A few months ago I wrote an article on C. S. Lewis in connection with the centennial of his birth. I mentioned his work as a Christian apologist and said that in a follow-up I would give some samples of his religious writings. I may still do so at a future date-time, space, and opportunity permitting. For the present article, however, I have chosen a different topic. Rather than plunging into his actual work, I want to say something about the times in which he wrote and about the specific attacks upon the Christian faith that he attempted to counter. This has the twofold advantage of making it easier to account for the enduring popularity of his work and to explain its strengths and weaknesses.

The Quest for Inwardness⤒🔗

Lewis began his career as a Christian writer in the period between the two World Wars. It was a time of political and economic turmoil, of intellectual soul-searching, and also of much religious doubt and uncertainty. The so-called higher Biblical criticism had been going on for more than a century, religious liberalism ruled supreme at universities and seminaries, and it was widely held that the scientific method alone was capable of providing objective truth. In this situation Biblical Christianity was very much on the defensive. Theologians who rejected the new wisdoms stood alone. Those who opposed liberalism, but were also impressed by the claims of science that it alone could lead to objective truth, looked for approaches that combined orthodoxy with an acceptance of Biblical criticism. What they felt they needed was a theology that stressed inward certainty, rather than objective, historical evidence.

They found a model for such a theology in existentialism. That philosophy was the brainchild of a Danish thinker, Søren Kierkegaard, who lived from 1813 to 1855. The problem Kierkegaard wrestled with in his days was the rationalism and worldliness of the Lutheran state church. People assumed that church membership, acceptance of church doctrine, and an outwardly decent lifestyle were all that was needed to be called a Christian. Kierkegaard tried to counter this tendency by stressing the need for conversion and a personal faith that was founded on deep inner conviction. He also rebuked his contemporaries for forgetting Luther’s teaching that salvation is by grace only; that from beginning to end it is God’s work in Christ. And because the theologians of his day taught that faith and reason could easily be harmonized, he reminded them of the Biblical truth that finite human reason cannot climb up to the infinite God; that we can know Him only because it has pleased Him to reveal himself.

Kierkegaard’s criticisms of the church of his day were to the point. Unfortunately, his fear of an externalized and rationalistic Christianity was so strong that he downplayed the role of the rational element in religion, as well as the importance of the historical evidence that the Bible gives. Philosophy, he reasoned, had nothing to do with religion, and historical proofs could never convince anyone. Only God could do that. Historical evidence could therefore all but be ignored. And so the Bible lost its central place in Kierkegaard’s system. Although he certainly cannot be called a religious liberal, he did question the historicity of certain doctrines (such as original sin). For him the fall into sin as recounted in Genesis 3 was merely a symbol of what happens in the life of every individual when he turns away from God.

It was this philosophy that was rediscovered after the first World War. It became popular among the so-called neo-orthodox or dialectical theologians. Karl Barth, the leader of this theological school and the first to be influenced by Kierkegaard, passed the message on to others. For Barth and his followers, Kierkegaard’s ideas seemed to provide the perfect solution to the problems they faced. By following him in his stress on inwardness rather than historical evidence, they believed, they would be able to make their peace with the higher criticism while holding on, as Kierkegaard had done, to most of the doctrine. But the attempt to reach a compromise failed. Although Barth’s theology often retained orthodox terminology, the work of his successors did not. For them God’s acts of salvation, which the Bible proclaims as historical, became mere symbols. In short, although the old liberalism was left behind, unbelief was not. It had only put on a different dress.

The Attack on Religious Language←⤒🔗

Existentialism was strong on the European continent. In England and America another philosophy reigned, namely logical positivism, which was even less accommodating to historic Christianity. Although the movement originated in Vienna, it had been greatly influenced by English thinkers, and in Lewis’s days its major stronghold was Oxford, his own university.

This philosophy, which modelled itself on the natural sciences, was concerned with language and taught that only statements which were capable of either scientific or logical proof were valid. All others were meaningless or nonsensical. One could say, for example, “You are stealing money,” because that could be proven, but to say, “Stealing is wrong,” was speaking nonsense. Someone else might have the opposite opinion, and neither could be scientifically proven. Moral judgments were a matter of personal feelings and preferences. The same verdict of meaninglessness applied to the assertion “God exists,” and to practically every other religious and ethical statement.

The philosophy department at Oxford was prestigious and influential, and its verdict stood. Under its rule it was no longer possible to ask philosophy to support the faith, nor could one meaningfully assert that there was objective evidence for religion. As Ludwig Wittgenstein, the man who had helped inspire the movement, put it: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Those who wanted to belong to the establishment – philosophers and theologians both – obeyed. To retain at least a semblance of religion, some followed an approach similar to that of the dialectical theologians on the continent and taught that the Christian religion, rather than being based on facts and historical truth as the Bible teaches, had (again) symbolic significance only. Religious language could be meaningful, but its meaning was restricted to its usage. It could serve, for example, to encourage individual and social morality, or enable people to make sense of life, or help them in their worship, but it could not refer to an underlying reality.

Lewis’s Mission and Message←⤒🔗

It was in this situation that Lewis began his work as a Christian apologist. The strength of his apologetic work was that he concentrated on the specific heresies of his day and, defying learned opinion, made it his business to defend both the rationality and the empirical, historical truth of Christianity. He continued doing so until his death and in spite of the scorn that was heaped on him by his colleagues, by the academic establishment as a whole, and even by a number of his fellow-believers. His courageous and unflinching defence of traditional Christianity was what the times needed and is a major reason why his work was so enthusiastically received by Christians of all stripes and backgrounds.

It is also a major reason why it continues to have a large, worldwide readership today. For although existentialism and logical positivism are no longer around as formal philosophies, their spirit is still very much with us. Indeed, the situation is worse today than it was in Lewis’s lifetime. In his day people still paid lip-service to the idea that scholars had the duty to pursue truth. Since then, postmodernism has arrived, and in the postmodern world it is the vogue to deny the very existence of truth. The battle that Lewis waged is therefore not over by any means, which explains why for many believers today his work is as relevant as it was for his contemporaries.

Lewis’s relevance is not restricted to his struggle with the theology of his day. He battled the spirit of the age also in other areas. A traditionalist by character and breeding, he took pains to explain and defend traditional morality. A fine example of this aspect of his work can be found in his book Mere Christianity. Throughout his writings he opposed what he believed to be the mind- and soul-destroying tendencies in modern thought (and therefore also in modern education). He battled the prevailing “chronological snobbery” of his days, according to which the new is always better than the old, and urged a return to the forgotten wisdoms of the past. Blessed with a keen psychological insight, he was also able to explain (for example in The Screwtape Letters) the extent to which psychological, social, and cultural factors and assumptions can be an obstacle to faith. The fact that all this was done with great literary artistry only enhanced the appeal of his writings.

His Rationalism←⤒🔗

If Lewis’s defence of the rationality and historical truth of Christianity was one of the great strengths of his work, it also accounts for its defects. Critics have accused him – in some instances on valid grounds – that he tried so hard to prove his point that he did less than justice to the position of his opponents. He also made use of traditional theistic arguments in support of the faith, the validity of which can, at least in some areas, be questioned on both Biblical and philosophical grounds. Indeed, his reliance on human reason was at times excessive. As I mentioned in the previous article, it led him even to question the inerrancy of Scripture and so to abandon his own philosophy.

That was not the only danger. An excessive reliance on reason also entails the risk of downplaying the supernatural character of Christianity. It can lead to a situation wherein one pushes the mysteries of the faith and the holiness of the God of the Bible – who has told us that He dwells in an unapproachable light and that his thoughts are higher than our thoughts – into the background. When this happens, faith becomes nearly synonymous with enlightened reason, and God’s acts of providence become predictable. Luther’s warning that we must let God be God (a warning that Kierkegaard well remembered!) is forgotten, and we become like Job’s friends, who had a rational explanation for all that God did, but whose certainties God shattered. Although Lewis often transcended his rationalism, I don’t believe that he always escaped the risk I described.

In Defence of the Gospel←⤒🔗

Lewis has been called an “unorthodox champion of orthodoxy,” and that is an apt description. For his rationalist inclinations notwithstanding, he was a believer and stuck to his goal of defending Biblical Christianity. This approach has not only earned him the contempt of less orthodox critics and commentators, but also at times a measure of admiration. One of these commentators, who faults Lewis for ignoring the findings of Biblical critics, nevertheless commends his independence of mind. Whereas theological liberals, he writes, “are willing to make more concessions and measure theology by the Spirit of the Age ... Lewis measures the Spirit of the Age by orthodox Christian theology,” even though “to many modern men” this seems “somewhat bigoted, narrow-minded, and intolerant” (Richard B. Cunningham in C.S. Lewis: Defender of the Faith).

This same author provides a summary of Lewis’s message that is worth quoting. The gospel Lewis proclaims as the cure for mankind’s ills, he writes, is

the old story of creation, redemption, and consummation; of incarnation, cross, resurrection, and ascension; of faith, hope, and love; of angels and heaven and devils and hell; of the urgency of decision and the eternal finality of temporal choice. Here (Lewis says) is the good news, the gift that is absolute demand, the answer to the problems of existence. Accept it and live; reject it and die! There is no third way!

The author is right. This is the central message of Lewis’s writings, from the Chronicles of Narnia to the space trilogy, from books like The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce to his more conventional apologetic works, his essays, and his sermons. Had he been a rationalist tout court, he would have had few weapons to attack the wisdoms of his age. It was his faith in the historical gospel that enabled him to wage the battle.