Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
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Book Reviews of Mere Christianity
Book Review: An invitation to be transformed ...
Summary: 5 Stars
Fitting, I think, to be reading what may arguably be one of C. S. Lewis's most important books, on a retreat during which one of my personal goals was to find a spiritual, if not religious, inner peace. Reading the work of C. S. Lewis is to meet a friend who reflects us and understands us--and helps us to understand.
Who of us has not asked these questions? Who of us has not prayed these prayers, even those of us who are atheists (which group has at times included me, and has also included C. S. Lewis), even if only praying to our void? Lewis takes on several of these questions that have held me captive since youth, when I first began to wonder about a God: who He might be, if indeed He is, and what might my relationship be with Him.
Before he has even cleared the pages of the preface, Lewis nabs me cold: "It is true that some people may find they have to wait in the hall for a considerable time, while others feel certain almost at once which door they must knock at. I do not know why there is this difference, but I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you do get into your room you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise." Then Lewis reminds us that this time of "waiting in the hall" is not a form of camping, but a time of rigorous seeking, questioning, praying even when we are not sure who we are praying to or if we are heard. "And above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and paneling."
Christianity, Lewis writes, is a way of life. An owner's manual, if you will. It is not meant to constrain us, but to fully free us. Following its doctrines means to "transform our lives in such a way that evil diminishes and good prevails." There is an innate law, he observes, that follows along the lines of human nature, a natural right and wrong, and in examining all religions, we find right and wrong, good and evil, are more or less defined along the same lines by all humanity, regardless of religious beliefs. This is our first clue that we have found an unchangeable truth. Even the atheist, Lewis says, has a sense of right and wrong, good and bad, and as soon as one realizes this, the next step is to understand the universal standard of morality. From where does this standard come if not from some higher ruling of the universe? It echoes inside each and every one of us. "The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard ..." which is what Lewis terms as "Real Morality."
The God Lewis has us see is not a kindly and bearded man sitting on a throne in some distant and ethereal place. He calls him a great artist, for the universe is a very beautiful place, but also a Being that is intensely interested in right conduct--in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty and truthfulness. Insofar as all that, one can think of God as "good." But Lewis does not see Him as an easy master. "There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails. It tells you to do the straight thing and it does not seem to care how painful, or dangerous, or difficult it is to do. If God is like the Moral Law, then He is not soft."
From here, Lewis proceeds to tackle those common questions: how can God exist in such a cruel and unjust world? If God knows how the story of mankind ends, why did he create us and our story at all? If the future already exists in His eyes, what does that say about free will? How can we know that Christ wasn't simply a great moral teacher, but indeed the Son of God? And, why did Christ have to die, and so cruelly, for our sins to be forgiven? Why could we not just shake hands on it?
Lewis explores free will and how God understood, as we so often have not, that in giving us free will, He gave us the ability to love. It is only when we have to ability to choose, that we can love. Anything else would be forced bondage, slave bowing to master. If we have botched up our ability to choose, so very often throughout our history, then we cannot shake our fists at the heavens and blame God, but must look to ourselves and the choices we have made. Lewis urges us to return to the basics, the Law of Morality, for only in addressing that place where our mistakes were first made can we continue forward in a progressive manner. If we cannot ever achieve perfection, it does not mean we are ever off the hook in striving for it.
Time and what is beyond time, the concepts of heaven and hell, the need to be a part of an active Christian community, what was meant by being formed in the likeness of God (no, we are not his mirror images), the true meaning of charity (far more than the occasional giving of alms to the poor), the meaning of faith and why it should not be blind, what it means to love our neighbor as we love ourselves (and this section made me laugh, perhaps in relief, as Lewis explains that to love our neighbors as ourselves does not mean we have to like our neighbors or even always to be kind to them, no more than we always like ourselves or are kind to ourselves), so Lewis covers all the basics.
There is a very real cost to being a Christian, Lewis teaches. Make no mistake, it is not a small pittance. But it is one that, if we do not pay it, will cost us far more in the long run, and not only after our lives on earth have ended. All that we do, all that we are, here on earth, already comes back to us, with our free will choices following their own natural law of returns.
"God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy," Lewis writes. We are not talking about mere improvement, but transformation. One that we choose to either retreat from, and pay the resulting price, or embrace, and pay that price. To find our own true selves, however, Lewis sums up, can be done only by submitting fully. To let go, and let God.
"The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires ... I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call `me' can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up ... that I first begin to have a real personality of my own."
Lewis has invited us to enter into this transformation, and he helps us to do so in a manner that is far from blind.
~Abridged from Zinta's Reviews, on blogspot.com, and The Smoking Poet, Fall 2008
Book Review: A too often misunderstood classic
Summary: 5 Stars
At the time that I am writing this review there are 361 other reviews already posted for this book. Obviously a lot has been said, and instead of writing a lengthy review discussing why I liked this book (a topic which I will shortly cover at the end), I am going to focus on answering what I perceive to be incorrect views about the book. In particular, I'd like to address the following groups of thought: those who think this book is good theology, those who think it is bad theology, and those who think it is just plain bad logic.
The thing that the first two groups have in common is that they both read this book as a work of theology. And on some level this book is theology; I suppose no book can be without theology insofar as it is impossible to talk about anything without implicitly making statements about God. To be sure, this book deals with a lot of material that we can probably all agree is clearly of a theological nature. However, the point I want to make to the first two groups of thought is that Lewis himself acknowledges that he is not a theologian, and that his work here should not be taken as a book attempting to answer the more difficult and deep theological problems. He is concerned, as he notes in the preface, with the basic points that all Christians tend to agree upon.
I go to such length about this topic because when people then go on to read this book in a theological way they make errors in understanding what Lewis is and is not saying. For example, on page 48 Lewis writes, "The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free." Now, it is possible to read (as some have, in fact some I know personally have) these words as being in full-fledged support of free will and/or a repudiation of predestination. But to read Lewis as saying either of those things would be a mistake, a mistake he warned us not to make when he said in the preface that he is not interested in discussing high theology. Another section that people seem to get snagged on is on page 141 when Lewis writes about "drifting away".
So if we're not to draw conclusions about what Lewis is talking about when he writes about "free will" and "drifting away", how are we to read this book. Lewis himself gives us some guidance in the preface, but suffice it to say that we should not attempt to nail Lewis down on one side of these issues or another. For all Christians, Lewis claims, accept that there is something called "free will" and something called "God's sovereignty"; and then again that there is something called "drifting away" and something called "God's strength". The point here is that in some mysterious way these seemingly exclusionary things all exist in reality.
To finish this point, perhaps one more example will be helpful. Let's reduce what Lewis is saying about "free will" and "God's sovereignty" to the statement: "We glorify God when we choose to follow him". It simply is not possible from this statement to say the Lewis believes that we have complete free will to choose God or not. And answering that question is not important to Lewis. What is important is the end result; that God is glorified when we follow him. The same pattern of Lewis focusing on a more basic issue can be seen in the "drifting away" example... the point isn't whether or not a Christian can lose his/her faith, but rather that strengthening faith and obedience requires practice and effort.
Enough with the problem of erroneously reading theological points into this book. I'd like to address one last group, which is those that say, "Lewis did not prove Christianity, so this book is worthless." Again, close reading would help prevent people from making such statements, since Lewis writes (I can't remember where, but I think in the preface) that no religion can be proved or disproved. Again, Lewis' point isn't to prove that Christianity is the truth. Rather, he wants to point out to people that, in his opinion, Christianity is the religion/philosophy that is most logically sound. Now I suppose people who disagree with Lewis can be upset with him for basically calling them illogical or without common sense. But when people criticize him for not "proving Christianity" they are simply putting words in his mouth and then turning around and attacking him for those words.
I've tried very hard to point out where I think some people have gone wrong in their understanding of this book, and I hope that I've been able to do so respectively. I think this is a great book, especially for those who are thinking about what they believe or are in the very beginning stages of their Christian walk. Lewis is a great writer, and I often found myself laughing or, conversely, (almost) crying. He has great insight into the human condition and the human mind. If you take this book for what it is (an apology of Christianity on a basic level) I think that most people will enjoy what Lewis has to say.
Book Review: How C.S. Lewis Rationalized His Faith
Summary: 5 Stars
C.S. Lewis has lately become a rock star within the Christian community. A new movie based on his books, The Chronicles of Narnia, is a blockbuster hit. His books are among the best selling in Christian literature. This is quite a feat for a reserved British intellectual who has been dead for more than forty years.
As a young man, Lewis was a skeptic who dismissed Christianity as a myth. At age 33, with the help of J.R.R. Tolkien and others, he experienced a spiritual awakening. Afterwards, his creativity helped make him a celebrated champion of Christian belief. The intellectual journey Lewis takes us on in his masterwork of apologetics, Mere Christianity, is truly amazing. In it, he sought to explain the doctrines that Catholic and major Protestant denominations could all agree. He drew upon his former skepticism to help explain Christianity in a common, non-theological way.
To begin, Lewis notes a predisposition in people to search for a standard of absolute truth. It seems all people across cultures and time generally agree that they should not put themselves first, and they ought to be honest, fair, unselfish, and courageous. He calls this tendency the Law of Human Nature because everyone knows it almost instinctively. Lewis then makes a second observation. While people everywhere have a notion that they should behave in these ways, they do not do so themselves. He says, "They know the Law of Human Nature; they break it. These two facts, are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe in which we live."
Lewis reasons that just as the laws of physics or mathematics are real, this Law of Human Nature must also be real. It must have been created as part of a universal truth, and not by man. He says, "I find that I do not exist on my own, that I am under a law. Something that is directing the universe, and appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong."
He reasons there must be a "perfect goodness" behind the universe that is interested in what we do. And if that perfect goodness exists, it must disapprove of much of our behavior. "I think we have to assume," he says, "it is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know." Perhaps that is because it has rules. To Lewis, that perfect goodness, that Being, is what we call God. Lewis believes that in the end, God is our only reassurance, and we have made ourselves his enemy. What we need most is that from which we want to hide our behavior.
Once we understand the Law of Human Nature, that there is a power behind that law, and that we have put ourselves wrong with that power by breaking it, Lewis says we then begin to understand what Christians are saying.
If we are free to choose between good and evil, Lewis reasons, then evil must be a genuine possibility. An all-powerful God could surely prevent evil, but he could only do so at the cost of human freedom.
Lewis goes on to observe that this powerful Being selected a specific group of people and spent hundreds of years hammering into them what kind of God he was, and that he cared about their conduct. Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament chronicles the hammering process.
Then, he says, comes the real shock. Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who claims he has always existed, forgives sins, and goes around talking as if he were God. "He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time . . . What he said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips." This man told people that their sins were forgiven. However, he never checked with others to whom those sins had wronged. He acted as if he were the primary one offended by our wrongdoing.
"In the mouth of any speaker who is not God," Lewis says, "these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivaled by any other character in history." Jesus' words make sense only if he really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded by our sins.
Lewis notes some people may say, "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." He responds, "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher . . . You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse."
"You can shut Him up for a fool," Lewis says, "you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
We know which choice C.S. Lewis made. To him, this rationalization was only the mere essence of Christianity. While his many books have been an inspiration to many people over the years, they continue to be an inspiration to those newly acquainted with his work today.
Book Review: The defense of the faith
Summary: 5 Stars
In his "Preface to Paradise Lost", Lewis wrote the following:"The first qualification for judging any piece of workmanship from a corkscrew to a cathedral is to know *what* it is - what it was intended to do and how it was meant to be used. After that has been discovered the temperance reformer may decide that the corkscrew was made for a bad purpose, and the communist may think the same about the cathedral. But such questions come later. The first thing is to understand the object before you: as long as you think the corkscrew was meant for opening tins or the cathedral for entertaining tourists you can say nothing to purpose about them."
This is a splendid piece of writing, but the idea presented is no way an original one - Plato and Aristotle said the same, said it clearly, and said it over two thousand years before Lewis did. If you had been able to confront Lewis with this fact, he might have said "Exactly."
This brings us to one of the great themes of Lewis's writing, evident nowhere more so than in "Mere Christianity": the defense of traditional wisdom against prejudice of our age that would reject it for no other reason than that it is traditional. Lewis often encountered those who complained that his ideas were old-fashioned, and his standard reply was that theirs would soon be as well, so in that they were equal. I admit I couldn't help but smile at the complaint by one Amazon reviewer that Lewis's ideas on sexuality were "decades old". The complaint is quite mistaken: the ideas are not decades old but thousands of years old.
And it is here that we have part of the answer to the problem of understanding the kind of thing "Mere Christianity" is: it is nothing new. It is in fact very, very old. What Lewis is defending is not his own personal belief system, but the Christianity that is the common heritage of mankind. The threat to it comes not from hard-core atheists, who receive the barest of notices from Lewis, but the general modern tendency to subject traditional Christianity to the death of a thousand cuts - discarding one ancient doctrine after another, on grounds often no better than mere chronological snobbery - that modern people aren't supposed to believe that kind of thing anymore
This is why Lewis, in what has been often described as the most important defense of Christianity in the twentieth century, spends a mere fifteen pages in arguing for the existence of God. The important task is not to defend a vague theism, which is the position Lewis found from experience that his audience already believed, but to rebuild what little of traditional Christianity modernism has left them - some vague belief in "a higher power", and "some purpose to all of this" into that concrete set of specific beliefs that are the historical core of Christianity.
While the defense of historical Christianity is one part of understanding what "Mere Christianity" is, the other part is that it is intended to be accessible to anyone. This requires that Lewis be both clear and brief - a combination brutally difficult to achieve, as any writer who has attempted it will attest.
Lewis's success in this can be measured in two ways: first, that his work has indeed found a very wide readership - millions of have read it; second, his work is often recommended by those whose knowledge of traditional Christian theology is broad and deep. The size of the readership attests to the accessibility of the work, and the expert recommendations attest to the accuracy of its message.
There is one other thing that is important to note about Lewis's success: Lewis could afford to be brief because what he was explaining was not his own theology, but our common intellectual inheritance. The reader who is dissatisfied with the depth of this or that point in "Mere Christianity" will have no difficulty in finding sources that go into the same thing in much greater detail. Calvin wrote line-by-line commentaries on all of scripture. Thomas Aquinas's "Summa Theologica" is over 6,000 pages long. The collected works of Augustine fill more than 40 volumes.
So, to return to the question with which this review began: what kind of thing is "Mere Christianity"? The answer is that it is a brief exposition of traditional Christianity for a modern audience. In the sixty years since it was published, the nature of the modernist challenge to Christianity has not substantially changed, nor has a clearer, more accessible response to that challenge yet been written. Some have complained that the work has "gaps" or that it skims over this or that point, but that is a complaint that fails to understand what kind of thing this is. What they are asking for, whether they know it or not, is a completely different book. Properly evaluated, on the basis of the kind of thing it is, it is trivially easy to give the highest recommendation to "Mere Christianity": it is on a topic of the greatest possible importance and the presentation is outstanding.
Book Review: An Incendiary Combination of Reason and Faith
Summary: 5 Stars
"Christ never meant that we were to remain children in *intelligence*: on the contrary. He told us to be not only 'as harmless as doves', but also 'as wise as serpents'...He wants everyone to use what sense they have." This is the description of a rational person's Christianity--this is why I respect C.S. Lewis so highly. Even if he and I may not have *total* agreement (even the agreement we do have is to a shocking degree!), it is clear this is someone who has applied his intellect to the matter of Christianity, carefully constructing his arguments step by step, defining all meanings and explaining their significance. He constantly warns against arrogance (as he also does in The Screwtape Letters) even as he proposes his theories--a caveat that I strongly believe must be taken with the utmost seriousness.I should warn the potential reader that I may make certain statements that will invite vehement disagreement, particularly in the most conservative quarters. However, I believe they are indicative of the nature of this book--if indeed one takes *extreme* offense to what I write, Mere Christianity is probably *not* the ideal book for that person. Lewis, from my readings, is no fundamentalist; otherwise, I could not imagine him daring to set the following into writing: "Is it not frightfully unfair that this new life [given through Christ] should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know him can be saved through Him." To my mind, and perhaps to others of what I call a moderate persuasion, this statement de-fangs one of the most serious potential arguments against Christianity. For to have a world in which certain people were condemned simply by happenstance of where they were born or when in time would require a capricious God--and such is *not* the God one encounters in the Bible. I respect the opinions of others, of course. However, I do warn very seriously that if statements of this nature are going to give you problems, you ought to look elsewhere in Christian writings.
This is heavy reading--at least, in the sense of the care taken by Lewis in the construction of his arguments. While not a work of philosophy or theology, it does demand the reader's close attention. It is not at all devoid of wit--but do not expect there to be anything sensationalized about it in the way that most "popular" Christian literature on the market today is. To be blunt--expect more. And Lewis will deliver. This is nothing like the sort of thing one finds in the Left Behind series or other works of LaHaye (for which I have a very serious dislike on grounds that I personally believe it has the potential to foster damagingly exclusionary attitudes in its audience...but that is another day's rant, and I'll leave it for now). In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that the taste for Lewis' work and the taste for LaHaye's, or works of that nature, would be almost mutually exclusive. This is why I must again warn the reader to make an educated decision as to which type of literature he or she will benefit most from.
To those, especially, on the more liberal end of the spectrum, I should let you know to be prepared for a few antiquated ideas such as certain statements of his about marriage and sexuality--however, Lewis himself in the same chapters does make certain allowances for the change of social mores. Bear this also in mind when he uses terminology for groups of people that, while acceptable in the 1940s, are no longer acceptable. In my opinion this is not sufficient grounds upon which to discount the entire book.
The other reviews may have helped to give you an idea of the book's contents and style--it is my hope that this one will help you to decide if it is *appropriate* for you or not. This is why I call Mere Christianity *incendiary*. I am deadly serious in the use of this word. It will without doubt provoke either extremely passionate agreement or a vehement condemnation. As other reviewers have noted, there is almost no middle ground. With content like this, it is no wonder. And it is a reflection of a very major divide in the Christian community as a whole. I award the five stars because from my experience, if it IS appropriate for you, it will very likely be a most rewarding reading experience. If you know it will not be appropriate for you, however, I will honestly advise you to pass this over in favor of something else.