MERE CHRISTIANITY BY C.S. LEWIS
                                       
reviewed

"In Behalf of the Fool"

   
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   It was suggested to the Fool some time ago that C.S. Lewis' book Mere
   Christianity is a good book for an unbeliever to read to establish a
   rational basis for belief in Christianity. The Fool had been told that
   Lewis is an example of a great scholar and intellectual who was at one
   time an atheist and/or agnostic who later converted to Christianity.
   
   Shortly after the Fool finished reading Mere Christianity , he had the
   opportunity to see the documentary film on the life of C.S. Lewis,
   "Through Joy and Beyond." At the conclusion of the film, an open forum
   was held in which the question was asked, "What is a good book to give
   to an atheist or an agnostic?" Father Hooper, who was C.S. Lewis'
   private secretary during the last few months of Lewis' life and who
   accompanied the presentation of the film, mentioned Mere Christianity
   again!
   
   The Fool had not been convinced of the validity of Christian beliefs
   by his first reading of Mere Christianity, so he decided that he had
   better read it again. At the same time, he read God in the Dock
   (previously recommended by a young Seminary student) and skimmed
   through several books about Lewis.
   
   The Fool does not question Lewis' conversion to Christianity, and he
   is quite overwhelmed with his intellect, imagination, and ability to
   write fiction. But the Fool doubts that Lewis ever was a convinced and
   dedicated agnostic or atheist. It is true that while still a young
   man, he professed to have no religion and maintained that "All
   religions, that is all mythologies, to give them their proper name,
   are merely man's own invention - Christ as much as Loki." (C.S. Lewis,
   A Biography , p. 48) but the tone of his objection to religions seems
   more the schoolboy realization of religious errors and inconsistencies
   than that of a mature thinker who has considered the atheist or
   agnostic positions extensively and sympathetically and who accepts the
   inevitability of one or the other of both positions. As a youth he had
   an apparent fascination with elaborate systems of mythology, and his
   later fiction, the Narnia saga and stories of the planets, is filled
   with poetic symbols of power and morality. It is a small step from
   contemplating a deity to bowing before it. In one account of his
   conversion, he said, "In 1929 I gave in and admitted that God is God."
   Had Lewis been a comfortable atheist or committed agnostic, he would
   not have had anything to "give in" to.
   
   On the second reading of Mere Christianity, the Fool found in the
   "Preface" the key to his misgivings about the book. Lewis concludes
   the "Preface" by saying that the he sees Christianity as a great house
   with a large hall. Different rooms leading off the hall are the
   different denominations. He said that he is not primarily concerned
   about which room Christians occupy, but he is concerned about getting
   them into the hall. The Fool realized the second time around that
   Lewis might have been writing to the people in the rooms, and possibly
   even to those in the hall, but the Fool found no convincing reasons to
   move into the hall from outside the house, and certainly nor into any
   of the rooms, on the book's account.
   
   In the first place, there is no such thing as "mere Christianity." For
   instance, either the Virgin Birth is valid or it is not. Either it is
   essential to Christian Belief or it is not. Lewis discusses and then
   avoids conclusions about such issues as being too controversial. If he
   believes in historical Christianity, then he must take a stand one way
   or the other and be willing to justify and/or explain the reasons for
   his conclusions. He needs to take into account the Biblical record as
   well as the later traditions that developed and label them
   accordingly. In reading the Bible, he must deal with the two disparate
   accounts of Jesus' lineage in Matthew and Luke and with the fact that
   both trace his genealogy through Joseph, not Mary. For the Christian
   who wants to ignore these difficulties, there is nothing reasonable
   that can be said, but for the outside or the Fool, and certainly for
   the agnostic who does not want to come to any conclusions without
   adequate evidence, a problem such as this must be cleared up rather
   than avoided.
   
   The Fool finds that Lewis' comments about what one must believe about
   Jesus to be not at all persuasive. He gives only two options in a
   crucial sentence on page 41. "Either this man (Jesus) was, and is, the
   son of God, or else a madman or something worse." Even the Fool knows
   that there are so many more options than these two that he can only be
   sorrowful for the maker of such an oversimplified and dogmatic
   statement.
   
   Most of Mere Christianity is devoted to what Christians believe, to
   Christian behavior, and to Christian homilies that may be of interest
   to Christians, but are only incidentally so to the Fool. Even before
   Lewis' chapter "The Shocking Alternative," which concludes, "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," the Fool has
   misgivings. None of these options seem viable to the Fool. In fact he
   has already been turned away by Lewis' shoddy reasoning and rhetoric.
   
   Take for example the first paragraph in the chapter on "The Rival
   Conceptions of God:"
   
     I have been asked to tell you what Christians believe, and I am
     going to begin by telling you one thing that Christians do not need
     to believe. If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that
     all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an
     atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the
     religions of the whole word is simply one huge mistake. If you are a
     Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the
     queerest one, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was an
     atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race
     have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them
     most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal
     view. But, of course, being a Christian does mean thinking that
     where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is
     right and they are wrong. As in arithmetic - there is only one right
     answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong: but some of the
     wrong answers are much nearer being right than others.
     
   
   
   This writing is very seductive, but the stinger is deceptively buried
   in the last sentence, "There is only right answer to a sum, and all
   other answers are wrong." Just because the "majority" that Lewis
   speaks of in the next paragraph "believe in some kind of God or gods,"
   does not indicate anything other than that all of the different
   ideologies of the "majority," except possibly one, are themselves
   wrong. Considering the similarity of all of the theistic beliefs in
   making assertions that can not be proved, it seems to the Fool most
   likely that the one point of view that may be "right" is the one that
   makes no assumption of deity. This leaves the possibility open that
   "some of the wrong answers are much nearer than being right than
   others," i.e., those that tend to be less presumptuous and dogmatic in
   their theistic assertions.
   
   The Fool is not persuaded by the childish anecdotes in Lewis' attempt
   to establish a "Law of Human Nature" somehow based on "The Law of
   Nature' which leads to a "power" that is soon spoken of as a
   "Life-Force," but which finally is to be called "God." This thing
   Lewis calls God is then defined in double-talk:
   
     God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we
     most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only
     possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies.
     
   
   
   This kind of argument has no meaning to the Fool who must humbly go
   his foolish ways, unconvinced by ... as Father Hooper said in "Through
   Joy and Beyond" ... "the finest religious thinker of the age."
   
   Gaunilo II
   
   June 1979
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