Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
There are many legitimate responses one could have to C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. A non-Christian could take aim at the book’s assumptions regarding the redemption of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion being tied with Aristotelian ethics. A scoffing progressive could rebuke Mere Christianity’s thoughts on marriage, women, and human sexuality. And an existentialist could simply reject the book’s fundamental assumption that there is an essential aspect of good in each human being and pick apart his Christian beliefs of redemption and immortality
Being a non-Christian, progressive existentialist did not, however, prevent me from appreciating all the components of the book’s fundamental argument. Mere Christianity is a book much more important than my opinion of it or my attempts to argue with it. Whatever our presuppositions or biases, the central moral argument of Mere Christianity deserves serious consideration, as does the historical context within which this powerful and sophisticated argument arose. C.S. Lewis was a man who, among a highly intellectual circle of secular scholars positioned himself as a Christian Apologist and who, in the midst of the Battle of London and the spread of fascism, articulated, in absolute terms, the hope and individualism a Christian society provides.
This book was recommended to me by my Aunt Jai and is the first of only a few books on this list that I already owned and had been planning to read. (more…)
