C.S. Lewis: on Joy and Desire
February 10, 2010
I’m really excited about this ConneXions class. We’ll be doing something totally unique, diving into the life and writings of C.S. Lewis–and all the richness they have to offer on the subject of Joy and Desire.
We’ll be covering Surprised by Joy and The Pilgrim’s Regress, two biographies of Lewis’ spiritual pilgrimage. And we’ll be looking at two specific questions: Why did Lewis see his movement toward Christianity in terms of joy and desire? How did this influence his apologetics?
I owe a great debt to Louis Markos, Houston Baptist University, Ph.D., University of Michigan, for the content of this class.
“One of Lewis’ goals was to bring philosophy—and theology—back to the world, to embody it in flesh and blood, and to breathe into it the healthy air of common sense. His life, his thought, his work were profoundly incarnational, like the God he worshipped.”
“If you wish to take Lewis’ works seriously, you must accept them as creations of passionate thinking: of the spiritual brought down to the physical, of experience carried up into reason.”
–Professor Markos
C.S. Lewis: Fast Facts
Because so much of his life was reflected in his works, to understand C. S. Lewis the writer it is essential to know C. S. Lewis as a man and literary figure.
Clive Staples Lewis (Jack to his friends) was an Irish Protestant, born in Belfast in 1898. A happy childhood ended when his mother died in 1908 when Lewis was nine and his father decided to send him to boarding schools that he despised.
Fortunately, he met tutor William Kirkpatrick and under his guidance was accepted to Oxford University. He entered as a confirmed atheist, but under the influence of friends he met there—J. R. R. Tolkien among them—Lewis became a Christian.
His newfound faith changed him completely, and in 1933 he quickly composed a fictional account of his conversion: The Pilgrim’s Regress.
Over the next 15 years, he wrote prolifically. Everything he wrote, sacred or secular, was related to his Christian faith. During World War II, he agreed to deliver a series of broadcast talks on the Christian religion, which were later collected as Mere Christianity.
In 1954, Lewis was elected Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge. He would build the rest of his life around that university and his Oxford home, the Kilns.
About this time, Lewis befriended and later married Joy Gresham, a divorced American Jew who had converted to Christianity. After three years of marriage, however, Joy died of cancer. Lewis was devastated and wrote a moving account of his sadness: A Grief Observed.
Lewis died on November 22, 1963, just before his 65th birthday. The same day JFK was shot.
If you enjoyed this post, be sure to read the rest from this author. Marc is a local writer, musician, and physician. He is a regular contributor to ConneXions and has written reviews for Spectrum: Adventist Forum. He loves words and music, windsurfing, and going on adventures with Janine and the kids.(Read more from this author) 
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