The Christian beliefs expressed by Lewis can be summarized as follows:
- There is an all-powerful God that created everything.
- God gave man freedom of choice, because happiness without choice is meaningless
- Good and evil exist as unquestionable absolutes in the universe
- Jesus was God and he died (and rose from the dead) so that we may be forgiven for our sins.
- During the final judgment God closes the door to sinners and there is no further chance to repent.
There is also mention of Satan and a convoluted explanation of how God could allow evil to take place. The explanation involves the requirement of free will (because God’s creation would be meaningless without free will) as applied to Satan. Satan had free will to turn from God and cause evil in the world. Differences in beliefs between various Christian denominations seem to be written off by Lewis as unimportant details. It’s probably unfair to make that generalization, given that this text is based on a series of radio talks that probably had severe time constraints. However, Lewis himself seems to infer that the disagreements between the various Christian faiths are unimportant. Lewis certainly does not come across as being passionate about a single denomination to the exclusion of all others. He seems to treat choosing a denomination like choosing one’s clothes for the day: a matter of personal taste. One should not read this book expecting to find a proof of what Lewis or Christians believe. Proof or disproof of God is impossible and Lewis is smart enough not to fall into that trap. However, it would seem that he is not smart enough to avoid falling prey to circular logic and logical inconsistencies. At the end of the first chapter, Lewis says, “If the whole universe has no meaning we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know that it was dark.” I will not go to the trouble here to prove why that statement is complete nonsense. Even if I were to prove it to be nonsense, I doubt that I would be successful in convincing someone who doesn’t already know it to be nonsense. In the second chapter, Lewis talks of goodness and badness as if they are absolutes. However, good and bad are relative terms. I assume that the popes during the time of the inquisitions thought the torture and killing of thousands of people was a good thing. At the very least, they must have thought it less evil than allowing all those sinners to continue to live in sin. Of course the church defined what sin was. I suppose the church in those times thought freedom of worship was a bad thing. You had to agree with the church or be killed. The Islamic extremists today believe that killing 3000 people on September 11, 2001 was a good thing (the will of God, no less). Any feeble mind can come up with additional examples where your perspective defines what is good and bad. So I think it’s rather incorrect to talk about good and bad as absolutes. Good and bad are relative and subjective. I could give many more examples, but I do not think more examples will convince someone that has already made up their mind that good and bad are universally absolute terms. Lewis also sates “existence, intelligence, and will are in themselves good”. This is an opinion. It is an opinion presented as fact and used to support the idea that evil which is a result of free will is an unavoidable side effect of good creation of God. (Excuse me if I am misrepresenting the argument. It is quite illogical and hard to follow.) I on the other hand believe that existence, intelligence, and will are neither good nor bad in and of themselves. They are simply the results of the evolution of life on Earth. In chapter three, Lewis states, “A world of automata (of creatures that work like machines) would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and each other”. However later he says, we cannot expect to understand “the inconceivable, the uncreated, the thing from beyond nature”, referring to God. So which is it? Ether humans can intuit the mind of God or they can’t. Lewis seems to be contradicting himself when he make assumptions about what motivates God. Lewis tries to suggest that God has sent humans clues to his existence via the beliefs of pagans when he states, “He [God] sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a God who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given men new life.” I find the wording of the sentence very interesting. Isn’t it more probable that new religions reuse familiar motifs of earlier religions? Why resort to divine influence, when simpler explanations are sufficient? Is this statement by Lewis a thinly veiled attempt to diminish Christianity by pointing out similarities between Christianity and pagan religions? Is it a hidden message meant to be heard with those to have ears to hear it? One of Lewis’s main tenets is that there are only three options regarding Jesus: (1) Jesus is God, (2) Jesus was a mad man, or (3) Jesus was the devil (or some other evil spirit). He strongly claims that there are no other choices. I can think of several other choices: (4) Jesus’ disciples and/or early Christians intentionally exaggerated the story of Jesus’ life (5) Jesus’ disciples and/or early Christians unintentionally exaggerated the story of Jesus’ life because of being in a delusional state brought on by religious fervor (they were crazy, not Jesus) (6) Jesus intentionally mislead people with staged (magic) tricks in order to profit and promote himself and his ideas. (In other words, he was a con man who simply lied when he said he was God.) (7) Early church leaders chose, edited, and amended the books of the bible in a prejudicial manor that skewed the true message of Jesus. (8) The bible could be being misinterpreted due to the fact that nearly 2000 years have elapsed since they were written. (In other words, idiomatic meaning may have been lost, such that we do not understand the text in the way it was intended.) There are more than three options, and none of the additional options require supernatural explanation. Furthermore, more than one of the additional options may be true. Jesus could have been a con man and his disciples may have been crazy. Any of these additional options are much more likely than Jesus actually being God. Some may say that Lewis’s three options are the only options that are available, assuming the events in the bible actually happened. This is not the case. Since Lewis included the option that Jesus might have been crazy, he is already considering the possibility that the bible (which says Jesus walked on water, cured the sick, and rose from the dead) might contain errors. If we assume the events in the New Testament actually took place, then the only options are: Jesus is God or Jesus is a devil. But since Lewis himself considered an option that requires the bible to contain falsehoods (Jesus was crazy), we are free to do the same. It’s worth noting that “Jesus being crazy” can’t be viable option by itself. That option is only viable when combined with one or more additional options that account for the supernatural events described in the bible. Jesus and his disciples could all have been crazy, but Jesus alone being crazy does not fully account for the supernatural events described in the bible. Therefore, one of the basic assumptions Lewis built his argument on is fatally flawed. You cannot explain away the entire New Testament by saying Jesus was crazy. Certainly, Lewis must have realized that, yet he clearly stated otherwise. It is hard to believe that an extremely educated and intelligent man like Lewis was prone to such limited thinking regarding possible explanations of the events described in the bible. Either Lewis’s faith blinded him to other options, or Lewis intentionally neglected other options. Perhaps Lewis was intentionally constructing the setup of a straw man argument. The fact that this work contains blatant inconsistencies and errors does not necessarily invalidate Lewis’s faith, because issues of faith (by definition) cannot be proved or disproved. However these logical inconsistencies may give insight into how Christians think. Mere Christianity seems to make the case for faith blinding an otherwise intelligent person from seeing what logic and reason would otherwise reveal. These logical inconsistencies in the text are so blatant that it nearly becomes comical. I do not know if Lewis intended to parody the religious beliefs he claims to have. As parody, this book is a brilliant masterpiece, which lampoons Christianity while at the same time being unrecognized as parody by Christians themselves. To paraphrases a quote attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas, Mere Christianity may be a joke for those who have ears to hear it. There is some evidence to support the position that Mere Christianity was intended as parody disguised as something else. Lewis was raised Catholic, but claims to have become atheist at the age of 13 and remained atheist until he was 31 years old. In 1916 at the age of 18 he wrote: You know, I think, that I believe in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best. All religions, that is, all mythologies to give them their proper name, are merely man's invention--Christ as much as Loki. Primitive man found himself surrounded by all sorts of terrible things he didn't understand--thunder, pestilence, snakes, etc: what more natural than to suppose that these were animated by evil spirits trying to torture him. These he kept off by cringing to them, singing songs and making sacrifices etc. Gradually from being mere nature-spirits these supposed beings were elevated into more elaborate ideas, such as the old Gods: and when man became more refined he pretended that these spirits were good as well as powerful. (Found in a letter he wrote to his friend Arthur Greeves on October 12, 1916 (as published in They Stand Together, p.135).) Could it be that Lewis’s conversion to Christianity, just before the start of his writing career, was to avoid turning away potential buyers of his books? If so, he may have felt compelled to write about his beliefs as a hidden message for people with ears to hear it, while at the same time pacifying those who would question the sincerity of his own religious conversion. C.S. Lewis was either a literary genius, able to create a single literary work that makes the case for two diametrically opposed opinions simultaneously, or he was a simpleton prone to illogical thinking. Both cannot be true. He has not left that option open to us. He did not intend to.
