MERE CHRISTIANITY [Hardcover]

C. S. Lewis (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishing Company, Incorporated (1967)
• ASIN: B000JFWW6Q
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (727 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), known as Jack to his friends, was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably the most influential Christian writer of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. His major contributions in literary criticism, children's literature, fantasy literature, and popular theology brought him international renown and acclaim. Lewis and his good friend J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of the The Lord of the Rings, were part of the Inklings, an informal writers' club that met at a local pub to discuss story ideas. Lewis's fascination with fairy tales, myths, and ancient legends, coupled with inspiration drawn from his childhood, led him to write The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, one of the best-loved books of all time. Six further books followed to become the immensely popular The Chronicles of Narnia. The final title in the series, The Last Battle, won the Carnegie Medal, one of the highest marks of excellence in children's literature. His other distinguished and popular accomplishments include Out of the Silent Planet, The Four Loves, The Screwtape Letters, and Mere Christianity.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

788 of 826 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The defense of the faith, September 11, 2002

By 

Bowen Simmons (Sunnyvale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mere Christianity (Paperback)

In his "Preface to Paradise Lost", Lewis wrote the following:

"The first qualification for judging any piece of workmanship from a corkscrew to a cathedral is to know *what* it is - what it was intended to do and how it was meant to be used. After that has been discovered the temperance reformer may decide that the corkscrew was made for a bad purpose, and the communist may think the same about the cathedral. But such questions come later. The first thing is to understand the object before you: as long as you think the corkscrew was meant for opening tins or the cathedral for entertaining tourists you can say nothing to purpose about them."

This is a splendid piece of writing, but the idea presented is no way an original one - Plato and Aristotle said the same, said it clearly, and said it over two thousand years before Lewis did. If you had been able to confront Lewis with this fact, he might have said "Exactly."

This brings us to one of the great themes of Lewis's writing, evident nowhere more so than in "Mere Christianity": the defense of traditional wisdom against prejudice of our age that would reject it for no other reason than that it is traditional. Lewis often encountered those who complained that his ideas were old-fashioned, and his standard reply was that theirs would soon be as well, so in that they were equal. I admit I couldn't help but smile at the complaint by one Amazon reviewer that Lewis's ideas on sexuality were "decades old". The complaint is quite mistaken: the ideas are not decades old but thousands of years old.

And it is here that we have part of the answer to the problem of understanding the kind of thing "Mere Christianity" is: it is nothing new. It is in fact very, very old. What Lewis is defending is not his own personal belief system, but the Christianity that is the common heritage of mankind. The threat to it comes not from hard-core atheists, who receive the barest of notices from Lewis, but the general modern tendency to subject traditional Christianity to the death of a thousand cuts - discarding one ancient doctrine after another, on grounds often no better than mere chronological snobbery - that modern people aren't supposed to believe that kind of thing anymore

This is why Lewis, in what has been often described as the most important defense of Christianity in the twentieth century, spends a mere fifteen pages in arguing for the existence of God. The important task is not to defend a vague theism, which is the position Lewis found from experience that his audience already believed, but to rebuild what little of traditional Christianity modernism has left them - some vague belief in "a higher power", and "some purpose to all of this" into that concrete set of specific beliefs that are the historical core of Christianity.

While the defense of historical Christianity is one part of understanding what "Mere Christianity" is, the other part is that it is intended to be accessible to anyone. This requires that Lewis be both clear and brief - a combination brutally difficult to achieve, as any writer who has attempted it will attest.

Lewis's success in this can be measured in two ways: first, that his work has indeed found a very wide readership - millions of have read it; second, his work is often recommended by those whose knowledge of traditional Christian theology is broad and deep. The size of the readership attests to the accessibility of the work, and the expert recommendations attest to the accuracy of its message.

There is one other thing that is important to note about Lewis's success: Lewis could afford to be brief because what he was explaining was not his own theology, but our common intellectual inheritance. The reader who is dissatisfied with the depth of this or that point in "Mere Christianity" will have no difficulty in finding sources that go into the same thing in much greater detail. Calvin wrote line-by-line commentaries on all of scripture. Thomas Aquinas's "Summa Theologica" is over 6,000 pages long. The collected works of Augustine fill more than 40 volumes.

So, to return to the question with which this review began: what kind of thing is "Mere Christianity"? The answer is that it is a brief exposition of traditional Christianity for a modern audience. In the sixty years since it was published, the nature of the modernist challenge to Christianity has not substantially changed, nor has a clearer, more accessible response to that challenge yet been written. Some have complained that the work has "gaps" or that it skims over this or that point, but that is a complaint that fails to understand what kind of thing this is. What they are asking for, whether they know it or not, is a completely different book. Properly evaluated, on the basis of the kind of thing it is, it is trivially easy to give the highest recommendation to "Mere Christianity": it is on a topic of the greatest possible importance and the presentation is outstanding.

121 of 124 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must have for Christian thinkers, February 16, 2003

By 

bixodoido (Utah, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: C. S. Lewis Signature Classics: Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, A Grief Observed, The Problem of Pain, Miracles, and The Great Divorce (Boxed Set) (Paperback)

CS Lewis is one of the great modern Christian writers. His writings are non-denominational, and can be appreciated by people of any faith. This box set contains some (though not all!) of his best work.

'Mere Christianity' is a great introduction to Lewis's way of thinking. Originally a series of radio addresses, this work details why Lewis is a Christian, and presents a case for Christianity that is compelling, to say the least.

'The Screwtape Letters' is my personal favorite. It is fiction, written from the unique point of view of a master devil named Screwtape. The master is trying to teach his nephew how to win souls for the devil through temptation. This one will definitely change the way you look at sin.

'The Problem of Pain.' -- what is pain? Well, Lewis tackles this subject here, and argues that God gives us pain because he loves us, and in order to mold us to his will.

'A Grief Observed' is a very intimate work, written after Lewis's wife died. It is, quite simply, a very honest and unique look at grieving, which shows this master Christian apologist, who seems to always have all the answers, vulnerable and without a solution.

'The Great Divorce' is Lewis's 'Divine Comedy.' This is a great look at Heaven and Hell, and presents the very compelling idea that people will go to Hell, not because they are forced to, but because they simply won't tolerate Heaven.

'Miracles' examines the question "can miracles occur?" For Lewis, the answer is yes, and this book shows how the Creator of Nature and mankind can work miracles without interrupting the 'natural' flow of things.

Buying these books together in a set is a good way to get these six classics at a great price. This is a wonderful starting point for anyone interested in Christian theology. No one interested in Christian thinker should be without these masterpieces by CS Lewis.

256 of 275 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Simplistic View of A Complex Subject, November 1, 2001

By 

B. Stubblefield (GA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mere Christianity (Paperback)

After reading several books on a similar topic that did nothing but confuse me, I was glad that I came upon C.S. Lewis's work. All of the other books about the existence of God are way off in their own world, and discourage anyone who feels lost in their ideas about God. This book really explained the reasons that God must exist, and then moved on to easily describe the major beliefs of Christians, without leaving anyone out in the cold on what the key issues actually are. This book is perfect for the agnostic, the atheist, and even the Christian that wants to know the logical and simple reasons that C.S. Lewis came to be a Christian. Over and over, his words made me see even the simplest concepts of religion in a completely new light. I was greatly impressed and have already read this book multiple times.