Well I finished reading C.S. Lewis A life by Alister McGrath.
I just want to write my thoughts here.
some of my questions were answered eg where he got the 'lion' from was a book he read by a friend called charles Williams called 'the place of the lion' which was a fantasy novel. The bio didn't give any details of what this book was actually about.
CS. Lewis then made the lion to be the Christ-like figure, but also it said he could have got the idea from the lion door knobs of his childhood church. The lion of Judah of course is the one prevailing to open the scroll, but he fails because only the lamb is worthy to open it. Aslan is turkish for 'lion'.
What struck me is the lack of reference to the Bible in all of C.S. Lewis work, like he never really quotes from it directly. If he did he would have known about the imagery of the lamb and how the lion directly opposes the lamb, even eats the lamb, but yea.
That puzzled me, but as he's a writer he can make christ like figures of whatever he wants, I just thought it was unusual that he would choose a lion, considering the fact that the lion is really described in the bible as like the devil prowling around in the new testament.
Another thing that the bio said about him was he had a double life, with his landlady Mrs Moore, as some sort of complex relationship with her that was never explicit, although it was said he was into Marquis de Sade?! One of his best friends, Greeves was homosexual, and when Lewis got married to an american divorcee, what happened was he didn't even tell his best friend, and he had to do it outside of the church, in a civil ceremony. The bio said that Joy basically seduced Lewis and he was a willing victim. It was a marriage of convenience. When she became his wife, she basically inherited his place along with his stepsons.
Then his brother became an alcoholic, and he didn't have a very good relationship with his dad, his mother died when he was young. And he never really went back to Ireland. Being brought up protestant in Ireland meant he never got the catholicism and was basically not considered irish.
I wanted to know a bit more about his faith and how it worked in his life apart from his intellectual mind and writings, but the book never really said anything about that. So I'm still a bit clueless. He didn't do things like start reading the Bible, or minister to the poor or sick or anything like that. He did write childrens books - Narnia, but he never had any children, which is a bit unusual. But then the biographer said he didn't know C.S. Lewis personally. So maybe he just didn't know. He was called 'the apostle to the skeptics' so maybe that was his big thing, to change some of the most hardened minds and point them to God, but I was hoping that more would have followed, as the first commandment says to love the Lord your God with all your mind, all your heart and all your strength..I thought that, with Lewis, it was all his mind...but not sure about the rest.
Lewis did many things wrong before his conversion. Do we hold it against him that he was a sinner before finding Christ? Really? Are we that petty?
A few points I would make:
He signed some letters as Philomastix or Lover of the Whip as a student, but this was a long time before his conversion. Lewis always says he is a sinner in his works, and always says he is not a paragon of virtue. This was just part of his Cross to bear.
Likewise his relationship to Mrs Moore. A lot is written on it today, but Lewis never says anything happened, nor did contemporaries. It is more a post-mortem decision that he had, key word
had, some sort of relationship with her as a student. He just stayed with her thereafter, and as he had promised to look after her to his friend in the war, her deceased son, this is actually laudable. (it is similar to the modern idea that Lewis Carroll was a paedophile, with no evidence whatsoever beyond conjecture)
Maybe something happened, maybe it didn't, but it isn't our place to luridly explore the sins of people before they became Christian in the first place.
Lewis and his brother both had a strained relationship with his father, as do many sincere Christians. Again this is of no relevance beyond feeling sad for them.
He married Joy in a civil ceremony, but then later had a Christian marriage performed, so I don't understand the relevance. This was on account of Anglican practice towards divorcees at the time. Also, Joy's sons didn't inherit Lewis's property as that all went to his 'sister', as had been contractually agreed upon when he bought his house. Joy's sons just became his literary executors.
Arthur Greeves was a Homosexual. Lewis explicitly repudiated homosexuality, but remained good friends with the man, who by the way was also a Christian. We can actually learn a lesson from him on not rejecting people, for hating the sin and not the sinner.
As to the Lion versus Lamb, this has been explained ad nauseam.
Lewis only became well-known due to his radio addresses during the War in Britain (which became Mere Christianity) and thereafter thanks to Screwtape Letters in America. He entered public consciousness as a Christian Apologist, not as a writer of fiction or anything. The fact that other fiction writers declared themselves Christian is irrelevant. He became famous for describing Christianity, not for some other reason. He wrote Narnia etc. thereafter.
If you read Mere Christianity, he states explicitly that it is only to enter the Hall of Christianity, but that the rooms of specific churches are where the true fellowship lies. Mere Christianity was explicitly not written as a substitute for any denomination, but an introduction to Christianity from where you are to seek your Church. As to using Anglican terminology, he was an Anglican. What do you expect? But he submitted it to multiple denominations who all agreed with what he had wrote, so it does not have an Anglican bias at all, merely a Christian one.
