Mere Christianity is considered a classic work in the field of Apologetics, the defense of the belief in God in general and specifically in Christianity. Lewis, an Oxford Don is a master of language and uses his mastery of language and his understanding of human nature to construct a compelling argument in favor of Christianity. Like all good salesmen, he begins his argument with something that most people can accept and then builds on that idea in small steps until it reaches a grand conclusion: Jesus is God and Christianity is the only true religion. Lewis uses what he calls the Law or Rule about Right and Wrong or the Law of Human Nature to make a case for the existence of the God of theism followed by the Lewis Trilemma in an attempt to show that Jesus is divine.
The Law of Human Nature states that every person is born with some sense of what is right or wrong or fair or unfair, and everyone is born with it without the need to be taught it. This inherent feeling of what is fair is evident when observing young children. For example, if a mother cuts two slices of cake for her four-year old twins, she knows to be very precise assuring that each piece of cake is identical in size for any perceived difference will elicit howls of protest by the child with the “smaller” piece. Conscience then is that inner voice that makes people feel good when they do the right thing and feel bad when they do the wrong thing. The details of what is right or wrong may vary somewhat among different cultures, but there is universal agreement on many acts including murder, rape, and robbery.
The general form of Lewis’s argument is that anything that cannot be explained by natural laws must be the work of some supernatural force or deity. Darwin’s theory of evolution provides an answer that does not rely on a deity. Stated simply, having an “inborn” sense of right and wrong provides a survival value in as much as people tend to respond in kind, and what is done to others will be received back; kill a member of another group and there is a good chance they will kill a member of your group in retaliation. In other words, there is a survival advantage in having a conscience (a result of the Law of Human Nature) and a disadvantage in not having one such that over time the group of people with a conscience will dominate. This is not to say people will always do the right thing, but they will feel guilty if they do not.
John Bordley Rawls (1921 – 2002), an American moral and political philosopher provided another explanation for the Law of Human Nature; it came about after years of trial and error. He begins with the argument that “the most reasonable principles of justice are those everyone would accept and agree to from a fair position” and that these principles were developed over thousands of years of experience of trial and error. For example, over time man learned that killing your neighbor was not a good idea for a host of reasons and it became part of the moral culture without the need of any supernatural deity.
Lewis followed his argument for the existence of the God of theism with his famous Trilemma as a “proof” that Jesus is divine. The Lewis Trilemma asserts that there are three possibilities concerning Jesus’ claim of divinity. It is sometimes described as the “Lunatic, Liar, or Lord”, or “Mad, Bad, or God” argument. In his words,
“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something else.”
Since Jesus obviously was not a lunatic or the “Devil of Hell,” he must be the Son of God. Alister McGrath, the author of the Lewis biography CS Lewis: A Life and a great admirer of Lewis called it “a weak argument.” It is actually an invalid argument. First, it commits the Fallacy of False Choice by, restricting the reader to three choices when there are many others. For example, Jesus could have been simply mistaken or the Divinity of Christ could be an invention of the early Christian movement, seeking to glorify Jesus. Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said, “there could be a fourth option–legend.” Lewis himself described myths as “lies breathed through silver.” Second, Lewis never established his major premise, that Jesus claimed to be the “Son of God,” or what it meant in his time to be called the “Son of God.” As the holder of the chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, Lewis must have known that in Jesus’ time the “Son of God” was a title indicating a king and did not imply a filial relationship with God. In fact, Jesus referred to himself not as the “Son of God” but as the “Son of Man,” a title indicating a mere mortal. According to biblical scholar Reza Aslan in his 2013 book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, “The phrase ‘the “Son of Man”’ (ho huios tou anthropou in Greek) appears some eighty times in the New Testament, and only once in a positively operatic passage from the book of Acts, does it occur on the lips of anyone other than Jesus.” Therefore, the Lewis Trilemma fails logically and scripturally and cannot be accepted as a proof that Jesus was or claimed to be Divine.
It is interesting that Lewis does quote any scripture to support any of his arguments, but he does make a number of bold assertions without any authority. For example, he says that God is delaying “End Times” so that more people can be saved. At another point he asserts that “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exist.” This is a real whopper. After all “unsatisfied desires” form the foundation for economics and capitalism. One last example: He states that “Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have guessed. That's one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It's a religion you couldn't have guessed.” To the contrary, it is not necessary to guess that Christianity would happen because it was totally predictable based a host of earlier religions that contain all the major features of Christianity such as the virgin birth and resurrection. For example, various ancient Egyptian statues and writings tell of Horus, a creator sky God. He was worshiped thousands of years before the first century.
Theistic religious tradition (a belief in a personal God) attributes four characteristics to God: omniscience (all-knowing), omnipotence (all-powerful), omnibenevolence (all-loving), and omnipresence (present everywhere). The Greek Philosopher Epicurus (341 - 270 BCE) created what is called the Epicurean paradox as a way of demonstrating that these alleged characteristics of God are logically inconsistent. In his words:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
Others have pointed out that there is a contradiction between omniscience and “Free Will.” They argue if God knows everything that will happen in a man’s life, even before he is born, then that man cannot have “Free Will” because if any aspect of his life differed from God’s advanced knowledge, that would violate God’s omniscience. Moses Maimonides, the famous twelfth-century Rabbi, described the “paradox of free will” as follows:
“Does God know or does He not know that a certain individual will be good or bad? If thou sayest ‘He knows’, then it necessarily follows that man is compelled to act as God knew beforehand he would act, otherwise God's knowledge would be imperfect.”
C.S. Lewis make a rather awkward and illogical attempt to reconcile the “paradox of free will” by asserting that since God exists outside of time, he can view any point in time with any other point in time simultaneously. “What we call ‘tomorrow’ is visible to Him in just the same way as what call ‘today.’ All the days are ‘Now’ for Him.” Please note that this simply defines omniscience. He then states that “He does not ‘foresee’ you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him.” In his words, “And obviously to watch a man doing something is not to make him do it.” Obvious to whom? This argument requires accepting that ‘seeing’ into the futures is not the same thing as ‘foreseeing’ the future, and therefore cannot constitute a violation of “free will” or “omniscience.” His argument is unworthy of a man with his education and command of language.
Peter Schuck in his book, Why Government Fails So Often argues that while the self-interest hypothesis explains everything, it predicts nothing. The alleged God “hypothesis” also explains everything while predicting nothing. While Pierre-Simon de Laplace (1749 - 1827), the famous French mathematician was presenting his definitive work on the properties of the solar system, Napoleon interrupted and asked, if it was true that there was no mention of the God in his opus magus? Laplace replied, “I had no need of that hypothesis.” Joseph Lagrange (1736 – 1813), another great French responded to Laplace’s comment to Napoleon by saying, “Ah, it is a fine hypothesis; it explains many things.” Laplace’s reply was, “This hypothesis, Sir, explains in fact everything, but does not permit to predict anything. As a scholar, I must provide you with works permitting predictions. This [the God hypothesis] is the ultimate insult in science: it explains everything but predicts nothing.” Although Christianity is not a valid scientific hypothesis for the reason all ready stated, prophecy is certainly a prediction and the Bible contains many failed prophecies. For example Mark (9:1) quotes Jesus saying “There are some of you standing here who will not taste death until you see the kingdom of God come in power.” Careful reading of the New Testaments indicates an evolutionary-like moving away from an earthly Kingdom of God to a celestial one in the hereafter because of the failure of Jesus returning to earth while some of his disciples were still living.
Stuart Chase (1888 – 1985), an American economist and social theorist said, “For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible.” It is equally true that the existence of a supernatural deity (theistic or deistic) cannot be proved or disproved. We can, however, use the same reasoning tools that we enlist to probe other life questions to form a probabilistic view as to the existence and nature of the God. This view can range from a “stone cold” atheist to Carl Jung’s statement, “I don’t believe, I know.” Mere Christianity might boost the confidence of believers, but is unlikely to convince many non-theists.
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