Mere Christianity

If I ask them, even in a better world, I might, for all I know, be answered as a far greater questioner was answered, What is that to thee? Follow thou me? But there are other questions as to which I am definitely on one side of the fence, and yet say nothing. For I was not writing to expound something I could call my religion, but to expound mere Christianity, which is what it is, and was what it was, long before I was born, and whether I like it or not. Some people draw unwarranted conclusions from the fact that I never say more about the Blessed Virgin Mary than is involved in asserting the virgin birth of Christ. But surely my reason for not doing so is obvious. To say more would take me at once into highly controversial regions, and there is no controversy between Christians which needs to be so delicately touched as this. The Roman Catholic beliefs on that subject are held not only with the ordinary fervor that attaches to all sincere religious belief, but, very naturally, with the peculiar and, as it were, chivalrous sensibility that a man feels when the honour of his mother or his beloved is at stake. It is very difficult, so, to dissent from them that you will not appear to them a cad as well as a heretic. And contrary-wise, the opposed Protestant beliefs on this subject call forth feelings which go down to the very roots of all monotheism whatever. To radical Protestants, it seems that the distinction between creator and creature, however holy, is imperiled, that polytheism is risen again. Hence, it is hard so to dissent from them that you will not appear something worse than a heretic, an idolater, a pagan. If any topic could be relied upon to wreck a book about mere Christianity, if any topic makes utterly unprofitable reading for those who do not yet believe that the Virgin Son is God, surely this is it. Oddly enough, you cannot even conclude from my silence on disputed points either that I think them important or that I think them unimportant. For this is itself one of the disputed points. One of the things Christians are disagreed about is the importance of their disagreements. When two Christians of different denominations start arguing, it is usually not long before one asks whether such and such a point really matters, and the other replies, Matter? Why, it's absolutely essential. All this is said simply in order to make clear what kind of book I was trying to write, not in the least to conceal or evade responsibility for my own beliefs. About those, as I said before, there is no secret. To quote Uncle Toby, they are written in the common prayer book. The danger clearly was that I should put forward as common Christianity anything that was peculiar to the Church of England, or, worse still, to myself. I tried to guard against this by sending the original script of what is now Book II to four clergymen—Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic—and asking for their criticism. The Methodist thought I had not said enough about faith, and the Roman Catholic thought I had gone rather too far about the comparative unimportance of theories in explanation of the atonement. Otherwise, all five of us were agreed. I did not have the remaining book similarly vetted, because in them, though differences might arise among Christians, these would be differences between individuals or schools of thought, not between denominations. So far as I can judge from reviews and from the numerous letters written to me, the book, however faulty in other respects, did at least succeed in presenting an agreed, or common, or central, or mere Christianity. In that way it may possibly be of some help in silencing the view that, if we omit the disputed points, we shall have left only a vague and bloodless H.C.F. The H.C.F. turns out to be something not only positive but pungent, divided from all non-Christian beliefs by a chasm to which the worst divisions inside Christendom are not really comparable at all. If I have not directly helped the cause of reunion, I have perhaps made it clear why we ought to be reunited. Certainly I have met with little of the fabled Odium Theologicum from convinced members of communions different from my own. Hostility has come more from borderline people, whether within the Church of England or without it, men not exactly obedient to any communion. This I find curiously consoling. It is at her centre, where her truest children dwell, that each communion is really closest to every other in spirit, if not in doctrine. And this suggests that at the centre of each there is something or a someone who, against all divergences of belief, all differences of temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, speaks with the same voice. So much for my omissions on doctrine. In Book Three, which deals with morals, I have also passed over some things in silence, but for a different reason. Ever since I served as an infantryman in the First World War, I have had a great dislike of people who, themselves in ease and safety, issue exhortations to men in the front line. As a result, I have a reluctance to say much about temptations to which I myself am not exposed. No man, I suppose, is tempted to every sin. It so happens that the impulse which makes men gamble has been left out of my make-up, and no doubt I pay for this by lacking some good impulse of which it is the excess or perversion. I therefore did not feel myself qualified to give advice about permissible and impermissible gambling, if there is any permissible, for I do not claim to know even that. I have also said nothing about birth-control. I am not a woman, nor even a married man, nor am I a priest. I did not think it my place to take a firm line about pains, dangers, and expenses from which I am protected, having no pastoral office which obliged me to do so. Far deeper objections may be felt, and have been expressed, against my use of the word Christian, to mean one who accepts the common doctrines of Christianity. People ask, who are you to lay down who is and who is not a Christian? Or may not many a man who cannot believe these doctrines be far more truly a Christian, far closer to the Spirit of Christ, than some who do? Now this objection is in one sense very right, very charitable, very spiritual, very sensitive. It has every amiable quality except that of being useful. We simply cannot, without disaster, use language as these objectors want us to use it. I will try to make this clear by the history of another, and very much less important, word. The word gentleman originally meant something recognisable, one who had a coat of arms and some landed property. When you called someone a gentleman, you were not paying him a compliment, but merely stating a fact. If you said he was not a gentleman, you were not insulting him, but giving information. There was no contradiction in saying that John was a liar and a gentleman, any more than there now is in saying that James is a fool and an M.A. But then there came people who said, so rightly, charitably, spiritually, sensitively, so anything but usefully. Ah, but surely the important thing about a gentleman is not the coat of arms and the land, but the behaviour. Surely he is the true gentleman who behaves as a gentleman should. Surely in that sense Edward is far more truly a gentleman than John. They meant, well, to be honourable and courteous and brave is, of course, a far better thing than to have a coat of arms. But it is not the same thing. Worse still, it is not a thing everyone will agree about. To call a man a gentleman in this new refined sense becomes, in fact, not a way of giving information about him, but a way of praising him. To deny that he is a gentleman becomes simply a way of insulting him. When a word ceases to be a term of description and becomes merely a term of praise, it no longer tells you facts about the object, it only tells you about the speaker's attitude to that object. A nice meal only means a meal the speaker likes. A gentleman, once it has been spiritualized and refined out of its old coarse objective sense, means hardly more than a man whom the speaker likes. As a result, gentleman is now a useless word. We had lots of terms of approval already, so it was not needed for that use. On the other hand, if anyone, say, in a historical work, wants to use it in its old sense, he cannot do so without explanations. It has been spoiled for that purpose. Now, if once we allow people to start spiritualizing and refining, or as they might say, deepening the sense of the word Christian, it too will speedily become a useless word. In the first place, Christians themselves will never be able to apply it to anyone. It is not for us to say who, in the deepest sense, is or is not close to the Spirit of Christ. We do not see into men's hearts. We cannot judge, and are indeed forbidden to judge. It would be wicked arrogance for us to say that any man is or is not a Christian in this refined sense. And obviously, a word which we can never apply is not going to be a very useful word. As for the unbelievers, they will no doubt cheerfully use the word in the refined sense. It will become in their mouths simply a term of praise. In calling anyone a Christian, they will mean that they think him a good man. But that way of using the word will be no enrichment of the language, for we already have the word good. Meanwhile, the word Christian will have been spoiled for any really useful purpose it might have served. We must, therefore, stick to the original, obvious meaning. The name Christians was first given at Antioch, Acts 11, verse 26, to the disciples, to those who accepted the teaching of the apostles.