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Prior to Lewis' [[conversion ]] to Christianity, he published two books: ''Spirits in Bondage'', a collection of poems, and ''Dymer'', a single narrative poem. Both were published under the pen name of Clive Hamilton.

In addition to his career as an English Professor, and his novels, Lewis also wrote a number of books about Christianity—perhaps most famously, ''Mere Christianity''. As an adult convert to the Anglican church (he stated that he was influenced by Tolkien) Church of England,he was very much interested in presenting a reasonable case for the truth of Christianity. ''Mere Christianity'', ''The Problem of Pain'', and ''Miracles'' were all concerned, to one degree or another, with refuting popular objections to Christianity.

C.S. Lewis is much loved by many Orthodox Christians who often raise the question, "Was C.S. Lewis an anonymous Orthodox?" Lewis's Atonement Theology and Soteriology, as well as his understandings of [[heaven ]] and [[hell]], are very similar to that of the Orthodox and stand opposed to traditional Roman Catholic and Protestant understandings of these matters. As a Platonist, Lewis also appreciated the Platonism that drives much of Orthodox theology. Lewis frequently quoted Orthodox theologians in his works, and wrote a brilliant [http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/history/ath-inc.htm introduction] to St. Athanasius's "On the Incarnation"—a foundational piece of Orthodox theology.

AdditionallyOf course, of all the Christian theologies, Orthodoxy bears the closest resemblance to [http://www.george-macdonald.com/theology.htm the universalism] of George MacDonald whom C.S. Lewis regarded as remained an Anglican throughout his spiritual [http://www.george-macdonald.com/cslewis.htm "master."] Before moving on to the rest of this articlelife; however, the reader it is advised significant to read [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/macdonald/unspoken3.viii.html "Justice"]note that for more than a century, which is a distillation of MacDonaldand all through Lewis's theology and an intense reaction against Augustinianism life, the Anglican and CalvinismOrthodox churches were studying union. If The Orthodox gave up the reader is unfamiliar with this sermonquest for union in the late 1960s when it became apparent that liberalism, not orthodox theology, then what follows will be truly beyond beliefwould prevail in the Church of England.

Of course, Lewis remained an Anglican throughout his life; however, it It is significant very fair to note that for more than a century, and all through describe Lewis' lifeas an "Anonymous Orthodox"—his official allegiance lay with the Church of England, but his sympathies lay with the Anglican and Orthodox churches were studying union. The Anglican Church began in the 16th century most thoughtful study of Lewis' relationship to Orthodoxy was written by adapting the liturgy Bishop [[Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia|Kallistos Ware]] of the Celtic Diokleia, who also teaches at Oxford. In an article published in ''Sobornost'' (orthodoxan Anglican-Orthodox Ecumenical magazine) church entitled "C.S. Lewis: an 'Anonymous Orthodox'?" he explores this fascinating question. He humbly relates that was introduced when Britain was Lewis has a Roman provincetendency to "idealize us Orthodox, long before the schism between the Roman West " and affirms that "even though C.S. Lewis' personal contacts with the Orthodox East. The Orthodox gave up Church were not extensive at the quest for union same time his thinking is often profoundly in harmony with the late 1960s when it became apparent that liberalism, not orthodox theology, would prevail in the Church of EnglandOrthodox standpoint. "

===Orthodox Theology=== Lewis is subtle about revealing the manner in which his theological ideas significantly diverge from the Roman Catholics and the Protestants around him. Much of his theological thought is expressed in allegories and fantasy rather than in religious exposition. Moreover, even in his religious works, Although he wrote in a colloquial style, avoiding the terminology and jargon of theologians which would can't be a dead give-away for his Orthodox theology. His work was not to destroy the false, except looked upon as it came in the way of building the true. Therefore Lewis sought to speak only what he believed, saying little concerning what he did not believe; trusting in the true to cast out the false, and shunning dispute. But a close reader who is familiar with the fault lines of theological debate will distinctly perceive from what Lewis says and leaves unsaid that Lewis was much more sympathetic to an Orthodox theology than he was to standard Roman Catholic and Protestant theology. To get a general sense of these differenceswriter, please see [http://www.stmaryorthodoxchurch.org/orthodoxy/articles/2004-hughes-sin.php Ancestral Versus Original Sin]. In particular, in ''Mere Christianity'', Lewis emphasizes the "Christus Victor" model of Christ's work to the exclusion of the standard Roman Catholic model which holds that Christ was "penalized" by God as a substitute his consistent sympathy for all those who believe in this theory of penal substitution. Lewis's personal favorite metaphor of the "atonement" was St. Athanasius's "Mystical Theory" which states that what Christ actually did when incarnated was to infuse His deity into humanity, thus giving humanity the thing needed to counteract and overcome the death and impending corruption which were introduced into the human race through Adam. Men who are saved become partakers of this purified humanity. Lewis in ''Mere Christianity'' describes this by saying that Christ brought the "Good Infection" that spreads the "Christ-life." This book also describes the operation of St. Maximos's "Vicarious Repentance Theory" of the atonement. In ''The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe'', we see Lewis's adaptation of St. Gregory of Nyssa's "Fishhook Theory" of the atonement whereby Christ conquers Satan by a divine ruse. Lewis constructed his "Space Trilogy" around Irenaeus's "Recapitulation Theory" of the work of Christ. Throughout his writing career, Lewis illustrated and affirmed each ancient theory of atonement, while conspicuously ignoring the modern western theory which he described as "immoral" and "very silly" in ''Mere Christianity''. [http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mischedj/ca_lewisatone.html C.S. Lewis Explains the Atonement] In ''Mere Christianity'', Lewis also emphasizes the understanding of salvation as deification Orthodoxy has to the exclusion of the Roman Catholic and Protestant thought that salvation includes being "pardoned," or "justified" by God. Finally, Lewis did not believe in a penal hell, choosing instead the understanding that "hell" is the unfortunate state of mind of a person who has not developed the capacity for love and joy, regardless of their religion (see ''The Great Divorce'' and ''The Problem of Pain''). In a parallel fashion, Lewis believed in heaven as the experience of having a heavenly kind of character: "To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and powerconsidered. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other." (''Mere Christianity'') In the entire corpus of Lewis's work, it is impossible to find a statement of belief in "penalties against non-believing sinners" or "penal atonement." Lewis felt comfortable belonging to the Anglican church because Anglicans, like the Orthodox, but unlike Roman Catholics and Protestants, are allowed to affirm Christus Victor notions of the atonement and to deny that the atonement or hell has penal aspects. As Lewis explains, "Theories about Christ's death are not Christianity: they are explanations about how it works. Christians would not all agree as to how important these theories are. My own church—the Church of England—does not lay down any one of them as the right one. The Church of Rome goes a bit further." (''Mere Christianity'') After Lewis's death, the Roman Catholics have begun to shift their theology of atonement and hell in ways that would have made Lewis more comfortable. See Pope John Paul II's [http://www.catholicculture.org/docs/doc_view.cfm?recnum=1183 Homily on the Nature of Hell] and his statement of the [http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mischedj/ca_scandalcross.html Scandal of the Cross.] ===Salutary Wrath=== Instead of a belief in divine penalties, Lewis agreed with [http://www.stathanasius.miss.on.coptorthodox.ca/Menu/Patrology/SchoolOfAlexandria/DeansClement.htm St. Clement of Alexandria] that God's punishment of all sinners is a "wise fire" that delivers sinners from death to life, evil to good, gloom to joy, if only the sinners had the sense and trust to "lay ourselves open" to God's infinite justice. St. Clement of Alexandria speaks the comforting words: "The punishment that God imposes is due not to anger, but to justice, for the neglect of justice contributes nothing to our improvement." biographers recalls (''The Tutor'') In ''Problem of Pain'', Lewis describes divine retribution in similar terms as the painful but ''salutary'' process by which God exposes our souls to divine truth. God's justice is "a truly ethical demand that, soon or late, the right should be asserted, the flag planted in this horribly rebellious soul." According to Lewis, a sinner will not be saved from the hell that he is trapped in until he yields himself to God's infinite wrath. This is a very radical notion that Lewis adopts directly from the central thought of his "master" George MacDonald. See [http://lib.ru/LEWISCL/mcdonalds_antology.txt George MacDonald. An Anthology (edited by C.S.Lewis)]. This paradoxical theology is totally contrary to what most of his modern western audience understands to be the "Christian Gospel" -- to them, the good news is that we can ''avoid'' God's punishment by believing that Christ was our penal subsitute. To Lewis, the good news includes the idea that we never needed to be "justified" before our Glad Creator in the first place and the imposition of his wrath brings us heavenly joy. Thus Lewis dares speak directly of this surprising conclusion only in his fantasy literature: *"If you are thirsty, come and drink." "Are you not thirsty?" said the Lion. "I'm dying of thirst," said Jill. "Then drink," said the Lion. "Will you promise not to—do anything to me, if I do come?" said Jill. "I make no promise," said the Lion. "I daren't come and drink," said Jill. "Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion. "Oh, dear!" said Jill, coming another step nearer. "I suppose I must go and look for another stream then." "There is no other stream," said the Lion. —''Silver Chair'' *Then Hwin, though shaking all over, gave a strange little neighHis Times, and trotted across to the Lion. "Please," she said, "you're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd sooner be eaten by you then fed by anyone else." "Dearest daughter," said Aslan, planting a lion's kiss on her twitching, velvet nose, "I knew you would not be long in coming to me. Joy shall be yours." —''Horse and His Boy'' When the reader contrasts these two dialogues, the reader sees that Lewis had the greatest admiration for those to whom the theories of "penal hell" and "penal atonement" are immediately perceived to be palpably untrue and who instead cry exultant to God with a child-heart: "Do with me as thou wilt!" Lewis did not believe that it was possible for Christians to be saved from hell so long as they are successful in their scheme to evade God's justice and wrath. Thus, Lewis believed that Western Christians will be ''the very last ones'' to be saved, after the pagans, atheists, and agnostics. The last sin that will dissolve as Western Christans enter into the consuming fire of divine love is the sadly misguided theories of penal atonement and penal hell. According to Lewis, the ones who approach the throne of God say: "We know nothing of religion here: we think only of Christ. We know nothing of speculation." (''Great Divorce'') ===Purgatorial Heaven=== Fully half of the quotations that Lewis selected to include in his [http://lib.ru/LEWISCL/mcdonalds_antology.txt Anthology of George MacDonald's Theology] were on this very point—that God's wrath delivers us from death to life. This was George MacDonald's central theological insight. Lewis tells us in the introduction to the anthology: "This collection, as I have said, was designed not to revive MacDonald's literary reputation but to spread his religious teaching." "My own debt to this book is almost as great as one man can owe to another: and nearly all serious inquirers to whom I have introduced it acknowledge that it has given them great help—sometimes indispensable help toward the very acceptance of the Christian faith." Lewis then proceeds to quote the theology of MacDonald that he admired: *When we say that God is Love, do we teach men that their fear of Him is groundless? No. He is against sin: insofar as, and while, they and sin are one, He is against them-against their desires, their aims, their fears, and their hopes; and thus He is altogether and always for them. That thunder and lightning and tempest, that blackness torn with the sound of a trumpet, that visible horror billowed with the voice of words, was all but a faint image of what God thinks and feels against vileness and selfishness, of the unrest of unassuageable repulsion with which He regards such conditions. As much as they fear will come upon them, possibly far more. The wrath will consume what they call themselves; so that the selves God made shall appear. The man whose deeds are evil, fears the burning. But the burning will not come the less that he fears it or denies it. Escape is hopeless. For Love is inexorable. Our God is a consuming fire. He shall not come out till he has paid the uttermost farthing. —''George MacDonald: An Anthology'' This reasoning is identical to that performed by St. Clement of Alexandria 1600 years previously: *"How then", they say, "If the Lord loves man, and is good, is He angry and punishes?" Revenge is returning evil for evil, imposed for the satisfaction of the one taking vengeance, but He would never desire revenge who has taught us to pray for those who calumniate us. The punishment that God imposes is due not to anger, but to justice, for the neglect of justice contributes nothing to our improvement. Many of the passions are cured by punishment. For reproof is, as it were, the surgery of the passions of the soul. Reproach is like application of medicines, dissolving the callousness of the passions, and purging the impurities of the lewdness of life; and in addition, reducing the excrescences of pride, restoring the patient to the healthy and true state of humanity. Therefore, God is good. —St. Clement of Alexandria, "''The Tutor''" Lewis echoed St. Clement of Alexandria in his remarks concerning what he called "purgatory" (note that the Church of England denies the existence of PurgatorySayer): *I assume that the process of purification will normally involve suffering. Partly from tradition; partly because most real good that has been done me in this life has involved it. But I don't think the suffering is the purpose of the purgation. I can well believe that people neither much worse nor much better than I will suffer less than I or more. The treatment given will be the one required, whether it hurts little or much. My favorite image on this matter comes from the dentist's chair. I hope that when the tooth of life is drawn and I am 'coming round',' after a voice will say, 'Rinse your mouth out with this.' This will be Purgatory. The rinsing may take longer than I can now imagine. The taste of this may be more fiery and astringent than my present sensibility could endure. But it will [not] be disgusting and unhallowed. Mind you, the Reformers had good reasons for throwing doubt on the 'Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory' as that Romish doctrine had then become. —''Letters to Malcolm'' In other words, instead of preaching "Justification by Faith," Lewis implicitly taught a very odd and truly unconventional theology of "Deification by Punishment." In this process, Christians have no privileged position—if the liturgy and sacraments of Christianity are not deifying Christians by transforming them into divine love, then they are useless: "[T]he Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time." —''Mere Christianity'' In short, Lewis was a universalist holiday spent in the way that Orthodox Christianity teaches universalism, believing that God loves all his creatures now and throughout eternity, and we experience hell only insofar as, and so long as, we choose not to conform ourselves to Divine Love. Like the Orthodox, Lewis believed that we could repent beyond the grave and we could all hope for (but not predict Greece together with certainty) [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01599a.htm ''apokatastasis,''] universal reconciliation of humanity to divine goodness (see ''The Great Divorce''). According to Lewis, a human is not required to accept any particular religious beliefs or doctrine in order to be "saved," i.e., in order to turn from gloom to joy. In fact, the Western doctrine of "Justification by Faith" can only serve to retard a Christian's salvation by shielding them from God's life-giving wrath. An article on this matter is [http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-05292002-153921/unrestricted/etd.pdf Reason, Imagination, and Universalism in C. S. Lewis]. ===Criticism=== The late Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a respected Calvinist theologian, opined in Christianity Today, Dec. 20, 1963, that C.S. Lewis's view of salvation was "defective" because Lewis "was an opponent of the substitutionary and penal theory of the Atonement." Lloyd-Jones would have the very same criticism of Orthodox theology as represented by such theologians as Vladimir Lossky and Christos Yannaras. The Protestant and Roman Catholic penal theory of the atonement and its associated understanding of a penal hell is denied by the Orthodox. See [http://aggreen.net/beliefs/heaven_hell.html "Heaven & Hell in the Afterlife, According to the Bible"]. See also [http://orthodoxcanada.org/TEMP/pof_16.pdf On The Nature Of Heaven And Hell According To The Holy Fathers]. Several other evangelicals became cognizant that Lewis's approach was radically different from theirs: A. N. Wilson asserted: "If the mark of a reborn evangelical is a devotion to the Epistles of Paul and, in particular, to the doctrine of Justification by Faith, then there can have been few Christian converts less evangelical than Lewis." J. I. Packer complained of Lewis’s "failure ever to mention justification by faith when speaking of the forgiveness of sins." Orthodox Christianity does not teach "Justification by Faith" in the sense spoken of by these men. See the popular lecture [http://www.stnectariospress.com/parish/river_of_fire.htm "The River of Fire."] Certain Protestants who begin to get a sense of what Lewis was saying boldly declare that Lewis will be damned for his theological tinkering. (See [http://www.trinityfoundation.org/PDF/205a-DidCS.LewisGotoHeaven.pdf Did CS Lewis Go to Heaven?]wife, [http://www.blessedquietness.com/journal/homemake/lewisthe.htm "C.S. Lewis: The Devil's Wisest Fool"], and [http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/exposes/lewis/general.htm Biblical Discernment Ministries].) Of course, as we have seen, Lewis would have welcomed being plunged into the divine fire because he trusted it to be purgatorial rather than penal. Other Protestants who begin to understand Lewis express gratitude for his presentation of a new way of thinking about Christianity. See [http://www.brow.on.ca/Articles/Megashift.html Evangelical Megashift] and [http://www.greaterthings.com/Ridenhour/general/realChristianity.htm Real Christianity A Family or Court Room?] ===Church Life=== Lewis had occasion to visit Greece and visit Orthodox churches there. C.S. Lewis has been quoted as saying told him that of all the liturgies he'd ever attended, Lewis he preferred the Greek Orthodox liturgy to anything that he had seen in the West, Protestant or Roman Catholic. Lewis also claimed Then he went on to say that of all the priests and monks that he had ever had the opportunity to meet, the Orthodox priests that he ran across in his sojourn in Greece were the holiest, most spiritual men he had ever met. C.S. Lewis was also referred to a sacramentalistcertain look they had, stating in ''Mere Christianity'' that: "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, the Lord's Suppera sense." Lewis said prayers for the deadhimself, believed in the physical presence one of Christ’s body and blood in the bread and winehis letters, speaks of having been at an Orthodox liturgy and practiced and taught auricular confessionhe said he loved it. ===Sum=== In shortHe said "some stood, it is very fair to describe Lewis as an "Anonymous Orthodox"—his official allegiance lay with the Church of Englandsome sat, but his sympathies lay with some knelt and one old man crawled around the Orthodox. The most thoughtful study of Lewis' relationship to Orthodoxy was written by Bishop [[Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia|Kallistos Ware]] of Diokleia, who also teaches at Oxfordfloor like a caterpillar. In an article published in ''Sobornost'' (an Anglican-Orthodox Ecumenical magazine) entitled "C.S. Lewis: an 'Anonymous Orthodox'?He " he explores this fascinating questionabsolutely loved it. He humbly relates that Lewis has a tendency to "idealize us Orthodox," and affirms We only know for sure that "even though C.S. Lewis' personal contacts with loved the Orthodox Church were not extensive at the same time his thinking is often profoundly , though he never joined it and remained in harmony with the Orthodox standpointAnglican Church."

*[[Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia]]. ''“C. S. Lewis:An ‘Anonymous Orthodox’?”'' '''Sobornost''' (incorporating ''Eastern Churches Review'') , new series 17.2 (1995) , 9-27.*[[Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia]].''“God of the Fathers: C.S.Lewis and many moreEastern Christianity.”'' In David Mills (ed.), '''The Pilgrim’s Tale: C.S.Lewis and the Art of Witness'''(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 53-69.

*''Shadowlands '' (British VersionA television movie made for BBC Wales, 1985)*''Shadowlands '' (American VersionA British theatrical movie remake, 1993)