CS Lewis’ Mistake?

Who Knows? — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:00:08 +0000

CS Lewis abandoned childhood faith to become an atheist, at 13 or 15 (Wikipedia contradicts itself, will be fixed later). He remained an atheist until age 31, at which point he converted to Christianity and became known as “The Apostle to the Skeptics”. (I’m not saying “converted back”, as childhood faith and adult faith does look rather different.)

While there is great value and truth to be found in CS Lewis’ works, I think he made one critical error: he thought in terms of labels.

Labels divide, and often identity is found in the label rather than in the “truth”. It is a completely understandable error though, the dangers of modernistic thinking were not as well known during his time. Additionally, biblical scholarship has progressed significantly since then…

Now I’m going to sound like the creationists that argue “CS Lewis would have been a young earth creationist had he only known of the ‘progress’ we have recently made in our ‘scientific’ understanding of creationism”. Hehe, funny stuff that, but anyway… (There is no way CS Lewis would ever have been a creationist, sorry…)

I think, had CS Lewis lived today, he would have drawn on contemporary biblical scholarship and post-modernistic thinking, and it could have helped his case a lot.

It should go without saying that all of this is merely my opinion. Please think for yourselves, guys (and gals), thanks. Hopefully you can recognise truth when you see it – I am certain I will utter some truth, and some falsehoods. It is up to you to “beproef alle dinge en behou die goeie” (what’s that in English? BibleGateway.com doesn’t have Afrikaans) – and do bear in mind that that is hyperbole as well:

Sorry about the bad layout… the last frame says “Told yer so.” Click on the comic to visit the original.

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CS Lewis’ Mistake?