C.S. Lewis: The Story of His Journey to Faith and Christian Apologist

what is the story of c.s lewis one of the  greatest apologists not only the 20th century   but really of all time why did he move from an  atheist to a christian what were the arguments   and experiences he had that shaped his life and  what lessons can we learn from him for today   well that's what we're going to explore in this  program and i don't know anybody more qualified   to talk about the conversion of c.s lewis than  our guest today dr harry lee poe who goes by   hal has a fascinating new book it's over 300 pages  you did a massive amount of research on his life   and his story and it's called the making  of c.s lewis thanks for taking the time not   only to do the research for that book but  for coming on and joining me on the show   thanks sean it's good to be with you so  the story begins where cs lewis is an   undergrad and he's a materialist kind of  a staunch atheist before we get into his   conversion what led him to that point being  an atheist at roughly say around 20 years old   it had been quite a few years in the making  lewis had a happy childhood but his mother died   of cancer when he was nine years old and that  was the first big blow to his view of religion   a child's view of religion and so why didn't god  keep his mother alive and he came from a religious   family his uh mother's father was  the rector of their church and um   her grandfather was a bishop so there's a long  religious tradition in the family but louis then   when his mother died went off to boarding school  and in boarding school while studying latin the   latin teacher was explaining to them that all the  mythologies of ancient rome and greece were simply   made up stories to explain natural phenomenon and  the gods and the goddesses represented different   forces of nature and they were just uh  stories that developed to explain things   and louis young lewis in essentially what we would  call middle school made the logical connection   that therefore the bible is just a collection  of made-up stories as well interesting and so um   he he then developed a dim view of religion  now he's going to to church every sunday   that's part of the obligation of being uh in  these boarding schools and they had chapel   and so he's he's receiving  um a huge amount of bible but   it's just bible is literature these  old stories so that's the first piece and then when he was in what  we would call high school   um he went to be privately tutored he  didn't do well in in the big boarding school   with the sports he had some uh genital thumb  problem he couldn't bend his thumb at that joint   uh and so that made sports difficult for him  catching throwing that sort of thing so he was an   odd man out at school his father finally decided  to send him to a private tutor uh and his father   uh had known this man he'd been his headmaster  when he was uh in in school but since then uh   wt kirkpatrick had become an avowed atheist and  materialist uh albert lewis didn't realize that   and um so he's sent his son to study with a man  who's going to provide young uh c.s lewis with the   intellectual underpinnings of atheism he gave him  a strong rationalistic um basis for materialism   the idea that only physical matter exists nothing  exists besides atoms and the forces of of uh   the universe so um so there it was it was a  a one-two punch and he was quite comfortable   in his atheism in his materialism what's so  interested me in your book is that these pieces   of lewis's earlier life like the death of his  mother plays out in his ministry later of course   he writes the book the problem of pain he thinks  that christianity is a myth later on he starts   writing in different books about how it's the true  myth so you see these life experiences they had   play out when he becomes an apologist now before  we get to his responses to some of the reasons he   became an atheist broadly speaking tell me the  journey that he went on because in the pilgrims   regress one of the early books lewis wrote he  describes how he went from make sure i get this   correctly from popular realism to philosophical  idealism from idealism to pantheism pantheism   to theism theism to christianity now we don't  have to unpack each one of those but broadly   speaking from atheism what were the different  big steps he went through to ultimately become   a christian well it is fascinating and it's  a period that took from well about the time   he entered um service in world war one so 1917  until 1931 that's the period of his conversion   i think that's very important for us to recognize  when we're doing evangelism and apologetics   it takes time and we need to be comfortable  with time god created time for a reason and   god does things with time and so in our  culture we want things to happen instantly   and in the bible things rarely happen  instantly god is slow to anger and he's patient   so a long period of time and these  steps now if you want a concise   treatment of these steps go to mere christianity  and in fact the outline of mere christianity   those first two sections are in fact the story of  lewis's conversion from a third person point of   view lewis is discussing them as simply ideas that  we observe but these ideas were in fact the things   that happened to him spiritually so think of mere  christianity as as a version of lewis's testimony   and so that first piece realism uh popular realism  the idea that um the only thing that's real   is something you can touch taste smell hear fear  um the things we know through our five senses   material matter uh the physical universe  so that was his position when he um   uh left wt kirkpatrick to go up to oxford he  was a popular realist now philosophical idealism while he was developing this love of philosophy  with wt kirkpatrick and and these uh just the   the um the joy of rational argument and pulling  uh arguments apart and critique and all of that   sort of thing he was doing that during the day  but at night he was doing something subversive   he was reading for pleasure and in the evenings he  had a couple of hours of free time in which he was   reading all the great novels all the great stories  of western literature now during this period excuse me oh no worries sorry  that's okay no escape um he had um   his new friend newfound friend arthur grieves   introduced him to jane austen and jane austen  then the bronte sisters and all of that literature   but he and his friend arthur grieve shared a  love of norse mythology so they were also reading   different versions of the norse myths he came  upon william morris and morris was a 19th century   novelist but uh polymath he was he did  um he was really the father of the arts   and crafts movement so he was doing he had a  wallpaper factory he had a tile factory and   he dabbled in all sorts of things and uh  lewis loved his treatment of the of the old   mythologies so we read something else morris  wrote uh the well at the end of the world um   and in that story lewis was really gripped by uh  the story line and it's the the the hero goes on a   quest to the end of the world for the great thing  and along the way he um fights the unbeatable foe   he goes where the brave dare not go he dreams  the impossible dream you can think of that   song from the man of la mancha which is  in fact a parody of this kind of story   and once at the end of the world the great thing  is found and the hero returns a different person   because the journey itself changes them he loved  this story it gripped him then he discovered   it was based on some medieval stories the quest  for the holy grail which was told and retold and   by mallory and you find a new telling of it with  spencer's the fairy queen and this then became   in later years lewis's career the study of these  stories these medieval stories okay but the great   plot was to go there and back again in the course  of it to be changed he then found the story again written by george mcdonald and george mcdonald's  story fantasies and it just gripped him   deeply now among the things he liked about  this this kind of story was um the values   there was um nobility there was humility there  was selflessness um all sorts of of high and noble   values and you were fighting against evil  and upholding the right you were upholding   truth and so here's the crisis for lewis as he's  leaving wt kirkpatrick and entering world war one   how can you have values in a brute universe  nietzsche very um succinctly arguable not   succinctly but very carefully argued that  in a brute universe of just matter there   is no right and wrong no good and evil nothing  beautiful nothing ugly there's just what is brute   brute matter and so lewis had to decide do values  actually exist and so that was his struggle   in the early 1920s trying to decide do  they exist and and can you have a basis for   right and wrong for ethics if there's no god  if there's no um uh nothing other than the   physical so he finally had to concede well there's  something other than the physical so these ideals   these values exist then you got a problem how  do you explain the existence of these values   and so that finally led him to the belief  well there's got to be some sort of mind   behind the universe that the values alone  can't just exist without some mind conceiving   them and so that brought him um that's your  philosophical um idealism moving from there to   some kind of religious idea and he looked at  different religious ideas pantheism was one he   he liked for a little while but not a very  long while he began to see the problems   with pantheism one of the big ones is it doesn't  really take evil seriously all is one so evil and   good are just two sides to the same coin  um and um uh so from there he went to the   idea that no there there has to be a god and uh  that finally happened in january of 1930 and um by then he was teaching at modeling college  and he was going to chapel in the mornings   he was not a christian but he was he was convinced  that there was some kind of a god a personal god   um and then his um his love of  mythology comes back into play   he's when he joined the english faculty in 1925 he  made a new friend several new friends but one was   j.r.r tolkien the new professor of anglo-saxon  tolkien started a reading group to learn old   icelandic and lewis quickly joined so did his  other friend neville coghill another christian but lewis and tolkien began meeting  together every monday morning   to talk about mythology and what they loved  and finally tolkien showed lewis something   he was had been working on since the war and it  was in fact this world of middle earth and the   mythologies behind it in the the legends and  louis thought it was the cat's meow this is so um he and tolkien grew closer   and finally one night lewis had invited  tolkien and another literary friend hugo dyson   who was another christian who taught down the road  at the university of reading about 30 miles away   they came to dinner at modeling college now  dinner at modeling in those days lasted several   hours one course after another and bought  between the courses and then after dinner   to go into the senior commons room that would  be the faculty lounge where they had port   and uh smoked and talked some more and and so it  would be ten o'clock before you finally got away   they went back to lewis's room talked some more  and then went out for a walk within the grounds of   maudlin one of these grand old colleges with acres  and acres of land inside the city within a wall   and as they walked and talked they were back  to this problem of mythology and jesus well   that's where lewis had left when he was in middle  school the idea that the bible is just mythology   and lewis said i love the story of the dying and  rising god everywhere i find it except the gospels   and he said it it's just that same old mythology  that you find in every culture of baal and isis   and osiris and balder the beautiful and on and  on and on and um as he talked with tolkien and   dyson and again they were taking their time yep  and by the end of the talk lewis said that he   realized that the um only difference between jesus  and all these other mythologies is that with jesus   it was the myth that really happened um so in the  others it's once upon a time but with jesus it's   when there went out a decree from  caesar augustus that all the world   should be taxed and this taxing first took  place when quirinius was governor of syria   it didn't happen once upon a time it happened  when pontius pilate was governor of judea   and it didn't happen in some um mythological  otherworldly place it happened on golgotha's   hill outside the city of jerusalem and so um  he gave that some consideration and a few days   later he was riding to the zoo with his brother  warnie in the sidecar of warney's motorcycle   and he said when he left their home in outside of  oxford he didn't believe jesus was the son of god   but when he arrived at the zoo he realized he did  believe that jesus was the son of god and he said   he hadn't really been thinking about it along  the way and it was it was a bit like waking up um   and so that's the that's the short version  of the story of this conversion and it was   one little step after another after another and  different people played different parts in his   conversion it wasn't this instantaneous if you've  only got one minute to convert somebody to faith   what would you do um that wasn't what happened  it was a number of people coming into his life   at particular moments at the ripe moment  and bringing him one further step along   there's so many lessons like that that jumped  out of your book he said 1917-1931 i think that's   14 years it's relationships it's patience it's  amazing as he goes from materialism to see cracks   in his materialistic worldview so he's open to  some immaterial reality and then believes this   is a personal being and then ultimately concludes  that personal being is found through christianity   and the person of jesus in a step-by-step fashion  now the way you told the story could make it seem   like if just left there louis's experience is  purely rational and intellectual but there's a   lot more to it that he writes about and you talk  about in particular this kind of surprise by   joy experience he has multiple times talk  about that experience and how it rocked him   well to me the one of the important things is that  he noticed it i think it's the sort of experience   that everybody has from time to time but we often  simply dismiss it and there was a period in his   life during his twenties when he ignored it he  noticed it when he was a child and when he went   up to uh to oxford he fell in love with psychology  and psychoanalysis and it was all the rage then   so lewis was reading lots of psychology in his  free time and psychoanalyzing himself and so he   dismissed his experience of joy as a projection  so that's an important piece of it but um   he tells us that his first memory  of it was when his brother made took   the the top of a tin cookie box um or the sort of  tin can that um um fruitcakes come in and he um   he made a little uh miniature garden with it  with twigs and little pebbles and probably   some moss and that sort of thing and this just  um it had an effect on lewis it it it it was as   though it touched him he'd ex and he experienced  that sort of thing a number of times in nature and then he experienced it when he was reading  the the norse myths and he called it joy um   and but it it it's the sort of thing that's  a longing and a pang to it a a deep desire   so it's not a satisfaction and he said it's more  like a signpost it's pointing you elsewhere it's   getting your attention but it's not the  thing in itself it's the notification that   there is something to long for and the longing  experience is not the satisfaction of that longing   it's the call to the longing um and so he would  say that he did not have an emotional conversion   that is the kind of dramatic conversion at  a at a revival meeting and uh but rather   um it was intellectual in terms of he was thinking  through things but we shouldn't take from that   that his emotions were not involved in it because  lewis was a whole person this is something he's   very much concerned with how do our emotions  relate to our intellect and he wrote an entire   series of lectures on that that he published as  the abolition of man what's the relation between   the the the belly and the head and the necessity  of the chest as the intermediary and there he   was using old medieval allegorical language for  the intellect and the emotions and between them   is the character uh one's character so he was  very much concerned for how it all fit together   and a critical part of his conversion came in the  mid 1920s when he decided that freud was wrong   about projecting god on the universe because  because he'd intellectually come to the point   of view that there is something other than the  material and that those are not projections therefore he was beginning to realize that his own  experience was something outside of himself coming   to him he wasn't working up those experiences they  suddenly came upon him and when he tried to work   up the experiences he couldn't he never succeeded  in creating one of those experiences they always   took him by surprise and thus the title for  his spiritual autobiography surprised by joy   now you talk quite a bit about in the book about  his father and i had no idea that albert lewis   and he had at least a 14-year plus just broken  relationship so his mom passes away when he's nine   talk about this relationship with his  father and one biographer suggested that   he kind of became a christian at the time his  father died and they were connected is that true he came he became a christian um a couple of  years after his father died he became a theist um   the year after his father died but um i i don't  think his father's death played any part in his   conversion um after his conversion he felt just  awful about the estrangement uh with his father   and the part he had played in that the fact is um  c s loris was not a very nice person before he was   a christian he was a lovely person after he was  and that's sort of the the proof of the conversion   that his character changed wow but he before his  conversion he was arrogant he was patronizing   um he was insulting he thought he was better than  everybody else because he was so smart and on and   on and on he just he would make fun of people  ridicule people he was just awful person and um   and he had been lying to his father from from his  teenage years you know he just learned the art of   how to pull the wool over his father's eyes that  sort of thing and he and his brother warney had   been making fun of their father for a long time  their mother had great ambitions for the boys   which could never be realized as long as they  had an irish accent and that's why she insisted   on sending them to england for education to knock  the irish accent out of them and um uh hers was an   upwardly mobile family they had um well  her her cousin was uh married to a baronet   and uh uh so that that's she she had great  aspirations so that's why once she died jack   and warner were doomed to stay at the english  boarding schools because um albert lewis could   not go against his wife's dying wishes no matter  how awful the boarding schools might be um but um the um i've rambled off away from your primary question  it's okay that's okay it was about his father   and the influence that his father had so um so the  boys then as their english improved began making   fun of their father behind his back because he had  the standard northern irish accent and they even   they mimicked his his the way he pronounced potato  and he pronounced it podeta a pate padeda with d's   rather than t's and so they started calling  their father behind his back the potato bird   wow the potato and and they would say yeah and  this was in their letters to one another for   for years until he until uh um albert lewis  died so it was a bad situation it came to a head   when his father found out just what contempt  young lewis had for him came to a head   in 1919 lewis was back from the war and lewis was  taking care of mrs moore who was the mother of   one of his friends from officer  training corps just before the war   and he would take care of her the rest  of her life until she died in 1951.   only lewis didn't want his father albert  knowing the extent of that relationship and so   albert was sending louis money every you know  every month to sustain him there in oxford and   young jack lewis was using that money  to sustain mrs moore wow and he got in   a little bit of a financial difficulty  and while he was home for vacation in in   summer of 1919 albert lewis who was a little  bit nosy was going through jack's papers   his bank accounts and lo and behold he discovered  he was overdrawn in his accounts at the bank   and lewis had told his father he was fine  so they had a huge row in which the son pointed out all the failings of the father and it  just devastated albert lewis who assumed that he   was his son's best friend and they would rather  enjoy his company than the company of anyone else   in the world and um so it was it was devastating  um how how do we see his life change after you   mentioned the way he was just arrogant and  pompous and mocked people and self-absorbed before   are there really tangible ways we see louis's  character change after becoming a christian   well yeah we've we have all the accounts of what  he was like before and we have his diaries in   which we know his inmost thoughts and attitudes  towards other people and wow the terrible things   he would say about oh for instance he he was  on a committee that meant that he had to visit   cambridge university and he said oh the professors  at cambridge aren't gentlemen this is this rabble   you know and so you've got all of that account  but then we have all the accounts of lewis   after his conversion and they're two entirely  different people wow wow but here's the thing   we from um we also know what he struggled with and  for him his greatest temptation was always pride   and he writes about that in some of his  public writing that that pride is the great   sin he mentions that in mere christianity  but so much of what you see coming out in   the screwtape letters is lewis's self-examination  of himself and his own temptations   uh and you can look back and see what he  was like in the 20s when he took up a new   crowd and that's one of the episodes in the  screwtape letters and his attitude towards his   mother and from his letters in his diaries  we know he's really talking about mrs moore   who was a very difficult woman a very difficult  woman i thought it was really interesting that   you mentioned that was the hardest book  for him to write because it took a lot   of self-reflection on his failures and his  regrets to get in the mind of a demon how to   cause pain and misery and temptation in others  i thought that was fascinating now there's a ton   there's a few lessons that come out of this  one give people time number two there's a lot   of relationships in lewis's life that you go  into depth they shape his thinking they shape   his character just one step along the time  we can't get into all of them but he had this   ongoing conversation with owen barfield that if  i understood it correctly they called it like   the great war explain what that was and some  of the how it shaped lewis's thinking uh lewis   called it the great war in in retrospect um but  it was an ongoing conversation that lasted from   oh goodness uh in in conversation and in letters  uh probably from about 1922 until about 1930 um   and um so it was this transition period  um lewis of course had a christian   background he'd been to church all  his life he knew the bible very well   um didn't believe it but he knew the information  in the bible uh barfield on the other hand had   a secular background he didn't know anything  about christianity didn't didn't know the bible   never been to church but they were both coming  out of atheism barfield um got swept up in um   uh theosophy which is uh an evolutionary  theology it's not a biblical theology but it's   it's um there were several evolutionary theologies  and philosophies that developed in the early 20th   century off of darwin and this one was developed  by rudolph steiner and um it includes the idea   that the whole human race is evolving spiritually  um and that it involves reincarnation it involves   the group imagination of humanity and um though  they though barfia would see um the bible   as evidence of earlier spiritual experience he  didn't see it as definitive normative or final   and one of his criticisms of lewis in later years  was that lewis was so tied to the bible whereas   barfield um was more interested in all  the heresies so arianism pelagianism   the cathari the gnosticism all of that  those were more his cup of tea and   so um but barfield's great contribution to lewis  was um what barfield called chronological snobbery   and it's the idea that our current time is  the final word the last word and all the   old stuff is wrong and bad and that's sort of a  trend of the 20th century and the 21st century   and lewis had fallen into that view that old ideas  were bad ideas obsolete passe have no value and in arguing with barfield he decided  that um well there might be old ideas   that were good ideas that were  discarded for all the wrong reasons   and so um this idea that our time is is  the final time and now we've got the real   ideas um is a mistake we're just a blip in time  and so that caused him to rethink old ideas um   but that was uh essentially all that he got from  barfield um because barfield though the dialogue   the argument really the argument they they  went into barfield trying to convince lewis   of his conception of what god must be like in  listening to that of course lewis wasn't defending   biblical theology he was just critiquing  barfield's theology and so in critiquing   barfield's theology he decided barfield was  wrong and it was pushing him more toward theism when lewis did become a theist he discontinued his dialogue with farfield and  after he was a christian he never again discussed   theology with barfield wow interesting yeah and it  was um the part of it was was just the difficulty   of talking to barfield because  barfield it was a literary man um   but had no philosophical training and yet  spoke uh extensively on philosophical subjects   and it was a a mayor's nest lewis just he couldn't  he couldn't straighten barfield's logic out it was   impossible to talk to him and of course barfield  didn't realize that but but it was driving lewis   just stark raving it was the the logic was just  scattered all over the place and so one of the   just fascinating things about lewis is he made  genuine academic contributions he wrote popular   works like mere christianity he writes novels of  course a range of them like narnia but he also   wrote on kind of relational issues philosophically  speaking on love it seems like not only beauty   and morality but this idea of love what it is  and how it fit within a materialistic universe   was one of the other things that bothered  him so what were some of his reflections on   love that brought him out of materialism and  ultimately to become a christian well it was   love along with good and evil it was it  was all the same thing it was all one piece   and um so with him um friendship was so important  um in 1960 he would publish a book the four loves   and he mentions the erotic love  between a man and a wife he mentions the love between friends philia he mentions  um storge which is that affection that you   have for someone it's a sort of a parent's love  it's um but but his greatest experience of love   in the 20s was friendship these friendships  he had with a number of people um and um he's studying at this time um the medieval  literature and writing his great academic book um   the allegory of love in that book he is discussing  he's exploring this whole phenomenon of love   and in all its different forms and there uh toward the end of the  book when he's discussing spencer's   fairy queen he mentions the fact that uh spencer  identifies three lives um storge philia and eros   um well he's going to discuss those ideas  in several different passages over the next   30 years but he adds to those agape that is  this selfless divine love uh that motivated   god to take on flesh and dwell  among us and bear our sins and it's different from the human loves  it's different from the natural loves all   the natural loves are corruptible but agape  is incorruptible you know first corinthians   chapter 13. there you go um that uh so so yes it  it was uh with um good and evil it's one of those   things that you really can't explain and to give  some context because we don't usually look at his   academic books the allegory of love is is looking  at a major problem on the planet earth marriage   is a business deal it involves the exchange of  property might be goats might be chickens might   be eleanor of aquitaines county in an exchange  of property um and even today in the 21st century   that's still how half the marriages on earth take  place and in the 11th century something happened   that lewis says is absolutely extraordinary  and it was the development of romantic love   as a positive thing that the troubadours sang  about and the development of the love story   and how over the next 500 years in um in  europe you went from love romantic love   being mocked and ridiculed as ridiculous to being  the object of great stories like romeo and juliet   and when he started working on the book in uh  around 1925 1926 he was still wavering in his   his materialism some days he was an idealist some  days he was a materialist some days he was pushing   the the uh envelope towards some sort of deity  it it's not quite as neat as we often make it   out he was wavering back and forth but when he  began that book he was definitely not a theist   and in the writing of that book uh he became  a christian so this that sort of what was his   daily work that he was doing and he was exploring  that problem of love love is a tremendous problem   if you're an atheist gotcha gotcha now one  of the stories i had heard before reading   your book but didn't really have the context  for it was this interaction with thomas weldon   a professor who i i understand correctly  was an atheist and makes a statement about   the gospels that just stood with lewis  and was significant in his conversion   talk about that a little bit um  thomas known as harry weldon nickname was one of the young fellows at modeling  college with lewis and they hung out together   those first couple of years but lewis  was moving in a different direction   and weldon was not on that journey at all weldon  was a virulent atheist who took great pleasure and   joy in ridiculing faith and people who believed  such ridiculous things he was cynical he was   not a pleasant man he was also one of those  people in an academic community who is always aiming at power within the academic community  lewis wrote about that in his last science   fiction book that hideous strength he wrote about  the politics in a university henry kissinger said   that academic politics um uh are so um uh  oh what did he say what did he call them um uh not violent uh but that that idea  wicked so um because the stakes are so low   that's funny but anyway weldon would drop by  lewis's rooms at night and and have a drink and   they would drink and talk and um he dropped by one  night uh in the 20s and he said uh rum thing about   the gospels um it's as though this this dying and  rising business actually happened once and that   blew louis apart because the coming from weldon he  was the last person on earth to make a statement   like that but weldon was recognizing there is  something different to the to the quality of those   stories it's it's different kind of  writing than mythology and um and so uh   that got louis's attention you know we all the  years we live we don't remember very many things   that happened to us but along the way we remem we  remember those significant spiritual experiences   you know just an odd dropping by  in the evening and an odd remark   and yet there it's emblazoned in the brain so one  more takeaway would be that the primary actor in   apologetics and evangelism is the holy spirit  amen he makes he makes sense of things hmm   it's amazing louis's life he uses somebody  who is in theosophy uses an atheist he uses   all sorts of people to ultimately bring  him to christ but one of the people that   i think intrigues most people because  they recognize the name tolkien   was the relationship that they had together now  you hinted at this earlier but talk a little   bit about the role that tolkien played in his  relationship with lewis and maybe his conversion   and or just his later apologetics well i think we  we think of that critical conversation that took   place in september of 1931 but that conversation  took place at the end of a relationship that had   been building for six years wow and there had been  many conversations one thing about tolkien and his   faith was he was consistent and his lifestyle  mirrored his faith there was no discontinuity   it wasn't disjoint he wasn't talking one way  and acting another there was a consistency there   and i i think it's important to add that  there were two others who were critical   one was neville coghill also in the english  department and and the the third one is hugo dyson   and those three men would continue to be  close friends of lewis up until his death   wow and um and yes they were important for his  conversion um the first one was really coghill   and louis was surprised by coghill he was  a man who was clearly one of the cleverest   men in the english uh program with him and yet  he was noble he was noble and that struck louis   when he was dealing with his idealism and it was  lived out day-to-day basis and his graciousness   and his his kindness and his thoughtfulness and  you contrast that with somebody like harry weldon   with his cynicism and his um uh power  politics and and all of that sort of thing   so so they were important um in his conversion  but also in the years after his conversion um you know there's the term accountability  group there's a sense in which they were his   accountability partners they met together once  a week for years and um they would discuss all   sorts of things all sorts of of questions  of life uh you know ostensibly they were   a writing club the inklings and they'd read what  they were writing but then they'd talk about most   anything and so it's important to have christian  friends who um live out the life of faith with you   that's that's another great lesson i love how  in the book you'll tell the story about cs   lewis and then draw out just a philosophical  or practical or really an apologetics point   once lewis became a christian did he did he decide  instantly oh i want to be an evangelist i want to   be an apologist because earlier on as i understand  it he wanted to be a poet and be famous for it   he keeps writing how did it change the way he  thought about his profession moving forward   well i don't know that his conversion made him uh think one way or another  about these different things we think   about him for what he did realize was  i have to go back to modeling college   and be a professor as a christian i have  to live out the rest of my life he read the   pilgrim's progress four or five times before  his conversion he loved the pilgrims progress   and again it's another one of those stories  where you're changed in the course of the journey   and so when he uh was converted the next summer  on his summer vacation he went back to ireland   to see his friend arthur greaves and in that  two-week vacation he wrote the pilgrims regress   14 days he wrote wrote it out it's an allegorical  telling of his personal testimony so it's it's not   it's not readily accessible to the average person  who hasn't studied allegory but the point is he   called it the regress not because he lapsed but  because when you become a christian you don't go   straight to heaven you have to go back to the  world in which you've been living and you have   to live out your faith and for lewis i think  that was the big thing that whatever it meant   he was going to live out his faith as a christian  he was going to live his life he was a uh and and   what he did was an offering to christ did he  suffer at all in the sense of professionally   for writing popular works like mere christianity  or the speaking tour when he became famous some   of these theological popular books because i'm  in academia i know in certain circles these can   be looked down on i can only imagine in oxford  and cambridge at this time there was maybe some   jealousy or ways he suffered because of that am i  reading into it or are there ways that that's true   that that's true that's true um and  uh harry weldon wasn't the only one   there there were lots of them uh lewis was  hated by many people after after the war   and it's an odd thing lewis did not undertake  to write his religious books he was asked   to write the problem of pain he was asked to do  the radio broadcasts um and uh dorothy l sayers   said we need a book on miracles so he did the book  on miracles wow and so those those things that um   upset people the most were not things that he  undertook on his own but he considered them his   duty and there this goes back to those those  values that he found in that those medieval   journey stories it was his duty he had to do it  he was asked to do it and he would do his duty   he called it his war work um  but uh yes i i've looked at um   the uh documents we have related to some of those  um academic chairs that came open right after the   war and the committee rejected lewis the idea  was well he hadn't done enough important writing   and by this time talking had his second academic  chair he was now the merton professor of english   which is um more money more prestige that sort of  thing but talking hardly did any writing at all   i mean virtually none he he wrote a couple of  very small articles um he did a glossary of terms he edited co-edited a book he didn't he really  he didn't do enough to to to earn tenure here   at union university um but they criticized  lewis but not doing much when his allegory   of love and his preface to paradise lost um and  his ballard lectures at cambridge all during   i'll you know before this professorship came up  are monumental allegory of love still in print   preface to paradise lost still in print and you  know it's an academic you're lucky if your book   stays in print for three years you know you  sell 500 copies to a library and that's it   sayonara but um because he's he did the definitive  treatment and even if you disagree with him you   have to interact with him this many years later  and so yeah they did a number on lewis it was   it was most unfair but he he moved on he didn't  hold a grudge you see really early coming through   in your book that lewis is constantly changing  his ideas he defends ideas he changed them about   literature about theology philosophy there seems  to be a rooted in commitment to truth to him   and a willingness to change his beliefs even if  it costs him something that really stood out to me   even long before he's a christian does he waver  at all after becoming a christian and second guess   his beliefs and in particular although you don't  go into this in the book you talk about problem of   pain when it comes to a grief observed sometimes  i've heard the story told that well he kind of   abandoned his faith and questioned things as he  got older and experienced grief on a deeper level   well the that part of his story i tell  in the third volume of the biography   which is i finished writing it it's with crossway  now but uh it won't come out until next year okay sorry that's all right um but yes a grief  observed is the bookend to the problem of   pain and the problem of pain he says up front now  i'm not exploring at all what grief feels like   okay i'm i'm looking at it rationally i'm  looking at the problem of pain rationally   we're thinking about it and it's the idea of  thinking about it on a sunny tuesday afternoon   not in the midst of despair so you've got two two  ends um the problem of pain and a grief observed   grief observed he wrote um right after his  wife died he wrote it over a two to three week   period some people had the idea that this is  ruminating that's going on for years and years   it's the immediate experience of her  death she died the end of july 1960 and um and one of his friends came to see him at the end  of august and lewis showed him the manuscript of   the book so it's it's his immediate reflection  the shock of the death and those fears that he had   um and he never doubted the existence of god  he wondered oh goodness is god really a mean   god and so he's working through all of  that in the midst of of the shock but you   know a couple of weeks after her death it's  mellowing out he's always going to miss her   he's always going to be sad that  she's gone but he's gonna be okay that's really powerful to see that in his  life philosophically wrestle with this   but his willingness kind of like the psalms to  just cry out to god in a very raw real way and   like you said earlier you just see that in lewis  he's such a whole human being he's got rationality   and imagination and relationships and creativity  and it's just a fascinating story you tell   in in this book a couple last questions that  will wrap up is why do you think lewis has   such a lasting legacy when i look in the  top evangelistic and apologetics books   i mean mere christianity's other writings are  consistently up there what do you think it was   that set him apart and he continues to have such  appeal today i think some apologetics is simply   done in the study people think about  ideas and come up with arguments   um what lewis talks about in the problem  of pain and mere christianity and miracles   are from his own experience yes they're rational  logical presentations um but as i mentioned   earlier the um they're really testimony um peter  said always be ready to give a reason for the   hope that's in you and i think his writings have  a validity that is particularly powerful because   they are rooted in his own spiritual experience  um the same can be true of the abolition of man   uh that one begins with a discussion  of a waterfall from a passage in the english poet coleridge one tourist says  the waterfall is pretty the other one says   it's sublime now what's the difference uh s  the prettiness is your interpretation of of   something your regard for something but the  sublime is something that actually grabs you   that it it's something that elicits from you all  in one wonder it works upon you and um this was   such an issue with lewis because that had been his  experience of joy he knew from his own experience   that something had grabbed him from the outside  and that values were real and that they came from   some place and so whether it's abolition of man  problem of pain mere christianity or miracles   they're all related um to how he logically thought  about his own experience in his own conversion   i have so many more questions for you but uh let  me just ask this last one as i read your book it   really brought some pieces together in terms of  evangelism and apologetics the importance of time   14 years the importance of relationships you just  see these patient-loving relationships with lewis   the role of the holy spirit are there any other  just evangelism or discipleship or apologetic   lessons that jump out of this that you want  to really just hammer home for people to hear   and take from the life of c.s lewis i think  you've i think you're careful reading them   the book has pulled them all out i mean that  um you know over time we have opportunities   uh with people we're related to uh but the  um it's important that we know our own we   know our our own experience with the lord and to  realize that it is the holy spirit who convinces and that takes all the pressure  off us really we don't have to make   something happen that in his time he uses us  in ways we don't even recognize at the moment and so that can make it a joyous experience for us a gift  to us really when we're when we're willing to talk   about our faith that's a great way to look at  it i really want to commend your book the making   of c.s lewis i think anyone who's in apologetics  like myself should read it to learn these lessons   anybody who's interested in literature and just  this person c.s lewis one of the most influential   christians over the past century i can't imagine  how many hundreds if not thousands of hours   it took you to write a 300 page plus book  just carefully methodically and graciously   about his life i enjoyed it immensely and will  be recommending it for a long time those of you   who stayed with us till the end make sure you hit  subscribe because we have some fascinating shows   coming up including an interview with a navy seal  and his story to become a christian while a navy   seal have a dialogue coming up with a progressive  christian about the bible and homosexuality i'm   going to be doing a live q a with drew mccoy  you know him as the genetically modified skeptic   and a ton of other shows brought to you by biola  apologetics so make sure you hit subscribe so you   don't miss any of those shows and again pick  up a copy of my guest book today dr harry lipo   the making of c.s lewis dr poe thanks  so much for joining us thank you sean

Channel: Sean McDowell

Views: 110,818

Keywords: C.S. Lewis, Jack, author, writer, mere christianity, chronicles or narnia, story, conversion, faith, atheist, atheism, skeptic, surprised by joy, beauty, Jesus, Lord, Liar, Lunatic, book, c.s. lewis

Id: dih7LHCYw5s

Length: 65min 9sec (3909 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 24 2021