Around the world, Mere Christianity is considered a classic of Christian apologetics, and for a good reason too. Written in a clear yet evocative language, the book touches on the basics of Christian teachings in an easily accessible and understandable way. Lewis (1952) begins his work by addressing the issues of Christian morality, and this is when one of the most impactful epiphanies of the book takes place. A major takeaway from the way the author structures his argument is the objectivity of the moral law as the law of nature, and one may understand it reliably through reason and observation.
The major premise of the book’s argument regarding morality is that the moral law is at, for all intents and purposes, the law of nature. It means that it is as objective as the other laws of nature identified by science so far – such as gravity, conservation of mass, and so forth. When discussing the morality of their actions or those of somebody else, people habitually invoke a higher moral standard to which behaviors ought to correspond (Lewis, 1952). As the author points out, it indicates that they imply to share the universal standard of decent behavior that regulates what is to be done or not done. Moreover, people tend to judge different moral theories as more or less right correct (Lewis, 1952). According to the author, it indicates that people have a scale to measure the correctness of moral and ethical theories and, as shown in the previous example, imply this scale to be universal. As such, the author concludes, humans recognize, whether implicitly or explicitly, that there is a universal standard of moral behavior, which is as objective as the other laws of nature.
This argument is not new in itself, and philosophers discussed morality as a natural law long before Mere Christianity. None other than St. Thomas Aquinas (1485) argued that the natural law was discovered through reason and demanded that “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided” (94.2). However, while the essence of the argument is not new, the way in which Lewis (1952) approaches it is enlightening. Aquinas (1485) discovered and analyzed his natural law of morality through the application of abstract philosophical concepts rooted in ancient philosophy and Christian theology. Lewis (1952), on the other hand, asks people to take a look at the numerous societies throughout history, such as “ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans” (p. 12). His point is that, for all their differences, they developed codes of conduct that stressed the same ideas of unselfishness. The brilliance of this argument is that it is equally accessible to devout Christians and skeptics because they all can agree based on facts and not only belief that humans tend to follow the same moral principles throughout history.
As such, one major takeaway from Mere Christianity is the way in which the author structures his argument about morality. The idea of the moral law being a law of nature accessible to any reasonable human has been exercised by many philosophers, both Christian and otherwise, before Lewis. Yet rooting the argument in historical facts rather than merely abstract reasoning allows the author to create a case for objective and universal morality allows Mere Christianity to construct a case appealing to different audiences.
References
Aquinas, T., St. (1485). Summa Theologica. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Web.
Lewis, C. S. (1952). Mere Christianity. Danville Area Community College. Web.