Volume 7, number 2 (2017)

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C.S. Lewis and other Christians have often struggled with the apparent conflict between culture, or the arts, and evangelism. Lewis, however, concluded that while evangelism is the duty of all Christians, culture could serve as a road to conversion for some, particularly as a praeparatio evangelica. Evangelicals, however, approach culture and evangelism with the desire to use the work as an explicitly evangelistic tool and therefore tend to interpret Lewis’s works in such a light. Using Lewis’s own conversion narrative, non-fictional writings, and his fictional depictions of conversion in That Hideous Strength and Till We Have Faces, this article explores conversion as a necessary but gradual process in which the non-believer is prepared both imaginatively and mentally, through works of literature, for a more explicit and direct gospel presentation. These works are each inseparable from the influence of literature, fairy-tale, story, and myth, demonstrating how culture may act as a pre-conversion stimulus, but also, as a work itself, may also stimulate such a transformation in the reader.

On the surface, Out of the Silent Planet appears to be C.S. Lewis’ first halting exploration into the realm of ‘the space-and-time story’. However, there is a deeper and more significant experiment involved; Out of the Silent Planet is Lewis’ first attempt at a philosophical narrative exploring a specific theme, a technique which he will later incorporate into his most famous works, the Chronicles of Narnia. In Out of the Silent Planet, Lewis is examining the tri-part Platonic soul as he presents it in The Abolition of Man, using the three species of Mars as representations of each aspect. This article demonstrates how these three parts are represented: the seroni being the Head, the pfifltriggi being the Belly, and the hrossa being the Chest, as well as the other connections between The Abolition of Man and the first book in the Ransom Trilogy.

In April 1958, after reading C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, a woman from Manchester wrote a letter to the philosopher Bertrand Russell. After reading Lewis’s book, the woman was deeply concerned that she would have to become a Christian, and so she asked Russell–one of the most prominent atheist intellectuals of the twentieth century–for advice. That letter began a correspondence of five letters (and one greeting card) between Russell and the woman. In his first response, Russell told the woman that ‘the whole idea of throwing away your life blindly as an imagined service to Christ is a form of glorifying masochism’. With the exception of one of Russell’s letters, this complete correspondence has never been published, but it is available in the Bertrand Russell Archives. This study analyzes the contents of that fascinating correspondence and will compare Russell’s and Lewis’s attitudes on religious sacrifice. Using Lewis’s own writings, it will be demonstrated that Lewis himself would not have agreed with Mrs. Mound’s extreme interpretation of his work, and would have had some sympathy with Russell’s response.

In a 6 September, 1959 unpublished letter to Reverend Alan Fairhurst, C.S. Lewis clearly Universalism. In a second unpublished letter to Fairhurst dated 9 September, 1959, Lewis offered evidence that he was not an Annihilationist. Both letters are unusual because Lewis was normally hesitant to discuss eschatology, particularly the nature of hell.
This essay presents both previously unpublished letters in their entirety, discusses the reasons for their importance, sets them in the context of Lewis’ other writings on hell and renders a conclusion, based on Lewis’ own words, about his positions on Universalism and Annihilationism.