C. S. Lewis: Journey From Atheism to Faith

By John G. Frazier III, Ph.D. | August 2019

Introduction

In his book, “Surprised by Joy,” as well as in other publications, C. S. Lewis describes his journey from nominal faith as a boy, to atheism as a teen, to belief in the occult, to belief in “the Absolute,” to belief in Theism, and lastly to belief in Jesus Christ as God incarnate. This is not the normal progression of faith for most people. Most, are brought up in a family and society which has Christian values where they hear the gospel and come to believe in Christ without venturing into other belief systems.

The story of C. S. Lewis is fascinating because he had to grapple with the critical issues of life such as the why and how of the existence of the universe, ultimate reality, and personal meaning to arrive at a faith position. His great intellect required this. We have a picture in C. S. Lewis of a person who carefully examined the Christian faith with a (somewhat reluctant) willingness to learn the truth about God and Jesus Christ, and who because of the evidence of reason, morality, the historicity of the gospel accounts, and the essential humanity of man, coupled with intellectual honesty, became a believer.

Early Years

C.S. Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland on November 29,1898. His father, an attorney, came from a family who owned an engineering business and a shipyard.¹ His mother’s father and grandfather were clergymen in the Protestant Church of Ireland.² Of his childhood, C. S. Lewis reflects: “I was taught the usual things (about the Christian faith) and made to say my prayers and in due time taken to church. I naturally accepted what I was told but cannot remember feeling much interest in it.”³

Sadly, his mother died when he was age 9. He “had been taught that prayers offered in faith would be granted.”⁴ So, he prayed that she would recover, but she didn’t. This resulted in disappointment and the realization that this prayer hadn’t worked. Upon his mother’s death, there was the loss of “all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable…and of the old security.”⁵

Early Education

His father then sent him to live and study at Wynard School whose headmaster was Robert “Oldie” Capron. The school closed soon after when “Oldie” was committed to a psychiatric hospital.⁶ Of this time, C. S. Lewis writes: “There I first became an effective believer.”⁷ This happened through the church to which they were taken twice every Sunday. “On the conscious level, I reacted against its peculiarities. Unconsciously, I suspect, the candles and incense, the vestments and hymns sung on our knees, may have had a considerable, and opposite effect on me. What really mattered was that I here heard the doctrines of Christianity…taught by men who obviously believed them. As I had no skepticism (at that point), the effect was to bring life to what I would have said that I believed.”⁸

“In this experience there was a great deal of fear. I feared for my soul (because he learned about hell). The effect, so far as I can judge, was entirely good. I began to seriously pray and to read my Bible and to attempt to obey my conscience.”⁹

Then, at age 13, “Lewis attended Campbell College in the east of Belfast about a mile from his home, but left after a few months due to respiratory problems. He was then sent to the health-resort town of Malvern, Worchestershire, where he attended the preparatory school Cherbourg House which Lewis called ‘Chartres.'”¹⁰ Of that time at Chartres, C. S. Lewis writes: “I ceased to be a Christian.” This was at age 14.¹¹

At Chartres, was a Matron, “dear Miss C.” C. S. Lewis praised her for being a cheerful, loving woman who skillfully and selflessly cared for the students. She was, however, unsettled in her mind about spiritual matters and tried to find truth and “a way of life” in systems of belief such as Theosophy, Spiritualism, and the Occult.¹²

As Lewis pondered these belief systems, they gradually eroded his faith. At the same time, they encouraged him to believe in a non-material, spiritual realm. This then worked against any notions he had about holding on to a materialistic philosophy, which claims that the material world is all that exists, and which rules out any type of spirit world, including the spirit world taught in the Bible. Thus, exposure to the occult damaged his Christian beliefs for a time, but left open the door to faith in the unseen God.

Atheism

His newfound atheism was also supported by other factors including the loss of his mother, his desire to escape from the self-imposed burden of Christian duty (especially prayer),¹³ his various readings,¹⁴ his pessimistic attitude,¹⁵ the notion of the universe as an impermanent and cold and foreboding place,¹⁶ the existence of suffering and pain in the world, an atheistic assertion by Lucretis that the universe has so many faults and shortcomings that it could not have possibly been made by God,¹⁷ the influence of a worldly headmaster at Chartres,¹⁸ and the terror and horror which he experienced firsthand in the First World War.¹⁹

Commenting on his atheism, Lewis said: “I was at this time living, like so many atheists,…in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry at God for not existing. I was equally angry at him for creating a world.”²⁰ And, he was displeased with God for “creating me without my permission.”²¹

Education, Military Service, And Academic Positions

“In September 1913, Lewis enrolled at Malvern College, where he remained until the following June.”²² Then, at age 16, his father arranged to have him study privately with his father’s old tutor, William T. Kirkpatrick.²³ “Kirk,” as he called him, forced C. S. Lewis to realize that he had to have a firm basis in reality to support his thoughts and declarations.²⁴

While “Kirk” who had been a Presbyterian, was an atheist, he never attacked religion in the presence of C. S. Lewis. When Lewis, came to “Kirk,” his “own Atheism and Pessimism was fully formed. So, what he “got there was merely fresh ammunition for the defense of a position he had already chosen.”²⁵

In 1917, Lewis enrolled in Oxford at age 18. Six months later, he was on the front lines in France fighting in the First world War. He was wounded, treated and recovered, and then released from the military in December 1918, whereupon he returned to his studies at Oxford in January 1919.²⁶

“After Lewis returned to Oxford University, he received a First in Honour Moderations (Greek and Latin literature) in 1920, a First in greats (Philosophy and Ancient History) in 1922, and a First in English in 1923. In 1924 he became a philosophy tutor at University College and in 1925, was elected a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Magdalen College, where he served for 29 years until 1954.”²⁷

In 1954, Lewis was “awarded the newly founded chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, and was elected a fellow of Magdalene College”²⁸ where he remained until his death in 1963.

Materialism

On Materialism: Lewis said: “The materialist’s universe had the enormous attraction that it offered you limited liabilities. Death ended it all. The horror (in his view at the time) of the Christian universe was that it had no door marked Exit.”²⁹ On the other hand, “The materialistic universe had one great negative attraction to offer me. (Everything is) a meaningless dance of atoms.”³⁰

Maybe there is “Something Else”: When Lewis read the poet W. B. Yeats as well as other writers whom he considered learned and responsible and who were not Christians, he found that they “nevertheless rejected the whole Materialistic philosophy out of hand.”³¹ Thus, he began to think that there might be “after all ‘something else'”³² beside the material world. Such authors helped to open the door even further to allow him to admit the possibility of the existence of a spirit realm.

A Rebellious Nature: While contemplating the implications of materialism, as well as aspects of nature with its features of both beauty and cruelty, and the Christian view of things, C. S. Lewis somehow became keenly aware of his own rebellious nature. He opined: “What mattered most of all was my deep-seated hatred of authority, my monstrous individualism, my lawlessness. No word in my vocabulary expressed deeper hatred than the word Interference. But Christianity placed at the center of what then seemed to me a transcendental Interferer.”³³

An Important Book: At age 16, he read a book which had a profound influence on him, Phantastes, a faerie Romance, by George MacDonald. This book thrust him into a spectacular imaginary world. Reading it made him feel that he was reunited with his childhood experiences of Joy and Brightness whose source he later learned was God.³⁴

Back at Oxford – Steps Toward Faith

When C. S. Lewis returned to Oxford in January 1919, he made some excellent friends with whom he could discuss his ideas and develop his philosophical outlook. There was A. K. Hamilton Jenkin, Owen Barfield and his friend A. C. Harwood.³⁵ Later in1925, he met J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, both Christians. Of them he said: “These peculiar people seemed now to pop up on every side.”³⁶

At Oxford, Lewis read the French philosopher Henri Bergson and was impressed by his case for the concept of the “Necessary Existence” of the universe. (He had not yet attached this concept to God.) Nevertheless, this philosophical acceptance of the universe as real gave him a great sense of peace.³⁷

His friend Owen Barfield, convinced him that he needed a coherent Theory of Knowledge. Barfield observed that they thought that a) abstract thought (if obedient to logical rules) gave indisputable truth, b) that moral judgments were considered “valid,” and c) aesthetic experience was thought to be “valuable.” This meant, then, that they were making claims for these “phenomena of consciousness” that really belonged to a theistic point of view.³⁸ In other words, God is needed to explain the efficacy of abstract thought, the existence of morality and the presence of aesthetic experience in human consciousness. This means that a true theory of knowledge requires an underpinning of theism (belief in God).

In the Summer of 1922, Lewis had completed three years at Oxford. “As there were no philosophical posts (academic positions) going, or none that I could get (at that time), my long-suffering father offered me a fourth year at Oxford during which I read English (literature) so as to get a second string in my bow.”³⁹

At his fourth year at Oxford, C. S. Lewis made another friend, Nevin Coghill. He writes of this: “I soon had the shock of discovering that he – clearly the most intelligent and best informed man in that class – was a Christian and a throughgoing supernaturalist.”⁴⁰ Coghill forced Lewis to consider that clinging to modern ideas simply because they are modern might do injustice to ideas of the past. Perhaps “the archaic” ideas (the Christian story) were “the civilized” (the good) and “the modern ideas” (contemporary philosophies) were “the barbaric” (the evil).

Interestingly, he noticed that the Christian and the most religious authors he read, wrote with depth and substance and meaning; they really made sense! Whereas, the authors who were atheists or non-religious came across as being superficial. “They were all entertaining; but hardly more. There seemed to be no depth in them. They were too simple.”⁴¹

Discovery of “The Absolute”

Lewis eventually concluded that there was something he called “The Absolute” which he defined as “The utter Reality.”⁴² It was a concept that allowed him to have a belief in something which costs him nothing. “It was ‘there,’ but it would never come ‘here.’ There was nothing to fear…(and) nothing to obey.”⁴³ “The Absolute” was, in his mind, impersonal and not God. Yet to him it “contained the reconciliation of all contraries, the transcendence of all finitude, the hidden glory which was the only perfectly real thing there is. In fact, it had much of the quality of Heaven. But it was a Heaven none of us could ever get to.”⁴⁴ There was no possibility for Lewis of having a personal relationship with “The Absolute” and while he wasn’t ready to call him “God,” he did eventually call him “Spirit.”⁴⁵

Further, Lewis began to consider that he was yearning for Something or Someone and that he had been on this quest all his life. He realized that the “Something Other” he had been yearning for, was something outside of the self. He writes: “I did not yet ask, Who is the desired? Only What is it? Thus, I understood that in deepest solitude there is a road right out of the self, a commerce with something which,…proclaims itself sheerly objective; imageless, unknown, undefined, (and) desired.”⁴⁶

This led him to conclude that “we have a root in the Absolute, which is the utter reality. And that is why we experience Joy; we yearn, rightly for that unity (with the Absolute).”⁴⁷ But then he asked, what does one mean by the Absolute? Is the Absolute “Nobody-knows-what, or do you mean a superhuman mind and therefore (as we may admit) a Person?”⁴⁸

Christianity Makes Sense

Then he “read G. K. Chesterton’s Everlasting Man and for the first time saw the whole Christian outline of history set out in a form that seemed to make sense.”⁴⁹ This reading helped him to see that Christianity itself was actually sensible by objective standards.

Following this, “the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room…and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good, exclaiming: ‘Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once.’ To understand the shattering impact of it, you would need to know the man (who has certainly never since shown any interest in Christianity). If he, the cynic of cynics, the toughest of the toughs, were not – as I would have put it – ‘safe,’ where could I turn? Was there then no escape?”⁵⁰ This conversation clearly shook him up; it forced him to confront the possibility that the Christian faith might be true.

Free Choice

Soon after, he “was in fact offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice.”⁵¹ He relates: “I became aware that I was holding something at bay, or shutting something out. I could open the door or keep it shut. I chose to open.”⁵²

He felt that God was closing in on him.⁵³ The authors he had read, his teachers, and the influence of his friends over the years all seemed to be conspiring to influence him toward faith in God.

This led him to a personal self-examination. He writes: “Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his ‘faith’ too carefully. ‘Dangers’ lie in wait for him on every side. An attempt at complete virtue (an honest evaluation) must be made. All my acts, desires, and thoughts were to be brought into harmony with Universal Spirit. For the first time I examined myself with a seriously practical purpose. And there I found what appalled me; a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds.”⁵⁴

Becoming a Theist

C.S. Lewis really didn’t want to be interfered with by God, but it was too late. The process had begun and moved to a point of no return. He writes: “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.

“I did not see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; The Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. But who can duly adore that Love who will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? (O) the depth of his Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and his compulsion (to bring us in to Himself) is our liberation.”⁵⁵

This conversion “was only to Theism, not to Christianity.”⁵⁶ In surrendering to God, he came to understand that God was a Person and he was to be “obeyed simply because he was God.”⁵⁷ Further, he concluded that “union with that Nature (God) is bliss and separation from it, horror. Thus, Heaven and Hell come in.”⁵⁸ Upon his conversion, he began “attending parish church on Sundays and college chapel on weekdays.”⁵⁹

Christianity the True Religion

Lewis, considered other religions, but concluded that Christianity was the true one for two reasons. First, Christianity presented the highest moral standards. Second, Christianity was based in actual historical events.⁶⁰ The birth, life, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ was not a myth and his teachings not merely a viewpoint; Christianity was history. It actually happened! And Jesus’ resurrection validated his teachings as God’s absolute truth.

C.S. Lewis comments: “I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myths. And nothing else in all literature was just like this. And no person was like the Person it depicted; as real, as recognizable, lit by a Light from beyond the world – by God. Here and here only in all time, the ‘myth’ must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, Man. This is not ‘a religion.’ Nor ‘a philosophy.’ It is the summing up and actuality of them all.”⁶¹

On his journey to faith, Lewis traveled from the experiences of Joy and Brightness in his childhood, to belief in the occult and Atheism at age 14, to the concept of Necessary Existence, to his recognition of the Absolute, the Something Other who he eventually called Universal Spirit, and then to Theism – a belief in God for whom he had reverence and to whom he gave worship, and who was also a Person.

Faith in Christ

As he approached the conclusion of his journey, he said: “I felt a resistance almost as strong as my previous resistance to Theism. As strong, but shorter-lived, for I understood it better. Every step I had taken, from the Absolute to “Spirit” and from “Spirit” to “God,” had been a step toward the more concrete, the more imminent, the more compulsive. At each step, one had less chance ‘to call one’s soul one’s own.’ To accept the Incarnation (of Jesus Christ) was a further step in the same direction. It brings God near, or near in a new way. And this, I found, was something I had not wanted. But to recognize the ground for my evasion was of course to recognize both its shame and its futility.”⁶²

“Lewis was converted to Christianity in 1931, following a long discussion during a late-night walk along Addison’s Walk with his close friends J. R. R Tolkin and Hugo Dyson.⁶³ On this walk, his friends convinced Lewis that 1) the events in the Gospels actually happened, and that 2) Jesus Christ is like no one else.⁶⁴

They emphasized that Jesus taught a depth of moral truth unparalleled in history. They related that Jesus claimed to be God, to have always have existed, to be the Judge of the world, and to be able to forgive sins. No one else claimed to be God but Jesus Christ. And, if these things are true, they are of infinite importance! This means the Incarnation happened! C. S. Lewis had not wanted to accept this, but he listened to his friends.

“He records making a specific commitment to Christian belief while on his way to the zoo with his brother.”⁶⁵ He comments: “I know very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken. I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out, I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, when we reached the zoo, I did. It was like when a man, after a long sleep, becomes aware that he is now awake.”⁶⁶

Reflections

What impressions do we get upon reviewing the journey of C. S. Lewis from atheism to faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God? It’s almost as if God has a bumper sticker on his vehicle that says, NOT “I brake for atheists.” BUT “I stop the car, get out, go over, shake his hand, invite him home for dinner, and become a life-long friend!”

God seems to have a soft spot in his heart for those who have no certain hope, yet seek hope; for those who have no ultimate meaning, yet seek meaning; and for those who have no eternal future, yet seek a good future. C. S. Lewis was a seeker. What separates him from the many who say they are seekers is that he was entirely sincere about his seeking.

He certainly resisted the God who was drawing him to Himself, but he never abandoned the quest. He didn’t allow the prospect of submission to a moral authority or the submission of his own personal autonomy to his Creator-Redeemer stop him from being honest with himself and following the evidence for faith where it took him.

God came to him in a most personal way; breaking through his barriers, defenses, and objections; arriving unexpectedly yet unmistakably in the certitude that was HIM, who was making Himself known and changing forever the recipient with an immediate awareness of His Presence.

How humble, how kind, God is to come into the conscious awareness of men and women who up until their encounter with Him, have denied his very existence and refused to allow Him to have any claim on their lives. God is Love! – To reveal Himself to us in this way. This gives everyone hope, no matter how far they may have strayed from faith in Christ.

Relevant Bible Passages:

Jesus said: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30. NKJV.

Jesus also said: “Seek, and you will find.” Matthew 7:7. NKJV.

Isaiah admonishes: “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon Him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:6-9. NKJV.

And Peter tells us: “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” I Peter 5:5. NKJV.

Then Peter adds: “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you (receive, bless, favor you) in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.” I Peter 5:6-7. NKJV.

Commentary

C.S. Lewis humbled himself before God. He let God be God and accepted his own position as servant and worshiper before the Almighty. He sought and found. He accepted the yoke (responsibility) of being a believer and found rest for his soul. He learned, contrary to the world’s opinion, the burden Jesus lays on his followers is not impossible or life-killing, but rather “light” and bliss and peace. He received forgiveness and found the satisfaction he had been looking for all his life. He entered into a relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ.