[Bishop George Berkeley’s proof for the existence of God] is unanswerable.

[soso]

TO MR. N. FRIDAMA, who seems to have asked Lewis about the steps in his conversion to Christianity: On the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination.

15 February 1946

I was baptised in the Church of Ireland (same as Anglican). 

My parents were not notably pious but went regularly to church and took me. 

My mother died /when I was a child.

My Christian faith was first undermined /by the attitude /taken towards Pagan religion /in the notes of modern editors

of Latin and Greek poets at school.

They always assumed that the ancient religion was pure error:

hence, in my mind, the obvious question ‘Why shouldn’t ours be equally false?’

A theosophical Matron at one school helped to break up my early beliefs,

and after that [a ‘Rationalist’ tutor //to whom I went] finished the job.

I abandoned all belief in Christianity /at about the age of 14, though I pretended to believe for fear of my elders.

I thus went /thro’ the ceremony of Confirmation /in total hypocrisy.

My beliefs continued to be agnostic, with fluctuation towards pantheism and various other sub-Christian beliefs,

till I was about 29.

I was brought back 

(a.) By Philosophy. I still think () [Bishop George Berkeley’s proof for the existence of God] is unanswerable.

(b.) By increasing knowledge of medieval literature.

It became harder and harder to think that all those great poets and philosophers were wrong.

(c.) By the strong influence of 2 writers, the Presbyterian George MacDonald and the Roman Catholic, G.K. Chesterton.

(d.) By argument with an Anthroposophist Owen Barfield.

He failed to convert me to his own views (a kind of Gnosticism)

but his attack on my own presuppositions smashed the ordinary pseudo-‘scientific’ world-picture /forever.

On Calvinism. 

Both [the statement that our final destination is already settled and the view //that it still may be either Heaven or Hell],

seem to me to imply the ultimate reality of Time, which I don’t believe in.

The controversy is one () I can’t join /on either side /for I think that in the real (Timeless) world it is meaningless.

In great haste.

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume II
Compiled in Yours, Jack