C. S. Lewis’s Journey of Faith: From Atheism to Christianity
Today, we celebrate Clive Staples “Jack” Lewis (1898-1963). Having authored popular works including Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and The Chronicles of Narnia, he is indisputably one of Christianity’s most beloved authors of the 20th century. As such he warrants a place in our Reformational Worldview Emphasis Month.
Like Luther, Kuyper, and Schaeffer, Lewis took seriously those reformational categories of Scripture, Gospel, and Christ. And like these men, he recognized that Christianity is lived out in the world—and not merely in the church. Lewis exemplified this in his radio broadcasts, writing, and lecturing.
Without doubt, Lewis’s legacy as a reformational Christian is profound. But many of us know that already. The question remains how he came by this legacy. After all, Lewis wasn’t always an advocate for Christianity, but a determined atheist for a time. So how did this otherwise severe critic of Christianity convert into one of its most ardent defenders?
Beginnings
August 23, 1908 is perhaps the best place to begin Lewis’s faith journey. For it was upon this date that his mother died from cancer. Without question, this challenged Lewis’s conception of God [1]. Prior to her death, Lewis had viewed God “merely as a magician” [2]. But upon her death, this nine-year-old boy learned that God, Whoever He was, was not the magician he believed Him to be.
About a month later, Lewis began his education by spending nearly two years at the Wynyard School in England. Significantly, education would play a vital role in Lewis’s faith journey. However, Wynyard didn’t challenge his intellect as later schools would, and he found no reason to doubt God—yet. He attended church, read his Bible, and prayed. However, skepticism would soon mount its ugly head.
Skepticism
By January 1911, Lewis was attending the Cherbourg House (“Chartres”), where he spent about two-and-a-half years. It was there that his “education really began” [3]. And it was there that skepticism arose, until finally (to use his own words) he “rendered [his] private practice of that religion [Christianity] a quite intolerable burden” [4]. Instead, through the influence of books and the School Matron, Lewis became deeply interested in mythology and the occult.
Lewis would leave Chartres and begin attending Malvern College, where these developments continued to grow. However, something else occurred during this period too: Lewis befriended Arthur Greeves, a Christian, in April 1914. Arthur would remain “the most faithful of friends” to Lewis through his lifetime [5]. And Lewis’s eventual conversion to Christianity would result in part from Arthur’s influence [6]. However, these developments were still far off.
Atheism
Significantly, Lewis began attending Great Bookham Surrey that fall under the private study of William Thompson Kirkpatrick, an atheist [7]. Without question, Lewis considered him a mentor and role model. And while Kirkpatrick never attacked religion in Lewis’s presence, his influence was indisputable. As Lewis would later put it, he got “fresh ammunition” for his atheism “indirectly from the tone of [Kirkpatrick’s] mind or independently from reading his books” [8].
Gradually, Lewis’s atheism began to show its teeth: “There is absolutely no proof for any of them [religions], and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best,” wrote Lewis just two years later to Arthur, “[And] the other tomfoolery about virgin birth, magic healings, apparitions and so forth is on exactly the same footing as any other mythology” [9]. Despite Lewis’s strong language here, God was at work—and in a unique way.
See, Lewis had stumbled upon what he described as “a great literary experience” this same year, 1916: George MacDonald’s novel Phantastes (1858) [10]. Little did he know what effect this book would have upon him at the time, but its influence would be exceedingly important: “That night my imagination was, in a certain sense, baptized,” Lewis wrote nearly 40 years later, “the rest of me, not unnaturally, took longer” [11].
Lewis similarly encountered G.K. Chesterton about a year later. Again, Lewis recalls this in humorous fashion: “In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading” [12]. Just as books had previously given him ammunition for his atheism, they would eventually help deliver him from it. However, for the time being, his atheism remained in full force.
Upon finishing at Bookham, Lewis began attending University College, Oxford in April 1917. Again, his atheism was pronounced during this period: “I believe in no God,” he confessed to Arthur [13]. Despite this and other troubling developments, Lewis’s brother, Warren (“Warnie”), held out hope: “Lewis’s Atheism is I am sure purely academic,” he would write to their discouraged father [14]. And sure enough, Lewis’s atheism soon turned to agnosticism.
Agnosticism
By September 19, Lewis had forsaken his fierce atheism for a more tempered agnosticism. He now, in his words, found “some sort of God as the least objectionable theory.” And consequently, he “stopped defying heaven” [15]. Just as God used books and authors in Lewis’s faith journey, He also used friends.
We’ve already noted Arthur. Another important friend was a schoolmate, Nevill Coghill. This friendship was not without consequence. In Lewis’s words, “I soon had the shock of discovering that he—clearly the most intelligent and best-informed man in that class—was a Christian and a thorough-going supernaturalist” [16].
By 1926, at which point he had begun his teaching career at Oxford, Lewis forged two other important friendships: Hugo Dyson and J.R.R. Tolkien, both Christians. Lewis humorously recounted later, “[T]hese queer people [Christians] seemed now to pop up on every side” [17]. Still, it would be another five years before his conversion to Christianity.
Theism
By now, God had placed a sufficient support system around Lewis through books and friends to lead him to salvation. And by 1929, Lewis converted from agnosticism to theism—though not yet to Christianity. This change occurred upon reading Chesterton’s Everlasting Man. And though he believed “that Christianity itself was very sensible,” he did not yet convert, but simply “admitted that God was God” [18].
In other words, he believed in God, but not yet in Christ. Lewis’s reluctance concerning Christianity was still clear. Writing to Arthur in January 1930, he charged, “In spite of all my recent changes of view, I am still inclined to think that you can only get what you call ‘Christ’ out of the Gospels by picking & choosing, & slurring over a good deal” [19].
Despite this charge, Lewis nevertheless recognized that his conversion to Christianity was just around the corner. Just two months later, Lewis made this remark: “[W]hereas once I would have said ‘Shall I adopt Christianity’, I now wait to see whether it will adopt me: i.e. I now know there is another Party in the affair” [20]. Sure enough, Christianity would get the better of him, eventually.
Christianity
Meanwhile, Lewis still struggled to accept Christianity. No longer was his difficulty a misconception about God or misplaced intellectual sophistication. Instead, it was something far more basic. “I think the trouble with me is lack of faith,” Lewis admitted to Arthur in December 1930, “when I pray I wonder if am not posting letters to a non-existent address. Mind you I don’t think so—the whole of my reasonable mind is convinced: but I often feel so” (italics his) [21]. Intellectually, Lewis had no problem with Christianity. Emotionally, he did.
In the end, emotion had little to do with it. Lewis recalls an evening in September 1931 in which he stayed up until 3 a.m., talking with Dyson and Tolkien about everything from myth to Christianity to poetry. Then, about a week later, the day finally arrived: September 28, 1931—Lewis and Warnie having decided to visit a zoo that day. Lewis recalls the trip there:
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 spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion. ‘Emotional’ is perhaps the last word we can apply to some of the most important events. It was more like when a man, after long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake [22].
Several days later, Lewis made this confession to Arthur: “I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ—in Christianity” [23]. And with that, Lewis converted to Christianity, impacting a countless many.
Conclusion
Most of us are familiar with Lewis’s profound influence upon Christianity. Over the next several decades, Lewis authored dozens of works of reformational Christianity on everything from apologetics to theology to science fiction to fantasy to poetry. And these have sold well into the hundreds of millions, many of them even being adapted for radio, television, stage, and film production. Yet it all began with his difficult, decades-long conversion from atheism to agnosticism to theism to Christianity.
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[1] So profound was Flora’s death for Lewis that we see autobiographical glimpses of this period in The Magician’s Nephew (1955), whose protagonist Digory Kirke also struggles with a dying mother.
[2] C. S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (Orlando: A Harvest Book, 1955), 21.
[3] Ibid., 58.
[4] Ibid., 61
[5] Lewis Papers” or “Memoirs of the Lewis Family: 1850-1930,” Volume 11, 218-2; C. S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis (Volume I): Family Letters 1905-1931, ed. Walter Hooper (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), 993.
[6] The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, 995.
[7] So influential was this instructor upon Lewis that he based at least two characters on him in his later writings: (1) Digory Kirke in The Magician’s Nephew (1955), later Professor Kirke in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950); and (2) Mr. MacPhee in The Dark Tower (1977) and That Hideous Strength (1945).
[8] Surprised By Joy, 140.
[9] The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, 230, 234.
[10] Ibid., 169.
[11] Surprised By Joy, 181.
[12] Ibid., 191.
[13] The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, 379.
[14] Ibid., 443, n. 44.
[15] Ibid., 509.
[16] Surprised By Joy, 212.
[17] Ibid., 216.
[18] Ibid., 223, 227.
[19] The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, 862.
[20] Ibid., 887.
[21] Ibid., 944-945.
[22] Surprised By Joy, 237
[23] The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, 974.
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Selected Bibliography of Lewis’s Works:
The Pilgrim’s Regress (1933)
The Problem of Pain (1940)
The Screwtape Letters (1942)
The Abolition of Man (1943)
The Space Trilogy (1938, 1943, 1945)
The Great Divorce (1945)
Miracles (1947)
Mere Christianity (1952)
Surprised By Joy (1955)
The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56)
Till We Have Faces (1956)
The Four Loves (1960)
A Grief Observed (1961)
November 21, 2012
I enjoyed this article. It reminds me of the fact that, though there is only one way to God and that is through his son Jesus Christ, God shows his very creativity by all the amazing ways He leads people to Jesus. Thank you for the reseach you did to show us Lewis’s progression from atheism to faith. Readers may also enjoy Sheldon Vanauken’s autobiography entitled A Severe Mercy. Vanauken studied at Oxford when Lewis was a professor there and was greatly influenced by him to become a Christian. In his book Vanauken includes Lewis conversations and personal letters he received from Lewis as he contemplated his own leap from unbelief to faith. Lewis’s letters are so compelling because you can tell that he is speaking from personal experience.
November 25, 2012
Mrs. Morgan:
I apologize for the delay in responding to your comment–thank you for it! Indeed, Lewis is a fascinating person of history and warrants our attention. I’ve not read the biography you mention, but it sure sounds good. Actually, I’ve been reading through his collected letters as of late. At three volumes long and just over 4,000 pages in length, it’s taking me some time, but I’m enjoying it immensely. In fact, much of the work for this article came from volume one of that collection. Anyway, it’s good to hear you like Lewis as I do. I owe much to his writings in my own spiritual formation for sure.