Mere Christianity (C. S. Lewis Signature Classic)

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a b Tandy, Gary L. (2011–2012). "The Stylistic Achievement of Mere Christianity". Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal. 5/6: 127–152. eISSN 2694-4324. ISSN 1940-5537. JSTOR 48580493.

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 Life

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His most important point is that Christianity mandates that one "love your neighbour as yourself." He points out that all persons unconditionally love themselves. Even if one does not like oneself, one would still love oneself. Christians, he writes, must also apply this attitude to others, even if they do not like them. Lewis calls this one of the great secrets: when one acts as if he loves others, he will presently come to love them. a b Cootsona, Greg (20 February 2018). "5 Books That Bring Science and Christianity Together". Christianity Today . Retrieved 20 August 2022. 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] Ultimately, Lewis contends that the goal of Christianity is for the person, with Christ’s help, to expand “beyond personality,” to reach toward the level of existence enjoyed by God. This is achieved by allowing the Holy Spirit to guide the person’s actions and by using Christ as model and mediator. Christian Themes Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis’s eloquent and winsome defense of the Christian faith, originated as a series of BBC radio talks broadcast during the dark days of World War Two. Here is the story of the extraordinary life and afterlife of this influential and much-beloved book.

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.Meilaender, Gilbert. The Taste for the Other: The Social and Ethical Thought of C. S. Lewis. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1978. Covers Lewis’s social and ethical works, showing the interrelationship between his fiction and nonfiction. In 1939 Lewis published an essay on “ The Personal Heresy” in literary criticism. He argued that it was wrong to view a poem as about the poet’s state of mind. “The poet is not a man,” he wrote, “who asks me to look at him; he is a man who says ‘look at that’ and points; the more I follow the pointing of his finger the less I can possibly see of him” (14). Interestingly, while most Christian concepts of the Trinity emphasize the relationship of love, Lewis seems to emphasize a relationship of power or being. The Father shares power and wisdom with the Son through the Holy Spirit. The Christian, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the mediation of Christ, can participate in the Father’s power and wisdom through prayer. Morality is in that sense a means of self-discipline to handle God’s power properly.

The title comes from Lewis’s claim to abstract from the various denominations a kind of “pure” Christianity. Like a Puritan, Lewis believes that this “undiluted” Christianity would be as potent as merum, undiluted wine. However, like a Catholic, he relies heavily on tradition and dogmatism. In the years immediately following Lewis’s death in 1963, many predicted that his influence would soon dim. “No one will be reading C.S. Lewis twenty years from now”, a publisher told Peter Kreeft when he proposed a book on Lewis in the late 1960s. A few decades later, around the turn of the twenty-first century, the shift towards postmodernism was heralded (and dreaded) as a sure death knell to Lewis’s particular brand of affable, common-sense rationality. Yet by 2007 Christopher Hitchens was noting Lewis’ re-emergence as “the most popular Christian apologist” and “the main chosen propaganda vehicle for Christianity in our time.” The next third of the book explores the ethics resulting from Christian belief. He cites the four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. After touching on these, he goes into the three theological virtues: hope, faith, and charity. Lewis also explains morality as being composed of three layers: relationships between man and man, the motivations and attitudes of the man himself, and contrasting worldviews.This law was called the Law of nature because people thought that everyone knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it. They did not mean, of course, that you might not find an odd individual here and there who did not know it, just as you find a few people who are colour-blind or have no ear for a tune. But taking the race as a whole, they thought that the human idea of decent behaviour was obvious to everyone. And I believe they were right. If they were not, then all the things we said about the war were nonsense. What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practised? If they had had no notion of what we mean by right, then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have blamed them for that than for the colour of their hair. [3] Lewis also covers such topics as social relations and forgiveness, sexual ethics and the tenets of Christian marriage, and the relationship between morality and psychoanalysis. He also writes about the great sin: pride, which he argues to be the root cause of all evil and rebellion.