Question 1 of 10

In the passage quoted above from Surprised by Joy, Lewis indicates how he finally “gave in, and admitted that God was God”; however, Lewis has only converted to theism so far. Only after his evening conversation several years later with J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson on the grounds of Magdalen College does he come to believe in the Christian God specifically.

Question 2 of 10

At the beginning of Surprised by Joy, Lewis explains that “the central story of [his] life is about nothing else than joy”—an eternal, inconsolable yearning to be united with the divine. He later recounts how his earliest experience of joy was prompted by his brother’s toy garden, which always lived in his imagination as a figure of paradise.

Question 3 of 10

C.S. Lewis, John F. Kennedy, and Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World, all died on November 22, 1963.

Question 4 of 10

Since death is real and the ultimate reminder of man’s fallen nature, Lewis considered it acceptable and even proper to acknowledge and express grief, as is evident from his deeply personal and sorrowful account of his wife’s death in A Grief Observed.

Question 5 of 10

While skeptics may contend that the presence of suffering is evidence of an absent or neglectful God, Lewis argues the contrary: “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Question 6 of 10

In Miracles, C.S. Lewis writes that: “We ‘just see’ that there is no reason why my neighbour’s happiness should be sacrificed to my own, as we ‘just see’ that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another. If we cannot prove either axiom, that is not because they are irrational but because they are self-evident and all proofs depend on them. Their intrinsic reasonableness shines by its own light.” Lewis presents a more complete account of these first principles of morality, the Tao, in The Abolition of Man.

Question 7 of 10

In The Problem of Pain, Lewis describes heaven as “a city, and a Body, because the blessed remain eternally different: a society, because each has something to tell all the others – fresh and ever fresh news of the ‘My God’ whom each finds in Him whom all praise as ‘Our God.’ For doubtless the continually successful, yet never completed, attempt by each soul to communicate its unique vision to all others . . . is also among the ends for which the individual was created.” This eternal act of worship unites those in heaven as distinct images of the Godhead and draws them all closer in communion with their Creator.

Question 8 of 10

The Screwtape Letters depicts hell as a modern, bureaucratic department teeming with secretaries and under-secretaries, dossiers, and memoranda. As a result, Lewis’s satire defamiliarizes the common perception of demons and mocks their efforts to foil Providence.

Question 9 of 10

This episode illustrates the painful nature of a real conversion, since God must surgically remove our fleshly desires to give man new life in Him. Eustace is only able to shed his dragon skin when Aslan claws deeply enough to rip off the thick hide. Like Christ’s crucifixion, the conversion experience is both a cause for sorrow and joy.

Question 10 of 10

After studying classical philosophy as an undergraduate at Oxford, Lewis filled in for one of his old tutors for a year during his sabbatical. His first lecture series was on the nature of goodness, reminiscent of his later philosophical work The Abolition of Man. It would only be afterwards in 1925 when Lewis began teaching English literature for the rest of his academic career.