DON'T YOU MEAN SELFLESSNESS :-I
Arguments for a Moral Law
Lewis bases his case for Christian belief on the existence of a Moral Law, a "Rule about Right and Wrong" commonly known to all human beings. This law is like mathematical laws in being real, not just a matter of convention, contrived by humans. But it is unlike mathematically expressed laws of nature in that it can be broken or ignored by humans, who possess free will.
Humans know the moral law intuitively, Lewis argues. It is the only law of the universe which they know from within themselves. All other laws are known only through observation, such as the law of gravity. The moral law is generally agreed to in one form or another by religious and non-religious persons. One source of evidence of this was, that even non-religious people in England during World War II believed that what Hitler was doing was wrong. On a more mundane level, even a non-religious person may object that someone stealing from them or taking unfair advantage of them is doing something wrong.
The other claimed intuitive underpinning of his system is the experience of people for something deeper and more than can ever be experienced in an earthly life. Lewis refers to these experiences in himself as "joy" and describes these in his book Surprised by Joy. His argument is that we cannot yearn for something that does not exist. The fact that we thirst reflects that we naturally need water and that there is a substance which satisfies that need. The same could be said of other needs as well. Humans cannot know to yearn for something which does not exist.
Lewis states that to understand Christianity, one must understand the moral law, which is the underlying moral structure of the universe. The moral law is "hard as nails." Unless one understands the dismay which comes from the moral law, one cannot understand the coming of Christ and his work.
After introducing the Moral Law, Lewis argues that the eternal God who is its source takes primacy over the created Satan whose rebellion undergirds all evil. Evil is a parasite on goodness. Satan was and is a supernatural power, who, in his pride, set himself against God. But there is nothing about evil which is not a perversion of something good. That is why, Lewis argues, evil is a parasite in the world. It twists the good things which God placed into the world.
Then the death and resurrection of Christ, the Son of God, is introduced as, in the Christian view, the only way in which our inadequate human attempts to redeem our own sins could be made adequate in God's eyes.
"He [mankind] had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself," Lewis says of the futility of our own attempts at moral self-justification and consequent need for repentance and "surrender." God "became a man" in Christ, says Lewis, so that "our human nature which can suffer and die" could be "amalgamated with God's nature" and make full atonement possible.
[edit] Atonement
There are many theological theories about what "the point of this dying was," writes Lewis. None is fully adequate to the thing itself, any more than a verbal description of a mathematical model, such as that of an atom, is fully adequate to the mathematics per se. Thus does Lewis make nuanced logical distinctions between core religious truths and theological explanations thereof, throughout his book.
[edit] Christian ethics
The last third of the book explores the ethics resulting from belief.
Mere Christianity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
an old code talker ;-)
Live Search: C.S. Lewis on MERE CHRISTIANITY radio broadcast
NO MORE FALSE WITNESS OR COVETING MY WIFE BY YOUR HOMO LEGION EITHER
__________________
If you don't KNOW where you come from...you WILL wind up going nowhere.
That goes for Ideas, institutions as well as individuals :-I
YouTube - - You CAN Handle The Truth - TRANCE Form America - 3of7
YouTube - The Fray - How To Save A Life Video
^I^
Finale/Reprise
La, la, la, etc, etc
Jack's ok,
and he's back, ok.
He's alright.
Let's shout,
make a fuss,
scream it out!
Weeee!
Jack is back now, everyone sing,
in our town of Halloween.
What's this? What's this?
I haven't got a clue.
What's this? Why it's completely new.
What's this? Must be a Christmas thing.
What's this? It's really very strange.
This is Halloween. Halloween! Halloween! Halloween!
What's this? What's this? (etc…)
My dearest friend, if you don't mind.
I'd like to join you by your side,
where we can gaze into the stars.
And sit together,
now and forever.
For it is plain as anyone can see,
we're simply meant to be
Closing
And finally, everything worked out just fine.
Christmas was saved, though there wasn't much time.
But after that night, things were never the same—
Each holiday now knew the other ones' name.
And though that one Christmas things got out of hand,
I'm still rather fond of that skeleton man.
So many years later I thought I'd drop in,
and there was old Jack still looking quite thin,
with four or five skeleton children at hand
playing strange little tunes in their xylophone band.
And I asked old Jack, "Do you remember the night
when the sky was so dark and the moon shone so bright?
When a million small children pretending to sleep
nearly didn't have Christmas at all, so to speak?”
And would you, if you could, turn that mighty clock back
to that long, fateful night, now think carefully, Jack.
Would you do the whole thing all over again,
knowing what you know now, knowing what you knew then?"
And he smiled, like the old Pumpkin King that I knew,
then turned and asked softly of me, "Wouldn't you?"
YouTube - Final Reprise - The Nightmare Before Christmas - FFVII
(-;;-)
The Virtue of Selfishness
Archimedes
Linear Mode
