C.S. Lewis

This week marks the anniversary of both the birth (Nov. 29) and the death (Nov. 22) of C.S. Lewis, one of the most remarkable Christians of the last century. Even today, nearly 60 years after his passing, Christians of all denominations, depth, and discernment continue to learn from Lewis about the nature and substance of faith. The value of the wit and wisdom of this unexpected champion of the faith only becomes more obvious as the central message of Christianity, that “Jesus is Lord!” sounds more and more strange to late-modern ears.

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While C.S. Lewis died comparatively young a week before his 65th birthday, he left behind enough words to fill two lifetimes. He published over 40 books, including classics like Mere Christianity and the Chronicles of Narnia. After his death, between 20 and 30 books of new material (letters, poems, essays) were published, including God in the Dock and Letters to Malcolm.

With the recent C.S. Lewis biopic The Most Reluctant Convert out on DVD and streaming platforms and plans for two more movies about Lewis, it’s a good time to revisit Lewis’ work. Here are some of his many thought-provoking words about faith, some things you probably didn’t know about his life, and a few things other people have said about him.

Further Reading: 10 C.S. Lewis Books You Haven’t Read Yet

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J.R.R. Tolkien is easily the best-known fantasy author of the last 100 years. If you haven’t read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings or seen the various films based on those stories, you almost certainly know at least one person familiar with them.

You may not know that Tolkien wrote many more fantasy works than just his famous ones. As he built his stories about Middle-earth into full-fledged mythology, he wrote numerous other stories about its history leading up to the fight over the One Ring. As a scholar of languages, Tolkien studied and translated famous medieval texts like Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He also wrote shorter fairy-tale works for his children, some connected in interesting ways with his more famous works.

With Amazon’s The Rings of Power coming out soon, it’s a good time to look at some of his other work. The following is a list of his great shorter works and some of his more accessible Middle-earth writings. Many of these shorter stories have been published separately, but you can also find them collected in anthologies like The Tolkien Reader or Tales from the Perilous Realm.

Further Reading: Does the Lord of the Rings Have Christian Themes?

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Jordan Feliz says influential Christian theologian C.S. Lewis inspired Another World, a reflective song on his latest album that discusses the desire for eternity.

Thanks to sold-out shows nationwide, The Most Reluctant Convert: The Untold Story of C.S. Lewis, a new biopic film about Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, will enjoy an extended release.

That story, the story of C.S. Lewis’s struggle leading to reliance in Jesus, is now in theatres across America. It releases today.

One line from C.S. Lewis’s autobiography Surprised by Joy is both simple and profound: “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.”

My friend Max McLean is bringing the story behind this line to life in his new film The Most Reluctant Convert. It premieres in select theaters across the country this Wednesday, November 3.

C.S. Lewis knew that without morality, human beings act less than human. Now more than ever, it’s a message we need to hear.

The appeal of The Chronicles comes back to a single character. Aslan, the Great Lion, who calls the children into Narnia, plays the central role in each adventure. It’s not exactly correct to call Aslan an “allegory” of Jesus. Lewis might prefer that we instead think of Aslan as Christ transposed into a Narnian key, a Creator and Lord fit for a world primarily inhabited by talking animals.

Earlier this week, Dr. Ward spoke with my colleague, Shane Morris, about the inconsistencies of modern culture and the similar realities Lewis observed. They talked about the sorts of ideas the world is planting in the cultural soil and what the harvest now looks like. Here’s a segment of that conversation: