Alister McGrath. Eccentric Genius. Reluctant Prophet. C.S. Lewis: A Life. Carol Steam, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 2013. See here to buy the book.
C.S. Lewis was a teacher at Oxford and Cambridge, a scholar of
English literature, a Christian apologist, and the author of fantasy,
the most famous of his fantasy works being The Chronicles of Narnia.
There is so much in Alister McGrath’s biography about Lewis, that this
blog post would become a book were I to mention everything that I got
out of it. Here are some items, though.
1. Although Lewis could be a bit pretentious, McGrath’s narration of
Lewis’ struggles in life certainly made him sympathetic to me. Lewis
struggled with the death of his mother, difficulty in getting along with
his father, an alcoholic brother whom he still loved, horrible boarding
schools, employment prospects, alienation from some of his colleagues,
and feelings of inadequacy as a Christian apologist, especially since he
could not convince the people closest to him to embrace Christianity.
Plus, the challenge to one of his arguments by a student expert on
Wittgenstein made him feel intellectually inadequate to continue
argumentative apologetics, though, as McGrath notes, Lewis did not
abandon apologetics completely, for it is in the Chronicles of Narnia,
on some level. (Lewis would later say that he preferred enjoying
Christianity to defending it.) Even when Lewis was at the height of his
fame, he could not really become pompous about it, on account of the
struggles that he continually experienced. Why do I say that he could
be a bit pretentious? Well, he did prefer students whom he considered
interesting, and he did not always care for teaching on account of what
he considered amateurish questions from his students. I suppose that
this is understandable for a well-read scholar such as Lewis, but it
does sound somewhat elitist.
2. I gained more insight into Lewis’ atheism from this biography. I knew from Surprised by Joy
that one factor behind his atheism was the death of his mother. But,
according to McGrath, Lewis also had intellectual reasons. Lewis read
old myths and wondered what made Christianity and its claims any
different from them. I am a bit vague, however, about the precise
reason that he became a Christian. Lewis was searching for joy, and he
became convinced that Christianity contained the true, historical myth
to which other myths were pointing, on some level. In addition, other
prominent authors were becoming Christians around that time, and Lewis
felt that added a depth to their writing that was absent from certain
secular works. Lewis was coming to believe that Christianity offered a
compelling way to look at life. McGrath denies that Lewis became a
Christian out of wishful thinking or primarily for emotional reasons,
however, for he characterizes Lewis’ theism as rational. Lewis himself
said that it was almost as if philosophical arguments were becoming
embodied before him as he thought about them, and those arguments
pointed to theism. Lewis also felt as if God were pursuing him: he
mocked the platitude about man’s search for God by saying that, in his
case, that would be like saying that the mouse is searching for the
cat! Did Lewis ever come up with philosophical arguments that proved
the existence of God? Not that I could tell. I long thought that, in Mere Christianity,
Lewis was trying to prove the existence of God by saying that there is a
moral law, and thus a moral lawgiver, but McGrath contends that Lewis
in that case was not trying to prove God’s existence. Rather, according
to McGrath, Lewis was saying that the existence of a moral law is
consistent with what Christianity and theism have to say. I respect
Lewis’ spiritual journey, but I am somewhat reluctant to exclude wishful
thinking as a factor behind it. Maybe spirituality does not need
hard-core proof in order to be valid, though.
3. Many books have been written about Lewis, but what sets Alister
McGrath’s book apart is his redating of Lewis’ conversion to theism and
to Christianity. McGrath questions Lewis’ own dating of those things,
as well as the dating that many biographers accept. McGrath makes his
arguments by looking at Lewis’ letters. If Lewis was becoming a theist
and attending chapel in 1929, for example, why did he not mention those
things then, especially after noteworthy events, such as the death of
his father, occurred in that year? But Lewis does mention those things
in 1930. While McGrath does present instances in which Lewis could
fudge the truth, he does not think that Lewis does so when it comes to
the dates of his conversions. Rather, McGrath argues that Lewis simply
was not good at dates, and that this problem was accentuated after he
became less faithful in keeping his journal. (Eventually, Lewis stopped
keeping a journal altogether because he thought it was self-absorbed.)
4. There were parts of the book that made me laugh at loud! Lewis
wrote a lady and told her that the trenches of World War I were better
than his experiences in boarding school. That expert on Wittgeinstein
who challenged Lewis? According to McGrath, A.N. Wilson suggested that
Lewis based the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
on her. McGrath does not buy that, though! And, in his later years,
Lewis wore a device due to his health problems. McGrath says on page
350: “The frequent malfunctions of this improvised device caused
inconvenience and occasionally chaos to Lewis’ social life, as at an
otherwise dull Cambridge sherry party which was enlivened with a shower
of his urine.”
5. The scenes that especially touched me in the book were ones in
which people whom Lewis did not particularly like, or who did not care
that much for Lewis, ended up helping him. Lewis did not care for the
taciturn husband of Maureen, the daughter of Mrs. Moore (who may have
been his lover in his young, pre-Christian days), but he helped Lewis
out when Lewis was in need. Lewis was alienated from some of the Oxford
faculty on account of his Christianity and his popular works, but one
scholar (whom I vaguely recall was rather critical of Lewis) turned down
a position at Cambridge so that it could go to Lewis. Lewis did not
care for the poetry of T.S. Eliot, but Eliot helped Lewis to make his Grief Observed
(which is about Lewis’ grief after the death of his wife) more
anonymous, which is what Lewis wanted. (Interestingly, people
recommended A Grief Observed to Lewis, unaware that he wrote it.)
6. Lewis took meticulous notes in the books that he read. McGrath
refers to someone who contrasts that with the ease with which scholars
today can do a search and find what they are looking for in a book.
Something is missing in today’s approach, that person was saying. Back
then, a person could be surprised by something in a book that he did not
notice before, or that made an impression on him that it did not
previously make, whereas such surprises are less likely to occur today.
7. McGrath offers thoughts about Lewis’ relationship with various
religions. He discusses his reception within Catholicism and
evangelicalism. McGrath also tells about how Lewis encouraged the
desire of one of his step-sons to convert to Judaism. I was hoping that
McGrath would explore further the aspects of Lewis’ thought that
disturb some conservative evangelicals, such as Lewis’ views on the
Bible and the atonement. But McGrath did make an interesting point in
discussing Lewis’ approach to the atonement. McGrath suggests that
perhaps some scholars are barking up the wrong tree when they try to
place Lewis in a certain theological school, or to ascribe a particular
view of the atonement to Lewis. McGrath doubts that Lewis was deeply
conversant with theological nuances about this, for Lewis’ field was
English literature. McGrath believes that medieval plays about Christ’s
death, ransom of people from the power of the devil, and harrowing of
hell are more helpful for understanding how Lewis depicts the atonement
in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. That is an
interesting thought, and there may be something to it. I do believe,
however, that Lewis was conversant with theology and theological
nuances, on some level, for he did write an introduction to the church
father Athanasius’ work on the incarnation (which I do not recall
McGrath even mentioning).
Excellent book!