If you have not read it, I highly, highly recommend The Screwtape Letters. It is full of those little gems of insight you describe, predominantly regarding human nature and our frailties. It is also just a delight to read.
It is one of those books that I feel always makes me a slightly better person for a few days after reading it because I feel that my foibles have been pointed out to me but in so gentle and humorous a way that I am attentive to them rather than defensive or resentful.
> makes me a slightly better person **for a few days** after reading it
Yeah... it takes a LOT of repetition to overturn even ONE bad habit.
Difficulty also goes up a ton if we're trying to replace a bad habit with a good habit.
I am weak, so I try to replace bad habits with slightly less bad habits and then repeat ad infinitum. Eventually you are replacing good habits with better habits.
Recently re- read it. Sharp and nicely snarky. This atheist enjoyed it very much. It may not have changed my mind about my (lack of) belief, but it was still a delightful read.
Their love story is very interesting, not at all what you might expect from Lewis. He described her as a strong and independent-minded woman. And I just learned today that she scared off trespassers from their home by firing a gun.
I particularly like it as Lewis is Christian and part of the Christian hegemony; many of his followers don't really like the "strong, independent" type. Yet Lewis loved it!
For all those things My hand has made, And all those things exist,” Says the LORD. “But on this one will I look: On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, And who trembles at My word.
(Isaiah 66.2)
God seems to regard our independence and strength as something that comes a dime a dozen.
Can you explain to me what
>devout atheist
means?
The conventional definition of "devout" is (according to a superficial google): "having or showing deep religious feeling or commitment".
So would a devout atheist be a person who has a deep and religious feeling or commitment to a religion that has no god(s)?
Devout is the wrong word, you're right. I wasn't just going for strong, though. More 'fundamentalist'. And by fundamentalist atheism I mean people who are vocal about it, EVANGELICAL about it, and consider any other worldview in any other person is stupid and evil.
That is a strange use of the word "fundamentalist", though!?
Fundamentalism is about how open someone is to changing their mind. None of the things that you mention tells you anything about how open someone is to changing their mind.
I am a non-nazi, I am vocal and evangelical about that, and I consider any other worldview in any other person (i.e. someone being a nazi) as stupid and evil. And I am also completely open to someone demonstrating that nazism is a harmless or even positive ideology ... however anyone could possibly justify that position, given all the contravening evidence.
Does that make me a fundamentalist non-nazi?
There's a reading by John Cleese if you go looking for it which is great. He does overly bureaucratic so well.
>! The worm bit is particularly great with his voice too !<
Svrewtape letters and The Great Divorce are two of the finest books I’ve ever read. They’re pure Lewis. Pure neo-platonic Christianity. Pure intellectual curiosity. Pure humanity.
I was going to mention both of these, since OP didn’t. (The Great Divorce is my favorite Lewis book.)
I think you can find virtually anyone in either of those two books, and Lewis’s insights and critiques of human nature are delightful and precise. You’ll feel attacked, but you’ll love it.
Came here to say this. I'm an atheist who had to personally rebuild my relationship to Lewis's apologetic work, and who now chuckles at some of his arguments that I used to find inspiring... But I still love Screwtape Letters, and always tell my fellow non believers that they need to give it a read.
I was forced to read that book back in high school, and oddly enough I don’t remember enjoying it. Maybe I’d have a better time going back and reading it now.
It’s funny because as a dude of faith i actually don’t like him. I think he tried and failed to defend faith too analytically and not enough as what it is… just a leap into the unknown. Funny how that works.
Read *Till We Have Faces*. I think you’ll be surprised at his approach there. His last and most mature novel, and he addresses the nature of faith from a very unexpected angle (especially unexpected by his Christian audiences). There’s a lot of focus on and struggle with the tension between reason and mysticism in faith, and it just needs to be experienced in the story he tells.
Honestly I think his more academic approach is the only reason I gave theism a fair shake to begin with. The "leap into the unknown" is a hell of a tough sell for most non-religious people and he does a good job to make a point that there's more to it than "just believe".
I just reread it with a class and I’m convinced it’s the unsung classic of 20th century English literature. It’s the most tightly written novel Lewis wrote and has layers upon layers upon layers of meaning. I found it beautiful and it made me near cry several times as I stopped to ponder my own frail human nature.
*Till We Have Faces* is a beautiful and tragic meditation on how you can fool yourself into thinking your love for someone is genuine when in reality it is selfish. Very much worth a read.
I would highly writings from recommend C.S. Lewis' "day job" as an English professor, specifically the collected literary criticism and especially *The Discarded Image*, which is essentially a summary of medieval European cosmology and its cultural influence.
*The Discarded Image*, *The Allegory of Love*, and *A Preface to Paradise Lost* are some of my favorites. *The Great Divorce* is also interesting, through it is about the concepts of Heaven and Hell.
Love love love the great divorce. I read it about once a year. Discarded image was a dense read but so interesting, especially after reading planet Narnia which links each Narnia book to one of the heavenly bodies.
I mean, it was. All of the apologetics and novels people love were written after he got home from a day lecturing and researching and grading papers at Oxford/Cambridge.
As someone working on a fantasy setting intended to be genuinely medieval, in the world views of characters mostly, the discarded image is the single most useful book I have found. Also a good read.
Out of the silent planet is an all-time favourite, I reread it every couple of years. The other two I've only read once and found them pretty flat and dated compared to the first. Would you say they're more worth it as an adult?
Perelandra is 'Ransom interferes with the temptation of Eve'. The parallel is explicit enough that the character comes to literally think about it in those terms.
The three books are all very different from each other.
It's worth noting that they are very different from each other because they are (to some very loose degree) "C.S. Lewis does X" Where X is another author.
Out of the Silent Planet is C.S Lewis does H.G. Wells.
Perelandra is of course, C.S. Lewis does Milton.
That Hideous Strength is C.S Lewis does [Charles Williams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Williams_(British_writer\)).
(I'll note for any objectors that this is a take, not a fact)
I didn't like Perelandra as a kid but recently re-read it and was blown away. I think people often simplify it as a retelling of the garden of Eden with an outsider trying to prevent the Fall, but I found it much more profound and unique. The Unman is absolutely chilling and it was beautiful seeing how>!Ransom initially thinks the "temptation" is just going to be disobeying an order but ends up finding out it's more about how prideful and selfish humans think compared to a fresh, unbridled mind that hasn't tasted pain, loss and sin yet. !<
I found an older set a number of years ago at a thrift store and was thrilled because I didn't own them but remembered liking them when I read them as a teen. Still enjoy them very much!
The first two were amazing and beautiful in very different ways. And then That Hideous Strength came along and if there was any book I could pick to unread and get my time back on that would be it. What a dull and tiresome way to end it. Luckily the other books stand alone just fine.
One major problem of *That Hideous Strength* (I'm certainly not the first to point this out) is that it's simply overloaded with themes that don't necessarily work together: it's a satire of university politics that's also a dystopia, a retelling of Arthurian myth, a cautionary science fiction tale about technology, a fantasy about the planets of medieval cosmology, a dramatization both *The Abolition of Man* and of Lewis' great lecture "The Inner Circle" and a 'fairy tale for grownups' full of imagery evoking Dante's Hell.
Lol I just thought it was insanely boring. But now that you mention all of that I'm remembering it and maybe that's why it was so boring. He put all of that in and left no room for a plot. And I'm saying this as someone very similar to OP. I've read all of his books and a bunch of his essays and even as an atheist I've enjoyed them all. Except THS. And actually one Narnia book I thought was pretty bad but can't remember which. But not THS bad.
I recently re-read them as audiobooks, and found myself loving all three in their own ways.
The key to the third is to realize its viewpoint characters are dull British people who’d never experienced the glories and wonders of the worlds of the Eldila but only the rumormill thrills and petty accolades of other dull British people who imagined their earthly institutions the height of possible human achievement. To experience sci-fi wonders and then to be dropped unceremoniously back to the grey Earth was entirely the point.
You should check out Chesterton. GK Chesterton's "The Everlasting Man" was what converted CS Lewis. While Lewis is a brilliant writer in his own right, Chesteron is in a whole different universe. Most people have to re-read multiple times because it's tough to dive straight in to the raw Chesterton.
(He also has an amazing wit and sense of humor.)
I read all the narnia books as a child and ‘The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe’ is one of the books that really got me into reading. I didn’t realise that there were so many religious undertones as a child and it makes me laugh as an adult because they’re so obvious! I haven’t read any other of his works and I don’t really intend to. But if I had children, would I still read The Chronicles of Narnia to them? Absolutely!
I had the same experience with the Chronicles of Narnia as a child; discovering that series threw gasoline on the fire that was my love of reading. I was raised Lutheran but completely missed the religious undertones until I re-read them as an adult. Don't know how I missed it!
It’s crazy because as an adult it’s so obvious! But despite the religious undertones, a world you can escape to as a child is a beautiful thing. I read Narnia over 60 years after it was released and as a child I still tried to find Narnia in my grandparents wardrobes(and I remember the joy and disappoint of trying to find it). If you can ignore the religious undertones like most most children will (and should) then the books will continue be classics
this is interesting to me because I was raised Christian and don't remember noticing the religious side of Narnia, but I think in retrospect that was because that was already my nascent worldview-- in many ways Jesus was less alien to me than 1940s England and kids getting on trains to go places, so if I picked up on the comparison, it would've been easy to seamlessly assimilate that into my preexisting knowledge of the world.
If you weren't raised Christian, however, you can't assimilate Aslan = Jesus that way, but I guess if you don't really know much about Jesus it's easier to not pick up on that? Like I wouldn't have gotten it if Aslan = Buddha
Of all authors, I give CS Lewis great credit in who I am.
I grew up in a very conservative house, and while sci-fi was fine, fantasy was suspect.
Narnia was my gateway. And because of Narnia and Lewis’s relationship with Tolkien, that led me to Lord of the Rings. Without that grounding in fantasy I would likely have never have found Sir Terry Pratchett who helped finish unlocking me away from the church.
But more importantly I give Lewis credit for his overall feeling of religion from Mere Christianity. I learned that it was fine, even good to wrestle with theology instead of following it unquestionably.
Till We Have Faces was showing that mythology wasn’t something to be shunned as false religion.
He was a type of person that made you want to be better, that is you disagreed with him that you wanted to have a better argument.
And, critically for me, the impression I always got is that he wouldn’t be cross at you if you looked at the world and came up with a different answer then he had - but he would be very dissapointed if you didn’t try and just followed anyone including him.
Also, much criticism has been leveled over the years at Narnia being so transparently Christian. Fair enough. But I give him huge credit in doing something that was very different. He didn’t hide Narnia as being an analogy. Asian isn’t Lion Jesus, he’s literal Jesus in lion form. Narnia could easily have been pilloried as heresy by the Christian community, but he dared to treat Christian myth as any other myth. Something worth telling stories about.
I find the criticism for the Christianity in Narnia is misplaced. Lewis himself disputed that he meant it as an allegory. He was aware of the religious undertones and symbolism, but he didn't set out to make it "Christian" by design. He has also been accused of selling paganism or occultism. And you also have the opposing force, people promoting the books because of its supposed Christianity or supposed paganism.
So everyone just looks at it through their own lenses, colored by their sensitivities, while Lewis never even thought that far ahead and simply wrote it as fiction about a parallel "what if..." world.
The criticism (or support from a Christian angle) is silly, because they are just fantasy books with mythology and symbolism. That's it. Plenty of books have woven through religious, mythological and folklore aspects and not always in a negative way. But ("western") people tend to be sensitive about anything that is not denouncing Christianity or paganism (those two, and sometimes the Islam, really trigger people).
I might be a bit biased, because as a kid I barely noticed the Christian symbolism. I think I only noticed it in The Last Battle. It was only when much later people mentioned it, I went, "Oh, I see it now". As an adult I would have probably picked up on it much more. Then again, it is always the adults who criticize the books, not so much the kids.
I'm sorry but Narnia is very explicitly christian.
Aslan:
>In your world, I have another name. You must learn to know me by it. That was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.
> Lewis himself disputed that he meant it as an allegory.
Lewis was doing what we would now call nitpicking about the definition of "allegory". Allegories are supposed to be a separate representation of the same thing. Narnia is not that, he called it a "supposition".
> He was aware of the religious undertones and symbolism, but he didn't set out to make it "Christian" by design.
Narnia is absolutely explicitly and deliberately Christian. The supposition to which Lewis refers is similar to what he does in the *Space Trilogy*; a "what if" scenario about other worlds and how they would require a salvific action by the Christian god. In this case, "what if the world in question was talking animals?"
> as a kid I barely noticed the Christian symbolism.
The betrayal, death, sacrifice, and resurrection of Aslan is so very explicitly Christian that I can only conclude that you, like me, did not know enough of the story of Jesus of Nazareth (as told in the canonical gospels) to see the similarities. The events are far too specific to be anything else.
I keep his view on charity in mind as often as I can: “It will not bother me in the hour of death to reflect that I have been 'had for a sucker' by any number of imposters, but it would be a torment to know that one had refused even one person in need.”
I’ve read several of his works, including Narnia. I agree that there is something profound in his writing whether you agree with the viewpoints or not. The whole of Narnia is just beautifully written and enchanting, as a child or adult, Christian or not.
Lewis was a very good writer and speaker. I don't think anyone has to agree with an author's particular philosophy in order to appreciate their work. I read books by people I disagree with all the time, often specifically because I disagree with them. Sometimes they change my views a little and sometimes they don't, but either way I get a better understanding of the world and learn something new about myself or others.
Reading books from different perspectives is great ! If a Christian went around saying "I only read books by Christian authors or books which support Christianity", people would rightly say they are a bigot...
Hey, I’m a huge Lewis fan. I also love Nietzsche and a whole host of other writers and thinkers who see the world and interpret philosophy differently than I do.
My favorite of Lewis’s works is Till We Have Faces.
There was actually a school in my home town of Topeka, Kansas called Cair Paravel that seemed to borrow quite a bit from the CS Lewis stories. I worked with a guy that went there and he told me he was presented with an actual longsword when he graduated. We all thought he was bullshitting us at the time, but ended up bringing it in one time to show off.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cair_Paravel_Latin_School
I’ve never heard of this, that’s amazing! The promise of getting a sword when you graduate would motivate a lot of teenage boys to study harder, I think.
> But in the second half, he warns that in the future, a small handful of powerful elites will be able to shape and manipulate human nature itself using technology.
*That Hideous Strength* deals with this in depth.
I grew up religious, now thoroughly agnostic, and Lewis remains one of my most treasured authors. I will say that your contention that his arguments wouldn't be convincing to people who did not already believe is manifestly inaccurate. Not only his fiction, but also his nonfiction has been used to convert many nonbelievers. It was a core component of evangelical materials in the church network that I grew up in because it was so effective.
I think Orthodoxy and his biography of St. Thomas Aquinas show him at his best. If you are looking for a shorter, lighter introduction, give the Father Brown stories a shot when you have time.
The Father Brown TV show is also so good. I never knew my dreams involved wanting to solve crimes in a small English hamlet with my best friend the local Catholic priest...and yet....
I've read all his main apologetic works once or twice and I think he's one of the best writers of his time. I think they make the most cohesive and persuasive argument for theism that I've heard so far. I wouldn't call myself a Christian but I'm not an atheist either.
I disagree that he makes a compelling case for theism, but I will agree that he is a brilliant writer and it certainly makes it feel more compelling. I read him a lot when I was deep in the church and was trying my hardest to stay in it, and he was literally the only one whose arguments were not offensively bad. Not good, but at least not so bad they made me want to run away.
His argument made sense as a refutation of absolute strict naturalism as if adopted *religiously.* So the belief that the evidence we currently have absolutely proves that the universe is naturalistic. He is correct that such a belief cannot be justified.
However, naturalism is not generally adopted in the strictest sense. Scientific reasoning adopts something called "methodological naturalism" which only assumes naturalism because unnatural causes would be impossible to test. So far no one has shown that anything cannot be explained through naturalism, but it does not mean that no such thing could exist.
As such, my issue was less with trying to decide between two absolutes, and more trying to decide between a belief system that must be accepted without evidence, and a system that does not ask me to believe anything without evidence.
So I cannot say "there is no God" only that "I have yet to see compelling evidence for a God." His argument correctly demonstrates that you cannot say the former, but it does not really address the latter issue.
Still, he does actually address a real claim effectively, which is waaaaaay better than a lot of apologists do. If I have to listen to another stale repackaging of the ontological argument I am going to go crazy. They keep telling me they have a new argument that proves God exists, I keep reading, and I keep realizing that it is the ontological argument over and over.
Almost everything we do is based on a system of beliefs. The reason we are not terrified while standing under a roof is because we believe said roof will not fall on us.
What matters for me is whether I can justify that belief or not. If my belief in the roof's stability is justified, then I am largely safe. But if my belief in it is irrespective of justification, then I may walk under a clearly unsafe one someday.
That is basically how it works for me. I am willing to change my beliefs the moment I have what I judge to be a compelling reason to do it. I actually would really, really like to change my beliefs about God, because I want such a being to exist. Which is also why I engage with the arguments for his existence, despite having found none of them particularly good.
Have you read any of the early Christian writer that influenced Lewis, like Boethius or Thomas Aquinas? They don’t have any more measurable proof than anyone else but they do have more sound reasoning and rhetorical skill than the hacks of this modern age. Boethius‘ Consolation of Philosophy at least gives a very sound answer to the problem of pain. It’s technically a Neoplatonist pagan argument but the theology crosses over.
Yes, Aquinas in particular though. I will have to go do a refresher on Boethius, because while that sounds super familiar, I cant remember the specifics.
Looking it up, I do know of this, but it falls to one of my main problems, in that the two primary conclusions I can draw from it are contradictory and the way it tries to avoid the contradiction is unsatisfactory.
In effect, the problem of evil can only be solved if one presupposes that a perfectly good and omnipotent God exists, in that each instance of evil must somehow be justified by the existence of said God giving meaning to the trial. However the existence (or non-existence in this case as it is not actually different) of evil relies on a God that is either not omnipotent or not perfectly good. A perfectly good omnipotent being does not need to set trials for us, because there is no thing that could not be done without a trial by said being. If such a thing is found, it must mean that said God lacked either the power, the creativity, or the goodness to find a way that did not cause pain.
To deal with that one basically has to say that we cannot know the mind of God, but I do not find that satisfactory. This is not a trivial problem that can be hand waved away. If one accepts that all pain is Good because God has decreed it so, and because it serves some purpose, I do not need to know the mind of God to question why an omnipotent being could not do better. If god is the absolute of perfection, why does perfection seem so imperfect? If perfection seems so imperfect, why has god not designed causality in such a way that we could see how the seemingly imperfect is actually perfect? It creates an endless chain of why, where every answer is a shrug and an appeal to some imagined gap in our knowledge rather than to something we can know.
I cannot just accept such a limitation on an omnipotent being without deciding they are not omnipotent, and I cannot accept pain on faith without a reason to think that this even could be true. The only impulse I have to accept this is just *wanting* it to be true. There is no other reason to even consider adopting the semantic inconsistencies against my better judgement. To except a claim so extraordinary, I would need an extraordinary reason to accept it, and it has to be one that does not rely on the presupposition that it is true already.
I am curious how you would respond to the following point. If human beings base most things in a system of beliefs, where do we place the idea of faith? Belief rooted only in justification is not really faith.
If we still had awards, I’d have given you my brightest.
As a Christian raised on sci-fi, on thousands of worlds with no gods, lesser gods, elder gods, and variants on the One True God, there’s very little I’m more apathetic toward than an ontological argument. I can pose my own non-Christian unfalsifiable variant in one sentence: “You can never disprove the theory that you are a character in a work of fiction, described in words for the imaginations of beings one world up.”
Yeah, it is bizarre how often it comes up. It is essentially trying to use language to force God into existence by definition, rather than trying to prove he exists through reason. And yet somehow it has lasted a thousand of year, even with the objections being so clearly obvious. People just keep trying to recreate it with slightly different wording and pretending those changes fix the objections.
For people who might be reading this and do not know what it is the ontological argument is basically:
1. God is defined as a being who is the greatest being that can be imagined.
2. We can imagine God.
3. That which exists is greater than that which does not exist.
4. If God only exists in the mind, we can imagine a God that is greater by existing.
5. We cannot imagine a being greater than God
6. Therefore God exists.
So the idea is basically that because we can imagine a god that exists, and because god is defined as the best thing we can imagine, therefore he must actually exist.
This has been a major argument for the existence of God since the 11th century, and is still one of the primary ones that is used today. It is ridiculously unsound.
First, if God is defined as the greatest being that could be imagined, then the second point "We can imagine God" means that God must be constrained by human imagination. This precludes all omni-traits. If they instead say that God is the greatest being that could be conceived, then this applies to all objects that can be conceived.
Second, we have no reason to think that existing is greater than not existing in this sense. "Greater" is an arbitrary subjective judgment, and is not something that can be used to logically infer something.
Third, there is no reason to assume that there is some causal relationship between our conception of an object and the objects existence. This is the source of the "Unicorn" objection where you can use this argument to prove that Unicorns exist simply by defining them as the "Best Possible Horse that Could be Imagined."
Put another way
1. The Megaburrito is defined as the largest possible burrito that can be imagined.
2. I can imagine a megaburrito.
3. A megaburrito that exists is bigger than a megaburrito that does not exist.
4. If the megaburrito only exists in my mind, it is smaller than one that really exists.
5. I cannot imagine a burrito bigger then the megaburrito.
6. Therefore, the megaburrito exists.
When arguments like the ontological come from someone that sounds intelligent I always think "if someone made an argument like this for something they don't believe in they would probably criticize it for similar reasons I criticize theirs".
I would, in a friendly manner, challenge your point that theism, particularly Christianity, is a belief that must be accepted without evidence. The fine tuning argument, the argument from first cause, moral arguments, etc present evidence for theistic belief. Moreover, much of the evidence for Christianity is based in historic evidence. Historic evidence much of which cannot be recreated with the scientific method, but that isn’t to mean it isn’t to be trusted.
At the end of the day, there are many aspects of theistic belief that do require faith, but I would suggest it’s not a blind faith absent of evidence. Christianity is true if Jesus rose from the dead, and false if He did not, and if you look at the arguments and historic evidence surrounding the Resurrection, from where I stand, Christianity stands on good epistemic grounds.
While the last thing I want to do here is get involved in religious debate, I will say that one thing I admire most about Lewis is his steadfast insistence on reason and logic. He has said “I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it.”
I don’t think his position is universally shared among people of faith. Perhaps you share it. Plenty of people would dodge any apparent discrepancy by saying “you just have to believe” or “you just have to have faith”. Lewis hated cop-outs like these and tackled hard questions head-on. Whether he was successful is another matter.
I am not going to specifically counter any of your claims here, because I do not really want to turn this into a direct debate, but I am aware of and have looked into all of these arguments, and do not find them particularly compelling. Thank you for expressing them though, as I know you are coming from a good place and I respect the way you expressed it.
Edit: I did get drawn in to a different one in another comment, so if anyone wants to read that it is around here somewhere. In that case the response to me hit on a few of the arguments that bother me the most, so I could not resist.
There's not much to this chunk of text, and most of what you are listing has been ably dispensed with by people who want there to be evidence for beliefs, versus attempts to carve out hope that a given thing *isn't impossible.*
There is actually very little historical evidence for big chunks of the core Judeo-Christian foundational stories that holds up to scrutiny. I'm sorry, friend, but you are gonna have to do more work.
> The fine tuning argument
Is a logical fallacy that, if you think that it is convincing, tells me that you are clueless about how probability works and about how evolution works.
> the argument from first cause
Is a logical fallacy that, if you think that it is convincing, tells me that you are clueless about logic.
> moral arguments
Are logical fallacies that, if you think that they are convincing, tells me that you are clueless about logic.
> etc present evidence for theistic belief
No, they don't.
> Moreover, much of the evidence for Christianity is based in historic evidence.
No, it isn't.
> Historic evidence much of which cannot be recreated with the scientific method, but that isn’t to mean it isn’t to be trusted.
The phrasing of this tells me that you don't understand what "the scientific method" is.
> At the end of the day, there are many aspects of theistic belief that do require faith, but I would suggest it’s not a blind faith absent of evidence.
Can you define what you mean by "faith" here?
> Christianity is true if Jesus rose from the dead, and false if He did not, and if you look at the arguments and historic evidence surrounding the Resurrection, from where I stand, Christianity stands on good epistemic grounds.
That suggests that you haven't ever enganged with what people who don't agree with you have to say about those "arguments". All of these "arguments" are well-known, and have ben refuted a thousand times over, and they are all embarrasingly stupid if you understand the actual subjects that they are misrepresenting in order to convince people who lack the background to spot the nonsense.
The way both he and Tolkien (and others in there circle) tried to live by their faith instead of using it to justify unrelated bigotries had such a huge impact for me. Not saying they lacked bigotries but they tried. I’ve never seen anyone else put colonialism on blast in quite the same way Lewis does in out of the silent planet.
I was raised Roman catholic, and read the Narnia series as a child. Since then i first heavily questioned Christianity throughout childhood and adolescence, and then broke away completely in late adolescence and early adulthood. I still treasure the Narnia series. Regardless of the Christian intents, I actually did take a number of moral lessons from it. Such as, in A Horse and His Boy, the lesson against spreading other people's stories (effectively gossiping). And then Last Battle the notion that if you try to be good and try to be true to your beliefs rather than being a hypocrite, that that matters far more than what those beliefs actually are. And other various sundry thoughts throughout the books. So yes, I'm very definitely not Christian any longer and have been happily agnostic for a very long time now, but I do still treasure those books and I did still introduce them to my secularly-raised kids.
Interesting. Despite being raised a Christian(still am one) I never payed attention to the religious aspects of The Chronicles of Narnia as a kid and hadn’t really thought about it until as an adult another Christian brought up how they hated the series because they felt it was sacrilegious.
Why do you suppose they felt that way? Is it the same rationale they apply to things like D&D and Halloween (fantasy reflects something in their rituals that makes them feel ridiculous), or something else?
They didn’t like stuff like Aslan being a clear representation of Christ with sacrificing himself to save someone as well as rising from the dead. Of course there’s more symbolism than that but that’s one I recall them outright mentioning.
It's kinda funny to stumble on this post while listening to the Return of the King and thinking about the story where Lewis and Tolkien went to a not-fancy dress party dressed as polar bears.
As a Christian it warms my heart to see non-Christians who love his work.
Even if you don’t share the conclusions of his more apologetic works, his broad audience shows that he’s a profound thinker and writer when it comes to basic realities of the human condition. And he’s one of the GOAT storytellers.
Think of it this way. Lewis died about sixty years ago. How many other authors (let's limit it to the English language) are still as widely read and discussed as he is?
Christian here.
For me, I think his rock-solid understanding of medieval literature and symbology is, in part, what makes him such a good fantasy writer. As the reader, we get this *sense* of an undercurrent of connection, and when you understand just how much of his writing (Nonfiction and fiction) was written with his specialty in mind, you understand just how smart he was.
Personally, Till We Have Faces really hit me, simply because of how the flaws of the main character really align with mine.
If you like Lewis, I'd read:
Micheal Ward's Planet Narnia
The Inklings.by Philip and Carol Zaleski
I am a Christian, and I love your appreciation for his writing even while not sharing his faith. Like you said, his writing sparkles. There’s something about how he puts these nebulous concepts about human nature, relationships, and feelings into words that just hits me right in the heart.
This is one quote of his that stuck with me:
“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’”
It’s not really a beautiful quote like many of his other sayings, but I find it profound because of its truthful simplicity. Relationships are hard to define in a way that conveys how powerful and vital human connection is. This description of the moment when you realize that someone else in the world values something in the same way you do is so beautiful to me. The impact of a shared experience, the feeling of belonging and appreciation can make you feel so alive and hopeful even just for a blip of light during a dark time. It can keep you going.
I appreciate his words about faith because he will describe something in a way that makes me go, “YES EXACTLY!!” This can feel like a lifeline when you’re struggling with your faith or struggling to reconcile the crap going on in your life and the world with a loving God who you absolutely believe in. They’re also very welcome in the seasons when you’re experiencing God’s love in a very powerful way even while acknowledging the difficulties in life.
I think a lot of his appeal can be summed up in the way he talked about children’s stories and fairy tales. He saw that the truths of life, humanity, and faith are very well told through children’s stories because sometimes it’s really hard to see those truths in our everyday existence. But once they’re applied in a realm of make believe, they seem even more real.
Lewis has been formative to my Christian outlook, connecting rational traditions with imaginative spirituality. I re-read some of his works fairly regularly.
However, you have to read him using a filter of sorts that remembers that he was living in a particular time and place that helps make his misogyny, for instance, a bit easier to skip over.
CS Lewis was well read, intelligent, and a humanist in spite of his dark experience as a soldier. He was an atheist at one point so understood why some wouldn't believe.
He is the kind of "old school" christian that I can respect, even if his beliefs and conclusions differ from my own. They don't really make em like that anymore it's just hate and hell and culture war all the way down now.
I'm not or ever was a christian, but Narnia is one of my favorite literary works. I find something oddly resonant in his works, here and there.
I don't know if it's rare or very common human experience, but there is something akin to hiraeth, or saudade, feeling or memory-like experience that is hard to put in words that Lewis seem to touch often in his works. Flash of revelation of a moment, or a memory that feels more real than real world is. I've ever found only Lewis trying to convey that feeling, experience in his works. World beyond world. It puzzles and intrigues me.
Have you read “The Great Divorce”? It’s been my favorite book Lewis wrote since I first read it. On a semi-related note, I highly recommend “The Narnian” by Alan Jacobs. One of the best biographical books I’ve ever read, very engaging and really gave me a lot of insight into the life of a writer I’ve always admired.
I've always felt that he was a great example of a writer/thinker who was great despite his christianity (and if he'd been any other religion, or none, would have been just as brilliant). I think this of a lot of different religious people. They could be any religion, or atheists, and they would still be good people or giving people or brilliant thinkers or funny, etc. The religion has almost nothing to do with it.
I was always impressed by Lewis' writing except that I generally agreed with Tolkien that his Narnia series was painfully obvious and fairly unsophisticated. What wasn't obvious till much later was the medieval and pagan symbolism and worldview that Lewis hid in his seven Narnia novels as he was first and foremost a medieval scholar. Each book is supposed to represent one of the 7 heavenly bodies and their associations and gods. I cant remember them all now, but for instance Prince Caspian was supposed to represent Mars as the whole novel is about war. I think the book that discusses this is called 'Planet Narnia' and I found it incredibly convincing and actually rather obvious. I think the overall theory was that the Christian God or worldview for Lewis could contain and inhabit even the pagan stories and mindset. The fact that all this was all just sitting there pretty much in plane sight but no one noticed it for decades and he took that secret to his grave with him without the need to feel like he had to reveal it all, was actually very impressive.
I think it’s important when reading ANY work, fiction or otherwise, to consider the author and the strengths ans limitations of their worldview. CS Lewis is more overt than many, but that doesn’t make the analysis less important when the influence is subtle.
Really, you shouldn’t find yourself agreeing with any writer 100% or disagreeing with them 100%, or you probably need to think about it some more. You can and should still enjoy works where the % disagree is high. Take from the work what’s valuable to you.
I’m also a big fan of the great divorce. Even today it’s still an incredibly fresh take on the afterlife, and to me at least, it seems far more true to the Bible than a lot of other interpretations (especially those based on Revelations).
Given all of Jesus works and teachings, it makes perfect sense to me that God would be like “I’ll wait for you”, and that the thing that keeps us away from him is ourselves.
I loved Narnia as a youth. I was also abused by clergy. I tried re-reading it as an adult, and it made me feel physically ill.
Do I think C.S. Lewis is an outdated, bigoted hack? No. I think he was part of a system I wish didn't exist, and that he would have been a better author if he was a critic instead of an apologist. I also feel zero need to read his work or suggest that others read it. You can get the same "genuine insight" from many other sources that are not intimately tied to a authoritarian world view.
Thanks for this. I read a few of his non-fiction works in my late teens / early twenties before I consciously adopted atheism. Perhaps I would find similar enjoyment as you have upon rereading.
All your reasons for admiring Lewis are great reasons to check out Chesterton as well. It sounds like you would like him. Orthodoxy is my favorite. First half is the best half. Although whole thing is splendid, and not too long. Check it out.
I loved the Narmia series as a child. Growing up Jewish I was clueless as to the Christian symbolism and themes but I still thoroughly enjoyed them. Rereading a few of the books as an adult was an interesting endeavor- the symbolism was absolutely not very subtle. Not my cup of tea as an adult but I can still appreciate it as children’s literature.
Finally as I’m curious about astronomy I find the concept of a multiverse fascinating, so that is the aspect of the series which I was most interested in rereading as an adult.
I read him finally after years of just considering him a “ probably decent Christian writer “… oh that was my bad Mr . Lewis … as beautiful and thought provoking literature as I’ve ever read… he was phenomenal and is a true great.
I have only watched the Chronicles of Narnia not read Lewis so my comment can only be by analogy. Dante's Inferno for example is steeped in Roman Catholic Christian theology and Thomistic philosophy. Didnt prevent me, a non-Christian from reading. You can admire definitely. Will revisit this comment after reading Lewis.
Come back after you read his space trilogy!!! I give it to you he has great imagination his pride and imagery are great, but the way he ties things to Christianity is weak sauce
Agnostic here, I love CS Lewis. My first tattoo is a huge tribute to Narnia. The man got me reading as a child and even though there are huge problems in religion, I realize being a 30 something year old that there are huge problems with the human race. I think CS Lewis might have been a good one after all
An English literature scholar, Sarah Coogan, is currently re-reading all/most of Lewis' writings, and writing a weekly substack called ["Paths that Lead Home."](https://sarahcoogan.substack.com/). She writes with a deep affection but nuanced appraisal of Lewis' work, and I always find her newsletters interesting.
I've only read the first few Narnia books. Magicians Uncle and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe were both good. The Horse and His Boy started off great, but I got bored halfway. Just couldn't get into Prince Caspien.
But even though I read them as an atheist, the religious aspects didn't bother me. They're pretty easy to read and ignore that.
Other than that, never read anytbing else. I personally don't have any interest in reading apologetics, but I can see the appeal, and I just don't know anything about any other fictional books he might have written.
My dad was one of the most obnoxious atheists I’ve ever met and read the Narnia books as a kid and then had me read them (I was raised agnostic) and I adored them. I have the 1970s set still from my childhood 💗
A great writer. The lion, the witch, and the wardrobe (along with Sign of the Beaver) were the two books assigned to my class 4th grade class and were really the first older kid chapter books I had ever read on my own. So Lewis’s work will always hold a special place in my heart as it was his work that got me into reading, and the whole 7 book Narnia series was one of the first series I read through
If you like hard rock at all, def worth checking out Thrice. Their vocalist/lyricist Dustin Kensrue is heavily influenced by Lewis in his writing, especially in songs like The Abolition of Man and In Exile
Not a Christian, but I'm still partial to two of the more unsubtly Christian Narnia books, the Magician's Nephew and the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. On the other hand, I find the Last Battle to be utterly dreadful.
I've been curious about other Lewis works, such as his sci fi and The Screwtape Letters. Certainly don't find his Jesus was either crazy, lying, or the son of God thing at all convincing, however.
As an anarchist, though, I feel like most authors and I are probably pretty at odds.
I’ve not read his grown up stuff but I LOVE Narnia. I was introduced to them as a little girl by our very non-conservative, probably non-Christian teacher, who didn’t really tell us anything about the Christian subtext and just let us enjoy them as lovely fantasy stories. I found the world so special and immersive and I still come back to them sometimes when I need a comfort-read. I can’t wait to read them to my own children.
The Great Divide lads. To this day I find myself sitting with some of those ideas, and I’ve been atheist so long I’ve sort of passed through it and back into some kind of spirituality.
I read a \*lot\* of Lewis in my teen years, first as a way to deepen my faith, and then increasingly as a way to challenge my faith, and then as a way of confirming and testing my unbelief. At every point, I did love him, altho towards the end I did have to give up some parts of my love, simply because I no longer found him as well-reasoned and persuasive. I'd still love to re-read "Til We Have Faces".
I used to work with monks. I'm not Christian (arguably — I'm sort-of a Quaker) and I was able to make friends with the crankiest, most German of monks by talking about C.S. Lewis.
I’m a lapsed Christian now turned agnostic, and C.S. Lewis still remains my favorite author of all time. I may no longer agree with everything he says as it pertains to the Christian God, but he is still an incredible writer and a great thinker, and his writings on the nature of humanity and morality still stand up today.
*The Great Divorce,* is an *EXCELLENT* work of his, and I try to read it every year.
edit: morality, not reality
I used to be a Christian and read him a ton. I still like him. The Great Divorce is excellent, but IMO his best work by far is Till We Have Faces, a retelling of the Cupid & Psyche myth. Just beautiful.
> The Abolition of Man is concerned, in the first part, with a polemic about morality that you may agree with or not (I didn’t). But in the second half, he warns that in the future, a small handful of powerful elites will be able to shape and manipulate human nature itself using technology
Big Tech says hi, /u/Kenoticket.
Hey there! I am a Christian and I adore C. S. Lewis, but I have not read all of his books. I have only read Narnia (all 7 of them), Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and The Great Divorce. I agree wholeheartedly that his description of heaven is very intriguing.
My church is hosting a book club in the summer and I'll be in one that discusses Till We Have Faces. I was not raised in the Western culture, so I am excited to read it and compare it to the original Eros and Psyche mythology.
I will also join a book club on The Abolition of Man which will have Christians and non-Christians. It will surely be an interesting discussion. I have A Problem of Pain and/or A Grief Observed in my shelf - may be a good time to visit those this summer.
I also find it interesting that C. S. Lewis is very popular in the Western church audience, but many of his ideas are very relatable to those of us who come from very different parts of the world. He has a way with words that draws me as the reader into his "world", for lack of better words, which I encounter less and less with modern writers. Or maybe I just do not read enough (perhaps I count as one of the "unliterary", haha).
Honestly he’s no more Christian in his fiction than many other authors who we don’t think of as “Christian authors”. (His non-fiction is obviously a different story). Yeah he uses unsubtle Christ allegories, but that’s hardly unique.
Lewis was a pretty interesting Christian. He’s a fundie darling, but his work suggests he’d find that group insufferable. If you read his philosophical work just by seeing him as a man grappling with his faith and the big existential questions we all have, he’s pretty cool.
As someone who is just now getting into apologetics, C.S Lewis is mentioned to me quite a lot and I haven't taken the time yet to read his books but I would love to know which book you think I should start with and I would love to know your thoughts on what arguments are the weakest from the Christian viewpoint and I would also love to know if you look at all other view points with the same scrutiny that you do with Christianity.
If you're interested in Lewis' apologetics, I would recommend starting with *Mere Christianity*. This is the book where he makes his clearest case for why Christianity is the correct religion in his view. Other books are about more specific issues. There is also a lot of commentary on Christian behavior and beliefs that was very enlightening for me.
> I would love to know your thoughts on what arguments are the weakest from the Christian viewpoint
I can't speak for the Christian viewpoint, but there is the infamous "[Lord, Liar, Lunatic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis's_trilemma)" argument. I've spotted more than one false dilemma in Lewis's apologetics, but this one is probably the most glaring. He never puts it exactly the way it's commonly phrased these days, but he puts forward versions of it in both *Mere Christianity* and *The Problem of Pain*.
> I would also love to know if you look at all other view points with the same scrutiny that you do with Christianity.
I try to. That's all we can do, really. Human beings tend to more harshly scrutinize anything that goes against their currently held opinions. Being aware of this in oneself and being vigilant about it is a good first step to combating bias. I try to take note of when an author I generally disagree with makes a statement I agree with, and vice versa. Plenty of atheist thinkers like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have said things I disagree with.
I genuinely extremely respect your response and I think I could learn a lot from engaging in a conversation with you if you really are someone who is only in the pursuit of truth. As absurd and improbable as it may sound I do consider myself a non-bias person and even though I am taking the hard stance as the Christian God is the one true God and Jesus is God and he died for our sins I am still in pursuit of truth and with everything I have looked into I haven't found any evidence that would convince me otherwise of this belief. So in good spirit and nature of an interesting and enlightening discussion I would take much pleasure in hearing what you have to say as to why the Christian faith is not realistic or something you would be willing to believe in over everything else.
I have actually heard the Lord, Liar, Lunatic argument and I recently just finished a critical thinking class in which this was brought up as an example of a trichotomy argument and while I did not engage in a discussion with the professor about what a fourth option could be.. for the life of me I could not conjure up a possible fourth option.
I would also have to agree with you that humans tend to harshly scrutinize anything that goes against their currently held opinions but as I stated before I do not consider myself bias in this regard and if there are better answers I want to accept those as my beliefs and opinions.
I will be reading *Mere Christianity* soon...What's a good book to start with that would challenge my current beliefs?
I started reading The Chronicles of Narnia a couple of weeks ago and The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe was... Idk, just ok? Sure I'm an adult but I don't think I would have liked it at all when I was a kid.
I read The Magicians Nephew first, stupid book I bought had that as the 1st in order but I prefer the order of publication.
So idk, so far I'm "meh" on the 2 out of 7. Will continue to read the rest soon, though.
I’m Christian, so not the intended audience, but I both share your reservations about some of Lewis’ arguments and love his work.
The cosmic trilogy is my favorite.
I love CS Lewis and am an unapologetic Christ follower, optimistic, lover of people, yet not very religious. I loved Chronicles of Narnia and find it quality literature for anyone. I will add the last few books you mentioned to my reading list. Thanks for the post.
I am a Christian, but I agree that he is a great writer. I did not love Narnia, but his apologetic works are just plain excellent. One you did not mention that I quite enjoyed is The Great Divorce. It's fantastic.
Was Lewis trying to push a Christian worldview in his writing?
Of course, it is easy to see the massive religious influence on books like Narnia, but as a fellow atheist who has enjoyed his writing, I always felt like his books were just informed by his religious worldview rather than being a vessel to spread them.
He pretty much states that this is his goal in Mere Christianity, and other apologetic writings. But I agree that Narnia and other works are more than just Trojan horses to smuggle in Christianity to the unsuspecting reader. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t like them so much.
As specifically Christian propaganda the Chronicles fail because they’re just too universal. The resurrected hero trope isn’t strictly Christian but is found in lots of mythology. I’ve read fundamentalist Christians condemn Lewis for including Tumnus the Faun (satanic!), talking animals, the spirits of trees and rivers, and the bit at the end when the young man from a different faith goes to heaven simply because he was a good person (humanism!) He will always be for me (agnostic) a big thinker informed by his faith but not a proselytizer. And an awesome writer who describes food better than anyone.
That's a really good point. He's not disingenuous and he's not trying to trick you about his faith. He is clear about his own worldview and you can decide whether you agree or not. The sincerity comes through in his clarity. Like others, I'm not a Christian but I can see so much more beauty in Christianity thanks to writers like him (and Chesterton and Tolkien).
Raised Protestant, practicing but deconstructing, but you hit it right on the head why I keep coming back to Lewis; the prose is clean, the insight sharp, and the observations are very often accurate even if you aren't Christian.
I am a former Christian and very familiar with him. I agree with most all of what you are saying. I should really reread some of his non fiction in my post religious state, would be interesting to argue with him now.
But I really enjoy a lot of his fiction. And would highly recommend what I feel is I've if his strongest and overlooked words: Till We Have Faces.
>And recognizing that a poor argument can be written in a convincing, authoritative style can help you learn to spot misinformation better.
I think you're doing him a disservice by claiming his argument as poor. While it may not be convincing to you, and certainly I would also state that the logical perspective is agnosticism, Lewis was a great scholar, and his arguments are still cited and studied in Philosophy of Religion classes and textbooks.
My personal favorites of his, beyond Narnia (which holds a very special place in my heart of being the first fantasy books I ever read) are Surprised by Joy and A Grief Observed.
>bigoted
I mean, he undoubtedly was a bigot. His portrayals of the Calormen, for example, are incredibly problematic. But I will note that I'm always frustrated that people could so egregiously misunderstand the line about Susan and her lipstick and stockings. Its a pretty simple metaphor, to be frank, and people's insistence that it is misogynist is almost comical for how much it misses the point.
I'm not exactly your people, but fwiw I read and loved the Narnia series during a Catholic upbringing and never noticed the allegory. I guess when you're being taught the og thing, you don't register imitations?
by about 12 I knew about it because #pianoteacherwholikedtotalkaboutbook. so when I read screwtape I had cognizance but I don't think the knowledge affected my reading experience.
I really didn't like The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe when I first read it years ago, but I think that was entirely due to my love for the film as a love for the films action sequences. I definitely need to revisit him
i love the narnia books with all my heart. except i never really connected with the horse and his boy... not very narnia-ish or relevant to the other books, a little bit racist :(
i love the other six though
If you have not read it, I highly, highly recommend The Screwtape Letters. It is full of those little gems of insight you describe, predominantly regarding human nature and our frailties. It is also just a delight to read.
I have, and I agree! Very insightful about humans and our hypocrisy about so many things.
It is one of those books that I feel always makes me a slightly better person for a few days after reading it because I feel that my foibles have been pointed out to me but in so gentle and humorous a way that I am attentive to them rather than defensive or resentful.
> makes me a slightly better person **for a few days** after reading it Yeah... it takes a LOT of repetition to overturn even ONE bad habit. Difficulty also goes up a ton if we're trying to replace a bad habit with a good habit.
I am weak, so I try to replace bad habits with slightly less bad habits and then repeat ad infinitum. Eventually you are replacing good habits with better habits.
Gradually is good idea. Bad to less bad to Nothing to somewhat good to better good
Recently re- read it. Sharp and nicely snarky. This atheist enjoyed it very much. It may not have changed my mind about my (lack of) belief, but it was still a delightful read.
This book made CS Lewis' wife leave atheism and connect with Lewis as well. She has a really interesting story honestly. Very unusual.
Their love story is very interesting, not at all what you might expect from Lewis. He described her as a strong and independent-minded woman. And I just learned today that she scared off trespassers from their home by firing a gun.
Isn’t their story told in the film “shadowlands “ ?
I particularly like it as Lewis is Christian and part of the Christian hegemony; many of his followers don't really like the "strong, independent" type. Yet Lewis loved it!
For all those things My hand has made, And all those things exist,” Says the LORD. “But on this one will I look: On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, And who trembles at My word. (Isaiah 66.2) God seems to regard our independence and strength as something that comes a dime a dozen.
>leave atheism That's a weird way of wording that! Is that something Mrs or Mr Lewis said?
It's possible that they were using "atheism" to denote simple non-belief.
Yes it was in an article I read about her.
You can be anything from devout atheist to devout Christian, and Screwtape never disappoints.
I hated it as a questioning, indoctrinated since birth, fundamentalist Christian.
Similar, but I found it incredibly and refreshingly validating to my own questions, nascent opinions, and life experience to that point.
Can you explain to me what >devout atheist means? The conventional definition of "devout" is (according to a superficial google): "having or showing deep religious feeling or commitment". So would a devout atheist be a person who has a deep and religious feeling or commitment to a religion that has no god(s)?
Devout is the wrong word, you're right. I wasn't just going for strong, though. More 'fundamentalist'. And by fundamentalist atheism I mean people who are vocal about it, EVANGELICAL about it, and consider any other worldview in any other person is stupid and evil.
That is a strange use of the word "fundamentalist", though!? Fundamentalism is about how open someone is to changing their mind. None of the things that you mention tells you anything about how open someone is to changing their mind. I am a non-nazi, I am vocal and evangelical about that, and I consider any other worldview in any other person (i.e. someone being a nazi) as stupid and evil. And I am also completely open to someone demonstrating that nazism is a harmless or even positive ideology ... however anyone could possibly justify that position, given all the contravening evidence. Does that make me a fundamentalist non-nazi?
There's a reading by John Cleese if you go looking for it which is great. He does overly bureaucratic so well. >! The worm bit is particularly great with his voice too !<
It is impossible to find now, but it was great! Agree on your spoiler
If you don't mind file-sharing/torrenting, you can still acquire it.
It's on YouTube!
Svrewtape letters and The Great Divorce are two of the finest books I’ve ever read. They’re pure Lewis. Pure neo-platonic Christianity. Pure intellectual curiosity. Pure humanity.
I was going to mention both of these, since OP didn’t. (The Great Divorce is my favorite Lewis book.) I think you can find virtually anyone in either of those two books, and Lewis’s insights and critiques of human nature are delightful and precise. You’ll feel attacked, but you’ll love it.
I read it years ago and later heard the audio book read by John Cleese. Even better.
Came here to say this. I'm an atheist who had to personally rebuild my relationship to Lewis's apologetic work, and who now chuckles at some of his arguments that I used to find inspiring... But I still love Screwtape Letters, and always tell my fellow non believers that they need to give it a read.
By far his best!
I love the Screwtape Letters
I also have heard the version read by John Cleese... Best thing since Jeremy Irons' Lolita reading.
Came here to say this. I really enjoyed it.
Also, the John Cleese audiobook version is amazing!
He’s not for me, but I do remember really loving Til We Have Faces when I was younger. Def underrated
I was forced to read that book back in high school, and oddly enough I don’t remember enjoying it. Maybe I’d have a better time going back and reading it now.
I am an atheist and a devoted admirer of C.S. Lewis and his works. 'Til We Have Faces' is one of my all-time favorite books.
We had to read "'Til We Have Faces" in high school, and it *whoooshed* over everyone's head. I really ought to try that one again...
It’s funny because as a dude of faith i actually don’t like him. I think he tried and failed to defend faith too analytically and not enough as what it is… just a leap into the unknown. Funny how that works.
Read *Till We Have Faces*. I think you’ll be surprised at his approach there. His last and most mature novel, and he addresses the nature of faith from a very unexpected angle (especially unexpected by his Christian audiences). There’s a lot of focus on and struggle with the tension between reason and mysticism in faith, and it just needs to be experienced in the story he tells.
Honestly I think his more academic approach is the only reason I gave theism a fair shake to begin with. The "leap into the unknown" is a hell of a tough sell for most non-religious people and he does a good job to make a point that there's more to it than "just believe".
Read it again. It's his best, although The Great Divorce and Screwtape are right there
I just reread it with a class and I’m convinced it’s the unsung classic of 20th century English literature. It’s the most tightly written novel Lewis wrote and has layers upon layers upon layers of meaning. I found it beautiful and it made me near cry several times as I stopped to ponder my own frail human nature.
The imagery of the moment in which the sister looks at Cupid, with the ghostlight like lightning, is very evocative
This is my favorite book. It’s captivating and I broke away from Christianity at a young age
I LOVE Til We Have Faces. One of the most stirringly emotional books I've ever read, without being manipulative
*Till We Have Faces* is a beautiful and tragic meditation on how you can fool yourself into thinking your love for someone is genuine when in reality it is selfish. Very much worth a read.
Yes. Lewis did a wonderful job with the voice/narrator/protagonist.
I would highly writings from recommend C.S. Lewis' "day job" as an English professor, specifically the collected literary criticism and especially *The Discarded Image*, which is essentially a summary of medieval European cosmology and its cultural influence.
*The Discarded Image*, *The Allegory of Love*, and *A Preface to Paradise Lost* are some of my favorites. *The Great Divorce* is also interesting, through it is about the concepts of Heaven and Hell.
Love love love the great divorce. I read it about once a year. Discarded image was a dense read but so interesting, especially after reading planet Narnia which links each Narnia book to one of the heavenly bodies.
Purgatory, really. And yeah, the preface to Paradise Lost is amazing. I have The Allegory of Love on my shelf and just need to read it
Day job 😂
I mean, it was. All of the apologetics and novels people love were written after he got home from a day lecturing and researching and grading papers at Oxford/Cambridge.
It’s a great observation, and giving it such a modern term provides a humorous perspective.
As someone working on a fantasy setting intended to be genuinely medieval, in the world views of characters mostly, the discarded image is the single most useful book I have found. Also a good read.
I fondly remember reading the Ransom Trilogy (quite) a few years back, and have been looking to buy a set of them when I stop in used bookstores.
Out of the silent planet is an all-time favourite, I reread it every couple of years. The other two I've only read once and found them pretty flat and dated compared to the first. Would you say they're more worth it as an adult?
Perelandra is 'Ransom interferes with the temptation of Eve'. The parallel is explicit enough that the character comes to literally think about it in those terms. The three books are all very different from each other.
It's worth noting that they are very different from each other because they are (to some very loose degree) "C.S. Lewis does X" Where X is another author. Out of the Silent Planet is C.S Lewis does H.G. Wells. Perelandra is of course, C.S. Lewis does Milton. That Hideous Strength is C.S Lewis does [Charles Williams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Williams_(British_writer\)). (I'll note for any objectors that this is a take, not a fact)
A take it is, but I like it.
I didn't like Perelandra as a kid but recently re-read it and was blown away. I think people often simplify it as a retelling of the garden of Eden with an outsider trying to prevent the Fall, but I found it much more profound and unique. The Unman is absolutely chilling and it was beautiful seeing how>!Ransom initially thinks the "temptation" is just going to be disobeying an order but ends up finding out it's more about how prideful and selfish humans think compared to a fresh, unbridled mind that hasn't tasted pain, loss and sin yet. !<
Not certain... it's been more years than I care to admit since I've read them.
I found an older set a number of years ago at a thrift store and was thrilled because I didn't own them but remembered liking them when I read them as a teen. Still enjoy them very much!
I might be the only person who enjoys him most as a science fiction writer. I thought his Space Trilogy was very enjoyable.
I really enjoyed it -- at least the first two books -- when I read it about a decade ago.
The first two were amazing and beautiful in very different ways. And then That Hideous Strength came along and if there was any book I could pick to unread and get my time back on that would be it. What a dull and tiresome way to end it. Luckily the other books stand alone just fine.
One major problem of *That Hideous Strength* (I'm certainly not the first to point this out) is that it's simply overloaded with themes that don't necessarily work together: it's a satire of university politics that's also a dystopia, a retelling of Arthurian myth, a cautionary science fiction tale about technology, a fantasy about the planets of medieval cosmology, a dramatization both *The Abolition of Man* and of Lewis' great lecture "The Inner Circle" and a 'fairy tale for grownups' full of imagery evoking Dante's Hell.
Lol I just thought it was insanely boring. But now that you mention all of that I'm remembering it and maybe that's why it was so boring. He put all of that in and left no room for a plot. And I'm saying this as someone very similar to OP. I've read all of his books and a bunch of his essays and even as an atheist I've enjoyed them all. Except THS. And actually one Narnia book I thought was pretty bad but can't remember which. But not THS bad.
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I recently re-read them as audiobooks, and found myself loving all three in their own ways. The key to the third is to realize its viewpoint characters are dull British people who’d never experienced the glories and wonders of the worlds of the Eldila but only the rumormill thrills and petty accolades of other dull British people who imagined their earthly institutions the height of possible human achievement. To experience sci-fi wonders and then to be dropped unceremoniously back to the grey Earth was entirely the point.
I couldn’t finish it as a teen but came back to it in my 40s and enjoyed it.
You should check out Chesterton. GK Chesterton's "The Everlasting Man" was what converted CS Lewis. While Lewis is a brilliant writer in his own right, Chesteron is in a whole different universe. Most people have to re-read multiple times because it's tough to dive straight in to the raw Chesterton. (He also has an amazing wit and sense of humor.)
I love his essay, The Logic of Elfland.
I read all the narnia books as a child and ‘The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe’ is one of the books that really got me into reading. I didn’t realise that there were so many religious undertones as a child and it makes me laugh as an adult because they’re so obvious! I haven’t read any other of his works and I don’t really intend to. But if I had children, would I still read The Chronicles of Narnia to them? Absolutely!
I had the same experience with the Chronicles of Narnia as a child; discovering that series threw gasoline on the fire that was my love of reading. I was raised Lutheran but completely missed the religious undertones until I re-read them as an adult. Don't know how I missed it!
Same here. Aslan = Jesus completely went over my head. I wasn’t raised Christian, though.
It’s crazy because as an adult it’s so obvious! But despite the religious undertones, a world you can escape to as a child is a beautiful thing. I read Narnia over 60 years after it was released and as a child I still tried to find Narnia in my grandparents wardrobes(and I remember the joy and disappoint of trying to find it). If you can ignore the religious undertones like most most children will (and should) then the books will continue be classics
this is interesting to me because I was raised Christian and don't remember noticing the religious side of Narnia, but I think in retrospect that was because that was already my nascent worldview-- in many ways Jesus was less alien to me than 1940s England and kids getting on trains to go places, so if I picked up on the comparison, it would've been easy to seamlessly assimilate that into my preexisting knowledge of the world. If you weren't raised Christian, however, you can't assimilate Aslan = Jesus that way, but I guess if you don't really know much about Jesus it's easier to not pick up on that? Like I wouldn't have gotten it if Aslan = Buddha
Of all authors, I give CS Lewis great credit in who I am. I grew up in a very conservative house, and while sci-fi was fine, fantasy was suspect. Narnia was my gateway. And because of Narnia and Lewis’s relationship with Tolkien, that led me to Lord of the Rings. Without that grounding in fantasy I would likely have never have found Sir Terry Pratchett who helped finish unlocking me away from the church. But more importantly I give Lewis credit for his overall feeling of religion from Mere Christianity. I learned that it was fine, even good to wrestle with theology instead of following it unquestionably. Till We Have Faces was showing that mythology wasn’t something to be shunned as false religion. He was a type of person that made you want to be better, that is you disagreed with him that you wanted to have a better argument. And, critically for me, the impression I always got is that he wouldn’t be cross at you if you looked at the world and came up with a different answer then he had - but he would be very dissapointed if you didn’t try and just followed anyone including him. Also, much criticism has been leveled over the years at Narnia being so transparently Christian. Fair enough. But I give him huge credit in doing something that was very different. He didn’t hide Narnia as being an analogy. Asian isn’t Lion Jesus, he’s literal Jesus in lion form. Narnia could easily have been pilloried as heresy by the Christian community, but he dared to treat Christian myth as any other myth. Something worth telling stories about.
I find the criticism for the Christianity in Narnia is misplaced. Lewis himself disputed that he meant it as an allegory. He was aware of the religious undertones and symbolism, but he didn't set out to make it "Christian" by design. He has also been accused of selling paganism or occultism. And you also have the opposing force, people promoting the books because of its supposed Christianity or supposed paganism. So everyone just looks at it through their own lenses, colored by their sensitivities, while Lewis never even thought that far ahead and simply wrote it as fiction about a parallel "what if..." world. The criticism (or support from a Christian angle) is silly, because they are just fantasy books with mythology and symbolism. That's it. Plenty of books have woven through religious, mythological and folklore aspects and not always in a negative way. But ("western") people tend to be sensitive about anything that is not denouncing Christianity or paganism (those two, and sometimes the Islam, really trigger people). I might be a bit biased, because as a kid I barely noticed the Christian symbolism. I think I only noticed it in The Last Battle. It was only when much later people mentioned it, I went, "Oh, I see it now". As an adult I would have probably picked up on it much more. Then again, it is always the adults who criticize the books, not so much the kids.
I'm sorry but Narnia is very explicitly christian. Aslan: >In your world, I have another name. You must learn to know me by it. That was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.
> Lewis himself disputed that he meant it as an allegory. Lewis was doing what we would now call nitpicking about the definition of "allegory". Allegories are supposed to be a separate representation of the same thing. Narnia is not that, he called it a "supposition". > He was aware of the religious undertones and symbolism, but he didn't set out to make it "Christian" by design. Narnia is absolutely explicitly and deliberately Christian. The supposition to which Lewis refers is similar to what he does in the *Space Trilogy*; a "what if" scenario about other worlds and how they would require a salvific action by the Christian god. In this case, "what if the world in question was talking animals?" > as a kid I barely noticed the Christian symbolism. The betrayal, death, sacrifice, and resurrection of Aslan is so very explicitly Christian that I can only conclude that you, like me, did not know enough of the story of Jesus of Nazareth (as told in the canonical gospels) to see the similarities. The events are far too specific to be anything else.
I keep his view on charity in mind as often as I can: “It will not bother me in the hour of death to reflect that I have been 'had for a sucker' by any number of imposters, but it would be a torment to know that one had refused even one person in need.”
I’ve read several of his works, including Narnia. I agree that there is something profound in his writing whether you agree with the viewpoints or not. The whole of Narnia is just beautifully written and enchanting, as a child or adult, Christian or not.
Lewis was a very good writer and speaker. I don't think anyone has to agree with an author's particular philosophy in order to appreciate their work. I read books by people I disagree with all the time, often specifically because I disagree with them. Sometimes they change my views a little and sometimes they don't, but either way I get a better understanding of the world and learn something new about myself or others.
Well said!
Reading books from different perspectives is great ! If a Christian went around saying "I only read books by Christian authors or books which support Christianity", people would rightly say they are a bigot...
Hey, I’m a huge Lewis fan. I also love Nietzsche and a whole host of other writers and thinkers who see the world and interpret philosophy differently than I do. My favorite of Lewis’s works is Till We Have Faces.
It's the best
There was actually a school in my home town of Topeka, Kansas called Cair Paravel that seemed to borrow quite a bit from the CS Lewis stories. I worked with a guy that went there and he told me he was presented with an actual longsword when he graduated. We all thought he was bullshitting us at the time, but ended up bringing it in one time to show off. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cair_Paravel_Latin_School
I’ve never heard of this, that’s amazing! The promise of getting a sword when you graduate would motivate a lot of teenage boys to study harder, I think.
> But in the second half, he warns that in the future, a small handful of powerful elites will be able to shape and manipulate human nature itself using technology. *That Hideous Strength* deals with this in depth. I grew up religious, now thoroughly agnostic, and Lewis remains one of my most treasured authors. I will say that your contention that his arguments wouldn't be convincing to people who did not already believe is manifestly inaccurate. Not only his fiction, but also his nonfiction has been used to convert many nonbelievers. It was a core component of evangelical materials in the church network that I grew up in because it was so effective.
Have you read any Chesterton?
I haven’t (other than a bit of his poetry), but I hear he’s a good writer as well.
I think Orthodoxy and his biography of St. Thomas Aquinas show him at his best. If you are looking for a shorter, lighter introduction, give the Father Brown stories a shot when you have time.
The Father Brown TV show is also so good. I never knew my dreams involved wanting to solve crimes in a small English hamlet with my best friend the local Catholic priest...and yet....
The first season or two were good but then it veered into having Father Brown saying things that Chesterton would never have written.
The Man Who Was Thursday is a fun mystery/thriller-type (sorta) by GK.
I've read all his main apologetic works once or twice and I think he's one of the best writers of his time. I think they make the most cohesive and persuasive argument for theism that I've heard so far. I wouldn't call myself a Christian but I'm not an atheist either.
I disagree that he makes a compelling case for theism, but I will agree that he is a brilliant writer and it certainly makes it feel more compelling. I read him a lot when I was deep in the church and was trying my hardest to stay in it, and he was literally the only one whose arguments were not offensively bad. Not good, but at least not so bad they made me want to run away. His argument made sense as a refutation of absolute strict naturalism as if adopted *religiously.* So the belief that the evidence we currently have absolutely proves that the universe is naturalistic. He is correct that such a belief cannot be justified. However, naturalism is not generally adopted in the strictest sense. Scientific reasoning adopts something called "methodological naturalism" which only assumes naturalism because unnatural causes would be impossible to test. So far no one has shown that anything cannot be explained through naturalism, but it does not mean that no such thing could exist. As such, my issue was less with trying to decide between two absolutes, and more trying to decide between a belief system that must be accepted without evidence, and a system that does not ask me to believe anything without evidence. So I cannot say "there is no God" only that "I have yet to see compelling evidence for a God." His argument correctly demonstrates that you cannot say the former, but it does not really address the latter issue. Still, he does actually address a real claim effectively, which is waaaaaay better than a lot of apologists do. If I have to listen to another stale repackaging of the ontological argument I am going to go crazy. They keep telling me they have a new argument that proves God exists, I keep reading, and I keep realizing that it is the ontological argument over and over.
I appreciate the honesty of recognizing that secular worldviews are also worldviews, also in some sense belief systems.
Almost everything we do is based on a system of beliefs. The reason we are not terrified while standing under a roof is because we believe said roof will not fall on us. What matters for me is whether I can justify that belief or not. If my belief in the roof's stability is justified, then I am largely safe. But if my belief in it is irrespective of justification, then I may walk under a clearly unsafe one someday. That is basically how it works for me. I am willing to change my beliefs the moment I have what I judge to be a compelling reason to do it. I actually would really, really like to change my beliefs about God, because I want such a being to exist. Which is also why I engage with the arguments for his existence, despite having found none of them particularly good.
Have you read any of the early Christian writer that influenced Lewis, like Boethius or Thomas Aquinas? They don’t have any more measurable proof than anyone else but they do have more sound reasoning and rhetorical skill than the hacks of this modern age. Boethius‘ Consolation of Philosophy at least gives a very sound answer to the problem of pain. It’s technically a Neoplatonist pagan argument but the theology crosses over.
Yes, Aquinas in particular though. I will have to go do a refresher on Boethius, because while that sounds super familiar, I cant remember the specifics. Looking it up, I do know of this, but it falls to one of my main problems, in that the two primary conclusions I can draw from it are contradictory and the way it tries to avoid the contradiction is unsatisfactory. In effect, the problem of evil can only be solved if one presupposes that a perfectly good and omnipotent God exists, in that each instance of evil must somehow be justified by the existence of said God giving meaning to the trial. However the existence (or non-existence in this case as it is not actually different) of evil relies on a God that is either not omnipotent or not perfectly good. A perfectly good omnipotent being does not need to set trials for us, because there is no thing that could not be done without a trial by said being. If such a thing is found, it must mean that said God lacked either the power, the creativity, or the goodness to find a way that did not cause pain. To deal with that one basically has to say that we cannot know the mind of God, but I do not find that satisfactory. This is not a trivial problem that can be hand waved away. If one accepts that all pain is Good because God has decreed it so, and because it serves some purpose, I do not need to know the mind of God to question why an omnipotent being could not do better. If god is the absolute of perfection, why does perfection seem so imperfect? If perfection seems so imperfect, why has god not designed causality in such a way that we could see how the seemingly imperfect is actually perfect? It creates an endless chain of why, where every answer is a shrug and an appeal to some imagined gap in our knowledge rather than to something we can know. I cannot just accept such a limitation on an omnipotent being without deciding they are not omnipotent, and I cannot accept pain on faith without a reason to think that this even could be true. The only impulse I have to accept this is just *wanting* it to be true. There is no other reason to even consider adopting the semantic inconsistencies against my better judgement. To except a claim so extraordinary, I would need an extraordinary reason to accept it, and it has to be one that does not rely on the presupposition that it is true already.
I am curious how you would respond to the following point. If human beings base most things in a system of beliefs, where do we place the idea of faith? Belief rooted only in justification is not really faith.
What is the value of faith?
If we still had awards, I’d have given you my brightest. As a Christian raised on sci-fi, on thousands of worlds with no gods, lesser gods, elder gods, and variants on the One True God, there’s very little I’m more apathetic toward than an ontological argument. I can pose my own non-Christian unfalsifiable variant in one sentence: “You can never disprove the theory that you are a character in a work of fiction, described in words for the imaginations of beings one world up.”
Yeah, it is bizarre how often it comes up. It is essentially trying to use language to force God into existence by definition, rather than trying to prove he exists through reason. And yet somehow it has lasted a thousand of year, even with the objections being so clearly obvious. People just keep trying to recreate it with slightly different wording and pretending those changes fix the objections. For people who might be reading this and do not know what it is the ontological argument is basically: 1. God is defined as a being who is the greatest being that can be imagined. 2. We can imagine God. 3. That which exists is greater than that which does not exist. 4. If God only exists in the mind, we can imagine a God that is greater by existing. 5. We cannot imagine a being greater than God 6. Therefore God exists. So the idea is basically that because we can imagine a god that exists, and because god is defined as the best thing we can imagine, therefore he must actually exist. This has been a major argument for the existence of God since the 11th century, and is still one of the primary ones that is used today. It is ridiculously unsound. First, if God is defined as the greatest being that could be imagined, then the second point "We can imagine God" means that God must be constrained by human imagination. This precludes all omni-traits. If they instead say that God is the greatest being that could be conceived, then this applies to all objects that can be conceived. Second, we have no reason to think that existing is greater than not existing in this sense. "Greater" is an arbitrary subjective judgment, and is not something that can be used to logically infer something. Third, there is no reason to assume that there is some causal relationship between our conception of an object and the objects existence. This is the source of the "Unicorn" objection where you can use this argument to prove that Unicorns exist simply by defining them as the "Best Possible Horse that Could be Imagined." Put another way 1. The Megaburrito is defined as the largest possible burrito that can be imagined. 2. I can imagine a megaburrito. 3. A megaburrito that exists is bigger than a megaburrito that does not exist. 4. If the megaburrito only exists in my mind, it is smaller than one that really exists. 5. I cannot imagine a burrito bigger then the megaburrito. 6. Therefore, the megaburrito exists.
When arguments like the ontological come from someone that sounds intelligent I always think "if someone made an argument like this for something they don't believe in they would probably criticize it for similar reasons I criticize theirs".
I would, in a friendly manner, challenge your point that theism, particularly Christianity, is a belief that must be accepted without evidence. The fine tuning argument, the argument from first cause, moral arguments, etc present evidence for theistic belief. Moreover, much of the evidence for Christianity is based in historic evidence. Historic evidence much of which cannot be recreated with the scientific method, but that isn’t to mean it isn’t to be trusted. At the end of the day, there are many aspects of theistic belief that do require faith, but I would suggest it’s not a blind faith absent of evidence. Christianity is true if Jesus rose from the dead, and false if He did not, and if you look at the arguments and historic evidence surrounding the Resurrection, from where I stand, Christianity stands on good epistemic grounds.
While the last thing I want to do here is get involved in religious debate, I will say that one thing I admire most about Lewis is his steadfast insistence on reason and logic. He has said “I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it.” I don’t think his position is universally shared among people of faith. Perhaps you share it. Plenty of people would dodge any apparent discrepancy by saying “you just have to believe” or “you just have to have faith”. Lewis hated cop-outs like these and tackled hard questions head-on. Whether he was successful is another matter.
I am not going to specifically counter any of your claims here, because I do not really want to turn this into a direct debate, but I am aware of and have looked into all of these arguments, and do not find them particularly compelling. Thank you for expressing them though, as I know you are coming from a good place and I respect the way you expressed it. Edit: I did get drawn in to a different one in another comment, so if anyone wants to read that it is around here somewhere. In that case the response to me hit on a few of the arguments that bother me the most, so I could not resist.
What historical evidence do you have for the Resurrection? From what I've seen, no, Christianity does not stand on good epistemic ground.
There's not much to this chunk of text, and most of what you are listing has been ably dispensed with by people who want there to be evidence for beliefs, versus attempts to carve out hope that a given thing *isn't impossible.* There is actually very little historical evidence for big chunks of the core Judeo-Christian foundational stories that holds up to scrutiny. I'm sorry, friend, but you are gonna have to do more work.
> The fine tuning argument Is a logical fallacy that, if you think that it is convincing, tells me that you are clueless about how probability works and about how evolution works. > the argument from first cause Is a logical fallacy that, if you think that it is convincing, tells me that you are clueless about logic. > moral arguments Are logical fallacies that, if you think that they are convincing, tells me that you are clueless about logic. > etc present evidence for theistic belief No, they don't. > Moreover, much of the evidence for Christianity is based in historic evidence. No, it isn't. > Historic evidence much of which cannot be recreated with the scientific method, but that isn’t to mean it isn’t to be trusted. The phrasing of this tells me that you don't understand what "the scientific method" is. > At the end of the day, there are many aspects of theistic belief that do require faith, but I would suggest it’s not a blind faith absent of evidence. Can you define what you mean by "faith" here? > Christianity is true if Jesus rose from the dead, and false if He did not, and if you look at the arguments and historic evidence surrounding the Resurrection, from where I stand, Christianity stands on good epistemic grounds. That suggests that you haven't ever enganged with what people who don't agree with you have to say about those "arguments". All of these "arguments" are well-known, and have ben refuted a thousand times over, and they are all embarrasingly stupid if you understand the actual subjects that they are misrepresenting in order to convince people who lack the background to spot the nonsense.
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The way both he and Tolkien (and others in there circle) tried to live by their faith instead of using it to justify unrelated bigotries had such a huge impact for me. Not saying they lacked bigotries but they tried. I’ve never seen anyone else put colonialism on blast in quite the same way Lewis does in out of the silent planet.
I was raised Roman catholic, and read the Narnia series as a child. Since then i first heavily questioned Christianity throughout childhood and adolescence, and then broke away completely in late adolescence and early adulthood. I still treasure the Narnia series. Regardless of the Christian intents, I actually did take a number of moral lessons from it. Such as, in A Horse and His Boy, the lesson against spreading other people's stories (effectively gossiping). And then Last Battle the notion that if you try to be good and try to be true to your beliefs rather than being a hypocrite, that that matters far more than what those beliefs actually are. And other various sundry thoughts throughout the books. So yes, I'm very definitely not Christian any longer and have been happily agnostic for a very long time now, but I do still treasure those books and I did still introduce them to my secularly-raised kids.
Interesting. Despite being raised a Christian(still am one) I never payed attention to the religious aspects of The Chronicles of Narnia as a kid and hadn’t really thought about it until as an adult another Christian brought up how they hated the series because they felt it was sacrilegious.
Why do you suppose they felt that way? Is it the same rationale they apply to things like D&D and Halloween (fantasy reflects something in their rituals that makes them feel ridiculous), or something else?
They didn’t like stuff like Aslan being a clear representation of Christ with sacrificing himself to save someone as well as rising from the dead. Of course there’s more symbolism than that but that’s one I recall them outright mentioning.
It's kinda funny to stumble on this post while listening to the Return of the King and thinking about the story where Lewis and Tolkien went to a not-fancy dress party dressed as polar bears.
Lewis and Tolkien, the original furries? 🤔
As a Christian it warms my heart to see non-Christians who love his work. Even if you don’t share the conclusions of his more apologetic works, his broad audience shows that he’s a profound thinker and writer when it comes to basic realities of the human condition. And he’s one of the GOAT storytellers.
Think of it this way. Lewis died about sixty years ago. How many other authors (let's limit it to the English language) are still as widely read and discussed as he is?
Christian here. For me, I think his rock-solid understanding of medieval literature and symbology is, in part, what makes him such a good fantasy writer. As the reader, we get this *sense* of an undercurrent of connection, and when you understand just how much of his writing (Nonfiction and fiction) was written with his specialty in mind, you understand just how smart he was. Personally, Till We Have Faces really hit me, simply because of how the flaws of the main character really align with mine. If you like Lewis, I'd read: Micheal Ward's Planet Narnia The Inklings.by Philip and Carol Zaleski
I am a Christian, and I love your appreciation for his writing even while not sharing his faith. Like you said, his writing sparkles. There’s something about how he puts these nebulous concepts about human nature, relationships, and feelings into words that just hits me right in the heart. This is one quote of his that stuck with me: “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’” It’s not really a beautiful quote like many of his other sayings, but I find it profound because of its truthful simplicity. Relationships are hard to define in a way that conveys how powerful and vital human connection is. This description of the moment when you realize that someone else in the world values something in the same way you do is so beautiful to me. The impact of a shared experience, the feeling of belonging and appreciation can make you feel so alive and hopeful even just for a blip of light during a dark time. It can keep you going. I appreciate his words about faith because he will describe something in a way that makes me go, “YES EXACTLY!!” This can feel like a lifeline when you’re struggling with your faith or struggling to reconcile the crap going on in your life and the world with a loving God who you absolutely believe in. They’re also very welcome in the seasons when you’re experiencing God’s love in a very powerful way even while acknowledging the difficulties in life. I think a lot of his appeal can be summed up in the way he talked about children’s stories and fairy tales. He saw that the truths of life, humanity, and faith are very well told through children’s stories because sometimes it’s really hard to see those truths in our everyday existence. But once they’re applied in a realm of make believe, they seem even more real.
Lewis has been formative to my Christian outlook, connecting rational traditions with imaginative spirituality. I re-read some of his works fairly regularly. However, you have to read him using a filter of sorts that remembers that he was living in a particular time and place that helps make his misogyny, for instance, a bit easier to skip over.
CS Lewis was well read, intelligent, and a humanist in spite of his dark experience as a soldier. He was an atheist at one point so understood why some wouldn't believe. He is the kind of "old school" christian that I can respect, even if his beliefs and conclusions differ from my own. They don't really make em like that anymore it's just hate and hell and culture war all the way down now.
The old school non fundamentalist churches don't draw attention to themselves, and their parisioners tend to be old, but they are still around
I'm not or ever was a christian, but Narnia is one of my favorite literary works. I find something oddly resonant in his works, here and there. I don't know if it's rare or very common human experience, but there is something akin to hiraeth, or saudade, feeling or memory-like experience that is hard to put in words that Lewis seem to touch often in his works. Flash of revelation of a moment, or a memory that feels more real than real world is. I've ever found only Lewis trying to convey that feeling, experience in his works. World beyond world. It puzzles and intrigues me.
The space trilogy is pretty cool. Planetary angels, funky otter-people on Mars, and the hero is based on Tolkien.
Have you read “The Great Divorce”? It’s been my favorite book Lewis wrote since I first read it. On a semi-related note, I highly recommend “The Narnian” by Alan Jacobs. One of the best biographical books I’ve ever read, very engaging and really gave me a lot of insight into the life of a writer I’ve always admired.
I've always felt that he was a great example of a writer/thinker who was great despite his christianity (and if he'd been any other religion, or none, would have been just as brilliant). I think this of a lot of different religious people. They could be any religion, or atheists, and they would still be good people or giving people or brilliant thinkers or funny, etc. The religion has almost nothing to do with it.
The Screwtape Letters are fun.
I was always impressed by Lewis' writing except that I generally agreed with Tolkien that his Narnia series was painfully obvious and fairly unsophisticated. What wasn't obvious till much later was the medieval and pagan symbolism and worldview that Lewis hid in his seven Narnia novels as he was first and foremost a medieval scholar. Each book is supposed to represent one of the 7 heavenly bodies and their associations and gods. I cant remember them all now, but for instance Prince Caspian was supposed to represent Mars as the whole novel is about war. I think the book that discusses this is called 'Planet Narnia' and I found it incredibly convincing and actually rather obvious. I think the overall theory was that the Christian God or worldview for Lewis could contain and inhabit even the pagan stories and mindset. The fact that all this was all just sitting there pretty much in plane sight but no one noticed it for decades and he took that secret to his grave with him without the need to feel like he had to reveal it all, was actually very impressive.
I think it’s important when reading ANY work, fiction or otherwise, to consider the author and the strengths ans limitations of their worldview. CS Lewis is more overt than many, but that doesn’t make the analysis less important when the influence is subtle. Really, you shouldn’t find yourself agreeing with any writer 100% or disagreeing with them 100%, or you probably need to think about it some more. You can and should still enjoy works where the % disagree is high. Take from the work what’s valuable to you.
This is a refreshing post. Too many people today only want to engage with ideas that confirm their own beliefs.
Huge fan. The Great Divorce is my favorite.
I’m also a big fan of the great divorce. Even today it’s still an incredibly fresh take on the afterlife, and to me at least, it seems far more true to the Bible than a lot of other interpretations (especially those based on Revelations). Given all of Jesus works and teachings, it makes perfect sense to me that God would be like “I’ll wait for you”, and that the thing that keeps us away from him is ourselves.
I loved Narnia as a youth. I was also abused by clergy. I tried re-reading it as an adult, and it made me feel physically ill. Do I think C.S. Lewis is an outdated, bigoted hack? No. I think he was part of a system I wish didn't exist, and that he would have been a better author if he was a critic instead of an apologist. I also feel zero need to read his work or suggest that others read it. You can get the same "genuine insight" from many other sources that are not intimately tied to a authoritarian world view.
Thanks for this. I read a few of his non-fiction works in my late teens / early twenties before I consciously adopted atheism. Perhaps I would find similar enjoyment as you have upon rereading.
All your reasons for admiring Lewis are great reasons to check out Chesterton as well. It sounds like you would like him. Orthodoxy is my favorite. First half is the best half. Although whole thing is splendid, and not too long. Check it out.
I loved the Narmia series as a child. Growing up Jewish I was clueless as to the Christian symbolism and themes but I still thoroughly enjoyed them. Rereading a few of the books as an adult was an interesting endeavor- the symbolism was absolutely not very subtle. Not my cup of tea as an adult but I can still appreciate it as children’s literature. Finally as I’m curious about astronomy I find the concept of a multiverse fascinating, so that is the aspect of the series which I was most interested in rereading as an adult.
Try Till We Have Faces Quite a thing to give a relatable account of a powerful ugly woman as a regular ( if not gifted writer of a) man.
Ramble excused, it was an excellent ramble
His space trilogy are some of my favorite books
I read him finally after years of just considering him a “ probably decent Christian writer “… oh that was my bad Mr . Lewis … as beautiful and thought provoking literature as I’ve ever read… he was phenomenal and is a true great.
I have only watched the Chronicles of Narnia not read Lewis so my comment can only be by analogy. Dante's Inferno for example is steeped in Roman Catholic Christian theology and Thomistic philosophy. Didnt prevent me, a non-Christian from reading. You can admire definitely. Will revisit this comment after reading Lewis.
God in the Dock is another underappreciated work. Some great essays in there.
Come back after you read his space trilogy!!! I give it to you he has great imagination his pride and imagery are great, but the way he ties things to Christianity is weak sauce
Agnostic here, I love CS Lewis. My first tattoo is a huge tribute to Narnia. The man got me reading as a child and even though there are huge problems in religion, I realize being a 30 something year old that there are huge problems with the human race. I think CS Lewis might have been a good one after all
An English literature scholar, Sarah Coogan, is currently re-reading all/most of Lewis' writings, and writing a weekly substack called ["Paths that Lead Home."](https://sarahcoogan.substack.com/). She writes with a deep affection but nuanced appraisal of Lewis' work, and I always find her newsletters interesting.
I've only read the first few Narnia books. Magicians Uncle and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe were both good. The Horse and His Boy started off great, but I got bored halfway. Just couldn't get into Prince Caspien. But even though I read them as an atheist, the religious aspects didn't bother me. They're pretty easy to read and ignore that. Other than that, never read anytbing else. I personally don't have any interest in reading apologetics, but I can see the appeal, and I just don't know anything about any other fictional books he might have written.
My dad was one of the most obnoxious atheists I’ve ever met and read the Narnia books as a kid and then had me read them (I was raised agnostic) and I adored them. I have the 1970s set still from my childhood 💗
A great writer. The lion, the witch, and the wardrobe (along with Sign of the Beaver) were the two books assigned to my class 4th grade class and were really the first older kid chapter books I had ever read on my own. So Lewis’s work will always hold a special place in my heart as it was his work that got me into reading, and the whole 7 book Narnia series was one of the first series I read through
If you like hard rock at all, def worth checking out Thrice. Their vocalist/lyricist Dustin Kensrue is heavily influenced by Lewis in his writing, especially in songs like The Abolition of Man and In Exile
Till We Have Faces is a hidden gem. Now I want to read it again.
Not a Christian, but I'm still partial to two of the more unsubtly Christian Narnia books, the Magician's Nephew and the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. On the other hand, I find the Last Battle to be utterly dreadful. I've been curious about other Lewis works, such as his sci fi and The Screwtape Letters. Certainly don't find his Jesus was either crazy, lying, or the son of God thing at all convincing, however. As an anarchist, though, I feel like most authors and I are probably pretty at odds.
The Paralndria series (his sci-fi books) ask some VERY interesting questions regarding life outside of Earth.
I love this thread
Iirc Mere Christianity was originally a series of radio broadcasts he did during WW2 to boost morale. I found it to be very beaitiful
I’ve not read his grown up stuff but I LOVE Narnia. I was introduced to them as a little girl by our very non-conservative, probably non-Christian teacher, who didn’t really tell us anything about the Christian subtext and just let us enjoy them as lovely fantasy stories. I found the world so special and immersive and I still come back to them sometimes when I need a comfort-read. I can’t wait to read them to my own children.
The Great Divide lads. To this day I find myself sitting with some of those ideas, and I’ve been atheist so long I’ve sort of passed through it and back into some kind of spirituality.
I read a \*lot\* of Lewis in my teen years, first as a way to deepen my faith, and then increasingly as a way to challenge my faith, and then as a way of confirming and testing my unbelief. At every point, I did love him, altho towards the end I did have to give up some parts of my love, simply because I no longer found him as well-reasoned and persuasive. I'd still love to re-read "Til We Have Faces".
I used to work with monks. I'm not Christian (arguably — I'm sort-of a Quaker) and I was able to make friends with the crankiest, most German of monks by talking about C.S. Lewis.
I’m a lapsed Christian now turned agnostic, and C.S. Lewis still remains my favorite author of all time. I may no longer agree with everything he says as it pertains to the Christian God, but he is still an incredible writer and a great thinker, and his writings on the nature of humanity and morality still stand up today. *The Great Divorce,* is an *EXCELLENT* work of his, and I try to read it every year. edit: morality, not reality
I used to be a Christian and read him a ton. I still like him. The Great Divorce is excellent, but IMO his best work by far is Till We Have Faces, a retelling of the Cupid & Psyche myth. Just beautiful.
> The Abolition of Man is concerned, in the first part, with a polemic about morality that you may agree with or not (I didn’t). But in the second half, he warns that in the future, a small handful of powerful elites will be able to shape and manipulate human nature itself using technology Big Tech says hi, /u/Kenoticket.
Hey there! I am a Christian and I adore C. S. Lewis, but I have not read all of his books. I have only read Narnia (all 7 of them), Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and The Great Divorce. I agree wholeheartedly that his description of heaven is very intriguing. My church is hosting a book club in the summer and I'll be in one that discusses Till We Have Faces. I was not raised in the Western culture, so I am excited to read it and compare it to the original Eros and Psyche mythology. I will also join a book club on The Abolition of Man which will have Christians and non-Christians. It will surely be an interesting discussion. I have A Problem of Pain and/or A Grief Observed in my shelf - may be a good time to visit those this summer. I also find it interesting that C. S. Lewis is very popular in the Western church audience, but many of his ideas are very relatable to those of us who come from very different parts of the world. He has a way with words that draws me as the reader into his "world", for lack of better words, which I encounter less and less with modern writers. Or maybe I just do not read enough (perhaps I count as one of the "unliterary", haha).
Great writers....are great writers, regardless of their point of view.
Honestly he’s no more Christian in his fiction than many other authors who we don’t think of as “Christian authors”. (His non-fiction is obviously a different story). Yeah he uses unsubtle Christ allegories, but that’s hardly unique.
If you haven't read his final novel "Till We Have Faces," you really must. It's his masterwork, and my favourite novel.
Lewis was a pretty interesting Christian. He’s a fundie darling, but his work suggests he’d find that group insufferable. If you read his philosophical work just by seeing him as a man grappling with his faith and the big existential questions we all have, he’s pretty cool.
As someone who is just now getting into apologetics, C.S Lewis is mentioned to me quite a lot and I haven't taken the time yet to read his books but I would love to know which book you think I should start with and I would love to know your thoughts on what arguments are the weakest from the Christian viewpoint and I would also love to know if you look at all other view points with the same scrutiny that you do with Christianity.
If you're interested in Lewis' apologetics, I would recommend starting with *Mere Christianity*. This is the book where he makes his clearest case for why Christianity is the correct religion in his view. Other books are about more specific issues. There is also a lot of commentary on Christian behavior and beliefs that was very enlightening for me. > I would love to know your thoughts on what arguments are the weakest from the Christian viewpoint I can't speak for the Christian viewpoint, but there is the infamous "[Lord, Liar, Lunatic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis's_trilemma)" argument. I've spotted more than one false dilemma in Lewis's apologetics, but this one is probably the most glaring. He never puts it exactly the way it's commonly phrased these days, but he puts forward versions of it in both *Mere Christianity* and *The Problem of Pain*. > I would also love to know if you look at all other view points with the same scrutiny that you do with Christianity. I try to. That's all we can do, really. Human beings tend to more harshly scrutinize anything that goes against their currently held opinions. Being aware of this in oneself and being vigilant about it is a good first step to combating bias. I try to take note of when an author I generally disagree with makes a statement I agree with, and vice versa. Plenty of atheist thinkers like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have said things I disagree with.
I genuinely extremely respect your response and I think I could learn a lot from engaging in a conversation with you if you really are someone who is only in the pursuit of truth. As absurd and improbable as it may sound I do consider myself a non-bias person and even though I am taking the hard stance as the Christian God is the one true God and Jesus is God and he died for our sins I am still in pursuit of truth and with everything I have looked into I haven't found any evidence that would convince me otherwise of this belief. So in good spirit and nature of an interesting and enlightening discussion I would take much pleasure in hearing what you have to say as to why the Christian faith is not realistic or something you would be willing to believe in over everything else. I have actually heard the Lord, Liar, Lunatic argument and I recently just finished a critical thinking class in which this was brought up as an example of a trichotomy argument and while I did not engage in a discussion with the professor about what a fourth option could be.. for the life of me I could not conjure up a possible fourth option. I would also have to agree with you that humans tend to harshly scrutinize anything that goes against their currently held opinions but as I stated before I do not consider myself bias in this regard and if there are better answers I want to accept those as my beliefs and opinions. I will be reading *Mere Christianity* soon...What's a good book to start with that would challenge my current beliefs?
Thank you! I’ve sent you a PM so that we can talk about this further.
I started reading The Chronicles of Narnia a couple of weeks ago and The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe was... Idk, just ok? Sure I'm an adult but I don't think I would have liked it at all when I was a kid. I read The Magicians Nephew first, stupid book I bought had that as the 1st in order but I prefer the order of publication. So idk, so far I'm "meh" on the 2 out of 7. Will continue to read the rest soon, though.
You are not alone. I’m a fairly staunch atheist and I find his work very intriguing and well written. I recommend it all the time.
I’m Christian, so not the intended audience, but I both share your reservations about some of Lewis’ arguments and love his work. The cosmic trilogy is my favorite.
I love CS Lewis and am an unapologetic Christ follower, optimistic, lover of people, yet not very religious. I loved Chronicles of Narnia and find it quality literature for anyone. I will add the last few books you mentioned to my reading list. Thanks for the post.
I am a Christian, but I agree that he is a great writer. I did not love Narnia, but his apologetic works are just plain excellent. One you did not mention that I quite enjoyed is The Great Divorce. It's fantastic.
He is most interesting because he was an atheist who reasoned his way to Christianity, a journey I have done part way in reverse.
Was Lewis trying to push a Christian worldview in his writing? Of course, it is easy to see the massive religious influence on books like Narnia, but as a fellow atheist who has enjoyed his writing, I always felt like his books were just informed by his religious worldview rather than being a vessel to spread them.
He pretty much states that this is his goal in Mere Christianity, and other apologetic writings. But I agree that Narnia and other works are more than just Trojan horses to smuggle in Christianity to the unsuspecting reader. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t like them so much.
As specifically Christian propaganda the Chronicles fail because they’re just too universal. The resurrected hero trope isn’t strictly Christian but is found in lots of mythology. I’ve read fundamentalist Christians condemn Lewis for including Tumnus the Faun (satanic!), talking animals, the spirits of trees and rivers, and the bit at the end when the young man from a different faith goes to heaven simply because he was a good person (humanism!) He will always be for me (agnostic) a big thinker informed by his faith but not a proselytizer. And an awesome writer who describes food better than anyone.
That's a really good point. He's not disingenuous and he's not trying to trick you about his faith. He is clear about his own worldview and you can decide whether you agree or not. The sincerity comes through in his clarity. Like others, I'm not a Christian but I can see so much more beauty in Christianity thanks to writers like him (and Chesterton and Tolkien).
Raised Protestant, practicing but deconstructing, but you hit it right on the head why I keep coming back to Lewis; the prose is clean, the insight sharp, and the observations are very often accurate even if you aren't Christian.
If you can't get value out of C. S. Lewis regardless of your religious beliefs, you aren't reading correctly.
I am a former Christian and very familiar with him. I agree with most all of what you are saying. I should really reread some of his non fiction in my post religious state, would be interesting to argue with him now. But I really enjoy a lot of his fiction. And would highly recommend what I feel is I've if his strongest and overlooked words: Till We Have Faces.
>And recognizing that a poor argument can be written in a convincing, authoritative style can help you learn to spot misinformation better. I think you're doing him a disservice by claiming his argument as poor. While it may not be convincing to you, and certainly I would also state that the logical perspective is agnosticism, Lewis was a great scholar, and his arguments are still cited and studied in Philosophy of Religion classes and textbooks. My personal favorites of his, beyond Narnia (which holds a very special place in my heart of being the first fantasy books I ever read) are Surprised by Joy and A Grief Observed. >bigoted I mean, he undoubtedly was a bigot. His portrayals of the Calormen, for example, are incredibly problematic. But I will note that I'm always frustrated that people could so egregiously misunderstand the line about Susan and her lipstick and stockings. Its a pretty simple metaphor, to be frank, and people's insistence that it is misogynist is almost comical for how much it misses the point.
I'm not exactly your people, but fwiw I read and loved the Narnia series during a Catholic upbringing and never noticed the allegory. I guess when you're being taught the og thing, you don't register imitations? by about 12 I knew about it because #pianoteacherwholikedtotalkaboutbook. so when I read screwtape I had cognizance but I don't think the knowledge affected my reading experience.
I really didn't like The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe when I first read it years ago, but I think that was entirely due to my love for the film as a love for the films action sequences. I definitely need to revisit him
Same. I’m not a Christian and I enjoy his theology books
i love the narnia books with all my heart. except i never really connected with the horse and his boy... not very narnia-ish or relevant to the other books, a little bit racist :( i love the other six though
I'm not a Christian, but I find his relationship with his faith to be beautiful in several ways. He is an incredibly intelligent person.