C.S. Lewis was born in
Belfast, Ireland, on November 29, 1898, to Flora and Albert Lewis. His father was a successful lawyer and decided to move the family to a city just outside
Belfast. His mother was an avid reader but was diagnosed with cancer and died in 1908 when C.S. Lewis was just ten years of age. As a child, Lewis grew up in a sizeable house called Little Lea that had a large library which held some of his favorite books such as
Treasure Island by Robert Lewis and
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
His father was so overcome with grief at the death of his wife he decided to send C.S. and his brother to
Wynward School in
Watford, England, just a month after her death. Lewis hated the school because of its strict rules. Fortunately for C.S. the school was shut down in 1910 and he was able to return to
Ireland for a short time. Lewis would later refer to this school as ‘
Belsen’ the name of a German concentration camp in 1911. Lewis was soon sent back to
England to study. As a teenager he began to love poetry, especially the works of Virgil and Homer. He was also able to master modern languages in French, German, and Italian. Because of respiratory problems Lewis was eventually enrolled at a school in
Mavern, England. During this time Lewis began to pull away from his Christian upbringing and became an atheist.
In 1917 Lewis was accepted at University College which is the oldest of the Oxford schools. During his time at Oxford, World War I was being fought on European soil and Lewis began officer training for one year. He fought in France in the Battle of Arrasa in 1918. Once removed from military duty Lewis had some time to recover: however, his father refused to see him during this time because of their personal differences which made their relationship distant. Once Lewis’ health improved he was able to fight again. He fought in World War I until he was discharged from military duty in 1919. After his military duty Lewis went back to University College and worked for his degrees in Greek, Roman literature, ancient history and English literature.
Once C.S. Lewis attained his degree from University College he found a job at Oxford teaching and tutoring students in English literature, which was a new subject at the University in 1925. Four years later Lewis’ father became very ill and passed away. This was extremely difficult for Lewis and eventually brought him back to Christianity with help from friends, Hugo Dyson and J.R.R Tolkien. These friends, as well as Dorothy Sayers and Charles Williams, had a tremendous impact on Lewis’ life as a Christian man. The book The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton, a Catholic convert to Christianity, helped influence Lewis’ change from atheism to Christianity. In his book Surprised by Joy, Lewis says this of his conversion.
"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."
From this point on Lewis’ life changed. He began writing some of the world’s best literature, especially on the Christian life and in fantasy.
C.S. Lewis grew up around many types of aesthetics and had a passion for literature from an early age. He discusses his views on aesthetics in his essay entitled “How the Few and Many Use Pictures”. Lewis makes the point that there are two different types of art. Useful art,which is created to serve a practical purpose. Such arts include ceramics and architecture. The second type of art is the fine arts. Its purpose is artistic joy. Fine arts range from music and painting to literature. In his introduction, Lewis says there can be a problem when a person confuses the two types of art. He writes, “the attempt to ‘use’ a work of fine art rather than recognize its beauty and craftsmanship are their own reason for being.” His essay explores the issue of when someone tries to make fine art useful.
He discusses the impact, as a young man, of Beatrix Potter’s Tales had on his childhood. This work was something unusual because the rabbits have human qualities to them. This was fascinating to him and had an impact on his fantasy writings of The Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis goes on to describe the impact of art and what it intends for the audience. He says, “Nearly all those pictures which, in reproduction, are widely popular are of things which in one way or another would in reality please or amuse or excite or move those who admire them.” Lewis says that when one makes comments on art such as ‘what a beautiful house’ that “the emphasis is on what may be called the narrative qualities of the picture. Line or color or composition are hardly mentioned.” He says what is admired is the realism and the difficulty of producing a piece of art.
Those comments are often made when someone looks at art for the first time; once it has been bought it begins to loose its appeal. It has served its purpose and given the audience all it can give. Lewis explains this was once his attitude towards art, he ‘used’ art. He says if a person continues this type of thinking you use it as a self-starter for certain imaginative and emotional activities of your own. He explains his point by saying, “in other words, you ‘do things with it.’ You don’t lay yourself open to what it, by being in its totality precisely the thing it is, can do to you.” Lewis goes on to explain how a person should go about viewing art and appreciating it. He says, “We must not let loose our own subjectivity upon the pictures and make them its vehicles. We must begin by laying aside as completely as we can all of our own preconceptions, interests, and associations….We must see with our eyes. We must look, and go on looking till we have certainly seen exactly what is there. We sit down before the picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things with it.” In other words, Lewis is saying we need to allow the art to grab us and pull us in and think deeply about what is in front of us and allow part of ourselves to be moved.
In Lewis’ first essay he writes about how culture should view art and appreciate it. Once Lewis became a Christian he ran into a problem. How can a Christian engage in culture when the New Testament seems so against secularism? In his second essay entitled Christianity and Culture he examines how the two, culture and Christianity, can and should fit together.
Lewis begins the essay by explaining what his beliefs were prior to his conversion to Christianity. He says, “At an early age I came to believe that the life of culture (that is, intellectually and aesthetic activity) was very good for its own sake, or even good that it was the good for man….I continued to hold this belief without consciously asking how it could reconcile with my new belief that the end of human life was salvation in Christ and the glorifying of God.” As a result he began to belittle culture, but as soon as he did he was faced with this question, ‘If it is a thing of so little value, how are you justified in spending so much of your life on it?’
To answer his own question Lewis began to study other philosophers and their thoughts on the issue. In his research he found varying opinions on the subject, but it led him to ask another question regarding salvation and culture. He says, “No one, presumably, is really maintaining that a fine art is a condition for salvation. Yet, the glory of God, and, as our only means to glorify Him, the salvation of human souls, is the real business of life. What, then is the value of culture?”
Lewis continues his research on other theologians and scriptural texts. He answers his question at the end of his essay saying, “On these grounds I conclude that culture has a distinct part to play in bringing certain souls to Christ.” He then asks if culture has any part to play in winning people to Christ. His answer is yes, in two parts. (a) “If all the cultural values, on the way up to Christianity, were dim antepasts (appetizers) of the truth, we can recognize them as such still.” (b) “Whether the purely contemplative life is, or is not, desirable for any, it is certainly not the vocation for all. Most men must glorify God by doing to His glory something which is not per se an act of glorifying but which becomes so by being offered. If, as I hope, cultural activities are innocent and even useful, then they also can be done to the Lord.”
Lewis makes an important statement here, and I believe it is based on biblical truth. For example, John 17:13-19 says, “But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.”
What is being said here, and it can answer Lewis’ question, is once we become a Christian we are not removed from culture. We should engage in culture, but know where our allegiance lies. Our allegiance lies in Christ. Lewis has it right when he says, “Yet the glory of God and, as our only means to glorify Him, the salvation of human souls is the real business of life.”
