What Christians Believe? Peter Kreeft - 2

What Christians Believe? Peter Kreeft – 2
cinops be gone Sunday, April 6, 2008

Continue from a talk given at the C.S. Lewis Summer Conference 2003. A tape from St. Joseph Radio – P.O. Box 2983, Orange, Ca. 92859 (714) 744-1998 –
www.stjosephradio.com This is a classic on Lewis’s book, Mere Christianity.

“There is another and easier way to outline, Mere Christianity by a single standard. A kind of psychological progression from what is easier to know to what is harder to know: The first part is about morality because that is easier to know than theology.
It is easier because it is about us. We have inside information which we don’t have about God. And it is easier because God deliberately left the human race much more knowledge of morality than of theology.

“The religions of the world contradicted very significantly in theology but less significantly in morality. God did this for rather obvious reasons. Morality is immediately necessary for our survival and sanity and it is the natural beginning of our knowledge of God.

“Scripture is not concerned with God’s existence but God’s character. What surprises us is not that God exists but that He is good. The knowledge of God from nature alone doesn’t lead too much of a knowledge of a true God or a good God. We see that in the book.

“Ecclesiastics for instance, where God’s existence is taken for granted but life remains vanity of vanities. Reason is also easier than Faith, more natural, a starting point. So we begin with doubly easy thing, morality known by reason than theology known by reason and experience as we are led to by that first things including reflection on the New Testament data; and then thirdly morality known by faith and finally theology known by faith.

“Within part II of Mere Christianity we have five chapters. The first is entitled The Rival Conception of God. These are the basic theological alternatives. First, Lewis forces us to choose between atheism and theism. And with some sort of theism between pantheism and creationism. And then within creationism between dualism and a single God and then in a later chapter 3 between other forms of deism and
Christian deism. He doesn’t give you a complete picture as a philosopher would; doesn’t for instance; look at agnosticism as a possibility or polytheism which is not much of a live option for modern westerners.

“The second chapter naturally follows from the moral dualism established in Chapter I where Lewis establishes the God behind the moral law and it’s entitled, The Invasion. And it’s about spiritual warfare, the warfare between good and evil.

George H. Kubeck, Duplicate and or translate into Spanish and Vietnamese.