Posted on 11/22/2013 8:09:56 AM PST by rhema
He went quietly. It was very British. While the world’s attention turned to Dallas and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, one Clive Staples Lewis breathed his last in Oxford just a week shy of his 65th birthday. Strangely enough, science-fictionist Aldous Huxley passed the same day. In one calendar square, three of the 20th century’s most influential figures were gone.
It was Nov. 22, 1963.
C.S. Lewis is known best for his series of seven short fiction books, the “Chronicles of Narnia,” which have sold more than 100 million copies in 40 languages. With three of the stories already made into major motion pictures, and the fourth in the making, Lewis is as popular today as he’s ever been.
But even before publishing “Narnia” in early 1950s, he had distinguished himself as a professor at Oxford and Cambridge, the world’s foremost expert in Medieval and Renaissance English literature, and as one of the great lay thinkers and writers in two millennia of the Christian church.
Lewis was born in Belfast in 1898. He became an atheist in his teens, and a strident one in his 20s, before slowly warming to theism in his early 30s, and finally being fully converted to Christianity at age 33. And he would prove to be for many, as he was for his friend Owen Barfield, the “most thoroughly converted man I have ever known.”
What catches the eye about Lewis among Christian thinkers is his utter commitment to both the life of the mind and the life of the heart. He both thinks and feels with the best. Lewis insisted that rigorous thought and deep affections were not at odds, but mutually supportive.
What eventually led Lewis to theism, and finally to Christianity, was “Longing”
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
Much more notable. Lewis’ writing have had a profound impact for the good on many millions of souls. “Mere Christianity’ is beautiful and convincing in it’s sincerty and simpliicity.
He was a great man!
CS Lewis led more souls to Christ through the wood of the wardrobe than JFK ever did.
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
- C. S. Lewis
About 30 years ago, Peter Kreeft wrote a marvelous book called “Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis & Aldous Huxley.” It posits Kennedy as a representative of Secular Humanism, Huxley as a representative of Eastern Mysticism, and Lewis as the spokesman for classical Christianity. The book is a post-death dialog between the three of them as they await whatever comes next. It is very interesting, fair, and non-polemical.
I especially liked the Screwtape Letters.
I knew this but thanks for thinking of posting it. C. S. Lewis was and is the greatest Christian apologist of all time. I particularly enjoyed his book titled “The Great Divorce.” I particularly want to tell you about it, but I do not want to spoil that wonderful book for anyone that hasn’t read it yet.
I will just say he was so much more than just a children’s books author. Yet even in those he could have something profound to share.
Ironically, of the three JFK was the least significant.
Lewis influence is obvious; Huxley’s Brave New World is ominously prophetic of the cultural morass of current America.
My favorite,
‘Till We Have Faces
In an event little noted nor long remembered by the vast majority of Americans, another notable death in November 1963 was the assassination of South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem, the First Elected President of that nation, and a Roman Catholic. This military coup and conspiracy had been financially aided and abetted by the USA. Less than 3 weeks later, our chickens came home to roost with the assassination of JFK.
Perelandra trilogy is a good read.
Another striking thought, ". . . and finally being fully converted to Christianity at age 33."
The "age 33"!
Did not the Savior of the world complete his earthly mission at the "age 33"?
Perhaps American youth today need a reminder of such things.
In America, it might be remembered, Thomas Jefferson, the Author its Declaration of Independence, was "age 33" when he wrote that world-changing statement summarizing the underlying philosophy of liberty for a new nation--a declaration that the life, rights and liberties of individuals come from the Creator.
"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them." - Thomas Jefferson
In the Year 1859, responding to an invitation celebrating the birthday of Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln summarized his sentiments of what he called "the principles of Jefferson," in these words:
"All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression." - Abraham Lincoln, April 6, 1859, Letter to Messrs. Henry L. Pierce & Others
To return to the memory of C. S. Lewis, on a related note, Lewis's search led him to this bit of wisdom also:
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C. S. Lewis
Where in America, in the Year 2013, is the 20- or 30-something whose "longing" for freedom and searching for truth may bring him/her to rediscover, resurrect and lead his/her fellows in asserting that "abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times" which will be the "stumbling-block to the . . . re-appearing tyranny and oppression" of our time?
CS Lewis is by far the more significant loss. I cant wait to meet him in eternity, he is one of my favorite authors. I recommend Mere Christianity to any of my friends that are too intellectual or sophisticated to give Christianity a look.....
Can you imagine the conversations between Lewis and Tolkien?
And the person most responsible for converting C. S. Lewis to become a devout Christian was another noted Oxford professor named John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.
Perelandra is not the trilogy; it is the second book in the Space Trilogy.
Correct. I just call it that.
This is a very nicely written op-ed. Good to see it in the Star-Trib.
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