Surprised by change

Okay, I’ll say it once, and promise not to use the cliche again: C.S. Lewis needs no introduction. And before you’ve sampled my observations on this latest biography, you’ll grasp what I mean— even if  you can’t recall what the C. and the S. stand for. (Yes, they are Clive and Staples.)

This is the second volume of a three-volume biography by Harry Lee Poe, who explains that in addition to presenting papers at conferences and writing articles for magazines and journals, he has had a number of invitations over the years to speak and write about Lewis.

Poe holds the Charles Colson Chair of Faith and Culture at Union University in Jackson,Tennessee.

  Poe’s lectures have all informed this biography and helped to shape his thinking about Lewis; and it’s no surprise that his acknowledgments run to eighteen pages.

Poe covers the major events in Lewis’s life, his friendships, his approach to writing, and, inevitably, his sense of humor, all of which secured his emergence as one of the most recognizable voices in the English-speaking world.

The title is The Making of C.S. Lewis: From Atheist to Apologist (1918-1945) (Crossway, 2021). Those years, of course, reflect the range of this book, not Lewis’s lifespan.

As you will have guessed, this is a scholarly work for readers concerned to dig beneath the surface of established favorites such as Surprised By Joy, Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and the movie Shadowlands (with Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger), and grasp the underlying historical detail.

It’s not a book that gleams with inspiring insights into Lewis’s prayer experience. Nor does it show us how a divine approach to everyday life can bring healing and regeneration. 

It’s a meticulous account, in ten chronological chapters of about thirty pages each, of Lewis’s pilgrimage from atheist to smooth-talking apologist for the Christian faith—with very few frills. In other words, it’s not a beach book, but perfect for the cooler, shorter days of Fall and Winter.

And Poe appears to take special delight in surprising us with neat observations, like, for example, his suggestion that in many ways the only book C.S. Lewis truly wrote was The Allegory of Love.

Poe says, “All the other books flow from it like a stream. In it can be found the synthesis of all the ideas that had been swirling in his head for years.”

And this falls in step with the comment from British philosopher Owen Barfield that to change the mind carries the meaning of the word in the Bible that is usually translated repentance. “Lewis was always submitting his life to Christ to be changed. He was always renewing his mind.”

And this is confirmed in Poe’s epilogue which deserves be quoted in full:

“The last years of [Lewis’s] life would be one long series of major changes. … He would devote more time to his teaching and academic writing. … He would marry, and then fall in love—in that order. … He would give up old pleasures of twenty-mile walks and swimming in icy water. And he would continue to change his mind.”

Which millions of us are glad that he did!