Behind-the-Scenes: Writing about C.S. Lewis and the Bible
By Karlissa J
While I was writing To Narnia and Beyond, I ‘tried out’ a variety of content and information that ultimately didn’t make it into the book. At one point, I had a chapter comparing how the four authors – MacDonald, Tolkien, Lewis, and L’Engle – each interacted with the Bible in their storytelling. Here is part of the section that I wrote for C.S. Lewis.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was the first of the Narnia books written by C.S. Lewis, and it has been highly regarded for how it poignantly mirrors the death and resurrection story of Jesus.
Though there are other events going on in the tale, at the core of the story is the lion Aslan allowing himself to be bound to the stone table in place of the traitor Edmund, where Aslan dies and then, gloriously, is raised back to life. The story’s connections to the Gospels have been obvious to many (though not all) readers.
However, most of Lewis’ fantasy books aren’t based around Bible stories. In fact, many of Lewis’ works barely seem to mention scripture.
In his books of theology and apologetics, Lewis emphasized the importance of using both our logical capacities and our imaginative capacities to explore our faith. He defended traditional Christian beliefs against those who considered them outdated. And he meditated on the nature of God.
C.S. Lewis was a part of the Anglican church, which is a liturgical-style church where there is regular reading of the scriptures and quotes from the Bible within the service. In the Anglican church I attend, every Sunday there is a reading from the Old Testament, a Psalm is recited as a congregation, there’s a reading from the Epistles or Revelation, and there’s a reading from the Gospels (in addition to sometimes reciting parts of Isaiah or other Bible passages). Though his services may have looked slightly different, Lewis would have been very accustomed to hearing multiple portions of scripture in church.
But despite all of this, Lewis rarely mentioned the Bible in any of his writings. He wrote over twenty books, many of them nonfiction works aimed at Christian instruction, yet his only Bible study book was A Reflection on the Psalms.
In the C.S. Lewis Podcast, Lewis biographer Alister McGrath contemplates this.
“Lewis actually doesn’t look at the Bible all that much,” he notes. Instead, “he more looks along it, or he looks at people who have looked along it, and asks, what is this telling me about myself, the way the world is? Lewis I think is using the Bible, but not perhaps in the way you might expect.” (Note 1.)
Sometimes fantasy authors choose to retell Bible stories. Sometimes they choose to quote passages of scripture. And sometimes, the Bible’s influence on their writings is more subtle, existing as the behind-the-scenes source that helped the author pinpoint who God is and how He interacts with His world.
Since coming up with this now-discarded content, I’ve learned that C.S. Lewis might have had a more complex relationship with the Bible than I ever knew. That is one interesting aspect of research: discovering the depth and nuance in life, and how much you didn’t know! But for now, I’m busy reading xenofiction novels - so I may have to revisit Lewis’ understanding of the Bible some other time…
Note 1: The C.S. Lewis Podcast, “#52 Reflections on the Psalms” (posted May 2, 2022).
