Charges Against C. S. Lewis

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: On CSL and Mike Schmitz · New blog on the kid: Did C. S. Lewis Publically Attack Catholicism? · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Charges Against C. S. Lewis

Found a meme on FB, an Evangelical attacking C. S. Lewis about doctrinal matters:

Some of the charges are true, and in some cases, they are charges against Catholicism and so against me too.

Purgatory is a real place ... he insisted it didn't include flames, though, despite 1 Cor 3:15. I wish he had been more into this. And less into excusing the Reformation by blaming the "flame imagery".

Catholic sacraments are necessary ... again, I wish he had been more into this. He did not explicitate what exact view he held of the Eucharist, but felt some need to excuse the Reformation by taking a distance from Real Presence and Transsubstantiation.

Anglicans and under their influence by now also Lutherans do have seven sacraments, but recognise only some of them as "Gospel sacraments" ... C. S. Lewis confessed regularly, but unfortunately to a priest who had no actual power to absolve him.

Some of the charges are true, and I take a distance.

The Bible is not inspired or inerrant ... he actually believed the Bible inspired but not everywhere inerrant, especially on topics outside doctrinal or moral core doctrine. To him it was good enough if the Bible conveyed truth, even if on some issues it didn't convey literal fact.

Evolution is true ... this to the amount that he didn't believe in a literal Adam. Lots of Church of England didn't already before he returned to it. There is some indication in late essays he was maybe reconsidering this, but in two works of the 1940's, this was very unfortunately the case. In Miracles, it matters less, he enumerates Evolution among the truths that only quasi transcendent claims of reason could reveal with certainty to us. In Problem of Pain, it matters more, he gives a whole chapter on what happened instead of the actual story in Genesis 3.

The Bible is not literal ... more like diversly literal or otherwise in diverse books. Genesis he classed as mythology, so, not literally true.

Obviously, I cannot be held solidaric with these actual errors given I have explicitly stated my adherence to the opposite truths.

Some are what I consider and he would probably also have considered debatable topics.

Christ did not atone for our sins ... by substitutionary atonement, as Evangelicals understand it, if so understood, it is actually correct. Jesus was not temporarily damned so we needn't be. He was temporarily dead, so we could be raised. But He won our delivery from sin by other means, i e sacrifice.

CSL was not totally into the Catholic view of Christ's sacrifice, which has more of atonement in the Evangelical sense than his position had, he certainly believed Jesus saves us through the Cross, and he was content to say "I don't understand how, I just believe that."

Pagan religions have truth ... if we take this as them having some truth, that is obvious.

There is a God Who created Heaven and Earth is a truth admitted by unbelievers like Jews and Muslims.

There is a clear question on how much such truth can be hoped to contribute to an adherent's salvation. I would say, and CSL would not say "if he didn't convert from that community, it didn't contribute enough, though."

God is found inside man ... how so?

If you mean "inside man, as opposed to in Bible or Church", that's not just a heresy, but a heresy CSL didn't utter.

CSL would have stated, and I would agree, that some things that happen inside man, for instance universally valid reasoning, even if we are sometimes inattentive enough to reason invalidly or on false premisses, or universally valid moral principles (sth other than "universally agreed" as in conventions!) are known if not always obeyed, do in fact point to God being the reason why they exist.

Natural Man is not condemned ... what "natural man"?

The word "natural" in the context of man or his habits is used in two different ways. CSL as a linguist knew both.

• as opposed to elaborate, studied, cultured, possibly overcultured and degraded to unnatural man, and in this sense Christianity does not condemn natural man;
• as opposed to regenerate man, and in this sense not just all of Christianity, but CSL with it admits that man on his own, without redemption, is headed for damnation.

I suppose some sects are so good at making the "discipleship" a perversion of human nature, that they tend to confuse the two senses. For instance, it's natural man in the first sense that is disgusted at Double Predestination, and yet a Calvinist will pretend this is just the reflex of Unregenerate Man, Incurved into himself. This is obviously a well known and old example, but there are some newer ones too.

White Magic is good ... when and where?

CSL would have classed what Jacob did with painted staffs in Genesis 30 as "magic", and somehow he considered that even so God allowed it back in this confused time, when very little of revelation was public and known on earth.

CSL might have classed what St. Raphael did in Tobit as magic, in this case, it's his prerogative as an angelic being. It's men who are forbidden to use angelic powers at their own command, since the only angels providing such to some would be demons.

In the parallel creation called the world of Narnia, he supposed there was no such rule. Perhaps because in Narnia, the magic would not have been provided by demons. He would probably have denied that in our world it would be licit to call on help magically by blowing a horn, aware that no one likely to hear it would be willing or able to provide help.

When Merlin offers help, his help is accepted, but with a caution, and someone tells him that such things "were never quite licit even back in your day"

And some of the charges are simply false.

Hell is fiction ... if you had said "Hell is unreal" you would have been up to something about what CSL thought.

He thought that every damned person in Hell is unreal, like a drama queen is unreal. Like you are telling someone "get real" you don't imagine you are God calling them into existence. You are calling them out of a real or supposed unreality of their own self perception and perception of their circumstances.

That kind of unreality, Hell, on his view, has plenty of, and Satan was the first drama queen. And it "rubs off on the landscape" too. But Hell is as unreal as a person or place gets without not existing at all, Hell is not unreal like a fictional story. As a Platonist, CSL believed "reality" or in other words "being" has several different graditions, not just that God is more an IS than any created thing is, but also that there are differences within creation.

God's creation was flawed ... if you mean "before sin", no. As he admitted Evolution, he admitted sadness and pain before human sin, but he put this down to creation being corrupted by Satan. I think Copeland has said the same thing, and does so in connection with Gap Theory, the creation days supposedly coming after "Satan's Flood" after a flood in between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 over God condemning how Satan had misruled and corrupted earth.

This is wrong too, but CSL never said this was how God's creation originally was.

Mysticism supersedes the Bible ... no. He definitely does not say mysticism supersedes external authority, whether of Bible or of Church Magisterium.

We should pray to the dead ... he said we and the dead can pray for each other, he clearly didn't feel at home in directly asking dead, presumably having died in Christ, to pray for him.

On praying to the saints, Anglicans are divided from Catholics by a ban ... which CSL respected. On praying with them, well, Anglican "common prayer" as well as Lutheran "mass" (but not a valid one) have liturgic traces of the Catholic mass and both say things to the effect of "Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of heaven, ..." so, CSL insisted we have the right to pray WITH the saints, but while he respected his friend Tolkien under a different ecclesial authority praying to them, he didn't do that.

God is not the only object of worship ... again, I don't see CSL even took up praying the Hail Mary, just so as to avoid making some person other than the Three Persons of the Trinity an object of any kind of cultus.

In Catholicism, God is the only object of the cultus or worship of adoration. CSL unfortunately (like other Protestants) took this to other kinds of cultus as well, denying saints dulia or hyperdulia. The most Marian prayer he allowed himself was arguably the Magnificat, because he thought it was OK to pray with Her.

We also adress Her with the words of Gabriel and Elisabeth, of an angel and a priestwife of the Old Testament, and some prayers from the tenderness of the faithful over the centuries. He didn't, alas.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre BU
Wednesday of the Pentecost Novena
20.V.2026