C.S. Lewis’s Ultimate Questions
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Theology
April 2nd, 2013
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C.S. Lewis’s Ultimate Questions
A gentleman by the name of Owen Barfield, who was life-long friend and ultimately the literary executor for C.S. Lewis, suggested that there was not only one C.S. Lewis, but three “C.S. Lewises.” Of course, Mr. Barfield was not being literal in his statement. He was simply implying that there were three different vocations that encompassed Lewis in his lifetime, all of which were successful. First, there was the Lewis who was an accomplished Oxford literary critic. Next, was the acclaimed author of children’s literature and science fiction. Finally was the Lewis that was a popular writer and the broadcaster of Christian faith. The most intriguing thing about these three “different” Lewises, Mr. Barfield states, is that the people that knew Lewis as one of these three figures probable did not know that he was involved with the other two. Mr. Lewis, in his extremely successful career, managed to establish an impeccable reputation as a novelist, scholar, and a theologian for three different audiences. His book “Surprised by Joy, which was written only seven years before his death, Lewis shows us all “three Lewises.”
Surprised by Joy is pretty much the only testament to where Lewis puts himself in the limelight and speaks directly about his personal life. Since Lewis’s death, the attention to his private life by critics has been astonishing, yet Surprised by Joy stands on its own as a very candid, yet self-effacing book by one of the most widely regarded Christian apologists of the twentieth century. In Surprised by Joy, Lewis shows reluctance to reveal to us specific details about his life, but ultimately relents, as he explains in the preface to the book. He sets out to answer “requests that I would tell how I passed from Atheism to Christianity” as well as “to correct one or two false notions that seem to have got about.”
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