A Study Guide to C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity

Peter J. Schakel, Hope College

This essay offers introductions, outlines, discussion questions for individual reading or group discussions of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, which has come to be regarded as a classic work of conservative Christian apologetics. It will show that a study of Mere Christianity could well be combined with a study of the Epistle to the Romans: Lewis’s book is not a commentary on Romans, but it does discuss and illuminate some central themes of that Epistle.

Because Mere Christianity exists in multiple editions, quotations are cited by Book, chapter, and paragraph number.

Background

The original setting of Mere Christianity was some of the darkest days of World War II. London was bombed every night from September 7, 1940 to November 2, 1940. On the night of November 14^th, 30,000 incendiaries and 500 tons of bombs and landmines dropped on Coventry. It was a time of blackouts, bomb shelters, shortages, and rationing—and a time of personal searching, wondering, and questioning.

About this time C. S. Lewis, a Fellow in English at Oxford University, was just becoming known in Christian circles in England. He had written and published The Pilgrim’s Regress in 1933 (but it was hardly noticed), Out of the Silent Planet in 1938 (it was more successful), and The Problem of Pain in 1940 (it was not a best seller).

Within the next year, Lewis became better known. In May 1941 a weekly religious magazine, The Guardian, began serial publication of “The Screwtape Letters”—one section per week. This work was so widely read that Lewis’s name became almost a household word.

The Problem of Pain came to the attention of James W. Welch, director of religious programming at the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). On February 7, 1941, Dr. Welch wrote to Lewis, asking whether he “would be willing to help us in our work of religious broadcasting.” Welch suggested a series on Christianity and Literature, or “a series of talks on something like ‘The Christian Faith As I See It—by A Layman’: I am sure there is need of a positive restatement of Christian doctrines in lay language” (quoted in C.S. Lewis: A Biography, by Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper, p. 201).

Lewis replied that he would like to give such a series of talks, but it would have to be during the summer holidays (he was too busy during the school terms), and he would prefer the subject of a layman’s approach to Christianity.

It was agreed that Lewis would give four talks running fifteen minutes each. He took the train to London each Wednesday in August 1941 and delivered the talks, live, from 7:45 to 8:00 p.m. The number of letters received in response to these talks was so great that Lewis was given an additional 15 minutes on September 6 for a talk on “Answer to Listeners’ Questions.”

Because this series was so well received, he was asked to do a follow-up series a few months later. This series was broadcast on five Sunday afternoons in January and February 1942 from 4:45 to 5:00 p.m.

These two series of talks (the first on “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe,” the second on “What Christians Believe”) were published in July 1942 as a slender volume entitled Broadcast Talks (the American edition, published in September 1943, was called The Case for Christianity).

Lewis did a third series of talks in the summer of 1942—eight talks on Sunday afternoons in September and October from 2:50 to 3:05. These, with some supplementary materials, were published in 1943 as Christian Behaviour.

And he did a fourth series in 1944: seven fifteen-minute talks which were prerecorded and played on the air in February and March. They were published later in the year as Beyond Personality: The Christian Idea of God. Unfortunately, the recordings of these talks were later destroyed by the BBC.

About a decade later, these four series of radio talks (these three slim books) were revised slightly and combined into Mere Christianity, published in 1952. Since then it has sold hundreds of thousands of copies and influenced countless lives.

Introduction

Lewis explains on page 6 that “mere” does not mean “nothing more than.” The word as he is using it traces back to its Latin root, meaning “pure” or “unmixed.” “Mere” Christianity is the core of essential, basic beliefs common to all Christian traditions and groups.

He explains his purpose for the talks on p. 6: “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.”

If his primary intended audience is “unbelievers,” his purpose must be evangelical. Seeing his purpose that way helps clarify the meaning and tone of Books I and II.

The tent-style evangelist begins by arousing, usually by appeals to the emotions, a sense of guilt (over the mess one has made of life) or of fear (of the torments of hell). Lewis would not have approved of the latter—he did not think people should become Christians from fear of punishment, or from hope of reward: only from love of and desire for God and His goodness.

But Lewis did not object to emotional appeals. He did not use them himself, because he didn't have the ability to. But those who did, he said, should use them with all their might (see God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper, p. 99).

And he did not object to creating in people a sense or awareness of guilt. Indeed, that is a central purpose in Book I of Mere Christianity. As Lewis wrote in his reply to Mr. Welch in 1941, twentieth-century people have on the whole lost a sense of sin and guilt; therefore, they believe Christianity has nothing to say to or offer them.

A few years later he made the same point in a lecture to clergy and youth leaders. Among the difficulties that the contemporary evangelist faces in trying to convert unbelievers is the absence of a sense of sin: “The early Christian preachers could assume in their hearers, whether Jews . . . or Pagans, a sense of guilt. . . . Thus the Christian message was in those days unmistakably the Evangelium, the Good News. It promised healing to those who knew they were sick. We have to convince our hearers of the unwelcome diagnosis before we can expect them to welcome the news of the remedy” (God in the Dock, p. 244).

Lewis’s primary purpose in Book I of Mere Christianity is to convince people of their guilt and their need for a remedy for that guilt—he does so, however, not by emotional means but by logical, intellectual ones, as he sets up an argument (or a logical “case”) for the presence of wrongdoing and guilt in people’s lives.

A secondary, closely related purpose in Book I is to offer a moral proof for the existence of God. The two purposes were related in Lewis’s life. Lewis’s conversion, or reconversion, to Christianity in 1931 was due in part to the influence of several friends who were, or were becoming Christians, and in part to longings which he eventually recognized as a longing for God. But it was also due in part to Lewis’s study of philosophy, which convinced him of the existence of a moral law, and thus of a Lawgiver. Parts I and II of Mere Christianity contain, perhaps unintentionally, an account of the process by which Lewis found his way to a mature belief in God and, subsequently, to Christianity.

Book I

In his letter to Mr. Welch about the first series of radio talks, Lewis wrote, “I think what I mainly want to talk about is the Law of Nature, or objective right and wrong” (C. S. Lewis: A Biography, p. 202). What he meant and how it fits in might be clarified by viewing the first five talks as amplification of Romans 2:14-15 and 3:20 and 23:

When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them . . . . For no human being will be justified in [God’s] sight by works of the law, since through the law comes knowledge of sin . . . . All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Revised Standard Version)

Lewis believed, like Paul, that all people possess knowledge of right and wrong, and he used that as the starting point in his effort to awaken in his listeners an awareness of guilt and of a need for assistance. And, like Paul, he uses a logical, carefully organized, argument to convince listeners of the truth of what he believes. It may be a help to readers if we walk slowly through the steps of the “case” Lewis presents in Book I, since for most readers it is not, initially, as easy to follow as later parts of Mere Christianity and other works by Lewis.

Lewis begins with a semi-scientific method—observation and drawing conclusions from what is observed:

Every one has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kinds of things they say. They say things like this: “How’d you like it if anyone did the same to you?”—“That’s my seat, I was there first.” . . . People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups. (Book 1, chapter 1, paragraph 1))

From these observations, Lewis draws his initial conclusion and sets up the first point in his argument: that a universal moral sense, an agreed-upon standard of morality, runs throughout the human race.

It looks, in fact, very much as if [in such quarrels] both parties [have] in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have. (1.1.2)

It must be made clear that Lewis did not mean by “Law or Rule” specific laws and rules to govern every society—these of course do vary, especially sexual mores, marriage practices, even approval or disapproval of killing (some societies approve of cannibalism, others not). The point is that beneath the variable rules of societies are principles which are recognizably similar: such principles as fairness, loyalty, unselfishness, and respect for life (for example, where cannibalism is practiced, it will be against those who are not in one’s own tribe and thus who are not really defined as “people”).

Lewis puts it this way:

Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to—whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. (1.1.7)

Such principles, or standards of right and wrong, are his concern. And he believes we all know them: we know right from wrong, what we ought to do from what we ought not to do.

We know it, but not because of instinct—these standards are something bigger and deeper than instincts or social conventions. They are something learned from parents, family, and society, but not because society invented them. They are independent of, outside of, human beings—they exist on their own as objective, universal moral truth. They are real, but are not real in the way facts of human experience are real. They are truths, not facts (1.3.6). Though we know what is right and wrong, we often fail to do the right. We know that we regularly do not obey the moral directives within us (1.1.9).

If there is such a truth, such a moral law above and beyond the facts of human behavior, it either came into existence by chance, or it was made. If it was made, there must be something behind the law greater than it is, yet in sympathy with what it demands and embodies, a “law-giver” behind the law. In that case, this “law-giver” would not be observable in nature, which is not under the moral law, but would be observable only within human beings, “as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourselves” (1.4.4).

The existence of the moral law and a moral sense within us, thus, provides for Lewis a key argument for the existence of a god. This god is not necessarily the God of Christianity (merciful, loving, willing to forgive); that God we must come to know in other ways. It only affirms the existence of a personality behind the law who made the law and must be in sympathy with it. And what we can know about that god from the moral law should give us cause for concern: “There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails. It tells you to do the straight thing and it does not seem to care how painful, or dangerous, or difficult it is to do” (1.5.3). Therefore, as Lewis put it in the title of chapter five, “We Have Cause to Be Uneasy.” Whoever and whatever that god is, he is interested in right conduct of a sort we do not consistently perform in our lives:

If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. (1.5.3)

Thus Lewis makes his readers aware of sin and guilt. By observation and logic, he has come to the same point other evangelists arrive at through emotion. In his letter to Mr. Welch he wrote that “most apologetic begins a stage too far on. The first step is to create, or recover, the sense of

guilt.” To that point he returns as he summarizes the central points of Part I:

Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness. It is after you have realised that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power—it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk. (1.5.4)

He has, thus, laid the necessary foundation required for Book II, the second series of radio talks, on “What Christians Believe.”

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Questions for reflection or discussion:

1) Is Lewis right that a universal moral sense does exist and is evident in all societies? Has modern sociological research disproved it? Is modern assertion of relativism in values more valid?

2) Lewis says his main audience is unbelievers—is the book most effective with unbelievers? Or does his approach appeal more to former believers—or to present believers, by supplying an intellectual base for beliefs they have already accepted with their hearts? Would this book be your choice to give to an unbeliever?

3) Is Lewis’s proof for the existence of a god as compelling as he believes? If a universal moral law like the one he describes does exist, can one conclude that there was a personal creator of that law? Or is a leap of faith involved even in getting from law to a “law-giver”?

4) Is Lewis really closer to the Christian God than he admits in 1.4.5 and 1.5.3? Does he make unstated Christian assumptions even as he claims not to?

Book II

In Book I Lewis laid the groundwork for evangelism: there he attempted to convince readers of the existence of moral law, and of the difficulty all humans face because they fail to obey that law perfectly. Book II builds on that foundation by clarifying what Christians believe is the answer to the dilemma presented in Book I.

Book II might well be understood as discussing the themes of Romans 3: 24-26, where Paul discusses the nature of God’s saving act in Christ:

They are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus.

Book II is a review of basic Christian beliefs or doctrines, especially those concerning the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is less tightly logical and subtly argued than Book I, and thus easier to read and follow. Its substance can be conveyed adequately by an outline of the most important topics dealt with, rather than the detailed analysis provided for Book I:

1) The Nature of God:

--His goodness, or righteousness (2.1.3)

--His creative activity (2.1.4)

2) The Need for Justification:

--The nature of evil (2.2.9)

--Free will (2.3.3) and the fall (2.3.6)

3) The Divinity of Christ:

--God’s revelation of Himself through conscience, myths, and the Old Testament, but most fully through Christ (2.3.9)

--Argument by dilemma: “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse” (2.3.13)

4) Christ’s Redemptive Activity:

--The nature of Christ’s sacrifice (2.4.3)

--Christ’s substitution as payment of a debt, rather than punishment (2.4.6)

5) The Human Response:

--Repentance (2.4.7)

--Belief and use of the sacraments (2.5.3-7).

Thus, what Lewis provides in Book II is a conventional, orthodox Christology, but stated in a fresh way. He endeavored to put into elemental terms, free from theological jargon, such concepts from Romans 3 as Justification, Redemption, Expiation, and Grace, and he seems to have conveyed such concepts to lay people clearly and successfully.

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Questions for reflection or discussion:

1) Lewis based one of his stories, Perelandra, on the belief that one does not need to know Evil in order to know Good. Do you agree with him? How does the account of the Fall in Genesis 3 treat this issue—does it support Lewis or undercut him? How does his question (in 2.1.6) about where his ideas of just and unjust come from fit in?

2) Lewis says in 2.3.5, “The better stuff a creature is made of—the cleverer and stronger and freer it is—then the better it will be if it goes right, but also the worse it will be if it goes wrong.” Discuss the validity and implications of that statement. (That idea becomes a central point in Lewis’s satiric essay “Screwtape Proposes a Toast.”)

3) In 2.3.6-8 Lewis offers a brief overview of human history. Discuss its accuracy and adequacy.

4) On 2.3.9 Lewis says that God used pagan myths (Lewis labels them “good dreams”) as one means of communicating things about Himself to the human race. Do you agree with him? Try out a specific Greek or Roman or Norse myth to see how it might apply to Lewis’s theory.

5) Discuss the implications of the way, in 2.5.3-7, Lewis closely links use of the sacraments with belief. Can one believe without partaking of the sacraments? What would/do the sacraments add?

6) In 2.5.8 Lewis touches on the issue of whether virtuous pagans will be saved. Consider the soundness and implications of the position Lewis expresses here and compare it with Romans 2:14-16 and what Lewis says in 4.10.4.

Book III

Having described basic Christian beliefs, Lewis moves on to the practical implications of Christianity to daily life. Book III is on Christian ethics, or how should Christians live. This portion too can be viewed as an elaboration of some verses in Romans 12:

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in your hope. . . . Contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality.

Here again an outline can be helpful in grasping the structure and movement of the discussion.

1) Introduction (Ch. 1)

--Morality involves rules, not ideals

--The three parts of morality

relations between people (covered in Ch. 2-7)

relations within the individual (covered in Ch. 8-12)

relations with God (covered in Ch. 8-12)

- -Morality has eternal implications, not just for this life (see Ch. 4)

2) Relations between People (Ch. 2, 3, 5-7)

--The four Cardinal Virtues: ones important in all ethical systems, not just in Christian ethics (Ch. 2)

Prudence

Temperance

Justice

Fortitude

--Social Morality (Ch. 3)

a. Christianity depends on individuals to carry out social programs

b. The importance and demands of practical charity

--Sexual Morality: the virtue of chastity (Ch. 5)

--Christian Marriage (Ch. 6)

a. Its permanence

b. It involves justice (keeping a promise)

c. It involves the will, not just the feelings

--Forgiveness, especially loving one’s enemies (Ch. 7)

3) Relations within the Self and with God (Ch. 8-12)

--Pride: the greatest sin (Ch. 8)

--The three Christian Virtues

a. Charity: To love your neighbors, act as if you love them (Ch. 9)

b. Hope: The longing for heaven (Ch. 10)

c. Faith: Emotions will change, TRUST should not (Ch. 11-12)

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Questions for reflection or discussion:

1. Lewis directs his attention wholly to individual ethics. Does he neglect an important dimension of ethics by failing to raise questions involving group or corporate or national ethics? (For example, unfair treatment of employees or pollution of the environment by businesses; or

apartheid or brutality in war by nations.)

2. Consider and evaluate these positions, or suggestions, by Lewis:

--against charging interest on money (3.3.6)

--the extent to which one’s charity should go (3.3.7)

--the danger of desiring earthly security (3.3.7; see also 4.10.11)

--the importance of placing the will above feelings (3.5.8; 3.6.9; 3.9.10)

--endorsing moderate drinking (3.2.4; 3.6.14)

--advocating two types of marriage ceremonies, one for Christians, another for non-Christians (3.6.14)

--the husband as the head of the family (3.6.15-17)

3. Lewis’s defense of participation in war is based to a large extent on the ancient “just war” theory: it held that a war was just if it is used as a last resort, waged as a defense, especially of the helpless and innocent (not of economic interests), uses no more force than is essential, takes every effort to avoid civilian casualties, and offers a likelihood of a better situation afterward as a result of the war. Consider whether a just war is possible in a nuclear age, and, if not, whether Christians can support or participate in war today.

Book IV

In the final book, Lewis treats the completion of the Christian life, what St. Paul refers to as sanctification:

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life. . . . It is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. . . . Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 6:22, 8:16, 12:2)

Lewis summarizes his purpose about half way through the book: “I have been trying to describe facts—what God is and what He has done. Now I want to talk about practice—what do we do next?” (4.7.1)

Book IV, then, can be outlined as follows:

1) What God is:

--God is the maker of humankind (4.1.13-14): we are made by, not begotten of God

--God is beyond personality (4.2.2)

--God is three persons in one being (4.2.7)

--God is outside of time (4.3.3-11)

--God is active and dynamic: thus God reveals Himself (4.2.13-15) and draws us into Himself (4.4.9-10)

2) What God has done:

--God became human so that humanity, in at least one instance, had passed into the life of Christ (4.5.5)

--God suffered the death of self, as we must to be saved (4.5.5)

3) What we must do next:

--pretend to be like Christ (4.7.2)

--become, through God’s help, new people (4.7.10-13)

--“put on” Christ (4.8.1, 4-9)

--become perfect: God will be satisfied with nothing less (4.9.1-11)

--acquire a new personality (4.11.14-15)

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Questions for reflection or discussion:

1. Consider the implications of Lewis’s belief in Purgatory, implied in 4.9.4, where he talks of “whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death”; it is spelled out more fully in Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, Letter 20, where he says that though he is totally saved from sin and its effects by God’s grace, he would want to be cleansed of earthly dross before entering God’s pure and perfectly holy presence (as a prisoner held in a dungeon might be fully and freely pardoned by the king, but he would want to wash and shave before kissing the king’s hand in thanks).

2. Lewis held an Anglican view of salvation (the Christian life as a process, a “pilgrimage,” a “growing into” Christianity) rather than a view of salvation as a sudden experience of being “born again.” Notice how often he uses the metaphor of a “road” we are traveling (for example, 3.12.1 and 5 and 9; 4.2.9—implied also in 3.10.5; 3.12.7; 4.1.4). That comes out in the way ideas are discussed throughout Book 4. Consider which view is closer to your experience and to your theological beliefs.

3. Notice in Book 4 how Lewis begins to clarify his points through more use of comparisons, or analogies (theology to a map, the three-personed God to a cube, etc.).

4. Notice and consider one of Lewis’s few printed statements on politics, in 4.8.10: “The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life.” Is it an accurate and adequate position? Is it consistent with the statement on p. 182 that “we must try to produce a world where all have plenty to eat”? How does all this relate to the dilemma he describes in an essay entitled “Is Progress Possible?”: “We must give full weight to the claim that nothing but science, and science globally applied, and therefore unprecedented Government controls, can produce full bellies and medical care for the whole human race. . . . But in an increasingly planned society, how much of what I value can survive?” (God in the Dock, pp. 315, 314).