C. S. Lewis
The moral law everyone feels, and reason itself, point towards God.
Life
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), born in Belfast, was a British writer who taught English literature at Oxford and then held the chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge (1954). An atheist in his youth, he became a Christian around 1931 and defended his faith by reason, notably the moral law and the problem of suffering, in Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain. He also wrote The Chronicles of Narnia.
Main works
He argues that suffering is compatible with a good God, because of the free will of creatures.
He argues that there is an objective moral law recognized across cultures and that denying it destroys humanity.
He argues that reason cannot come from wholly non-rational causes.
He moves from the moral law to God, and then to Christianity.
In his own words
« A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. »
« Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself. »
« For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. »
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceReason and the moral law we all feel point to a God; he defends Christian theism.
Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952)
Reason cannot be the product of purely non-rational causes, so the mind points beyond nature.
Lewis, Miracles (1947)
God gave creatures real free will, and suffering follows from its misuse.
Lewis, The Problem of Pain (1940)
Right and wrong are a real law above human opinion; denying it makes moral argument meaningless.
Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1943) ; Mere Christianity (1952)
Humans are fallen and need grace, though they keep the image of God.
Lewis, The Problem of Pain (1940)