Podcast - The Apologist: C.S. Lewis, Part 4

This work originally began with independent broadcasts by Lewis over the BBC as a way for people to think and talk about religion. The network was skeptical it would ever gain traction and was concerned it might do more harm than good. They were proven wrong and eventually the broadcast got moved to more popular timeslots. Lewis’ broadcasts were eventually put into book form and titled Mere Christianity. 

These broadcasts were grouped into four major sections: 

This is a laymen’s common-sense approach to Christianity. He first addresses the meaning of existence and origin, then moves into what Christians believe and how they behave as a result of their beliefs, which flows into answering questions about the Trinity. 

This is not an easy read, although the reasoning is easy to follow. Lewis was excellent at painting word pictures and metaphors to demonstrate his reasoning and conclusions.  

In his section on morality, Lewis makes a strong argument that human beings often know right from wrong intuitively, although they cannot explain why or how. Lewis asks the question (paraphrased), “If you instinctively know whether something is right or wrong, where did that sense come from?” 

Surprisingly. Lewis does not address much on Christ’s resurrection in this book (a criticism from NT Wright). This does not discount this book as an extremely valuable resource, but is something to be aware of. However, within this critique, it is important to ask “What was Lewis trying to do in this book? What is he doing as an apologist?”

He is not trying to do academic apologetics. He is not writing to a post-secular Christian world. In this time-period in Britain, many people had an idea of what Christianity was. He wrote to expound on Christian beliefs for the benefit of those who were leaning that direction or were newly converted. This work served as a guide to those individuals. 

Brittany Proffitt lives in Dallas and is a writer and content manager for So We Speak.