Alister McGrath Was Wrong About The Date Of C. S. Lewis’ Conversion To Theism

C. S. Lewis came to believe in God late in the spring of 1929. In Surprised By Joy he wrote, “In the Trinity Term of 1929 [April 28 to June 22] I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England.”

Alister McGrath in C. S. Lewis - A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet claims that Lewis got the date of his own conversion wrong, that it actually happened a year later. McGrath bases this claim on inferences from Lewis' correspondence with friends and family. "At no point in Lewis' writings of 1929 did I discern any signs of the dramatic developments that he describes as having taken place in his inner life that year...Even allowing for Lewis' reluctance to self-disclosure, his writings of this period do not point to any kind of conversion experience in 1929." McGrath also finds it significant that apparently Lewis did not begin attending college chapel services until October of 1930. "If Lewis really was converted during the Trinity Term of 1929, why did he wait over a year before starting to attend college chapel? It makes little sense.” McGrath concludes, "Lewis's conversion is best understood as having taken place in the Trinity Term of 1930, not 1929. In 1930, Trinity Term fell between 27 April and 21 June."

McGrath’s revision of the date is not compelling. First, there is really no puzzle about Lewis taking more than a year to start attending chapel. For a man who disliked religious ritual as much as Lewis, it is understandable that it would take him a while to learn to drag himself out of bed to make it to an 8 AM chapel service. The amazing thing is that he went at all, because at that point in his spiritual development he wasn't a Christian but a merely a theist.

What is truly puzzling is McGrath's claim that Lewis' private letters in 1929 "do not point to any kind of conversion experience." This is simply false. Below I have compiled a list of quotes from Lewis' letters all taken from before the time frame in which McGrath thinks Lewis converted from atheism to theism – April to June of 1929. The letters are in reverse chronological order. My few comments are in italics.

Lewis to Hamilton Jenkin, March 21, 1930:

On my side there are changes perhaps bigger: you will be surprised to hear that my outlook is now definitely religious. It is not precisely Christianity, tho’ it may turn out that way in the end. I can’t express the change better than by saying that whereas once I would have said, 'Shall I adopt Christianity', I now wait to see whether it will adopt me: i.e. I now know there is another Party in the affair – that I’m playing poker, not Patience, as I once supposed.

Lewis to Arthur Greeves, January 30, 1930:

The old doctrine is quite true you know – that one must attribute everything to the grace of God, and nothing to oneself. Yet as long as one is a conceited ass, there is no good pretending not to be. My self-satisfaction cannot be hidden from God, whether I express it to you or not: rather the little bit of self-satisfaction which I (probably wrongly) believe myself to be fighting against, is probably merely a drop in the bottomless ocean of vanity and self-approval which the Great Eye (or Great I) sees in me.

Lewis to Arthur Greeves, January 26, 1930:

[On daily reading George MacDonald’s devotional book, Diary of an Old Soul:

I shall soon have finished it and must look round for another book. Luckily the world is full of books of that general type: that is another of the beauties of coming, I won't say, to religion but to an attempt at religion – one finds oneself on the main road with all humanity, and can compare notes with an endless succession of previous travelers. It is emphatically coming home: as Chaucer says 'Returneth home from worldly vanitee.'

Lewis to Arthur Greeves, January 13, 1930:

In spite of all my recent changes of view, I am still inclined to think that you can only get what you call 'Christ' out of the Gospels by picking and choosing, and slurring over a good deal.

If Lewis is still an atheist, what would "my recent changes of view" refer to? He seems to be saying that though now he believes in God, he is not ready to embrace Christianity because he cannot reconcile that faith tradition with all of what he reads concerning Jesus in the Gospels.

Lewis to Arthur Greeves, January 3, 1930:

By now I hope you have my long letter and are well advanced with your long reply. You shall have another gripping instalment, D.V., in the course of the next ten days.

I am willing to stand corrected if anyone finds a counter-example, but I believe that the above is the first occurrence in Lewis of the abbreviation "D. V.", (Latin Deo Volente - "God willing"). It may reflect mere social custom, (as when a non religious person says “God bless you” when you sneeze), but I suspect that the ever-precise (and newly-theistic) Lewis actually meant it: "If God so wills, I’ll write you some more.”

Lewis to Arthur Greeves, December 21, 1929:

I should like to know, too, in general, what you think of all the darker side of religion as we find it in the old books. Formerly I regarded it as mere devil worship based on horrible superstitions. Now that I have found, and am still finding more and more, the element of truth in the old beliefs, I feel I cannot dismiss even their dreadful side so cavalierly...

Bacon says "The whole world cannot fill, much less distend the mind of man."(By the way, that is the answer to those who argue that the universe cannot be spiritual because it is so vast and inhuman and alarming. On the contrary, nothing less would do for us. At our best, we can stand it, and could not stand anything smaller or snugger. Anything less than the terrifyingly big would, at some moments, be cramping and 'homely' in the bad sense – as one speaks of a 'homely' face. You can't have elbow room for things like men except in endless time and space and staggering multiplicity.)

Lewis to Arthur Greeves, October 17, 1929:

It is very hard to keep one's feet in this sea of engagements and very bad for me spiritually.

Would an atheist care about what was bad for him spiritually?

Lewis to Arthur Greeves, October 6, 10, 17

These letters seem to show that Lewis was trying to maintain a devotional life.

I have not yet started meditation again. The difficulty is to find a suitable time.

I am slowly reading a book that we have known about, but not known, for many a long day – MacDonald’s Diary of an Old Soul. How I would have scorned it once! I strongly advise you to try it.

Dropped in on [John] Christie for half an hour and was in bed by 11:15 after reading my daily verse from The Diary of an Old Soul.

(Resumption)

Part of me feels bad for McGrath, because he worked very hard on his biography of Lewis, and he said in an interview with Aaron Cline Hanbury, "I think my proposal for a redating of Lewis’ conversion from 1929 to 1930 may be the most important aspect of the book." If I wrote a book and treasured one part of it as "the most important aspect", I'd be a bit put out if someone proved me wrong, and I'd probably go to bed that night in total chagrin muttering to myself, "Oh shucks. Darnit. Darnit." But C. S. Lewis had his conversion date right in the first place, and McGrath's revision cannot be allowed to stand.