Warren Christian Apologetics Center
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C. S. Lewis

 

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement.
Lewis wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. C. S. Lewis’s most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics in The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and been transformed into three major motion pictures.

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Timeless Thoughts from C. S. Lewis

During the uncertainty of the late 1930s and the decade of the 1940s, a modestly known British professor and author was writing and speaking on issues that addressed the uncertainties, fears, and threatening shadows resulting from the danger, destruction, and death of World War II. His name, Clive Staples Lewis, was recognized by readers who perhaps numbered in the hundreds. However, today his readers number in the millions. Such has been the case for decades since the 1950s. His Mere Christianity (1952) is the result of radio talks he delivered in 1941-42 over the BBC and published as separate works (1942, 1943, 1944). Mere Christianity has never been out of print.    

   The first of those radio talks aired 11 months following the beginning of the Blitz—the unrelenting bombing of London which continued for 57 consecutive nights. It left more than 30,000 Londoners dead and another 50,000 injured. Every night 10-20,000 were rendered homeless, hospitals were blasted, and public and private buildings destroyed. Thousands spent the nights in shelters with little or no sanitation.

   Much of what Lewis spoke and wrote had direct application to coping with the circumstances of the war. Though Lewis never experienced COVID-19, much of what he wrote has powerful application for today, because he was concerned with many of the eternal truths of the Christian religion. It has been suggested that substituting “coronavirus” for “atomic bomb,” “war,” etc., when reading Lewis can provide help in dealing with today’s pandemic. Following are a few examples we think are worthy of consideration.

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“We see at once (when we have been waked) that the important question is not whether an atomic bomb is going to obliterate ‘civilization.” The important question is whether “Nature”—the thing studied by the sciences—is the only thing in existence.” (Present Concerns: Essays by C. S. Lewis, 75)

 “. . . Thank God he has not allowed my faith to be greatly tempted by the present horrors. I do not doubt that whatever misery He permits will be for our ultimate good unless by rebellious will we convert it to evil. But I get no further than Gethsemane: and am daily thankful that that scene of all others in Our Lord’s life did not go unrecorded.” (Letters of C. S. Lewis, 166)

 “What does war do to death? It certainly does not make it more frequent: 100 per cent of us die, and the percentage cannot be increased. . . . Does it increase our chances of painful death? I doubt it. . . . Does it decrease our chances of dying at peace with God? I cannot believe it. If active service does not persuade a man to prepare for death, what . . . circumstances would? (The Weight of Glory, 31)

 “In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us where going to die in unpleasant ways. . . . It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.” (Present Concerns: Essays by C. S. Lewis, 73)

 

  

Apologetics Heroes, CS LewisLyn MillerComment