A Hebraic Inkling: Chapter 1

In Chapter 1 of "A Hebraic Inkling" Brazier reviews Lewis' spiritual biography until the time of his conversion. Lewis biography is well known and I will not repeat it here. However, unlike other biographies of Lewis (of which there are many), Brazier tells Lewis' story in the context of the antisemitism Brazier asserts is inherent to the British Empire. Having conquered the world, the British had, in their mind, become the Chosen People, and thus Jews and Judaism had no place in Britain. Lewis himself, when a self-described atheist, was especially dismissive of the Jews calling them "class A primitives," and wondering aloud why one would waste their time reading the Hebrew Bible. 

However, God had other plans for Lewis. From the time he was a child Lewis had experienced sehnsucht, stabs of longing and beauty, what Lewis himself would later call Joy. Brazier states that these are times when the Holy Spirit (the divine presence) touch Lewis, though Lewis himself did not understand their cause. At the point Lewis came to understand, thanks to reading George MacDonald's Phantastes, that these experiences were not an end to themselves, but a mean reach their source, he found God. Lewis thus becomes a theist. 

This is not yet a full conversion to Brazier's Judeo-Christian God, that would wait until after his famed conversation with J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson. However, later in life, Lewis would be thankful he was "permitted for several months, perhaps a year, to know God and to attempt obedience without even raising that question [that of future life]. My training was like that of the Jews to whom He revealed Himself centuries before there was a whisper of anything better (or worse) beyond the grave than shadowy and featureless Sheol" (Surprised by Joy page 179). 

Traditional Jews may disagree as to when the concept of life after death entered Judaism, but what is important for us at the moment is that Lewis accepted theism before Christianity and claimed (at least in one respect) that his conversion process followed that of God's revelation to the Jews, His chosen people. 

Brazier will further expand on this theme in the next chapter.