Book Review: Mere Christianity
The first book in The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics is probably the most popular, namely Mere Christianity. It was originally a BBC radio talk show from 1942-1944 while Lewis was at Oxford. The transcripts were published later in three separate pamplets. In 1952 it was all published in one volume. It is considered one of the finest theological and apologetical books of the 20th century, a book millions of Christians and non-Christians have read and appreciated.
Mere Christianity is a simple affirmation of Christian doctrine that Lewis put forth as a way for Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians can essentially agree on as common ground. While Lewis was an Anglican (a fact that irritated his friend J.R.R. Tolken who was Catholic!) he aims at avoiding controversies to explain fundamental teachings of Christianity, for the sake of those basically educated, the curious, as well as the intellectuals of his generation. Lewis spends most of his defense of the Christian faith on an argument from morality - a point which persuaded him from atheism to Christianity. After providing reasons for his conversion to theism, Lewis goes over rival conceptions of God to Christianity. Pantheism, he argues, is incoherent, and atheism too simple. Eventually he arrives at Jesus Christ, and invokes a well-known argument now known as the "Trilemma". Usually found in literature and simple apologetics up to this day, Lewis puts it this way:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. 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, 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. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.
While this argument is not foolproof and has its share of critics, it is meant to be a simple dilemma for the reader to ponder.
Lewis says God "became a man" in Christ so that mankind could be "amalgamated with God's nature" and make full atonement possible. He offers several analogies to explain this abstract concept: that of Jesus "paying the penalty" for a crime, "paying a debt," or helping humanity out of a hole. His main point, however, is that redemption is so incomprehensible that it cannot be fully appreciated, and he attempts to explain that the method by which God atones for the sins of humanity is not nearly as important as the fact that he does so. The next third of the book explores the ethics resulting from Christian belief. He cites the four cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude. After that, he goes into the three theological virtues:: hope, faith, and charity. Lewis also explains morality as being composed of three "layers": relationships between man and man, the motivations and attitudes of the man himself, and contrasting worldviews. He also talks about social relations and forgiveness, sexual ethics (as expected he condemns homosexual relationships in a paragraph) and the tenets of Christian marriage, and the relationship between morality and psychoanalysis. He also writes about "the great sin": pride, which he argues to be the root cause of all evil and rebellion. His most important point is that Christianity mandates that one "love your neighbor as yourself." He points out that all persons unconditionally love themselves. Even if one does not like oneself, one would still love oneself. Christians, he writes, must also apply this attitude to others, even if they do not like them. Lewis calls this one of the "great secrets": when one acts as if he loves others, he will presently come to love them.
I view this book as pretty much required reading for every Christian and those non-Christians who like studying about the faith. I like how it challenges presumptions about what being a Christian is like in reality - that your life will get more difficult but the more you align your will to Christ's, the more good you can accomplish and non-Christians will see this in you - versus how it is portrayed today as those who parade themselves as ideal Christians but end up falling due to sin and scandal.
Book Review Score: 4/5
(Amazon US, Canada, UK)
Next Book: The Screwtape Letters (Author: C.S. Lewis)
Mere Christianity is a simple affirmation of Christian doctrine that Lewis put forth as a way for Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians can essentially agree on as common ground. While Lewis was an Anglican (a fact that irritated his friend J.R.R. Tolken who was Catholic!) he aims at avoiding controversies to explain fundamental teachings of Christianity, for the sake of those basically educated, the curious, as well as the intellectuals of his generation. Lewis spends most of his defense of the Christian faith on an argument from morality - a point which persuaded him from atheism to Christianity. After providing reasons for his conversion to theism, Lewis goes over rival conceptions of God to Christianity. Pantheism, he argues, is incoherent, and atheism too simple. Eventually he arrives at Jesus Christ, and invokes a well-known argument now known as the "Trilemma". Usually found in literature and simple apologetics up to this day, Lewis puts it this way:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. 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, 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. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.
While this argument is not foolproof and has its share of critics, it is meant to be a simple dilemma for the reader to ponder.
Lewis says God "became a man" in Christ so that mankind could be "amalgamated with God's nature" and make full atonement possible. He offers several analogies to explain this abstract concept: that of Jesus "paying the penalty" for a crime, "paying a debt," or helping humanity out of a hole. His main point, however, is that redemption is so incomprehensible that it cannot be fully appreciated, and he attempts to explain that the method by which God atones for the sins of humanity is not nearly as important as the fact that he does so. The next third of the book explores the ethics resulting from Christian belief. He cites the four cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude. After that, he goes into the three theological virtues:: hope, faith, and charity. Lewis also explains morality as being composed of three "layers": relationships between man and man, the motivations and attitudes of the man himself, and contrasting worldviews. He also talks about social relations and forgiveness, sexual ethics (as expected he condemns homosexual relationships in a paragraph) and the tenets of Christian marriage, and the relationship between morality and psychoanalysis. He also writes about "the great sin": pride, which he argues to be the root cause of all evil and rebellion. His most important point is that Christianity mandates that one "love your neighbor as yourself." He points out that all persons unconditionally love themselves. Even if one does not like oneself, one would still love oneself. Christians, he writes, must also apply this attitude to others, even if they do not like them. Lewis calls this one of the "great secrets": when one acts as if he loves others, he will presently come to love them.
I view this book as pretty much required reading for every Christian and those non-Christians who like studying about the faith. I like how it challenges presumptions about what being a Christian is like in reality - that your life will get more difficult but the more you align your will to Christ's, the more good you can accomplish and non-Christians will see this in you - versus how it is portrayed today as those who parade themselves as ideal Christians but end up falling due to sin and scandal.
Book Review Score: 4/5
(Amazon US, Canada, UK)
Next Book: The Screwtape Letters (Author: C.S. Lewis)