Introduction

Abstract The Introduction establishes the importance of Lewis, particularly the fact that his life journey was driven by the quest for the most adequate philosophical worldview. The criterion of adequacy pertained not only to the intellectual strength but also to the existential liveability of each worldview he considered—from atheistic materialism, through various forms of idealism and pantheism, to theism and ultimately Christian theism. The Introduction prepares the reader to see that Lewis’s perspective involved his own biographical details and intellectual predilections but also that it was a wide, expansive conduit for classical ecumenical orthodoxy—which he famously called “mere Christianity.” The Introduction particularly explains that most of the existing books about Lewis are either about his “biography” or his “literature” and that books about his “philosophy” are topical and do not offer a comprehensive treatment of his worldview—a point that uniquely positions this book among the scholarly works on Lewis.