The Key Teachings of C. S. Lewis

This is a companion to C. S. Lewis, not a book by him. Written by Ochorus, it sets out in fifteen short chapters the teaching for which Lewis is chiefly remembered — the longing that points beyond this world, the moral law and what it tells us about the Lawgiver, the claims of Jesus Christ, the faith held in common by all Christians, pride and humility, the new life of the Christian, temptation and the reality of the enemy, the problem of pain and the honest face of grief, prayer, the four loves, myth and imagination, miracles, glory, and the final choice between heaven and hell. It adds a chapter on his life, a conclusion, and a guide to his books and to the older classics he loved.

It is important to be clear about what this book is and is not. It is an independent work of exposition, summary and appreciation. It is not published by, affiliated with, or endorsed by the C. S. Lewis estate or by any organisation that holds rights in his writings. Lewis’s own books are still in copyright, and none of his words are reproduced here: every description of his thought is the present author’s own summary, and his books are named only so that readers may obtain them from their publishers and read him for themselves, which they are warmly encouraged to do. The only words quoted are those of Scripture, from the Authorised (King James) Version.

Lewis was loved by evangelicals and was not quite one of them. This volume says so where it matters — on his openness to a purifying purgatory, on his hope that some who never knew Christ’s name might yet be saved by Him, on his view of how Scripture is inspired, and on his willingness to accept an evolutionary account of human origins — briefly, charitably and without hiding it. He would have wanted every claim tested, and he would have wanted readers to go past him to the One he served.

Many of the older writers who shaped him are in the Ochorus library and are named in the last chapter: George MacDonald, G. K. Chesterton, Athanasius, Augustine, Bunyan, Thomas à Kempis, William Law and others.