professional academics, which ranks Lewis amongst the more important theologians and philosophers of the twentieth century.

An analysis of Lewis’s method and technique (both theological and philosophical) in the way he re-presented the basic non-negotiable core of the faith in his apologetic, his analogical stories, and in his theological narrative.

A study of Lewis’s Christology that acknowledges the Catholic (for example, a high sacramental theology, a belief in purgatory) and the Evangelical (his acknowledgement of the need for personal conversion in the form of a direct relationship with the Lord) within his faith as a Catholic-Evangelical.

Many books relating to C. S. Lewis’s theology assume that he was an amateur theologian who simply summarized Christian doctrine and ethics for his audience, that he was not an original thinker or a systematician on the scale of more noted professionals. This series of books, C. S. Lewis: Revelation and the Christ, demonstrates that this is not so, that such conclusions are spurious. Lewis may not have been employed as a religious professional but the same can be said for many theologians and apologists in church history. Lewis’s work is original, underlyingly systematic, and orthodox (i.e., traditional).

Lewis excelled at a cohesive expounding of the essentials at the heart of the Christian belief, nonetheless he held to an understanding of the wider logical sweep of the faith, without becoming embroiled in the more controversial details that have bedevilled the churches, individual denominations, for centuries. Lewis’s understanding of Christ was grounded in his conversion. This was a conversion that paralleled, in many ways, that of Augustine in his acceptance of what God had done for him in the incarnation and in his invocation of Christ as the light of the world, and was given its systematic edge by his daily reading of key works of theology and related philosophy from before the modern era (that is, works written prior to the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the modernism-postmodernism of the twentieth century).

Revelation and salvation are all intertwined with what we know of and understand about Jesus Christ. Therefore we are dealing with three doctrines (that is, doctrine as a set of beliefs or principles held and taught by a group, whether the church, a political party, or academics, from the Latin doctrina teaching, learning). These three doctrines are closely related: a doctrine of revelation, a doctrine of Christ, and a doctrine of salvation. We cannot separate who and what Jesus is from what he came to achieve, and what this person reveals to us about God. This work is a systematic study of Lewis’s presentation and understanding of Jesus Christ that, following his conversion, underpinned his work. It assesses the implications of what he wrote and how Lewis the philosopher/theologian—when writing on Christ—is to be seen in relation to the church. This is in regard to his reputation as a Christian theologian, but also how the person and work of Christ Jesus is central to the human that he was.

4. Explanations, Qualifications

Despite often being classified as an amateur, Lewis was a highly educated man. Although he had no formal training in theology, his intellect was confirmed in that he received, within four years of study, two BA Hons degrees from the University of Oxford, having passed all three required public examinations with first class honors. These degrees were in Greats (Greek and Roman Literature and Classical Philosophy) and in English. Despite the astute sharpness and strength of his intellect, Lewis tried to avoid specialized theological language (jargon). However, a few terms do need to explained before we proceed. Some readers familiar with Lewis’s books may not appreciate the full meaning and use of the terms used here. Professionals familiar with these terms may still gain some understanding of the context in which they are used in this book. Many Catholics and Evangelicals are familiar with these terms derived from New Testament Greek, and from ecclesial (i.e., church) Latin—ironically it is often Lewis’s Anglicans who are ignorant of them.

i. Revelation and Reason

Revelation is personal, as in the realization of perception and understanding many people will have—a eureka moment when one finds something, or when something is revealed to one. But it is also more than that, more than the personal and subjective. Revelation is about God’s self-disclosure to humanity. Lewis understood and accepted how God had revealed of God’s self to humanity in multifarious and diverse ways down the millennia and across vast geographical and cultural eons, but as an orthodox Christian he knew, both as fact and from personal encounter, that Christ was the unique, the highest, form of self-revelation of the one true living God. So to talk about Christ is to talk about God; to speak of Christ is to speak of revelation. Over recent centuries revelation has often been pitted against reason. Because of the confidence emanating from the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, a confidence issuing from the belief that the human capacity to reason things out for ourselves was all that was needed, revelation became, in certain quarters, obsolete.1 Lewis seeks to try to hold both revelation and reason in balance; as a trained philosopher he knew and understood the background against which he was writing.

ii. Patristic

The patristic era is from the time of Christ’s resurrection through to the mid-eighth century. The church leaders and theologians of this period of over 700 years are called patristic—from the Greek for Fathers, patēr, patros—hence the theology of these centuries is patristic, formed by the early church fathers. The immediate years after Christ’s resurrection is called the apostolic era—the era or period of the apostles, essentially the people who knew Jesus of Nazareth or were of his generation, all of whom had died by around the year 100 AD. We then have the sub-apostolic era, which is essentially the second century, then fully the patristic era.

iii. Platonism

Platonism is the name given to the philosophy of Plato (c.424/423BC–348/347BC), and his writings. The term also applies to systems of philosophy derived from Plato’s work and ideas, for example, Neo-Platonism or Platonic Realism. Central to Platonism is the theory of forms. The forms are transcendent archetypes; what we take for reality is in some way a pale imitation of the forms—reality relates to the forms as an imperfect copy does to an original. The forms tell us that what we take for reality is perceivable but not intelligible, but that there is another higher reality that is intelligible but not perceivable. Lewis was a trained philosopher; indeed early in his career he taught philosophy. Platonism is a type of philosophy that he not only subscribed to but which characterized his work throughout his life. Most patristic theologians were Platonists, to varying degrees; Neo-Platonism was in many ways part of patristic theology. Many Protestant, Reformed, or Evangelical supporters of Lewis’s work today object strongly to his Platonism, not realizing that it is fundamental to Lewis’s interpretation of the gospel and is at the heart of his understanding of revelation. The precise nature of Lewis’s Platonism will be fully explained at the appropriate point in this work.

iv. Apologist/Apologetics

C. S. Lewis is an apologist. Apologetics are defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, reasoned arguments in justification of a theory or doctrine. An apologist is one who argues, who confronts the disagreements and divergences that are evident between different belief systems. The term comes from the Greek word, apologia, meaning to speak in defense. Christian apologetics are written to defend the truth of the gospel against attack from atheists, scientists, philosophers, exponents of non-Christian religions, indeed anyone that denies the heart of the Christian faith. Christian apologetics are considered different to theology per se, because in apologetics the truth of the gospel is represented in such a way as possibly to change the content in reaction to a perceived threat, indeed the apologetic content may be defined by the threat. Academic theology is considered by some to be impartial, disinterested, and neutral—in theory—and therefore in some ways superior. Yet if the gospel is true we cannot hold to an impartial multi-faith position that regards all religions and philosophies as equal, more pertinently that regards the content of all world religions as equally valid. Lewis did not: he understood that the gospel stands in contrast to the world, was against the world in many ways. Most of the theological writings in the early church are considered to be apologetics because they were written against the background of pagan Roman religion and politics, and were therefore written under persecution.

v. Creation, Fall, Incarnation, Resurrection,

Second Coming, and the Four Last Things

The heart of the Christian faith, the basics, are in some ways summarized by the creation and the fall into original sin set out in the Book of Genesis; by the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and second coming of God in Christ, in the New Testament; but also the four last things from the Book of Revelation as well as the Gospels. This is Lewis’s basic summary of the faith. Lewis believed in the traditional faith, set out by the apostles, the early church, and the early church fathers, which was biblical. At the centre of the Bible story, in some ways summarized by the creeds, is, as Lewis asserted the Creation, the Fall, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Second Coming, and the Four Last Things.2 Some of this may be obvious but it separates Lewis from many modern theologians and churchmen who have watered down the faith. First, whatever we may learn about evolution and the origin of the world and the universe, God created everything out of nothing and sustains it. Second, that humanity, through its own fault, disobeyed God and was infected by original sin; furthermore we brought this on ourselves, and the predicament we find ourselves in is perilous. Third, God became incarnated as a human being, Jesus Christ, who was crucified for our sins and was resurrected, all to atone for our fall into original sin and restore us to a right relationship with God. Fourth, that this same Jesus Christ will return to judge all at the end of the world, which will be, as Lewis terms it, the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. This is the eschaton (from the Greek for last or final things).

vi. Liberal/liberal, Modernism

C. S. Lewis’s writings are set against the background of liberal culture and society in Britain specifically, and the United States and Europe generally. Liberalism is often seen as a contentious and problematic word—often it appears to generate an emotional response, may be considered pejorative, and may also be invoked in an equally subjective manner. In this work the words Liberal and Liberalism with an initial capital letter are used strictly in the context of theological Liberalism in the church: this is a position that more often than not denies the incarnation and resurrection, seeking to promote Jesus of Nazareth as an ordinary human being, furthermore, a Liberal theological position may not believe in God (with a capital G) but happily allow people to believe in gods of their own making, their own invention. Lewis often referred to this as a modernist tendency. Theological Liberalism since the eighteenth-century has claimed freedom not only from traditional dogmas and creeds but also in the analysis of and value accorded to Scripture. Such theology was to a large degree formulated in the light of what were considered advances in the natural sciences and philosophy—the spirit of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. In this work, when cited with a lower case initial letter (liberal), the term refers to liberalism in society and culture generally, in ethics and morality in the twentieth-century. This has often been to do with sexual behavior, but is also seen in culture, the media, entertainment, etc. Therefore a distinction needs to be drawn between Liberalism as a theological movement or belief system and what is often euphemistically called a liberal perspective in Western society generally. Today those who subscribe to ethical liberalism (particularly in the area of sexuality and marriage) may or may not to a greater or lesser degree subscribe to theological Liberalism. For example, there are East Coast American Episcopalians today who support the legitimization of homosexual behavior within Christian ethics yet who are strongly orthodox and creedal in their doctrinal beliefs; but then there are also those who subscribe to this ethical liberalism whilst simultaneously denying Christ’s divinity and regarding him as just another ordinary man, therefore these two liberals (differentiated by an upper or lower case initial letter) cannot be seen as identical, or as completely separate from each other. Lewis uses the term Modernism/Modernist very much in the same context as Liberalism—he was often scathing about Modernist tendencies in the Church of England, tendencies that essentially were theological Liberalism, which argued that all our ideas about God were wrong, that there was no supernatural God beyond the ideas in our minds, our deepest desires, and wishes.

vii. Pagan

Lewis’s theological writings, as indeed with his conversion, are played out against the backdrop of what is termed pagan religion or paganism. A pagan is essentially someone holding beliefs from outside of the world’s main religions. Pagan therefore refers to this form of religion and religious myths from outside of, in our instance, the Jewish and Christian traditions. It is important to remember that the term pagan was used by Lewis, and is likewise used here, with no derogatory intent, nor as a term of abuse. Lewis used the term simply to refer to those peoples and cultures outside of the Jewish and Christian traditions: that is, Oriental, Middle Eastern, Indian, and European tribes and nations, but particularly in the ancient world (Greek and Roman philosophy and literature, religion, and mythology) and especially the religion and mythology of the North European tribes (Celtic, Norse, etc.), with whom the name pagan is most often associated. In comparison to the post-Christian world in the West today (Lewis was amongst the first to coin the term post-Christian at a time when Britain still perceived its civic pageantry and public religion, and its people as Christian, first using the term post-Christian publically in an address on November 29, 19543), where it was often being asserted that Britain is slipping, descending, regressing into paganism, Lewis was quite adamant:

When grave persons express their fear that England is relapsing into Paganism, I am tempted to reply, Would that she were. For I do not think it at all likely that we shall ever see Parliament opened by the slaughtering of a garlanded white bull in the House of Lords or Cabinet Ministers leaving sandwiches in Hyde Park as an offering for the Dryads. If such a state of affairs came about, then the Christian apologist would have something to work on. For a Pagan, as history shows, is a man eminently convertible to Christianity. He is essentially, the pre-Christian, or sub-Christian, religious man. The Post-Christian man of our own day differs from him as much as a divorcée differs from a virgin. The Christian and the Pagan have much more in common with one another than either has with the writers of the New Statesman; and those writers would of course agree with me.4

When Lewis is talking about Paganism he is therefore speaking of the pre-Christian world of peoples and cultures diverse from the Christian but moving towards the fulfillment of some sort of understanding of the revelation of Jesus Christ. Essentially the difference between a pre-Christian pagan and the contemporary post-Christian pagan is one of movement: the pre was moving towards in his/her theistic beliefs, the post is moving away in his/her atheistic beliefs.

viii. Romantic

The term Romantic, with an initial capital letter, has nothing to do with cheap romantic novels or magazines, or romance! The term Romantic represents a movement in art and culture—poets such as Longfellow, Wordsworth, and Keats were considered Romantics, as were painters such as Constable and Turner, and composers such as Beethoven and, to a degree, Wagner. As an artistic and cultural term Romantic is to do with feeling, with expressing oneself, with responding to the innate beauty in landscape and the natural world. Romanticism was in some ways a reaction against the scientific rationalism of the Age of Reason. The Romantic Movement was often associated with the cult of the individual—of emaciated, troubled artists starving in garrets and producing works of genius entirely by themselves without any input and involvement from anyone else.

5. . . . and the Collected Works of C. S. Lewis

Many people over the last one hundred and fifty years have tried to encapsulate the intellectual rigor, the cogency, and veracity of the gospel, while communicating it to an audience of ordinary people, often interested skeptics. The Bible scholar and bishop N. T. Wright, commenting on Lewis’s writings, notes how millions around the world have been introduced to, and nurtured within, the Christian faith through his work where their own preachers and teachers were not giving them what they needed.5 Wright was a case in point; he notes how his tutors, when an undergraduate at the University of Oxford, looked down their noses if you so much as mentioned him [Lewis] in a tutorial. This was, we may suppose, mere jealousy: He sold and they didn’t. It may also have been the frustration of the professional who, busy about his footnotes, sees the amateur effortlessly sailing past to the winning post. But Wright, like other academics, raises questions about just how universal Lewis’s work was—it was about the gospel, was a defense of the gospel, but it was not the gospel: the Christianity offered by Lewis both was and wasn’t the ‘mere’ thing he made it out to be . . . But above all it worked; a lot of people have become Christians through reading Lewis. There is, therefore, a universal appeal to Lewis’s work that is lacking in many other apologists and academic theologians, whose work is often soon forgotten, being relative to and emerging from particular cultural, human, subjective positions. This has not been the case with Lewis’s defense of the gospel. For example, the writer Joseph Pearce has noted how Joseph Fessio S. J. cited this universal appeal in comments at a theological conference in the mid-1990s. Quoting from an address given by the philosopher Peter Kreeft, Pearce notes Fessio’s comments, initially given somewhat tongue-in-cheek, which were roundly endorsed across all denominational divisions:

Father Fessio made these remarks during a theological conference in the mid-1990s, which Peter Kreeft recalled in 1998 as the most memorable moment of the most memorable conference I ever attended. Attending the meeting, says Kreeft, were dozens of high-octane Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant Evangelicals, who, despite their noted theological differences, converged near the end of the conference in a crescendo of agreement. Kreeft continues: In the concluding session Father Fessio got up and proposed that we issue a joint statement of theological agreement among all the historic, orthodox branches of Christendom saying that what united us was ‘Scripture, the Apostles’ Creed, the first six ecumenical councils and the collected works of C. S. Lewis.’ The proposal was universally cheered.6

Pearce notes how Protestants, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox have managed to find areas of substantial agreement in Lewis’s works. For example, Pearce notes, the centrality to salvation history of Christ’s atoning death on the cross, the historical event of the resurrection, the authority of Scripture, and the unchanging reality of moral law. So despite flaws, despite Lewis’s humanity, there is categorically, objectively, something to Lewis’s work that transcends the relative, the fashionable and transient, the subjective, the slanted, prejudiced, and blatantly one-sided (i.e., denominational), in ways that other apologists and theologians have failed in.

6. Lewis on the Christ: God and Redeemer

As the first book in the series, C. S. Lewis—Revelation, Conversion, and Apologetics, consists of three parts, twelve chapters in all. Some chapters are quite long, but nonetheless are a coherent thematic whole despite their length. All chapters are divided into multiple sections and sub-sections to allow for ease of access to the material contained in these long chapters. (A full, detailed, sectional contents can be found at the end of this volume.)

i. Part One, The Personal God of Salvation—Conversion and Acceptance

Part One (chapters 1–5) is about Lewis’s relationship with and acceptance of Christ; therefore we examine Lewis’s protracted conversion. Lewis became a Christian as a boy, but fell away from an active faith to become an apostate self-confessed atheist as a young man. As a young Oxford don he started to become religious—first a Hegelian, then a deist; but then Christ revealed to him the reality of life, and he became a Christian. The question we address is this: What was Lewis’s conversion from and to?

Lewis learned from George MacDonald, the Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister, the critical value of a baptized imagination, which was crucial in his conversion and his vocation as a Christian apologist. We can compare Lewis’s conversion to the conversion of Joy Davidman, who later in life was to marry Lewis: how similar/dissimilar are they? Lewis can be compared with other people who underwent a similar conversion. Lewis’s conversion can be elucidated by comparison with the conversion of the Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth: both arrive at a point where they must own that God is God (Barth 1915; Lewis 1929), which leads both of them to point to the unique self-revelation of God in Jesus, the Christ (Lewis is more the Romantic whereas Barth believes he must still measure all against Kant). In their mature work both are muscular, intellectual Christians who despite their denominational differences are orthodox-traditional, biblical-creedal Christians who argue against the zeitgeist of an Enlightenment-spawned modernism. However, there are significant differences—particularly related to religious experience. Therefore how do the two conversions compare? And what does this tell us about Lewis’s relationship with Jesus Christ?

ii. Part Two, C. S. Lewis—Theologian and Mere Christian

Part Two (chapters 6–8) examines what was the basis or ground of Lewis’s work as a theologian, and apologist—what was his method, and what did he mean by Mere Christianity? The sources for this method came from a fifth-century Catholic monk by the name of Vincentius of Lérins (What has been held Always, Everywhere, by Everybody), and a seventeenth-century Puritan called Richard Baxter (I am a Christian, a Mere Christian). Therefore Lewis sought to promote a basic core, a sheer, undiluted, essence that was at the heart of the faith endorsed by Scripture, and by this developed patristic church tradition. Lewis distrusted anything modern as compared to the patristic foundations of theology. We can consider what it meant for Lewis to declare that he was a Catholic Evangelical, but also why so many professional churchmen and theologians claim he is not one of them; that he was an amateur.

What picture of Christ do we read from Lewis’s numerous theological writings as praeparatio evangelica (his phrase—for he saw himself as preparing his readers for the gospel, not necessarily converting them)? How did Lewis see his role—public and private—in bearing witness to Christ? How did he react against the modern world, for Christ’s sake? In 1958 the theologian, apologist, and process theologian, W. Norman Pittenger publicly accused Lewis of christological heresy. Lewis, however, refutes the accusation and then proceeded to demolish Pittenger’s Christology as dangerously liberal. Their differences come down to ontology and status: is Jesus Christ defined by the very nature of his being in and before God, or is he who he is because of humanely conferred status?

iii. Part Three, C. S. Lewis—Apologist, Broadcaster, and Public Figure

Part Three (chapters 9–12) considers what picture of Christ we can read from Lewis’s numerous theological writings. What is the nature of the Christology, along with the understanding of revelation and salvation, in Lewis’s apologetics published after his conversion? We can give particular attention to his role as a public figure and apologist, and his attempt to present an interdenominational basic core of the content of the faith relating to the Christ (in particular his work at the BBC).

Lewis’s understanding of revelation relates closely to his doctrine of God, and is both orthodox and original in identifying areas of study which return the faith to orthodoxy while opening up human religiosity to the Christ event. Lewis considers theodicy and human pain, how we approach God’s justification in relation to affliction (The Problem of Pain). This is seen to be rooted in the person and the office of Jesus Christ. Although written to be broadcast to the general public The Broadcast Talks provide the strongest insight into Lewis’s technique as an apologist grounded in reductio ad absurdum (reduce to the absurd), and into his Christology and doctrine of revelation. How does the incarnation, The Grand Miracle relate to God’s supra-natural action within this world? In the infinitum capax finiti (the infinite capable of the finite) revelation defines what our understanding of God’s infinity should be—the truly infinite capacity of God is also to be finite, specific, incarnated. This contradicts our religious expectations for a distant singular god, an unknowable and unattainable god, whereas transposition reveals the incarnation.

We can then consider what picture of Christ we can read from Lewis’s numerous mature theological writings, and how they are considered different to his popular apologetics from the 1940s, when he was at the height of his skill as an apologist and defender of the faith. Is Lewis’s Mere Christianity broadly creedal, orthodox? The answer is yes, but there are shortcomings. Some criticize it for a lack of emphasis on the cross; however, it can be demonstrated that Lewis’s understanding of the cross appears to be focused on the nature of atonement that issues from the death of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, and how this repays the debt generated by humanity through sin. Does this marginalize the place of punishment? Or is punishment subservient to the debt repaid through the Christ’s lifeblood spilt? It is the blood of the lamb, Jesus the Messiah, slain for our salvation, that is the key to Lewis’s understanding of the cross, not necessarily the means (crucifixion) of his death; this is confirmed by the Hebrew categories defining the relationship between blood and atonement. This is clear from Lewis’s writings—particularly in The Chronicles of Narnia.

Towards the end of his life Lewis became more and more preoccupied in his writings with what may be termed Christlikeness: how Christ is translated into ordinary mortal humans. These people are not Christ, but exhibit some of the characteristics, such as the ability to sustain altruistic love, self-sacrifice, a graceful acceptance of a God-given reality, and so forth (for example, Till We Have Faces, Reflections on the Psalms, and both positively and negatively in The Chronicles of Narnia), where this is more than simply a comparison but is caused by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In his mature work Lewis points to the primacy of the Christ event, consistently.

7. Lewis’s Christ

We can ask what do we make of Lewis’s understanding of Jesus Christ, the incarnation of the one true living God? How do we assess the rare accusations by some professional theologians/writers that there are elements of christological heresy in some of Lewis’s writings? How do we define/categorize Lewis’s objective understanding of Christ, and likewise his subjective appropriation? What christological model does Lewis draw? Lewis’s Christ, that is the picture he gives us in his Christology, is essentially a picture in words, a Christ from below, not primarily from above because it starts with Immanuel, God with us. This is balanced, initiated, by a shift (a Platonic shift for Lewis) from eternity into our reality: the Christ descends to raise us up; in doing so we are drawn into the divine life. However, humanity is not overwhelmed by Christ: Christ is the loving servant, but authoritative in his divine claim on all creation, a creation that, for Lewis, Christ sang into being, into existence, ex nihilo (out of nothing). Lewis’s Christology is therefore high—this is God incarnate, not a wandering preacher/healer who was super-religious, or a Palestinian carpenter who was a good moral teacher.

The key to Lewis’s Christology is in the authority of Christ in majesty, in the Last Judgment. This was represented in Patristic art by the Pantocrator, the risen and ascended Christ enthroned in majesty, surveying, sustaining and judging creation: Christ as the ruler of the universe. This was seen especially in Byzantine art (for example, The Christ Pantocrator, a mosaic in the apse of Monreale Cathedral in Sicily, see: www.cslewisandthechrist.net). Christ, the second person of the Trinity was always shown in paintings and mosaics of the Pantocrator in the form of a Jewish man, God descended to be the humble servant, though reigning in the future, on high. Lewis’s understanding of Christ is grounded in many ways in the future, the pure transcendent action of the loving God, the God of love, manifested in and with humanity that comes to us: Immanuel (this is essentially, the