Mere Christianity (C. S. Lewis Signature Classic)

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When you argue against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on. a b The Life and Writing of C.S. Lewis, Lecture 3; The Great Courses, Course Guidebook; Professor Louis Markos, Houston Baptist University; The Teaching Company; 2000

Lewis has some skill and intellect, but the way he meanders about duality, truth, social darwinism, pathetic fallacy, comparative anthropology, and scientific process tends more towards self-justification than any profundity. Blake, John (17 December 2010). "Surprised by C.S. Lewis: Why his popularity endures". CNN . Retrieved 20 August 2022. In the classic Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, the most important writer of the 20th century, explores the common ground upon which all of those of Christian faith stand together. Bringing together Lewis' legendary broadcast talks during World War Two from his three previous books The Case for Christianity, Christian Behavior, and Beyond Personality, Mere Christianity provides an unequaled opportunity for believers and nonbelievers alike to hear this powerful apologetic for the Christian faith. popularity 8680 links

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I was aware of this book in my childhood but never read it until now, because I'm working with two C.S. Lewis classes and wanted to get a better sense of his theology. I know some people still use this book as a way to explain the tenets of the Christian faith, but I think that is unwise for several reasons: I am somewhat confused about some of the reasoning behind those giving this work one or two stars. From what I have seen it appears to be that C.S. Lewis does not justify his explanations well enough - that there is not enough of a burden of proof that he has fulfilled. Or that his writing, his work, is far too offensive. Petersen, William J.; Petersen, Randy (2000). 100 Christian Books That Changed the Century. Fleming H. Revell. ISBN 0-8007-5735-1.

Green, Roger Lancelyn; Hooper, Walter (1974). C. S. Lewis: A Biography. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 0-15-123190-7. Mere Christianity, against all the odds, continues to do what C.S. Lewis aimed at eighty years ago: to communicate the basics of the faith, in ways that satisfy the intellect and capture the imagination. Perhaps its appeal endures simply because the faith of which Lewis has proven to be such a winsome explicator has itself, in spite of everything, lost none of its appeal. As Lewis himself writes, with the simplicity, humility, and occasional grandeur that characterises the book as a whole: Kushiner, James M. (June 2009). "Mere Economics: The Dollars & Sense of Publishing". Touchstone . Retrieved 20 August 2022. It is no wonder that Christians should revere a miracle-working carpenter: I think one must be the son of a god to build an attic before the rest of the house. A significant contribution to Lewis scholarship. No one has surveyed the reception history of Mere Christianity as well as Marsden has done here, and given the enduring popularity and influence of the book, this is a task well worth doing."—Alan Jacobs, author of The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis

Duncan, Graham A. (2020). "CS Lewis's 'Mere Christianity,' by G. M. Marsden". Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae. 46 (2): 1–2. doi: 10.25159/2412-4265/5564. eISSN 1017-0499. ISSN 2412-4265. Mere Christianity is a popular, not an academic, book, which is not directed towards a readership of academic theologians or philosophers. It is simply unfair to expect Lewis to engage here with detailed philosophical debates, when these would clearly turn his brisk, highly readable book into a quagmire of fine philosophical distinctions. Mere Christianity is an informal handshake to begin a more formal acquaintance and conversation." And Matt read it less than a year ago, with a group of friends as part of an informal, online book club. Three of the four, he says, were atheists before they read Mere Christianity; afterwards, none were. Matt says faith had been creeping up on him for a while — while he was enthusiastic about the New Atheists in the early 2000s, more recently he’d started going along to church, though still without subscribing to Christian belief — but the book club and reading Mere Christianity were the turning point. He quotes from Lewis’s spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy, a comment that he says applies to all three of the friends: George Marsden provides a splendid account of the book's evolution . . . and its reception."—Jonathan Wright, Catholic Herald

Readers familiar with Mere Christianity may recall some of the many images that Lewis uses to describe becoming a Christian. It is like passing from death into life, or like laying down your rebel arms and surrendering, or like saying sorry, or like killing part of yourself, or like learning to walk or to write, or like buying God a present with his own money. Or it is like a drowning man clutching at a rescuer’s hand, or like a tin soldier or a statue becoming alive, or like a horse turning into a Pegasus, or like a compass needle swinging to north, or like a dark greenhouse transformed as the roof suddenly becomes bright in the sunlight. And many more. 4. “Mere” Christianity involved a demanding gospel message. Kilby, Clyde S. The Christian World of C. S. Lewis. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1964. Kilby was one of the pioneers of Lewis scholarship. Includes a chapter on each of Lewis’s major fictional and apologetic works, including Mere Christianity. The circumstances of that first talk, on Wednesday, 6 August 1941, were not overly auspicious. The American historian George Marsden, in his biography of Mere Christianity, explains that the time slot — 7:45 to 8:00pm precisely — might sound like primetime, but actually Lewis found himself sandwiched between a news broadcast from Nazi-occupied Norway (in Norwegian) and a program of songs from a Welsh cultural festival. The talk was vetted in advance and had to be exactly 15 minutes long; any dead air on a show could be cut into by Lord Haw-Haw, the German propagandist, who was broadcasting on the same wavelength (a friend of mine explained it this way: “Think of it as The Chaser, if The Chaser were Nazis”). Edwards, Bruce L. (2007). "An Examined Life: Introducing C. S. Lewis". In Edwards, Bruce L. (ed.). C. S. Lewis: Life, Works, and Legacy. Vol.1: An Examined Life. Praeger Perspectives. pp.1–16. ISBN 978-0-275-99116-6.

Lewis was not promoting “cheap grace” — to use the term that Dietrich Bonhoeffer coined in the same era. “Mere” Christianity is not minimal Christianity. It is not easy or safe. Rather, readers find that they are being drawn in to an understanding of Christianity that is going to be extraordinarily demanding on them personally. Lewis is of course far more readable (and likeable) than Friedrich Nietzsche, yet I feel they are two sides of the one coin. Both view the issues in their modern societies and reflect critically upon them. However, where Nietzsche always asserts his views in first person as if they are fact (where they are opinion), Lewis works his way through his reasoning in the third person - questioning rather than asserting. They are both equally aggressive (and depending on your values as I said, offensive) but one sees Christianity as all that is wrong in this world and the other sees the world as all that is wrong in this world.

Sullivan, Philip R. (Spring 1995). "The Natural Ought". Behavior and Philosophy. 23 (1): 1–12. eISSN 1943-3328. ISSN 1053-8348. JSTOR 23006495.Lewis would have said the same for his work as an apologist. Had it drawn primary attention to himself, or have been just a reflection of his own peculiar views, it would have had little lasting impact. In fact, one of the greatest sources of the lasting vitality of the presentations is that Lewis deliberately points the listener or reader toward an object.