Was C.S. Lewis an Anglo-Catholic?

(in reply to Brian Carpenter’s blog)

Any biblical Christian must read Lewis with discernment, because as Lewis would admit himself, he is not the touchstone of biblical faith. He was, however a good guide to historic orthodoxy. I first read a copy of “The Screwtape Letters”, when I was in High School in Texas and it began a life-long interest and conversation with Lewis’s thinking. How an Oxford atheist, turned Christian apologist grabbed the attention of a young kid raised on fundamentalist religion is a mystery. But, then it is in the “shadow-lands” of mystery that Lewis makes a case for rational belief in the Christian faith. Here in his principle works of both his explicit apologetics and his “cultural” apologetics (i.e. works of fiction) that he rises to great heights. He once wrote, “most of my books are evangelistic, addressed to us exo (those outside).” On issues of intramural theology, he did play his cards close. You are right about some of his weaknesses from “our point of view”. He never claimed to be a Calvinist. But he drank deeply from the wells of Puritan authors. Richard Baxter, John Bunyan and William Law were writers he quoted revealing an appreciation of Reformed Spirituality that came from the English Puritans. He in fact was often accused of being too “Puritan”. Just read the criticism he received by Dr. I.A. Richards (an atheist akin to Richard Hitchens) in his essay “Christianity and Culture”. He sought to rehabilitate the negative image of the Puritans in a day when they were equated with flat earthers and witch hunters.
Even though we might find the soft Calvinism of George MacDonald slipping over the standards of the Westminster Confession, it was this Scottish trained clergyman that Lewis said influenced his thinking more than any other. Yet, even then Lewis was not uncritical of MacDonald’s own attraction to universalism.
Lewis rejected what he called the notion of total depravity, but then described what might be called clear Reformed view of fallen man and the total need of grace. Where he mentions the view he rejects is in the discussion of the ability of human reason to think, much in the same way that Gordon Clark and R.C. Sproul argue for the role of reason in fallen man.
Did Lewis argue from Rome’s point of view and use the traditionalist argument on the role of women in the priesthood. Now let’s be clear, Lewis as a faithful churchman in the CofE, used terminology we would not. We don’t have priests. When he states that the women can preach, he is quoting the Bible and shows where such is the case- as in the daughters of Phillip. We too can say that women can preach and teach. I once heard a woman preach. The issue is whether they ought. And what the Bible says is a lawful or ordained office that is only open to men. Once again, the essay in question does rest more on where the Bible makes clear that the differences in the sexes are a created reality. We can no more change the distinct reality of our sex than we can change the language that the Bible uses about God. It seems to me his arguments are soundly biblical.
Was Lewis a sacramentalist? His comment on the sacredness of one’s neighbor in the “Weight of Glory” (the only sermon Lewis ever preached, and so powerful) shows nothing more than what any Anglican of the sort that Packer, Stott, Green, and other low church Evangelicals might describe. Ian Hamilton also might call Calvin a sacramentalist, as well. Hamilton who preaches at Cambridge Presbyterian Church in England, recently spoke on the high view of the Sacraments (only two) that the great Reformer had. Lewis use of the word magic was not of the Roman Medieval sort, but rather an appreciation of the mysterious reality that is beyond our comprehension. I dare say that his understanding of the healing of Joy, was not tied to an ex opere operato understanding of priestly rites, but to the effectiveness of prayer and divine grace.
Yes, Lewis does quote the Tractarian Newman (Anglican turned to Rome and later made Cardinal) but he also shows a fundamental disagreement with Newman in his essay, “Christianity and Culture”, showing a remarkable kinship with the Reformed view of grace and nature.
Is his view purgatory a Roman one? He denies the idea of merit. As one reads Lewis, he is simply posing the idea that something must happen in our final sanctification to remove the body of sin from us. How that happens in Glory is a truth veiled from us. Here like, Dante, he is using a baptized imagination. Like Milton, he keeps clear from making any fundamental confusion of categories about grace and works.