ical believers. Lewis held quite a high view of Scripture, but it remained somewhat vague and elusive in places. Not long before his death, he commented that as Christians ‘we still believe (as I do) that all Holy Scripture is in some sense—though not all parts of it in the same sense—the Word of God.’5
Regarding the atonement, Lewis was equally as vague and disappointing. He declared that what matters is that it works, not how it works: ‘The central Christian belief is that Christ’s death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start. Theories as to how it did this are another matter. A good many different theories have been held as to how it works; what all Christians are agreed on is that it does work.’6
Later in life, Lewis appears to have shifted in a direction that was more biblically orthodox.
Later in life, Lewis appears to have shifted in a direction that was more biblically orthodox. One of his last essays, Fern-seeds and Elephants, is quite a devastating critique of the acceptance of Modernist theology in the Church of England. Lewis’s final sentence is particularly barbed: ‘Missionary to the priests of one’s own church is an embarrassing role; though I have a horrid feeling that if such mission work is not soon undertaken, the future history of the Church of England is likely to be short.’7 Overall, Lewis never regarded himself as a theologian; his strengths lay in his wonderful command of prose and in his clarity of thought.
C.S. Lewis as an atheist
Only in 1929 did Lewis become what he called ‘perhaps the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England’.8 This was a conversion to theism, but it was followed two years later by the acceptance, while being driven to the zoo, that Jesus was the Son of God. Until his conversion, Lewis was a rabid unbeliever, being not simply indifferent to Christianity but decidedly hostile—not unlike Richard Dawkins today. Indeed, Lewis was to refer to this period of his life as ‘the days when I still hated Christianity’.9 He used the traditional argument that the state of the world shows that it is not governed by a good God. In October 1916 he wrote to one who was to be his lifelong friend, Arthur Greeves: ‘I believe in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best. All religions, that is, all mythologies, to give them their proper name, are merely man’s own invention, Christ as much as Loki.’10
Lewis was more philosophical than scientific in his outlook, and so he rarely referred to the evolutionary hypothesis in his rejection of Christianity. One of the few references comes in 1925 when Lewis recorded that Mrs Moore’s daughter, Maureen, had asked him about the theory of evolution. Lewis’s response was straightforward: ‘I explained that the Biblical and scientific accounts were alternatives. She asked me which I believed. I said the scientific. She said “I suppose if one believes in it then, one doesn’t believe in God.” I said one could believe in God without believing in all the things said about him in the Old Testament. Here the matter ended.’11
C.S. Lewis’ early attitude to evolution as a Christian
When Lewis became a Christian, he felt no immediate need to renounce any belief in evolution. In the meantime, Bernard Acworth (a retired Royal Navy captain), Douglas Dewar, and Sir Ambrose Fleming launched the Evolution Protest Movement. Acworth came to seek to enlist the pen of Lewis on the side of the anti-evolutionary creationists. Lewis, however, was reluctant to come on board. On 9 December 1944 he wrote to Acworth: ‘I can’t have made my position clear. I am not either attacking or defending Evolution. I believe that Christianity can still be believed, even if Evolution is true. This is where you and I differ. Thinking as I do, I can’t help regarding your advice (that I henceforth include arguments against Evolution in all my Christian apologetics) as a temptation to fight the battle on what is really a false issue: and also on terrain very unsuitable for the only weapon 