Extend . . .

Notes for An Introduction to Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

January 5, 2014

First Presbyterian Church of Cookeville, TN

Richard R. Neil, D. Min.

“For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strenth.” 1 Corinthians 1:25

In the Preface to Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis says that he got the title for his book from “Baxter,” by whom he means Richard Baxter (1615-1691) who was a Puritan pastor, poet, hymn writer, and theologian. Baxter favored a universal interpretation of the atonement and presbyterian church order over the congregationist and episcopal systems. The English Civil War occurred during his life and he spent time in prison for his beliefs. Among his many writings at least two are read today: The Reformed Pastor—which I read in seminary—and The Saints Everlasting Rest.

I spent a little time on the Internet and found what is widely believed to be the Baxter quote Lewis refers to in the Preface of Mere Christianity: “I am a Christian, a mere Christian, of no other Religion; and the Church that I am of is the Christian Church, and hath been visible where ever the Christian Religion and Church hath been visible: But must you know what Sect or Party I am of? I am against all Sects and dividing Parties: But if any will call Mere Christian by the name of a Party, because they take up with Mere Christianity, Creed, and Scripture, and will not be of any dividing or contentious Sect, I am of that Party which is so against Parties...” (from Baxter's Church-history of the Government of Bishops, 1680) This quote gives you some insight into what Lewis was thinking as he delivered the radio talks that would later become Mere Christianity.

As we begin this morning I must confess that I can sympathize with the mild mannered young man, who after taking his seat on an airplane was startled to see a parrot strapped in next to him. Choosing to ignore the bird as the plane took off, he asked the flight attendant for a cup of coffee. And get me a Coke, right now! the parrot ordered rudely, as the attendant hurried away.

A few moments later the attendant returned with the Coke, but no coffee. “Hey, lazy,” the parrot screeched, after draining his glass. “Get me another Coke!” Again the flight attendant hurried to bring the parrot his drink, and again forgot the coffee. Upset at being ignored, the man decided to try the parrot’s approach. “Hey, you!” he yelled at the attendant. “Coffee now or you’ll never work for this airline again!” A moment later a burly co-pilot appeared from out of the cockpit, grabbed the young man and the parrot and tossed them both out the airplane door. As they plunged downward, the parrot turned to the man and said, “That was really gutsy, mister. Especially for somebody who can’t fly.”

I feel a bit like that fellow this morning – like a guy who because of his own words gets himself tossed out of a high-flying airplane but can't fly. I volunteered to lead this class in a study of C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, but I am in no way a Lewis scholar. Lewis was an Oxford don, an expert in Medieval literature and classical philosophy, both of which play a major role in the imagery of Mere Christianity. The problem is that, while I may have a smattering of knowledge about classical philosophy, I know next to nothing about medieval literature.

So you might ask, “Why would I try to teach a class on a book by Lewis. For two reasons: First, because Mere Christianity was perhaps the most widely read work of Christian theology in English during the 20th century and is still popular today, especially among Evangelical Christians but also among more liberal folks like me because it espouses what someone has called a “generous orthodoxy.” And secondly, because I personally owe C. S. Lewis a great debt of thanks; his writings came to my aid during a time in my life when I was questioning my faith. I do not agree with Lewis on every point of theology but his work is important to me. I'll tell you more about that a little later, but first I want to summarize briefly the life of this brilliant but often controverseal Christian thinker.

Clive Staples Lewis was born November 29,1898, the second son of Albert and Flora Lewis of Belfast, Ireland.* As a child he hated the name Clive and called himself Jack. It stuck. Albert was solicitor -- an official of the British court system -- and of Welsh parentage. Flora died of cancer in 1908, when Lewis was ten years old and it turned his world upside down. She was a very bright woman who graduated from Queen's College, Belfast with a degree in mathematics. She gave Lewis and his brother Warren (called Warnie) their first schooling, not only in math, but in Latin and French.

Perhaps because of their home schooling and the common loss of their mother the two brothers were very close. In fact, they lived together for much of their lives and Warnie was at Jack's bedside when he died on November 22, 1963 at age 65. It was the day JFK was shot in Dallas, and his passing was almost overlooked by the press. Jack and Warnie Lewis shared a gift for imagination: Even before they could read or write they invited imaginary worlds -- Warnie called his “India,” Jack named his "Animal Land," thus prefiguring the characters in the Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis would later describe the two after their mother's death as "two frightened urchins huddled for warmth in a bleak world."

After his mother's death schooling was in fact a bleak world for Lewis due to the harsh discipline of school masters and bullying by older students. Not surprisingly Lewis became something of a rebellious and pessimistic teenager. He was rescued for scholarship through the influence of a gifted teacher named Kirkpatrick at Bookham School, who trained him to think with unusual clarity. The interplay of reason and imagination is characteristic of all Lewis' writings and the very thing that attracted me to his work.

In 1916, after Warnie had been drafted for World War I, Lewis joined the army officers' training program at Oxford University where he had just been accepted. He was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant and arrived at the front lines on his 19th birthday in l9l7 and was wounded near Arras by shrapnel from friendly fire during the German Spring Offensive of 1918. He was sent home to England in May. One of his good friends was a young man named Paddy Moore, whom Jack promised that he would take care of Paddy's mother, if Paddy did not survive the war. He didn't, and Lewis made good on his promise. Jane Askins Moore remained a significant part of Lewis' life until her death in 1951. Her daughter Maureen – Jack's "adopted"sister -- later Lady Dunbar of Hempriggs -- was one of the last people to speak with Lewis before his death. Mrs. Moore's relationship with Jack caused a rift with his father that was never entirely healed. Jack and Warnie and the Moores bought a house near Oxford named the Kilns, for two kilns in the yard.

After the war Lewis finished his work at Oxford and began his life as a scholar, publishing his first book in 1919: Spirits in Bondage and many articles. During the 1920s Lewis steadily worked his way first from athiesm to the Romantic theism of Yeats and Wordsworth and then became a Christian under the influence of friends like J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. One day in 1931 Lewis was on his way to visit the Whipsnade Zoo, when he became a believer. He wrote, “I know very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken. I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.” Most Lewis scholars believe the conversion was a result of a conversation Lewis had with Tolkien about the nature of myth. Lewis would later defend the notion that Christ is “myth become fact,” an idea that sets him apart from many of his more conservative Evangelical admirers.

During the 1930s and early 40s, Lewis was part of an influential group of Christian scholars at Oxford that become known as the Inklings who met every week over a period of fifteen years, sharing ideas, reading aloud work on their latest projects, and generally giving one another constructive criticism and encouragement. The Inklings included J.R. R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, Hugo Dyson, Nevill Coghill, and Charles Williams.

In 1938 he published the first book of his Science Fiction trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet and several other religious works followed shortly, including The Screwtape Letters. Lewis was suddenly famous as a scholar who was also a Christian and a defender of the faith against scientific determinism and modern scepticism. During World War II, he was asked to give a series of radio talks on Christian belief. These talks, first given as four separate series ,were later combined and published as Mere Christianity in 1952. Despite the fact that Mere Christianity has become a Christian classic, it should be kept in mind while reading it that this is war literature, originally intended to inspire a people who were struggling to keep their faith and a positive frame of mind during a difficult and violent period of their history, which explains the military imagery you will find in the book.

In 1950 Jack Lewis began a correspondence with a young American divorcee named Joy Davidman Greshem. Two years later she moved to England and their friendship became much closer. So close in fact that he married her in a 1956 civil ceremony so that she and her son Douglas might remain in England. When Joy was diagnosed with cancer they were married in her hospital room by a Priest of the Church of England. Joy died in July 1960. Lewis struggled through a period of deep grief and despair which he wrote about in A Grief Observed.

Lewis served more than 35 years as one of Oxford's most popular lecturers but the university never made him a Full Professor. In a sense you could say that Lewis paid a price for his conversion to Christianity and his willingness to talk publicly about it. As his friend J.R.R. Tolkien observed: “In Oxford, you are forgiven for writing only two kinds of books. You may write books on your own subject whatever that is, literature, or science, or history. And you may write detective stories because all dons at some time get the flu, and they have to have something to read in bed. But what you are not forgiven is writing popular works, such as Jack did on theology, and especially if they win international success as his did.” Lewis’s work on a popular level, which appealed to vast audiences outside the University defied academic protocol. Moreover, he chose to express his faith in the vernacular rather than in the language of the scholar. Although he did so in order to make the faith more accessible, this was viewed by many at Oxford as a thing not proper to his profession, where it was thought that a professor of English Literature should teach literature, not theology.

Therefore, in 1954 when Cambridge offered him a full professorship and created a chair for him, "the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English Literature," he took it and left his beloved Oxford. He remained at Cambridge until his death in November 1963 at the age of 65.

Now why is C. S. Lewis' work so important to me? Let me tell you a story. In 1970 I went to work for Washington University in St. Louis as an administrator in what many universities call the Dean of Students Office. It was not a carefully thought-out career move. The funding for my job in St. Louis with the Presbyterian Board of National Missions was coming to an end. A friend got me an interview at the university, and when the job was offered I took it. I soon found myself in an environment apathetic to and sometimes antagonistic to my Christian faith. In fact, a popular book on campus that first year was Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology. Monod ends the book with his fundamental conclusion that: “The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below; it is for him to choose.” By the kingdom above Monod meant science, by the darkness below he meant value laden pursuits such as religion.

Though the intensity of the anti-religious mood moderated as the 1970s progressed, that sentence rather accurately states the intellectual environment through which I moved during my seven years at the university. On the one hand, it made life seem experimental and exciting; but on the other hand, it could be intensely pessimistic and amoral, and it shook my faith to the core. Toward the end of my time there I found a boxed set of Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia at a local bookstore and bought it, probably because of my ongoing conversations with a favorite student about the philosophical usefulness of fairy tales, folk tales, and myths. I don't remember reading it until my first year back in the ministry. But one day deep into The Silver Chair, the 4th book in the series, I came across a passage that electrified me.

A Narnia character named Puddleglum accompanies Eustace and his friend, Jill Pole, – two real world children -- on the quest to find the lost prince, King Caspian's son, Rilian. Prince Rilian has been kept captive for ten years under the spell of a witch who rules the Underland, a cave-like place where there is only darkness and shawdows. ** [If this description of the scene causes you to think of Plato's allegory of the cave in The Republic, you are right on target. Lewis was a Platonist and followed in the footsteps of Augustine in this regard.] As the scene opens Puddleglum and the children are captive in the witch's cave as well. Puddleglum becomes a hero by thwarting the witch's nearly successful attempt to put them all under a spell that would make them doubt the very existence of Narnia and Aslan and accept the cave as the real world. He stomps his webbed foot (he's a Marshwiggle, a creature who's sort of a cross between a man and a frog) in the fire, breaking the spell and then gives this speech:

"One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire... “I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

Puddleglum's speech got my attention because it helped me clarify where my deepest loyalties lie – with the Christian faith, and – as I gradually came to realize – with a version of Christianity that can be called a generous orthodoxy. To paraphrase Lewis' character: Suppose we have mostly made up the Christian story. Well, then, it beats the so-called real world all hollow because it is more adventurous, more commited to love and justice than the “real world” the doubters are always talking about. So I decided then and there that despite all of Monod's evidence to the contrary that I was going to stand by the Christian story. And be on Jesus side even if there isn't any Jesus to lead it, and live like a Christian even if there isn't any Kingdom of Heaven. And as I began to live out that commitment, I also began to believe in Jesus and the Kingdom of Heaven in a deeper fashion than ever before in my life.

As some of you may recognize, Puddleglum's argument – and Lewis' – is a form of Pascal's Wager***, which is this: Either there is God or there is not God. We all must choose a side, and only one or the other will be true. Since we can't prove either side, we must make a wager. If we believe in God and it's true, we gain here on Earth by living a moral life and gain infinitely in eternity. If it's not true, we still have lived a moral life based on love and justice, and lose nothing in eternity, for there is none. But I think there is something more at stake Puddleglum's speech than a cosmic wager. In one of his essays, Lewis wrote: "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else." In short, Christian faith helps me to understand the world and make sense out of its sound and fury. As Alister McGrath puts it, “Lewis tends to treat Christianity as a “big picture,” whose ability to... position our observations of the external world and our internal experience of longings is itself to be seen as an indication of its truth.”

Some on the liberal left dismiss Lewis as a closet fundamentalist. He was not! Those on the Evangelical right tend to see Lewis as St. Jack, and gloss over his foibles and short-comings. The truth is that he could be something of an arrogant bully when arguing in favor of traditional Christian belief. As a man born in the Edwardian era, he was often infuriatingly sexist in his attitudes toward women. As an a member of the Anglo-Irish gentry, he was a monarchist who believed in the essential rightness of social and political hierarchy and suggested that democracy was little more than a necessary evil invented to keep the powerful humble before God. In several of his writings he seems to maintain that a belief in equality is one of modern world's most dangerous ideas.

Still, C. S. Lewis was a brilliant man and a deeply committed Christian whose reasonable arguments and imaginative descriptions of traditional Christian beliefs illuminated our lives for a moment in mid 20th century before we plunged into the postmodernisms and fundamentalisms that darken the 21st century.

*This following sketch of Lewis life borrows heavily from a handout that I received at one of several Lewis conferences I attended during the 1990s. The handout was not dated nor did the author include his/her name. If I knew who to attribute it to, I would gladly do so.

**This summary of the action leading to Puddleglum's speech is adapted from a description I found on the Internet at the Wood Between the Worlds blog. The writer doesn't give her name but I thank her for the help her blog gave me as I assembled these thoughts about Mere Christianity.

http://worldsthewoodworlds.blogspot.com/2011/12/puddleglums-speech.html

***Once again, I owe this insight to the Wood Between the Worlds blog. There is a similar discussion in Steve Lovell's chapter “Breaking the Spell of Skepticism: Puddleglum versus the Green Witch,” in The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy: The Lion, the Witch, and the Worldview. Edited by Gregory Bassham and Jerry L. Walls, Open Court, 2005

Extend . . .

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