C. S. Lewis

Literary Scholar, Christian Apologist, and Author

1898–1963
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Clive Staples Lewis was a British literary scholar, novelist, essayist, and Christian apologist whose writings brought Christian theology into conversation with reason, imagination, literature, and ordinary human experience. Best known for Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and The Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis became one of the most widely read Christian authors of the twentieth century.

Lewis was born on November 29, 1898, in Belfast, Ireland, which was then part of the United Kingdom. As a child he loved books, mythology, and imaginary worlds. His mother died of cancer when he was nine, an experience that deeply affected him. He was educated at several schools in England and later studied privately under William T. Kirkpatrick, whose rigorous training strengthened Lewis’s powers of logic and argument.

In 1917 Lewis entered University College, Oxford, but his studies were interrupted by military service during the First World War. He served as an officer in France and was wounded in battle. After returning to Oxford, he achieved exceptional academic results in classical literature, philosophy, history, and English. He later taught English literature at Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1954, and then held a chair in medieval and Renaissance literature at Cambridge University until shortly before his death. (Oxford C.S.Lewis Society)

Although raised in a Christian environment, Lewis became an atheist in his youth. During the 1920s, however, conversations with Christian friends, philosophical reflection, and his growing conviction that reason and moral experience pointed beyond materialism gradually changed his outlook. He first came to believe in God and later embraced Christianity. His friends J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson played important roles in helping him understand how myth, imagination, and historical truth could come together in the gospel.

Lewis became known as a defender of what he called “mere Christianity”: the central beliefs shared by Christians across denominational boundaries. During the Second World War, he delivered a series of radio talks explaining basic Christian teaching to a broad audience. These talks were later revised and collected as Mere Christianity. Lewis argued that the moral law, human longing, reason, conscience, and the person of Jesus Christ all point toward the truth of Christianity.

His apologetic works also include The Problem of Pain, Miracles, and The Abolition of Man. The Screwtape Letterspresents Christian temptation and spiritual warfare through the imagined correspondence of a senior demon. The Great Divorce explores heaven, hell, freedom, and the human refusal of grace. Lewis’s seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia uses fantasy, adventure, and symbolism to present themes of creation, sacrifice, resurrection, judgment, courage, and redemption. He wrote more than thirty books, reaching readers far beyond academic theology. (HarperCollins)

Lewis was also part of the informal Oxford literary group known as the Inklings, whose members included Tolkien and Charles Williams. They met regularly to discuss literature and read works in progress.

In 1956 Lewis married the American writer Joy Davidman. Her illness and death from cancer in 1960 brought him profound grief, which he explored with painful honesty in A Grief Observed. Lewis died on November 22, 1963.

As a conversation partner, Lewis helps Christians communicate biblical truth through reason, analogy, story, and imagination. He was not a professional biblical scholar or systematic theologian, and some of his arguments and doctrinal formulations remain debated. Nevertheless, his ability to make difficult Christian ideas understandable continues to serve readers seeking to connect faith with moral experience, suffering, beauty, and human longing.

Lewis reminds the church that Christian truth is not merely a collection of propositions. It addresses the whole person—mind, conscience, imagination, affections, and will. His work should be appreciated without being treated as infallible and tested, like every human interpretation, by Scripture.

“Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.”
—1 Peter 3:15