Mere Christianity
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| Mere Christianity | |
 2001 edition book cover |
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| Author | C. S. Lewis |
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| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | Christianity |
| Publisher | Macmillan Publishers[1] |
| Publication date | 1943 |
| OCLC | 23033258 |
Mere Christianity[2] is a book by C. S. Lewis, adapted from a 1943 series of BBC radio lecture broadcast while Lewis was at Oxford during World War II. It is considered a classic work in Christian apologetics. The transcripts of the broadcasts, expanded into book form, originally appeared in print as three separate pamphlets, The Case for Christianity, Christian Behaviour, and Beyond Personality.
Contents |
[edit] Thesis of book
The title, Mere Christianity, indicates the intention of Lewis, an Anglican, to describe the Christian common-ground. He aims at avoiding controversies to explain those things that have defined Christianity in nearly all places and times. Lewis restates the fundamental teachings of the Christian religion, for the sake of those basically educated as well as the intellectuals of his generation, for whom the jargon of formal Christian theology did not retain its intended meaning.
[edit] Arguments for a Moral Law
Lewis bases his case for Christian belief on the existence of a Moral Law, a "Rule about Right and Wrong" commonly known to all human beings. This law is like mathematical laws in being real, not just a matter of convention, contrived by humans. But it is unlike mathematically expressed laws of nature in that it can be broken or ignored by humans, who possess free will.
Humans know the moral law intuitively, Lewis argues. It is the only law of the universe which they know from within themselves. All other laws are known only through observation, such as the law of gravity. The moral law is generally agreed to in one form or another by religious and non-religious persons. One source of evidence of this was, that even non-religious people in England during World War II believed that what Hitler was doing was wrong. On a more mundane level, even a non-religious person may believe that someone stealing is doing something wrong.
The other claimed intuitive underpinning of his system is the experience of people for something deeper and more than can ever be experienced in an earthly life. Lewis refers to these experiences in himself as "joy" and describes these in his book Surprised by Joy. His argument is that we cannot yearn for something that does not exist. The fact that we thirst reflects that we naturally need water and that there is a substance which satisfies that need. The same could be said of other needs as well. Humans cannot know to yearn for something which does not exist.
Lewis states that to understand Christianity, one must understand the moral law, which is the underlying moral structure of the universe. The moral law is "hard as nails." Unless one understands the dismay which comes from the moral law, one cannot understand the coming of Christ and his work.
After introducing the Moral Law, Lewis argues that the eternal God who is its source takes primacy over the created Satan whose rebellion undergirds all evil. Evil is a parasite on goodness. Satan was and is a supernatural power, who, in his pride, set himself against God. But there is nothing about evil which is not a perversion of something good. That is why, Lewis argues, evil is a parasite in the world. It twists the good things which God placed into the world.
Then the death and resurrection of Christ, the Son of God, is introduced as the only way in which our inadequate human attempts to redeem our own sins could be made adequate in God's eyes.
"He [mankind] had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself," Lewis says of the futility of our own attempts at moral self-justification and consequent need for repentance and "surrender." God "became a man" in Christ, says Lewis, so that "our human nature which can suffer and die" could be "amalgamated with God's nature" and make full atonement possible.
[edit] Atonement
There are many theological theories about what "the point of this dying was," writes Lewis. None is fully adequate to the thing itself, any more than a verbal description of a mathematical model, such as that of an atom, is fully adequate to the mathematics per se. Thus does Lewis make nuanced logical distinctions between core religious truths and theological explanations thereof, throughout his book.
[edit] Christian ethics
The last third of the book explores the ethics resulting from belief.
[edit] Legacy of book
Mere Christianity is widely admired and influential across a spectrum of trinitarian Christians, which may attest to the author's success in accomplishing the aim of restating theology in a way that avoids many controversies. The work is also widely admired by many nontrinitarian Christians.
The title has influenced Touchstone Magazine: A Journal of Mere Christianity and William Dembski's book Mere Creation. Charles Colson's conversion to Christianity resulted from his reading this book, as did Francis Collins' and Josh Caterer's.
A passage in the book also influenced the name of contemporary Christian Texan Grammy-nominated pop/rock group Sixpence None the Richer.
The phrase, "the hammering process" was used by Christian metal band Living Sacrifice for the name of their album "The Hammering Process.
Metalcore band, Norma Jean, derived the title of their song "No Passenger:No Parasite" from the section in the book in which Lewis describes a fully Christian society as having "No passengers or parasites".
[edit] References
- ^ Lewis CS. Mere Christianity. WorldCat. Retrieved on 2007-07-16.
- ^ Lewis, C. S. (2001). Mere Christianity: a revised and amplified edition, with a new introduction, of the three books, Broadcast talks, Christian behaviour, and Beyond personality. [San Francisco]: HarperSanFrancisco. ISBN 0-06-065292-6.
[edit] External links
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