Glimpses 41

CS Lewis - Atheist to Theist to Christian

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G'day and welcome to Partake Glimpses Stories. Today we take a step back to recent history, to the 20^th century and a glimpse at why and how CS Lewis started his own Christian journey and the relevancy of Jesus Christ to his life! It may not be what you have heard it said to be!

Beginnings

Clive Staples Lewis was born in Northern Ireland in 1898. If he ever had any christian faith at all during is childhood, he soon lost it and was an avowed atheist during those formative years.  The story we tell here is from his autobiographical book "Surprised by Joy" (1982 Fount Paperback), which tells of his journey of, and to, faith. He relates of his search for God, and that eventually he discovered, that in actual fact, God was reaching out for him through human reason, human experience and intellectual honesty. Because of this, the only possible conclusion is the existence of a God or Gods.

Atheism

We start his story in the chapter "Check" on page 136 "... as a schoolboy, I had destroyed my religious life by a vicious subjectivism which made ‘realisations' the aim of prayer; turning away from God to seek states of mind, and trying to produce those states of my ‘maistry' " He continues in the chapter "Checkmate" on page 180: "Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side. You must not do, you must not even try to do, the will of the Father unless you are prepared to ‘know of the doctrine.' All my acts, desires, and thoughts were to be brought into harmony with universal Spirit. For the first time I examined myself with a seriously practical purpose. And there I found what appalled me; a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a hareem of fondled hatreds. My name was legion." He continues on page 181: "If Shakespeare and Hamlet could ever meet, it must be Shakespeare's doing. Hamlet could do nothing." God was pursuing Lewis and it was all on the initiative of God. "Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about ‘man's search for God.' To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse's search for the cat."

Theism

Now we come to page 182: "Doubtless, by definition, God must be reason itself. But would He also be ‘reasonable' in that other more comfortable sense? Not the slightest assurance was offered me. Total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark were demanded. ... Now, this demand was simply ‘All!' You must picture me alone in my room at Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England. ... The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation." Many writers and speakers, conclude that this is Lewis's conversion to Christianity. But it is not - it was his conversion from atheism to theism! On the very next line, in the very next chapter "The Beginning" on the very next page, page 184, Lewis writes "It must be understood that the conversion recorded in the last chapter was only a conversion to Theism, pure and simple, not to Christianity. ... The God to whom I surrendered was sheerly non-human." He continues "My conversion involved as yet no belief in a future life. I now number it among my great mercies that I was permitted for several months, perhaps for a year, to know God and to attempt obedience without even raising the question." He continues on Page 186 "As soon as I became a Theist I started attending my parish church on Sundays and my college chapel on weekdays; not because I believed in Christianity, nor because I thought the difference between it and simple Theism a small one, but because I thought one ought to ‘fly one's flag' by some unmistakable overt sign. I was acting in obedience to a sense of honour.. ... Thus my churchgoing was a merely symbolical and provisional practice. If it in fact helped to move me in the Christian direction, I was and am unaware of this."

Christianity

Then, ultimately, we come to CS Lewis' conversion from theism to Christianity. Writing in the final chapter of this book, on page 188-189 "I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myths. They had not the mythical taste. ... As I drew near the conclusion, I felt a resistance almost as strong, but shorter-lived, for I understood it better. Every step I had taken, from the Absolute to ‘Spirit' and from ‘Spirit' to ‘God' had been a step towards the more concrete, the more imminent, the more compulsive. At each step one had less chance ‘to call one's soul one's own' to accept the Incarnation was a further step in the same direction. It brings God nearer, or in a new way. And this, I found, was something I had not wanted. ... I know very well, when, but hardly how, the final step was taken. I was driven to Whipsnade Zoo one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.  Yet I had not exactly spend the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion." In this story, CS Lewis has moved from atheism, to theism, to Christianity.  Each a natural stage in the development of his faith and christian journey.  We get a glimpse of a great God calling people to see Himself as He truly is: a God of unmistakable joy.  If this story has helped you, please do make a comment and let us know! Thank you! Links to more about CS Lewis CS Lewis on the BBC CS Lewis Foundation

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