Category: Apologetics

Mere Christianity – Book II – Chapter 1 (“Rival Conceptions of God”)

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Book 2

We now begin the second Book of “Mere Christianity” which is entitled “What Christian’s Believe”. Previously I had been posting my notes as I read. Here are my notes for the first chapter of Book II:

Notes & Quotes

1. Christians can recognize the elements of truth in other religions

“If you are Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all those religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth”

2. Christians can still make absolute claims

“As in arithmetic – there is only one right answer to a sum…but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others”

3. Humanity may be divided first into two groups, the majority who believe in some kind of deity and a minority who do not. This group may be further subdivided into the kind of deity in which they believe:

(a) Pantheists

These believe that:

(i) God who is beyond good and evil

“…these people think that long before you got anywhere near the divine point of view the distinction [between good and evil] would have disappeared altogether…[This is] Pantheism. It was held by the great Prussian philosopher Hegel and, as far as I can understand them, by the Hindus.”

(ii) God and the universe almost the same thing

“Pantheists usually believe that God, so to speak, animates the universe as you animate your body: that the universe almost is God, so that if it did not exist He would not exist either, and anything you find in the universe is a part of God”

These two beliefs are connected:

“If you do not take the distinction between good an bad very seriously, then it is easy to say that anything you find in this world is a part of God”

(b) Non-Panthesists

These believe that:

(i) God who is ‘good’

“…a God who takes sides, who loves love and hates hatred, who wants us to behave in one way and not in another…[a view] held by Jews, Mohammadans and Christians”

The word “Mohammadans” is an old word used to describe Muslims (since they were followers of Mohammad).

(ii) God is distinct from His creation

“…God invented and made the universe – like a man making a picture or composing a tune. A painter is not a picture, and he does not die if his picture is destroyed”

These beliefs are connected:

“…if you think some things really bad, and God really good, then you cannot talk like that. You must believe that God is separate from the world and that some of the things we see in it are contrary to His will…a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on putting them right again”

4. The very question as to why there is evil in the world presupposes God

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line…I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that then my argument against God collapsed too – for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies”

Discussion Questions

1. Why does Jack say that when he became a Christian he adopted the more “liberal” view?

2. Is it possible to affirm the truth of other religions while still holding to the absolute truth claims of Christianity?

3. Can you think of any religion completely devoid of ALL truth?

4. Into what two central conceptions of God does Jack say people hold? Do you think we could divide it up in a different way?

5. In what way do these conceptions of God and our attitudes towards the Moral Law and the Universe relate to each other?

6. Why does the very question of asking about evil in the world presuppose the existence of God?

C.S. Lewis Doodle

(The video does work, honest!)

Early Christian Controversies that Protestantism Can’t Explain

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This past Friday, Joe Heschmeyer was on Catholic Answer Live, the audio of which is available here. Joe was talking about one of my favourite subjects, Church History. In particular he was talking about how many of the early controversies in the Church can’t really be explained from within a Protestant framework.

For example, in the Early Church there was a breakaway group in AD 311 called the Donatists. These were rigorists who insisted that the sacraments administered by clergy who had been compromised during persecution were invalid. This was a major issue within the Church of the Early Fourth Century…but it’s an argument that makes no sense within most Protestant frameworks.

If you are interested, the article where he draws out these ideas is available below:

Shamless

To go deep into history…

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CofECardinal Newman famously said that “…to go deep into history is to cease to be Protestant”. I couldn’t help but think of this quotation when a friend of mine sent me a screenshot of the Church of England Twitter account, remembering the “Reformation Martyrs” St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher. While I can appreciate the ecumenical good-will which no doubt motivated the tweet, the history of these two men renders this tweet exceptionally odd.

Both Sir Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher were Catholics who were executed by King Henry VIII. They were killed because they opposed the King’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon, his marriage to Anne Boleyn and the break from Rome which this remarriage necessitated. It is therefore more than a little strange for the Church of England to hold in high regard two men who shed their blood in opposing the creation of their own institution!

On a personal note, when I lived in London, the gym which I attended was very close to the location of their execution on Tower Hill, so I would quite often pray the Divine Office on that martyrdom site.

It has been said that shortly before Bishop Fisher’s execution, he opened St. John’s Gospel and read the following:

“Eternal life is this: to know You, the only true God, and Him Whom You have sent, Jesus Christ. I have given You glory on earth by finishing the work You gave me to do. Do You now, Father, give me glory at Your side”

– John 17:3-5

After closing the book, the good bishop commented “There is enough learning in that to last me the rest of my life”.  St. More and St. Fisher, pray for us.

 

Mere Christianity – Book I – Chapter 4 (“What lies behind the Law”)

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Book 1

Notes & Quotes

These are my notes from the penultimate chapter of Book 1 of “Mere Christianity”:

1. What is this universe and how did it come to be here? There are two (or three) main views on the subject (neither of which are new):

(a) The Materialist view

“…matter and space just happen to exist…[which] by some sort of fluke produced creates like ourselves who are able to think”

(b) The Religious View

“…which is behind the universe is more like a mind…conscious, and has purposes, and prefers one thing to another…”

2. Science can’t tell you which view is correct

“…why anything comes to be…and whether there is anything behind the things science observes – something of a different kind – this is not a scientific question”

3. We know more about mankind than the universe because we don’t simply observe mankind

“We do not merely observe men, we are men…we have, so to speak, inside information”

4. Since we are man, we know that we are under a moral law

“…men find themselves under a moral law, which they did not make, and cannot quite forget even when they try, and which they know they ought to obey”

5. If there a controlling power outside the universe it could not be inside the universe

“…no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall… The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way”

6. This doesn’t take us all the way to the Christian God

“All I have got to is a Something which is directly the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to do right… I think we have to assume it is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know – because…the only other thing we know is matter and you can hardly imagine a bit of matter giving instructions”

7. There was actually a third possible worldview regarding the universe, Life-Force philosophy

“…the small variations by which life on this planet ‘evolved’…were not due to chance but to the ‘striving’ or ‘purposiveness’ of a Life-Force”

(a) When we hear someone say this, we should ask whether this “life-force” has a mind:

(i) If yes, then it is really a god

(ii) If no, then how can something without a mind ‘strive’ and have ‘purposes’?

(b) This worldview is attractive

“…it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences…[the life-force] will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life-Force is a sort of tame God… All the thrills of religion and none of the cost.”

Discussion Questions

1. Lewis offers two fundamental views of the universe. What are they and how do they differ from each other?

2. Why can’t science help us decide which view is correct? Would this discount proofs for God such as the Kalaam Argument?

3. What extra information does Lewis say we have which can help us to point us to an answer?

C.S. Lewis Doodle

Mere Christianity – Book I – Chapter 3 (“The reality of the Law”)

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Book 1

Notes & Quotes

These are my notes for Chapter 3 of “Mere Christianity”. Here, Jack tries to penetrate the Law of Human Nature more deeply and explains why its presence and our disobedience to it is odd…

1. The fact that there is a Law of Human Nature and that we don’t always obey it is odd

(a) Some people questioned why he called it “odd”

(i) They said that it’s not odd, it only shows that humans are imperfect

(ii) …but Jack points out that the idea of something being imperfect is important

“…the very idea of something being imperfect, of its not being what it ought to be, has certain consequences”

(b) He asks whether, when you say that stones obey the Law of Gravity whether or not it’s the same thing as just saying what stones do. 

“The laws of nature, as applied to stones or trees, may only mean ‘what Nature, in fact, does'”

(c) However, the Law of Human Nature tells us something different and this is odd, it is prescriptive, not descriptive…

“…the Law of Human Nature tells you what human beings ought to do and do not. In other words, when you are dealing with humans, something else comes in above and beyond the actual facts. You have the facts (how men do behave) and you have something else (how they ought to behave)”

2. Some will try to explain away the oddness…

(a) …by saying that when someone doesn’t act rightly he is simply being inconvenient to you

“…we might try to make out that when you say a man ought not to act as he does, you only mean the same as when you say that a stone is the wrong shape [for your rockery]; namely, that what he is doing happens to be inconvenient to you”

(i) However, we can have two identical inconveniences yet blame one while we might not blame another.

“A man occupying the corner seat in the train because he got there first, and a man who slipped into it while my back was turned and removed my bag, are both equally inconvenient”

(ii) We can be angry even if we are not inconvenienced

“I am angry with a man who tries to trip me up even if he does not succeed”

(iii) We call some behaviour “bad” even if it is convenient to us!

“In war, each side may find a traitor on the other side very useful. But though they puse him and pay him they regard him as human vermin“

(iv) Our own “good” behaviour often is inconvenient!

“It means things like…doing school work honestly when it would be easy to cheat…staying in dangerous places when you would rather go somewhere safer, keeping promises you would rather not keep…”

(b) …by saying that “good” behaviour might not benefit us immediately, but benefits humanity as a whole

“…decent conduct does not mean what pays each particular person at a particular moment…it means what pays the human race as a whole”

(i) It is true that safety and happiness is dependent upon societal cooperation

“…[we] see that you cannot have any real safety or happiness expect in a society where every one plays fair, and it is because they see this that they try to behave decently”

(ii) However, it misses the point and results in circular reasoning:

Q. Why should we be unselfish?
A. For the good of society.
Q. Why should I care about society except where it affects me personally?
A. Because you ought to be unselfish

“If a man asked what was the point of playing football, it would not be much good saying ‘in order to score goals’, for trying to score goals is the game itself, not the reason for the game, and you would really only be saying that football is football – which is true, but not worth saying”

3. From all this we conclude that the Law of Human Nature is real and speaks to another kind of reality

“…the Law of Human Nature…[is] a thing that is really there, not made up by ourselves. And yet it is not a fact …in the same way as our actual behaviour is a fact. It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality…yet quite definitely real – a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us”

Discussion Questions

1. Since the Law of Nature is prescriptive, what does this tell us about the world?

C.S. Lewis Doogle

Mere Christianity – Book I – Chapter 2 (“Some Objections”)

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Book 1

Notes & Quotes

Here are my notes for Chapter 2 (Book 1) of Mere Christianity. In this chapter, Jack outlines objections which might be raised in response to his assertion that there is a Moral Law of which we all fall short…

Objection #1: “Isn’t what you call the Moral Law simply our herd instinct?

There is a difference between instinct and the Moral Law.

“…feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not”

The Moral Law judges between instincts.

“…[there is] a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts…cannot itself be either of them…it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two impulses…[and] often tells us to try to make the right impulse stronger”

No instinct dominates, every instinct has its place.

“The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys…[a piano] has not got two kinds of notes on it, the ‘right’ notes and the ‘wrong’ ones… There is none of our impulses which the Moral Law may not sometimes tell us to suppress, and none which it may not sometimes tell us to encourage”

Objection #2: “Isn’t what you call the Moral Law just a social convention, something that is put into us by education?”

Learning something doesn’t automatically make it a convention.

“…[this takes] for granted that if we have learned a thing from parents and teachers, then that thing must be merely a human invention. We all learned the multiplication table at school…but surely it does not follow that the multiplication table is simply a human convention…[which] might have made different if they had liked?”

Some things we learn are only convention, but others are not.

“…some of the things we learn are mere conventions…to keep to the left of the road…and others of them, like mathematics, are real truths. The question is to which class the Law of Human Nature belongs”

The Law of Human Nature is real truths:

1. It is universal

“…the differences are…not nearly so great as most people imagine…mere conventions…may differ to any extent”

2. We compare moralities, thinking one better than another

“We do believe that some moralities are better than others… The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other…real Right, independent of what people think”

Objection #3: “Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?”

There is a difference between belief about facts and morality.

“You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house”

In India they don’t eat cows. In America we do. The morality is the same (don’t eat your ancestors), but the understanding is different (cows are not your ancestors)

Discussion Questions

1. How does Jack make a distinction between the Law of Human Nature and heard instinct?

2. How does Jack distinguish between social convention and real truth, like Mathematics? Why might we think that the Law of Human Nature fall into the latter category?

C.S. Lewis Doodle

There’s no doodle for this chapter! 🙁

Mere Christianity – Book I – Chapter 1 (“The Law of Human Nature”)

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Book 1

Notes & Quotes

Here are my notes for the first chapter of Mere Christianity. In this chapter, Jack argues two main points:

1. There is a Law of Human Nature

“…the man who makes [these objections] is not merely saying that the other man’s behaviour does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about”

“Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football”

(a) The Law of Human Nature is the only one which we can choose to disobey

“a body could not choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a man could choose either to obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it… As a body [a man] is subjected to gravitation…if you leave him unsupported in mid-air, he has no more choice about falling than a stone has…but the law which is peculiar to human nature…is the one he can disobey if he chooses”

(b) You may still find a few people who don’t really know the Law of Human Nature

“…you might not find an odd individual here and there who did not know it, just as you find a few people who are colour-blind or have no ear for a tune”

(c) Differences in morality are not that great

“…some people say…different civilisations and different ages have had quite different moralities. But this is not true. There have been differences between their moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like a total difference”

“…think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in a battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well imagine a country where two and two made five”

(d) Those who deny a real Right and Wrong will accidentally betray themselves

“He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining ‘It’s not fair’ before you can say Jack Robinson”

We see the presence of the Moral Law more clearly in our reactions, rather than our actions.

2. We do not keep this Law 

(a) That doesn’t change the Law itself

“…people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table”

(b) Our excuses prove we do not keep the Law

“If we do not believe in decent behaviour, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently?”

(c) We demonstrate the Law by only make excuses for the bad things, not the good.

“…you notice that it is only for our bad behaviour that we find all these explanations. It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves”

Discussion Questions

1. What does Lewis argue we can we learn from the way people quarrel?

2. Why should we believe that the Law of Human Nature is real?

3. Do you think it’s true that we don’t live according to the Law of Human Nature?

C.S. Lewis Doodle

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