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Clive Staples Lewis

Geburtstag: 29. November 1898
Todesdatum: 24. November 1963
Andere Namen:C.S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis war ein irischer Schriftsteller und Literaturwissenschaftler. Er lehrte am Magdalen College der University of Oxford und hatte den Lehrstuhl für Englische Literatur des Mittelalters und der Renaissance an der University of Cambridge inne. Er ist vor allem im angloamerikanischen Raum bekannt für seine Kinderbuchserie Die Chroniken von Narnia.

Zitate Clive Staples Lewis

„Ein bloßer Mensch, der solche Dinge sagen würde, wie Jesus sie gesagt hat, wäre kein großer Morallehrer. […] Entweder war – und ist – dieser Mensch Gottes Sohn, oder er war ein Narr oder Schlimmeres. Wir können ihn als Geisteskranken einsperren, wir können ihn verachten oder als Dämon töten. Oder wir können ihm zu Füßen fallen und ihn Herr und Gott nennen. Aber wir können ihn nicht mit gönnerhafter Herablassung als einen großen Lehrer der Menschheit bezeichnen. Das war nie seine Absicht; diese Möglichkeit hat er uns nicht offengelassen.“

— Clive Staples Lewis
Pardon, ich bin Christ. 18. Auflage. Brunnen Verlag, Basel 2006. ISBN 3-7655-3150-2 S. 56

Über Gott, Über Menschen, tot

„Am Ende werden nur zwei Gruppen von Menschen vor Gott stehen - jene, die zu Gott sagen: »Dein Wille geschehe«, und jene, zu denen Gott sagt: »Dein Wille geschehe«. Alle, die in der Hölle sind, haben sie sich erwählt.“

— Clive Staples Lewis
Die große Scheidung, 9. Kapitel

Über Gott, Über Ehe, Über Menschen, Hölle

„Die beste Waffe des Teufels ist der Glaube der Menschen, es gebe keine Möglichkeit, ihn loszuwerden, außer indem sie ihm nachgeben.“

— Clive Staples Lewis
Dienstanweisungen an einen Unterteufel

Über Menschen, Über Glauben

„Wer alles durchschaut, sieht nichts mehr.“

— Clive Staples Lewis
Die Abschaffung des Menschen, S.82

„Gott flüstert in unseren Freuden, er spricht in unserem Gewissen; in unseren Schmerzen aber ruft er laut. Sie sind sein Megaphon, eine taube Welt aufzuwecken.“

— Clive Staples Lewis
Über den Schmerz

Über Gott, Über Schmerzen, Über die Welt, Freude

„Ich glaube an Christus, so wie ich glaube, dass die Sonne aufgegangen ist, nicht nur, weil ich sie sehe, sondern weil ich durch sie alles andere sehen kann.“

— Clive Staples Lewis
Ist Theologie Dichtung?, in: Das Gewicht der Herrlichkeit und andere Essays

Über Ehe, Sonne, Christus

„Der Kernpunkt des christlichen Glaubens besteht darin, dass uns der Tod Christi irgendwie mit Gott versöhnt und die Möglichkeit zu einem Neubeginn gegeben hat.“

— Clive Staples Lewis
Pardon, ich bin Christ

Über Tod, Über Gott, Über Glauben

„It would be even worse to think of those who get what they pray for as a sort of court favorites, people who have influence with the throne. The refused prayer of Christ in Gethsemane is answer enough to that.“

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— Clive Staples Lewis
Context: Prayer is not a machine. It is not magic. It is not advice offered to God. Our act, when we pray, must not, any more than all our other acts, be separated from the continuous act of God Himself, in which alone all finite causes operate. It would be even worse to think of those who get what they pray for as a sort of court favorites, people who have influence with the throne. The refused prayer of Christ in Gethsemane is answer enough to that. And I dare not leave out the hard saying which I once heard from an experienced Christian: “I have seen many striking answers to prayer and more than one that I thought miraculous. But they usually come at the beginning: before conversion, or soon after it. As the Christian life proceeds, they tend to be rarer. The refusals, too, are not only more frequent; they become more unmistakable, more emphatic.” Does God then forsake just those who serve Him best? Well, He who served Him best of all said, near His tortured death, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” When God becomes man, that Man, of all others, is least comforted by God, at His greatest need. There is a mystery here which, even if I had the power, I might not have the courage to explore. Meanwhile, little people like you and me, if our prayers are sometimes granted, beyond all hope and probability, had better not draw hasty conclusions to our own advantage. If we were stronger, we might be less tenderly treated. If we were braver, we might be sent, with far less help, to defend far more desperate posts in the great battle.

„You can't get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.“

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— Clive Staples Lewis
As quoted in Of This and Other Worlds (1982) by Walter Hooper, Preface, p. 9

„It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.“

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— Clive Staples Lewis
Context: If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next... It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth "thrown in": aim at earth and you will get neither. Book III, Chapter 10, "Hope"

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„The imagined beings have their insides on the outside; they are visible souls. And Man as a whole, Man pitted against the universe, have we seen him at all till we see that he is like a hero in a fairy tale?“

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— Clive Staples Lewis
Context: But why,' (some ask), 'why, if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never land of your own?' Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality. One can see the principle at work in his characterization. Much that in a realistic work would be done by 'character delineation' is here done simply by making the character an elf, a dwarf, or a hobbit. The imagined beings have their insides on the outside; they are visible souls. And Man as a whole, Man pitted against the universe, have we seen him at all till we see that he is like a hero in a fairy tale? p. 89

„Now, to-day, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side.“

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— Clive Staples Lewis
Context: Now, to-day, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it. Book II, Chapter 5, "The Practical Conclusion"

„Friends are not primarily absorbed in each other.“

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— Clive Staples Lewis
Context: Friends are not primarily absorbed in each other. It is when we are doing things together that friendship springs up – painting, sailing ships, praying, philosophizing, fighting shoulder to shoulder. Friends look in the same direction. Lovers look at each other — that is, in opposite directions. To transfer bodily all that belongs to one relationship into the other is blundering.

„We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.“

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— Clive Staples Lewis
Context: And all the time — such is the tragi-comedy of our situation — we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more “drive”, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or “creativity”. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

„Neither the temporal succession nor the phantom of what ye might have chosen and didn't is itself Freedom. They are a lens. The picture is a symbol: but it's truer than any philosophical theorem (or, perhaps, than any mystic's vision) that claims to go behind it. For every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys your knowledge of Freedom."“

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— Clive Staples Lewis
Context: "Ye can know nothing of the end of all things, or nothing expressible in those terms. It may be, as the Lord said to the Lady Julian, that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. But it's ill talking of such questions." "Because they are too terrible, Sir?" "No. Because all answers deceive. If ye put the question from within Time and are asking about possibilities, the answer is certain. The choice of ways is before you. Neither is closed. Any man may choose eternal death. Those who choose it will have it. But if ye are trying to leap on into Eternity, if ye are trying to see the final state of all things as it will be (for so ye must speak) when there are no more possibilities left but only the Real, then ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears. Time is the very lens through which ye see — small and clear, as men see through the wrong end of a telescope — something that would otherwise be too big for ye to see at all. That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves parts of eternal reality. But ye can see it only through the lens of Time, in a little clear picture, through the inverted telescope. It is a picture of moments following one another and yourself in each moment making some choice that might have been otherwise. Neither the temporal succession nor the phantom of what ye might have chosen and didn't is itself Freedom. They are a lens. The picture is a symbol: but it's truer than any philosophical theorem (or, perhaps, than any mystic's vision) that claims to go behind it. For every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys your knowledge of Freedom." Ch. 13

„There is no spiritual sustenance in flat equality. It is a dim recognition of this fact which makes much of our political propaganda sound so thin.“

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— Clive Staples Lewis
Context: There is no spiritual sustenance in flat equality. It is a dim recognition of this fact which makes much of our political propaganda sound so thin. We are trying to be enraptured by something which is merely the negative condition of the good life. That is why the imagination of people is so easily captured by appeals to the craving for inequality, whether in a romantic form of films about loyal courtiers or in the brutal form of Nazi ideology. The tempter always works on some real weakness in our own system of values — offers food to some need which we have starved.