IgnatiusInsight.com: "Paganism and the Conversion of C.S. Lewis" by Clotilde Morhan
Paganism and the Conversion of C.S. Lewis | Clotilde Morhan
"Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless." [1] With these words C.S. Lewis, the great Christian apologist who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, described the early years of his life. The story of his pre-conversion self, however, is much more than the autobiography of one 20th-century Englishman. It depicts the spiritual torpor of modern man, namely post-Christian man.
For the first time in the history of humanity, man does not believe in the supernatural. The supernatural was natural to the pre-Christian age. The sun and the stars, trees and rivers, everything that surrounded them was inhabited by dryads and nymphs and all sorts of mythological creatures. Everything bore the trace of the divine. Modern man may smile at the primitiveness of their beliefs. In the best case, he will admit that it would make a good fairy tale for children.
It is very, very hard for the skeptical, positivist modern to regain the ancient view of the world, in which creation is suffused with the life of the Creator. This is a good article, but it left me further interested in exactly how Lewis shed his modern blinders.
Posted by: Tom Harmon | Tuesday, November 08, 2005 at 11:19 AM
It is very, very hard for the skeptical, positivist modern to regain the ancient view of the world, in which creation is suffused with the life of the Creator. This is a good article, but it left me further interested in exactly how Lewis shed his modern blinders.
Posted by: Tom Harmon | Tuesday, November 08, 2005 at 11:22 AM
Tom: If you've not read it, the place to go for more on Lewis's conversion is Lewis's own account, found in Surprised by Joy. I highly recommend it.
Posted by: Carl Olson | Wednesday, November 09, 2005 at 08:23 AM