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C.S.
Lewis on Objective Morality
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Public
Domain, U.S. Army hangman John C. Woods (at left with rope) hangs Nazi war
criminal Justus Gerstenberg on September 12, 1946. Gerstenberg was a former
Wehrmacht soldier who had been convicted of murdering allied airmen shot down
over Germany.
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QUOTE: “Does loving your
enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought
not to subject myself to punishment – even to death. If you had committed
murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the
police and be hanged. It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a
Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian soldier to kill an
enemy.” [Mere Christianity Book 3 Chapter 7:
Forgiveness]
AUTHOR: Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 –
22 November 1963), commonly called C. S. Lewis and known to his friends
and family as "Jack", was a novelist, poet, academic, medievalist,
literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, and Christian apologist. Born in
Belfast, Ireland, he held academic positions at both Oxford University
(Magdalen College), 1925–1954, and Cambridge University (Magdalene College),
1954–1963. He is best known both for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape
Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and for his
non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The
Problem of Pain.
Lewis and fellow novelist J. R. R. Tolkien
were close friends. Both authors served on the English faculty at Oxford
University, and both were active in the informal Oxford literary group known as
the "Inklings". According to his memoir Surprised by Joy, Lewis had
been baptized in the Church of Ireland (part of the Anglican Communion) at birth,
but fell away from his faith during his adolescence. Owing to the influence of
Tolkien and other friends, at the age of 32 Lewis returned to the Anglican
Communion, becoming "a very ordinary layman of the Church of
England". His faith had a profound effect on his work, and his wartime
radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim.
In 1956, he married the American writer Joy
Davidman, 17 years his junior, who died four years later of cancer at the age
of 45. Lewis died three years after his wife, from renal failure, one week
before his 65th birthday. Media coverage of his death was minimal; he died on
22 November 1963—the same day that U.S. President John F. Kennedy was
assassinated, and the same day another famous author, Aldous Huxley, died. In
2013, on the 50th anniversary of his death, Lewis will be honoured with a
memorial in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.
Lewis's works have been translated into more
than 30 languages and have sold millions of copies. The books that make up The
Chronicles of Narnia have sold the most and have been popularized on stage, TV,
radio, and cinema.
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