Marshall Tankersley, Student Editor

How is it possible that two men with such similar backgrounds can come to divergent ends in life? This is the question that Harvard psychiatrist and professor Dr. Armand Nicholi explores in his book, The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life. 

Both Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis were raised in a religious atmosphere; both rejected that religion, yet one of them returned to the faith of their fathers while the other did not. Both of them dealt with keenly-felt problems of pain in their lives, and both had devoted their lives to thinking about philosophical questions and applying them to their lives; how then did the two men find themselves at the end of their lives in to such disparate places?

The path to conversion is not easy, nor is it oftentimes easy to trace. God works in mysterious ways on people to bring them to Himself, and it is not a light task to attempt to determine every movement of His guiding hand in the lives of individuals. Still, with two men as similar in background and upbringing as C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud, the opportunity to see the Divine machinations in action is irresistible. Coming from very similar backgrounds and experiencing very similar things in the course of their lives, one would expect a similar outcome for both men. However, that is not the case.

Lewis lived his life seeking after God, while Freud lived his fleeing from God as far and as fast as his philosophy could carry him. A few key elements (or lack of them) shaped these men’s lives and destinies, namely their differences in early religious experience and their circle of friends and influences. In understanding the effect these factors had on Lewis and Freud, Christians can better understand how they play a role in each conversion experience (even when the individual involved does not intend them to).

Both Freud and Lewis experienced many similar things in their early lives. Both experienced relationships with their fathers that were not on the kindest of terms, and both had strained family dynamics with their mothers (Lewis’s mother passed on when he was a young boy, while Freud’s was several decades younger than his father). Both of these young men experienced the sinful side of religion, both as embodied by their fathers, in school, and in church experiences; therefore, both turned away from their traditional religious upbringing into atheism as they grew older. Lewis in particular “knew that his embracing atheism would be in defiance of and disturbing to his father” (50).

However, the two men diverge after college as Lewis finds his atheistic convictions assailed from all sides by his friends, associates, and even the books he read. He felt the relentless pursuit of God, a pursuit that eventually ends up with the destruction of the walls around his heart and his salvation. Freud never had such an experience and in fact mocked those who did by ascribing their newfound convictions as resulting from various psychological issues.

The difference between the two men then could not be more stark; though both experienced a great amount of pain and suffering in their later years, Lewis could stand and rely on Christ while Freud had no such foundation. While Lewis pushed through the death of his beloved wife by clinging to the cross, Freud’s reactions to trials and troubles only pushed him further into becoming a bitter, unrepentant old man who, for all his accolades and accomplishments, remained an unrepentant rebel to the day he chose to end his life by euthanasia.

In understanding the divergence of religious life in the two thinkers, one must first turn to examine the religious experiences both men rejected. Lewis came from Christianity, having grown up in predominantly Catholic Ireland. His view of Christianity was influenced by his father who, after the death of his mother, became prone to emotional outbursts and failed to provide emotional stability for his grieving sons. Lewis’s reaction to this parental abandonment was certainly part of his abandonment of his family’s faith: he could not hold in tandem the goodness of God and the failures of his father.

Freud, on the other hand, grew up Jewish, with a smattering of Catholic experiences given to him by a nanny when he was a young child. Freud also rejected the faith of his father when he saw his father as (he believed) weak and unable to provide for his family. Still, Freud retained the Jewish identity even though he was a devout atheist. Lewis abandoned all show or pretense of religious identity, whereas Freud found himself at odds with the anti-Semite Catholics who populated much of his home country of Austria. Freud felt such rejection by Catholicism so keenly that he wrote, “I was expected to feel myself inferior and an alien because I was a Jew” (21). Freud felt rejected by religion as much as he rejected it, whereas Lewis simply pushed religion away.

Finally, Lewis and Freud had different circles of friends and influences, as well as different goals in life. Lewis’s friends (such as J.R.R. Tolkien) were not content to allow the young Lewis to remain contentedly in his atheism; rather, they came to him and discussed these ideas with him. Lewis also found helping voices in works of literature he read, especially by author G.K. Chesterton, and even in the random musings of ascribed atheist professors he trusted about the apparent historicity of the gospels. All of these experiences culminated in Lewis’s questioning his pride and prior assumptions as far as he was able, and then Christ broke into his heart and rescued him.

Freud, unfortunately, had no friends who would do that for him. The circles he ran in were filled with either those whose attention he was seeking to court in the scientific community or those who were seeking to follow after him. He was never able to truly engage in a meaningful way with representatives of true Christianity, only facing the unfair and un-Christian prejudices that ran rampant in the Vienna of his time. Freud also had made his goal in life to be famous, to make his name known, and that led to his trying his best to fit in and be accepted in the scientific community. As he prized being the same and not being the odd one out, one wonders whether he would have seriously considered the Gospel at all even if he had been more directly confronted with it. 

Understanding how these two men came to their respective religious positions should drive Christians to change the way they interact with non-believers. Do they always take every opportunity to witness to or to pray for even those avowed atheists who would seem to be beyond salvation? Do they seek to emulate Christ in all things, or do they (intentionally or not) do things that push others away? Are they willing to confront strongholds of pride and ambition in others that are antithetical to the gospel?

The stories of these two men should provide both hope in the form of Lewis, but also a grave warning when one looks at Freud. The Church can and must do better, for we represent and are empowered by Christ.