C. S. "Jack" Lewis
A Legacy Shared
(with Captain Kirk, that is)

Beam Me Up, Jack!

What, we ask, do writer Clive Staples "Jack" Lewis and actor William Alan "Bill" Shatner have in common?

Well, both were born in countries whose citizens swear they will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth II, Her Heirs and Successors.

Both men achieved iconic stature in their respective fields.

And both men are among the most difficult subjects to caricature.

We need to qualify this last statement. It is as a young man - that is, when portraying the same Captain James Tiberius Kirk of Trouble with Tribbles fame - that Bill is so difficult to caricature. To see how even the greatest artists struggle with Bill, see Mort Drucker's Star Blecch.

Such difficulty is not unique to Bill or Jack. Nor is it particularly uncommon. Instead, it's what happens when your subjects don't have one or two distinctive features that define their likeness. Instead you recognize them by the combinations of a number of subtle shapes and interactions of shapes. Such features can make even a straightforward portrait difficult to render. And if you're trying for a caricature, there's nothing really to exaggerate.

Fortunately as the years have rolled on, Bill has become easier to draw. Nowadays, just draw a portrait and you've got a caricature of William Shatner.

Unfortunately - for caricaturists - Jack never underwent any Adonis-to-Jabba-The-Hutt transformation. And what appears to be his most characteristic feature - a stout and jowly visage topped by a balding pate - is shared by many others - even people Jack knew! Jack owned a photograph - now apparently lost - that showed him standing in the Oxford pub The Eagle and Child, while Charles Blagrove, the proprietor, handed him a glass. Charlie looked so much like Jack that you'd swear Jack was standing in front of a mirror.

To date there is only a single decent caricature of C. S. Lewis - and no, the one shown on this page is not it. The rest of the renderings range from barely passable to the absolutely unrecognizable. And the recognizability or lack thereof seems to have nothing to do with the prominence of the artist.

Although today everyone knows Jack as the author of the The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, it wasn't until after his friend, John Ronald Reuel "Tollers" Tolkien, actually created the genre of modern fantasy fiction that your average Joe and Josephine Blow began to show real interest in Jack. Before then if you knew who he was, it was as the author of The Screwtape Letters, the short amusing satire where Screwtape, an older experienced Demon, advises a younger apprentice and nephew, Wormwood, on how to ensnare a particular victim. The Narnia tales didn't become really a hit with mainstream audiences until after people started reading the Lord of the Rings.

Clive Staples Lewis - who as a kid picked the nickname "Jack" - was born of Ulster Protestant stock in Belfast in 1898. His father, Albert, was a solicitor and a rather remote figure. Apparently Albert's job kept him busy and as was typical, it was Florence, Albert's wife, who took care of Jack and his older brother, Warren. Yet Florence still found time to write magazine articles, something that was not typical for your average Edwardian housewife.

Jack was only nine when Florence died in 1908. From this time on, neither Jack nor Albert seems to have made much effort in forging family ties. Later Jack rather ruefully said he had treated his father "abominably", and Albert sent both boys to a school near London. Sending kids to boarding schools, though, was quite common for the aspiring middle class, and it certainly provided the boys with an excellent education. Albert also hired a special (and capable) tutor to prepare them for college. Jack won a scholarship to Oxford, and Warnie applied for and was accepted to the British military academy at Sandhurst.

Of course, came 1914 and there was a war on. Being too young to join up immediately, Jack entered Oxford in 1917 and began officer's training. In 1918, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant, served in France, and returned to Oxford in 1919.

Jack completed his studies in 1923 with three first-class degrees. True, the degrees were not actually degrees but rather ratings for completing two-year blocks of courses. Engineers and mathematicians may also point out Jack's "degrees" were "only" in (ptui) philosophy and history, (ptui) Greek and Latin, and (double ptui) English. Still what Jack accomplished was not for the faint-hearted, and he actually completed the two-year curriculum for English in a single year.

With three "firsts" from Oxford, Jack could count on landing a university job. In fact Jack's tutor had told Albert that Jack would have success, even distinction, in an academic career. But he also warned Albert that the boy would be useless at anything else.

Of course, the best job would be one at Oxford. But competition was stiff. So there was some delay during which Jack was supported by his dad. Then in 1925 and after a temporary teaching job, he was elected a fellow and tutor at Oxford's Magdalene College. His pay was £500 a year.

An Oxford fellow and tutor was not an independent teacher who just helped kids with their studies. You were a full-time faculty member who was hired for five year stints. And unless you committed some extraordinary impropriety, you were almost guaranteed reelection indefinitely. So for all practical purposes Jack had a job for life.

At least part of the fascination with Jack is our envy of what seems such a perfect job. Tutor a few students, have a glass of beer in the local pub, meet your friends for lunch, and at night get together with them to talk literature, philosophy, and religion.

Best of all there was none of that publish-or-perish scit (to borrow a reconstructed and unattested Anglo-Saxon word). You could do research if you wanted, yes, but it was not considered a major part of the job. You could advance to full professorships and publish almost nothing.

There were also some nice perks.

Like other tutors and professors, Jack was assigned college rooms. These served the purpose as a combination dorm and office. If you were living "in college" you could take your meals in the college dining hall and so your living expenses could be nigh on nil.

Also in the first half of the 20th century, costs of goods and services were ludicrously low. A quart of milk cost about a dime, as did a loaf of bread (day old bread at 10¢ could still be found in the 1960's). Costs were comparable in England where both milk and bread went for about four pence.

Now when Jack started teaching, you could buy a small house or "cottage" for about £250. A good and large house would run £500. In other words, a nice spacious single family dwelling would cost Jack a year's salary. Today this would either mean we have a cheap house or a wealthy homeowner. Interest rates were also low and a typical house payment would be - this is no joke - £2 a month.

And so in 1930, when Jack moved into a house the expense barely dented his budget.

Correct?

Well, because some houses only cost £500 a year, that doesn't mean that all houses only cost £500 a year. Certainly not Jack's.

Like many English homes, Jack's house was dubbed with a name. It was called the "Kilns" after the old brick ovens on the property. The Kilns was (and is) located three miles east and a little north from Magdalene. Since Jack didn't drive, Americans naturally wonder how he got to work, thinking perhaps that if he didn't have modern technology he must have been beamed around by aliens.

Well, remember Jack had his college rooms where he could stay during the week. Also, bicycles were common - not just for students but for the teachers as well. There were also frequent buses - and may we die the death of dogs if we lie - it was also common to walk.

Three miles was not considered a particularly onerous trek. A famous English novel written before the era of automobiles had one of the characters mention he was taking "a pleasant walk of four miles" into town to ask about a telegram. In other words, he made an eight mile round trip on foot just to go to the post office. And Jack loved to hike - his friend Ronald Tolkien called him a "ruthless walker" - and three miles would have been a casual stroll.

Although the Kilns has been described as a "simple cottage", it is also described as a "simple twelve room cottage". It had six - count 'em - six bedrooms, not to mention a parlor (i. e., a living room), a dining room, study, and kitchen. Although today the Kilns is in a completely typical suburban neighborhood and shares the street with rows of other middle class houses, when Jack moved in, it occupied land with a spacious lawn, garden, tennis court, and surrounding woods.

Such a house wasn't cheap even by the standards of the day. Land and house went for £3300. That would be about £200,000 today or about $300,000 American. Too much for Jack's yearly salary.

But what is not well known is that although Jack lived at the Kilns from 1930 to 1963, he did not, that's did not own the house. Instead, the deed was assigned to a lady named Janie Moore.

And just who was Janie Moore?

Jane King Askins Moore - called "Minto" by her friends - was born in Ireland in 1872. In 1897 she married Courtenay Edward Moore, a somewhat mysterious gentleman who held the title to a baronacy in Scotland - a trifling fact he apparently kept secret from his family. The marriage of Janie and Courtenay had not been a happy one, and in 1907, Janie and the kids, Paddy and Maureen, just up and moved out. Janie never sought a divorce, and she lived on money sent by her husband.

Jack and Paddy had been roommates during their officer's training at Oxford. Janie and Maureen had moved into a nearby apartment, and in the course of visiting her son, Janie naturally met Jack. For some reason, the 20 year old officer candidate and the 45 year old non-divorcee hit it off quite well. Albert, though, never came to visit Jack at Oxford or as far as we can tell, anywhere else.

It's hard to figure out just what the feelings were between Jack and his dad. The impression is that Albert's plea of the pressure of his work was really an excuse to keep Jack and Warnie at an arm's distance. When Jack was granted a two day pass - which was too brief to make the trip to Belfast - his dad couldn't be bothered to take the time off to visit. But Janie stopped by. Then when Jack was wounded by flying shrapnel in France, Janie visited him every day for the five months he was recovering. Again Albert never showed up, so it's no surprise that after he got better, Jack spent most of his leave with Janie.

Then in March 1918 Paddy was killed in action and in December Jack was mustered out of the Army. When he returned to Oxford to complete his studies the following year, he, Janie, and Maureen all moved in together.

First they occupied apartments (called "flats" in the British patois). Then in 1930, they all - yes, they all - moved to the Kilns. The deed, as we said, was in Janie's name.

However Jack and Warnie - who was serving in China in the British Army - also chipped in. The brothers contributed £1200 and Janie - actually probably her husband - covered the rest. The agreement was the brothers, although not holding the title, had lifetime right to residency. The house and land would pass to Maureen, but she would not claim use of the house as long as one of the brothers wanted to live there.

You will read on the Fount of All Knowledge that speculation about Jack and Janie's relationship "resurfaced" after a biography of Jack was published in the 1990's. The truth is anyone who knew about Jack's life - whether friends, family, or complete strangers - speculated about the matter. The topic was broached in books stretching back at least to the 1970's.

The authors of polite times would dismiss any notion of impropriety. Jack, we read, had simply promised Paddy that should anything happen to him then, he, Jack, would look after his mom. And remember that Maureen also lived at the Kilns. Maureen and Jack always remained on friendly terms even after Maureen grew up and inherited her dad's baronetcy (and thus becoming Dame Maureen Dunbar). So although Albert, who died in 1929, sometimes referred to "Jack's affair", we hear everything was on the up and up.

But as our more tabloid-oriented and salacious culture developed, opinions flip-flopped. Although Maureen herself first denied there were any shenanigans, later she conceded there could have been. And one of Jack's best friends, Owen Barfield, said that at first he wasn't sure if Jack and Janie had something going. But later he said he was certain they did.

Today the prevailing - but not unanimous - opinion is that in the early years before 1930, Jack and Janie were hiking through the woody grove, so to speak. And no, this would not have been difficult to hide. Maureen was at school during the day and Jack often worked at home when only he and Janie would be there.

But by 1930, Jack was 32 and Janie nearly 60, and most people agree that if any relationship had ever existed beyond that of surrogate mother-son, it had ended by then. Certainly by 1932, any improprieties would have ceased when Jack returned to the Christianity of his youth.

At the time, though, there was another question that Jack's friends wondered about regarding Janie. Why did Jack even put up with her?

As Janie aged, what had been a strong personality had altered and to call her overbearing is putting it mildly. Bossy, yes; domineering, most probably; tyrannical, very likely. When Jack was at home, Janie didn't care that Jack was busy with his academic work. She would constantly interrupt him and would order him to perform minor and yet time consuming errands and housework. Jack never complained and always dropped what he was doing. Janie never seemed grateful, even sneering that Jack was "as good as an extra maid."

By 1932, Warnie himself had moved in, having retired after 18 years in the army. He saw everything first hand and was flabbergasted. How could a person as nice as Jack let himself be so dominated by someone who Warnie believed was not even completely sane?

Jack's explanations were vague and sometimes curt. Once he wrote that he had simply made a decision and had never regretted it. On the other hand, when Warnie privately broached the subject, Jack told him to mind his own business. Jack himself brought up the matter in correspondence with his childhood friend and neighbor, Arthur Greeves, but only to say it was a topic they should not discuss. Even in one of his books, Jack mentioned that there was a part of his life that he had to leave out.

About the only thing we can say is Jack must have been satisfied with the overall situation, imperfect as it was. By the 1940's he was famous and admired for his popular writing and BBC radio broadcasts. He had a permanent position at the world's most prestigious university and lived in a spacious home which had been paid for.

We shouldn't minimize the last point. Pulling up stakes and resettling would have been expensive. And as hard as it is to believe - after all, today Jack Lewis is a multi-million dollar industry - he made virtually no money from his books.

Not that the books didn't sell, mind you. But Jack gave most of his royalties away. Now if properly handled, this itself wouldn't have caused problems - actually it could have helped his finances. But if you donate money, you have to make sure your gifts are properly registered as deductible. Of course, today Jack could have dumped the money in a bank on the Channel Islands, but that was not then a popular option.

Instead Jack simply accepted the money and then gave it away. He figured that if he didn't keep the money, well, then he shouldn't have to pay tax on it. Unfortunately the Chancellor of the Exchequer didn't quite agree with the financial calculations of an English professor who as a student had flunked his college algebra entrance exam. So Jack got presented with some whopping tax bills that played havoc with is finances.

Whatever the reasons were, Jack stayed at the Kilns and remained incredibly patient with Janie. To be fair, part of her personality changes were symptoms of progressing dementia which in 1950 had become so severe she had to be placed in a nursing home. Although her mind was almost gone, Jack visited her every day.

Janie died on January 12, 1951 - a particularly interesting date - and Jack, like many who develop in dysfunctional environments, had never realized he had not been living an Ozzie and Harriet existence. Referring to his private life, he wrote:

I have lived most of it in a house which was hardly ever at peace for 24 hours, amid senseless wranglings, lyings, backbitings, follies, and scares. I never went home without a feeling of terror as to what appalling situation might have developed in my absence. Only now that it is over do I begin to realize quite how bad it was.

Janie's death did not mean all was well at the Kilns. During his years in the army, Warnie had developed a serious problem with alcohol. Jack did his best to help Warnie break the habit, and sometimes he thought he had succeeded. But even though there were extended times when Warnie would appear to forswear drink, there would always be a relapse. At one point Warnie had been alcohol-free for nine months. Then he started drinking again, forcing Jack to cancel a planned vacation. We also know that at one time Warnie had gone on a vacation in Ireland and drank so much he ended up in the hospital. By the time he died in 1973, Warnie was reportedly putting away three bottles of whiskey a day.

In 1954, Jack was offered the job of Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University. We read - according to one of Jack's biographers - that there was hardly a scholar better qualified. In 1936, Jack had written an important book on medieval literature, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition, and he later wrote A Preface to Paradise Lost. Today this output would be considered quite paltry, but with his academic lectures (some of which were published), at the time it was significant scholarship. It also didn't hurt that Jack's friend - Ronald Tolkien - had been asked by Cambridge to sit on the search committee.

As it was, Jack pulled up stakes and relocated to Cambridge - sort of. He resided in his Cambridge college rooms during the week and returned to the Kilns on weekends. Warnie held down the fort in Oxford.

Then came a shock to Jack's friends. In 1956, this lifelong bachelor secretly married Joy Gresham, an American who was not only a published writer but also an award winning poet. Born into a Jewish family, she and her first husband, Lindsay, had converted to Christianity, which unfortunately did not stop Lindsay's philandering. The two eventually divorced, and Joy and Jack had been corresponding after she had written to him saying how much she liked his books.

For Joy, life in America had palled, probably due to the memories of her bad marriage, but of course her former membership in the Communist Party didn't help, either. A lot of fellow travelers (including folklorist Alan Lomax) left the Land of the Free for the Home of the NHS. Joy and her two sons moved to London.

Her finances were tight and Jack stepped in and helped her and the kids out. She soon moved to Oxford and resided not far from the Kilns. She and Jack naturally saw each other frequently and developed a close friendship.

Things might have continued unchanged, but Joy then learned she would not be permitted to stay in England. She was officially just visiting, and so could not be granted a resident visa. To solve the problem Jack agreed to a civil marriage which by English law would allow Joy to remain. Jack said the marriage had just been a favor to help out a good friend.

When and how Joy and Jack actually started to live together varies with the source. But by 1957, Joy and the kids were living the Kilns. At first Warnie felt it would be best for him to move to a separate residence. But when he mentioned his plans, both Jack and Joy went ballistic and said that was the last thing they either expected or wanted. The house, after all, was big enough for everyone.

However, before Joy had moved to the Kilns she had been diagnosed with bone cancer and had to go into the hospital. Since their marriage had been only a civil union, she and Jack had a second ceremony in the hospital officiated by an Anglican bishop. Although she was not expected to survive (or even return home), Joy began receiving radiation therapy. Surprisingly (some said miraculously) the cancer went into remission, and she was able to live at the Kilns.

What may have started out as a marriage of convenience turned out to be an extremely happy one. Unlike the norm of the times, Jack saw no reason to keep Joy stuck at home away from his friends - the usual fate of the Oxford housewife. For her part Joy handled Jack's correspondence - giving Warnie a break - and continued to write (she and Jack even co-authored a book). Sadly, their marriage lasted only four years since Joy's cancer returned in 1959. She died the following year, age 45.

From the late 1930's to 1950, Jack's fame far eclipsed that of his friend Ronald Tolkien. The BBC Broadcasts had pushed him to an international audience, there were write-ups in Life Magazine, and he even made the cover of Time.

Jack had published a lot. By 1950, the list of his books included The Pilgrim's Regress, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength, The Personal Heresy, The Problem of Pain, The Case for Christianity, The Broadcast Talks, Abolition of Man, Christian Behaviour, Beyond Personality, Miracles, Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Ronald had only published The Hobbit.

Then in 1954, Allen and Unwin issued the first volume of Ronald's opus magnus, the Lord of the Rings. The Fellowship of the Ring was soon followed by The Two Towers and the Return of the King. Still, although the books were profitable, Ronald was by no means a household word. As far as fame goes, Jack still was up front.

But when for reasons that we won't belabor here (but do here), paperback editions of the Lord of the Ring and The Hobbit were issued in 1966. Soon Ronald and his books became household names. Unlike Jack, Ronald kept his royalties, and by the time he died in 1973, he was a famous and wealthy man.

For his own part, Jack had doubted people would be remembering him five years after he died. And in his later years, it looked like this was coming true. A new generation had emerged - which included the beatniks (soon to be followed by the hippies) - and many rejected traditional values and had never heard of Jack. If he was mentioned at all, it was the old folks talking about Screwtape.

But the success of the Lord of the Rings - the hippies really loved it - brought on the craze for fantasy fiction. Ronald's popularity in turn gave the proverbial shot in the arm to Jack's Narnia tales. People became fans who had never heard of Jack's earlier books (new editions were soon re-issued) or knew of him as a BBC star. Then in the 1980's, the BBC turned four of the Narnia books into TV movies where the fourth Dr. Who, Tom Baker, played Puddleglum. The films were released on home video, and Jack had hit the big time.

An official CooperToons opinion is the critics are right but they're also wrong. The best Narnia books are the earlier ones, not the latter as we're told. Also they are best read in the order that Jack wrote them, not the chronological order within the stories, an order which flattens out - to use Ronald's term - the tale. But the books merit their popularity, and the 2005 release of the film The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe finally pushed Jack's fame fully to par with Ronald's.

Jack, though, never saw it. He had been dead for over 30 years. Although active, even vigorous, by 21st century American standards, he still smoked heavily (both pipe and cigarettes) and enjoyed the hearty and fatty English breakfasts. He collapsed from a heart attack on the morning of November 22, 1963 and died a few minutes later. Nowadays it's well known that Jack and John Kennedy died on the same day, but few people know that the famous British author, Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, also died later that afternoon. Even fewer know this was the day that John Nance Gardner, a good friend of Pat Garrett (not to mention a former Vice President of the United States), turned a hale and hearty 95.

Before the 1950's, Jack's fame rested on his skill as a Christian apologist, that is, he attempted to explain his beliefs using rational arguments. Jack expounded his view on the BBC, and a number of his writings are in fact transcripts of the broadcasts.

But suddenly at age 50, Jack dropped his apologetic writings. When Carl Henry, the first editor of Christianity Today, asked for some articles on Christian theology, Jack politely turned him down. Instead he was turning his efforts to his Narnia tales, and as he explained to Carl:

I do not think I am at all likely to write more directly theological pieces. The last work of that sort which I attempted had to be abandoned. If I am now good for anything it is for catching the reader unawares - thro' fiction and symbol. I have done what I could in the way of frontal attacks, but I now feel quite sure those days are over.

What, we ask, had happened?

The Truly Expert Professional

In 1955 Jack wrote the women's chaplain at Oxford, Elia Aldwinckle (called Stella by her friends), recommending some speakers for the university's Socratic Club. As a student at St. Anne's College, Stella had organized the club in 1942 as a forum for promoting Christianity by debate and discussion. Jack agreed to serve as president.

The Socratic Club did not shy from tough topics and in fact its primary purpose was to discuss the difficulties and questions of Christianity. The club invited all sorts of speakers, believers and non-believers alike. But Stella would sometimes get a bit bent out of shape at the infidels in their midst. After the atheist philosopher, Cyril Joad, made a presentation mildly questioning some Christian beliefs, Stella jumped up and proclaimed, "Mr. Lewis will now answer, Dr. Joad!" Jack gently replied, "'Open the discussion' I think is the formula."

Even after he left for Cambridge, Jack remained involved in the club. In his letter to Stella, he strongly recommended inviting Oxford faculty member Elizabeth Anscombe to give a talk on why she believed in God. In urging they bring Elizabeth in, Jack wrote:

The lady is quite right to refute what she thinks bad theistic arguments, but does this not almost oblige her as a Christian to find good ones in their place: having obliterated me as an Apologist ought she not to succeed me?

Ha? (to quote Shakespeare). Jack says he had been "obliterated" as a Christian apologist?

Elizabeth had spoken at the Socratic Club once before. In 1948, she read a paper which pointed out some logical errors in the views of - not non-believers like Cyril Joad, Bertrand Russell, or Freddie Ayer - but the views of C. S. Lewis!

Elizabeth was neither an agnostic nor an atheist. Instead she was a devout Roman Catholic of the old traditional school and a fervent opponent of birth control, abortion, and same gender liaisons. She has also long been recognized as one of the most outstanding 20th century philosophers. As a friend and student (albeit informal) of Ludwig Wittgenstein, she was probably the best qualified philosopher to analyze natural language in terms of analytic logic.

As Linus Van Pelt once said, until it's demonstrated you don't appreciate the difference between the merely competent amateur and the truly expert professional. With Elizabeth, Jack had met his match. In her presentation, Elizabeth had pointed out that Jack was incorrect when he claimed that naturalism - the philosophy that nature was a collection of mindless natural laws - was self-contradictory. She demonstrated that it was his misuse of the language that led him to his errors. Jack had no answer. Although he may not have been actually devastated - as some people have written - he realized that he was not the apologist he thought he was.

Analyzing Jack

Warning!!!! The following few sections have a high nerd content and may get a bit pedantic. These may be conveniently skipped by clicking here.

We have to be honest. Trying to use logic to analyze real-world natural language arguments can be excruciating and fraught with perils. And there's no better way to show this than to analyze one of Jack's arguments.

As we said, Jack had objected to naturalism - that is, the philosophy that nature is just a collection of mindless laws. He believed his arguments proved the whole concept was self-contradictory.

More specifically he held that the human ability to reason could not have arisen by a collection of atoms and atomic particles just coming together without purpose. If that was the case, then the thought process itself would be completely unreliable. If your thoughts were unreliable, then even arguments against the existence of God were unreliable.

Or as he put it in one of his BBC broadcasts which was later reprinted in one of his books:

Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought; so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God. [The Broadcast Talks, 1943]

If you check on the Fount of All Knowledge, you'll find this quote is popular for both Jack's friends and his critics. It catapults some people into rapturous praise of Jack's intellectual titanity and you wonder how those dunderheaded non-believers can dare to disagree with anyone with such a razor-sharp and divinely guided mind.

Of course, you get just as many readers who vent off tirades about Jack's use of strained and tortuous logic which clearly were just to cover up his own insecurity and doubt. It also shows Jack's surprising naïveté and ignorance of philosophy since he is just pushing together two of those old chestnuts, William Paley's, Watchmaker Analogy and St. Thomas Anselm's Ontological Argument, neither of which impressed many of their own contemporary religious compatriots.

OK. So what do we do?

The approach some people take when analyzing Jack's argument is to bring in points from the sciences, discuss the nature of probability and randomness, and try to determine what we mean by belief and thought. And of course, you have to sort through Jack's use of multiple negatives and conditional phrasing.

Strangely, no one seems interested in taking a strictly logical approach to Jack's argument. In other words, can we see if Jack has properly structured his sentences so that the conclusion properly follows from the premises? And if the argument is valid, what else can we say?

Well, we have always wondered how to determine if an argument is valid.

No doubt you have, as Captain Mephisto said to Sydney Brand. First, when analyzing an argument for logical validity, we need to put the English into an analyzable form. This requires rephrasing the English sentences into smaller independent statements termed atomic sentences, and which can be assigned values of true or false. We then connect the small statements by using the logical connectives which are "If-Then", "Not", "And", "Or", and "Therefore". Do this properly and we get the whole argument.

So first we restate Jack's argument into two separate sentences: a premise and a conclusion:

A premise is something we accept for the argument. Of course, you can question the correctness of any premise, but when analyzing an argument, you accept it for the time being. The conclusion is what we infer from the premises.

Next we rephrase the argument using the logical connectives. The English then becomes what one philosophy professor has called "Loglish".

There are long lists of logical equivalents for translating normal English into the logical forms. Some are simple. "So" becomes "therefore" and "disbelieve" becomes "not believe". On the other hand some phrases are less obvious. For instance "unless [something]" means the same as "if not-[something]-then". This construction is confusticating enough that it has to be explained to students studying for the American SAT's.

So if you remember that the original quote was:

Rememer the original quote was:

Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought.

Put all this together and Jack's argument is:

If I do not believe in God then I cannot believe in thought.

Therefore, I cannot use thought to not believe in God.

Now the word "cannot" is a bit wishy-washy. It implies that the truth or falsity of the statement depends on the individual ability of the speaker. In logic, though, statements are true or false - no ifs, ands, or buts. So we will keep the basic wording but simply substitute "do not". The meaning of the argument does not actually change, and everything is put in terms of the logical connectives.

So we now have Jack's argument as:

If I do not believe in God then I do not believe in thought.

Therefore, I do not use thought to not believe in God

At this point, we'll deal with what is one of the most difficult conversions of natural language into a logical equivalent. That is, we have to decide how to write "do not use thought to not believe" into the logical equivalent. That is, just what do we mean by "not-[something] to not-[something else]". Or equivalently, "do-[something] to do-[something else].

What you should do in a case where you need to translate normal English (or whatever language) into Loglish is to make what is called a truth table. Truth tables are ways to determine if a complex sentence is true or false based on whether the component sentences are true or false.

OK. So let's set up the truth table for "to" or "in order to". That is, we ask under what circumstances the sentence "A in order to B" is TRUE or FALSE.

Truth Table: "In Order To"

A	B	A In Order To B
TRUE	TRUE	?
TRUE	FALSE	?
FALSE	TRUE	?
FALSE	FALSE	?

So the first line first. If I let A = "I am going to the store" and B = "I will buy bread" is the first line TRUE or FALSE?

Well, it's TRUE. Because if "I am going to the store" is TRUE and "I will buy bread" is TRUE, and I did go to the store to by bread.

Truth Table: "In Order To"

A	B	A In Order To B
TRUE	TRUE	TRUE
TRUE	FALSE	?
FALSE	TRUE	?
FALSE	FALSE	?

And Line #2 where A = TRUE and B = FALSE? Well, if I go to the store and do not buy bread, this it is FALSE that I went to the store to buy bread. We the second line is FALSE.

Truth Table: "In Order To"

A	B	A In Order To B
TRUE	TRUE	TRUE
TRUE	FALSE	FALSE
FALSE	TRUE	?
FALSE	FALSE	?

The third option is A = FALSE and B = TRUE. That is I did not go to the store and I did buy bread (maybe from the Farmers Market). In that case it is FALSE that I went to the store to buy bread. The third line if therefore FALSE.

Truth Table: "In Order To"

A	B	A In Order To B
TRUE	TRUE	TRUE
TRUE	FALSE	FALSE
FALSE	TRUE	FALSE
FALSE	FALSE	?

Last of all, A = FALSE and B = FALSE. That is, I did not go to the store and I did not buy bread. Once more it's FALSE that I went to the store to buy bread, and the last line is also FALSE.

Truth Table: "In Order To"

A	B	A In Order To B
TRUE	TRUE	TRUE
TRUE	FALSE	FALSE
FALSE	TRUE	FALSE
FALSE	FALSE	FALSE

Now as we will show below, this truth table is exactly the same as the truth table for AND. That is, a sentence "A AND B" is true only when both A and B are TRUE.

Truth Table: "In Order To"

A	B	A In Order To B	A AND B
TRUE	TRUE	TRUE	TRUE
TRUE	FALSE	FALSE	FALSE
FALSE	TRUE	FALSE	FALSE
FALSE	FALSE	FALSE	FALSE

So we can now render Jack's argument more simply. That is, when Jack says:

I use thought to not believe in God.

... he is saying:

I use thought and do not believe in God.

So we see that his conclusion is he cannot simultaneously use thought and not believe. Or in even more stilted Loglish:

It is false that I use thought and do not believe in God.

So with some effort we finally can come up with an unambiguous Loglish version of Jack's argument:

If I do not believe in God then I do not believe in thought.

Therefore, it is false that I use thought and do not believe in God.

And now we're coming to the really nerdy parts.

One of the greatest obstacles to analyzing an argument for validity is that we get sidetracked with the meaning of the individual statements. We want to ignore the actual meaning of what we're saying.

Say what?

Yes, that's right. We want to ignore the actual meaning of what we're saying.

Why? Well, that's because validity isn't a function of the specific meanings of the statements. Instead, it arises from the structure of the argument. That is, how we have arranged the individual statements with the "Ors", "Ands", "Nots", and "If-Thens".

What we do, then, is to replace the actual English with the language of symbolic or analytic logic. Symbolic logic was pioneered by George Boole in 1854 as a tool for modeling human thought. In its later developments this Boolean Algebra became the basis for twentieth century analytic philosophy and really shone when applied to computer and circuit design.

And in this case, assigning the sentences to symbols is very easy. First we start out as:

I do not believe in God ≡ A

I do not believe in thought ≡ B

I use thought ≡ C

... where the "≡" is logician's symbolic lingo for "is equivalent to".

Next to cast the actual premises and conclusion into symbolic language, we use the arrow connective , "→ ", to indicate the "If-Then" statement, a "∨" symbol for "Or", and an inverted V, "∧" to mean "And".

Normally logicians use the symbol ¬ to refer to not or it if false that. But for simplicity in what we are calling statements A and B, we haven't used "not" explicitly but understand it to be part of the atomic sentences.

We now can write Jack's argument:

If I do not believe in God then I do not believe in thought.

Therefore, it is false that I use thought and not believe in God

... quite easily - and simply - as:

A → B

-------------

∴¬(C ∧ A)

... where the ∴ means "Therefore".

Notice that we put parentheses around the two statements in the conclusion. That's because we want to say it is false that we simultaneously use thought and not believe in God. The symbolic representation handles this rather cumbersome phrasing quite nicely.

OK. Now what we do?

 

The Quest of Sir Validahad

Well, logicians tell us Jack's argument - or any argument - is valid if:

Whenever all premises are TRUE, the conclusion is also TRUE.

On the other hand:

If it is possible for the premises to be TRUE and yet the conclusion be FALSE, the argument is invalid.

There's one thing to realize. Just because someone can show you a specific case where the premises are TRUE and the conclusion is TRUE, that does not mean your argument is valid.

Instead we have to recognize the distinction between a valid argument and a satisfiable argument. If a set of statements - which is what an argument is - can all be made true, then the set is said to be satisfiable.

But doesn't that mean the argument is valid?

Actually no. All it means is that there are some examples where the argument appears to work. But showing examples that work does not make the argument valid. So be careful if you're debating with someone and they start saying "Let me give you an example ...". That's a warning bell for an invalid argument.

Instead, you must never be able to have the premises TRUE and the conclusion FALSE. In other words, there must be no counterexamples. Even a single counterexample means your argument is not valid.

But before we go further, a word about THE TRUTH.

 

The Tables of Truth

We have already mentioned that we determine if complex statements are TRUE or FALSE by using Truth Tables. We saw that Truth Tables are pretty self-explanatory, but it's still a good idea to explain them in more detail.

Logic statements are true or false. There is nothing in between (unless you're using some of those oddball multivalued or fuzzy logics). And when you combine statements with "If-Then", "And", "Not", or "Or", then the new combined statements also have values of TRUE or FALSE.

First let's look at the "If-Then" Table, called by the cognoscenti Material Implication.

Now in "If-Then" statements, the first part - the "If" - is called the antecedent. The last part - the "Then" - is called the consequent. And in Jack's example, the consequent of the last premise is also the conclusion of the entire argument. (Note: This is a feature of Jack's argument but is not a requirement in logical discourse).

And logicians fill in the "If-Then" Table thusly.

Truth Table: If-Then Statements

A	B	A → B
TRUE	TRUE	TRUE
TRUE	FALSE	FALSE
FALSE	TRUE	TRUE
FALSE	FALSE	TRUE

This table can actually be a lot of fun. For instance, let's say you've debated your friends from France. You told them:

If George Washington had led the French Revolution, then Robespierre would never have come to power.

You, as an American, are asserting that the whole statement is TRUE. But your French buddies dispute this.

How do you decide? I mean, George never led the French Revolution, so how can we ever tell if this statement would ever true or false?

But ho! ho! Look what we have. We know that the statement "George Washington led the French Revolution" is FALSE. But we also know "Robespierre never came to power" is also FALSE. So we look at the Truth Table and we do indeed see that:

FALSE → FALSE

... is actually TRUE.

Of course, your friends could respond, "Well, mon ami, if George Washington had led the French Revolution then you can bet your sucré cul, we would still be waving the Tricolour and not the Stars and Stripes.

And so from the Table we see that:

FALSE → TRUE

... is also TRUE.

Instead, you can only get a FALSE "If-Then" statement when you have the "If" part TRUE and the "Then" is FALSE. So something like "Well, it was because George Washington led the American Revolution that America lost the War" is indeed FALSE just like the table says. ("Because-That" is a form of "If-Then".)

What causes philosophy students to gnash their teeth and tear their hair with the "If-Then" Truth Table is that you can get some oddball statements out of it. That's because there is no requirement that there be any causal relationship between the antecedent and the consequent. For instance, consider the sentence:

If George Washington had been the King of France, then C. S. Lewis would have joined the Barnum and Bailey Circus.

... which analyzes as...

FALSE → FALSE

... which, as we see, is also TRUE.

If this makes you scratch your head and wonder if logic is, well, logical, rest assured it is. And you can indeed draw proper conclusions using this Truth Table.

There are some ways other than using our examples to demonstrate that the "If-Then" Truth Table is correct, and you can read a bit more detailed explanation if you click here. But if after that, you're still doubtful, as an American President said, "Trust Me".

OK. Now let's turn to the AND (∧) Truth Table which we've already seen.

Truth Table: And (∧)

A	B	A ∧ B
TRUE	TRUE	TRUE
TRUE	FALSE	FALSE
FALSE	TRUE	FALSE
FALSE	FALSE	FALSE

.The AND statement is true only if both statements are true.

Now the "Or" (∨) statement:

Truth Table: Or (∨)

A	B	A ∨ B
TRUE	TRUE	TRUE
TRUE	FALSE	TRUE
FALSE	TRUE	TRUE
FALSE	FALSE	FALSE

In other words, a combined Or statement is TRUE if at least one of the individual statements is TRUE.

Note that this is what we call the inclusive meaning of Or. An exclusive Or would mean it was true only if one of the statements was true but not both. Some languages have different words for the inclusive and exclusive Or. For instance aut in Latin means either one or the other but not both while vel means either or both. And yes, the ∨ sign is taken from the Latin vel.

And finally we'll have the NOT (¬) or NEGATION Truth Table.

Truth Table: Negation (¬)

A	¬ A
TRUE	FALSE
FALSE	TRUE

Now we just need to use the tables.

 

Counterexamples and The Trees of Truth

Remember we said it is possible to have cases where the premises are true and the conclusion is true, and yet still come up with a counterexample where the premises are true and the conclusion is false. But how can we find if a counterexample even exists?

Well, you can search for counterexamples just by trial and error. If you find one, you've proven the argument is invalid.

But you might be searching for a long time. For lengthy arguments, there can literally be thousands of combinations of truth values to check. And only if you've shown you've counted all possible values and all possible combinations of values, and yet found no counterexamples can you claim you've proven the argument is valid.

The old way to prove validity or invalidity is to make Truth Tables for the entire argument. This does let you look at all the possibilities. Lewis Carrol - that is, the Reverend Charles Dodgson - who when not writing Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass taught math and logic at Oxford - loved making huge complex Truth Tables. But he, after all, was a bit of a weirdo, and these tables get large and unwieldy very quickly.

Now in a moment we'll broach on a quick method for analyzing even large and complex logical arguments. But it turns out that with the Truth Tables and a bit of thought, we can indeed quickly figure out if Jack's argument is valid or not.

Remember Jack's argument was:

If I do not believe in God then I do not believe in thought.

Therefore, it is false that I use thought and not believe in God

Which is represented symbolically as:

A → B

-------------

∴¬(C ∧ A)

Is there a counterexample? Well, if there is, then the conclusion, ¬(C ∧ A), must be FALSE. This means the expression in the parentheses, C ∧ A, must be TRUE. So both A and C must both be TRUE as well.

But if A is TRUE, then the whole expression, A → B, is also TRUE provided B is TRUE. So as long as:

A ≡ TRUE

B ≡ TRUE

C ≡ TRUE

... we have a counterexample. And since we can create a counterexample:

Jack's argument
is
INVALID
!!!!!

Now before friends of Jack start going into spittle flinging diatribes while his critics break into MWUAH-HA-HA! laughter, we will mention that professors of philosophy will simply shake their heads wearily. Of course, they say, this argument will be invalid. That simply is because it's a case of what we can call the Principle of Invalidity by Paltry Premises. That is, if you have too few premises then you have a lot of options to assign values to the individual statements. So it's easy to make the premises be TRUE and the conclusion FALSE and so create our counterexample.

Now you may have noted that the reasoning seems a bit abrupt when you move from the premise to the conclusion. This is typical in arguments when you leave out premises. An argument that has some premises omitted (although perhaps understood) is called an enthymeme (pronounced "en-thuh-MEEM"). Jack's argument is indeed an enthymeme.

So Jack's argument flows a lot more smoothly if you slip the missing - and quite commonsensical - premise. This more flowable argument is:

If I do not believe in God then I do not believe in thought.

If I do not believe in thought, then it is false that I use thought and not believe in God. [New Premise]

Therefore, it is false that I use thought and not believe in God.

Notice we don't need any new symbols. So our symbolic argument is:

A → B

B → ¬(C ∧ A)

-------------

∴¬(C ∧ A)

OK. Is there a counterexample here?

Remember, we need to have the values of all the premises be TRUE and the conclusion be FALSE.

The conclusion is ¬(C ∧ A). We have said this must be false. So it also must be FALSE in the second premise. So for the second premise to be TRUE, B must also be FALSE.

But if B is FALSE, for the first premise to be TRUE, A must also be FALSE.

But hold on! If A is FALSE, then (C ∧ A) must be FALSE. And so ¬(C ∧ A) must be TRUE! But we had previously given it the value of FALSE!

So we cannot have the final statement FALSE and the premises TRUE.

So Jack's argument
is
VALID
!!!!!

So we've now convinced Jack's detractors as to the truth of his arguments. Correct?

Not, as Eliza Doolittle said, bloody likely.

Jack's detractors are a stubborn lot. They point out that Jack has spoken only about belief. Belief is fine. But - and pardon us if we shout - belief in something has nothing to do with its existence!

Instead, they snort, Jack is making a disguised circular argument. He talks about having belief and using belief but nowhere does is does he talk about proving God's existence. On the other hand, clearly that's what he thinks he's doing. So to put his argument more transparently we say:

If God does not exist, then we cannot have rational thought.

But we have rational thought.

Therefore God exists.

Which if we define:

God does not exist ≡ A

We do not have rational thought ≡ B

... and we have the argument:

A → B

¬B

-------------

∴¬A

Any student of logic will recognize this as modus tollens, a classical valid argument.

But Jack's critics point out modus tollens is a trivially true argument. We know that if the first premise is true as is the second, the conclusion follows.

Instead what is important here is whether the first premise is true. So for Jack to properly make his case, the first premise should be a conclusion of a completely different argument.

Or to put it another way, Jack is making an argument assuming everyone agrees with his premises. Alas, there are a lot of people who have held "Even if God does not exist, then at least we can rely on rational thought to understand the universe." Jack, they say, has done nothing to disprove that statement.

 

Agreeing with Bertie

In fact, the critics point out, saying you can't use thought to disbelieve in God is just factually false. There are plenty of people - and these include some of the greatest thinkers of all time - who do just that.

And who, Jack's fans ask, are these "great thinkers" who believe in logic but don't believe in God?

Well, we can think of one.

In the Adventure of the Dawn Treader, the second (and one of the best) of the Narnia tales, has Eustace Scrubb going to one of the new "progressive" schools. Eustace is a horribly ill-behaved child whose bad behavior is considered "interesting" by the headmaster.

The reference to the headmaster is a not too veiled dig at the mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. Bertie did indeed set up a progressive school in England where the kids were pretty much allowed to do what they wanted. The story was that the local vicar decided to pay a courtesy call to the school and when he knocked on the door it was opened by a girl in the buff.

"Good God!" the vicar exclaimed.

"There is no God," the girl replied haughtily and slammed the door.

The story is completely apocryphal and in fact the Russells had a time reserved where they told the kids stories from the Bible. But Bertie was definitely a confirmed agnostic, a stand from which he never wavered for all of his 97 years. As he said in his lecture (and later essay) "Why I Am Not a Christian":

I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.

It's almost like Bertie is saying Jack is wasting his time.

Mr. Lewis, What Does It All Mean?

Was Mr. Natural's answer to Flakey Foont close to the mark? There is, after all, something about logical proofs we haven't expressly touched on.

It's really easy to prove God exists if you want to. The most unusual proof is the one that was originally devised by the Oxford philosopher Dorothy Edgington when she was working on the problem worked of "If-Then" statements.

If God does not exist, then it is false that if I pray he will answer my prayers.

I do not pray.

-------------

Therefore God exists.

Naturally you say, "Hanh?" But let's look at the proof. We define our symbols as:

God exists. ≡ A

I pray. ≡ B

God answers my prayers. ≡ C

... and the argument becomes:

¬A → ¬(B → C)

¬B

A

The easiest way to look at the validity of this statement is to see if we can have a counterexample. That is, is it possible for the premises to be TRUE and the conclusion FALSE?

Well, let's look. First an invalid argument must have the conclusion false. So in a counter example A is FALSE.

We also know Premise 2, ¬B, must be TRUE. So B must be FALSE.

Now turn to Premise 1. If B is FALSE then the part of the consequent in parentheses (B → A) is TRUE. That's because a FALSE antecedent always produces a TRUE If-Then statement.

Therefore the consequent of Premise 1, ¬(B → C), must be FALSE.

So if Premise 1 is to be TRUE, the antecedent, ¬G, must also be FALSE.

If ¬G is FALSE, then G must be TRUE.

But wait! We've just shown that if the premises are TRUE and the conclusion is FALSE - a counterexample - then G must be FALSE in the conclusion but TRUE in Premise 1.

That's not possible. Therefore there is no counterexample.

So the argument
is
VALID
!!!!!

OK. Now consider this argument:

If God exists, then it is false that if I pray he will not answer my prayers.

I pray.

-------------

Therefore God does not exist.

If we now define these sentences as:

God does not exists. ≡ A

I pray. ≡ B

God does not answer my prayers. ≡ C

.. with these new definitions our symbolic argument becomes:

¬A → ¬(B → C)

¬B

A

Notice something?

Yes. This has exactly the same symbolism as our previous valid argument. The two arguments are what philosophers call isomorphic - that is, they have the same form. Isomorphic arguments have identical validity because the same proof showing one is valid or invalid works for both. So this argument is also valid.

But now let's define our symbols as:

God exists. ≡ A

I do not eat chocolate. ≡ B

I gain weight. ≡ C

And we have the argument:

If God does not exists, then it is false that if I do not eat chocolate I will still gain weight.

I eat chocolate.

-------------

Therefore God exists.

... written out as:

¬A → ¬(B → C)

¬B

A

Notice something again?

Yep. This is also isomorphic to our two last arguments. So this argument is also valid.

With arguments like these, it's not surprising that not a single logical argument has been persuasive enough to make any meaningful shift in the ratio of believers to non-believers. Believers say the (ptui) non-believers are rejecting the Light of the Revealed Word. And of course, the non-believers argue that only the (double ptui) gullible and credulous would fall for such shallow arguments that keep getting recycled century after century.

Actually the reasons for the apparent bullheadedness of both sides is very simple. And that is:

Logical proofs, no matter how correct, do not determine if the conclusion is true or false.

What was that again?

Logical proofs, no matter how correct, do not determine if the conclusion is true or false.

Instead we have seen that logical proofs determine if an argument is valid. That is, the proofs test if the assumptions or the premises properly lead to your conclusion. But a valid proof does not mean the conclusion is true in any absolute sense.

For instance, if I say, "C. S. Lewis lived at the Kilns" and "A resident of the Kilns wrote The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe", and therefore I conclude that "C. S. Lewis wrote The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe", every statement is true. But the argument is not valid.

But if I say "C. S. Lewis competed in the 1932 Winter Olympics", and "The 1932 Winter Olympics were in Lake Placid, New York", and I conclude "C. S. Lewis visited Lake Placid, New York", then every statement is false. Yet the argument in perfectly valid.

So what's the point? Then why do people keep trying to use logic?

Well, for one thing your average Joe and Josephine Blow on the street usually don't understand the difference between truth and validity. If they find a valid argument - or even a seemingly valid argument - they think it's true.

Instead we saw that validity is established independently of whether the premises or conclusion are actually TRUE or FALSE. What's stated in a valid argument may be completely and totally FALSE. And every statement in an invalid argument can be completely and totally TRUE.

So does logic work for anything?

Yes, logic works quite nicely in math, thank you. After all, in math, you don't care about truth.

What? You said in math you don't care about TRUTH?

Yes, that's correct. In math, you don't care about truth.

What you care about is (yes) validity. More exactly, you care about validity within a system For instance, you can prove in Euclidean geometry that the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees. But then in Riemann geometry, you can prove the angles sum up to more than 180 degrees. And in Lobachevskian geometry the angles sum to less than 180 degrees. All three proofs are perfectly correct. But it isn't correct to say any one of the conclusions is actually true.

So in the end we must conclude that Mr. Natural was not far wrong and about the most useless exercise in the world is to try to use logic to arrive at final absolute truth. And as far as we can tell, Elizabeth never took up Jack's challenge to offer better proofs than his (she probably wasn't even aware that he had asked). But remember Elizabeth was one of the best philosophers of the 20th century, and if anyone knew it wasn't worth the trouble, it was her.

[Note: End of high nerd content section]
[To Return to Nerdy Section click here]


Jack and his Critics

Ironically for someone who has achieved about as high a level of fame as possible, Jack has lately become a somewhat fashionable figure to trash.

Sometimes the criticism gets downright personal. One of Jack's major biographers objected to the fastidious picture of Jack as portrayed by Antony Hopkins in the movie "Shadowland". Far from being a dapper well-dressed academic, the author stated that Jack "was a filthy old man dripping beer and tobacco". Andrew also questions Jack's critical objectivity. Jack's antipathy for the (Christian) poet, T. S. Eliot was vehement and simply a response to his own lack of talent. But Jack, the book said, "hated all poets" adding "because he was a failed poet."

Some readers have even felt that the Narnia tales - by far Jack's most popular books - have no literary merit - and one of the most severest of the critics was none other than Ronald Tolkien! Jack had read or given proof copies of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to a number of his friends. Later Ronald bumped into Roger Lancelyn Green, one of Jack's former students. "I hear you've been reading Jack's childrens story," Ronald snorted. "It really won't do, you know!"

It's not just the literary merit or lack thereof that concerns some readers. Another writer seemed to see Jack as a case of arrested development and he was simply "a clever schoolboy who had never grown up". The Narnia books were dismissed as "Christian armtwisting". But we can't agree completely. The allegory is really pretty subtle or else the books wouldn't be so popular.

Lately there's been more serious objections to Jack's writing and philosophy, and he's been accused of being nothing more than another fatuous old school Edwardian sexist. After all, Jack has Susan, one of the female characters in the Narnia stories, "fall from Grace". She can no longer believe in Narnia (that is, be religious) once she began to use lipstick, wear nylon stockings, and (gasp!) became interested in young men!

And things get worse. To say that the Narnia tales represent the Calormenes, a people based on non-European Middle Eastern characters, in an unsympathetic light is putting it mildly. Instead it looks like no matter how much Jack may have felt his religion made him a better person, it didn't seem to be able to fix the underlying racism inherited from his society, a society which made much ado about the "white man's burden".

Naturally Jack's fans pooh-pooh such critics who they say are ignoring the mote in their own eyes. Calling Jack sexist is ridiculous as he never gave any hint that he shared the opinion of his friend Ronald Tolkien that women were not as inherently as capable as men (yes, Ronald did think like that). Jack's marriage with Joy was a full partnership (including literary), she would sometimes attend what had been all male dinners at the college. Even in what was admittedly a male-dominated society, Jack had a number of women friends whom he treated with respect and equality.

As far as the accusations of racism go, we see in Narnia that Jack was simply using the common literary device where writers model the "bad guys" from the nation's recent adversaries. Virtually all writers do this in one way or another. So are fans of Get Smart guilty of racism because Siegfried and Starker were your stereotypical comic-opera Germans?

Still, sometimes Jack's comments give us pause. In 1940 his brother Warnie had been briefly recalled for service in World War II, and Jack had written him a letter.

Did you fondly believe - I did - that where you got among Christians, there, at least, you would escape (as behind a wall from a keen wind) from the horrible ferocity and grimness of modern thought? Not a bit of it. I blundered into it all, imagining that I was the upholder of the old, stern doctrines against modern quasi-Christian slush; only to find that my "sternness" was their "slush". They've all been reading a dreadful man called Karl Barth, who seems the right opposite number to Karl Marx. "Under judgement" is their great expression. They all talk like Covenanters or Old Testament prophets. They don't think human reason or human conscience of any value at all: they maintain, as stoutly as Calvin, that there's no reason why God's dealings should appear just (let alone, merciful) to us: and they maintain the doctrine that all our righteousness is filthy rags with a fierceness and sincerity which is like a blow in the face.

But, in a private letter, one may, for a moment, bewail happier days - the old world when Politics meant Tariff Reform, and war, war with Zulus, and even religion meant (beautiful word) Piety.

At first glance this seems to be an understandable comment by a middle aged man caught in a fit of nostalgia and longing for the days of his youth. But it's the last, short paragraph that makes us wince. Of course, we agree with George Bernard Shaw that all people deserve to be judged by the standards of their own time. But it's still a bit disconcerting to read that the same man who became the world's most popular Christian writer looked back with wistful nostalgia on the days when his country used Gatling guns and howitzers to blow away indigenous people armed only with spears.

Finally there's one group that has emerged relatively recently as Jack's severest critics. And it's a big surprise. Although Jack has been mostly lionized by the American religious community, some cracks have appeared, and some of the faithful have begun to have second thoughts when they began to delve into Jack's beliefs in greater depth.

And they have been shocked! shocked! to read that Jack - like Sportin' Life - thought that the things that you're liable to read in the Bible ain't necessarily so. Although Jack certainly did not reject Biblical accounts as historical (not even if they were about the miraculous), when asked if he was a fundamentalist, he said he was not. He wrote that the story of Genesis could very well be mythical and even drawn from pagan legends. A book like Acts, he felt, was straightforward history (a point that even Isaac Asimov conceded), but Jack believed that both the books of Job and Esther were fiction. And although readers can interpret the Screwtape Letters as Jack holding conventional beliefs in Heaven and Hell, in The Last Battle, the final volume of the Narnia tales, he appears to have adopted the Unitarian option of not believing in Hell in a literal sense - and even having non-believers enter Heaven! Of course, for a lot of people this takes all the fun out of religion. After all, if people who think differently than you aren't going to suffer, what's the point?

Actually, Jack's views were not unusual for his time or place. And among those expressing agreement to at least some of Jack's views are religious leaders like (the late) Albert Schweitzer, the former rock star and now Church of England minister the Reverend Richard Coles, and some guy named Jorge Bergoglio, who at one time was the head of the Argentine Episcopal Conference (although he now has another job - can't remember what it is). On the other hand, among those who have vehemently disagreed with Jack's (ptui) "liberal theology" have been many adherents from across the water including the Reverend(s) Jimmy Swaggert, James Bakker, and Billy James Hargis.

Even during his lifetime, there were people who questioned Jack's sincerity. How could he claim to be a Christian, they asked, when he not only smoked, but actually (augh!) drank beer! And do you want your kids to read such corrupting books as the Narnia tales? Yes, corrupting. Why he has the kids - Peter, Susan, and Lucy - that is, minors - not only drink wine but even take some snorts of hard liquor which Mrs. Beaver carried in a hip-flask!

For his part, Jack, could get quite irritated when Americans wanted to export their doctrine to Oxford. When Jack got a chiding note from his American readers who saw his fondness for a dram as incompatible with Christianity, he would promptly send off a rather curt note:

I strongly object to the tyrannic and unscriptural insolence of anything that calls itself a Church and makes teetotalism a condition of membership. Apart from the more serious objection (that Our Lord Himself turned water into wine and made wine the medium of the only rite He imposed on all His followers), it is so provincial (what I believe you people call 'small town').

Well, we should have expected it. Now there's some people who are picking up Jack's Narnia books and conclude that far from crafting one of the best allegories of Christianity, Jack was actually writing Satanic literature! And if you think that's bad, after the turn of the millennium there was a religious convention in one of the United States - the same state, by the way, that retroactively mandated de jure that slaveowners in the antebellum south had treated their slaves well. At one of the conference sessions, a paper (also published in a magazine) was read about Jack and his views. Refusing to call Jack a Christian - but merely an "Anglican" - the author concluded that if Jack really believed what he wrote in his books, then

C. S. Lewis,
Everyman's Theologian,
ACTUALLY WENT TO HELL!!!!!!!!!

Yep. If Jack were alive, he'd be rolling over in his grave.

References

One criticism of Jack's biographies is they tend to be either hagiographies or "lets-trash-the-great-man" rants. That's probably a bit too sweeping a judgement and here are some standards that everybody reads.

C.S. Lewis: A Biography,Walter Hooper, Roger Lancelyn Green, Harcourt, Brace, 1974 (Revised Edition: 1994, Harvest Books). Walter was Jack's private secretary for the last year of his life, and Roger was a former friend and pupil. Once Roger commented on the Inkling's fondness for tobacco, explaining at that time theywere blissfully unaware of the health hazards.

Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis, George Sayer, Crossway Books, 1988. George was a student of Jack's at Oxford and he later became friends with Ronald as well. George himself has received an amazing and warm testimonial from BBC - quote - "journalist" - unquote - Jeremy Paxon who we know doesn't seem to like anybody.

There have been some musings that since Jack taught George, and George taught Jeremy that in Jeremy we're seeing continuation of Jack's, well, his forceful manner of debate. An interesting, but, of course, unprovable theory.

C. S. Lewis: A Life - Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet, Alister McGrath, Hodder Stoughton , 2013. Eccentric, yes. Reluctant, no.

C.S. Lewis A Biography, A. N. Wilson, Norton, 1990. This has received a lot of criticism from Jack's fans.

The Inklings: C S Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends, Humphrey Carpenter, George Allen and Unwin / Houghton-Mifflin (1978). This seems to be the first biography of Jack - he's by far the main character - that talks in depth about Jack and Janie Moore. But what really shocks the reader is to learn that Jack considered Ronald Tolkien to be a "friend of the second class". Among Jack's friends of the first class were editor and writer Charles Williams, who Ronald Tolkien once called a "witch doctor", and Owen Barfield, who was an anthroposophist. Jack, by the way, was godfather to Owen's daughter, Lucy, to whom he dedicated The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

The Oxford Inklings: Lewis, Tolkien and Their Circle, Colin Duriez, Lion Hudson, 2015. A more recent book about Jack and his friends.

C.S. Lewis, Poetry, and the Great War, 1914-1918, John Bremer, Lexington Books, 2012.

The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, C. S. Lewis (Walter Hooper, Ed.), Harper-Collins.

     Volume I: Family Letters: 1905-1931, 2000
     Volume II: Books, Broadcasts, and War: 1931-1950, 2004
     Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy: 1950-1963, 2006.

Earlier collections of Jack's letters were somewhat - to quote Shakespeare (yet again) - craftily qualified and not gathered in toto. These volumes, though, are laudable for their completeness. Paperback and electronic editions are available, but the hardcovers are way, way, way overpriced.

It's kind of weird how educators rant and rave about how uneducated kids are and then require textbooks costing hundreds of dollars.

Letters of C.S. Lewis, Clive Staples Lewis, (Warren Lewis, Ed.) Harcourt, 1988. A bit "qualified".

Brothers and Friends: An Intimate Portrait of C. S. Lewis: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis, Clyde Kilby, Marjorie Mead, Harper and Row, 1982.

Broadcast Talks: Reprinted with Some Alterations from Two Series of Broadcast Talks (Right and Wrong: Clue to the Meaning of the Universe and What Christians Believe), C. S. Lewis, Geoffrey Bles, 1943.

Tolkien: The Authorized Biography, Humphrey Carpenter, Houghton Mifflin, 1977.

The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, J. R. R. Tolkien, (Humphrey Carpenter, Ed.), Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

The History of The University of Oxford: Volume VIII: The Twentieth Century, Brian Harrison (Editor), Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994.

The Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe, Roger Teichmann, Oxford University Press, 2011.

"Chaplain Stella Aldwinckle: A Biographical Sketch of the Spiritual Foundation of the Oxford University Socratic Club", James Stockton, Inklings Forever, Volume 8, (2012)

Formal Logic: Its Scope and Limits, Richard Jeffrey, McGraw-Hill, 1981 (2nd Edition). Good introduction to Truth Trees and a fun book. The first edition is OK but the second is (personal opinion) better.

"Truth Trees for Propositional Logic", Peter Suber, Earlham University. A short on-line introduction to truth trees for sentential (but not first order) logic. There's also some advice to avoiding memorizing the rules.

"Some Remarks on Indicative Conditionals", Barbara Abbott, Proceedings from Semantics and Linguistic Theory, Vol. 14, pp. 1 - 19, (2004). This gives the example of

The C. S. Lewis Foundation.

"The Odd Story of C.S. Lewis, an Extremely Odd Man ", Andrew Wilson, The Daily Beast.

"The Stella Aldwinckle Papers, 1922-1990", ArchiveGrid.

"Pictures of the Kilns", Pictures of England

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"UK Economy in the 1920s", Economics: Helping to Simplyfy Economics, Tejvan Pettinger, Econonomics Help

"A Short History of the English Faculty", Oxford University

"Did C. S. Lewis Go to Heaven?", The Trinity Review, pp. 1 - 8, November/December, 2003