C.S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis (1898 – 1963) was a British academic, author and (lay) theologian. He was a Fellow of English Language and Literature at Oxford University and later Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University. Apart from his academic publications, Lewis wrote more than 30 books which have been translated into more than 30 languages and have sold an estimated 100 million copies. He is best known for his works of fiction, especially The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles and The Problem of Pain.

Lewis is now often promoted as the greatest ‘Christian’ thinker/apologist of the 20^th century. His book Mere Christianity is regarded as the manifesto of the present evangelical church. However, a careful investigation into his life and his writings, proves that the place afforded to Lewis is manifestly misplaced. Indeed, there is strong evidence to conclude that he was not a Christian in a true Biblical sense. His own belief system was a mix of philosophy, mythology, paganism, mysticism, Theosophy, Catholicism, and High Anglicanism.

Lewis is arguably the principal author whose ideas have been behind the extraordinary uptake amongst evangelical churches of the New Spirituality; because he made mysticism appealing to the masses.

Formative Years – Paganism, Occultism, Mysticism and Catholicism

Though raised as an Anglican, Lewis became enamoured at a very early age with Norse and Greek mythology (and subsequently with Irish mythology). His love for mythology persisted his whole life long. He took the view later in life that these pagan myths were fulfilled in Christianity i.e. he wed paganism with Christianity. Lewis wrote:

“First let us make the younger generation good pagans and afterwards let us make them Christians.”

(Letter from Yours, Jack).

“(I have) the deepest respect for Pagan myth.”

(The Problem of Pain)

“It is only since I have become a Christian that I have learned really to value the elements of truth in Paganism and Idealism. I wished to value them in the old days; now I really do. Don’t suppose that I ever thought myself that certain elements of pantheism were incompatible with Christianity or with Catholicism.”

(Letter to Bede Griffiths)

“I had some ado to prevent Joy [Lewis’s wife] and myself from relapsing into Paganism in Attica! At Daphni it was hard not to pray to Apollo the Healer. But somehow one didn’t feel it would have been very wrong – would have only been addressing Christ sub specie Apollinis.”

(Letter 23 May 1960)

(Note: A person who becomes an authentic Christian renounces pagan myths and legends as being doctrines taught by demons. To give credibility to any depiction of the spirit or supernatural world outside of the Bible’s boundaries is fraught with danger.)

The influence of a school matron when he was eleven and twelve led him into the occult and away from the Anglican Church, and he became an atheist:

“No school ever had a better Matron, more skilled and comforting to boys in sickness, or more cheery … She was floundering in the mazes of Theosophy*, Rosicrucianism**, Spiritualism; the whole Anglo-American Occultist tradition … I had never heard of such things before; never, except in a nightmare or a fairy tale, conceived of spirits other than God and men. I had loved to read of strange sights and other worlds and unknown modes of being, but never with the slightest belief.

For the first time, there burst upon me the idea that there might be real marvels all about us, that the visible world might be only a curtain to conceal huge realms unchartered by my very simple theology. And that started in me something with which, on and off, I have had plenty of trouble since—the desire for the preternatural, simply as such, the passion for the Occult. Not everyone has this disease; those who have will know what I mean … It is a spiritual lust; and like the lust of the body it has the fatal power of making everything else in the world seem uninteresting while it lasts. It is probably this passion, more even than the desire for power, which makes magicians …

The vagueness, the merely speculative character, of all this Occultism began to spread—yes, and to spread deliciously—to the stern truths of the [Anglican Church] creed. The whole thing [Christianity] became a matter of speculation: I was soon (in the famous words) altering ‘I believe’ to ‘one does feel.’

And oh, the relief of it! . . From the tyrannous noon of [Bible] revelation, I passed into the cool evening of Higher Thought, where there was nothing to be obeyed, and nothing to be believed except what was either comforting or exciting.”

(Surprised by Joy)

*Theosophy is an esoteric and occultic religious movement established in the US during the late nineteenth century. It was founded largely by Helena Blavatsky and draws its beliefs predominantly from her writings.

**Rosicrucianism is a religious movement that arose in Europe in the early 17th century after the publication of several texts which purported to announce the existence of an unknown esoteric order to the physical world and the spiritual realm. The documents combine references to Kabbalah, alchemy, and ‘Christian’ mysticism.

Note that Lewis admitted that the fascination with the Occult continued with him throughout his life. This influence is most evident in all of the fantasy novels that he wrote.

George MacDonald

A defining moment in Lewis’s life was when at age 18 he read a mythical book by George MacDonald, Phantastes. Lewis recalled the impact that the book had upon him years later:

“It was as if I were carried sleeping across the frontier, or as if I had died in the old country and could never remember how I came alive in the new. … I did not yet know (and I was long in learning) the name of the new quality, the bright shadow, that rested on the travels of Anodos.* I do now. It was Holiness… It was as though the voice which had called to me from the world’s end were now speaking at my side.”

(Surprised by Joy)

* The hero in Phantastes was Anodos who journeyed through a mythical landscape called Fairy Land (see later).

It marked the turning point for Lewis from atheism towards belief in ‘God’, and eventually ‘Christianity’. However, Lewis defined and forever understood God through the mystical quality of “Holiness” as he encountered through MacDonald. He never embraced a pure Biblical understanding but persisted in mixing the holy (i.e. Christian terms and concepts) with the profane (mysticism and paganism).

So affected and influenced by MacDonald was Lewis that he published a collection of writings by MacDonald entitled George MacDonald: An Anthology, and in the lengthy preface acknowledged MacDonald as “my master”. On the cover of the book is the following statement by Lewis, “I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself.” Lewis writes:

“In making this collection I was discharging a debt of justice. I have never concealed the fact that I regarded George MacDonald as my master: indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him. But it has not seemed to me that those who have received my books kindly take even now sufficient notice of the affiliation. Honesty drives me to emphasize it….It must be more than thirty years ago that I bought… Phantastes. A few hours later I knew that I had crossed a great frontier. I had already been waist deep in Romanticism, and likely enough, at any moment, to flounder into its darker and more evil forms, slithering down the steep descent that leads from the love of strangeness to that of eccentricity and thence to that of perversity. Now Phantastes was romantic enough in all conscience; but there was a difference. Nothing was at that time further from my thoughts than Christianity and I therefore had no notion what this difference really was. I was only aware that if this new world was strange, it was also homely and humble; that if this was a dream, it was a dream in which one at least felt strangely vigilant; that the whole book also had about it a sort of cool, morning innocence and also, quite unmistakably, a certain quality of Death, good Death. What it actually did to me was to convert, even to baptize (that was where the Death came in) my imagination. It did nothing to my intellect nor (at that time) to my conscience. Their turn came much later and with the help of many other books and men. But when the process was complete – by which, of course, I mean “when it had really begun” – I found that I was still with MacDonald and that he had accompanied me all the way and that I was now at last ready to hear from him much that he could not have told me at that first meeting. But in a sense, what he was now telling me was the very same that he was now telling me from the beginning. There was no question of getting through to the kernel and throwing away the shell: no question of a gilded pill. The pill was gold all through. The quality which had enchanted me in his imaginative works turned out to be the quality of the real universe, the divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live.”

MacDonald’s description of ‘reality’ – i.e. God, man, nature, eternal states – forever gripped Lewis in a straight-jacket of deception. In his book The Great Divorce, Lewis writes about his future (fictional) encounter with MacDonald in heaven:

“I tried, trembling, to tell this man all that his writings had done for me. I tried to tell how a certain frosty afternoon at Leatherhead Station when I had first bought a copy of Phantastes (being then about sixteen years old) had been to me what the first sight of Beatrice had been to Dante*: Here begins the new life. I started to confess how long that Life had delayed in the region of imagination merely: how slowly and reluctantly I had come to admit that his Christendom had more than an accidental connexion with it, how hard I had tried not to see the true name of the quality which first met me in his books is Holiness.”

*Dante was a renowned Italian poet and after meeting a girl named Beatrice for the very first time at age nine, was forever fixated by her. She became ultimately, in his imaginative poetry, his saviour leading him in the afterlife through purgatory into paradise and ultimately into “total absorption in the divine” (Encyclopedia Brittanica).

Lewis informed a correspondent in 1946:

“I was brought back [from atheism to ‘Christianity’] by the strong influence of two writers, the Presbyterian George MacDonald and the Roman Catholic G. K. Chesterton.”

It must be understood, therefore, that the brand of ‘Christianity’ Lewis became a convert to was framed by MacDonald’s mysticism and Chesterton’s Catholicism (we will come to Chesterton shortly but first a closer look at George MacDonald). Both of these streams (of falsehood) are most evident in Lewis’s life and books.

Who was George MacDonald?

Few people today know about George MacDonald and his extraordinary impact upon C.S, Lewis and numerous other celebrated writers, including G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings), Madeleine L’Engle and C.L. Dodgson (who wrote Alice in Wonderland under the pen-name of Lewis Carol). He is regarded as the founder of the modern fantasy genre of literature.

MacDonald was a prolific author publishing more than fifty volumes of novels, poetry, short stories, fantasy, sermons, essays and children’s fairy-tales. His work placed him alongside his era’s greatest literary figures and his following was vast. He was a celebrated speaker, lecturing to thousands at a time who paid to hear him speak. (Literary luminaries of the day including John Ruskin, Charles Kingsley, Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Mark Twain all paid him homage.) His most well-known books Phantastes and Lilith, were groundbreaking works that used myth and fantasy for adults to explore concepts of morality and human spirituality.

Phantastes is a story centred upon a man named Anodos (which means “pathless” in Ancient Greek) who suddenly encounters an entity from the spirit realm who introduces ‘herself’ to him as his fairy grandmother. She informs Anodos that he must go to Fairy Land. There he encounters numerous supernatural beings and his wandering through the land is filled with fantasy experiences.

Lilith is based on the Jewish Kabbalah* teaching that Adam was married to a demon named Lilith before he married Eve. By the end of MacDonald’s book, Lilith is redeemed, and Adam says that even the devil will eventually be redeemed.

(*Kabbalah is an esoteric method, discipline, and school of thought in Jewish mysticism.)

Claims that these books are only fantasy and the underlying or hidden themes are Christian and meaningful is a poison chalice. Clearly, MacDonald is depicting the demonic realm which the Bible condemns for believers to engage with.

MacDonald fell into literary work because of his fallout with his church. MacDonald was raised a Calvinist and trained to become a minister but as Lewis writes:

“On the intellectual side, his history is largely a history of escape from the theology in which he had been brought up.”

(Anthology)

MacDonald was effectively fired after two years from the church he was first appointed as minister for his heretical views. Lewis continues:

“In 1850 he received what is technically known as a ‘Call’ to become the Minister of a dissenting chapel in Arunder. By 1852 he was in trouble with the ‘deacons’ for heresy, the charges being that he had expressed belief in a future state of probation for heathens and that he was tainted with German theology….”

(Anthology)

MacDonald rejected his Calvinist upbringing and training, finding the Calvinist’s perception of God unbearable (see Calvinism .) But instead of embracing a true Biblical understanding of God and salvation, which juxtaposes the justice of God with the love of God, he turned to the mystics for answers – especially Novalis and Swedenborg*, who is widely regarded as the father of modern spiritualism – and consequently became a renowned Universalist i.e. believing that eventually everyone will go to heaven. MacDonald adopted Swedenborg’s view that (1) hell was not a place of eternal punishment, but a temporary abode where people would still have the opportunity to turn to God and ascend into heaven; (2) rejected the central Biblical truth that Jesus paid the price for sin, thereby satisfying the eternal justice of God; and (3) that a person’s works during life determined their initial place in the spirit world.

G.K Chesterton acknowledged MacDonald to be “a genuine mystic” (George MacDonald and His Work, 1901). Mysticism and authentic Christianity have always and will always be antithetical. Mystics knowingly or unknowingly engage with the demonic realm and they are always led away from the truth into error. (Note: Technically, mysticism is knowledge about the spirit realm, whereas occultism is engaging with the spirit realm and/or employing demons to affect change in the natural realm.)

*Swedenborg – “At the age of 55, Swedenborg had a series of clairvoyant visions, which, he said, gave him the ability to experience the spiritual dimensions … A year or so after these initial visions, Swedenborg abandoned all other pursuits and devoted his time to spiritual meditation and mediumistic trances during which he explored the spirit world. He claimed to have conversed with biblical prophets, apostles, Aristotle, Socrates, and Caesar, as well as with numerous deceased friends and acquaintances and spirits from other planets…

Of the Adam and Eve story, Swedenborg reported that everything in the story is symbolic, Adam representing the intellectual side of man and Eve the emotional. The great Flood, he said, was not a physical deluge, but a flood of monstrous evils that overwhelmed the people in ancient times. Noah and his family represented those who had not succumbed to the immoralities of the time. Many other stories in the Old Testament, at least before Abraham, were similarly allegorical, Swedenborg was informed during his trances.

Perhaps the most significant discovery by Swedenborg was the “world of spirits,” an intermediate region between the heaven and hell of Protestant theology, but unlike the purgatory of Catholicism, which was much like hell. The conditions of the spirit world that Swedenborg explored were very similar to earth, so similar that many newly arrived souls had to be told that they were no longer on the earth plane. It was in this world of spirits that newly arrived souls found themselves.

“When the soul thus separates himself, he is received by good spirits, who likewise do him all kind offices whilst he is in consort with them,” he wrote. “If, however, his life in the world was such that he cannot remain associated with the good, he seeks to be disunited from them also, and this separation is repeated again and again, until he associates himself with those whose state entirely agrees with that of his former life in the world, among whom he finds, as it were, his own life. They then, wonderful to relate, live together a life of similar quality to that which had constituted their ruling delight when in the body…”

Swedenborg did not think it wise for the average person to commune with spirits because of the risks involved in being negatively influenced by low-level spirits…

Swedenborg’s writings are said to have influenced Goethe, Balzac, Coleridge, Carlyle, Lincoln, Tennyson, Emerson, Henry James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Thoreau, both Brownings, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, George MacDonald, and Helen Keller to name just some.”

(http://whitecrowbooks.com/michaeltymn/entry/swedenborg_a_genius_who_explored_the_afterlife)

G.K. Chesterton (1874 – 1936)

As noted, Lewis said that MacDonald baptized his imagination, while Chesterton effectively did the same for his intellect. Their combined influence paved the way for him to become a ‘Christian’.

In 1962, The Christian Century magazine published Lewis’s answer to the question, “What books did most to shape your vocational attitude and your philosophy of life?” Here is Lewis’s list:

Phantastes by George MacDonald.
The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton.
The Aeneid by Virgil.
The Temple by George Herbert.
The Prelude by William Wordsworth.
The Idea of the Holy by Rudolf Otto.
The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius.
Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell.
Descent into Hell by Charles Williams.
Theism and Humanism by Arthur James Balfour.

Lewis wrote:

“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. There are traps everywhere — “Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,” as Herbert says, “fine nets and stratagems.” God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.”

Lewis’s book Mere Christianity is a product of Chesterton’s apologetics. He said:

“The case for Christianity in general is well given by Chesterton; and I tried to do something in my Broadcast Talks.”

It was these radio broadcasts which were later fashioned into the book Mere Christianity.

Lewis applauded Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man as the “best popular apologetic I know”. The book is divided into two parts, “The Creature Called Man” and “The Man Called Christ”. It argues first, the case for creation in that human beings are different in kind from animals. He repudiated evolution’s conclusion that humans were just a higher order animal. Secondly, that Jesus Christ is a unique being and different in kind from any great religious founder, like for example Mohammed. And finally, that just as man is unique in the order of creation and Christ is unique in the human order, so the Catholic Church, which Christ founded, is unique among human institutions.

Who was G.K. Chesterton?

Chesterton was raised as a Unitarian (i.e. someone who did not believe in the Trinity). His discovery of what he described as “orthodox” Christianity led him first to the Church of England in 1901, which he said later was simply his own uncompleted conversion to Catholicism. And in 1922 at the age of 48 Chesterton left the Church of England to formally become a Catholic (many people were surprised thinking he was already a Catholic). The Everlasting Man was published three years later.

There is no equal to Chesterton as a writer for the sheer volume of his work and the breath of topics. He wrote a hundred books: novels, detective stories, poetry, plays, literary criticism, history, economic theory, philosophy and theology. And as a journalist, he wrote thousands of essays for the London newspapers. He is regarded as one of the top four literary figures of the early 20^th century.

Chesterton became a principal advocate for Catholicism in his era. He wrote:

“The Catholic Church is the only thing that saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.”

“The difficulty explaining why I am Catholic is that there are 10,000 reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.”

He advocated all of Catholicism’s aberrant teachings. For example:

The Eucharist: “The Mass is as Christian as the Gospel.”
Deification of Mary: “The honour given to Mary as the Mother of God is, among a thousand other things, a very perfect example of the truth…”
The supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church over the Bible: “To a Roman Catholic the Roman Catholic Church is simply the Christian religion; the gift of Christ to St. Peter and his successors of a right to answer at all times all questions about what it really is…”
Purgatory: “Purgatory may exist whether he likes it or not. … It may be obvious to us that [a person] is already utterly sinless, at one with the saints. It may be evident to us that [he] is already utterly selfless, filled only with God and forgetful of the very meaning of gain. But if the cosmic power holds that there are still some strange finishing touches, beyond our fancy, to put to his perfection, then certainly there will be some cosmic provision for that mysterious completion of the seemingly complete. The stars are not clean in His sight and His angels He chargeth with folly; and if [God] should decide … there is room for improvement, we can but admit that omniscience can heal the defect that we cannot even see.”

Shortly after Chesterton’s death in 1936, Pope Pius XI sent a telegram which was read to the vast crowd gathered for Chesterton’s requiem Mass at Westminster Cathedral. In the telegram, the Pope described Chesterton as a “gifted Defender of the Catholic Faith.”

A recent convert to Catholicism (from the Baptist church) because of the influence of Chesterton’s book The Everlasting Man, and now President of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Dale Ahlquist, writes:

“G.K. Chesterton has a way of making you think like a Catholic before you’re consciously aware of it.”

Contrary to Chesterton’s claims that the Roman Catholic Church was instituted by Jesus and is the only one true Christian church, the Catholic Church is an enemy of the gospel of Jesus Christ and has always persecuted true Christians.

The Roman Catholic Church

The Roman Catholic Church is called by many ‘Christian’ but that is far from the truth – it is a cult like the Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses.

Catholicism preaches a false gospel – salvation is through works (the sacraments) and not through faith in Christ alone.

It presents a false Christ – the eucharist, where magically the body and the blood of ‘Jesus’ appear, transformed from the wafer and the wine.

It practices a false baptism – only those who submit to the Pope and are baptised into the Catholic Church (not Christ) are declared saved (provided, of course, if they live past infancy into adulthood that they dutifully perform the sacraments).

It believes in a false ‘scriptures’ – the Catholic Church defines the ‘Word of God’ to be the Bible together with the ‘Traditions’ of the church. (The Traditions are completely antagonistic to the Bible and form the basic directives for most of the corrupt practices Catholics.)

It operates under the control of a false priesthood – the Papacy, archbishops, bishops and priests who stand between God and the people.

It worships a false Godhead – the Catholic Church deifies Mary; they worship and pray to her, declaring her to be the Mother of God, a title never found in the Scriptures, thereby making her equal to God.

(Note: A key element of the Protestant Reformation and the break from the rule and control of the Roman Catholic Church throughout Europe, was the understanding that the Bible’s end-time prophecies revealed the identity of the papacy to be the “man of sin …. the son of perdition” (2 Thessalonians 2:3 KJV), the very antichrist.)

See Who is the Antichrist? and A-Historicists-Approach-To-The-Major-Endtime-Prophecies-Of-The-Bible-2021

Lewis writes of the impact of his first reading of Chesterton:

“It was here that I first read a volume of Chesterton’s essays. I had never heard of him and had no idea of what he stood for; nor can I quite understand why he made such an immediate conquest of me. It might have been expected that my pessimism, my atheism, and my hatred of sentiment would have made him to me the least congenial of all authors. It would almost seem that Providence, or some “second cause” of a very obscure kind, quite over-rules our previous tastes when It decides to bring two minds together.”

Although Lewis never officially became a Catholic, he accepted and promoted many teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and engaged in certain Catholic sacraments (see below). As MacDonald is revealed in and through Lewis’s writings, so too is Chesterton.

Lewis’s Errant Teachings

In a reader’s poll published by Christianity Today (a leading ‘evangelical’ magazine) in 1998, Lewis was rated the most influential Christian author. In an article in 1998 commemorating the 100th anniversary of Lewis’s birth, Lewis was hailed to “to be the Aquinas, the Augustine, and the Aesop of contemporary evangelicalism”. In 2000, Mere Christianity was voted best book of the 20th century. In 2001 the magazine hailed Lewis as “the 20th century’s greatest Christian apologist”. In 2005, however, the magazine acknowledged certain aberrant beliefs of Lewis:

“Clive Staples (C.S.) Lewis was anything but a classic evangelical, socially or theologically. …. Though he shared basic Christian beliefs with evangelicals, he didn’t subscribe to biblical inerrancy or penal substitution. He believed in purgatory and baptismal regeneration. How did someone with such a checkered pedigree come to be a theological Elvis Presley, adored by evangelicals?”

This admission should have been sufficient to strike Lewis down as a heretic and false teacher, and his books relegated to the dustbin – as far as the church is concerned. His corrupt beliefs, however, are in general dismissed and downplayed. His influence remains as powerful as ever in the church and his books continue their dominance.

But it gets worse. Not only did Lewis subscribe to many unbiblical doctrines – which are explored later – he also promoted occultism.

The Occult/Witchcraft

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

In the first book of Lewis’s fantasy Narnia series, one of the main characters, Lucy, hides in a wardrobe while she is playing a game and suddenly finds herself transported to another world very unlike her own. It is a world of talking animals and mythical creatures – or rather, the spirit world of mystics and occultists.

The first creature she meets and befriends is a faun/satyr. In witchcraft and ancient Roman pagan mythology, a satyr is a drunken, lustful, woodland god which is half man, and half goat. (A satyr shared many characteristics of the Greek god Pan, who is understood in witchcraft to be Satan.) Satyrs were lovers of wine, music, dancing, and women; and they were characterised by profane and indecent humour. They were companions of the god Dionysus (see below). They often attempted to seduce or rape nymphs (female spirit entities that dwelt in the same regions as the satyrs) and mortal women. They are sometimes shown masturbating or engaging in bestiality.

With regard to the origin of the Narnia series, Lewis wrote:

“All my seven Narnian books . . . began with seeing pictures in my head. At first they were not a story, just pictures. The Lion all began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself: “Let’s try to make a story about it.” At first I had very little idea how the story would go. But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it. I think I had been having a good many dreams of lions about that time. Apart from that, I don’t know where the lion came from or why He came. But once He was there he pulled the whole story together, and soon He pulled the six other Narnian stories in after Him.”

(Of Other Worlds)

At sixteen, Lewis was an atheist, besotted with pagan myths and dabbling in the occult. It is extraordinary that a mental image remained with him for 24 years and then he commenced to write a fantasy novel initiated by that image. It begs the question: What source did Lewis receive his inspiration to write from? His description of how the thoughts came to him as the story appeared is identical to how mystics receive information from demonic spirits. Lewis admits, there was no original plan, intent or purpose as he set out to write:

“Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument; then . . . drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out “allegories” to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn’t write in that way at all. Everything began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn’t even anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord.”

(Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s To Be Said)

The Christian content, therefore, on Lewis’s own account was absorbed into a pagan realm of fantasy and myth. Lewis paganised Christianity and thereby corrupted the truth.

Prince Caspian

In a scene from book two of the Narnia series, Lewis expressly portrays witchcraft:

“The crowd and dance round Aslan (for it had become a dance once more) grew so thick and rapid that Lucy was confused. She never saw where certain other people came from who were soon capering among the trees. One was a youth, dressed only in a fawn skin, with vine leaves wreathed in his curly hair. His face would have been almost too pretty for a boy’s, if it had not looked so extremely wild. You felt, as Edmund said when he saw him a few days later, ‘There’s a chap who might do anything, absolutely anything.’ He seemed to have a great many names – Bromios, Bassareus, and the Ram were three of them. There were a lot of girls with him, as wild as he. There was even, unexpectedly, someone on a donkey. And everybody was laughing: and everyone was shouting out, ‘EUAN, EUAN, EU-oi-oi-oi.’”

Bromios, Bassareus, and the Ram are alternate names for Dionysus, the god of the grape-harvest, wine-making and wine, of fertility, drunken orgies, religious ecstasy and theatre, in ancient Greek religion and mythology. (Other alternative names include Bacchus or Bacchos, Sabazuis and Thrablipn.)

The words “EUAN, EUAN, EU-oi-oi-oi” are an actual ancient witches’ chant used to invoke the demonic power and presence of Bacchus (i.e. Dionysus).

Lewis continues the scene:

“Then the whole party moved off – Aslan leading. Bacchus and his Maenads leaping, rushing and turning somersaults, the beasts brushing round them, and Silenus and his donkey bringing up the rear … Then three or four Red Dwarfs came forward with their tinder boxes and set light to the pile, which first crackled, and then blazed, and finally roared as a woodland bonfire on midsummer night ought to do. And every-one sat down in a wide circle around it. Then Bacchus and Silenus and the Maenads began a dance, far wilder than the dance of the trees, not merely a dance for fun and beauty (though it was that too), but a magic dance of plenty, and where their hands touched, and where their feet fell, the feast came into existence. Sides of roasted meat that filled the grove with delicious smell, and wheaten cakes and oaten cakes…”

The scene is readily recognised in witchcraft, as a description of a witches’ summer solstice celebration (called a “sabbat”). The figures and details are very accurately described (though Lewis toned it down in disguise). The Maenads are female devotees or nymphs of Bacchus, who are driven into a demon-possessed frenzy in the orgiastic cult of Bacchus. In this state they were said to acquire supernatural abilities and experience the spirit world.

Silenus (or Seilenos) was the god of the dance of the wine-press. He was also the god of drunkenness who rode in the train of Dionysus seated on the back of a donkey.

After this scene, Lewis describes the group going down a hill into town where they happened upon a girls’ school. The girls were dressed in ugly tight collars, thick stockings and tight hair-dos. The teacher and class all fled in terror except for one girl. Aslan called her “sweetheart” and asked her to join his wild crowd, which she did. She was instantly dancing with the Maenads who helped her take off some of her unnecessary and uncomfortable clothes! Knowing full well who the Maenads were in Greek mythology, Lewis had to comprehend the implications for what he was promoting – a child being a participant in an occultic ritualistic sexual orgy. It is unconscionable and utterly reprehensible that a ‘Christian’ author would use such a representation, disguised under the cloak of a children’s fantasy story. Another contemptible association is also apparent in Lewis’s depiction of Aslan, who represents the Lord Jesus Christ, and he is the one merrily leading a satanic orgy of Bacchus! In so doing, Lewis unites Satan with God which is the ultimate blasphemy, and the sin against the Holy Spirit.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

In the third book in the Narnia series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, witchcraft is again portrayed in such a way as to make it good and acceptable. In Chapter 10 “The Magician’s Book”, on an island inhabited by invisible creatures called Dufflepuds, Lucy goes through a spell book in order to discover a spell to make the Dufflepuds visible. When she finds the right spell and says the words and follows the instructions, then the Dufflepuds and Aslan become visible; and Aslan is pleased with what she did.

The Narnia books are believed to portray an allegory of the Bible’s message, with (as mentioned earlier) Aslan representing Jesus and the children representing Christians. If you do this with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, then you portray Jesus as being pleased when Christians do magic and work spells. And you support the idea that that there are ‘good’ spells and ‘good’ magic.

Moreover, the Dufflepuds are ruled by a wizard. He uses magic to rule the Dufflepuds because they are not yet mature enough to be ruled directly by Aslan. So there is good magic and a good wizard. This magic prepares people for relationship with Aslan. Again, if Aslan is taken as a symbol for Jesus, then magic prepares people to become Christians. This is representative of Lewis’s fundamental belief that Christianity fulfils paganism; that Christianity is the mature or complete version of paganism.

Here are a number of statements from Lewis’s autobiography outlining this belief:

“Two things hitherto widely separated in my mind rushed together: the imaginative longing for Joy or rather the longing which was Joy, and the ravenous, quasi-prurient desire for the Occult.”

“The idea that if there were Occult knowledge it was known to very few and scorned by the many became an added attraction … That the means should be Magic … appealed to the rebel in me.”

“The question was no longer to find the one simply true religion among a thousand religions simply false. It was rather, ‘Where has religion reached its true maturity? Where, if anywhere, have the hints of all Paganism been fulfilled?’

“The intellect and the conscience, as well as the orgy and the ritual, must be our guide … Paganism had been only the childhood of religion. Where was the thing fully grown? … There were really only two answers possible: either in Hinduism or in Christianity.”

“But Hinduism seemed to have two disqualifications. For one thing, it appeared to be not so much a moralized and philosophical maturity of Paganism as a mere oil-and-water coexistence … with Paganism … And secondly, there was no such historical claim as in Christianity. I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myths. They had not the mythical taste.”

“And no person was like the Person (Christ) it depicted; as real … yet also numinous, lit by a light from beyond the world, a god … This is not ‘a religion,’ nor ‘a philosophy.’ It is the summing up and actuality of them all.”

This is complete nonsense and rank heresy. Historically, paganism has always been associated with mysticism, the occult and the rule of demonic entities. Pagan societies were identified by their devotion to spiritualism, their worship of idols, their fearful submission to shamans /witch-doctors and their belief in doctrines taught by demons. When pagan societies were offered the gospel of Jesus Christ and were converted, they always repented of their magic arts and shamans ceased their occult practices. It is just not possible for a true Christian to entertain any idea of paganism, even if it is “just a children’s fairy-tale”.

The Bible clearly forbids any form of witchcraft:

“ Let no one be found among you … who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD…”

Deuteronomy 18:10-12

Perelandra

Lewis used the Greek gods, Mars and Venus, as visible angelic deities on Planet Venus in his book, Perelandra, the second book in his Space Trilogy. Ransom, the main hero, was transported to that planet by some friendly “elvila” (angelic messengers visible only by the light they emanated).

On Planet Venus, Ransom befriends an innocent Eve and protects her from an earthly, demon-possessed tempter. The ensuing battle crushes the villain but bruises Ransom’s heel, which continues to bleed until the end of the story. (This is Lewis’s clever means of deception on display, as if this is representative of Genesis 3:15, and therefore, really the story is just a Christian allegory. Again, nothing could be further from the truth. It is all paganism with some Biblical concept thrown into the mix.)

That Hideous Strength

In the third book in the series, That Hideous Strength, Ransom must now stop a team of evil, totalitarian conspirators determined to rule the world through modern behaviour strategies and ancient magical powers. But stronger forces stand by Ransom. Having travelled to both Mars and Venus, he has continuing contact with the friendly elvila. Working with Ransom and Merlin (the same Druid magician featured in King Arthur tales), they summon the mighty powers of the planetary gods.

The first god to arrive is Mercury (called Hermes by the Greeks), the “messenger” god who works “Hermetic magic.” Lewis described the mind-altering power of the magic:

“The doubling, splitting, and recombining of thoughts which now went on in them would have been unendurable for one who was not already instructed in the counterpoint of the mind, the mastery of doubled and trebled vision … All fact was broken, splashed into cataracts, caught, turned inside out, kneaded, slain, and reborn as meaning. For the Lord of Meaning himself, the herald …. was with them …. whom men call Mercury [or Hermes].”

Moments later, Venus, the familiar goddess of love, arrives. Mars follows close behind:

“Suddenly a greater spirit came … Upstairs his mighty beam turned the Blue Room into a blaze of lights … Kingship and power and festal pomp and courtesy shot from him as sparks fly from an anvil … For this was great Glund-Oyarsa, King of Kings … known to men in old times as Jove [also called Jupiter by Romans, Zeus by the Greeks] … Then … Merlin received the power into him.”

The title “King of Kings” is that ascribed in the Bible to the Lord Jesus Christ (Revelation 17:14, 19:16). So again, by identifying Jesus with a Roman and a Greek god, Lewis mixes the holy with the profane – Christianity and Paganism.

In another scene from the book, an initiation rite into an inner ring of scientists who are occultists is depicted. They worship demons – huge, powerful and invisible beings – which are called “macrobes”:

“Here, here surely at last (so his desire whispered to him) was the true inner circle of all, the circle whose centre was outside the human race–the ultimate secret, the supreme power, the last initiation. The fact that it was almost completely horrible did not in the least diminish its attraction.”

Finally, reiterating an earlier quote of Lewis on the occult’s influence upon him:

“And that started in me something with which, on and off, I have had plenty of trouble since—the desire for the preternatural, simply as such, the passion for the Occult. Not everyone has this disease; those who have will know what I mean … It is a spiritual lust; and like the lust of the body it has the fatal power of making everything else in the world seem uninteresting while it lasts.”

He wrote this admission in his autobiography after all his fantasy books had been written. If Lewis struggled with an overwhelming addiction to the occult during his life, why would he seduce Christians into potentially the same predicament, by enticing Christians with the occult in his books?

(Note: There is much more of the occult to be found in Lewis’s books than what is explained here. For more information see https://revolutionforjesus.com/2016/06/09/lupus-occultus-the-paganised-christianity-of-c-s-lewis/)

Lewis’s False Beliefs

(1) Lewis believed that truth was to be found in paganism (i.e. he did not believe that the Bible was the sole authoritative source of truth) and that the essential pagan belief of pantheism was compatible with Christianity:

(Letter to Bede Griffiths)

(2) Lewis did not believe in Genesis as history, that it was a reconstructed pagan myth and that man was an animal:

“I have therefore no difficulty in accepting, say, the view of those scholars who tell us that the account of Creation in Genesis is derived from earlier Semitic stories which were Pagan and mythical …

We read in Genesis (2, 7) that God formed man of the dust and breathed life into him. For all the first writer knew of it, this passage might merely illustrate the survival, even in a truly creational story, of the Pagan inability to conceive true Creation, the savage, pictorial tendency to imagine God making things ‘out of’ something as the potter or the carpenter does.

Nevertheless, whether by lucky accident or (as I think) by God’s guidance, it embodies a profound principle. For on any view man is in one sense clearly made ‘out of’ something else. He is an animal; but an animal called to be, or raised to be, or (if you like) doomed to be, something more than an animal. On the ordinary biological view (what difficulties I have about evolution are not religious) one of the primates is changed so that he becomes man; but he remains still a primate and an animal. He is taken up into a new life without relinquishing the old.”

(Surprised by Joy)

(3) Lewis believed in ecumenism:

When Lewis composed the book Mere Christianity (from his radio lecture series) he sent parts of the text to ministers of the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church, Methodist and Presbyterian denominations to make sure his representation of ‘mere’ Christianity was one that they could all agree on. Christianity, wrote Lewis:

“… is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall I shall have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in.”

(Mere Christianity)

To this day, Protestant denominations and Catholics alike promote his books.

He is a favourite author amongst leaders in the emerging church, for example, Brian McLaren and Rob Bell. McLaren writes:

“…(Lewis’s) work has given me a lifetime of gifts. In his religious nonfiction like Mere Christianity and Miracles, he gave a sense of clarity and rational substance to my faith. In his religious fiction like The Last Battle and The Great Divorce, he reminded me that clarity doesn’t mean certainty about who’s in and who’s out. In his literary criticism like The Discarded Image, he showed that some essential postmodern sensibilities could emerge in a born-and-bred modernist, and in his poetry like A Footnote to All Prayers, he showed that even in a highly-ordered, analytical mind, there can be a mystical attic—or wardrobe. Every year or two, I go back and revisit a book by Lewis. Who knows what new treasures I’ll find next time?

(https://newsandpews.com/a-bad-first-date-with-c-s-lewis-by-brian-mclaren-author-of-naked-spirituality/)

Rob Bell in his book Love Wins which promotes Universalism, writes in the dedication:

“… to my parents, Rob and Helen, for suggesting when I was in high school that I read C.S. Lewis.”

See Emerging Church

And Lewis is “loved” by Mormons:

“C.S. Lewis was not a Mormon. But, Mormons love C.S. Lewis. We love to read his books … and we love to quote him. He’s one of the most oft-quoted non-Mormons by Mormons.”

(http://www.ldsliving.com/6-Reasons-Why-Mormons-Love-C-S-Lewis/s/74326)

See Summary of Mormon and Jehovah Witnesses Beliefs

(4) (As is necessary for ecumenism to succeed) Lewis discounted the central Christian truth of the significance and meaning of the cross of Christ:

“You can say that Christ died for our sins. You may say that the Father has forgiven us because Christ has done for us what we ought to have done. You may say that we are washed in the blood of the Lamb. You may say that Christ has defeated death. They are all true. If any of them do not appeal to you, leave it alone and get on with the formula that does. And, whatever you do, do not start quarrelling with other people because they use a different formula from yours.”

(Mere Christianity)

“The central Christian belief is that Christ’s death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start. Theories as to how it did this are another matter. … Any theories we build up as to how Christ’s death did all of this are, in my view, quite secondary…”

(Mere Christianity)

Contrary to Lewis’s claim, the New Testament labours to explain the meaning and significance of the cross, i.e. “the message of the cross”, in no uncertain terms. It does not present a malleable story of salvation. Nor does it permit alternate theories to flourish. The gospel is emphatic, clear and concise; certain knowledge that genuine faith is founded upon. However, it has always been attacked and maligned by wicked and deceitful philosophers outside the church, and distorted and changed by false prophets/teachers within. It is not “secondary” but the very heart of authentic Christianity:

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

1 Corinthians 1:18-19)

(5) Lewis believed in salvation outside of Christ (i.e. he was a qualified Universalist – you had to be a “Buddhist of good will” or a “good Pagan”!):

“But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. … There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. For example a Buddhist of good will may be led to concentrate more and more on the Buddhist teaching about mercy and to leave in the background (though he might still say he believed) the Buddhist teaching on certain points. Many of the good Pagans long before Christ’s birth may have been in this position.”

(Mere Christianity)

“I think that every prayer which is sincerely made even to a false god or to a very imperfectly conceived true God, is accepted by the true God and that Christ saves many who do not think they know Him.”

(Letters of C. S. Lewis)

(Note: As earlier explained, George MacDonald, who Lewis called his “master” and described him as a man “closer … to the Spirit of Christ Himself” than anyone else he knew, was a famed Universalist.)

(6) Lewis believed the Catholic doctrines of:

Purgatory

“I believe in Purgatory … The right view returns magnificently in Newman’s Dream. There if I remember rightly, the saved soul, at the very foot of the throne, begs to be taken away and cleansed. It cannot bear for a moment longer ‘with its darkness to affront that light’ … Our souls demand Purgatory, don’t they?”

(Letters to Malcolm)

Confession

Lewis confessed his sins regularly to a priest and was given the Catholic sacrament of last rites on July 16, 1963.

(Green and Hooper, C.S. Lewis: A Biography, 1974)

Baptismal regeneration and the Mass (i.e. Eucharist)

“There are three things that spread the Christ life to us: baptism, belief, and that mysterious action which different Christians call by different names – Holy Communion, the Mass, the Lord’s supper.”

(Mere Christianity)

Prayers for the dead:

“Of course I pray for the dead. The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter men. And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden.”

(Letters to Malcolm)

(7) Lewis believed in the “Tao”, the unbiblical concept found in Eastern thought that is the means to identify ‘truth’ (Tao is fundamental to Confucianism and Zen Buddhism):

“The Tao, which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgment of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or … ideologies … all consist of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they posses.”

(The Abolition of Man)

In accord with his essential belief that Christianity fulfilled (Western) paganism, Lewis asserted it was also true that Christianity fulfilled Eastern thought as well. He believed that every religion and philosophy contains universal ethics in line with the Tao. In Lewis’ thinking, God created the Tao and fully displayed it through the person of Jesus Christ. This is pure conjecture by Lewis and is a great deception. Truth is not found in the false religions of the world. Truth is only found in the Word of God. To unhitch truth from the Bible, as Lewis deceitfully does, is to make truth subject to human judgement. Either truth lies within us and is self-evident to all (the Tao), or there is no truth in us and the truth must be sought from a source external to us. The Bible emphatically presents the latter.

(8) Lewis believed that mysticism from whatever religious background, including Christianity, produced the same experience and knowledge of the spirit realm. And mysticism achieved, therefore, what he regarded as “the one true religion”:

“The following position is gaining ground and is extremely plausible. Mystics (it is said) starting from the most diverse religious premises all find the same things. These things have singularly little to do with the professed doctrines of any particular religion–Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Neo-Platonism, etc. Therefore, mysticism is, by empirical evidence, the only real contact Man has ever had with the unseen. The agreement of the explorers proves that they are all in touch with something objective. It is therefore the one true religion. And what we call the “religions” are either mere delusions or, at best, so many porches through which an entrance into transcendent reality can be effected—

And when he hath the kernel eate,

Who doth not throw away the shell?

I am doubtful about the premises. Did Plotinus and Lady Julian and St. John of the Cross really find “the same things”? But even admitting some similarity. One thing common to all mysticisms is the temporary shattering of our ordinary spatial and temporal consciousness and of our discursive intellect.”

(Letters to Malcolm)

Lewis believed that what mystics discovered in the unseen realm was to be received and accepted as valid and true. Lewis did not follow the Bible’s instruction that any such contact with the spirit realm was absolutely forbidden. Consequently, the information received by mystics (in particular George MacDonald), which are demonic lies and deceitful, became his personal fare and fodder for his books.

Following on the heels of the last quote, Lewis immediately points out the obvious question, that with such a high view of mysticism, why doesn’t he himself engage in it? To which he replies:

“You may wonder that my intense desire to peep behind the scenes has not led me to attempt the mystic way. But would it not be the worst of all possible motives? The saint may win “a mortal glimpse of death’s immortal rose”, but it is a by-product. He took ship simply in humble and selfless love.”

It is reasonable to suppose that Lewis would have never become an acclaimed apologist for ‘Christianity’ if he had crossed into mystical practices himself. That would have been a bridge too far. Nevertheless, he brought mysticism to the masses as an oracle for the mystics!

(9) Lewis believed in the legitimacy of contemplative prayer as practised by the ‘Christian’ or Catholic Mystics:

“… prayer without words is the best – if one can really achieve it … When I spoke of prayer without words I don’t think I meant anything so exalted as what mystics call the “prayer of silence”.”

(Letters to Malcolm)

See Contemplative Prayer

Lewis’s Conversion to Christianity

Lewis is one of the most celebrated atheists who converted to Christianity. When a careful examination is made of that experience, however, it is evident that he did not become a Christian in a true Biblical sense.

Lewis’s ‘conversion’ was prompted by a long talk he had in 1931 with two university colleagues, Hugo Dyson (a High-Church Anglican) and J.R.R. Tolken (a devout Roman Catholic and best known for his books The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy). They were able to persuade Lewis that all pagan myths contained some truth that were fulfilled in the one True Myth which was the ‘gospel account of Jesus Christ’. Christianity was the mythical story that actually happened.

Lewis wrote to his friend Arthur Greeves about that night.

“I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ – in Christianity. I will try to explain this another time. My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it.”

Nine days later, Lewis was travelling with his brother to Whipsnade Zoo. It was during this journey that his ‘conversion’ occurred:

“I know very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken. I was driven to Whipsnade zoo one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached to 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.

And it was, like that moment on top of the bus, ambiguous. Freedom, or necessity? Or do they differ at their maximum? At that maximum a man is what he does; there is nothing of him left over or outside the act. As for what we commonly call ‘Will,’ and what we commonly call ‘Emotion,’ I fancy these usually talk too loud, protest too much, to be quite believed, and we have a secret suspicion that the great passion or the iron resolution is partly a put-up job.”

This is an extraordinary account of a very unusual claim to a conversion experience. Lewis’s ‘conversion’ was mysterious, he himself even admitting that he didn’t know how it happened! It wasn’t a deliberate decision of his will, nor a leading of his emotions. What it was, as he became aware, was a final mental assent to the reality that ‘Jesus Christ is the Son of God’. This is not conversion, but rather mere persuasion, of a very strange type. What is missing from his conversion story entirely are the essential elements of a genuine conversion experience: godly sorrow for sin; repentance from sin and contrition of heart; and the moment of awareness of being born again, of the sense of the forgiveness of sin, of the weight of guilt lifted and becoming alive to God as He is now near and no longer distant. Lewis had been persuaded to accept the person of ‘Jesus Christ’ as prescribed by Dyson and Tolkien – the ‘Jesus’ that fulfilled pagan myth. This is a ‘Jesus’ Lewis could believe in, but it is not the true Jesus. Lewis was led to accept a false Jesus and, given his attachment to mythology and the occult, his experience on the trip to the Whipsnade zoo is best described as his acquiescence to a doctrine of demons; he had of his own volition bound himself to “follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons” (1 Timothy 4:1).
.

It must be concluded therefore that Lewis was never a genuine Christian. And this well explains why his beliefs and teachings were antithetical to Biblical truth. He remained in the dark and blind to the light of the Truth. Moreover, that his broadly accepted influence in the church has directly led to a general falling away from the Truth. Demon-inspired deceivers hide the truth from view; they weave a cloak of darkness by their fine-sounding arguments that surround the light of the truth around and about. And “If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit” (Matthew 15:14).

In this regard, consider what Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity on repentance and being born again:

Repentance:

“In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor-that is the only way out of a “hole.” This process of surrender-this movement full speed astern – is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person-and he would not need it. Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back.

This is confused rhetoric. Some truth twisted and distorted such that its meaning is lost. He blatantly overturns Biblical truth by stating “it needs a good man to repent”. The Bible states “none are good” (Psalm 53:3, Mark 10:18); that is why we need to repent, in order to be made good (Acts 3:19, Galatians 5:19-24, Ephesians 2:1-5). Lewis doesn’t mention sin even once in the context of repentance; no Bible quotations, nor any discussion from Biblical authority. Also, his “wrong track” is a misleading concept, it could be interpreted without any reference to sin at all. And, Lewis should have juxtaposed the forgiveness of God with repentance but doesn’t (he makes only one cursory comment elsewhere: “Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness.” – this of course could be interpreted as Catholic absolution and not Biblical forgiveness.) It is paramount to understand that genuine repentance from sin, bound in together with God’s forgiveness, is the absolute bedrock to becoming a Christian and foundational to explaining what “mere” Christianity truly is (cf. Acts 20:21, 26:19-20).

(For Lewis to have become a real Christian he would necessarily have had to repent of his attraction to, and belief in, paganism, mysticism and the occult. He would have had to confine his thinking to fall within the bounds of the Bible alone. These are elements that would have attested to a genuine conversion but, sadly, never occurred his whole life long.)

Being born again:

“…now we begin to see what it is that the New Testament is always talking about. It talks about Christians “being born again“; it talks about them “putting on Christ”; about Christ “being formed in us”; about our coming to “have the mind of Christ.” Put right out of your head the idea that these are only fancy ways of saying that Christians are to read what Christ said and try to carry it out – as a man may read what Plato or Marx said and try to carry it out. They mean something much more than that. They mean that a real Person, Christ, here and now, in that very room where you are saying your prayers, is doing things to you. It is not a question of a good man who died two thousand years ago. It is a living Man, still as much a man as you, and still as much God as He was when He created the world, really coming and interfering with your very self; killing the old natural self in you and replacing it with the kind of self He has. At first, only for moments. Then for longer periods. Finally, if all goes well, turning you permanently into a different sort of thing; into a new little Christ, a being which, in its own small way, has the same kind of life as God; which shares in His power, joy, knowledge and eternity.”

Lewis confuses the moment of conversion when a person is spiritually born again, with the process of sanctification i.e. “being transformed by the renewing of the mind” (Romans 12:2). And his description of “a new little Christ” is not a Biblical concept. It is not a term the Bible would use or could use. It is tantamount to deifying a person and. therefore, a blasphemous statement. The true Biblical understanding is that Christ dwells in the believer in union but always remains a separate entity – we don’t become a “little Christ”. Lewis has Christ in the “very room where you are saying your prayers” and “being formed in us” but never coming to dwell within a believer when a person is born again. Lewis fails to perceive “the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you …” (Colossians 1:27). Again, a fundamental truth that is necessary to understand “mere” Christianity. Moreover, to say we have “the same kind of life as God which shares in His power … (and) … knowledge” is a statement in accord with the essential pagan belief of pantheism; and, once again from a true Biblical position, it is blasphemy and rank heresy.

(Lewis was never born again. He never displayed a change of heart nor of lifestyle.)

“For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”

2 Timothy 4:3-4