In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis sets out to explain and defend Christian beliefs to a skeptical modern audience through a series of essays—originally delivered as a series of radio addresses in the United Kingdom between 1941 and 1944. Broadcast to a population in the midst of World War II, Lewis's discussions on evil, forgiveness, and serving a greater good struck a chord with a wide audience.
C.S. Lewis was a professor of literature widely known for his children's fantasy series, The Chronicles of Narnia. He spent the first part of his adult life as an atheist before converting to Christianity in his early 30s, influenced by his close friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien, the Catholic author of The Lord of the Rings. Lewis wrote several books on Christianity and many Christians regard him as an important lay theologian.
In Mere Christianity, Lewis argues that Christianity is supported by reason as well as revelation. He explores the major tenets of Christian faith, including the existence of God, the fixed nature of morality, and the role of free will. Finally, he offers a guide on how to become a more virtuous person by following the example of Christ and surrendering yourself to a higher moral power. Lewis argues that Christianity is a challenging religion to follow, but one that ultimately transforms its followers for the better.
Our guide will take you through Lewis's ideas in five parts:
Along the way, our guide places Lewis's ideas in the context of their philosophical traditions and compares them to alternative versions of Christian thought. We also discuss how modern psychologists understand the benefits of a virtuous life.
Lewis's first major argument for the credibility of Christianity is that morality is objective, universal, and non-material. Furthermore, he argues that these qualities provide evidence for the existence of a creator. To understand Lewis's argument, we'll take a closer look at his case for each of these claims in sequence.
Lewis argues that morality is not something people invented, but, rather, is objective and universal—much like scientific claims about the material world. He pushes back against the idea that morals are something we decide for ourselves and are therefore malleable. Instead, he argues, morality is a fixed and universal truth, and we cannot simply declare what is right and wrong based on our own changing whims. He marshals two key pieces of evidence to support his perspective: Morality is objective because societies all have shared moral standards, and morality is universal because these standards remain remarkably consistent across cultures.
Lewis argues that morality is objective by pointing out that people quarrel by appealing to shared moral standards. For example, if someone accuses another of treating them unfairly, the accused will rarely defend themselves by rejecting fairness as a standard. Instead, they assert that their behavior didn't violate this standard or that their situation merited an exception. These tendencies reveal that societies have widely agreed-upon moral laws. Lewis argues that the widespread adoption of single standards of morality suggests that moral codes are real and not simply invented.
Lewis argues that morality is universal by pointing out that every culture has a standard of conduct that members expect each other to uphold. While specific morals may change between cultures, having morals does not. Consider the similarities to language: While cultures have different words for things, there is no culture without a language. Therefore, people invented words, but no one invented language itself. Similarly, no one invented morality.
Furthermore, Lewis argues that moral laws across cultures don’t actually vary that much. There are no moral systems that praise selfishness over selflessness, or that celebrate murder as an inherent good. This suggests that not only did no one invent the idea of morality itself, but that no one invented our core moral tenets either.
The Philosophical Tradition of Natural Law
Lewis's arguments about the objective nature of morality places him in a philosophical tradition called natural law, in which right and wrong are part of the natural order of the world. While its origins might be even older, many scholars trace this idea back to Aristotle, who distinguished actions that were "just by law" from those "just by nature"—in other words, morality can, and does, exist independently of human laws.
The theologian St. Augustine incorporated natural law into Christian belief. He argued that God inscribed an "eternal law" in our minds through the act of creation. Therefore even non-Christians are able to intuit God's moral principles. Lewis draws on St. Augustine’s version of natural law theory when he cites the similarity of moral laws across cultures.
The theologian Thomas Aquinas built on St. Augustine's understanding of natural law, arguing that the full extent of the eternal law is known only to God. However, people could come to know more about God's eternal law by using reason. Though this view stands in tension with the religious belief that morality could only be known through divinely revealed decrees, such as the Ten Commandments, it aligns with Lewis's arguments that the veracity of Christianity can be deduced through reason.
Lewis argues that in addition to being objective and universal, morality has no material existence. Moral laws are distinct from the material world in that you can't point to them in the world of things around us or observe them the way you would material phenomena like gravity. Lewis makes three arguments for the non-material nature of morality.
Lewis argues that moral laws are non-material because even though they are objective, you still must choose to follow them. This makes them distinct from other objective laws, like those of physics. When the law of gravity compels a skydiver to fall to the ground, they can't choose to disobey. Lewis asserts that moral laws require choice because every society has people who disobey them. Thus, they’re not automatic like the law of gravity.
Do We Choose to Follow Moral Laws Freely?
In arguing that we must choose to follow moral laws, Lewis implicitly stakes out a position on the argument between determinism and free will. Philosophers have debated this issue for millennia across several continents. In general, determinists maintain that humans are not free to choose their own actions, because their actions are determined by other forces such as physiological processes in the brain, social pressures, or—in older cosmologies—fate. On the other hand, defenders of free will highlight the subjective experience of making decisions. They also argue—as Lewis does here, and as we’ll see more of later in this guide—that choice is a precondition for morality, and without free will, morality would lose its meaning.
This debate often cleaves along religious lines, with scientific materialists on the side of determinism and religious thinkers on the side of free will. However, there are some interesting exceptions: The atheist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre argued that humans have complete freedom of choice—whether they want it or not. Meanwhile, a small minority of Christian thinkers have adopted a rare position called hard theological determinism—in which it is impossible for anyone to act against God's will. Therefore, they contend, we can’t actually choose our own actions.
Lewis argues that you can’t tell a society's moral codes simply by viewing people from the outside: You would be able to tell how people act, but not how they believed they ought to act. Instead, understanding moral codes requires understanding how people think. Therefore, moral laws do not exist in an observable, material sense.
(Shortform note: By arguing that moral laws cannot be observed, Lewis is drawing on the "is-ought'' distinction, typically associated with the 18th-century philosopher David Hume. Hume contends that you cannot arrive at an understanding of how things ought to be simply by observing how they are. Ethical philosophers argue that failing to recognize this distinction often leads to a status quo bias—that is, people assume that how things are is how they ought to be.)
Lastly, Lewis argues that you cannot derive a moral principle from the material world. Rather, you can only derive a moral principle from other moral principles. Every ought statement presupposes another ought statement.
For example, let's say you want to argue that someone ought to give charity to the poor. You could argue that it would benefit society, but then you still have to explain why someone ought to benefit society. If you argue that someone ought to benefit society because it will improve people's quality of life, then you still then need to explain why someone ought to improve people's quality of life, and so on. You cannot cite scientific or mathematical proof for why you ought to do good things. Therefore, Lewis argues, morality does not exist in the material world, even though it is objective.
Is There a Non-Material World?
In arguing that morals aren't part of the material world, Lewis aligns himself with a philosophy of mind called substance dualism (not to be confused with theological dualism, which Lewis discusses below). Substance dualists believe that there are two distinct categories or domains of existence: the material and the non-material. They hold that things that exist in our minds such as values, perceptions, and concepts exist independently of matter. As evidence for their position, substance dualists argue that subjective first-person experiences cannot be described in material scientific terms such as mass, volume, or force.
Critics of dualism—sometimes called monists or materialists—argue that there is no non-material category of existence. They assert that your thoughts, values, and perceptions are instead manifestations of the physical processes of the brain. Therefore your subjective, internal experiences are part of the material world. Advocates support their claims by showing how the mind can be impacted by physical changes to the brain such as injuries or psychoactive chemicals.
Finally, Lewis argues that the existence of objective, universal, non-material moral laws provides evidence of a creator. He arrives at this conclusion by drawing together three points.
If we are placed under moral laws beyond our control, then something must have put us in that position. That “something” understands the non-material world of our minds and prefers good over evil. Thus, Lewis argues, we are placed under moral laws by a powerful entity with some form of moral consciousness.
Understanding What Makes a “Mind”
Lewis argues that God must have something like a mind because creation includes intangible things like values and moral laws. But how do we understand the “mind” of something without a material presence? According to psychologists, people rely on two characteristics when deciding if something has a "mind.”
Agency: the ability to act and make changes in one's environment
Experience: the ability to sense and perceive one's environment
Surveys show that people do not think that God has "experiences" the same way humans do. However, these same surveys show that people believe God has exceptional agency. This comports with Lewis's explanation of a non-material mind. By creating moral laws for humans to follow, God exercises agency over the world by determining what is right and wrong.
Lewis argues that objective, non-material morality supports not just the existence of a creator, but, specifically, a moral God who impels us to be good. This aligns with the Christian understanding of God’s moral nature. In this section, we'll explore the Christian understanding of God, how it differs from other theological beliefs, and why evil exists if the creator of the universe is good.
Lewis argues that the moral laws point us to a Christian conception of a moral God who is on the side of good. Lewis makes this case with the following line of reasoning.
This leads us to a perception of a moral God, like the vision of God presented in Christian teachings. Lewis explores two theological perspectives that contradict this interpretation of God: pantheism and dualism. We'll define each below and explain Lewis's arguments against them.
Is God “Virtuous”?
While Lewis asserts that God is on the side of good, many Christian thinkers have stressed that this doesn’t mean that God is good in the same way that we understand humans to be good. In other words, saying God is good is not the same thing as arguing that God practices human virtues like temperance, modesty, or chastity.
This distinction matters because critics of the Christian conception of God have argued that it is not possible for God to be both "good" and "all-knowing." If God knows everything, they reason, then God must also know what it is like to commit evil acts, which a good entity can’t possibly know.
However, many Christians would counter that this presupposes an anthropomorphic understanding of God. They argue that these criticisms make the mistake of assuming that the mind of God is identical to the human mind, and therefore God’s goodness must be identical to human goodness. By declaring that God is on the side of good, and possesses a mind or something like it, Lewis recognizes the distinction that God’s goodness is not necessarily interchangeable with human virtue.
According to Lewis, pantheists argue that God is neutral in the moral struggle between good and evil. Their reasoning is that God created everything—including both good and evil, and a truly good God wouldn't have created evil. Therefore, God is either neutral or somehow above moral concerns.
However, Lewis argues that this perspective doesn't take into account God's creation of the moral laws, which prefer good over evil. If the laws God created favor good over evil, then it follows that God, too, favors good over evil. Therefore, God cannot be morally neutral as pantheists believe.
What Do Pantheists Believe About Moral Authority?
While Lewis defines "pantheism" as a belief in God's moral neutrality, those who claim the term sometimes mean something quite different. Self-identified pantheists make a metaphysical claim about the nature of God—namely that God is inseparable from creation. In other words, the universe is God. In Western traditions, this view is often associated with philosophers like Baruch Spinoza and Ralph Waldo Emerson. However, some scholars have retroactively applied the term to Eastern religions such as Buddhism or Taoism that argue for the "wholeness" and "oneness" of creation.
Because pantheism is chiefly concerned with a metaphysical claim about God's nature, there is a range of pantheistic perspectives on the origins of moral authority. Some proclaim that the universe is inherently good, and therefore God must be good too, whereas "scientific pantheists" have argued that the universe has no inherent value, only the value that humans ascribe to it. This latter perspective would confirm Lewis's characterization of pantheists as proclaiming a morally neutral God. However, it's worth noting that—like Lewis—the pantheist philosopher Baruch Spinoza also subscribed to the theory of natural law: He argued that moral laws are part of the natural order, and therefore must also be part of God according to his theology.
Dualism is the belief that the universe is divided between two divine powers, one good and the other evil. Dualists understand these powers as being in conflict with each other and believe that the purpose of morality is to join sides with the good power. Lewis rejects the dualistic conception of God because it accords good and evil equal status and power.
(Shortform note: Dualism is most commonly associated with the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism. While Lewis contrasts Zoroastrianism with Christianity, some scholars believe these religions are not as opposed as Lewis suggests. They assert that Zoroastrianism had a major influence on Christianity, particularly on its ideas about Satan, heaven, and hell. These concepts suggest that absolute good and absolute evil are part of the cosmos—originally Zoroastrian ideas. Furthermore, Christian sects such as the Gnostics, Bogomils, and Cathars allegedly maintained a dualistic theology up through Medieval times.)
Lewis argues that good and evil cannot be equal because only good can be chosen for its own sake: No one pursues evil simply for the sake of pursuing evil. Those who do evil deeds are pursuing something they believe is good, but in the wrong way. For example, someone who makes a living providing a service and someone who robs people are both pursuing the same good: a personal income. However, one of them pursues their income in a harmful way.
Lewis contends that even sadists causing harm for no discernible reason are getting pleasure out of it—which is also a good, simply pursued in the wrong way. Since no one pursues evil for the sake of evil, it cannot be equal to good.
Aristotelian Ethics and Christian Thought
In arguing that all people strive toward good rather than evil, Lewis is drawing on an Aristotelian understanding of ethics. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle writes that all beings strive toward happiness by pursuing "virtues" which we believe will lead us toward that goal. He asserts that happiness is therefore the only thing we seek for its own sake and that everything else we seek is simply a means to that end.
Aristotelian philosophy had a major influence on Christian thought. During the Middle Ages, scholars reintroduced Aristotle’s works to Western Europe through Islamic Spain along with commentaries by Muslim theologians like Ibn Sina. A movement in Christian theology called scholasticism sought to integrate Aristotle's ideas with Christianity.
Thomas Aquinas was the most influential theologian of the scholastic movement. He adopted the Aristotelian notion that, by nature, we strive toward happiness. However, he adapted the idea by arguing that the highest ultimate happiness is only available through God in the next life. Therefore, he believed we all strive toward happiness by seeking God and pursuing a virtuous life.
If God is the highest power and favors good over evil, this raises a difficult question: Why does evil exist at all? If God has power over creation, then why not simply use that power to eliminate evil? Lewis argues that evil doesn't pose a paradox for Christianity because goodness can only exist because of free will, and evil is the price we must pay for free will.
Lewis argues that good and evil can only exist when someone with a rational mind has the ability to choose between right and wrong. Recall that moral laws advise us on how we ought to behave. Therefore, they are only relevant when it is possible for us to behave differently from how we ought to. For example, if a hurricane destroys your house, this doesn’t make it evil, because the hurricane didn’t choose to cause harm. On the other hand, if a person decides to burn down your house, this is evil because they could have chosen not to.
Therefore, Lewis concludes, evil exists because of free will: God calls on us to voluntarily choose good, but many disobey and choose evil.
(Shortform note: While most people today agree that only agents capable of making moral decisions can be considered moral or immoral, ancient cultures harbored some very different ideas about the nature of good and evil. Early religions often attributed all types of natural evil—including both bad decisions and bad events like droughts, plagues, or famines—to sources of absolute cosmic evil, like powerful demons or evil gods. While modern ethicists may dismiss the idea of a cosmic and absolute evil, this concept still frequently reappears in popular entertainment franchises like “Star Wars” or “The Lord of the Rings.”)
Other Solutions to the Paradox of Evil
Lewis's arguments on free will belong to the tradition of theodicy (literally "defense of God"), a practice of explaining how evil can exist in a world created by a God who is infinitely good. However, Christian thinkers have proposed a wide range of solutions to this question. Here, we'll review a few of the major alternatives.
Evil is a test from God. In the book of Job, God inflicts suffering on Job to test his commitment. Here, the question is not whether God's actions are right, but whether Job can remain committed to God in spite of his suffering. In this view, God has the right to test humans' faith.
Evil exists for our moral development. The Greek theologians Irenaeus and Origen argued that Earth is like a hospital or a school for the soul. Evil exists so that we can learn from it as we become greater moral beings ourselves.
Evil is simply the absence of good. St. Augustine argued that good is a positive quality created by God and that evil is simply the absence of good—much in the way that physicists consider coldness the absence of heat rather than a positive property of “coldness.”
God calls on everyone to choose good over evil, but how do we know what is “good”? Lewis argues that Christianity instructs us to be good by following Christian virtues, or moral principles that can be applied to a wide range of situations. This section will provide a brief overview of what those virtues are, as well as some of the benefits of choosing a virtuous life.
Lewis explains that following God's moral law requires living your life according to four key Christian virtues: faith, benevolence, moderation, and humility.
Lewis defines faith as a commitment to and trust in Christian teachings in the face of daily distractions and doubts. Lewis pushes back against the widely held idea that faith entails a blind or thoughtless belief in Christian doctrine. In fact, he writes that you should not believe in Christianity if you don’t think the evidence supports it.
Lewis also asserts that faith requires you to greet life with hope and optimism. To accept Christianity is to believe that there is something better in the next life and that the power of good is greater than the power of evil, both of which give you a reason for a hopeful outlook.
Does Faith Require Evidence?
Lewis argues that faith is not the same thing as blind acceptance. However, many of Christianity's most strident critics argue that faith and blind acceptance are one and the same. For example, Richard Dawkins, writing in The God Delusion, argues that belief without evidence is the "essence" of faith.
There are two contrasting schools of Christian thought on whether faith requires evidence: fideism and evidentialism.
Fideism advocates faith without evidence. It is the belief that faith is opposed to reason, but of the two, faith is superior. Scholars associate this perspective with the 17th-century French philosopher Blaise Pascale. He argued that religion is mysterious and unknowable by nature, and therefore it is senseless to expect rational proofs for religion.
Evidentialism is the belief that religious doctrines must be supported by evidence. Evidentialist Christians argue for the existence of God and the veracity of Christian doctrine with logical proofs that don't rely on presupposed Christian faith. By stating that you shouldn't believe in Christianity if you don't accept the evidence, Lewis aligns himself with evidentialism.
Benevolence is the virtue of treating others with kindness, fairness, and forgiveness. Essentially, benevolence requires you to unconditionally and universally treat all others with the same consideration that you would like them to show you. This includes loving and forgiving your enemies.
This raises a challenging proposition: how do you love those who have harmed you? Lewis argues that you don’t have to like what someone did to still love them as a person. You can love the person while hating their actions. While it may sound difficult to keep these two things separate, Lewis argues that we all have practice making this distinction: This is how we treat ourselves. Most people dislike their own vices, evil deeds, and faults while still managing to love themselves as people. Thus, the virtue of benevolence simply requires giving the same nuanced consideration to everyone else that we give to ourselves.
What Does Psychology Have to Say About Forgiveness?
In addition to the spiritual requirement for forgiveness asserted by lay theologians like Lewis, psychologists argue that forgiveness provides many important benefits for our well-being. For the person who forgives, forgiveness can provide the release of unhealthy anger and resentment, a chance to heal from past wounds, and a chance to move on with their lives. For the person being forgiven, forgiveness can lead someone to acknowledge harm they have caused and seek moral growth. Forgiveness also benefits both parties by creating an opportunity to restore the relationship.
However, most psychologists reject the idea that forgiveness is an obligation or a duty, as Lewis suggests. They argue that pressuring someone to forgive who is unready or unable can be detrimental to their well-being, especially if it requires opening up unprocessed trauma.
While Lewis argues that we do have a duty to forgive our enemies, he acknowledges that only those who have cultivated their virtue may be able to forgive serious wrongs. For example, addressing a British radio audience during World War II, Lewis told his listeners that if they can't forgive the Nazis, they can start by forgiving their neighbors and work their way up.
Lewis explains that moderation is the ability to control your appetites and impulses. Christian virtue calls on you to practice self-control when it comes to food, alcohol, sex, and other forms of indulgence and sensual pleasure. He explains that moderation sometimes calls on you to limit how much you consume, but it can also require you to recognize the things you need to give up entirely if they are too difficult for you to control.
(Shortform note: While Lewis approaches moderation from a religious perspective, many psychologists consider moderation to be just as important to general psychological well-being. In Dopamine Nation, Anna Lembke writes that compulsively indulging in pleasurable activities like drugs, sex, or gambling can cause your brain to develop a "tolerance" to pleasure. This will force you to seek these pleasurable activities in increasingly high amounts just to keep from feeling bad, thereby locking you into a cycle of addiction.)
Lewis writes that sexual appetites require more specific instructions than other bodily appetites. He provides two reasons why.
Because sexual appetites are different from other temptations in both their intensity and consequences, Lewis argues that they require a different solution than moderation. In traditional Christian teaching, the solution is a strict binary choice: abstinence or monogamous marriage. This will, at minimum, prevent the birth of children who lack two committed parents to support them. Thus, Lewis argues that the only acceptable place for sexuality is within a monogamous marriage. He also argues that the Christian conception of marriage is not primarily focused on feelings or personal fulfillment, but rather on having children and creating a stable home in which to raise them.
What Do Other Major Religions Say About Premarital Sex?
Lewis argues that the Christian prohibition on sex outside of marriage is not simply a preference of the Christian religion, but a response to fixed features of human nature. Recall also that Lewis argues that morality differs very little between cultures on the important issues. By this logic, we’d expect the world's other major religions to share Christianity's view on premarital sex—but is this the case?
To answer this question, let’s explore what the world's three next largest religions (by number of adherents) say on this point.
Islam: Like Christianity, Islamic doctrine strictly prohibits premarital sex and adultery. A study measuring the frequency of premarital sex by religion shows that Muslims are less likely to report engaging in premarital sex than followers of any other major religion.
Hinduism: Hindu teachings on sexuality vary from region to region—unlike Christians or Muslims, Hindus don't universally adhere to the same set of holy texts. In general, Hindu teachings determine the morality of a sexual act based on its intention and consider procreation within marriage a much better intention than personal pleasure. While Hinduism typically does not strictly prohibit premarital sex, Hindu societies have very strong social taboos against premarital sex that aren’t considered part of the religion. According to the above-cited study on the frequency of premarital sex, Hindus are less likely to report engaging in premarital sex than Christians, but more so than Muslims.
Buddhism: Buddhism also does not explicitly prohibit premarital sex. However, Buddhists consider any craving for pleasure to be a source of suffering, and therefore monks and nuns adhere to strict celibacy. Buddhist morality judges all actions by their consequences, so reckless sexual behavior could be considered immoral if it leads to a negative outcome. That said, Buddhists are more likely to report having premarital sex than Christians, Hindus, or Muslims.
Out of all the Christian virtues, Lewis considers humility to be the most important. Humility is the recognition of a modest position in the world, especially when faced with the infinite superiority of God. Humility is the opposite of arrogance and pride, and the opposite of satisfaction in one's own achievements, importance, or capacities. Lewis considers pride the worst sin of all. He offers two reasons why pride is so destructive.
1. Pride turns you away from other people. Lewis argues that when you seek to put yourself above others, their achievements contradict your high opinion of yourself, resulting in jealousy, resentment, and a loss of self-esteem. This makes it harder to be benevolent toward others. Therefore, pride becomes an obstacle to the Christian commitment to treat others with charity and love. Pride will leave you isolated and destroy the natural bonds of community, friendship, and family.
2. Pride turns you away from God. Recall that being virtuous requires submitting yourself to the moral law of a superior being. The more arrogant you are in your own sense of right and wrong, the less capable you are of submitting to that higher power. Therefore pride turns you away from your relationship with God, and consequently away from the source of your virtue. Lewis argues that pride is the worst sin because it has the power to undermine all your virtues.
What Is the Difference Between Pride and Self-Esteem?
Most psychologists recognize that it's important to have a healthy love and respect for yourself, which is sometimes called “pride.” However, they also recognize destructive forms of high self-regard, which they often refer to as arrogance, narcissism, or vanity. This raises a difficult question: How are we supposed to tell the difference between arrogance and self-esteem? Psychologists offer four key distinctions.
1. Difference in purpose. Some psychologists argue that the distinction between pride and self-esteem lies in motivation. When you hold an inflated sense of self to cover up low self-esteem or make yourself feel superior to others, this is arrogance as opposed to self-esteem, and it pushes you away from other people. The desire for superiority is the part of pride that Lewis considers most toxic to your virtue, as surrendering to God requires recognition of your inferiority when faced with the divine.
2. Difference in proportion. Some explanations distinguish between self-esteem and arrogance by measuring quantity: Self-regard is good in small amounts, but becomes a problem once you acquire an immoderate or excessive amount of it.
3. Difference in source. Some maintain that the difference between arrogance and self-esteem lies not in how highly you esteem yourself, but in how you understand the underlying source of your positive qualities. Healthy self-esteem comes from recognizing effort, whereas unhealthy arrogance comes from belief in consistent, internal qualities. For example, saying you won a race because you practiced is self-esteem, but claiming to have won because you're just amazing is arrogance.
4. Difference in consequences. Psychologists also differentiate healthy self-esteem, which is linked to empathy and positive reactions toward others, from arrogance, which is linked to lower empathy and increased hostility toward others. This confirms Lewis's argument that pride drives you away from others and undermines your virtues.
Lewis explains that virtue is essential to human thriving. He pushes back on critics of Christian morality who maintain that a life of Christian virtue simply prevents people from enjoying themselves and indulging bodily appetites for sex, food, or alcohol. Instead, Lewis asserts that pursuing virtue, though challenging, will ultimately help people live happier and more fulfilling lives. He argues for three distinct purposes.
Purpose #1: Social morality is how people treat each other and is what most people think of first when they consider ethics. Social morality includes treating each other kindly and fairly. It improves our quality of life because if everyone behaved ethically toward each other, the world would be a better place.
(Shortform note: Many modern theories of ethics focus almost exclusively on this first purpose. In particular, contract theory holds that morality is a set of agreements that allow people to live together. In The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt argues that moral systems make all societies possible because they induce people to put the interests of the group above their own personal interests.)
Purpose #2: Cultivating character—the practice of developing habits of virtue—largely benefits your inner life. Lewis argues that as you align your life with your values, you will experience greater levels of inner harmony and lower levels of personal distress. Living in alignment with your values frees you from the need to rationalize actions that violate your own moral code.
Purpose #3: Finding purpose allows you to experience a greater sense of meaning in your life. Lewis argues that for a truly virtuous life, it is not enough to simply be nice to others and practice cultivating character. You must also think about the greater aim of your life, and set your sights on virtuous goals.
Does Psychology Confirm Christian Virtue?
Many psychologists’ ideas regarding general well-being align with Lewis’s ideas on the benefits of virtue and his claim that living virtuously can ultimately help you live a better life.
Researchers have confirmed the importance of living in alignment with your values and beliefs. Living out of alignment can result in cognitive dissonance, or the mental toll of maintaining two contradictory values or beliefs at the same time. Cognitive dissonance often causes stress, anxiety, embarrassment, and a sense of guilt, as well as the need to constantly rationalize new information.
Like Lewis, psychologists emphasize the importance of a sense of meaning to your personal well-being. Victor Frankl (Man’s Search For Meaning), argues that human beings are naturally motivated by meaning more than pleasure or personal happiness. He asserts that people naturally want to understand the purpose they have contributed to their lives, and that this sense of contribution is the cornerstone of psychological health.
Lewis argues that the creator calls on each of us to be virtuous. In this section, we'll explore Lewis's explanation of how you can answer this call. We’ll discuss Lewis’s conception of God's high moral standards and how you must surrender your will to pursue them. We’ll also cover Lewis’s beliefs about how this effort will change you and why your intentions matter.
Lewis writes that if moral laws are created by the highest power in the universe, this puts humanity in a terrifying position. Since moral laws are often broken, we have reason to believe that the highest power in the universe dislikes our actions. Lewis argues that you ought to be worried—even afraid. However, this worry should inspire you not to hide from God and moral laws, but rather to try to align your conduct with these moral laws. Your best response to this fear lies in finding the courage to commit yourself to a more virtuous life.
Lewis considers this no easy task. If God's moral laws are truly objective then they permit little leniency and few exceptions. Since you have no control over what is right and wrong, you can't decide to exempt yourself from certain rules, nor can you decide when your circumstances merit an exception or when the rules’ standards apply. Therefore, the work of being virtuous is never done.
(Shortform note: Research supports the idea that a person’s perception of God's moral standards can influence their behavior. One study found that people who believe in a wrathful, punishing God are less likely to cheat on an academic test than those who believe in a kind, forgiving God. This supports Lewis's contention that a God with high, rigid moral standards may serve as a greater spur to moral action than one with lenient moral standards.)
Lewis argues that becoming a moral person requires surrendering your will to God. Because you did not create the moral laws, your impulses, goals, and desires may not be aligned with them. Therefore, in moments where your will is in conflict with moral law, you must give in. When you give in to a will that conflicts with your own, you are surrendering and placing your trust in a higher power.
(Shortform note: Many Christian thinkers agree with Lewis that following God’s laws requires surrender. Rick Warren (The Purpose Driven Life) takes this a step further, arguing that God not only has a set of moral laws—he also has a plan for each human’s life. Warren contends that God created you and all your attributes for achieving a unique purpose in this world. Therefore, surrendering to God's will not only changes you into a more virtuous person, but it also sends you down the road to achieving your life’s ultimate purpose.)
Because you are surrendering your will, becoming virtuous will inevitably require you to become a different person than who you would have become without God. Lewis provides three reasons why.
1. As you strive to become virtuous, you will become more aware of morality. The effort to make moral choices will force you to spend more time thinking about right and wrong, thereby developing your capacity for moral thought. This will lead to becoming more aware of new opportunities to make moral choices.
2. Becoming more aware of right and wrong strengthens your moral conscience, leading it to hold you to a higher standard of conduct. Therefore your conscience will begin making more demands of you.
3. Once your conscience demands more from you, you will confront all your vices, not just some of them. Your moral awareness will naturally spread into new areas of your life where you hadn't previously considered the morality of your choices.
Cultivating Virtue as a “Feedback Loop”
Systems analysts would describe Lewis's process of moral development as a feedback loop. In Thinking In Systems, Donella H. Meadows describes two types of feedback loops, stabilizing feedback loops, and self-reinforcing ones.
A stabilizing feedback loop regulates itself to stay within certain boundaries, like a thermostat that cools a house when it's too warm and warms a house when it's too cool.
A reinforcing feedback loop moves in one direction, and can just keep spiraling bigger and bigger. For example, population growth is a reinforcing feedback loop: the more people reproduce, the more people will be able to reproduce in the next generation.
We can understand Lewis's description of virtue as a reinforcing feedback loop. As you practice virtue, you will become more aware of opportunities to continue practicing virtue, allowing you to spiral upward. This means that even a small step towards virtue can have enormous effects on your character in the long run, by setting you on a virtuous path.
If virtue comes from God and practicing virtue changes you into a new person, then it follows that God is not just concerned with how you behave but what kind of person you are. It matters to God who you are on the inside. Lewis argues there are three points we should take from this.
1. Motives matter. It is not enough simply to act in the right way, one must do so for the right reasons. To be virtuous, you must pursue virtue for its own sake. For example, if you give to charity for recognition, or help a neighbor to put them in your debt, you have not been virtuous.
2. Every choice matters. God is concerned with every decision you make, large or small, because choices accumulate over time, ultimately shaping the person you become.
3. Effort matters. Lewis writes that God understands the obstacles each of us faces in trying to become virtuous. While God's ultimate standards may be difficult to reach, he welcomes every attempt as a positive step. This does not mean God has different standards for everyone. Rather God expects effort at virtue from everyone no matter their stage of moral development.
Why Does God Care About Us?
A central tenet of Christian faith is that God cares deeply about us: God cares about each decision we make, our reasons for making it, and how much work we put into trying to be good. This raises a fraught theological question: Why? If God is truly all-powerful, then why does God care at all whether mere humans are living virtuously? Here we’ll explore three explanations.
God cares about us because we have a role to play in completing creation. According to this view, God created us with the intention that we would live virtuous lives and join with him in the next life. Therefore, God expects us to be good so that it will complete his plan for creation. If God's plan is for us to be virtuous, then it matters why we make each decision.
God cares about what we do because God loved us enough to create us and plan out our lives. It follows that God would care whether we make decisions that bring us closer to him and the lives he wants us to lead.
God cares about our efforts to live more virtuously because human obstacles and mistakes are inevitable parts of life—it’s in making efforts to overcome and grow from these mistakes that God can see our true character and devotion to him.
Lewis argues that Christian faith requires not simply surrendering to God's moral laws, but following a perfect example. Lewis writes that only Christ is capable of setting this perfect example of surrender because he is both human and divine. In this section, we'll explore Lewis’s arguments for Christ’s divinity, why Christ’s dual nature allows him to set the example of perfect surrender, and how Christian practice helps us to become more Christlike.
Before discussing how Christ's dual nature leads to a perfect example, Lewis lays a foundational argument for the divinity of Christ to help skeptics accept Christ's dual nature. He argues for Christ’s divinity with the following line of reasoning: Christ did not claim simply to be a moral teacher. He claimed to be the son of God, and that he had the power to forgive others' sins. Lewis asserts that Christ’s claim to divinity forces you to accept one of three conclusions:
Lewis argues that it is unlikely that Christ was either lying or insane. He cites the depth of wisdom and kindness in his moral teachings. He also notes that others who wrote about him spoke very highly of his character, praising his love and serenity. If Christ is neither lying nor insane, then he must be God. Lewis accepts Christ's divinity as the least implausible of the three choices and encourages readers to accept it as well.
Did Christ Claim Divinity?
Lewis's argument for Christ's divinity has become popular in public debates over Christianity—even taking on the name "Lewis's trilemma." However, the argument remains controversial even among Christians and biblical scholars. Most of the controversy centers on the first premise—Christ’s claim to divinity—with scholars disagreeing over how sure we can be that Christ actually made this claim. Here we'll review some of the common arguments for each side.
The New Testament Scholar Bart D. Erhman casts doubt on whether Christ claimed divinity as Lewis says. He points out that Christ claims divinity in the Gospel of John, but not in the synoptic Gospels (those of Mathew, Mark, and Luke). Since the synoptic Gospels all share important similarities when contrasted with the Gospel of John, Erhman believes they corroborate each other and are therefore more historically accurate.
Furthermore, biblical scholars disagree on whether the New Testament should be taken as a historically accurate account of Christ's life in the first place. Those who question Christ’s claims to divinity point out that the gospels were written several decades after Christ's death and in Greek, a language neither Christ nor his original followers would have spoken. Therefore, they were first passed down as oral traditions and may have taken on the characteristics of a legend.
That said, defenders of Lewis's trilemma argue that the gospels should be taken as historically accurate accounts. The first argument is that the gospels are the divinely inspired word of God, and therefore must be accurate. Many Christian denominations hold that scripture is inerrant—meaning none of the gospels can be wrong.
Defenders also argue that there is strong historical evidence that Christ claimed divinity. They highlight evidence from Roman historical documents showing that Christ was a real person, and that in scripture he exhorts his followers to accurately pass on his teachings. Defenders also argue that Christ’s actions were aligned with a perception of divinity. Christ claimed the ability to forgive all sins, which only God could do according to Jewish tradition at the time.
Lewis argues that Christ is God, and reminds readers that in traditional Christian teaching, Christ lived in human form on Earth—therefore, Christ is simultaneously human and God. Lewis asserts that Christ's dual nature allows him to set an example of perfect surrender. He lays out the following argument.
Have Christians Always Believed in Christ’s Dual Nature?
Lewis's argument that Christ provides a perfect example of surrender rests on Christ's dual nature: Christ is both human and God, according to mainline Christian teaching. However, it's worth considering that in the earliest years of Christianity, not all Christian sects agreed on Christ's dual nature. A variety of interpretations of Christ arose before the early ecumenical councils sought to standardize Christian belief. Here we'll discuss two early alternatives.
Human but not divine: Some early Christian sects held that Christ was born a regular person, but because of his good deeds, God chose him to become the Messiah. This view is mostly associated with the Ebionites, an early sect of Jewish Christians who followed Christ's teachings alongside traditional Hebrew commandments.
Divine but not human: Other early Christians believed that Christ was in fact God coming to Earth, but that he only appeared human to his followers. This view is associated with Gnostic Christians who rejected the idea that Christ died or suffered on the cross.
Lewis argues that the purpose of Christian worship is to become more Christlike. While you can never be divine like Christ, you can still follow his human example of surrendering to God's moral laws. This surrender means you will become increasingly Christlike to the best of your human ability.
(Shortform note: Many spiritual traditions confirm the goal of becoming Christlike through religious practices. However, this can do more than simply make you a more virtuous person. In The Untethered Soul, the spiritual teacher Michael Singer writes that Christ's example revealed a divine and inexhaustible love. He argues that by welcoming that divine love into your heart, you join with God in a divine union, bringing you closer to the source of all goodness in life.)
Lewis argues that virtue will change you. As you make a practice of virtuous acts, you will gradually become more aware of opportunities for virtue, and you will confront all of your vices. This exercise provides a chance to reflect on virtue and opportunities for moral decision-making in your daily life.
Lewis argues that humility is the most important virtue. Only when we are truly humble will we be able to surrender to God's moral laws. Do you agree? If so, explain why. If not, write down which of Lewis’s other key Christian virtues (faith, benevolence, moderation) you consider to be the most important to living a fulfilling life and explain why.
Now that you have selected the virtue that is most important to you, brainstorm a list of opportunities to practice this virtue. Think about what your daily life looks like from when you get out of bed in the morning until you go to sleep at night. Consider your daily interactions with family, coworkers, and friends. Where and when could start practicing this virtue?
Lewis asserts that practicing virtue requires surrender—when your will is in conflict with God's law, you must submit. Now that you have a list of opportunities to practice virtue in your daily life, consider this question: What might you have to give up to practice this virtue every day? (For example, you may need to give up an indulgence, let go of a grudge in order to forgive, or tighten your budget to give more to charity.) Explain the sacrifices you would have to make to practice this virtue every day.
Lewis makes several claims on the nature and character of God. In this exercise, you'll have a chance to reflect on his arguments and develop your perception of God.
Lewis contrasts three potential understandings of God: (1) Christianity’s moral God who has granted us free will, (2) dualism’s moral God who is at war with an evil God, and (3) pantheism’s morally neutral God. Do you share Lewis's perception that the first one is the most compelling? If so, explain why. If not, pick the model you find more compelling and explain why.
Lewis argues that we can understand that God is moral because God created moral laws—thus making an inference about the mind of God by looking to creation. Could we infer other preferences, properties, or qualities of God by looking at creation? Think about the world around you. What sort of creator does it suggest to you and why?