Jon - Preface, Chapter 1 27 September 2015

Doug,

I apologize for the late start on our second round of e-mails for our second book.  I am excited to read CS Lewis's mere Christianity. 

While reading these chapters, I am going to organize my thoughts this way:

1. Give a short summary of what I think Lewis is saying.

2. Talk about what impacted me, spoke to me, and what I found to be the best parts of the chapter.

3. Raise any questions or concerns I have about the chapter.

Preface.

1. Summary

The preface had several interesting points. The part that stood out most to me was Lewis’s metaphor of the hallway and the rooms. On Lewis’s account, the hallway is what he calls “mere Christianity”. Now he doesn't explain it too much in the preface, but he says that his definition of “Christian” is the original meaning found in Acts chapter 11 verse 26– essentially the disciples who accepted the teaching of the apostles.

He says that in the rooms are all the fine chairs and meals, but the hall is the place to wait in to try various doors and ultimately come to a decision about what room you want to enter. He says that even though the rooms may differ from one another, there are common rules for the whole house.

He seems especially concerned about making room for the fact that there are separate doors. Near the end of the preface he makes an attempt to give space to people to decide on a door - are these doctrines true, is there holiness here, does my conscience move me toward this door.  He also seems concerned about giving space to people who choose different doors. If they are wrong, then he notes that they need your prayers. If they are your enemies, then you are required by the rules of the house to pray for them.

2. Best Parts

One of the things I liked most about the preface was Lewis’s acknowledgment that he is limited in giving advice to people. It's always nice to read a book where the author, from the get-go, states that he understands the limitations of his knowledge and experience.  He says “I have had a great dislike of people who, themselves in ease and safety, issue exhortations to men in the front line… No man, I suppose, is tempted to every sin… I… do not feel myself qualified to give advice about permissible and impermissible [actions regarding that which I have not directly experienced.]”

3. Questions.

I do have some questions about the existence of what he calls “belief common to Christians at all times” and the rooms connected to the hallway.  Lewis obviously thinks the rooms are legitimately connected to the hallway, but he also believes only one of these rooms was for him. I'm not sure if he thinks there is one room that's true, or if there are different rooms that are equally appropriate depending on who you are.  I also have a question concerning the existence of the rooms. If the hallway represents the common belief among all Christians, and that hallway is good, why do you even need a room? Why is the hallway “not a place to live in..”?  If “mere Christianity” is what we find in Acts 11:26, why all the additional rooms?

But I also have a question concerning what he calls “belief common to Christians at all times.”  I am not sure there is a belief common to Christians at all times.  I am not sure the hallway actually exists.  Given the wide variety of Christian beliefs that existed even immediately after the death of Jesus, Lewis needs to do more to show there is a common core belief that all Christians held.  And if there is any thing that they all held in common, it's not clear that what they all believe counts as the most important doctrines of Christianity.  The Gnostic Christians, for example, certainly used the word Jesus, but their conception of who/what that meant was very different from, say, the Roman Christians.  He also says that these beliefs were common to Christians “at all times.” This makes it even harder to try to find common ground among Christians, especially given the wide variety of groups who call themselves Christian that have developed over its 2000 year plus existence.  Bottom line is, I am not sure you can actually claim there is a hallway (core beliefs) and I am not sure you can separate the rooms from the hallway.  I would need to see more reasons to agree that there actually is something called “mere Christianity.”

My version doesn't have a forward, so I just did chapter 1, the law of nature.  

Chapter 1

1. Summary

Lewis’ main points are summed up in the final paragraph of Chapter 1.  Based on Lewis’s observations, there are two facts about the universe:

One, humans hold the idea that they ought to behave in a certain way.  And two, humans don't behave the way they believe they should.  “They know the law of nature; they break it.”

He gets to these two conclusions by observing that when humans quarrel they always appeal to an external standard, they expect the other person to know about the standard, and they argue about what's right or wrong with regards to the standard. 

This standard is what Lewis calls “the law of human nature.”  It's a common morality that we all have.

He claims that we must all believe in a moral law because when we fail to keep it, we always make excuses to try to show that we did not actually break it.

2. Good Points

I really liked this chapter because Lewis is trying to develop an argument that any person can accept. He is using examples that many people can understand, and he is making basic arguments that don't require some sort of religious experience or pre-existing religious belief in order for them to make sense.  

In other words he is trying to show that a rational person can look at these facts, and come to the conclusion that a moral law exists.  I like Lewis’s angle because it's something we can all talk about, without getting into arguments about whether a specific religious experience/authority is trustworthy, reliable, or appropriate.  In other words he's engaging in a conversation that everyone can participate in, not just those who already agree with him.  This is a welcome relief to the usual way people argue about religion which involves the people bearing down and saying one of three things over and over again:

1.  that my sacred book is truer/wiser than yours

2.  that  my leader is better/closer to God than yours, or

3. that my religion produces real happiness while yours just produces false   happiness. 

All of these common ways of arguing about relgion, as I quickly learned during my mission in Mexico, never produce anything valuable and always create hostility instead of understanding.

So I really like how he is going about his discussion.

3. Questions/Concerns

However, the disadvantage of not arguing like people usually do about religion (i.e. bearing down against one another and just asserting things over and over again without actually listening to each other) is that it requires more work. 

My concern about chapter 1 is that it doesn't have enough reasons to fully agree with Lewis. 

His argument is what is known as an “inference to the best explanation.”

Basically, he describes something that happens, he looks at all the explanations for why something happens, and chooses the best explanation.

Lewis says that he observed people talking and arguing as if a moral law exists. He says that when we argue about these things, we all seem to know what this law is, and he further notes that we often go to lengths to show that we in fact are keeping the moral law while others are not.

One explanation for this is that a real moral law exists, that we as humans know it by our nature, and that we know we ought to follow it.  That is the explanation Lewis believes is the best.  His conclusion would be that a moral law exists.

But I am not sure his conclusion is clearly the best explanation for what he is describing. What he's saying is that because we all act and believe a certain way,  whatever we act and believe about must be true.  But this doesn't make a lot of sense. 

Consider a small example: suppose I'm camping with my friends in the cave and we hear something in the cave at night. We also all happen to come from a village where superstition is rampant.  We would all believe that the noise in the cave could be some monster was sent to torment us because we didn't do something right.  We would talk about the monster we would even reason about what we should do considering the fact that we believe the monster is real. But just because we think something and act as if something is true doesn't necessarily make it true in the real world.  The conclusion, there must be a monster clearly isn’t the best explanation for why my friends and I were acting and behaving a certain way.

The same could be said about a moral law. To be clear I am not saying a moral law does not exist. But I am saying the mere observation that people talk and act as if one exists is not a good reason to believe a moral law does exist.

There are other explanations for why people might talk and act this way. He tries to address these other reasons in chapter 2, so I will save my discussion of those other reasons for chapter 2.