56 pages • 1-hour read
God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics
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Key Figures
C.S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was a British writer, literary scholar, and theologian best known for The Chronicles of Narnia, a seven-book series of fantasy novels for children. In his own time, Lewis was most famous as a theologian and Christian apologist. Born in Belfast, Lewis was educated at Oxford University, where he later became a fellow and tutor in English literature at Magdalen College. In 1954, he was appointed Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at the University of Cambridge, where he taught until his death in 1963.
Lewis was raised in a Christian household, but abandoned his faith in adolescence shortly after the death of his mother. After many years of atheism, Lewis began to seriously consider Christianity again while at Oxford. Prolonged debates about Christianity with his friends and colleagues J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson led Lewis to convert to Christianity in 1931. As a result of his own experience with atheism, Lewis’s theological works were primarily aimed at non-specialists, and sought to explain Christian beliefs in clear and accessible language, rather than engage in technical theological debate.
His most influential theological work is Mere Christianity (1952), which began as a series of BBC radio broadcasts delivered during World War II. The collection explores core Christian doctrines, such as the Incarnation and resurrection of Christ, and outlines major arguments for the existence of God. Although he was an active member of the Church of England, Lewis deliberately avoids discussion of denominational distinctions, focusing instead on beliefs common to most Christian traditions and visible in historical church writings. The collection draws heavily on Lewis’s experience as a historian and literary critic. Many of the arguments offered in Mere Christianity are first introduced in the essays in God in the Dock. These previously unpublished essays show that Lewis was working through these arguments as early as 1940.
The influence of the World Wars is evident in Lewis’s recurring interest in the question of suffering and evil. In The Problem of Pain (1940), Lewis examines how suffering can coexist with belief in an all-powerful and benevolent God, ultimately attributing it to free will and human sin. He returns to these ideas in A Grief Observed (1961), which details Lewis’s personal struggles with doubt and anger after the death of his wife from cancer. The essays in God in the Dock suggest that Lewis continued to consider these questions after the war and in the early years of his wife’s illness.
In addition to his explicitly theological works, Lewis addressed Christian doctrine indirectly in his fiction and via allegory. The Screwtape Letters (1942) uses a satirical format to explore temptation, sin, and spiritual life from the perspective of two devils. The Great Divorce (1945) is an allegory featuring residents of Hell attempting to get into Heaven. While not explicitly theological, the Chronicles of Narnia series (1950-1956) incorporate Christian symbolism in the character of Aslan, whose story of sacrifice and redemption closely mirrors the life of Jesus Christ. Lewis’s writing career reflects his continued engagement with theological issues in a variety of sources.
The Church of England
The Church of England (also known as the Anglican Church) originated in the 16th century when England formally broke from the authority of the Roman Catholic Church as a result of political and dynastic concerns. When the pope refused to annul King Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Parliament passed a series of acts, most notably the Act of Supremacy (1534). The Act of Supremacy declared Henry to be the Supreme Head of the Church of England, firmly rejecting the political and theological authority of the pope. Despite this break, the Church of England initially retained many Catholic doctrines and practices.
The Church of England developed a more distinct identity under Henry’s successors, beginning with his son Edward, whose reign saw strict religious reforms influenced by continental Protestantism. After Edward’s death, his sister, Queen Mary I, brought England violently back to Roman Catholicism, burning Protestants as heretics. When Elizabeth I took the throne in 1558, the state of the Church of England was a primary concern. The Religious Settlement of 1559 reinstated the Church’s political separation from Rome and established a new Book of Common Prayer. In addition, the Thirty-Nine Articles of Faith signed by the Church’s highest authorities identified clear theological differences between Catholicism and Anglicanism, such as avoidance of indulgences and the invocation of saints.
In the centuries that followed, the Church of England became closely intertwined with the British government and social order. It held a privileged legal position as the established state church, with bishops sitting in the upper house of Parliament, the House of Lords (a practice that continues into the present day), and the population required to attend church. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the church faced internal divisions, including the rise of Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic movements, as well as external challenges from a growing number of atheists and practitioners of other faiths.
By the time C.S. Lewis converted to Christianity in 1931, religion was in serious decline in Britain, and the Church of England faced a number of problems, most notably lack of attendance and donations. The fact that Lewis engaged directly with clergy and Church-led theological institutions suggests that the Church of England was desperate for new sources of influence.
The Oxford Socratic Club
The Oxford Socratic Club was a student-run debate society at the University of Oxford dedicated to the discussion of religious and philosophical questions. Its central purpose was to provide a forum in which Christian doctrine could be critically examined through reasoned argument, rather than authority or tradition. The club was founded in 1941 by a group of Oxford undergraduates concerned with the moral implications of World War II. C.S. Lewis, then a fellow of Magdalen College, played a central role in its creation and served as its first president. The club took its name from the philosopher Socrates, emphasizing its commitment to the pursuit of truth through reasoned discussion.
Meetings of the Socratic Club followed a formal structure. A speaker would present a paper defending or critiquing a philosophical or theological position. This was followed by open discussion, during which audience members were encouraged to challenge the speaker’s arguments. The emphasis was on logical clarity and argumentative rigor rather than persuasion through rhetoric or emotion. Both Christian and non-Christian viewpoints were represented, and speakers included students, faculty, local clergy, and visiting intellectuals. From 1943 to 1952, speeches and responses delivered at the Socratic Club were published in The Socratic Digest.
The club gained wider attention in the post-war years, as religious attendance continued to decline. One of the most famous meetings of the Socratic Club took place in 1948, when analytic philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe presented a critique of Lewis’s argument against materialism. Lewis responded with a paper of his own. The exchange highlighted the seriousness with which philosophical challenges to Christian apologetics were addressed within the club. The Anscombe debate demonstrated that the Socratic Club was not a platform for uncritical religious advocacy, but a venue for sustained intellectual engagement.
Lewis stepped down as Club president in 1954 when he left Oxford for Cambridge. The Club continued under new leadership, but suffered from the loss of Lewis’s prestige. Changes in student culture, philosophy, and attitude towards religion accelerated the Club’s decline. The Club ceased regular meetings in 1970, but its legacy is evident in God in the Dock. Many of the essays in the collection were first delivered at the Socratic Club and published in the Socratic Digest. The fact that the arguments raised in these essays appear in Lewis’s longer, later works suggests that the Oxford Socratic Club was a powerful influence on Lewis’s work. By offering a venue for direct engagement with non-believers, the Club ensured that Lewis was well-informed about his opponent’s views.
C.E.M. Joad
Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad (1891-1953) was a British philosopher, broadcaster, and public intellectual whose close relationship with C.S. Lewis impacted them both. He wrote over 100 books, pamphlets, and essays, including God and Evil (1942), a renunciation of Christianity in the context of World War that brought him directly into C.S. Lewis’s circle.
Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, Joad was trained in philosophy and developed an early reputation as a sharp critic of traditional religion. Joad achieved widespread fame in the 1930s and 1940s through his role in the BBC radio program The Brains Trust, in which a panel of public intellectuals debated questions submitted by the audience. Joad’s outlook was generally critical of religious belief, which he regarded as intellectually outdated and insufficiently grounded in reason.
Joad’s popularity as a public intellectual brought him into close contact with C.S. Lewis, who shared Joad’s concern for making philosophical ideas accessible to a general audience. After Lewis reviewed Joad’s book God and Evil, Joad read a paper at the Oxford Socratic Club titled “On Being Reviewed by Christians.” Lewis presented his own response, and the two engaged in a debate which was attended by over 250 students—the largest meeting of the Socratic Club ever. The debated cemented a friendship between Joad and Lewis, and the men continued to write in conversation with each other for many years. God in the Dock contains several essays which invoke Joad’s arguments or respond to him directly.
In the final years of his life, Joad returned to Christianity, due partially to the influence of Lewis’s arguments. In The Recovery of Belief (1952), Joad argued that Christianity offered a coherent moral framework and metaphysical worldview that was nonexistent in modern secular thought. The book attributes Joad’s change of heart to Lewis’s writing and their debates at Oxford. The essays in God in the Dock suggest that the relationship was mutually fruitful, and that Lewis appreciated and respected Joad’s honest disagreement.
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