"What Tolkien showed me was this: the pagan stories are God speaking to us through the minds of poets; the story of Christ is God speaking to us through real events in the real world. God comes to earth, is sacrificed, then comes back to life."

-- C.S. Lewis

In 1930, Jack, Warnie and Mrs. Moore jointly purchased a house in Oxford known as "The Kilns." It was here that Lewis would write the books that would thrust him into the spotlight and make him one of the most well known Christian writers of his day - or any day.

It was also here that Lewis accepted Christ. Although he had, as he said, accepted in 1929 "that God was God," it wasn't until a year later that he admitted that Christ was Christ.

Dr. Peter Kreeft, professor of philosophy at Boston College, said, "I think Lewis made the conventional objection to Christianity that it's so much like other religions, dying and rising gods, and redemption from sin, and the triumph of life over death. These seem to be common patterns so they could be explained psychologically instead of historically. And then one of his friends who was an atheist, who looked at the life of Christ and said, 'Rum thing. Seems to have really happened once.' And that shocked Lewis."

In 1931, after a night of intense discussion with his friends J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, Lewis said, "I went with my brother to have a picnic at Whipsnade Zoo. We started in fog, but by the end of our journey the sun was shining. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and when we reached the zoo I did. I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion. It was more like when a man, after a long sleep, becomes aware that he is now awake."

And, for C.S. Lewis, writing about Christianity and his experiences were the natural next step.

It's very difficult to pin Lewis down as an author - Christian apologetic, poet, literary historian, science fiction writer and author of children's books.

But, his writing career as a Christian began in 1933 with the publication of his first theological book. "The Pilgrim's Regress," a parody of John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress," which follows a pilgrim much like Lewis from a life of unbelief to a life of faith.

Then in 1936, he published "The Allegory of Love," which, according to Dr. Bruce L. Edwards, professor of English at Bowling Green University, "revolutionized literary understanding of the function of allegory in medieval literature" and earned Lewis a reputation as a first-rate scholar.

In all, Lewis wrote 38 books which have sold more than 200 million copies.

C.S. Lewis Foundation - Living the Legacy