1 of 3

In a 1982 interview in Discipleship Journal, Elisabeth Elliot was asked, “How could a person deepen his theology and become a clearer thinker?” She answered, “Study the Bible. And study C.S. Lewis. People are always saying C.S. Lewis was not a theologian—and Lewis himself would say that—but he was. He covered the whole field of theology in popular, understandable language. The fact that he could put it in simple language is proof to me that he understood it better than many theologians.”

This prescription is helpful. Lewis may not have considered himself a theologian, but his writing on theological subjects has stretched the minds, broadened the hearts, and challenged the thinking of many.

What was the core of C.S. Lewis’s theology? A hint is found in the caption that appeared below his picture on the cover of the September 8, 1947, Time magazine. It simply read, “His heresy: Christianity.” Both in written word and BBC broadcasts, Lewis sought to present historic Christian faith to the common man. Perhaps because his work is imaginative as well as analytical, some have criticized him for softness on issues that modern conservatives consider pivotal, for example, biblical authority. But the cornerstones of his theology are clearly orthodox: he called it “mere Christianity” not to diminish the truth-claims, but to suggest that the truth of God incarnate was so shockingly simple that people of all cultures and pedigrees might be stunned and joyful at its clarity and grace.

C.S. Lewis was a committed supernaturalist. In his essay “On Ethics” he commented: “I am myself a Christian, and even a dogmatic Christian untinged with modernist reservations and committed to supernaturalism in its full rigor.” Remove the supernatural and the first principles of Christian orthodoxy are gone. Because God is high and holy, every doctrine of Christian faith has a sense of awe and wonder, and the miracles that demonstrate those doctrines are simply the retelling in capital letters of “the same message which nature writes in her crabbed cursive hand,” he wrote. Lewis was fully committed to a Christianity with the supernatural elements intact.

Lewis’s lifetime study of medieval and renaissance literature helped him understand the importance of written texts as a source of authority. He likened the doctrinal texts of Christian orthodoxy to a series of maps drawn by men of knowledge and legitimized over time. Ministering to RAF pilots during the war, Lewis urged away from the elementary “thrills you and I are likely to get on our own” and toward the grand themes of authority, essential maps “if you want to get further.”

Literary sources also helped him with the insights that truth is one and that good thinking should unify all generations. Authority was weakened by modern emphasis on individual autonomy. Authority rests in the cumulative wisdom of the ages, a demanding jury for all new ideas. Clearly Lewis knew the importance of history; and his theology was bound to the church’s historic statements.

Lewis’s theology was further influenced by his commitment to logic and reason. Truth was not made for man; man was made for truth, and his chief purpose in life was to glorify Him forever. Lewis wrote, “In coming to understand anything we are rejecting the facts as they are for us in favor of the facts as they are. The primary impulse of each is to maintain and aggrandise himself. The secondary impulse is to go out of the self, to correct its provincialism and heal its loneliness.”

next page... |  1 of 3

share this page

RSS Feed   RSS Help