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Remember that we were talking about atheists who started believing here. These are people who were struck so hard by the Holy Spirit that they changed their entire worldview into one that they used to ridicule. They know all the arguments against Christianity, just as Lewis did. His book starts them out where they are and systematically walks them to where they need to be to just get started as a new Christian...and he does it in a simple, easy to understand format.

You make a strong point here. I was never an atheist, but more of a person who was simply ignorant when the Gospel was discovered to me. I studied the entire Bible first, with Matthew Henry as my commentary, though I fell into Charismaticism because the person who I credited with converting me was a Charismatic. It was probably one of the greatest mistakes of my life.

I do not like Lewis since his Arminianism is a problem, and new Christians will tend to look at a guy like that and try to emulate him entirely. Luther, Calvin, even Augustine are better bets.

>>I do not like Lewis since his Arminianism is a problem, and new Christians will tend to look at a guy like that and try to emulate him entirely.

Yeah. I have a good point there. When I lost my atheism and came to Christ, I obviously had a Calvinist leaning—even though I didn’t even know what Calvinism was. I became a Methodist because that’s what I nominally was when I was 10. I figured, “it doesn’t really matter”. But since God came and snatched me out of my comfortable life with no input from me, I just had this idea that it isn’t really a choice as my Methodist pastor kept telling me.

He went to great pains to explain the evils of Calvinism and how I needed to give up that idea that it wasn’t my free will choice. I almost believed him, but stopped talking about it so he thought he had won.

But it kept nagging at me, so instead of listening to Methodists telling me what a Calvinist believes, I went to a Calvinist and asked him. I felt like I finally understood.

My point in telling you all this is that a recently-converted atheist is going to feel like he had no choice, so the Arminian leanings of Lewis won’t affect him much.