Jesus, a Jew, was speaking to the Jewish community, which was suffering under Roman oppression. If Jesus was just an ordinary wise man, he would not have made the claims he did. It is foolish, Lewis says, to make this assertion. In Book 2, Chapter 3 Lewis addresses the commonly held notion that Jesus was merely a great moral teacher and nothing more. Either Jesus is what he says he is, he is insane, or he is lying. This argument is often referred to as the 'liar, lunatic, Lord' trilemma because of its assertion there are only three ways to interpret Jesus's claims to divinity.

Lewis uses unforgettable language to present a very old argument for the divinity of Jesus. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book 3, Chapter 1 (emphasis added).In one of the book's most famous passages, C.S.

Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for: what course the whole fleet ought to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants it to play. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonizing the things inside each individual. The instruments might be all in tune and might all come in at the right moment, but even so the performance would not be a success if they had been engaged to provide dance music and actually played nothing but Dead Marches.Īnd however well the fleet sailed, its voyage would be a failure it it were meant to reach New York and actually arrived at Calcutta.Īpplying this to morality, Lewis says that ethics is concerned with three things:įirstly, with fair play and harmony between individuals.

We have not asked where the fleet is trying to get to, or what piece of music the band is trying to play. These two elements are fairly obvious, but we often forget to identify the most important piece of information: He then offers an alternative metaphor: “humanity as a band playing a tune.” “To get a good result,” he says, “you need two things”:Įach player’s individual instrument must be in tune and also each must come in at the right moment so as to combine with all the others.

On the other hand, if their steering gears are out of order, they will not be able to avoid collisions. If the ships keep on having collisions, they will not remain seaworthy very long. The voyage will be a success only, in the first place, if the ships do not collide and get in one another’s way and, secondly, if each ship is seaworthy and has her engines in good order.Īs a matter of fact, you cannot have either of these two things without the other. He asks us to think of humanity as “a fleet of ships sailing in formation” and what makes it successful: The other is when things go wrong inside the individual-when the different parts of him (his different faculties, and desires, and so on) either drift apart or interfere with one another.

Mere christianity book 3