May 13 – Lunatic, Liar or Lord
Clive Staples Lewis grew up in Ireland and as a boy created stories filled with wondrous creatures with his brother, Warren. He fell in love with Norse and then Greek mythology and continued to hone his writing throughout his high school years, winning a scholarship to Oxford University. He left for a period of time to serve in the British Army during World War I, but after being injured and relocated to Andover, England, returned to complete his studies.
Lewis called himself an atheist from the age of fifteen on, even though he had been raised in a church-going family – his grandfather was an Anglican priest. Later he would remember that he was just angry with God for not existing.
He taught at Magdalen College, Oxford for 35 years, then was the first Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He became a part of a group called the Inklings of whom J.R.R. Tolkien was also a part.
Due to an argument with Tolkien regarding G.K. Chesterton’s “The Everlasting Man,” Lewis began to consider the reality of God, finding that God pursued him whether he believed or not. From his book, “Surprised by Joy,” we find him saying about this time:
“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”
C.S. Lewis became an apologist and his writings turned to Christian doctrine. Since he was an Anglican, much of his structure comes from that background. His books “Mere Christianity,” “The Screwtape Letters,” “The Great Divorce,” “Surprised by Joy” and many, many others are standards in Christian libraries today.
Lewis, as the great apologist, coined the “Great Trilemma” stating that Jesus Christ did not offer the us the possibility that He (Jesus) was simply a prophet or a good man. Jesus Christ plainly stated His Godhood and we can only believe Him to be a lunatic, a liar … or Lord.
C.S. Lewis died of renal failure in 1963 and though he was incredibly famous worldwide, no one paid much attention to his death since it occurred on the same day as did Aldous Huxley’s death and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Clive Staples Lewis grew up in Ireland and as a boy created stories filled with wondrous creatures with his brother, Warren. He fell in love with Norse and then Greek mythology and continued to hone his writing throughout his high school years, winning a scholarship to Oxford University. He left for a period of time to serve in the British Army during World War I, but after being injured and relocated to Andover, England, returned to complete his studies.
Lewis called himself an atheist from the age of fifteen on, even though he had been raised in a church-going family – his grandfather was an Anglican priest. Later he would remember that he was just angry with God for not existing.
He taught at Magdalen College, Oxford for 35 years, then was the first Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He became a part of a group called the Inklings of whom J.R.R. Tolkien was also a part.
Due to an argument with Tolkien regarding G.K. Chesterton’s “The Everlasting Man,” Lewis began to consider the reality of God, finding that God pursued him whether he believed or not. From his book, “Surprised by Joy,” we find him saying about this time:
“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”
C.S. Lewis became an apologist and his writings turned to Christian doctrine. Since he was an Anglican, much of his structure comes from that background. His books “Mere Christianity,” “The Screwtape Letters,” “The Great Divorce,” “Surprised by Joy” and many, many others are standards in Christian libraries today.
Lewis, as the great apologist, coined the “Great Trilemma” stating that Jesus Christ did not offer the us the possibility that He (Jesus) was simply a prophet or a good man. Jesus Christ plainly stated His Godhood and we can only believe Him to be a lunatic, a liar … or Lord.
C.S. Lewis died of renal failure in 1963 and though he was incredibly famous worldwide, no one paid much attention to his death since it occurred on the same day as did Aldous Huxley’s death and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
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