The popular reputation of C. S. Lewis depends to a large extent upon his prominence as a modern day "apostle to the skeptics." His theological writings are designed for and directed toward skeptical laymen who have been, in Lewis's opinion, unduly influenced by nineteenth-century liberalism and scientism and so have left the Church for the greener pastures of "humane science." Lewis's theological writings are thus designed to woo mankind away from the laboratories and the secular reform movements back into the arms of the Church. In books such as Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, and Miracles, Lewis is a propagandist; his cause is orthodoxy in religion and in morality; his methods are those of his enemies. At all times, he views the world from the vantage-point of the church steps.
Yet in order to provide a suitable literary vehicle for orthodox ideas, Lewis creates his own cosmic myth. Science fiction provides him with a method and a plot, the theology of the Church with a theme…. In Lewis's three novels—Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength—the earth becomes "Thulcandra," the "silent planet," cut off from the rest of the cosmos by the rebellion of Satan, the "Bent Eldil" (angel), and the subsequent fall of man. In the first novel, Elwin Ransom, the philologisthero of Lewis's cycle, is kidnaped by Edward Weston, a physicist, and so is accidentally involved in a trip to Mars. There he learns that the universe, apart from Earth, exists in harmony and peace, having a common language and a common interplanetary religion and government. In describing this theocratic arrangement Lewis seeks to translate the usual Christian terms into some sort of pseudo-scientific and mythical terms, without at the same time losing or distorting the basic Christian concepts with which he is working. Thus the two sets of terms involved can only approximate each other; the Martians, inhabiting as they do an unfallen world, cannot view Christianity from the same point of view as do fallen earth men. (p. 401)
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