Faith & Reason Events

“The Abolition of Man: C.S. Lewis’s Most Philosophical Work, But Is It Christian?”
Monday, September 15, 2025, 7:00-8:30 pm
Globe Room, Cataldo Building, Gonzaga University

C.S. Lewis is best known for his Narnia Chronicles and for works of popular theology such as Mere Christianity. What is less well known is that he began his academic career in philosophy. At Oxford he taught philosophy (with a focus on ethics) for many years, even after English literature had become his official scholarly focus. The Abolition of Man is his most philosophical work and Lewis described it as “almost my favourite among my books.” It consists of a short but dense argument, hard to grasp, and difficult to categorise. Dr Michael Ward will tackle this important and influential volume, showing its relevance for today’s culture and its explaining its place within Lewis’s extraordinary body of work.

Michael Ward is a literary critic, theologian, and C.S. Lewis scholar. An associate faculty member in Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford, he is the author of multiple books, most notably the award-winning Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford University Press, 2010) and After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man (Word on Fire Academic, 2021). He co-edited The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and presented the BBC television documentary The Narnia Code. He studied English at Oxford, theology at Cambridge, and earned his PhD in Divinity at the University of St. Andrews. Formerly an Anglican priest, he joined the Catholic Church in 2012 and was ordained a priest within the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in 2018.