Lewis the Protestant

From S. M. Hutchens at Christianity Today’s Books & Culture:

For many Catholics C. S. Lewis is an enigma that needs explaining. This is especially true for those who are strongly attracted to his writings, and most particularly those for whom he has been of aid in their own pilgrimages from Protestantism to Rome. How can it be that this man with such deep understanding of Christian life and faith, a master of so many masters, never converted? Why did he who gave so much light to others never himself lay hold of the fullness of the faith? Why in so many matters—the Church, the papacy, the sacraments, the Mother of our Lord, the priesthood, the doctrines of grace, the veneration of the saints, Purgatory, auricular confession, and Creed of which Catholic teaching is the best explication—did the brilliant and perceptive Lewis go so far and understand so much, yet not carry through to the reasonable end? Why was he content to remain an Anglican, in a church that at its best is a poor reflection of the Church of Rome?

Read the rest here.

UPDATE: I think Hutchens’ puts his finger on some of the major difficulties many Protestants have with Roman Catholic ecclesiology:

Lewis was a very typical Protestant in that he saw an absolute division between the claims of the Roman Church and her reality, the reality belonging only to a Church that is precisely not the Roman (or any other) particular church, and which while it touches upon and runs through this and other churches, is greater than them all. […]

One could envisage Lewis breaking communion with Canterbury, but not joining communion with Rome. He was, as Thomas Howard accurately notes in his introduction to Pearce’s book, a mere Protestant, and ferociously so—not because he thought the Christian Church did not exist in the Roman communion, but because he believed it could not subsist in her, the Church being something Other.