C.S. Lewis, a reluctant convert

C.S. Lewis was born into a Christian family, but abandoned his faith in childhood, mainly because of his mother's death. As a student and then professor of literature at Oxford, he befriended J.R.R. Tolkien and had long discussions with him about religion: Tolkien explained his reasons for believing, but Lewis maintained that all religions were merely human inventions. At the time, Lewis had no desire to make room for God in his life. However, in 1929 he finally acknowledged the existence of God out of intellectual honesty; in his own words, he was "the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England" (Surprised By Joy,ch. 14). This was because Lewis had not yet received the grace of faith: he only had the rational conviction of the existence of God. It was two years later, on September 28, 1931, that Lewis received the grace of conversion, and passed from simple intellectual deism to the Christian faith.

Reasons to believe:

Lewis was not only an atheist out of religious indifference or family tradition, he was an atheist out of conviction, a conviction that was thought out and argued. It was this very conviction that gave way to the even greater rationality of the Christian faith.

Lewis had no desire to become a Christian again: when he acknowledged the existence of God, his concern for intellectual honesty was greater than his personal reticence.

Understanding that God exists is not the same as believing in God: with his two-stage conversion, Lewis demonstrates that it is possible to arrive at the certainty of God's existence even without faith. The gift of faith is a supernatural gift, proof that God is really at work in his creation.

After his conversion, faith did not dull Lewis's rational and critical spirit, which he directed against the mediocrity of some of the expressions of his own religion.

The search for joy played a major role in his conversion to Christianity. After his conversion, Lewis kept the faith, even amid the suffering and spiritual struggle he experienced after the death of his wife.

Summary:

The childhood of Clive Staple Lewis (1898-1963), born into a Christian family in Northern Ireland, was marked by several trials: first, the death of his mother from cancer when he was only 9; then the abuse he suffered in the boarding school to which he was sent; and finally his own health problems. All this suffering caused him to lose his faith and extinguished the joy of childhood.

With a passion for mythology, especially that of Northern Europe, he studied philosophy and literature at the prestigious University of Oxford, before becoming a professor there. It was there that he met the man who was soon to exert a considerable influence on his spiritual journey: J.R.R. Tolkien, the future author of TheLord of the Rings. During their long discussions, Tolkien explained his reasons for believing, while Lewis justified his atheism. Tolkien based his argument on Chesterton's famous "trilemma": since Jesus claims to be God, either he is lying, or he is mad, or he is really God. Lewis, for his part, used his knowledge of ancient mythologies to show that all religions are in fact nothing more than a projection of the human imagination. In 1916, at age 17, he wrote to one of his friends: "I believe in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best. All religions, that is, all mythologies to give them their proper name are merely man's own inventions-Christ as much as Loki." (letter to Arthur Greeves, quoted in J. Ryan Duncan, The Magic Never Ends, Nashville, 2001).

At that point, it was clear that Lewis had no desire to convert : for the brilliant young professor, there was no question of welcoming this cumbersome and outdated God into a life that was running very smoothly without him! Deep down, Lewis was nostalgic for the joy of his childhood and felt somewhat attracted by Christian joy; but far from surrendering to this attraction, he protected himself behind the shell of rational atheism that he opposed to the reasons of his religious friends. It was a fragile shell, which the theistic arguments gradually unravelled, much to Lewis's anguish. In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, he wrote: "You must picture me alone in that room in 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."

But there came a day when his intellectual honesty forced him to give in to the rationality of Christianity: "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 England."

What is remarkable is that at this point Lewis did not yet have faith, that is, the attachment to God given by God himself: he had simply admitted, intellectually, the existence of God. But knowing that God exists is not the same as believing in him. His new rational conviction gave Lewis no joy, quite the contrary: it was exactly what he did not want! His conviction only concerned the existence of God, not the person of Jesus Christ.

Two years later, one night in September 1931, while walking with Tolkien and another of their friends, Lewis received the first sensitive grace to open his heart to faith: as Tolkien spoke to him about the Gospel, Lewis was enveloped by a feeling of unknown beauty, and the reluctance of his heart, after that of his reason, dissipated.

Soon afterwards, on September 28, 1931, Lewis received the grace of faith. That day, he and his brother set off in a sidecar to visit a zoo. This is what he wrote: "I was driven to Whipsnade 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." No particular event, no new thought, caused this latest transformation: Lewis received, during the time of this short journey, the gift of grace, that is to say an intervention of God himself in his heart, to give him faith.

After that, Lewis continued his remarkable career as a writer, publishing essays on Christianity, literary studies and several novels, the most famous of which are of course the seven volumes of The World of Narnia series: over 100 million copies sold in 47 languages, and several screen adaptations.

Tristan Rivière

Beyond reasons to believe:

In The Screwtape Letter (HarperOne; Reprint edition - February 6, 2001) C.S. Lewis humorously gives us the correspondence of a wordly-wise devil to a novice demon in charge of the damnation of an ordinary young man. An excellent book on spiritual warfare presented from the enemy's point of view!

Going further:

Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life by C.S. Lewis, HarperOne; Reissue edition (February 14, 2017)

More information:

The Most Reluctant Convert. C.S. Lewis's Journey to Faith, "C.S. Lewis Secondary Studies Series", by David C. Downing, Eugene (Oregon - USA), Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2021.
C. S. Lewis -- A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet by Alister McGrath, Tyndale Elevate; Reprint edition (March 1, 2016)
The film The Most Reluctant Convert: The Undold Story of C.S. Lewis (see trailer), by Norman Stone (2021).
Lewis's religious thought is admirably expressed in pictorial form in his great novel cycle The Chronicles of Narnia, particularly in volume 6, The Silver Chair, HarperCollins; Reprint edition (March 5, 2002)