Beyond The Mire of The Mere
Lewis Gave Us the Beginning, But Not the End & All Between
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father.” ~ John 14:12
There’s a common default among many Christians that I’ve spoken with that goes something like this: “I’m ultimately a [C.S. Lewis] Mere Christianity kind of person.” Well, I say to myself, if you call yourself a Christian then I hope that you’re at least a ‘mere Christian’. I have no qualms with mere Christians nor with Mere Christianity per se—I think of myself as the former and as a fan of the latter. What I’m not a fan of is the abused excuse of this notion.
To probe a bit, many of the people I know who hold themselves to be mere Christians use the phrase almost as a safeguard against really delving into the reality, and legitimacy, of Apostolic Christianity (e.g., Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican) with all its deep traditions and long, wily, and wonderful history; a history that is tied back to the Apostles themselves. Either way, the phrase becomes a type of Deus ex machina in theological discussions in which those who use it seem to say they’ve subscribed to a purified form of Christianity. It seems to them a form that has absolved itself of all historical corruptions of the faith and which has been distilled down to its original 33 A.D. form.
While the mere Christianity approach has indeed shed much of what it fears—such as any seemingly unnecessary historical appendages—it has also thrown out the baby with the bath water. Mere Christianity is an incredible thing insomuch as salvation is a good thing. I certainly don’t deny this wonderful fact. Whatever the good Lewis has done with the paradigm of mere Christianity, however, I would argue that it exists within a wishful vacuum. That is, it diminishes the full historical force and reality of Christ’s visible and powerful effects within the last two-thousand years of the Church with its great multitude of sinners and even greater communion of Saints. It is indeed the beginning. Yet it is not the end.
I turn to my grandfather, Dr. Sean O’Reilly, to help illustrate my point. In his work Our Name Is Peter, written during the tumultuous post-Vatican II period, Dr. O’Reilly wrote,
The book [Mere Christianity] is very readable, very persuasive in its presentation of what Lewis called the common doctrines of Christianity. It has done an immense amount of good…[However] It should be evident from our previous discussion that such a limited and incomplete vision of the Church and Christianity will not do. Catholic beliefs encompass all of Lewis's "mere" Christianity, but very much more. We can accept and enjoy the splendid-yet-threadbare tapestry woven by Lewis, but we know that we have a living artist—a corps of artists continuously engaged in developing the full splendor of that tapestry of the faith. I refer to the living magisterium of the Church, and especially to him who is the artist-in-chief, the vicar of Christ on earth.
While the book itself is more specifically a confession and defense of St. Peter’s primacy and succession in the Church (a.k.a., the Papacy), my grandfather’s point is relevant to our topic. That is, Lewis gives us a framework and a foundation for the faith, but we don’t just build frameworks and foundations for their own sake. We form a framework when we seek to build a ship to sail the oceans, we set a foundation when we seek to build a castle for a kingdom.
The gist is, whatever good may come of stripping things down to the fundamental principles, such as Christianity in this case, it is natural and true that good things flow from good things—such as the fruit of the tree, or, in the case of Church history, traditions such as the Rosary, or veneration of Saints, or feast days. When it comes to pruning trees, we only cut off the dead limbs (which at one point did live and flourish), but we don’t chop the tree down because “it’s merely about the roots.” St. Francis was a pruner; Luther was a lumberjack. And Lewis? Perhaps he was just a bit heavy-handed on the pruning.
There is much more I will say on this topic, and this will be the purpose of my next few articles regarding certain themes of doctrinal or historical development within the Church (yes, that means St. John Henry Newman). What I will end with for now is this: we can’t get stuck in the mire of the mere. And, yes, neither should we forget the roots, for indeed we are made to grow. The Scriptures themselves are full of developmental imagery and language (e.g., Ps. 1:3, Mt. 13:1-43, 1 Pt. 2:2, Ep. 2:21, etc.), I can’t imagine why Christ’s Church wouldn’t develop and grow in visible ways as well.
Didn't know GPa Sean referred to MC in the book. Its an excellent point he makes, and subsequently, you make. To be merely christian is essentially to not be christian...to be a Christian, the goal is to be transformed to the core.