C. S. Lewis, Stories, and Postmodernism

Markstein 209

C. S. Lewis believed in an objective standard of truth. His entire life was rooted in the fact that God is real, that the Bible reveals truth about God, and that God created reality. Lewis also believed that stories were not meant to detract from this reality but are meant to encourage people to face reality and come to a knowing of the truthfulness of God. His understanding of the world, as founded in what the Bible teaches, helped to grow his imagination, which is evident in his writings, whether it was his fiction or essays. The purpose of this paper will be to examine Lewis and his contemporaries to describe how he predicted the ideologies of postmodernism and used stories to fight against relativist thinking. I will be examining several of his works, such as That Hideous Strength and the Chronicles of Narnia, to describe how C. S. Lewis argued against relativist thinking in his day, as well as how he used stories to communicate what truth is. He understood the potency of stories to either promote or destroy imaginations, in which healthy imaginations are central to a person’s understanding the world.