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15 “Roman Catholic” Views of C. S. Lewis (Transcript)

15 “Roman Catholic” Views of C. S. Lewis (Transcript)

Last updated on: June 13, 2026 at 1:06 pm by Dave Armstrong

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15 “Roman Catholic” Views of C. S. Lewis (Transcript) 2026-06-13T13:06:29-04:00 Dave Armstrong

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This is the transcript of the 11-minute video of the same name, posted on the Lux Veritatis YouTube channel I share with Kenny Burchard, on 5-20-25.

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Summary: C. S. Lewis is celebrated by Protestants as a Christian champion—but what if many of his actual beliefs sounded more Catholic than evangelical? I survey fifteen such beliefs.

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C. S. Lewis, the wildly popular Anglican apologist and author of The Chronicles of Narnia, Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and many other classics, expressed a number of opinions that are not very often held by Protestants. We know that he didn’t become a Roman Catholic because of the Marian dogmas, the papacy, and Rome’s view of the Holy Eucharist. But in several other ways he was very similar. What follows are all words from C. S. Lewis, excepting the categories. The sources will appear on the screen. Specifically dated excerpts are drawn from The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, volumes 2 and 3, edited by Walter Hooper, HarperSanFrancisco, 2004 and 2007.

Faith and Works

We must not interpret any one part of Scripture so that it contradicts other parts: and specially we must not use an Apostle’s teaching to contradict that of Our Lord. Whatever St Paul may have meant, we must not reject the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:30-46). There, you see there is nothing about Predestination or even about Faith — all depends on works . . . It is all free grace . . . That is the Pauline account . . . all the good in us comes from Grace. . . . It is plain from Scripture that, in whatever sense the Pauline doctrine is true, it is not true in any sense which excludes its (apparent) opposite. (3 August 1953)

The Rule of Faith / Perspicuity (Clearness) of Scripture

No ancient sacred books were intended to be read without a teacher: hence the Ethiopian eunuch in the Acts says to St Philip ‘How can I understand unless someone tells me?’ (9 February 1953)

Oral Tradition

It is probable that all the gospels are based on acts and sayings which the disciples deliberately learned by heart: a much surer method even now than transmission by writing . . . (23 February 1947)

Bookless people have enormous memories. (27 June 1958)

Communion of Saints (referring to the death of his close friend and fellow author Charles Williams)

My friendship is not ended. . . . I believe in the next life ten times more strongly than I did. At moments it seems almost tangible. . . . A month ago I would have called this silly sentiment. Now I know better. He seems, in some indefinable way, to be all around us now. I do not doubt he is doing and will do for us all sorts of things he could not have done while in the body. (22 May 1945)

Communication with the Ghost of His Wife, Joy

I said, “If you can – if it is allowed – come to me when I too am on my death bed.” “Allowed!” she said. “Heaven would have a job to hold me; and as for Hell, I’d break it into bits.” . . . There was a twinkle as well as a tear in her eye. (

A Grief Observed, New York: Bantam Books edition, 1961, 88)

Development of Doctrine

The Church knew the answer (that God has no body . . .) as soon as it knew the question. But till the question was raised, of course, people believed neither the one answer nor the other. There is no more tiresome error in the history of thought than to try to sort our ancestors on to this or that side of a distinction which was not in their minds at all. . . . The earliest Christians were . . . like a man carrying a nut which he hasn’t yet cracked. The moment it is cracked, he knows which part to throw away. (“Is Theology Poetry?”: read to the Oxford University Socratic Club on 6 November 1944 and later published in The Weight of Glory)

Redemptive Suffering

I have not a word to say against the doctrine that Our Lord suffers in all the sufferings of His people . . . or that when we willingly accept what we suffer for others and offer it to God on their behalf, then it may be united with His sufferings and, in Him, may help to their redemption or even that of others whom we do not dream of. . . . The key text for this view is Colossians 1:24. Is it not, after all, one more application of the truth that we are all ‘members of one another’? I wish I had known more when I wrote The Problem of Pain. (12 September 1951)

Confession to a Priest and Absolution

The confessor is the representative of Our Lord and declares His forgiveness (4 January 1941)

Many people people do not feel forgiven, i.e. do not effectively “believe in the forgiveness of sins”, without it (4 June 1953)

Prayer for the Dead

Of course we should pray for the dead as I’m sure they do for us. (20 March 1944)

I have never seen any more difficulty about praying for the dead than for the living, and it is quite clear that God wishes us to do that. (26 October 1949)

Of course I pray for the dead. . . . I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden. At our age the majority of those we love best are dead. (

Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1964, 107)

Purgatory

I never believed before — I thought it immensely improbable — that the faithfulest soul could leap straight into perfection and peace the moment death has rattled in the throat. (

A Grief Observed, New York: Bantam Books edition, 1961, 48-49)

Our souls demand Purgatory, don’t they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, “It is true, my son, that . . . your rags drip with mud and slime, but . . . Enter into the joy”? Should we not reply, “. . . I’d rather be cleaned first.” “It may hurt, you know” — “Even so, sir.” 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.

(Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1964, 108-109)

Theological Liberalism

To me the real distinction is not between high and low but between religion with a real supernaturalism and salvationism on the one hand and all watered-down and modernist versions on the other. (8 November 1939)

It is certainly not ‘liberal-minded’ religious people who like my books in England. On the contrary it is precisely among them that I find (next to Marxists) my most hostile critics. (18 April 1946)

I really think that in our days it is the ‘undogmatic’ and ‘liberal’ people who call themselves Christians that are most arrogant and intolerant. . . . from Modernists, I have come to take bitterness and rancour as a matter of course. (23 April 1951)

Higher Critics . . . . don’t know by the smell, as a real critic does, the difference in myth, in legend, and a bit of primitive reportage. I suspect that ibn a few centuries hence the whole art of Higher Criticism will seem as strange an aberration of the human mind as Astrology. (23 September 1963)

Marriage and Procreation

Christians . . . of course agree that man and wife are ‘one flesh’ . . . this One Flesh must not (and in the long run cannot) ‘live to itself’ . . . It was not made, any more than he, to be its own End. It was made for God and (in Him) for its neighbours — first and foremost among them the children it ought to have produced. (8 May 1955)

Same-Sex Unions

I am sure that any attempt to evade it (e.g., by mock- or quasi-marriage with a member of one’s own sex even if this does not lead to any carnal act) is the wrong way. (14 May 1954)

Abortion

It is merciful and Christian to remove the natural consequences of fornication by giving the girl a bed in a maternity ward and providing for the child’s keep and education, but wrong to remove them by abortion or infanticide. (7 February 1951)

Female Priests

The Priest at the Altar must represent the Bridegroom to whom we are all, in a sense, feminine. (13 July 1948)

Suppose he suggests that the Incarnation might just as well have taken a female as a male form, and the Second Person of the Trinity be as well called the Daughter as the Son. . . . All this, it seems to me, is involved in the claim that a woman can represent God as a priest does. Now it is surely the case that if all these supposals were ever carried into effect we should be embarked on a different religion. (“Notes on the Way”,

Time and Tide, vol. 29, August 1948, 830-831; reprinted as “Priestesses in the Church” in God in the Dock)

***

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