Reading the Classics: Mere Christianity

I’ve been reading along with Tim Challies in his Reading the Classics Together reading program. This week’s reading was Book 2 (What Christians Believe) from C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. This section has five chapters in which Lewis discusses some the common foundational beliefs of Christianity.

There’s no getting around Lewis’s skill as a writer and explainer of difficult concepts. There were places in this section, however, that had arguments that I thought were weak or unbiblical. In his post on this section, Tim Challies mentions the three bits that annoyed me the most. I’m short on time, so I’m only only going to make some brief remarks on Lewis’s idea that God gave us free will because that’s the only way we could have meaningful love.

As Lewis defines free will, it includes the possibility of going “either wrong or right.” And this sort of free will, says he, is “the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.” I know this is a commonly used argument—that God had to make human beings with the possibility that they would choose evil in order for their love to be real—but I don’t think it’s a very good argument.

In heaven, will our love for God be real? Will it be a love worth having? Of course it will.

Will there be the possibility that we might go wrong in heaven, or that we might not love God? Of course not!

If we will be able to love truly and meaningfully in heaven, where there will be no possibility that we can go wrong, then we know that it wasn’t necessary for God to allow for the possibiliy of going wrong in order for us to have the sort of love that’s worth having. He had to have another reason for allowing evil in our world.

Birth (5)

Hannah Giving Her Son Samuel to the Priest
Jan Victors

There was a certain man of Ramathaim-zophim of the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Elkanah…. He had two wives. The name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other, Peninnah. And Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.

Now this man used to go up year by year from his city to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts at Shiloh, where the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of the Lord. On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and daughters. But to Hannah he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the Lord had closed her womb. And her rival used to provoke her grievously to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb. So it went on year by year. As often as she went up to the house of the Lord, she used to provoke her. Therefore Hannah wept and would not eat. And Elkanah, her husband, said to her, “Hannah, why do you weep? And why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?”

After they had eaten and drunk in Shiloh, Hannah rose. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat beside the doorpost of the temple of the Lord. She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly. And she vowed a vow and said, “O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.”

As she continued praying before the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was speaking in her heart; only her lips moved, and her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli took her to be a drunken woman. And Eli said to her, “How long will you go on being drunk? Put your wine away from you.” But Hannah answered, “No, my lord, I am a woman troubled in spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for all along I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation.” Then Eli answered, “Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to him.” And she said, “Let your servant find favor in your eyes.” Then the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad.

They rose early in the morning and worshiped before the Lord; then they went back to their house at Ramah. And Elkanah knew Hannah his wife, and the Lord remembered her. And in due time Hannah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Samuel, for she said, “I have asked for him from the Lord.” (1 Samuel 1:1-20 ESV)

All the Fullness of Diety

I wrote this bit to go with this one. Like the one before it, it will probably change a whole lot as I tweak, tweak, tweak it over time, but it’s a start.

In the fullness of time, God sent forth his Son, and the Word who is from the beginning came into our history.  The eternal became temporal, and the Word who was with God, became God with us. In him, all the fullness of deity lived among us in a human body. Great indeed, is the mystery of our faith which we confess: God who is eternal spirit became God in flesh and blood.

According to God’s plan, as the centerpiece of his purpose and the turning point of history, God the Son emptied himself. God-with-God and God-equal-with-God made himself nothing, and he did it by adding rather than subtracting. The sovereign Lord—the one who created thrones and dominions and rulers and authorities, and who upholds them all by his powerful word—emptied himself by taking on the form of a servant. Great indeed, is the mystery of our faith which we confess: The Creator took on the likeness of his creatures.

It was for our salvation that the all powerful One became weak and the self-existent One became subject to death. To make us rich, the heir of all things became poor. To destroy the one who has the power of death, the radiance of the Father’s glory became like us in every respect. Great indeed, is the mystery of our faith which we confess: The Lord of glory veiled himself in humanity for our deliverance.

And in the inscrutable wisdom of God, the Son’s humanity veiled God’s glory, and yet, in that veiling, he showed God’s glory to us. Christ the man revealed by concealing and disclosed by covering, for in the incarnate Word we see God’s glory—“glory as of the only Son from the Father.” No one has seen God, but in the Son who is the image of the invisible God, we see what is unseen. The Light who comes from the Father’s side into our world has made him known to us. Great indeed, is the mystery of our faith which we confess: We see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

In the mystery of God’s will, according to his purpose, the honored Son humbled himself to suffer the shame of crucifixion; the one for whom and by whom all things exist died to free us from the fear of dying. Great indeed, is the mystery of our faith which we confess: From his fullness we have received the grace of Christ.

According to the unfathomable wisdom and knowledge of God, and from his unsearchable judgments, the word became flesh and changed everything.

To him be glory forever.