Quotes and Excerpts

Excerpts from

C. S. Lewis

Who He Was & What He Wrote
 

by Tony Zakula

Keepers of the Faith, December 2005

(Emphasis added throughout)


C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) was a college professor... an atheist, who converted to theism, and later professed Christianity. His most notable work, for which he has won much acclaim, is Mere Christianity. The author basically describes the book’s intent as an effort to set forth the fundamentals that form the basis of Christianity, excluding all doctrines and opinions that are not integral to Christianity (or, at least his definition of Christianity), thus, the name Mere Christianity. The exclusion of all such doctrines allows for the inclusion of all faiths....

Mere Christianity is basically a treatise on the rightness and wholesomeness of behavior of the individual as prescribed by Christian precepts. Mere Christianity continually instructs us that our thinking processes about our behavior are either becoming good or becoming evil, and that a creature with good thinking processes will go to heaven, and one with evil thinking processes will go to hell. It is stunningly logical, and keenly accurate and intuitive into proper behavior and improper behavior, man’s sinful reasons for improper behavior, and the logical reasons for proper Christian behavior. However, Christian behavior is not the point of Christianity. Absolute faith in, and a personal relationship with, Jesus Christ are the point....

Lewis appears to be the modern-day precursor of the current wave of Christian philosophers and psychologists who mention Christ but exalt Christian behavior. The effect of the teachings of this persuasion is to unite people under a belief system of Christian behavior patterns. It is to draw them to large groups or churches that help reinforce such behavior patterns, in the name of Christ.... Such persuasions also stress the importance of spreading Christian behavior patterns through activism, legislation and other means, propounding the idea that “we are all in this together and we are all the same.” However, we are not all the same....

Lewis’s claim that doctrines are immaterial is an age-old ploy used to unite people under a “good, Christian” set of behaviors. The same purpose is shared by those who wish to combine all “Christian” faiths in efforts to combat sociological ills. The next step, which we already see taking place, is to unite them as one large religion or one large group that is far more controllable than many individual, dissimilar groups.

In this country, the behaviorists have combined efforts to merge everyone who uses the name “Christian” into one mass by forming popular movements which stress love, unity, and brotherhood. They also stress the world’s “desperate need” for such unity over the truth of Scripture....

Behavioral psychology is powerful, especially when intertwined with the term “Christianity”.... Lewis cites many behavioral truths, but they do not equate to being redeemed. They simply equate to natural laws of behavior. ...


Again from The Inklings Handbook—“The earliest hints of Narnia come very early in CSL’s life, long before he became a Christian; the common assumption that he wrote the whole series as an extended allegory of the Christian faith, with a strong evangelistic motive, is one that CSL always denied and which is not borne out by the facts.”

So, who are we to believe—scholars who wish to justify their untenable positions favoring exploration into occultism, or the author himself? ... Lewis knew that the work was no where near parallel to sound theology, and he knew that in that day people were not so willing to accept such surreal imaginations as “Christian.” He knew that it was much too early to present his New Age, miracle-working animals as actual doctrine, such as they are being hailed today. Aslan and Tash are obvious New Age manifestations, even without being placed within any context of religion.

Aslan is not a Christ as the authors of The Inklings Handbook would too eagerly suggest. He is a hermaphrodite image—an intangible copy—designed to capture hearts and minds—the hearts that God says He wants to be captured only by Himself....

Is this business about allegories really good counsel? It comes from the right sources and movements. These people are pro-life. They are conservatives. They are in the “Christian government” movements. However, here is what Screwtape says. “Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours—and the more ‘religious’ (on those terms) the more securely ours...."

It is truly baffling that any real Christian should think that Lewis was a Christian. It seems that most have only heard the advertising rhetoric, but few have taken the time to read the works that expose his personal views or biographical works chronicling his habits. Lewis did not consider all of the Bible the inerrant Word of God (Reflections on the Psalms). He did not believe that faith in Jesus Christ was all that was necessary for salvation (Screwtape Letters). He believed that one could lose one’s faith in a moment through commission of a mortal sin (Screwtape Letters). He believed in Limbo as a place (neither heaven nor hell) of temporary punishment (Screwtape Letters). He believed that church sacraments are part of salvation (Mere Christianity, Screwtape Letters). He believed that pagans may belong to Christ without knowing it (Mere Christianity). He had a participating interest in the occult (The Inklings Handbook). And, regardless of his reputation and his “great swelling words,” his outlook on death was not that of a Christian. This from C. S. Lewis, A Biography: “Like many (most?) religious people, Lewis was profoundly afraid of death. His dread of it, when in the midst of life, had been almost pathological and obsessive. Physical extinction was a perpetual nightmare to him and, whatever his theological convictions and hopes, he was unable, before his wife’s death, to reconcile himself to the transition which death must inevitably entail.”

The idea of Lewis as a “great Christian mind” has been thoroughly impressed upon so many for so long that he has become a very real “angel of light.” It was Hitler who said, “If you tell a lie often enough and long enough, the people will believe it.” So, now that we know what The Chronicles of Narnia is not (a Christian allegory), what is it? The concept of God’s enemies going to heaven is not theologically sound, and is by no means Christian. It is theosophical. Theology is the study of relating to God. Theosophy is the study of relating to God’s opposite or archenemy. The Chronicles is full of theosophical beliefs. The idea that God’s enemies go to heaven is a distinct theosophical tenet. This only makes sense. Those who serve and worship the devil do not expect to spend eternity in hellfire and brimstone for doing so.

Most theosophy is thrust upon the world today as its opposite—theology. The reason is obvious. Most people would not accept it for what is at face value, but disguised as religion, church, faith, etc, it is readily acceptable to those who have less care for being discerning. The American Theosophical Society met in 1901 to discuss how to plan and implement the goal of propagating theosophy throughout this nation and the world. The conclusion drafted at that convention stated that such propagation was only possible through the churches—that theosophical values must be disguised as Christian or religious to be accepted popularly. So what are we being taught by these scholars that tell us that all this theosophy is actually Christian?

And what about Lewis? Are we still not ready to believe his connection to the occult? Why? It is public fact. The following excerpt from a letter to a religious magazine.

“Kudos to Roberta green for deftly summarizing the trouble with Harry Potter. C. S. Lewis himself experienced the dangers of “crossing the line” into obsession with the occult. In Surprised by Joy, he writes that, partly because of a school matron who dabbled in the occult, “for the first time, there burst upon me the idea that there might be real marvels all about us, that the visible world might be only a curtain to conceal huge realms uncharted by my very simple theology. And that started in me something with which, on and off, I have had plenty of trouble since—the desire for the preternatural, simply as such the passion for the Occult. ... It is a spiritual lust; and like the lust of the body it has the fatal power of making everything else in the world seem uninteresting while it lasts.”

Some children will read Harry Potter and never struggle with such a lust; but for others, it will open the door for a maleficent obsession. ...
 


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