“My puzzle was the whole doctrine of Redemption: in what sense the life and death of Christ ’saved’ or ‘opened salvation to’ the world. I could see how miraculous salvation might be necessary: one could see from ordinary experience how sin (e.g. the case of a drunkard) could get a man to such a point that he was bound to reach Hell (i.e. complete degradation and misery) in this life unless something quite beyond mere natural help or effort stepped in. And I could well imagine a whole world being in the same state and similarly in need of miracle. What I couldn’t see was how the life and death of Someone Else (whoever he was) 2000 years ago could help us here and now – except in so far as his example helped us. And the example business, tho’ true and important, is not Christianity: right in the centre of Christianity, in the Gospels and St Paul, you keep on getting something quite different and very mysterious expressed in those phrases I have so often ridiculed (‘propitiation’ – ’sacrifice’ – ‘the blood of the Lamb’) – expressions which I could only interpret in senses that seemed to me either silly or shocking.”

Walter Hooper, ed., The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Family Letters 1905-1931 (San Francisco: Harper, 2004), 976; written to his friend, Arthur Greeves, dated 18 October, 1931.