Mere Christianity was compiled, and expanded, from a series of radio lectures by C.S. Lewis. They have a conversational style, but they present some very deep and difficult ideas. In his introduction to the volume, Lewis describes how he took these lectures upon himself as a means of joining the battle for the souls of men. He looked around him, saw that the finer points of doctrinal and practical religion were being debated by men whose specialty lay in them, and decided “that part of the line where I thought I could serve best was also the part that seemed to be thinnest” —mere Christianity, an “agreed, or common, or central” Christianity. The finished product was satisfactory to ministers in traditions as various as Anglicanism, Presbyterianism, Methodism, and Roman Catholicism.
[...] But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown Discussion I would like to consider, in particular, the reason for the importance of theology that Lewis gives in the beginning of the fourth part of Mere Christianity. He gives this reason in the form of an analogy—one of his best. I would like to consider the objection he's addressing, the solution he offers, and the way we can apply his ideas to ourselves. His consideration of this objection to theology comes in a very appropriate place. [...]
[...] He is about to begin a discussion of Christ as begotten, not made, and although it's a very exciting idea, and he draws out some very exciting implications from it, it's the sort of thing that people in his day, and increasingly in our day, object to on the basis of its dogmatic, theological character. He describes an encounter with an old R.A.F. Officer who objected to a talk Lewis once gave by saying that he had no use for all “your neat little dogmas and formulas about because he had met him for real out in the desert one night. [...]
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