C.S. Lewis

[FlyLikeABird]

I'm reading his "Mere Christianity". It's a really good arguement for Christianity in general. He is Anglican but he doesn't argue Anglicanism in particular. He actually avoids anything that can be disputed between different denominations.

Good reading for general apologetics about Christianity and easily adjusted for Catholics.

[cmotherofpirl]

This is the book that kept me catholic.

[Nathan]

Whenever I read Lewis I always wonder, why was he so reluctant to become Catholic? He was such a brilliant mind, such a great Christian thinker, and he certainly understood the Church -- he was great friends with that charismatic Catholic literary master J.R.R. Tolkien. Why such a man would settle for Anglicanism, a religion created by the tyranical King Henry VIII for the sole purpose of divorcing his wife, just baffles me.

Edited September 5, 2005 by Nathan

[cmotherofpirl]

The high-church is not much different than catholic. I think he ran out of time.

[Extra ecclesiam nulla salus]

there is no real evidence of that.

we really don't know why he wasn't catholic

we can wish he was

and wonder why he wasn't

but lets not think for him

God Bless,

sam

[FlyLikeABird]

My theory is that because he lived in England he attended the Church of England. But I agree, he should have been Catholic.

[jmjtina]

he was a great friend of Tolkien, a strong Catholic.

[goldenchild17]

Genius apologist. I'm going through all his books now. I'll get to his fiction later. One of my favorite writers.

[FlyLikeABird]

I like this. A tad hyberbolic in the second example by my measure byt non the less:

[quote] God judges them by their moral choices. when a neurotic who has a pathological horror of cats forces himselfto pick up a cat for some good reason, it is quite possible that in God's eyes he has shown more courage than a healthy man may have shown in winning the V.C. When a man who has been perverted from his youth and taught that cruelty is the right thing does some tiny little kindness, or refrains from some cruelty he might have commited, and thereby, perhaps, risks being sneered at by his companions, he may, in God's eyes, be doing more than you or I would do if we gave up life itself for a friend.[/quote]

Edited September 5, 2005 by FlyLikeABird

[Nathan]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' date='Sep 4 2005, 08:37 PM']The high-church is not much different than catholic.[/quote]

On the outside, maybe. On the inside, where it matters, there is no comparison.

[p0lar_bear]

In 1945, a young man named H. Lyman Stebbins wrote to C.S. Lewis telling him that his books had been central in his conversion to Christianity. Lyman felt compelled to join the Catholic Church but was heald back, in part, by the fact that Lewis had never converted. This was the letter C.S. Lewis wrote in response:

[quote]May 9, 1945
Dear Mr. Stebbins,

My position about the Churches can best be made plain by an imaginary example. Suppose I want to find out the correct interpretation of Plato’s teaching. What I am most confident in accepting is that interpretation which is common to all the Platonists down all the centuries: What Aristotle and the Renaissance scholars and Paul Elmer More agree on I take to be true Platonism. Any purely modern views which claim to have discovered for the first time what Plato meant, and say that everyone from Aristotle down has misunderstood him, I reject out of hand. But there is something else I would also reject. If there were an ancient Platonic Society still existing at Athens and claiming to be the exclusive trustees of Plato’s meaning, I should approach them with great respect. But if I found that their teaching was in many ways curiously unlike his actual text and unlike what ancient interpreters said, and in some cases could not be traced back to within 1,000 years of his time, I should reject their exclusive claims—while ready, of course, to take any particular thing they taught on its merits.

I do the same with Christianity. What is most certain is the vast mass of doctrine which I find agreed on by Scripture, the Fathers, the Middle Ages, modern Roman Catholics, modern Protestants. That is true “catholic” doctrine. Mere “modernism” I reject at once. The Roman Church where it differs from this universal tradition and specially from apostolic Christianity I reject. Thus their theology about the Blessed Virgin Mary I reject because it seems utterly foreign to the New Testament; where indeed the words “Blessed is the womb that bore thee” receive a rejoinder pointing in exactly the opposite direction. Their papalism seems equally foreign to the attitude of St. Paul toward St. Peter in the epistles. The doctrine of Transubstantiation insists on defining in a way which the New Testament seems to me not to countenance. In a word, the whole set-up of modern Romanism seems to me to be as much a provincial or local variation from the central, ancient tradition as any particular Protestant sect is. I must therefore reject their claim: though this, of course, does not mean rejecting particular things they say. I’m afraid I haven’t read any modern books of Roman-Angelican controversy. Hooker (Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity) is to me the great formulation of Anglicanism. But the great point is that, in one sense, there is no such thing as Anglicanism. What we are committed to believing is whatever can be proved from Scripture. On that subject there is room for endless progress. However you decide, good wishes. Mention me in your prayers.

Yours sincerely,
C.S. Lewis
[/quote]

H. Lyman did in fact become Catholic. He talked about the letter he received from C.S. Lewis in relation to his conversion:

[quote]I wrote to C.S. Lewis and got a fascinating and interesting reply. That letter of Lewis practically put me into the Church, because that man for whose intellect I had boundless admiration very carefully wrote a stupid letter, the stupidest thing he ever wrote. He summoned all that he could dream up to say as an argument against my becoming a Roman Catholic and there was no substance in any of it. My immediate response was that if this is the best this marvelous man can think of as an argument against it, then I’m all for it.[/quote]

[phatcatholic]

oh WOW!! what an amazing exchange!! i am very glad that you shared this!! where did you find it?

[StColette]

[quote name='phatcatholic' date='Sep 5 2005, 04:14 PM']oh WOW!! what an amazing exchange!! i am very glad that you shared this!! where did you find it?
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right here: [url="http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0033.html"]http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/...ics/ap0033.html[/url]

[phatcatholic]

[quote name='StColette' date='Sep 5 2005, 04:17 PM']right here: [url="http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0033.html"]http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/...ics/ap0033.html[/url]
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[/quote]
that is freakin sweet.