Mere Christianity

This book is pretty much the bottom line for what constitutes a competent Christian outlook. Influenced by the brilliant G. K. Chesterton, Lewis sets out to explain the core pan-denominational beliefs of a "mere Christianity"---the beliefs which any Christian would attest to. It is impressively comprehensive for such a short text, covering just about every debatable aspect of Christianity one could be concerned with without himself being a philosopher of religion---something which Lewis certainly cannot be confused with despite his valiant efforts and Enlightenment values. It is safe to say that, outside of his rather strained attempts to convey a triune model of God, Lewis succeeds in providing at least one semblance of an argument for just about all of his claims, typically in the form of a practical example or analogy. The book is wonderfully self-aware, anticipatory, and self-critical to an extent that makes the relatively harmless apologetics of someone like Lee Strobel sound like worst of Falwell's rants. However, it cannot be said to even rise to the level of Chesterton's Orthodoxy and its stunningly unbroken assaults on the assumptions of mainstream atheism; not that this is explicitly said to be the intention of either work.

Lewis will throw out an interesting metaphor here and there, but in general the reader is left with a sense of specious reasoning and possibly some sort of emotional manipulation or otherwise. Still, as I said before, Lewis is no philosopher, so one can only expect so much out of his aforementioned "reasoning". He still falls into the trap of straw-manning materialism in the same way that modern day Richard Dawkins is accused of distorting this "mere Christianity". There are few theologians who will dare to give materialism its fair due like Alvin Plantinga does in his Warranted Christian Belief, which probably provided some of the better critiques of Christian belief I've heard before refuting them with a single, powerful counterexample---something which Lewis fails to provide adequately even once.

But, as I said before, this is really less a work of argument than a work of summation or exegesis and one that is meant for the layman and the generally ignorant of Christianity. In that sense, he perhaps seems to pander a little too much in either regard, which ultimately reflects poorly on the whole work since it is probably the case that he ends up holding back more than he should have in order to not be too overwhelming.


As for this thread, I was hoping that we could use it as a place to discuss his claims in more detail than he does himself. Also, I am aware that there are currently, like, three religion based threads hanging around on the front page of the intermission section---all of which I post in an obscene amount of material---but maybe this can be a place to consolidate all of that "mumbo jumbo" as the vernacular currently holds.


Here are some links to the previous threads devoted to this same book which never really took off for some reason. And by "took off" I mean "caused a major flame war with lots of negative rep and temp bans".

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"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

The only G.K. Chesterton I ever read was The Man Who Was Thursday (a real whack job novel) and some of the Father Brown stories. Beware of your mailman.

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It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula

Yeah, I read the Father Brown series when I was a kid. Sort of a Catholic Sherlock Holmes.

Care to explain why yet another person is a "whack job"?