By Jonathan Cloud

2023 11 06 (Rev. 2024 09 09)

C.S. Lewis was sharp: cunningly so.  He could take friends and enemies and have them shaking hands about things they would otherwise have never believed.  He could win a person over to his side so effectively that the person would be unconscious of the change himself.  He would just find himself on Lewis’ side like a fisherman who is enjoying his fishing and drifts over to the other shore before he realizes it.  

As for his way with words, it seemed like he knew how to catch the wind and tie words to it.  He was so adept at words it seems that words had a mastery over his mind, rather than his mind mastering them.  

He made his more insidious points often by teasing at them and introducing just an ear or nose of them but leaving the reader without the whole face, until finally, late at night, after all the guards were asleep, he would paint in the missing parts…but the face was not a natural one. It included features that should never have been painted.  

Let’s get right to the point.  Lewis believed solidly in a false Gospel, all the way to the writing of Letters to Malcolm at the end of his life, and he spread this in his writings.  This short statement gives a sample of the kind of things he held to in the quiet of his own heart: 

“I think that every prayer which is sincerely made even to a false god or to a very imperfectly conceived true God, is accepted by the true God and that Christ saves many who do not think they know Him.” (Letters of C. S. Lewis, 428.)

He was consistent, for throughout his writings a person will find outright denial of the Gospel, as well as plentiful statements which weaken or cut away at the solid doctrine of Christ, such as this one: 

“You may say that the Father has forgiven us because Christ has done for us what we ought to have done. You may say that we are washed in the blood of the Lamb. You may say that Christ has defeated death. They are all true. If any of them do not appeal to you, leave it alone and get on with the formula that does. And, whatever you do, do not start quarrelling with other people because they use a different formula from yours.”^[1]  

Within the “different formulas” Lewis found acceptable were the two works-based formulas of Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism.  He did not hide this fact.  In the introduction to one of his most popular works (Mere Christianity), Lewis stated, “The reader should be warned that I offer no help to anyone who is hesitating between two Christian ‘denominations’. You will not learn from me whether you ought to become an Anglican, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, or a Roman Catholic. This omission is intentional (even in the list I have just given the order is alphabetical). There is no mystery about my own position.”^[2]

Seeing that he denied the real Gospel, Lewis’ own soul could not rest in Christ for total and eternal satisfaction.  In light of the burning in his soul for self-purification as well as his affinity with Roman Catholicism, it logically followed that he would believe in purgatory.  And, indeed, he did.  To him, eternity was not that state when man will either be fully redeemed from his sins or not.  A third option must exist, namely, that man could, through personal suffering and wilful desire, be slowly purged from his sins after death.  In relation to this he stated in his Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (the following lengthy quote is interspersed with my commentary), 

“Of course I pray for the dead. The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter me. And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden. At our age the majority of those we love best are dead. What sort of intercourse with God could I have if what I love best were unmentionable to Him?”^[3]

[He was unashamed in his promotion of Catholic purgatory, for his own views of salvation required it.  He went on to shamefully write these words in opposition to all Scripture: ]

“Mind you, the Reformers had good reasons for throwing doubt on ‘the Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory’ as that Romish doctrine had then become. I don’t mean merely the commercial scandal. If you turn from Dante’s Purgatorio to the sixteenth century you will be appalled by the degradation. In Thomas More’s Supplication of Souls Purgatory is simply temporary Hell. In it the souls are tormented by devils, whose presence is ‘more horrible and grievous to us than is the pain itself’. Worse still, Fisher, in his Sermon on Psalm VI, says the tortures are so intense that the spirit who suffers them cannot, for pain, ‘remember God as he ought to do’. In fact, the very etymology of the word purgatory has dropped out of sight. Its pains do not bring us nearer to God, but make us forget Him. It is a place not of purification but purely of retributive punishment.”

[Summary: purgatory was rejected by the Reformers because it was viewed as separating man from God by its harsh, punative portrayal.]

“The right view returns magnificently in Newman’s Dream [a highly influential Roman Catholic]. There, if I remember it rightly, the saved soul, at the very foot of the throne, begs to be taken away and cleansed. It cannot bear for a moment longer ‘With its darkness to affront that light’. Religion has reclaimed Purgatory.” 

[Summary: the soul wants to be purged, so purgatory is no longer punitive and harsh but desirable and urgent, like a hospital emergency room.]

“Our souls demand Purgatory, don’t they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, ‘It is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the joy.’? Should we not reply, ‘With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I’d rather be cleaned first.’ ‘It may hurt, you know’—‘Even so, sir.’” 

[Summary: the basis of purgatory: human sinfulness demands it, otherwise humans would be entering heaven in a polluted state.  So much does the human soul demand self-purging before entering heaven that even if God did not require it the soul of man would politely demand it even against His will.  Notice how Christ, the only means of cleansing, is completely missing from this dialogue between man and God…or at least a god.]

“I assume that the process of purification will normally involve suffering. Partly from tradition; partly because most real good that has been done me in this life has involved it. But I don’t think suffering is the purpose of the purgation. I can well believe that people neither much worse nor much better than I will suffer less than I or more. ‘No nonsense about merit.’ The treatment given will be the one required, whether it hurts little or much.” 

[Summary: forsaking every corner of God’s truth and its authority, Lewis launches out completely on his own understanding in rejection of God’s unqestionable clarity on the matter.]

“My favourite image on this matter comes from the dentist’s chair. I hope that when the tooth of life is drawn and I am ‘coming round’, a voice will say, ‘Rinse your mouth out with this.’ This will be Purgatory. The rinsing may take longer than I can now imagine. The taste of this may be more fiery and astringent than my present sensibility could endure.”^[4]

[Summary: Lewis cringes slightly at the horrific thought of paying for his own sins, but still frames it in a positive, tolerable light, similar to a distasteful part of a routine dental surgory.]

What sadness it brings to realize that Lewis finished this book close to the end of his life.

So, Lewis unwaveringly affirmed self-suffering in eternity as necessary to purge away personal sin for believers, for he did not believe that Christ’s suffering was sufficient.  Lewis taught that the human soul needed to suffer as well, agreeing with the Roman Catholic destructive false Gospel.  

Because of this false Gospel, Lewis had to believe in the ability of a Christian to lose his salvation, for if his effort wained sufficiently—and his own effort is always key in a works-salvation—he would be disqualified, for his salvation was conditional even after it was “obtained.”  Here is Lewis on this: 

“Your natural life is derived from your parents; that does not mean it will stay there if you do nothing about it. You can lose it by neglect, or you can drive it away by committing suicide. You have to feed it and look after it: but always remember you are not making it, you are only keeping up a life you got from someone else. In the same way a Christian can lose the Christ-life which has been put into him, and he has to make efforts to keep it.But even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam—he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts.”^[5]

This statement may sound palatable, if by losing “the Christ-life” Lewis meant “losing earthly fellowship with Christ” or “losing a Christlikeness in demeanor and speech,” but he did not.  He meant that salvation itself, the right relationship with the Father through the righteousness of the Son, could be lost.  

This belief in self-effort is seen in his utter confusion and false conclusions concerning the state of those who do not trust in Christ.  The following words are not the words of a true Christian:

“There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it.

For example, a Buddhist of good will may be led to concentrate more and more on the Buddhist teaching about mercy and to leave in the background (though he might still say he believed) the Buddhist teaching on certain other points. Many of the good Pagans long before Christ’s birth may have been in this position. And always, of course, there are a great many people who are just confused in mind and have a lot of inconsistent beliefs all jumbled up together. Consequently, it is not much use trying to make judgments about Christians and non-Christians in the mass. It is some use comparing cats and dogs, or even men and women, in the mass, because there one knows definitely which is which.”^[6]

Thus, salvation is available without turning to Christ or knowing Him.  This Satanic Gospel threads through Lewis’ writings.  If a Buddhist displays the correct effort at being virtuous, even in the name of Buddha and as a Buddist, this effort is effecacious for his salvation.  By it he becomes Christ’s without even knowing Christ.  This is shocking!  No, it is not shocking that Lewis believed these things, as many in the world do, but it is shocking that Lewis, a man under the curse of those who bring another Gospel (Gal. 1:8), succesfully took up residence in the unguarded affections and thoughts of God’s people who do believe the Gospel.

Since knowledge of salvation is not dependent upon knowing Christ in Lewis’ mind, there is no definite way to tell whether a person is a Christian or not, for a Buddhist or Hindu or Muslim who rejects Christ may, indeed, be a Christian and not even know it!  

This same false Gospel is found without any cover in the popular children’s series Chronicles of Narnia.  An excerpt:

“The Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, ‘Son, thou art welcome.’ But I said, ‘Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash.’ He answered, ‘Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.’

“‘Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one?’ The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, ‘It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. 

“‘Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.’

“‘Dost thou understand, Child?’ I said, ‘Lord, thou knowest how much I understand.’ But I said also (for the truth constrained me), ‘Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days.’

“‘Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.’”(Chronicles of Narnia 756–757; emphasis added)

This false Gospel was not nor could be a lone tree standing in the forest.  It was a fungus that sadly affected all of Lewis’ thinking.  For example, in Letters to Malcolm, he makes the reader draw his breath by coming close to saying that heaven will be a place of ardours and strains, akin to the relationships of fallen humans, but…just as the reader thinks he is saying so, he veers, leaving the question dangling in the air of whether humans will strain in heaven.^[7] 

Now, let’s pause and sincerely deal with this question.  Will heaven have its “ardours and strains” on the beings of those redeemed from their sins? Is it a place of eternal incompletion?  For when Lewis uses the word “strain,” he uses a word that signifies that something has not arrived at its satisfied state.  It lacks rest.  It is still in its struggle.  And with whom or against what would a human “strain” in heaven?  Against self?  That would indicate that the old nature is still present.  Against God?  That would indicate that the enmity of sin had not been succesfully removed by Christ.  Against the elements?  ….?  So, what would make a man raise the question and leave it in place of whether heaven will include “strain” and “ardour” for God’s people?  Well, quite simply, the belief in self.  If salvation comes by personal effort that extends out into eternity, then “strain” would be a valid way to describe some of what is to come.  For the human to struggle or “strain” in eternity would be to be continually dissatisfied and discontent, but for a man like Lewis, who believed deeply in self-purification and self-effort in personal salvation (i.e. the necessity of self-righteousness), the idea of struggle in heaven makes sense.  Salvation is not a gift, for him, but a process with no end in sight.  Lewis chose to be ignorant of the total grace of God in Christ.  He desperately desired to add his own works and efforts to Christ’s.  He wanted desperately to pay for some of his own wrong doings, of which he had many.  His was a conscience not cleansed from sin but still very conscious of sin’s guilt. 

“He lived for 30 years with Janie Moore, a woman 25 years his senior to whom he was not married. The relationship with the married woman began when Lewis was still a student at Oxford. Moore was separated from her husband. Lewis confessed to his brother Arthur that he was in love with Mrs. Moore, the mother of one of his friends who was killed in World War I. The relationship was definitely sexual in nature. See Alan Jacobs, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis, pp. 82, 94. 

“At age 58, Lewis married Joy Gresham, an American woman who pursued a relationship with Lewis even while she was still married to another man. According to two of Lewis’ friends, Gresham’s husband divorced her on the grounds of desertion (Roger Lancelyn Green & Walter Hooper, Light on C.S. Lewis), and he, in turn, married Joy’s cousin. Trading husbands and wives is not Christian godliness.”^[8]

This is a characteristic of those Peter warned about in 2 Peter, those who live sensually.  Just as Peter wrote, “and many shall follow their pernicious [destructive] ways” (2 Peter 2:2), so many have followed the thought processes of Lewis. The result?  “…by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.”  Lewis’ false teaching has been sufficiently documented above, but what about the results of that teaching as it went out into the world?  The extensive damage (destruction) could easily fill a book, for Christian leader after leader and those who listen to them have adopted his philosophies as their own, thinking all the while they are getting closer to God by doing so.  Still, reaching further out than professing Christians, the following account documents how Lewis has opened the door for unbelievers (Jews, in this case) to blaspheme Jesus Christ, the very way of truth.  

In the following lengthy quote, a Jew drew the true conclusion from Lewis’ views of Christ.  (The quote that comes next is from the Jew and the statement of Lewis he is referencing concerning Christ making a false prophecy can be found in footnote 9 below.^[9])

“In his work The World’s Last Night C. S. Lewis expressed a frank if shocking to most Christians view that Jesus was very wrong. The ‘God-Man’ (as Lewis called him) was clearly wrong when he prophesied about his own return. He was ignorant and has spoken presumptuously. Indeed, Jesus was the cause of the deception among his own disciples and knew no more than they did. Yet Jesus did prophecy, as the New Testament recorded for all to read, repeating the same failed prophecies across all of the four gospels.

…

That C. S. Lewis went to his grave as a devout Christian and worshiper of the ‘God-Man’, while effectively acknowledging that Jesus prophesied falsely and deceived not only his few immediate listeners but billions of others, is a dramatic testimony of just how far from the Jewish moorings Christianity has drifted. It testifies not only of the blind(ed) devotion to Jesus even in the face of bare and even self-acknowledged facts, but spotlights and exposes how little a value Christians have historically placed on what they call “the Law”. Had they really valued the Word of G-d (of which New Testament is not) they would have recognized that in the Torah that G-d gifted to Israel G-d has warned the Jewish people in no uncertain terms about false prophets that were to arise in their midst and taught them how to recognize them, how test them and how deal with their treachery:

But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death.” You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the L-RD?” If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the L-RD does not take place or come true, that is a message the L-RD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him. (Deuteronomy 18:20-22)”^[10]

Truly, as seen in Deuteronomy 18:20-22, despite all of Lewis’ blundering attempts to soften the fact that Jesus Christ made a false prophecy as an ignorant, presumptuous^[11] man, this Jewish author saw the truth.  This single fact of a false prophecy would totally disqualify the Son of God and turn Him into a false prophet altogether.  There is no escaping the devastating (“destructive” –  Peter’s word from 2 Peter 2:2 again) consequences of this on the minds of those who think.  Is this statement by Lewis not a denial of the Lord who bought him?  How long will God’s people listen to those who mislead?  To the witty rather than the true?  How long will their hearts stand hard toward their Savior and Lord while they sit with delight at the feet of those who deny Him? “Behold, He cometh”!  And may all glory be to the perfect Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world in totality, by the aid and resources of no one but His glorious and worthy self! 

“Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?” (1 Cor. 5:6). 

---

^[1] Lewis, C. S.. Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis Signature Classics) (pp. 181-182). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

^[2] Ibid. (p. viii)

^[3] Lewis, C. S.. Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer (p. 144). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 

^[4] Lewis, C. S., Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer (p. 145-147). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

^[5] Lewis, C. S., Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis Signature Classics) (pp. 62-63). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

^[6] Ibid. p. 208-209

^[7] “In fact, you are bringing in something like Purgatory. Well, I suppose I am. Though even in Heaven some perpetual increase of beatitude, reached by a continually more ecstatic self-surrender, without the possibility of failure but not perhaps without its own ardours and exertions—for delight also has its severities and steep ascents, as lovers know—might be supposed. But I won’t press, or guess, that side for the moment. I believe in Purgatory.” Lewis, C. S., Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer (p. 145). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

^[8] https://www.wayoflife.org/free_ebooks/downloads/CS_Lewis_and_Evangelicals_Today.pdf

^[9] “But there is worse to come. ‘Say what you like,’ we shall be told, ‘the apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, ‘this generation shall not pass till all these things be done.’

And He was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else.’
It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible…. The one exhibition of error and the one confession of ignorance grow side by side. That they stood thus in the mouth of Jesus Himself, and were not merely placed thus by the reporter, we surely need not doubt. … The facts, then, are these: that Jesus professed Himself (in some sense) ignorant, and within a moment showed that He really was so. To believe in the Incarnation, to believe that He is God, makes it hard to understand how He could be ignorant; but also makes it certain that, if He said He could be ignorant, then ignorant He could really be. For a God who can be ignorant is less baffling than a God who falsely professes ignorance…. And if limitation, and therefore ignorance, was thus taken up, we ought to expect that the ignorance should at some time be actually displayed.” Lewis, C. S., The World’s Last Night (pp. 105-107). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

^[10] https://dailyminyan.com/2014/09/04/c-s-lewis-on-jesus-false-prophecies/, accessed October 24, 2023

^[11] If Christ had spoken out of ignorance and falsely foretold something, it would have indeed been presumption, for to speak out of ignorance as if speaking out of knowledge is presumption.