“The Chronicles of Mormonia”

[God] said (in the Bible) that we were “gods” and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him—for we can prevent Him, if we choose—He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine. —C. S. Lewis1

By these and other quotes from Lewis, a growing number of Mormons attempt to blur the distinction between historic, creedal, and biblical Christian doctrine and the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS).2 Since Lewis is one of evangelicalism’s favorite authors (he was recently listed among the top ten Christians of the twentieth century in Christian History magazine3), a posthumous4 endorsement of Mormon theology from his writings would go a long way toward allaying Christian charges that Mormon theology is heretical.

Brigham Young University (BYU, the LDS university) professor Stephen E. Robinson is one of the most well-known Mormons in this movement to blur the distinction between Mormonism and evangelical Christianity, having authored a controversial book with Denver Seminary (an evangelical school) New Testament professor Craig L. Blomberg, How Wide the Divide? A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation, published by an evangelical publisher.5 In another work, Robinson uses the C. S. Lewis quote opening this article.6

Mormons frequently refer to Lewis as a well-favored author. His books are carried in many Mormon bookstores, including official Deseret stores.

The Spring 2000 BYU Women’s Conference includes an intriguing seminar, “Letting God Have His Way: A Conversation about C. S. Lewis.” The seminar description is provocative:

Join prominent LDS scholars as they explore Lewis’s writing on the relationship of God to man, the necessity for free will, the nature of man, opportunities for joy, the lessons of pain, and the Godhood of Jesus Christ.7

Professor Robert Millet, dean of BYU, was quoted by Christianity Today saying that C. S. Lewis “is so well received by Latter-day Saints (Mormons) because of his broad and inclusive vision of Christianity.”8 According to Marjorie Mead, Lewis scholar and associate director of the Marion E. Wade Center in Wheaton, Illinois, “Among Mormons, he is the most read religious author outside the Mormon faith.”9 A recent book from the Mormon publisher Signature Books, Strangers in Paradox: Explorations in Mormon Theology, is described in the Signature catalog as “Reminiscent of Hans Küng, or C. S. Lewis, they are perhaps provocative but always faith-affirming.”10

The research group of Mormons who seek to elevate Mormon studies to a higher intellectual and academic level, the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS)11 posts an article on its web site, “Do Latter-day Saints Believe that Men and Women Can Become Gods?”12 In addition to quoting the Lewis statement at the beginning of this article, they also quote from his slim address, The Weight of Glory, in which Lewis said,

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.13

The book Mormonism on the Internet14 by LauraMaery Gold lists C. S. Lewis sites among its favored non-Mormon sites. Journalists Richard and Joan Ostling quote from it: “Yeah, yeah, so he wasn’t technically LDS. But his personal theology continues to speak to LDS beliefs to such a degree that he certainly deserves the status of honorary member.”15

The Ostlings also quote Mormon scholar Philip Barlow, who calls Lewis “the most interesting modern adherent of the possibility of human exaltation,” and according to the Ostlings, he finds the concept “utterly ubiquitous” in Lewis’s writings.16 Other Mormon leaders who have cited Lewis favorably regarding Mormon deification include the late Mormon President Extra Taft Benson, “current Apostles Dallin Oaks and Neal Maxwell, and BYU Professors Hugh Nibley, Robert Millet, and Stephen Robinson.”17

When the evidence is repeated often enough by impressive sounding “authorities,” and multiple citations are given, it is tempting to naively trust the Mormon interpretation of Lewis’s writings and dismiss him from the rolls of evangelical saints.

Not so fast. The “sleight of mind” performed by the Mormons comes nowhere close even to the “sleight of hand” of a Las Vegas lounge stage magician. C. S. Lewis is no crypto-Mormon. Not only do his works not support the Mormon theology of deification, in fact they expressly contradict it. Each of the Lewis citations have been taken out of their contexts and twisted. In addition, frequently in his writings about humanity’s eternal destiny, he carefully clarifies the eternal and impassible gulf between the only Creator and His creatures, including humans.

In the first quote, Lewis’s context comes in a chapter called “Counting the Cost,” and describes the process of sanctification that God begins at the moment one becomes a Christian and will continue until we are reunited after death and the judgment with our resurrected bodies, when we will be “perfect,” that is, “complete,” as creatures. In fact, the sentence immediately preceding the Mormons’ favorite is “He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command.”18 In the same small volume he explains,

What God begets is God; just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God; just as what man makes is not man. That is why men are not Sons of God in the sense that Christ is. They may be like God in certain ways, but they are not things of the same kind. They are more like statues or pictures of God.19

In The Weight of Glory Lewis explains what he means by the perfection that God will work in us as we are sanctified, resurrected, and glorified. He distinguishes between God, the only Creator, and humans, even glorified, the created. In the beginning of the essay he explains,

The promises of Scripture may very roughly be reduced to five heads. It is promises, firstly, that we shall be with Christ; secondly, that we shall be like Him; thirdly . . . that we shall have “glory”; fourthly, that we shall, in some sense, be fed or feasted or entertained; and finally, that we shall have some sort of official position in the universe—ruling cities, judging angels, being pillars of God’s temple.20

Lewis’s positive assertions that we can never be deified in the Mormon sense come in a variety of forms. In his popular The Problem of Pain he notes,

For we are only creatures; our role must always be that of patient to agent, female to male, mirror to light, echo to voice. Our highest activity must be response, not initiative. To experience the love of God in a true, and not an illusory form, is therefore to experience it as our surrender to His demand, our conformity to His desire.21

Lewis notes the infinite chasm between Creator and creature when he describes, in the same book, the fall of humanity as “This act of self-will on the part of the creature, which constitutes an utter falseness to its true creaturely position, is the only sin that can be conceived as the Fall.”22 Lewis concludes The Problem of Pain with the glorious comparison:

As our Earth is to all the stars, so doubtless are we men and our concerns to all creation; as all the stars are to space itself, so are all creatures, all thrones and powers and mightiest of the created gods, to the abyss of the self-existing Being, who is to us Father and Redeemer and indwelling Comforter, but of whom no man nor angel can say nor conceive what He is in and for Himself, or what is the work that he “maketh from the beginning to the end.” For they are all derived and unsubstantial things. Their vision fails them and they cover their eyes from the intolerable light of utter actuality, which was and is and shall be, which never could have been otherwise, which has no opposite.23

Perhaps nowhere is Lewis’s consciousness of the utter difference between God and those made in His image greater than in his compelling science fiction trilogy, the Space Trilogy, consisting of three books, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength.24 Lewis draws the reader into a world of time and space travel, alternate worlds, evil and technological destruction and good and selfless sacrifice. It is the story of all stories, the redemption story that began in Eden and, for this series, ends in post-World War II England: God has created us for glory. We have abandoned Him in favor of our own evil desires. He has done everything to redeem us to Himself. Will we respond in faith believing, inheriting the glory prepared for us? Or will we respond with continued self-worship and absorption, damned by our own idolatry to worship ourselves, gods beneath our own dignity? The first way is God’s way. The second—whether cloaked in pantheism, polytheism, the henotheism of Mormon theology, or the masterful guise of materialistic humanism—is not.

Endnotes: 1. C. S. Lewis, Beyond Personality (London: The Centenary Press, 1945), 48. Also contained in Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan Company, 1952), 174-175. 2. Lewis is misused by other individuals, religious movements, and organizations as well; and Mormons also attempt to defend their deification theology in other ways, such as comparing it to the nonheretical Eastern Orthodox theology of “theosis,” but the focus of this brief article is restricted to the Mormon use of Lewis’s writings for this purpose. For more information on these issues, see Richard and Joan Ostling’s Mormon America: The Power and the Promise (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1999), especially pages 307-314; “Grace and the Divinization of Humanity” at http://mysticalrose.tripod.com/grace3.html; and Kurt Van Gorden’s “Can Man Progress to Godhood?” at www.answers.org/Theology/Man_become_God.html. 3. Ted Olsen, “C. S. Lewis,” Christian History, no. 65 (spring 2000) in “The Ten Most Influential Christians of the Twentieth Century.” 4. Lewis died November 23, 1963, the same date as John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley. 5. Craig L. Blomberg and Stephen E. Robinson, How Wide the Divide? A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1997). 6. In an article contributed by Robinson to editor Daniel H. Ludlow’s Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 5 vols. (New York: Macmillan Press, 1992). 7. Conference brochure, n.p., n.d. 8. John W. Kennedy, “Southern Baptists Take Up the Mormon Challenge” Christianity Today, 15 June 1998, 30. 9. Jay Copp, “Readers Cross Religious Lines for C. S. Lewis,” Christian Science Monitor, 23 May 1999, 19. 10. See www.signaturebooksinc.com/stranger.htm. 11. Despite its goals and the credentials of its contributors, there is no way to historically, evidentially, biblically, philosophically, or scientifically verify the fiction of Mormon history and theology. This, however, is not the forum for a critique of FARMS. 12. See www/farmsresearch.com/ free/qanda/basicissuesch5.html. 13. C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1949), 14-15. 14. For information see www.jersey.net/~inkwell/mormonet.htm. 15. Quoted from Richard and Joan Ostling, Mormon America: The Power and the Promise (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1999), 308. 16. Ibid., 307. 17. Ibid., 307-308. 18. Lewis, Beyond Personality, 48. 19. Ibid., 12-13. 20. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, 7. 21. C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1962), 51. 22. Ibid., 80. 23. Ibid., 153-154. 24. Available in various editions, including 1996 edition from Simon and Schuster.

First published in Cornerstone (ISSN 0275-2743), Vol. 29, Issue 119 (2000), p. 24
© 2000 Cornerstone Communications, Inc.
Electronic version may contain minor changes and corrections from printed version.