CC.S Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters Westminster Academy.ppt

C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters Introductory Notes * 1. The Irish-English writer C.S. Lewis was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1898. He was educated in England, enlisted in the army in 1917, saw front line combat and was wounded in the war. He returned to his studies at Oxford after the war, and graduated in 1922. He taught at Oxford and Cambridge as a professor of Medieval and Renaissance literature. 2. In his boyhood he was an atheist, but converted to Christianity in 1931. His spiritual pilgrimage followed two tracks, both intellectual (i.e. mind) And emotional-intuitive (i.e feeling). 3. Lewis was part of the Oxford literary circle known as the Inklings, whose membership included J.R.R. Tolkien (author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit). 4. In 1957 he married Joy Davidman Gresham, an American with whom he had corresponded for a number of years. Joy had been a “Jewish atheist” and a communist. She converted to Christianity partly as a result of reading Lewis’ books. 5. Joy was already suffering from bone cancer at the time of their marriage and died in 1960. Lewis died three years later on Nov. 22, 1963, the same day JFK was assassinated in Dallas. Their lives and love story are portrayed in the play and movie “Shadowlands”. The title of the movie alludes to Lewis’ belief that our world is only a reflection of God’s wonderful kingdom (“Now we see through a glass darkly, but in the end, face to face....”). 6. The screenplay gives some people the idea that Lewis lost his faith after Joy died. This is not true. In his autobiography, A Grief Observed, he makes it clear that he did go through a period of questioning God’s goodness for a short time. At one point he speculates whether “God might be wicked.” This statement is followed by the line “I wrote that last night. It was a yell rather than a thought.” It is interesting to note that one of Lewis’ finest Christian books is Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, which wa