Report on Mere Christianity

Apologetics

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Koraima Figueroa

Apologetics

Mr. Bermender

November 14, 2010

Report on Mere Christianity

Mere Christianity is a book that defends Christianity by building a logical foundation for belief and constructing an entire theology upon that foundation. He begins with the idea of the Natural Law, which according to him, must exist. He explains how we as humans didn’t invent it, but humans respond to it and cannot escape its influences. Also, he proposes that God must exist, and that this God must be made up of three parts: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. He states that love comes from the relationship between the Father and the Son. Throughout his book he argues how the Holy Spirit is an instrument for the divine love, and how the Son has the responsibility to bring as many human souls to the Father as possible. Therefore the son, Jesus, sacrificed for us while preaching the word of the Lord here on earth. Lewis describes what a Christian believes and how a Christian should behave.

We as Christians believe in some many different things that turn us away from God. Sometimes the fact that we hear that God created everything on earth, puzzle us into thinking that God also created evil. What we don’t know is that he also gave us free will and therefore humans crated evil. This connects to the first book in Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis lays that there exists a notion of right and wrong that is universal, which is the Law of Nature. All cultures everywhere agree that this Law of Nature exists, but that it has some differences on each place. One example Lewis uses is marriage. Some cultures allow a single man to marry multiple women, but under the Law of Nature, no man can have an unlimited number of women whom he desires.

Another argument in favor of the Law of Nature involves how very strange a culture would be if it went against the Law. Lewis suggests that a culture valuing cowardliness over courage would be very strange, as would one valuing lying and cheating. This is a great example on how we as humans are capable of knowing the difference between good and evil or someone being loyal to his/her significant other and cheating and that significant other. In this first book Lewis shows different topics related to the knowledge that we have regarding right and wrong. But the first chapter is the one that stand out to me the most.

On the second book Lewis talks about how Christians are free to think that all other religions contain at least some hint of the truth, which is finding God or finding someone who they consider to be a leader or some kind of goddess. Lewis observes that the greatest division on the God issue is whether people believe God exists or not. The majority of humans believe in the existence of one or more forms of goddess. He even talks about the time when he was an atheist, but after accepting the existence of God, he discovered a form of liberalism which allowed all religions to have some truth to them, rather than trying to demonstrate that all religions are wrong in their promotion of spiritualism. In the second chapter of this book Lewis points out that God created something that turned bad. Actually, two things: the devil and humankind. This leads to the chapter of “The Shocking Alternative”. In this section Lewis argues that all humankind has free will because God decided that free will is necessary in order for His creations to love Him in any meaningful way. The risk is that evil might develop, as Lewis declares, and so God allows the risk in the hope that love will also develop. So as we can see, God is not a selfish person who just cares about himself and us loving him. He cares about giving us free will and making us think and choose whether we want to follow him in the right pathway or keep on acting wrong by following the pathway of evilness.

In the third book and first chapter Lewis talks about morality which is made up of three parts. The first part is the relationships between human and human, the part of morality that most people think about. The second is the inner human, which means that an individual cares about himself only. Lewis sets up an example to this response where he compares it to an ocean-going ship and how well the engines run, the steering gears work, and everything which makes the craft seaworthy. The third part of morality consists of the relationship between a human and the power that made the human. The rest of this book talks about morality in different aspects and it gives u an overview of all the morality types there are and what each consists of.

Finally, the fourth book introduces us to the difference between makings and begetting, begetting is being born of the same kind, but making is the creation of something after the birth. Thus, according to one of the example that Lewis gave, a bird begets an egg in a nest that turns into a chick. The chick matures and creates its own nest, and so it goes throughout sexual reproduction in the natural world. Lewis compares this to how God begat Jesus Christ before creating the universe. Especially absent from this image is how some creatures in nature do not beget by sexual reproduction. They split into two identical beings or produce little clones of themselves which grown-up into identical ones. On the other side making as Lewis explained, is basically like us being created in God's image, which does not mean we look like God. Or when we speak of “likeness”, we speak of sculptures