S1E12 – MC B2C5 – “The Practical Conclusion”

We now come to the final chapter of Book II! In this chapter, C.S. Lewis draws to a conclusion “What Christians believe”. In previous chapters, Jack has explained that we receive New Life from Christ. In this final chapter he looks at how it is communicated to us. He principally focuses on belief, Baptism and Holy Communion.

S1E12: “The Practical Conclusion” (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

• On this episode, David and Matt will be exploring the concept of “dying to oneself”, and putting on a “new self” in Christ. What does this mean?

Toast

• Once again, Matt and David were drinking Ballast Point Bonito.
• The card game Matt taught me the day before was Euchre. It’s kinda weird…

Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.”

C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Discussion

01. “A New Kind of Man”

• Lewis begins this chapter with an attention-grabbing assertion:

People often ask when the next step is in evolution – the step to something beyond man – will happen. But in the Christian view, it has happened already. In Christ a new kind of man appeared: and the new kind of life which began in Him is to be put into us.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

• Matt referenced the podcast Intelligence Squared, where Yuval Noah Harari spoke about “Homo Deus”. In response to this, David quoted the Early Church Father, St. Athanasius:

For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.

St Athanasius, On the Incarnation

• This provocative phrase speaks of what is known as “Theosis”. Scripturally, this takes its foundation from 2 Peter 1:4:

…He has granted to us his precious and very great promises…and become partakers of the divine nature.

2 Peter 1:4

02. “Storks and Gooseberry Bushes”

• How do we acquire this New Life? Lewis compares it to the Natural Life, which we acquired through a curious process that we might not have expected. So too, he says, it is with the New Life.

How is this to be done? Now, please remember how we acquired the old, ordinary kind of life. We derived it from others, from our father and mother and all our ancestors, without our consent – and by a very curious process, involving pleasure, pain, and danger. A process you would never have guessed. Most of us spend a good many years in childhood trying to guess it: and some children, when they are first told, do not believe it – and I am not sure that I blame them, for it is very odd.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

• Matt and David have brief conversation about David’s belief in The Stork and the statue which is on top of Sharp Mary Birch Hospital. David also commented that in England, in answer to the question “Where do babies come from?”, children are often told that they are found underneath gooseberry bushes!

Now the God who arranged that process is the same God who arranges how the new kind of life – the Christ life – is to be spread. We must be prepared for it being odd too. He did not consult us when He invented sex: He has not consulted us either when He invented this.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

03. “The Process”

• Jack identifies the three main ways in which this Divine Life is passed on: belief, Baptism and Holy Communion.

There are three things that spread the Christ-life to us: baptism, belief, and … Holy Communion, the Mass, the Lord’s Supper. At least, those are the three ordinary methods.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

• However, Lewis doesn’t limit it to these channels. God’s grace can move in extraordinary ways.

I am not saying there may not be special cases where it is spread without one or more of these. I have not time to go into special cases, and I do not know enough. If you are trying in a few minutes to tell a man how to get to Edinburgh you will tell him the trains: he can, it is true, get there by boat or by a plane, but you will hardly bring that in.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

• Jack also doesn’t claim that one is more essential than another.

My Methodist friend would like me to say more about belief and less (in proportion) about the other two. But I am not going to do that. Anyone who professes to teach you Christian doctrine will, in fact, tell you to use all three, and that is enough for our present purpose.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

• He also says that these aren’t substitutes for our attempts to copy Christ.

Do not think I am setting up baptism and belief and the Holy Communion as things that will do instead of your own attempts to copy Christ.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

04. “Authority”

• On what basis do we believe that the Divine Life is transmitted like this? Simply put, on the authority of Jesus. Authority is not a scary word, it simply means believing something because someone whom you think trustworthy has told you that it is true.

I believe it on His authority. Do not be scared by the word authority. Believing things on authority only means believing them because you have been told them by someone you think trustworthy.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

• Lewis gives a few personal examples to prove his point on authority.

Ninety-nine per cent of the things you believe are believed on authority. I believe there is such a place as New York. I have not seen it myself. I could not prove by abstract reasoning that there must be such a place. I believe it because reliable people have told me so. The ordinary man believes in the Solar System, atoms, evolution, and the circulation of the blood on authority – because the scientists say so. Every historical statement in the world is believed on authority. None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Armada.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

• Matt and David took a short detour to discuss how Jesus passed on His authority to the Church.

And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.

If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

John 20:22-23

… I am writing these instructions to you so that,

if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth.

1 Timothy 3:14-15 (emphasis added)

• We spit on authority at our own peril.

We believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them: in fact, on authority. A man who jibbed at authority in other things as some people do in religion would have to be content to know nothing all his life.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

05. “Once-Saved-Always-Saved?”

• Lewis describes how this Divine Life should be protected, essentially addressing the doctrine of Once-Saved-Always-Saved. If you would like to see a really great debate on this subject, check out the one between James White and Trent Horn.

In the same way a Christian can lose the Christ-life which has been put into him, and he has to make efforts to keep it. But even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam – he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

• Lewis isn’t suggesting a form of Pelagianism. He says that the Divine Life is a gift, but it must be protected.

Your natural life is derived from your parents; that does not mean it will stay there if you do nothing about it. You can lose it by neglect, or you can drive it away by committing suicide. You have to feed it and look after it: but always remember you are not making it, you are only keeping up a life you got from someone else.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

• David described this idea in terms of mortal sin, which quenches the Divine Life within us (1 John 5:17). 
• Lewis says that when a living body is hurt, it can to a degree repair itself. David suggested that this nicely maps to venial sin.

A live body is not one that never gets hurt, but one that can to some extent repair itself. In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble – because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ himself carried out.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

06. “Grace”

• Anything good that a Christian does comes from this new life. We cannot take credit for any good deeds we have done, apart from Christ.

The Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

07. “The Hands and Feet of Christ”

• The New Life which comes from Christ is expressed through the whole Body of Christ. 

When Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral. When they speak of being ‘in Christ’ or of Christ being ‘in them’, this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through them; that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts – that we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

• In a recent episode of The Restless Heart, David recorded a more personal episode where he spoke about this idea, how he met Christ in the death of his father.

This new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but by bodily acts like baptism and Holy Communion. It is not merely the spreading of an idea; it is more like evolution – a biological or superbiological fact.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

• Some people might find the idea of God communicating His grace to us through physical means (such as Baptism and Holy Communication) rather crude, but as Jack points out, God likes matter – He invented it!

There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

08. “Some Objections”

• The chapter closes by considering two objections.
• The first objection is that this whole affair is unfair: why should the Divine Life only be given to those who have heard of Christ?
• Lewis points out that we haven’t been told too much about God’s plan for those who have never heard the Gospel. Matt and David briefly discussed the Catholic perspective on this topic.

God has not told us what His arrangements about th other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him.

• Lewis concludes by saying that the best thing you can do for others is to become a Christian yourself and help transmit that Divine Life to others.

If you are worried about the people outside, the most unreasonable thing you can do is to remain outside yourself … If you want to help those outside you must add your own little cell to the body of Christ who alone can help them.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

• Objection two: Why did God invade in this way? Why doesn’t He invade in force?
• Lewis answers that Christians believe He will invade in force at the Second Coming, but that he is probably giving us a chance to join His side freely.

Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely. I do not suppose you and I would have thought much of. Frenchman who waited till the Allies were marching into Germany and then announced he was on our side.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, The Practical Conclusion

Wrap Up

Concluding Thoughts

• The outline for this chapter is available here.

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