C.S. Lewis: Mere Christianity Read by an Orthodox Christian

Few modern Christian writers have been read as widely as C.S. Lewis. Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce and the Narnia books are read by Orthodox Christians as well as by Protestants and Catholics, and it is natural to ask what an Orthodox reader should make of him.

Lewis was an Anglican layman, and he said so. His books contain teaching the Orthodox Church recognises as her own, and teaching she cannot accept. This article tells his story from the sources and names both plainly.

In brief

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was born in Belfast, lost his childhood faith as a schoolboy, came to believe in God around 1929 or 1930, and, after a night conversation with J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson in September 1931, came to faith in Christ. Mere Christianity began as wartime BBC radio talks and was published as one book in 1952. Orthodox readers value much in it: the argument that Jesus cannot be "a great moral teacher" and no more, the argument from longing, and above all the teaching that every Christian is to become "a little Christ," which echoes St Athanasius, whose On the Incarnation Lewis commended in his introduction to a new English translation. But Lewis remained in the Church of England, offered no real doctrine of the Church, pictured the Holy Spirit in the Western manner that underlies the Filioque, and wrote that he believed in Purgatory. Lewis was a gifted brother in Christ who pointed readers toward the house of faith; its fullness is kept in the Orthodox Church.

Thesis: Lewis is worth reading, and much of what he wrote is close to the Fathers, but where he departs from Orthodox teaching he is in error, and his "hall" of mere Christianity is, by his own account, no place to live.

From Belfast to Addison's Walk

His memoir Surprised by Joy (1955) begins: "I was born in the winter of 1898 at Belfast, the son of a solicitor and of a clergyman's daughter."¹ The C.S. Lewis Foundation's chronology gives the date as 29 November 1898 and records that his mother, Flora, died of cancer in 1908.² He was raised in the Church of Ireland, but at boarding school in England, as he put it, "I ceased to be a Christian."³ Of his unbelief he later wrote: "I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing."⁴

Lewis was wounded in France in 1918, became a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1925, and moved to a Cambridge chair in 1954.⁵ His return to faith came in two steps. First, belief in God: "In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed," and he called himself that night "the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England."⁶ Lewis's biographer Alister McGrath has argued from Lewis's letters that this step actually came in 1930, a redating others have questioned.⁷ {{debated: Whether Lewis came to believe in God in 1929, as he wrote, or in 1930, as McGrath argues.}}

Then, on the night of 19 September 1931, Lewis talked with Tolkien and Hugo Dyson along Addison's Walk at Magdalen until the early hours.⁸ In a letter to Arthur Greeves of 18 October 1931 he explained what they had shown him: pagan stories of a dying god had always moved him, and the story of Christ was "a true myth," a myth "with this tremendous difference that it really happened."⁹ The decisive moment came days later, on a drive to Whipsnade Zoo: "When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did."¹⁰

Lewis became a practising Anglican; from 1940 until 1952 he met almost weekly for confession and spiritual direction with Father Walter Adams of the Anglican Society of St John the Evangelist.¹¹ He married Joy Davidman in 1956; she died in 1960, and Lewis died at his home near Oxford on 22 November 1963.¹²

From the microphone to Mere Christianity

The Foundation's chronology records Lewis's first BBC talks, four live broadcasts in August 1941, and his last series, Beyond Personality, between 22 February and 4 April 1944.¹³ In his preface Lewis explains that "The contents of this book were first given on the air," then printed in three short books, and finally revised as Mere Christianity (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1952).¹⁴ {{very-strong: Mere Christianity began as wartime BBC radio talks given between 1941 and 1944 and was published as a single book in 1952.}}

The preface also tells us what Lewis meant by "mere" Christianity. He called himself "a very ordinary layman of the Church of England" and said his aim was "to explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times." He left out disputed questions and sent his doctrinal chapters to four clergymen, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and Roman Catholic, for comment.¹⁵ No Orthodox reader was among them.

What Orthodox readers value

The claim of Christ

The most famous passage of Mere Christianity answers those who admire Jesus as a teacher but deny that He is God. "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher," Lewis writes, and he concludes: "You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God."¹⁶ Readers have called this the "trilemma."

The argument has critics. The philosopher John Beversluis argued that it leaves out other possibilities, for example that Jesus was sincerely mistaken, and that it assumes the Gospels report His words accurately; Christian philosophers have replied that a man deeply wrong about his own identity could hardly be the great moral teacher the skeptic admires.¹⁷ The trilemma is only as strong as its historical premise, but that premise can be defended (see Did Jesus Actually Claim to Be God?), and with it Lewis's point stands. The Church confesses with St Thomas: "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28, NKJV).

The longing for another world

Lewis's conversion began with what he called "Joy," a longing nothing earthly satisfies. In Mere Christianity it becomes an argument: "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."¹⁸ Philosophers dispute whether this works as proof, and Beversluis rejected it along with the trilemma.¹⁹ As a description of the human heart, though, it agrees with the Church: we were made for communion with God (see Man's Longing for Permanence and Eternal Life).

"Little Christs": Lewis and theosis

The most Orthodox-sounding part of the book is Beyond Personality. "Every Christian is to become a little Christ," Lewis writes. "The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else." The next chapter opens: "The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God."²⁰ He adds that the Church "exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs," and, citing the Lord's words that "we were 'gods'" (John 10:34), he says God will make each of us "a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature," reflecting God's power and goodness "(though, of course, on a smaller scale)."²¹

This is the language of theosis. St Athanasius wrote, in the translation Lewis introduced, "He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God," and St Peter says that believers become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4, NKJV).²² The Church teaches that deification is by grace, never by nature: we share in God's life, while His essence remains beyond every creature. Lewis's "on a smaller scale" points the same way, though he lacked the Church's teaching on God's essence and energies and gave the Holy Mysteries less place than she does. Still, he names them. "There are three things that spread the Christ life to us," he writes: "baptism, belief, and that mysterious action which different Christians call by different names."²³

The Cross as victory

Lewis also refused to make any one theory of the atonement essential. The core, he says, is that Christ "was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself"; theories about how this works are "quite secondary."²⁴ An Orthodox reader hears in "by dying He disabled death itself" the Paschal hymn, which begins "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death" and is sung throughout the Paschal season.²⁵

Lewis and St Athanasius

Lewis wrote the introduction to a new English translation of St Athanasius's On the Incarnation by an Anglican nun who signed herself "A Religious of C.S.M.V." (her preface is dated Wantage, April 1943). The introduction was later reprinted as an essay, "On the Reading of Old Books."²⁶ In it Lewis gives his famous advice: "It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between." Only old books, he says, keep "the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds."²⁷

Lewis calls the treatise a masterpiece and honours its author: "His epitaph is Athanasius contra mundum, 'Athanasius against the world.'" St Athanasius stood for the faith of Nicaea when much of the Church's leadership drifted toward Arianism, and Lewis writes: "It is his glory that he did not move with the times."²⁸ Orthodox readers can only agree (see Athanasius Against the Arians and the Church Fathers guide). The Orthodox add that the Fathers are read best within the Church that still keeps their faith.

Lewis also had some contact with Orthodox worship. In Letters to Malcolm he wrote: "What pleased me most about a Greek Orthodox mass I once attended was that there seemed to be no prescribed behaviour for the congregation."²⁹ Metropolitan Kallistos Ware lectured in 1994 on whether Lewis was "an anonymous Orthodox" and answered largely yes, drawing mainly on Lewis's imaginative works.³⁰

Where Lewis departs from Orthodoxy

The hall and the rooms: no doctrine of the Church

Lewis knew that "mere" Christianity was not a church. He wrote that it is "more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms," and that "it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals." The hall is "a place to wait in" and "not a place to live in." He names "Greek Orthodoxy" among the existing communions that mere Christianity is not meant to replace. And he tells the seeker to ask "which door is the true one," and to put the right questions: "Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here?"³¹

The Orthodox honour the question but not the picture, in which every communion is a room in the same house. The Creed confesses "one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church," and St Paul calls the Church "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15, NKJV).³² Christ founded one Church with one faith, one Eucharist and the apostolic succession of bishops, and the Orthodox Church is that Church. Lewis's own test, "Are these doctrines true?", leads there. The Church of England, with its Reformation formularies and its contradictory parties, was a door he chose honestly, but it is not the fullness of the Church (see the infographic The Anglican Tradition and Can We Find Christ's Church in History?).

The Holy Spirit as the "joint life" of Father and Son

In Beyond Personality Lewis explains the Trinity this way: "The union between the Father and the Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person," and "What grows out of the joint life of the Father and Son is a real Person," the Holy Spirit.³³ Lewis offered this as a picture ("look at it thus," he says), and he never mentions the Filioque. But the picture echoes St Augustine, who wrote that "the Holy Spirit, whatever it is, is something common both to the Father and Son."³⁴ {{strong: Lewis's analogy of the Holy Spirit as what "grows out of the joint life" of Father and Son echoes the Western, Augustinian line of thought behind the Filioque.}}

Taken as an account of where the Spirit comes from, the Orthodox Church cannot accept it. The Creed of 381 says the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father," following Christ's own words in John 15:26, and St John of Damascus states the Church's teaching exactly: "we do not speak of the Spirit as from the Son."³⁵ The Father is the one source of the Son and of the Spirit. To describe the Spirit as arising from the union of Father and Son implies that the Son is a co-source of the Spirit, which is the error of the Filioque. Lewis meant to describe the common faith; here he gave a Western picture instead.

Purgatory

Lewis said plainly in Letters to Malcolm, published in 1964, the year after his death: "Of course I pray for the dead." In the same letter he went further: "I believe in Purgatory." He did not mean the sixteenth-century "Romish doctrine" he criticised, but a cleansing after death that the soul itself desires: "Our souls demand Purgatory, don't they?"³⁶ {{very-strong: In Letters to Malcolm Lewis states plainly that he prayed for the dead and believed in Purgatory.}}

Lewis is right to pray for the departed; the Orthodox Church has always done so. But she rejects Purgatory. The Orthodox Church in America calls it a teaching "found among the Roman Catholics" that is alien to Orthodox Christianity, and explains that the Orthodox pray for the dead "so that the Lord will have mercy on their souls" and grant them rest, not to release them from a fixed punishment.³⁷ The Church entrusts the departed to God's mercy and teaches no purgatorial punishments to be paid off (see Purgatory: What Catholics Believe, and Where Orthodoxy Differs).

The Great Divorce and the last things

The Great Divorce (1945) imagines ghosts from a grey town taking a bus to the foothills of heaven, where most refuse to stay. Its guide, George MacDonald, explains the idea of the Refrigerium, "holidays" for the damned, and says of the grey town: "To any that leaves it, it is Purgatory."³⁸ Lewis warned against reading this as a map of the afterlife: "I beg readers to remember that this is a fantasy," and its conditions after death are "not even a guess or a speculation at what may actually await us."³⁹

The Church does not teach that souls in hell may visit heaven and choose again, and "it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment" (Hebrews 9:27, NKJV). Nor did Lewis teach universal salvation. In The Problem of Pain he wrote, "I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully 'All will be saved'"; he then explained why he could not, concluding that "the doors of hell are locked on the inside."⁴⁰ Here he stands with the Church, which rejected the restoration of all as Origenist error and confesses eternal life and eternal punishment. The book's moral, that hell is chosen by those who will not say "Thy will be done" to God, is sound; its purgatorial frame is fiction (see What Happens to the Soul After Death? The Orthodox View).

Silences

Lewis also kept silent on matters the Church has settled. He wrote that he never said more about the Blessed Virgin Mary "than is involved in asserting the Virgin Birth of Christ," because the subject was controversial.⁴¹ The Orthodox Church confesses her as Theotokos, the Mother of God, and Ever-Virgin, and honours her above all the saints. Such silences make the book a doorway, not a catechism.

Objections and replies

"Mere Christianity is enough. Why argue about the rooms?"

Lewis himself rejected this. The hall, he said, is "not a place to live in," and "the worst of the rooms (whichever that may be) is, I think, preferable."⁴² The questions he left aside, the Church, the Eucharist and the procession of the Holy Spirit, are questions of truth.

"Lewis was really Orthodox at heart."

The affinities Metropolitan Kallistos found are real. But Lewis lived and died an Anglican and wrote in favour of Purgatory and used a Western picture of the Spirit. Honesty requires us to call him a brother in Christ who held some errors, not a hidden member of the Church.

"Then Orthodox Christians should not read Lewis."

No. The Orthodox may read non-Orthodox writers with discernment, and few repay it as Lewis does. He sends his readers to the Fathers, and the Fathers lead to the Church. Read him as a voice in the hall, urging you to find the true door.

What we can say confidently

• Lewis came to faith in Christ in September 1931, after his night conversation with Tolkien and Dyson.
• Mere Christianity grew out of BBC wartime talks (1941-1944) and was published as one book in 1952.
• Lewis taught that Christians are to become "little Christs," language close to the Fathers' teaching on theosis, and he commended St Athanasius's On the Incarnation in his introduction to a new English translation.
• Lewis wrote that he prayed for the dead and believed in Purgatory; the Orthodox Church prays for the dead and rejects Purgatory.
• His picture of the Holy Spirit, though offered as an analogy, follows a Western line contrary to the Creed's "proceeds from the Father."
• Lewis called The Great Divorce a fantasy, and he did not teach universal salvation.

What remains disputed

• Whether Lewis's turn to theism came in 1929, as he wrote, or in 1930, as McGrath has argued.
• How much contact Lewis had with Orthodox Christians and Orthodox worship beyond the few remarks in his own writings.
• Whether the trilemma and the argument from desire work as stand-alone proofs, as philosophers continue to debate.

Conclusion

Lewis was a converted atheist who spent his gifts defending the Godhead of Christ, the reality of the soul and the hope of glory. He sent his readers back to St Athanasius and told them that God became man so that men might become sons of God. For this, Orthodox Christians can be grateful to him.

Gratitude does not require pretending. Lewis's hall had no fire, and he knew it. The Orthodox Church invites seekers not into one room among many but into the Church Christ founded, where the faith of St Athanasius is confessed without addition, the Spirit is confessed as proceeding from the Father, and the departed are commended to the mercy of the God who trampled down death by death. Lewis asked which door is the true one. The Church answers, and invites his readers home.

Notes

1. C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1955), ch. 1, "The First Years." Text checked in the Faded Page e-book #20150220, https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20150220.
2. C.S. Lewis Foundation, "Chronologically Lewis," entries for 1898 and 1908, https://www.cslewis.org/resource/chronocsl/.
3. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, ch. 4, "I Broaden My Mind" (see note 1); on his upbringing in the Church of Ireland, ch. 1.
4. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, ch. 7, "Light and Shade" (see note 1).
5. C.S. Lewis Foundation, "Chronologically Lewis," entries for 1918, 1925 and 1954 (see note 2).
6. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, ch. 14, "Checkmate" (see note 1).
7. Alister McGrath, C.S. Lewis: A Life (2013), as discussed by Andrew Lazo, "C. S. Lewis Got It Wrong," First Things (8 August 2013), https://firstthings.com/c-s-lewis-got-it-wrong/ (supporting 1930); for a critic of the redating, Greg Forster, "Redating Lewis' Conversion?" First Things (11 March 2013), https://firstthings.com/redating-lewis-conversion/.
8. Sarah R. A. Waters, "'Expressing the great myths': Hugo Dyson and Shakespeare in C. S. Lewis's Conversion Narrative," Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal 19, no. 2 (2026), article 4, https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/cslewisjournal/vol19/iss2/4 (abstract: "the night of 19 September 1931 in Addison's Walk").
9. Lewis to Arthur Greeves, 18 October 1931, in The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, vol. 1, ed. Walter Hooper, pp. 976-77, as quoted in Greg Clarke, "The epistles of Lewis," Sydney Anglicans (18 May 2008), https://sydneyanglicans.net/news/the_epistles_of_lewis/24679, and in The Gospel Coalition, Evangelical History blog, "85 years ago today: J.R.R. Tolkien convinces C.S. Lewis that Christ is the true myth," https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history/85-years-ago-today-j-r-r-tolkien-convinces-c-s-lewis-that-christ-is-the-true-myth/.
10. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, ch. 15, "The Beginning" (see note 1).
11. Lyle W. Dorsett, Seeking the Secret Place: The Spiritual Formation of C. S. Lewis (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2004), as summarised in Douglas B. Miller's review, Direction 34, no. 2 (Fall 2005): 298-99, https://directionjournal.org/34/2/seeking-secret-place-spiritual-formation.html; on Adams as a member of the Society of St John the Evangelist (the Cowley Fathers), John Stonestreet and Glenn Sunshine, "How C.S. Lewis Became C.S. Lewis (After His Conversion)," BreakPoint (4 April 2025), https://colsoncenter.org/breakpoint/how-c.s.-lewis-became-c.s.-lewis-after-his-conversion.
12. C.S. Lewis Foundation, "Chronologically Lewis," entries for 1956, 1960 and 1963 (see note 2).
13. C.S. Lewis Foundation, "Chronologically Lewis," entries for 1941 and 1944 (see note 2).
14. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1952), Preface and title-page verso ("First Published 1952"). Text checked in the Faded Page e-book #20150620, https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20150620.
15. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Preface (see note 14).
16. Lewis, Mere Christianity, bk. II, ch. 3, "The Shocking Alternative" (see note 14).
17. John Beversluis, C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion, rev. ed. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2007), as reviewed by David Werther, Denver Journal 13 (2010), https://denverjournal.denverseminary.edu/the-denver-journal-article/c-s-lewis-and-the-search-for-rational-religion/ (Werther reports David Horner's reply).
18. Lewis, Mere Christianity, bk. III, ch. 10, "Hope" (see note 14).
19. Beversluis, as reviewed by Werther (see note 17).
20. Lewis, Mere Christianity, bk. IV, ch. 4, "Good Infection," and ch. 5, "The Obstinate Toy Soldiers" (see note 14).
21. Lewis, Mere Christianity, bk. IV, ch. 8, "Is Christianity Hard or Easy?" and ch. 9, "Counting the Cost" (see note 14).
22. St Athanasius, The Incarnation of the Word of God, trans. A Religious of C.S.M.V., with an introduction by C.S. Lewis (New York: Macmillan, 1946; sixth printing 1957), §54, read at https://archive.org/details/20200325theincarnationofthewordofgod; compare On the Incarnation 54.3, trans. Archibald Robertson, NPNF2 4 ("He was made man that we might be made God"), https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2802.htm. 2 Peter 1:4 (NKJV).
23. Lewis, Mere Christianity, bk. II, ch. 5, "The Practical Conclusion" (see note 14).
24. Lewis, Mere Christianity, bk. II, ch. 4, "The Perfect Penitent" (see note 14).
25. The Paschal Troparion, Orthodox Church in America, "Selected Liturgical Hymns," https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/prayers/selected-liturgical-hymns.
26. St Athanasius, The Incarnation of the Word of God, trans. A Religious of C.S.M.V. (see note 22), translator's preface signed "Wantage, April 1943."
27. C.S. Lewis, Introduction, in The Incarnation of the Word of God (see note 22).
28. Lewis, Introduction (see note 27).
29. C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1964), letter 2. Text checked in the Faded Page e-book #20150618, https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20150618.
30. Kallistos Ware, "C.S. Lewis: An 'Anonymous Orthodox'?" Sobornost 17, no. 2 (1995), lecture to the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society, 29 November 1994, as summarised in Ron Dart, "C.S. Lewis and the Orthodox Tradition, Part III," The Clarion Journal, https://www.clarion-journal.com/cs-lewis-and-the-orthodox-tradition-part-iii-ron-dart/.
31. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Preface (see note 14).
32. First Council of Constantinople (381), Creed, trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3808.htm; 1 Timothy 3:15 (NKJV).
33. Lewis, Mere Christianity, bk. IV, ch. 4, "Good Infection" (see note 14).
34. St Augustine, On the Trinity 6.5.7, trans. Arthur West Haddan, NPNF1 3, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/130106.htm.
35. Creed of 381 (see note 32); John 15:26 (NKJV); St John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 1.8, trans. S.D.F. Salmond, NPNF2 9, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/33041.htm.
36. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, letter 20 (see note 29).
37. Orthodox Church in America, Questions and Answers, "Mary / Prayer / Death," https://www.oca.org/questions/teaching/mary-prayer-death.
38. C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1945), ch. 9. Text checked in the Faded Page e-book #20140726, https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20140726.
39. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Preface, dated April 1945 (see note 38).
40. C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1940), ch. 8, "Hell." Text checked in the Faded Page e-book #20140546, https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20140546. Hebrews 9:27 (NKJV).
41. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Preface (see note 14).
42. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Preface (see note 14).

Bibliography

Primary sources

• Lewis, C.S. The Problem of Pain. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1940.
• Lewis, C.S. The Great Divorce. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1945.
• Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1952.
• Lewis, C.S. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1955.
• Lewis, C.S. Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1964.
• Lewis, C.S. The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, vol. 1. Ed. Walter Hooper. (Letter of 18 October 1931, consulted through the quotations cited in note 9.)
• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Athanasius, St. The Incarnation of the Word of God. Trans. A Religious of C.S.M.V., with an introduction by C.S. Lewis. New York: Macmillan, 1946 (sixth printing 1957).
• Athanasius, St. On the Incarnation. Trans. Archibald Robertson. NPNF2 4.
• John of Damascus, St. An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. Trans. S.D.F. Salmond. NPNF2 9.
• First Council of Constantinople (381). Creed. Trans. Henry Percival. NPNF2 14.
• Augustine, St. On the Trinity. Trans. Arthur West Haddan. NPNF1 3.
• Orthodox Church in America. "Mary / Prayer / Death" (Questions and Answers) and "Selected Liturgical Hymns." oca.org.
• Ware, Kallistos. "C.S. Lewis: An 'Anonymous Orthodox'?" Sobornost 17, no. 2 (1995).

Other scholarship

• C.S. Lewis Foundation. "Chronologically Lewis." cslewis.org.
• Dart, Ron. "C.S. Lewis and the Orthodox Tradition, Part III." The Clarion Journal.
• Dorsett, Lyle W. Seeking the Secret Place: The Spiritual Formation of C. S. Lewis. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2004 (with Douglas B. Miller's review, Direction 34, no. 2, 2005).
• Forster, Greg. "Redating Lewis' Conversion?" First Things, 11 March 2013.
• Lazo, Andrew. "C. S. Lewis Got It Wrong." First Things, 8 August 2013 (on Alister McGrath, C.S. Lewis: A Life, 2013).
• Waters, Sarah R. A. "'Expressing the great myths': Hugo Dyson and Shakespeare in C. S. Lewis's Conversion Narrative." Sehnsucht 19, no. 2 (2026).
• Clarke, Greg. "The epistles of Lewis." Sydney Anglicans, 2008. The Gospel Coalition, Evangelical History blog. "85 years ago today: J.R.R. Tolkien convinces C.S. Lewis that Christ is the true myth."

Critics of Lewis's apologetics

• Beversluis, John. C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion. Rev. ed. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2007 (with David Werther's review, Denver Journal 13, 2010).