Readers familiar with Mere Christianity may recall some of the many images that Lewis uses to describe becoming a Christian. It is like passing from death into life, or like laying down your rebel arms and surrendering, or like saying sorry, or like killing part of yourself, or like learning to walk or to write, or like buying God a present with his own money. Or it is like a drowning man clutching at a rescuer’s hand, or like a tin soldier or a statue becoming alive, or like a horse turning into a Pegasus, or like a compass needle swinging to north, or like a dark greenhouse transformed as the roof suddenly becomes bright in the sunlight. And many more. 4. “Mere” Christianity involved a demanding gospel message. Hinten, Marvin D. (2007). "The World of Narnia: Medieval: Magic and Morality". In Edwards, Bruce L. (ed.). C. S. Lewis: Life, Works, and Legacy. Vol.2: Fantasist, Mythmaker, and Poet. Praeger Perspectives. pp.71–92. ISBN 978-0-275-99116-6.

I was talking to my father the other day when I said that "I think the funny thing to me about most academics at University, is that they so completely misunderstand Christianity. They think it's about becoming 'good enough' to get into Heaven." To which my Dad turned around and agreed saying, "That is because most churches don't understand Christianity well enough and keep preaching works-based repentance." Kilby, Clyde S. The Christian World of C. S. Lewis. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1964. Kilby was one of the pioneers of Lewis scholarship. Includes a chapter on each of Lewis’s major fictional and apologetic works, including Mere Christianity. I am perhaps a bit biased. I have always liked Lewis, ever since I read The Chronicles of Narnia in high school. My liking deepened for him when I saw the movie Shadowlands. Something about his life called to me. I have since done research on him and his journey from atheism to fervent Christian belief. I cannot deny how inspiring I find his life. This was written in 1952 and CS comes across as a wise old buffer in a cardigan speaking to an earnest younger man. Both their wives are rustling up something to eat in the kitchen and talking about whatever mysterious things women find so interesting. Meanwhile the men thrash out the deep questions. Here’s a pearl I think we all ought to cherish:In the years immediately following Lewis’s death in 1963, many predicted that his influence would soon dim. “No one will be reading C.S. Lewis twenty years from now”, a publisher told Peter Kreeft when he proposed a book on Lewis in the late 1960s. A few decades later, around the turn of the twenty-first century, the shift towards postmodernism was heralded (and dreaded) as a sure death knell to Lewis’s particular brand of affable, common-sense rationality. Yet by 2007 Christopher Hitchens was noting Lewis’ re-emergence as “the most popular Christian apologist” and “the main chosen propaganda vehicle for Christianity in our time.” Lewis has some skill and intellect, 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. Likewise, Lewis was careful to avoid efforts to improve Christianity with modern theological fads. These, he says, turn out to be versions of “Christianity and water” that dilute the essence of an essentially strong, life-changing drink. Unlike the liberal ecumenism that was so prominent in his day, which offered a largely demythologized Christianity, Lewis insisted on a robust appropriation of the central supernaturalist claims that have been the gospel message throughout the ages. 2. Lewis connected with perennial human nature. What is it that makes C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity so lastingly compelling? While most books fade in popularity, Lewis’s apologetic volume has sold even better in the twenty-first century than it did when it was first published. In English alone, it has reached something like four million copies since 2001. It is still the favorite go-to book for those considering Christianity or having doubts about their faith. New York Times columnist David Brooks quipped that when he was contemplating commitment to Christianity, acquaintances sent him about three hundred books, “only a hundred of which were different copies of C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity.” A clear and deeply informed account of a religious work that seems to have no expiration date."— Kirkus

This is a match made in heaven: C. S. Lewis, modernity's most influential Christian voice, interpreted by George Marsden, leading historian of Christian intellectual culture. Mere Christianity has taken on a life of its own, winning converts by its peculiar blend of rhetoric and reason. In unveiling the life of this book and taking the measure of its influence, Marsden has given us an indispensable key to the mind and stature of its author."—Carol Zaleski, coauthor of The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings The Eagle and Child pub, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England. In the mid-20th century it served as the meeting place of the Inklings literary group, which included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. (more)

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It was the director of the BBC’s Religious Broadcasting Department at the time, Reverend J.W. Welch, who had the bright idea to invite Lewis to give some radio talks which might outline the basics of Christianity for a modern audience. Welch estimated that two-thirds of BBC listeners lived without any reference to God; a survey of British army recruits showed that only 23 per cent knew the meaning of Easter. Lewis’s own journey from staunch atheism to theism and then to Christianity had been an arduous one, and he knew well he had his work cut out for him. Indeed, he did not even mention Christianity until the end of his fourth talk — building, instead, from the common ground of our intuitive sense of right and wrong. Surely we would, us avuncular old shitbags in cardigans puffing on our pipes and living in the real world as we do. For example, there are a few anti-gay statements and a few about women belonging in their places. A clear example of that, is when he touches on the subject of men being the heads of households: Lewis sees something similar in the Christian understanding of God as “three persons.” He compares animals to one dimension, humans to two dimensions, and God to three dimensions. Animals understand only instinct and interact with humans as if we were similarly instinctual. They are incapable of comprehending our level of rationality. Humans, however, can understand animals, but we are incapable of really understanding the level of existence enjoyed by God. God is so beyond our level of existence that humans cannot really understand his “dimension.” Christ became human to help humans understand God better. The best way for humans to comprehend God’s level of existence is to speak of God as three persons, just as the square might speak of the cube as six squares. Scathing criticism came from the philosopher John Beversluis, in his book C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion (1985). [8] Beversluis analysed Lewis's arguments for Christianity, arriving in the conclusion that each of them is built on faulty logic. [19] He argued that Lewis made his arguments convincing by creating false analogies, with an instance in his trilemma. [20] Beversluis said there are more alternatives in addition to Jesus being a liar or lunatic, one of which is that his disciples misinterpreted his words. [20] The philosopher Victor Reppert replied to Beversluis in C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea (2003), noting that Beversluis was correct in pointing out that many of Lewis's arguments are not strictly logical but overestimating the degree to which Lewis rested his case for Christianity on reason alone. [21] Reppert continued that Lewis, in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy (1955), realised Christianity rests on far more than solely reason. [22] Legacy [ edit ]

Green, Roger Lancelyn; Hooper, Walter (1974). C. S. Lewis: A Biography. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 0-15-123190-7. Lewis would have said the same for his work as an apologist. Had it drawn primary attention to himself, or have been just a reflection of his own peculiar views, it would have had little lasting impact. In fact, one of the greatest sources of the lasting vitality of the presentations is that Lewis deliberately points the listener or reader toward an object. Therefore, like a Pauline epistle, Mere Christianity is built on the core claim that God became man in Jesus Christ then died and rose from the dead to allow for humans to participate in the divine life of the blessed Trinity. In this context, moral behavior is seen as the way to better participate in that divine life. He started by appealing to individuals’ own experiences of the perennial human conviction that there was a real right and wrong in the universe. Most people could recognize that other humans (the Nazis whom they were fighting, for instance) often egregiously failed to live up to proper standards of right and wrong. And if they were honest, they might see that they themselves did not always live up to those standards either. So, Lewis began by trying to cultivate a sense of guilt that was a necessary first step toward looking for a cure. 3. Lewis put reason in the context of the imagination.Reports of the demise of his influence have continued to prove greatly exaggerated. And that influence has been remarkably diffuse. Though he was primarily a literary scholar, many have noted Lewis’s appeal to scientists. The Test of Faith resources from The Faraday Institute, which explore science and faith, include interviews with leading scientists like Francis Collins and Simon Conway Morris, a remarkable proportion of whom detail their encounters with this one book as a turning point. The mathematician John Lennox — himself an Oxford don and Christian apologist, in Lewis’s footsteps — reflects on why: Marsden, George M. (2016). C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity: A Biography. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-06-91153-73-5. I am somewhat confused about some of the reasoning behind those giving this work one or two stars. From what I have seen it appears to be that C.S. Lewis does not justify his explanations well enough - that there is not enough of a burden of proof that he has fulfilled. Or that his writing, his work, is far too offensive. Duncan, Graham A. (2020). "CS Lewis's 'Mere Christianity,' by G. M. Marsden". Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae. 46 (2): 1–2. doi: 10.25159/2412-4265/5564. eISSN 1017-0499. ISSN 2412-4265. Wow! What does one say when reading pure genius? Whether one chooses to agree or disagree with C.S. Lewis, his incredible mind, reasoning skills, and power of deduction are absolutely astounding.