A giant in the Valiant-for-Truth wars, Lewis published not only works of theology and apologetics, but also science fiction, literary scholarship, and seven books for children, The Chronicles of Narnia. He fitted in all this despite domestic difficulties and a full schedule of lecturing and tutoring, first at Oxford (1925-1954), where he had been an undergraduate, and then at Cambridge as Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English Literature from 1954 until his death in 1963.
Since Lewis had been an atheist, converted only in 1931, he understood some of the problems of unbelievers through his own experience. He attributed to this his invitations to lecture, first to the RAF and then to the BBC. But, of course, it was the robustness of his faith and the clarity of his ideas and their expression which made him popular. He was al-ways speaking or writing as a layman to laymen, setting himself in the centre of the Christian faith, so that he has been praised both by the pope and by Billy Graham. In the course of a critical disagreement with T.S. Eliot (Preface to Paradise Lost) he wrote: 'I agree with him about matters of such moment that all literary questions are, in comparison, trivial.'
Two of his books, The Problem of Pain (1940) and Miracles (1947) were aimed at particular problems in theological discussion, then and now. The mystery of how evil can exist if God is good puzzles many people, and Lewis does not claim to have a complete explanation, but he makes helpful suggestions. Miracles takes an orthodox view in response to those who were attempting to empty the Christian gospel of miraculous elements in order to accommodate secular thinking.
