C. S. Lewis and the Defense of the Faith (part three)

In 1945, C. S. Lewis was invited to address a gathering of Welsh Anglican priests and youth workers on the subject of Christian apologetics. Here are his remarks, published in the book, God in the Dock, and, as needed, some commentary on them.

Secondly, this scrupulous care to preserve the Christian message as something distinct from one’s own ideas, has one very good effect upon the apologist himself. It forces him, again and again, to face up to those elements in original Christianity which he personally finds obscure or repulsive, He is saved from the temptation to skip or slur or ignore what he finds disagreeable. And the man who yields to that temptation will, of course, never progress in Christian knowledge. For obviously the doctrines which one finds easy are the doctrines which give Christian sanction to truths you already knew. The new truth which you do not know and which you need, must, in the very nature of things, be hidden precisely in the doctrine you least like and least understand. It is just the same here as in science. The phenomenon which is troublesome, which doesn’t fit in with the current scientific theories, is the phenomenon which compels reconsideration and thus leads to new knowledge. Science progresses because scientists, instead of running away from such troublesome phenomena or hushing them up, are constantly seeking them out. In the same way, there will be progress in Christian knowledge only as long as we accept the challenge of the difficult or repellent doctrines. A “liberal” Christianity which considers itself free to alter the faith whenever the faith looks perplexing or repellent must be completely stagnant. Progress is made only into a resisting material.

There may be two reasons we find “elements in original Christianity” either “obscure or repulsive.” One, we do not have an accurate interpretation of the whole of the Scriptures. We have not understood the overall perspective of the prophetic writers. So, when we come to something that does not fit well or make sense in our current theology formed on partial knowledge of Scripture, we ignore it, or put a meaning on it that it cannot bear. As Lewis counsels, this is the “troublesome phenomena” we must delve into, letting it reshape our theological understanding.

The second reason we may find original Christianity repulsive is darker. We may disagree with what God says and how He does what He does. We may form a belief that is contrary to Scripture. We cannot defend it because we do not believe it to be true. But we cannot make the God of Scripture fit our view of reality and insist on defending Christianity from that vantage. We embrace the whole message or we are only defending the parts we like. We are not, in that case, defending “original Christianity.”