Yeah, I know. Blah.
As Anglophilic as I can be, I NEVER got into C.S. Lewis’ apologetics.
He was just too donnish and cerebral to have anything to say to me.
And as it turns out, he was very very odd.
As for Screwtape, all I could think of while trying to read it was, “Wow, England is a grimy, grotty shithole. This dude should move.”‘
Below, Michael Coren contends that Lewis has converted millions to Christianity, but I think he mostly props up believers and, quite possibly, has turned a large number of folks away from religion.
I’ve cited this TLS piece before, but:
Another strategy Lewis favoured was the argument from desire. From time to time, he revealed, he experienced a sense of joy, which was a feeling of unsatisfied longing, though more pleasurable than the satisfaction of any other desire. These experiences, he maintained, revealed a need that could only be met through God. “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” One might, alternatively, question whether the desire was a rational one, or indeed whether the sensation could fairly be described as a desire at all.
To draw a parallel, it would be strange to argue that if an eighty-year-old man wishes he was forty years younger, he must be made for another world in which he actually is forty years younger.
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