Mere Christianity - C. S. Lewis [0]
C. S. Lewis
A revised and amplified edition,
with a new introduction,
of the three books
Broadcast Talks,
Christian Behaviour
and
Beyond Personality
Contents
Preface
Foreword
Book 1. Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe
1 The Law of Human Nature
2 Some Objections
3 The Reality of the Law
4 What Lies Behind the Law
5 We have Cause to be Uneasy
Book 2. What Christians Believe
1 The Rival Conceptions of God
2 The Invasion
3 The Shocking Alternative
4 The Perfect Penitent
5 The Practical Conclusion
Book 3. Christian Behaviour
1 The Three Parts of Morality
2 The ‘Cardinal Virtues’
3 Social Morality
4 Morality and Psychoanalysis
5 Sexual Morality
6 Christian Marriage
7 Forgiveness
8 The Great Sin
9 Charity
10 Hope
11 Faith
12 Faith
Book 4. Beyond Personality: Or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity
1 Making and Begetting
2 The Three-Personal God
3 Time and Beyond Time
4 Good Infection
5 The Obstinate Toy Soldiers
6 Two Notes
7 Let’s Pretend
8 Is Christianity Hard or Easy?
9 Counting the Cost
10 Nice People or New Men
11 The New Men
About the Author
Other Books by C. S. Lewis
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
PREFACE
The contents of this book were first given on the air, and then published in three separate parts as Broadcast Talks (1942), Christian Behaviour (1943) and Beyond Personality (1944). In the printed versions I made a few additions to what I had said at the microphone, but otherwise left the text much as it had been. A ‘talk’ on the radio should, I think, be as like real talk as possible, and should not sound like an essay being read aloud. In my talks I had therefore used all the contractions and colloquialisms I ordinarily use in conversation. In the printed version I reproduced this, putting don’t and we’ve for do not and we have. And wherever, in the talks, I had made the importance of a word clear by the emphasis of my voice, I printed it in italics. I am now inclined to think that this was a mistake—an undesirable hybrid between the art of speaking and the art of writing. A talker ought to use variations of voice for emphasis because his medium naturally lends itself to that method: but a writer ought not to use italics for the same purpose. He has his own, different, means of bringing out the key words and ought to use them. In this edition I have expanded the contractions and replaced most of the italics by a recasting of the sentences in which they occurred: but without altering, I hope, the ‘popular’ or ‘familiar’ tone which I had all along intended. I have also added and deleted where I thought I understood any part of my subject better now than ten years ago or where I knew that the original version had been misunderstood by others.
The reader should be warned that I offer no help to anyone who is hesitating between two Christian ‘denominations’. You will not learn from me whether you ought to become an Anglican, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, or a Roman Catholic. This omission is intentional (even in the list I have just given the order is alphabetical). There is no mystery about my own position. I am a very ordinary layman of the Church of England, not especially ‘high’, nor especially ‘low’, nor especially anything else. But in this book I am not trying to convert anyone to my own position. Ever since I became a Christian I have thought that the best, perhaps the only, service I could do for my unbelieving neighbours was to explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times. I had more than one reason for thinking this. In the first place, the questions which divide Christians from one another often involve points of high Theology or even of ecclesiastical history, which ought never to be treated except by real experts. I should have been out of my depth in such waters: more in need of help myself than able to help others. And secondly, I think we must admit that the discussion of these disputed points has no tendency at all