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Mere Christianity (C. S. Lewis Signature Classic)

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We have never read arguments better marshalled and handled so that they can be remembered, or any book more useful to the Christian, in the Army or elsewhere, who finds himself called upon to argue briefly from first premises, to say why morality is not herd-instinct, why there is a special and unique character attaching to the sense of obligation, why the conviction that there is a law of right and wrong and a transcendent morality is only intelligible if there is a God." [11] 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." Given the remarkable successes of this book, an edifying question to ask is, What were the qualities of Lewis’s communication of the faith that made it so lastingly effective? None of us is another C.S. Lewis, but each of us might learn from him how best to communicate our faith to others. 1. Lewis looked for timeless truths. Deemed a classic in Lewis's career and religious literature, Mere Christianity has often received a wide readership decades following its release, and contributed to establishing its author's reputation as "one of the most 'original' exponents of the Christian faith" in the 20th century. The work, with Lewis's arguments for God's existence in it, continued to be examined in scholarly circles. Mere Christianity has retained popularity among Christians from various denominations, and appeared in several lists of finest Christian books. Often used as a tool of evangelism, it has been translated into over thirty languages, and cited by a number of public figures as their influence to their conversion to Christianity. Several "biographies" of the book have also been written. After serving in France with the Somerset Light Infantry in World War I, he began his studies at Oxford and achieved an outstanding record, taking a double first in Honours Moderations (Greek and Latin texts) and Greats (classical history and philosophy) and then staying on for an additional first in English language and literature, completing it in one year instead of the usual three. He became a fellow and tutor of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1925, a position he held until 1954. From 1954 to 1963 he was professor of medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge.

The following January and February, Lewis gave the next set of talks on what would become “What Christians Believe”. The talks remained popular and because of the success of the newly released The Screwtape Letters, Lewis’s publisher was happy to publish the broadcast talks as books that year. The Eagle and Child pub, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England. In the mid-20th century it served as the meeting place of the Inklings literary group, which included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. (more) Sacramone, Anthony (25 February 2008). "An Interview with Timothy Keller". First Things . Retrieved 20 August 2022. The following year, Colson pleaded guilty to an offence he wasn’t being charged with in connection with Watergate, and after serving his sentence dedicated the rest of his life to prison ministry and prison reform. In 1995, on a visit to Australia, following a talk at the National Press Club in Canberra, a journalist asked him a question: “You’ve lived two lives. Can you sum up what your life stands for?”: Phillips, Justin (2002). C. S. Lewis in a Time of War: The World War II Broadcasts That Riveted a Nation and Became the Classic Mere Christianity . HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-088139-9.

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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”). 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. The author Colin Duriez praised it as easy to understand, [14] and the biographer Thomas C. Peters opined that his straightforward language makes the book fit to a wide audience. [15] There had been also criticism, which was primarily directed towards Lewis's "Liar, lunatic, or Lord" trilemma. [16] The Lewis biographer and Christian apologist Alister McGrath, while commending the book in general, felt that his trilemma is a weak defence for the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus, calling this the book's "most obvious concern". [17] He wrote his argument is mostly unsupported by the modern biblical scholarship, and argued that others options such as that Jesus was mistaken about his identity should have gotten into consideration of alternatives. [18] I finished listening to this book early this morning, a little before seven. I could not sleep, and as I lay in the darkness in need of some comfort and company, I thought that I should go ahead and finish it. I am glad I did.

Lewis slowly, but surely explains the hows and whys he found himself converted. He starts with a long (and slightly difficult to follow) discussion regarding the reasoning behind there being a God (opposed to many or none).Lewis sees something similar in the Christian understanding of God as “three persons.” He compares animals to one dimension, humans to two dimensions, and God to three dimensions. Animals understand only instinct and interact with humans as if we were similarly instinctual. They are incapable of comprehending our level of rationality. Humans, however, can understand animals, but we are incapable of really understanding the level of existence enjoyed by God. God is so beyond our level of existence that humans cannot really understand his “dimension.” Christ became human to help humans understand God better. The best way for humans to comprehend God’s level of existence is to speak of God as three persons, just as the square might speak of the cube as six squares. I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. 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, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” Petersen, William J.; Petersen, Randy (2000). 100 Christian Books That Changed the Century. Fleming H. Revell. ISBN 0-8007-5735-1.

Most people in Western culture would stop calling themselves Christians, and would either become one or become a real athiest. They would at least be standing for something instead of falling for anything. They are being asked to give up their very “self” as a sovereign entity, and to experience Christ living in them. “To become new men means losing what we now call ‘ourselves.’ Out of our selves, into Christ, we must go” (224). Elsewhere he writes, “This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else. . . . The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs” (199). We are being made into creatures who can obey the command, “Be ye perfect” (198). We are to be transformed “from being creatures of God to being Sons of God” (220). That is possible only by being “in Christ,” who is the first instance of this new humanity. So, there must be “a real giving up of the self” (226). Lewis is a product of his time. He claims refusing to fight in war is a sin, calls homosexuality a perversion, and jokes about why anyone would ever want a woman as a decision maker. What is it that makes C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity so lastingly compelling? While most books fade in popularity, Lewis’s apologetic volume has sold even better in the twenty-first century than it did when it was first published. In English alone, it has reached something like four million copies since 2001. It is still the favorite go-to book for those considering Christianity or having doubts about their faith. New York Times columnist David Brooks quipped that when he was contemplating commitment to Christianity, acquaintances sent him about three hundred books, “only a hundred of which were different copies of C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity.” A superb study of C. S. Lewis's greatest work. Marsden succeeds both in illuminating the success of Mere Christianity and enriching our own reading of this seminal work."—Alister McGrath, author of C. S. Lewis—A LifeKilby, 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. a b McGrath, Alister (11 July 2013). "My Top 5 Books by C. S. Lewis". Christianity Today . Retrieved 20 August 2022. Lewis’s view of salvation is derived from Plato’s myth of the cave, a recurring concept in both Lewis’s fiction and nonfiction. Heaven is a state of reality that exists beyond people’s comprehension. The goal of a spiritual life is to prepare the soul to face the raw power of that reality when the time comes. Christianity is unique because it is the only religion that has God stooping down to the human level to lift people up. Sources for Further Study

I write to ask whether you would be willing to help us in our work of religious broadcasting ... The microphone is a limiting, and rather irritating, instrument, but the quality of thinking and depth of conviction which I find in your book ought sure to be shared with a great many other people. [1] url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=9F082EFE-E9B0-4747-B9BE-4F05D533C932&.epub-sample.overdrive.com If Marsden's biography of Mere Christianity encourages his readers to read or reread it for themselves, it may in its own way be an antidote for the attention to self that so dominates our culture."—Gilbert Meilaender, Commonweal Mead, Marjorie Lamp (2007). " Letters to Malcolm: C. S. Lewis on Prayer". In Edwards, Bruce L. (ed.). C. S. Lewis: Life, Works, and Legacy. Vol.3: Apologist, Philosopher, and Theologian. Praeger Perspectives. pp.209–236. ISBN 978-0-275-99116-6.Welch suggested two potential subjects. Lewis responded with thanks and observed that modern literature, the first, did not suit him, choosing instead the Christian faith as Lewis understood it. [1] To understand Mere Christianity, one of C. S. Lewis’s most well-known apologetics, one must understand his audience. The work is a compilation of talks on Christian philosophy that Lewis gave to radio listeners between 1941 and 1944. Lewis is an accomplished scholar, but he is writing for a popular audience. Therefore, he leaves out a great deal of material that scholars would look for in a systematic theology; most notably, epistemology. The book takes for granted a commonsense attitude toward morality, reason, and the Bible. Many scholars criticize the book for oversimplifying some issues, but Lewis’s arguments are sound if one understands his views on literary criticism, history, and Socratic logic as expressed in his other works.

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