Original Sin, Privilege, and the Psychology of Repentance

Thoughts on C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, Book II

Image credit: Brad Sherman (Wikimedia Commons)

This is the second in a series of essays about C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. In the first essay, I challenged Lewis’s claim that our moral intuitions imply the existence of a Moral Law, and thus a Something beyond ourselves that created it.

But Book II takes it for granted that some form of theism makes more sense than materialism, and so will I. Indeed the first few chapters of Book II operate like a kind of sieve. Starting from a generic theism, Lewis aims to show why Christianity makes the most sense.

Since I don’t want this essay to get too long, I’ll accept the arguments that open Book II. I’ll stipulate that if theism is true for the reasons set forth in Book I, then some form of monotheism makes more sense than either pantheism or dualism. I don’t have any beef with Lewis’s arguments here, and stepping over them will let us get straight into the concept of “repentance,” the real meat and potatoes of Book II.

The mechanics of repentance

For Lewis, repentance is what sets Christianity apart from other forms of monotheism. It constitutes both the central theme of Christ’s death and resurrection, as well as a guide for Christian behavior…