# Reasoning or storytelling? Lewis's two pleas and those who answered him

• A layman, not a theologian: he defends a "mere Christianity."
• Three favorite arguments: morality, reason, desire; and the famous "lunatic, liar or Lord."
• Serious critics: Anscombe, Beversluis, theologians.
• The story as another plea: "stepping past watchful dragons."

Mere Christianity

Apologetics is the art of defending a belief through arguments. Lewis was neither a priest nor a theologian, but a literature professor, and he often reminded his readers of this. This is precisely what made his work successful: he spoke in a language everyone could understand, using everyday images, and he knew the objections of the unbeliever from the inside, since he had been an atheist until he was over thirty.

He refused to get involved in disputes between churches. He wanted to defend what he called mere Christianity, the Christianity common to almost all Christians throughout the centuries. He compared it to a hallway that leads to several rooms: one does not settle there, but it is where people meet. As a result, he is read by both evangelical Protestants and Catholics or Orthodox alike.

First plea: reasoning

Three arguments

1. Morality. Everyone invokes a rule of justice when they argue. Where does this law come from, which we know without following it? For Lewis, it points to a lawgiver (The Foundations of Christianity, The Abolition of Man).
2. Reason. If our thoughts are merely the product of blind physical processes, we have no reason to trust them, including when they conclude in materialism (Miracles).
3. Desire. We experience a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy. Every natural desire has its object; this one suggests another world (The Weight of Glory, Surprised by Joy).

“Lunatic, liar or Lord”

This is Lewis’s most famous argument, and the most debated. Many say Jesus was a great moral teacher, but not God. For Lewis, this is the only impossible position: a man who claims to forgive sins and to be equal with God is either a lunatic, a liar, or what he claims to be.

Word to the critics

• Against the trilemma. The argument assumes the Gospels faithfully report Jesus’s words, which many historians contest; it ignores other possibilities (Jesus could have been mistaken in good faith, or his disciples could have developed these words later). His defenders respond that Lewis mainly wanted to push his reader to take a position.
• Elizabeth Anscombe, 1948. At the Socratic Club, this Catholic philosopher showed that the argument of reason, as formulated in Miracles, is imprecise. Lewis acknowledged the objection and rewrote the chapter.
• John Beversluis, 1985. In C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion, this philosopher devoted an entire book to refuting Lewis’s arguments, opening a debate that continues to this day.
• Theologians. Some criticize Lewis for taking shortcuts or holding unusual positions for a Protestant (purgatory, salvation of non-Christians of good will).

Second plea: storytelling

Lewis knew that arguments have their limits. In a poem, he asks God to deliver him from his own “brilliant arguments.” From the 1950s onward, he chose another path: storytelling. He said he wanted, through fairy tales, to “step past watchful dragons,” these reluctances that prevent us from feeling what we believe we know.

What essays demonstrate, Narnia lives:

• the moral law becomes the Deep Magic carved on the Stone Table;
• the myth become fact becomes Aslan’s sacrifice and return;
• the argument of desire becomes the land of Aslan, “further up and further in”;
• the salvation of non-Christians of good will, if debated, becomes the figure of Emeth, the Calormen welcomed by Aslan in The Last Battle.

Narnia does not prove anything; it allows us to feel. This is why Lewis rejected the word allegory: he did not translate his arguments into images, he imagined a world where they would be true.

Why read him today, believer or not

Because he takes objections seriously, because he writes clearly, and because he shows that one can debate God without contempt. One may not be convinced by his arguments, prefer his stories, and appreciate a loyal opponent.

## See also - [The Foundations of Christianity](https://narnia.guide/lewis/oeuvres/les-fondements-du-christianisme/) - [Miracles](https://narnia.guide/lewis/oeuvres/miracles/) - [The Problem of Pain](https://narnia.guide/lewis/oeuvres/le-probleme-de-la-souffrance/) - [The Abolition of Man](https://narnia.guide/lewis/oeuvres/l-abolition-de-l-homme/) - [God on Trial](https://narnia.guide/lewis/oeuvres/dieu-au-banc-des-accuses/) - [Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories](https://narnia.guide/lewis/oeuvres/of-other-worlds/) (title not translated) - [Reading Narnia as a Christian… or Not: An Open Reading](https://narnia.guide/comprendre/lire-narnia-en-chretien-ou-pas/) - [Is Narnia an Allegory?](https://narnia.guide/comprendre/narnia-est-il-une-allegorie/) - [Emeth, the Loyal Calormene](https://narnia.guide/personnages/emeth/) - [From the Trenches of Artois to the Evacuees of the Kilns: How Two Wars Opened the Wardrobe](https://narnia.guide/lewis/des-tranchees-aux-enfants-evacues/) - [The Lexicon of Jack: Twelve Lewis Ideas and the Scene from Narnia That Shows Them](https://narnia.guide/lewis/le-lexique-de-jack/)