C.S. Lewis
1898-1963 · Christian Literature · Renowned
Lewis was a medievalist at Oxford and later a professor of literature at Cambridge who became the most read Christian apologist of the twentieth century. He compressed the case for Christ into a trilemma: a man who said what Jesus said was telling the truth, lying, or out of his mind. With Tolkien and the other Inklings, the writers' circle he belonged to, he read myth as a carrier of truth.
Signature
The position Lewis is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Universals
- leans Realism
- Ethics Basis
- Natural Law / Divine Command
Positions on the 12 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- leans Describable (25 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Beauty
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Universals
- leans Realism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (100 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Vertical (16 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Opposition
- leans Concurrence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- War
- leans Militarism (82 on a 0–100 scale from Pacifism to Militarism)
- Ignorance
- leans Bondage (25 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
- Conviction
- mildly leans Certain (67 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
8 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Lewis refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism / Divine Drama
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Knowledge
- Pure Reason / Tradition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Natural Law / Divine Command
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will / Synergism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Linear Progressive / Eschatological
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Divine Revelation / Sacred Tradition
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Logos
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Natural Law / Divine Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Judgement
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Redeemably Corrupted
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?