C.S Lewis on the Christ-life

[cih1355]

I've been reading through Lewis's book, Mere Christianity, and in the chapter, "The Practical Conclusion", he says that the Christ-life is spread to us through baptism, belief, and the Lord's Supper. He says that to have the Christ-life means to have Christ operating through you. We have new life from Christ and Christ gives us this new life through baptism, belief, and the Lord's Supper. Did Lewis believe in baptismal regeneration? It sounds like he believed in it. When Lewis says that the life of Christ is spread through the Lord's Supper, is he talking about sanctification?

Below are two quotes from that chapter in Mere Christianity:

"There are three things that spread the Christ-life to us: baptism, belief, and that mysterious action which different Christians call by different names- Holy Communion, the Mass, and the Lord's Supper."

"And let me make it quite clear that when Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral. When they speak of being 'in Christ' or of Christ being 'in them', this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through them; that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts- that we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body. And perhaps that explains one or two things. It explains why this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts life belief, but by bodily acts like baptism and Holy Communion...God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us."

 

[turmeric]

In my humble opinion, it sounds like he believes in sacraments as means of grace. He was a self-admitted Arminian Anglican, but not a theologian.

 

[Davidius]

From what I've seen, Lewis was an Anglo-Catholic who believed in baptismal regeneration and purgatory. There are a lot of fundy sites calling him a condemned heretic and I think John Robins also consigned him to hell.

 

[MrMerlin777]

From what I've seen, Lewis was an Anglo-Catholic who believed in baptismal regeneration and purgatory. There are a lot of fundy sites calling him a condemned heretic and I think John Robins also consigned him to hell.

Thanks be to God that none of us actually have that power. (To consign people to Hell)

 

[turmeric]

Shouldn't he be in purgatory?

 

[discipulo]

Shouldn't he be in purgatory?

Well...C S Lewis concept of purgatory is not the roman catholic one, it is the purging of 1 Corinthians 3:13-15
But in his book the Great Divorce, oddly people are going from hell to heaven,
while in The Problem of Pain, Lewis states that hell is closed from within.
Still a great writer and a great apologist no doubt.

 

[Davidius]

Here is an excerpt from the end of the Trinity Review I mentioned:

Lewis taught and believed in purgatory (despite the fact that Article 22 of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England describes the doctrine of purgatory as “repugnant to the Word of God”), said prayers for the dead, believed in the physical presence of Christ’s body and blood in the bread and wine, a sacrament that he came to call “Mass,” practiced and taught auricular confession, believed in baptismal salvation, and free will. As we have seen, he rejected the inerrancy of Scripture and justification by faith alone, as well as the doctrines of total depravity and the sovereignty of God.
So we ask again: Did C. S. Lewis go to Heaven? And our answer must be: Not if he believed what he wrote in his books and letters.

 

[discipulo]

I really like C S Lewis books but I never forget that Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones
in Knowing the Times- chapter What is an Evangelical (in the Lloyd Jones book meaning equals Biblical Christian) bluntly says he doesn’t consider C S Lewis an Evangelical.
He still doesn’t say Lewis is not saved, he just means he has too much unbiblical views.
Anyway Lewis points to that passage in 1 Corinthians 3 to sustain a kind of purgatory but unlike the rcc doctrine.

David do you really see it that way for Lewis?
I mean, Lewis also wrote a lot on God's Grace and on the Vicarious work of Christ.

-----Added 12/29/2008 at 02:03:18 EST-----

To my great disappointment, even if I will continue to re read my C S Lewis books and leave his eternal state in God’s Hands, where it has always been, even before the foundation of the World, here is a link to a very interesting article on C S Lewis heretical views, quite sad I must say.

C. S. LEWIS’S THEOLOGY