C.S.Lewis. Mere Christianity
Born in Ireland in 1898, C. S. Lewis was educated at Malvern College
for a year and then privately. He gained a triple first at Oxford and was a
Fellow and Tutor at Magdalen College 1925-54. In 1954 he became Professor of
Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge. He was an outstanding and
popular lecturer and had a lasting influence on his pupils.
C. S. Lewis was for many years an atheist, and described his conversion
in Surprised by Joy: 'In the Trinity term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted
that God was God ... perhaps the most dejected and reluctant convert in all
England.' It was this experience that helped him to understand not only
apathy but active unwillingness to accept religion, and, as a Christian
writer, gifted with an exceptionally brilliant and logical mind and a lucid,lively
style, he was without peer.
The Problem of Pain, The Screwtape
Letters, Mere Christianity, The Four Loves and the Posthumous Prayer:
Letters to Malcolm, are only a few of his best-selling works. He also wrote
some delightful books for children and some science fiction, besides many
works of literary criticism. His works are known to millions of people all
over the world in translation. He died on 22nd November, 1963, at his home
in Oxford.
Preface
The contents of this book were first given on the air, and then
published in three separate parts as The Case for Christianity (1943), (*)
Christian Behaviour (1943), and Beyond Personality (1945). In the printed
versions I made a few additions to what I had said at the microphone, but
otherwise left the text much as it had been. A "talk" on the radio should, I
think, be as like real talk as possible, and should not sound like an essay
being read aloud. In my talks I had therefore used all the contractions and
colloquialisms I ordinarily use in conversation. In the printed version I
reproduced this, putting don't and we've for do not and we have. And
wherever, in the talks, I had made the importance of a word clear by the
emphasis of my voice, I printed it in italics.
----
[*] Published in England under the title Broadcast Talks.
----
I am now inclined to think that this was a mistake-an undesirable
hybrid between the art of speaking and the art of writing. A talker ought to
use variations of voice for emphasis because his medium naturally lends
itself to that method: but a writer ought not to use italics for the same
purpose. He has his own, different, means of bringing out the key words and
ought to use them. In this edition I have expanded the contractions and
replaced most of the italics by recasting the sentences in which they
occurred: but without altering, I hope, the "popular" or "familiar" tone
which I had all along intended. I have also added and deleted where I
thought I understood any part of my subject better now than ten years ago or
where I knew that the original version had been misunderstood by others.
The reader should be warned that I offer no help to anyone who is
hesitating between two Christian "denominations." You will not learn from me
whether you ought to become an Anglican, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, or a
Roman Catholic.
This omission is intentional (even in the list I have just given the
order is alphabetical). There is no mystery about my own position. I am a
very ordinary layman of the Church of England, not especially "high," nor
especially "low," nor especially anything else. But in this book I am not
trying to convert anyone to my own position. Ever since I became a Christian
I have thought that the best, perhaps the only, service I could do for my
unbelieving neighbours was to explain and defend the belief that has been
common to nearly all Christians at all times. I had more than one reason for
thinking this. In the first place, the questions which divide Christians
from one another often involve points of high Theology or even of
ecclesiastical history which ought never to be treated except by real
experts.
I should have been out of my depth in such waters: more in need of help
myself than able to help others. And secondly, I think we must admit that
the discussion of these disputed points has no tendency at all to bring an
outsider into the Christian fold. So long as we write and talk about them we
are much more likely to deter him from entering any Christian communion than
to draw him into our own. Our divisions should never be discussed except in
the presence of those who have already come to believe that there is one God
and that Jesus Christ is His only Son. Finally, I got the impression that
far more, and more talented, authors were already engaged in such
controversial matters than in the defence of what Baxter calls "mere"
Christianity. That part of the line where I thought I could serve best was
also the part that seemed to be thinnest. And to it I naturally went.
So far as I know, these were my only motives, and I should be very glad
if people would not draw fanciful inferences from my silence on certain
disputed matters.
For example, such silence need not mean that I myself am sitting on the
fence. Sometimes I am. There are questions at issue between Christians to
which I do not think I have the answer. There are some to which I may never
know the answer: if I asked them, even in a better world, I might (for all I
know) be answered as a far greater questioner was answered: "What is that to
thee? Follow thou Me." But there are other questions as to which I am
definitely on one side of the fence, and yet say nothing. For I was not
writing to expound something I could call "my religion," but to expound
"mere" Christianity, which is what it is and was what it was long before I
was born and whether I like it or not.
Some people draw unwarranted conclusions from the fact that I never say
more about the Blessed Virgin Mary than is involved in asserting the Virgin
Birth of Christ. But surely my reason for not doing so is obvious? To say
more would take me at once into highly controversial regions. And there is
no controversy between Christians which needs to be so delicately touched as
this. The Roman Catholic beliefs on that subject are held not only with the
ordinary fervour that attaches to all sincere religious belief, but (very
naturally) with the peculiar and, as it were, chivalrous sensibility that a
man feels when the honour of his mother or his beloved is at stake.
It is very difficult so to dissent from them that you will not appear
to them a cad as well as a heretic. And contrariwise, the opposed Protestant
beliefs on this subject call forth feelings which go down to the very roots
of all Monotheism whatever. To radical Protestants it seems that the
distinction between Creator and creature (however holy) is imperilled: that
Polytheism is risen again. Hence it is hard so to dissent from them that you
will not appear something worse than a heretic-an idolater, a Pagan. If any
topic could be relied upon to wreck a book about "mere" Christianity-if any
topic makes utterly unprofitable reading for those who do not yet believe
that the Virgin's son is God-surely this is it.
Oddly enough, you cannot even conclude, from my silence on disputed
points, either that I think them important or that I think them unimportant.
For this is itself one of the disputed points. One of the things Christians
are disagreed about is the importance of their disagreements. When two
Christians of different denominations start arguing, it is usually not long
before one asks whether such-and-such a point "really matters" and the other
replies: "Matter? Why, it's absolutely essential."
All this is said simply in order to make clear what kind of book I was
trying to write; not in the least to conceal or evade responsibility for my
own beliefs. About those, as I said before, there is no secret. To quote
Uncle Toby: "They are written in the Common-Prayer Book."
The danger dearly was that I should put forward as common Christianity
anything that was peculiar to the Church of England or (worse still) to
myself. I tried to guard against this by sending the original script of what
is now Book II to four clergymen (Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Roman
Catholic) and asking for their criticism. The Methodist thought I had not
said enough about Faith, and the Roman Catholic thought I had gone rather
too far about the comparative unimportance of theories in explanation of the
Atonement. Otherwise all five of us were agreed. I did not have the
remaining books similarly "vetted" because in them, though differences might
arise among Christians, these would be differences between individuals or
schools of thought, not between denominations.
So far as I can judge from reviews and from the numerous letters
written to me, the book, however faulty in other respects, did at least
succeed in presenting an agreed, or common, or central, or "mere"
Christianity. In that way it may possibly be of some help in silencing the
view that, if we omit the disputed points, we shall have left only a vague
and bloodless H.C.F. The H.C.F. turns out to be something not only positive
but pungent; divided from all non-Christian beliefs by a chasm to which the
worst divisions inside Christendom are not really comparable at all.
If I have not directly helped the cause of reunion, I have perhaps made
it clear why we ought to be reunited. Certainly I have met with little of
the fabled odium theologicum from convinced members of communions different
from my own. Hostility has come more from borderline people whether within
the Church of England or without it: men not exactly obedient to any
communion. This I find curiously consoling. It is at her centre, where her
truest children dwell, that each communion is really closest to every other
in spirit, if not in doctrine. And this suggests that at the centre of each
there is something, or a Someone, who against all divergences of belief, all
differences of temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, speaks with
the same voice.
So much for my omissions on doctrine. In Book III, which deals with
morals, I have also passed over some things in silence, but for a different
reason. Ever since I served as an infantryman in the first world war I have
had a great dislike of people who, themselves in ease and safety, issue
exhortations to men in the front line. As a result I have a reluctance to
say much about temptations to which I myself am not exposed. No man, I
suppose, is tempted to every sin. It so happens that the impulse which makes
men gamble has been left out of my make-up; and, no doubt, I pay for this by
lacking some good impulse of which it is the excess or perversion. I
therefore did not feel myself qualified to give advice about permissable and
impermissable gambling: if there is any permissable, for I do not claim to
know even that. I have also said nothing about birth-control. I am not a
woman nor even a married man, nor am I a priest. I did not think it my place
to take a firm line about pains, dangers and expenses from which I am
protected; having no pastoral office which obliged me to do so.
Far deeper objections may be felt-and have been expressed- against my
use of the word Christian to mean one who accepts the common doctrines of
Christianity. People ask: "Who are you, to lay down who is, and who is not a
Christian?" or "May not many a man who cannot believe these doctrines be far
more truly a Christian, far closer to the spirit of Christ, than some who
do?" Now this objection is in one sense very right, very charitable, very
spiritual, very sensitive. It has every amiable quality except that of being
useful. We simply cannot, without disaster, use language as these objectors
want us to use it. I will try to make this clear by the history of another,
and very much less important, word.
The word gentleman originally meant something recognisable; one who had
a coat of arms and some landed property. When you called someone "a
gentleman" you were not paying him a compliment, but merely stating a fact.
If you said he was not "a gentleman" you were not insulting him, but giving
information. There was no contradiction in saying that John was a liar and a
gentleman; any more than there now is in saying that James is a fool and an
M.A. But then there came people who said-so rightly, charitably,
spiritually, sensitively, so anything but usefully-"Ah, but surely the
important thing about a gentleman is not the coat of arms and the land, but
the behaviour? Surely he is the true gentleman who behaves as a gentleman
should? Surely in that sense Edward is far more truly a gentleman than
John?"
They meant well. To be honourable and courteous and brave is of course
a far better thing than to have a coat of arms. But it is not the same
thing. Worse still, it is not a thing everyone will agree about. To call a
man "a gentleman" in this new, refined sense, becomes, in fact, not a way of
giving information about him, but a way of praising him: to deny that he is
"a gentleman" becomes simply a way of insulting him. When a word ceases to
be a term of description and becomes merely a term of praise, it no longer
tells you facts about the object: it only tells you about the speaker's
attitude to that object. (A "nice" meal only means a meal the speaker
likes.)
A gentleman, once it has been spiritualised and refined out of its old
coarse, objective sense, means hardly more than a man whom the speaker
likes. As a result, gentleman is now a useless word. We had lots of terms of
approval already, so it was not needed for that use; on the other hand if
anyone (say, in a historical work) wants to use it in its old sense, he
cannot do so without explanations. It has been spoiled for that purpose.
Now if once we allow people to start spiritualising and refining, or as
they might say "deepening," the sense of the word Christian, it too will
speedily become a useless word. In the first place, Christians themselves
will never be able to apply it to anyone. It is not for us to say who, in
the deepest sense, is or is not close to the spirit of Christ. We do not see
into men's hearts. We cannot judge, and are indeed forbidden to judge.
It would be wicked arrogance for us to say that any man is, or is not,
a Christian in this refined sense. And obviously a word which we can never
apply is not going to be a very useful word. As for the unbelievers, they
will no doubt cheerfully use the word in the refined sense. It will become
in their mouths simply a term of praise. In calling anyone a Christian they
will mean that they think him a good man. But that way of using the word
will be no enrichment of the language, for we already have the word good.
Meanwhile, the word Christian will have been spoiled for any really useful
purpose it might have served.
We must therefore stick to the original, obvious meaning. The name
Christians was first given at Antioch (Acts xi. 26) to "the disciples," to
those who accepted the teaching of the apostles. There is no question of its
being restricted to those who profited by that teaching as much as they
should have. There is no question of its being extended to those who in some
refined, spiritual, inward fashion were "far closer to the spirit of Christ"
than the less satisfactory of the disciples. The point is not a theological,
or moral one. It is only a question of using words so that we can all
understand what is being said. When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine
lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than
to say he is not a Christian.
I hope no reader will suppose that "mere" Christianity is here put
forward as an alternative to the creeds of the existing communions-as if a
man could adopt it in preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or
anything else. It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several
rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall I shall have done what I
attempted. But it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and
chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try
the various doors, not a place to live in. For that purpose the worst of the
rooms (whichever that may be) is, I think, preferable.
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. But you
must regard it as waiting, not as camping. You must keep on praying for
light: and, of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the
rules which are common to the whole house. And above all you must be asking
which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and
paneling.
In plain language, the question should never be: "Do I like that kind
of service?" but "Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my
conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to knock at this door due
to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike of this particular
door-keeper?"
When you have reached your own room, be kind to those Who have chosen
different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong
they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you
are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the
whole house.
