“Death creates an economy that makes life precious. One of the ways of naming that preciousness is friendship.”
Stanley Hauerwas


C.S. Lewis and the hound of heaven

Page 2 of 2

Greeves’s unsatisfactory apologetic manoeuvres towards Lewis (most of which we don’t have, since Lewis didn’t keep his letters), seem to have goaded Lewis into greater consideration of Christian doctrine, but these ruminations do not appear in the early letters, and there is very little correspondence concerning his conversion to theism at Magdalen College in 1929. Most correspondence up until this point concerns matters of friendship and reading. One fascinating exception is Lewis’s admission to Greeves late in 1929 that he is finding 'more and more the element of truth in the old beliefs…even their dreadful side' (VI, p.850).

Lewis’s conversion to theism is certainly less remarked upon by him than his tortuous path towards belief in the divinity and lordship of Jesus Christ. In 1930, he is still writing to Greeves that, ‘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 great deal’ (VI, p.862).

But precious moments of spiritual awakening emerge as the correspondence continues, such as Lewis’s remark in 1930: ‘Terrible things are happening to me. The “Spirit” or “Real I” is showing an alarming tendency to become much more personal and is taking the offensive, and behaving just like God.’ (VI, p.882). Something is slouching towards Bethlehem in Lewis’s mind’s eye! Furthermore, Lewis is awkwardly aware that he is not entirely in control of what is going on: ‘I can’t express the change better than by saying that whereas 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—that I’m playing poker, not Patience, as I once supposed.’ (VI, p.887).		  
  Lewis … used letter-writing to explore deeper and more serious connections between people than they would usually establish across the table
  

The key letter to Greeves describing Lewis’s conversion to Christianity is dated 18th October, 1931, although his belief in Christ had been mentioned briefly in a few letters already. In this significant record, Lewis outlines how his friends Tolkien and Dyson had explained to him the meaning of sacrifice and propitiation as they strode Addison’s Walk behind Magdalen College at 3am. He describes the death and resurrection of Jesus as ‘true myth’, ‘a myth working in us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened’ True to his endlessly inquisitive and restless mind, Lewis concludes the letter by saying ‘I am also nearly certain that it really happened.’ (VI, p.976-7).

I always feel a little queasy reading the personal letters of famous people. The collection’s editor, Walter Hooper, justifies his project in the Foreword by recalling with what care Lewis and his brother Warnie preserved their own father’s correspondence. Yet it still seems unfair that private words are publicly displayed, as we readers presume some right to friendship and intimacy that we never earned. And yet, it is often in the letters when the real character, the genuine concerns, and the reasons for which the person has gained such prominence are revealed. Despite the fact that Lewis thought written letters were often more grandiose and unrealistic than conversation (VI, p.91), he nevertheless used letter-writing to explore deeper and more serious connections between people than they would usually establish across the table. The letters reveal a bruised and open heart that was thoroughly and painfully explored by the God Lewis came, reluctantly, to believe in.

The Collected Letters of C.S.Lewis in three volumes:
Volume I: Family Letters (1905-1931). Ed. Walter Hooper. HarperSanFrancisco, NY, 2004.
Volume 2: Books, Broadcasts, and the War (1931-1949). Ed. Walter Hooper. HarperSanFrancisco, NY, 2004.
Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy (1950-1963). HarperSanFrancisco, NY, 2007.


Greg Clarke is Director of the Centre for Public Christianity

1 | 2

Bookmark and Share

31-May-2009 03:31 AM Barbara Veech 5 out of 5 stars
No feedback was left by this visitor.

Comment


No Very





Captcha
•