Mere Christianity - Preface

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

C.S.Lewis. Mere christianity

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     1943
     Scan and OCR by Copper Kettle aka T.A.G, 2003-12-21. Yekaterinburg.
     Corrected: vladioan

     Spellcheck: Andrew B Robertson, 07.01.2005
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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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://lib.ru/LEWISCL/mere_engl.txt 

http://www.comnett.net/~rex/cslewis.htm

http://graceofgodlutheran.com/index_files/page0019.htm

http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-mere-christianity