On violence

It is not easy to criticize a writer who has done so much good as C.S. Lewis. Yet I must here write critically because I am to address his views concerning violence and war. I am a pacifist. Lewis was not. Indeed, not only was he not a pacifist, he argued strongly against pacifism and in defence of the idea that some wars may be just. During the Second World War he gave a talk to the Oxford Pacifist Society explaining his position, an address which was later published as the (justly famous) essay, Why I Am Not a Pacifist. I will try to show that his arguments against pacifism are inadequate, but I also want to suggest that he provides imaginative resources for Christians to inhabit a very different form of Christian non-violence, a form practically unknown to Lewis himself, but with which I think he might have had some sympathy. / Lewis and war / Before turning to Lewis’s arguments against pacifism I think it important to set the context for his more formal reflections on war by calling attention to his own experience of armed conflict. Born in 1898, Lewis fought in World War I and gave talks to the Royal Air Force during World War II.

Duke Scholars

Author Stanley M. Hauerwas Divinity School