A Muslim’s Critique of C.S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity”
by Yahya Sulaiman, a.k.a. Ziggy Zag
When I was a Christian I was much inspired by C.S. Lewis’s theology. I tore into it greedily, and the book Mere Christianity in particular helped me when I had lapses of faith. This is not unusual: there is no theological work of his--indeed, perhaps no book of Christian theology by anyone--which is as renowned for inspiring or increasing Christian faith. Now, rereading the book as a Muslim, I am a little ashamed that I was ever misled by such sloppy arguments for Christian belief as book provides.
On page 75 (all page number references in this review will be from the 2001 HarperCollins hardback) C.S. Lewis “[henceforth] assumes the Christian point of view, and looks at the whole picture as it will be if Christianity is true”. Everything up to that point is his attempt “to explain and defend the belief [system] that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times” (page VIII). This review will focus only on the former part of the book. Not being a Christian I am no longer interested in matters addressed only to Christians, and it is in that first seventy-five pages where the missionary crux of the text lies.
The structure of the book’s argumentation is progressive. Somewhat like the book I’m writing it starts with the issue of God’s existence, then discusses theories about God and characteristics attributed to Him; then it’s on to the issue of religion. Unlike me, Lewis decides to do almost all of the task in the form of a single process of elimination, going through other worldviews bit by bit until Christianity is left as the only possibility. It is in this structure that the book makes its jaw-dropping fatal mistakes. The whole process of elimination, after starting off well, becomes nothing more than a progressively huger and more blatant series of false dilemmas. Where he might say that A and B are the only possible options he leaves out a very real C and D: then he may allege that 1, 2, and 3 are the only possibilities and that by eliminating 1 and 2 he has proven 3, when in fact the number of possibilities may range well into the hundreds.
Like I said, at the start Lewis’s argumentation is at least generally sound. He certainly makes the first few chapters a worthy read by putting forth persuasively the Argument from Morality for God’s Existence and competently refuting the common rebuttals by nontheists: absolute relativism, the “natural/herd instinct” appeal, the claims of morality being purely a matter of social convention, education, or semantics. Then Lewis starts to narrow down the issue of what to believe of this higher moral lawgiver. He talks about how all of us have defied our inner moral law and thus put ourselves wrong with the Power behind it. Most of all this is, so far as I can see, free of fallacy, though even here Lewis makes some embarrassing false bifurcations: automatically equating religion with theism, nonreligion with atheism, and hard materialism with atheism. Also, I’m not sure but I don’t think that part of the definition of pantheism is belief that God is beyond good and evil, although one could argue that it might entail that.
Lewis next moves onto an even bigger and more egregious false dilemma. He claims that the only three possible worldviews in existence are religion (again, he uses “religion” interchangeably with “theism”), hard materialism, and the belief in that ill-defined “life force” of Creative Evolutionists. Where does Buddhism fall into these three categories? Buddhists believe in the existence of immaterial realms but not in theism and certainly not in the “life-force” of Creative Evolutionists. In which of Lewis’s three categories are we to place Taoists? What about agnostics? The issue of God’s existence is well covered, as I’ve said, by Lewis’s presentation and defenses of the Moral Argument but the fact remains that agnosticism still doesn’t fit into the religion/hard materialism/Creative Evolution trifurcation. Nor does deism, technically speaking. And there’s even more where all that came from.
But that false dilemma is nothing compared to the one that follows: “There are only two views that face all the facts. One is the Christian view that this is a good world that has gone wrong, but still retains the memory of what it ought to have been. The other is the view called Dualism” (page 42).
Wow.
I don’t think I could ever count how many excluded middles are left out of that! Islam is only one of maybe thousands. Technically speaking, one doesn’t even have to subscribe to any religion at all in order to believe that this is a good world that’s gone wrong yet retains the memory of what it ought to have been. Many fanatically irreligious atheists believe that at least as firmly as your average Christian. Even if you add the part about there being a universal moral lawgiver whom we have all defied, how are Islam or Judaism automatically excluded, leaving Dualism as the sole alternative left to Christianity? Did Lewis not know that we believe that too? The Christian scriptures themselves quote Old Testament texts--Judaism, in other words--to establish the doctrine: Romans 3:10-12 is citing Psalms 53:3 (and maybe also Psalms 14:3). The Koran says that morality is a sign from God (surah 30, verse 21) and that we have all violated it to the point where if God took us to task for it He would destroy all of us (surah 16, verse 61). It agrees that because of what happened in Eden the world has gone wrong yet traces of good--embellishments of this world and potential mercy from God--remain (surah 7, verses 19-32). Yet the one and only mention of our religion in the whole text of Mere Christianity is a little snippet on page 78 about how it is not Christianity but Islam that is a teetotal religion.
Did Lewis ever even consider Islam? His autobiography Surprised by Joy is of no help. Islam isn’t even brought up there either, even though it says that what got Lewis started considering, after he had changed his mind about being an atheist, whether any religions were true was when he began to wonder if any religion was a final consummation of all previous true religion. He arrived at the conclusion that there is such a religion and that it is Christianity. He gives no evidence that the subject of whether or not that religion is Islam ever even crossed his mind, even though Islam makes more of a point than any other religion in the history of the world of alleging to be such a consummation of previous religion. I’ve read pretty much almost every theological writing Lewis has ever written and with the exception of that incidental fleeting mention of Islam as a teetotal religion of page 78 of Mere Christianity the only thing about Islam from Lewis I can ever remember reading was his claim that that if you went up to Muhammad (on whom be peace) and asked him if he was Allah, “he would have rent his clothes and cut your head off”. With such shameful ignorance as that perhaps it’s not surprising he had little to say of my religion.
And so it is with this step in Lewis’s process of elimination--leaving out Islam, Judaism, and innumerable other excluded middles--that the whole thing goes awry, preventing any following steps in the process from working since they’re all proceeding from this false and presumptuous premise. That’s the risk you take when you’re forming a process of elimination. It’s like a game of Jenga: if one piece doesn’t fit or is left out then everything above it comes tumbling down. As Lewis himself notes, “progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer” (page 28). This review could almost end right here. But the process of elimination isn't quite the only argumentation for Christianity which Lewis employs. Perhaps he continues because he himself wasn’t completely confident of that absurd bifurcation. In any case he still hasn’t yet arrived at his final conclusion on pages 61-62 that “[therefore] I have to believe that Jesus was (and is) God”. His last few arguments focus on establishing the specific central doctrines of Christianity.
If you thought that no false dilemma could top the Christianity/Dualism one, you were wrong. Throughout the home stretch Lewis's arguments for Christianity are all built, blindly, without justification or even any mention of possible disagreeing viewpoints, on the assumption that all biblical texts he uses--including all of the text of all four Gospels--are necessarily accurate. He points to this and that and the other from the Gospels, and says there, don’t you see now? He poses his famous Trilemma (“lord, lunatic, or liar” etc.), which I soundly refuted here. He takes it for granted that the Bible is right about God having chosen the Jews and so forth. He assumes that all the words the Gospels attributed to Jesus (on whom be peace) are accurate recordings of what he said. He does not devote one penstroke to argumentation for the accuracy or authenticity of any of the texts in question. And because of the alleged implications he finds in his biblical references Christianity must be true. In other words, he essentially tells us to believe the Bible because the Bible says to. Terms like “circular argumentation” and “begging the question” don’t even begin to do the situation justice. Would he have been convinced if I had pointed to texts about Muhammad (on whom be peace) in the Koran as evidence that he must be God’s final prophet and messenger?
To be sure, there is one other argument for Christianity that Lewis makes. He says that “one of the reasons he believes Christianity” is that “it is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected I should feel we were making it up. But in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have” (pages 41-42). How many religions don’t offer people something contrary to the kind of universe they had previously expected? And why can’t there be nonreligious or even irreligious viewpoints which do the same thing too? Why isn’t Christianity the sort of thing that anyone would have made up? People could make up anything. Doesn’t scientology alone prove that there’s nothing on earth that people might not have made up? Exactly what does “a queer twist” even mean anyway?
So there you have it: this is what we get from world’s seemingly most oft toted evangelistic tract. This is the best the finest Christian apologist and theologian the world has ever seen can do. Now does that prove that Christianity is untrue? Not at all. One certainly shouldn’t reject a religion just because a single person, however relatively skilled at the task compared to most of his kind, failed miserably to argue persuasively for it. Nor does any of this mean that Islam is true. That is another subject for other articles, many of which I have already written. Not to worry: as Lewis himself remarks on page 32, “If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end.” Indeed, and you may even--God grant it--find truth. But for the reasons I’ve stated you certainly won’t find it in Mere Christianity--certainly not very far into the text after the issue of God's existence has come and gone, anyway. May God bless us all and guide us to a right path.
by Yahya Sulaiman, a.k.a. Ziggy Zag
When I was a Christian I was much inspired by C.S. Lewis’s theology. I tore into it greedily, and the book Mere Christianity in particular helped me when I had lapses of faith. This is not unusual: there is no theological work of his--indeed, perhaps no book of Christian theology by anyone--which is as renowned for inspiring or increasing Christian faith. Now, rereading the book as a Muslim, I am a little ashamed that I was ever misled by such sloppy arguments for Christian belief as book provides.
On page 75 (all page number references in this review will be from the 2001 HarperCollins hardback) C.S. Lewis “[henceforth] assumes the Christian point of view, and looks at the whole picture as it will be if Christianity is true”. Everything up to that point is his attempt “to explain and defend the belief [system] that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times” (page VIII). This review will focus only on the former part of the book. Not being a Christian I am no longer interested in matters addressed only to Christians, and it is in that first seventy-five pages where the missionary crux of the text lies.
The structure of the book’s argumentation is progressive. Somewhat like the book I’m writing it starts with the issue of God’s existence, then discusses theories about God and characteristics attributed to Him; then it’s on to the issue of religion. Unlike me, Lewis decides to do almost all of the task in the form of a single process of elimination, going through other worldviews bit by bit until Christianity is left as the only possibility. It is in this structure that the book makes its jaw-dropping fatal mistakes. The whole process of elimination, after starting off well, becomes nothing more than a progressively huger and more blatant series of false dilemmas. Where he might say that A and B are the only possible options he leaves out a very real C and D: then he may allege that 1, 2, and 3 are the only possibilities and that by eliminating 1 and 2 he has proven 3, when in fact the number of possibilities may range well into the hundreds.
Like I said, at the start Lewis’s argumentation is at least generally sound. He certainly makes the first few chapters a worthy read by putting forth persuasively the Argument from Morality for God’s Existence and competently refuting the common rebuttals by nontheists: absolute relativism, the “natural/herd instinct” appeal, the claims of morality being purely a matter of social convention, education, or semantics. Then Lewis starts to narrow down the issue of what to believe of this higher moral lawgiver. He talks about how all of us have defied our inner moral law and thus put ourselves wrong with the Power behind it. Most of all this is, so far as I can see, free of fallacy, though even here Lewis makes some embarrassing false bifurcations: automatically equating religion with theism, nonreligion with atheism, and hard materialism with atheism. Also, I’m not sure but I don’t think that part of the definition of pantheism is belief that God is beyond good and evil, although one could argue that it might entail that.
Lewis next moves onto an even bigger and more egregious false dilemma. He claims that the only three possible worldviews in existence are religion (again, he uses “religion” interchangeably with “theism”), hard materialism, and the belief in that ill-defined “life force” of Creative Evolutionists. Where does Buddhism fall into these three categories? Buddhists believe in the existence of immaterial realms but not in theism and certainly not in the “life-force” of Creative Evolutionists. In which of Lewis’s three categories are we to place Taoists? What about agnostics? The issue of God’s existence is well covered, as I’ve said, by Lewis’s presentation and defenses of the Moral Argument but the fact remains that agnosticism still doesn’t fit into the religion/hard materialism/Creative Evolution trifurcation. Nor does deism, technically speaking. And there’s even more where all that came from.
But that false dilemma is nothing compared to the one that follows: “There are only two views that face all the facts. One is the Christian view that this is a good world that has gone wrong, but still retains the memory of what it ought to have been. The other is the view called Dualism” (page 42).
Wow.
I don’t think I could ever count how many excluded middles are left out of that! Islam is only one of maybe thousands. Technically speaking, one doesn’t even have to subscribe to any religion at all in order to believe that this is a good world that’s gone wrong yet retains the memory of what it ought to have been. Many fanatically irreligious atheists believe that at least as firmly as your average Christian. Even if you add the part about there being a universal moral lawgiver whom we have all defied, how are Islam or Judaism automatically excluded, leaving Dualism as the sole alternative left to Christianity? Did Lewis not know that we believe that too? The Christian scriptures themselves quote Old Testament texts--Judaism, in other words--to establish the doctrine: Romans 3:10-12 is citing Psalms 53:3 (and maybe also Psalms 14:3). The Koran says that morality is a sign from God (surah 30, verse 21) and that we have all violated it to the point where if God took us to task for it He would destroy all of us (surah 16, verse 61). It agrees that because of what happened in Eden the world has gone wrong yet traces of good--embellishments of this world and potential mercy from God--remain (surah 7, verses 19-32). Yet the one and only mention of our religion in the whole text of Mere Christianity is a little snippet on page 78 about how it is not Christianity but Islam that is a teetotal religion.
Did Lewis ever even consider Islam? His autobiography Surprised by Joy is of no help. Islam isn’t even brought up there either, even though it says that what got Lewis started considering, after he had changed his mind about being an atheist, whether any religions were true was when he began to wonder if any religion was a final consummation of all previous true religion. He arrived at the conclusion that there is such a religion and that it is Christianity. He gives no evidence that the subject of whether or not that religion is Islam ever even crossed his mind, even though Islam makes more of a point than any other religion in the history of the world of alleging to be such a consummation of previous religion. I’ve read pretty much almost every theological writing Lewis has ever written and with the exception of that incidental fleeting mention of Islam as a teetotal religion of page 78 of Mere Christianity the only thing about Islam from Lewis I can ever remember reading was his claim that that if you went up to Muhammad (on whom be peace) and asked him if he was Allah, “he would have rent his clothes and cut your head off”. With such shameful ignorance as that perhaps it’s not surprising he had little to say of my religion.
And so it is with this step in Lewis’s process of elimination--leaving out Islam, Judaism, and innumerable other excluded middles--that the whole thing goes awry, preventing any following steps in the process from working since they’re all proceeding from this false and presumptuous premise. That’s the risk you take when you’re forming a process of elimination. It’s like a game of Jenga: if one piece doesn’t fit or is left out then everything above it comes tumbling down. As Lewis himself notes, “progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer” (page 28). This review could almost end right here. But the process of elimination isn't quite the only argumentation for Christianity which Lewis employs. Perhaps he continues because he himself wasn’t completely confident of that absurd bifurcation. In any case he still hasn’t yet arrived at his final conclusion on pages 61-62 that “[therefore] I have to believe that Jesus was (and is) God”. His last few arguments focus on establishing the specific central doctrines of Christianity.
If you thought that no false dilemma could top the Christianity/Dualism one, you were wrong. Throughout the home stretch Lewis's arguments for Christianity are all built, blindly, without justification or even any mention of possible disagreeing viewpoints, on the assumption that all biblical texts he uses--including all of the text of all four Gospels--are necessarily accurate. He points to this and that and the other from the Gospels, and says there, don’t you see now? He poses his famous Trilemma (“lord, lunatic, or liar” etc.), which I soundly refuted here. He takes it for granted that the Bible is right about God having chosen the Jews and so forth. He assumes that all the words the Gospels attributed to Jesus (on whom be peace) are accurate recordings of what he said. He does not devote one penstroke to argumentation for the accuracy or authenticity of any of the texts in question. And because of the alleged implications he finds in his biblical references Christianity must be true. In other words, he essentially tells us to believe the Bible because the Bible says to. Terms like “circular argumentation” and “begging the question” don’t even begin to do the situation justice. Would he have been convinced if I had pointed to texts about Muhammad (on whom be peace) in the Koran as evidence that he must be God’s final prophet and messenger?
To be sure, there is one other argument for Christianity that Lewis makes. He says that “one of the reasons he believes Christianity” is that “it is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected I should feel we were making it up. But in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have” (pages 41-42). How many religions don’t offer people something contrary to the kind of universe they had previously expected? And why can’t there be nonreligious or even irreligious viewpoints which do the same thing too? Why isn’t Christianity the sort of thing that anyone would have made up? People could make up anything. Doesn’t scientology alone prove that there’s nothing on earth that people might not have made up? Exactly what does “a queer twist” even mean anyway?
So there you have it: this is what we get from world’s seemingly most oft toted evangelistic tract. This is the best the finest Christian apologist and theologian the world has ever seen can do. Now does that prove that Christianity is untrue? Not at all. One certainly shouldn’t reject a religion just because a single person, however relatively skilled at the task compared to most of his kind, failed miserably to argue persuasively for it. Nor does any of this mean that Islam is true. That is another subject for other articles, many of which I have already written. Not to worry: as Lewis himself remarks on page 32, “If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end.” Indeed, and you may even--God grant it--find truth. But for the reasons I’ve stated you certainly won’t find it in Mere Christianity--certainly not very far into the text after the issue of God's existence has come and gone, anyway. May God bless us all and guide us to a right path.
