Lewis to Joyce Pearce in Collected Letters Volume 2, July 20, 1943: It is to me inconceivable that Nature as we see it is either what God intended or merely evil: it looks like a good thing spoiled. The doctrine of the Fall… is the only satisfactory explanation. Evil begins, …
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C. S. Lewis opens chapter four of his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, with this statement: “In January, 1911, just turned thirteen, I set out with my brother to Wyvern, he for the College and I for a preparatory school …” (56). However, since we know Lewis was born on November …
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“I would willingly do all in my power to secure for Tolkien’s great book the recognition it deserves,” Lewis writes to Sir Stanley Unwin on Dec. 4, 1953, regarding The Fellowship of the Ring. Lewis then enclosed the following endorsement: It would be almost safe to say that no book …
Read MoreC.S. Lewis turns 114 today. He had some things to say about growing old. On one occasion in his letters, he cites Dante and his description of the lost souls as looking entirely to their past, what they did and didn’t do, while the redeemed weren’t concerned about what went …
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Sister Penelope, a winsome, lifelong correspondent of C. S. Lewis, had written to him about the provenance of his first space travel adventure, Out of the Silent Planet, a volume remarkably full of theological insight. He replied whimsically: “Any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people’s minds under …
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Angels and devils are creatures of myth in the broadest sense, but they are also part of the true myth that is Christianity. Of devils, Lewis said that there are two equally serious errors: disbelief in them and an “excessive and unhealthy interest in them” (Preface to The Screwtape Letters). …
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An Introduction is a signpost – pointing not to itself but to the pages that follow. While “On the Reading of Old Books” is usually reprinted (and presented) as a stand-alone essay by Lewis, it is actually the introduction to a book written by someone else: “The Incarnation of the …
Read MoreWhen the third volume of C.S. Lewis’s Collected Letters came out in 2006, it did not receive nearly the attention it deserved. Its publication, however, marked the summit of assembling and editing which Walter Hooper almost single-handedly accomplished in the space of eight years. But where were the mainstream reviews …
Read MoreC. S. Lewis was deeply interested in heaven. In his nonfiction prose he frequently discussed the nature of heaven (and, less frequently, the nature of hell) and explained how to take part in it. In his works of fiction he created several striking descriptions of what heaven (and, in less …
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In 1941 a former student of C. S. Lewis, then in her thirties, asked Lewis if he would become her confessor and spiritual director. Lewis politely declined, feeling that he didn’t have the proper credentials for the job (Letters, 2, 481). Yet he continued to write her letters of candid …
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