The Rival Conceptions of God—Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

Pantheism vs. Theism

C.S. Lewis explains, "I have been asked to tell you what Christians believe, and I am going to begin by telling you one thing that Christians do not need to believe. If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through.... When I was an atheist, I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view. But, of course, being a Christian does mean thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong. As in arithmetic, there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong, but some ... are ... nearer being right than others."

This second book within Mere Christianity Lewis handled with special care to make sure the whole book lives up to its title, explaining in his preface, "The danger clearly 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." This is indeed mere Christianity.

People who believe in God, says Lewis, "can be divided according to the sort of God they believe in. One ... is the idea that He is beyond good and evil.... These people would say that the wiser you become the less you would want to call anything bad or good.... It all depends on the point of view. The other and opposite idea is that God is quite definitely 'good' or 'righteous', a God who takes sides.... The first ... is called Pantheism.... The other view is held by Jews, [Muslims], and Christians."

Censorship Not Needed Here!

"Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, 'if you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realise that this also is God. The Christian replies, 'Don't talk damned nonsense.'" Lewis comments that one broadcast listener "complained of the word damned as frivolous swearing. But I mean exactly what I say—nonsense that is damned is under God's curse, and will (apart from God's grace) lead those who believe it to eternal death." Why such strong language? Because "Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world—that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colors and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God 'made up out of His head' as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on ... putting them right again....

"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z ... why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it?... In the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist ... that the whole of reality was senseless, I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely, my idea of justice—was full of sense. Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark." In the next chapter Lewis explains that religion is, in fact, God's "statement to us of certain quite unalterable facts about His own nature."

Highlights from chapter 1: The Rival Conceptions of God, book 2: What Christians Believe in Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.  Click here for a clear view of how this chapter relates to the whole book.

What Lies Behind the Law—Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

There Have Always Been 2 Views: The Religious and The Materialist

"Ever since men were able to think," begins C. S. Lewis,  "they have been wondering what this universe really is and how it came to be here.... Two views have been held. First the materialist view.... The other view is the religious view. According to it, what is behind the universe is more like a mind ... than anything else we know.... It is conscious ... has purposes, and prefers one thing to another.... Please do not think one of these views was held a long time ago and that the other has gradually taken its place. Wherever there have been thinking men, both views turn up. And note this too. You cannot find out which view is the right one by science....

Useful and Necessary

"Science works by experiments. It watches how things behave. Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated it looks, really means something like, 'I pointed the telescope to such and such a part in the sky at 2:20 a.m. on January 15th and saw so-and-so,' or 'I put some of this stuff in a pot and heated it to such-and-such a temperature and it did so-and-so.' Do not think I am saying anything against science: I am only saying what its job is ... and a very useful and necessary job it is too. But why anything comes to be there at all, and whether there is anything behind the things science observes—something of a different kind—this is not a scientific question. If there is 'Something Behind', then either it will have to remain altogether unknown to men or else make itself known in some different way. The statement that there is any such thing, and the statement that there is no such thing, are neither of them statements that science can make. And real scientists do not usually make them. It is usually the journalists and popular novelists who have picked up a few odds and ends of half-baked science ... who go in for them....

"Now the position would be quite hopeless but for this. There is one thing ... in the whole universe that we know more about than we could learn from external observation. That one thing is Man. We ... have ... inside information.... If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe—no more than an architect could actually be a wall or staircase.... We could expect it to show itself ... 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. Surely this ought to arouse our suspicions?   In the only case where you can expect to get an answer, the answer turns out to be Yes ... [to] a Power behind the facts, a Director, a Guide. I find that I do not exist on my own, that I am under a law; that somebody or something wants me to behave in a certain way.

"Do not think I am going faster than I really am. I am not yet within a hundred miles of the God of Christian theology. All I have got to is a Something that is directing the universe, and that appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong. I think we have to assume it is more like a mind ... because ... the only other thing we know is matter and you can hardly imagine a bit of matter giving instructions.... In the next chapter we shall see if we can find out anything more about it. But one word of warning. There has been a great deal of soft soap talked about God for the last hundred years. That is not what I am offering. You can cut all that out."

Who or What Is Operating Inside?

Highlights from chapter 4: What Lies Behind the Law, book 1: Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe in Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.  Click here for a clear view of how this chapter relates to the whole book.

Is "Decent Behavior" Basically Instinct?—Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

"The Moral Law tells us the tune...our instincts are merely the keys."

C.S. Lewis said these two facts are foundational to all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe:

1. Human beings all over the world have the unshakable notion that they ought to behave in a certain way.
2. None of us do, in fact, behave that way: we know the Rule of Decent Behavior; we break it.

"If they are the foundation," Lewis begins in Chapter 2 of Mere Christianity, "I had better stop to make that foundation firm before I go on. Some of the letters I have had show that a good many people find it difficult to understand just what this Law of Human Nature, or Moral Law, or Rule of Decent Behaviour is. For example... 'Isn't what you call the Moral Law simply our herd instinct and hasn't it been developed just like all our other instincts?' Now I do not deny that we may have a herd instinct: but that is not what I mean by the Moral Law.... Feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling ... you ought to help whether you want to or not....

"The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play; our instincts are merely the keys.... There are no such thing as good and bad impulses... .A piano ... has not got ...'right' notes and 'wrong' ones.  Every single not is right at one time and wrong at another.... The most dangerous thing you can do is take any one impulse ... and set it up as the thing...to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials 'for the sake of humanity', and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man....

Worth Reading

"We learn the Rule of Decent Behavior from parents and teachers, and friends and books, as we learn everything else. But some of the things we learn are mere conventions," such as what side of the road to drive on, "and others of them, like mathematics, are real truths. The question is to which class the Law of Human Nature belongs. There are two reasons for saying it belongs to the same class as mathematics. The first is ... that though there are differences between the moral ideas of one time or country and those of another, the differences are ... not nearly so great as most people imagine." Lewis mentions he devoted an appendix to citing the evidence for that fact in his book The Abolition of Man. In short, it is the reason you won't find people of any time or place exalting cowardice or treachery to friends.

The other reason for believing morality is like math is when you think about the differences between the morality of one people and another, "Do you think that the morality of one people is ever better or worse than that of another?.... Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better. If no set of moral ideas were any truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilized morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality. In fact, of course, we all do believe that some moralities are better than others.... If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something—some Real Morality—for them to be true about....

"One word before I end. I have met people who exaggerate the differences [between moralities] because they have not distinguished between differences of morality and ... belief about facts. For example, one man said to me, 'Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of ... Right Conduct?' But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that ... if we really thought that there were people ... who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him...to kill their neighbors or drive them mad...surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy [traitors] did?... You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house."

Highlights from chapter 2: Some Objections, book 1: Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe in Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Click here for a clear view of how this chapter relates to the whole book.