About this title: This text by the beloved British author considers essential themes of Christianity, across all denominations. The volume combines three books--"The Case for Christianity", "Christian Behaviour", and "Beyond Personality"--which resulted from a series of radio broadcasts that Lewis conducted in England in the 1940s.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Scribner Paper Fiction
Date Published: 1986
ISBN-13:9780020869405ISBN:0020869401
Description: Good. A copy that has been read, but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (including dustcover, if applicable). The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "from the library of" labels. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Scribner Paper Fiction
Date Published: 1986
ISBN-13:9780020869405ISBN:0020869401
Description: Good. A copy that has been read, but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (including dustcover, if applicable). The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "from the library of" labels. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Macmillan, New York
Date Published: 1960
Description: Good. A revised and enlarged edition, with a new introduction, of the three books: The Case for Christianity, Christian Behaviour, and Beyond Personality. Softcover, xiv, 175 pp. Moderate wear with tiny edge tear on front cover, previous owner's name on front inside cover, text is slightly age-toned, otherwise unmarked. Average reading copy. read more
Description: Good. 1986-Paperback----Used-Good-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
"It is no wonder that Christians should revere a miracle-working carpenter. I think one must be the son of a god to build an attic before the rest of the house.
There is no fundamental basis for Lewis' arguments. I was hoping to find something more thought-provoking and convincing, but it just felt like the same old ideas Aquinas and Descartes bandied around. These are no longer sufficient in a world of thermodynamics and evolution.
The skill and intellect of Lewis are without question, but the way he meanders about duality, truth, social darwinism, pathetic fallacy, comparative anthropology, and scientific process tends more towards self-justification than any profundity.
Lewis clearly wants to believe, and wants to bolster and justify those beliefs, but he never overcomes a reasonable burden of proof. Since belief seems so important to him, Occam's Razor suggests that he doesn't have a 'secret vault' of excellent religious proofs which he failed to elucidate here. He's put together the best indications he could find, but they don't add up to much.
Every time Lewis embarked on a thought, it would grow and blossom in intriguing ways until he would simply bunch together the whole bundle, tie it with a bow, label it 'god's handiwork' with a reverent bow, and move on before reaching an insight. It made me think the allegory in Onan has been widely misread.
The righteousness of his belief contrasts hypocritically with the way he blithely writes off any other faith or reason. To believe everyone else is so faulty but still think yourself infallible is not only insulting, but a black mark on any otherwise reasonable mind.
I like Lewis, both his tone and his mind. I wanted to find something compelling in him. I wanted to find something that tied his observations together. I sense Lewis also wanted to find something he could attach himself to. After being alone and afraid in a grand world ripped by World Wars, he wanted meaning.
He found it. He found a meaning he could cling to, but in reading this book, I found his grasp too tentative. I cannot share it with him, because it does not find its tenacity in reason, but in romanticism, in idealism, in fear, and in a blindness to his own faults, even as he seeks out those of others."
"I had to read this for a high school religion class on those who questioned their faith (the least creepy of the religion options my school offered, I assumed). Ah, but how foolish not to have taken a class run by the lovely school chaplain. Instead, I get someone who deems it appropriate to call one of his students the most moral in the class, note in my mid-semester report that I dragged on discussions after he'd have preferred to move on (what I considered being thorough and making fine distinctions in arguments, he considered obstinacy and perseveration), and asked us to write an insanely unfair essay, tracking Lewis's argument in this awful book and saying if we disagree and, if so, at which point and why. Which of course makes it easy to say, "Lewis was right in every way," or even "He was right up till the Jesus part," but to expect a young atheist still unsure how to defend herself to prove the nonexistence of God when no one could offer proof anyway, that was ridiculous."
"Mere Christianity is such a classic work, and having been read by millions over the past sixty years plus years, it is difficult to say anything new about it. As the years have rolled on though, a different society, with different needs and expectations has arisen that sees the world a little different than the British society, in the midst of all the moral and spiritual challenges that happened in the World War II years.
Lewis' is more of a classic apologetic. He speaks of universal laws, the differences between longstanding morality and modern psychology, and the logic of why the Christian Gospel, of the invasion of humanity by the God/man Jesus and how theology is constantly practical in every area of the individual, personal lives of moder people. Mere Christianity answers quite well the challenges of its, and still to a large extent, our age.
What the reader is struck with again, upon reading the Oxford professor and Christian lay leader, is just how understanding he is of the typical struggles that the believer faces. The strains of applying mere Christianity to sex, marriage, the life of real faith and social morality remain real and if anything the tensions have increased since the 1940's.
This remains a valuable book, and one that large numbers of people have used to understand just how practical an adult and real a faith in Christ is. For many today, there is doubt about the effectiveness of family, real social interaction, the reality of history and the possibility of real power being humble. Yet to some degree, these strains have always existed, even back to the time of the first Christians. For this, Lewis as a very practical laymen, has done a wonderful job of showing that mere Christianity is a lot more than a whole mass of systems and ideologies, and that in comparison, they are worldly and ultimately worthless next to the Saviour/ carpenter from Nazareth."
"Lewis is brilliant! Here's a quote from the book that's never left my head:
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. 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 the 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 worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The MacMillan Company, 1960, pp. 40-41.)"
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