The Faith Held in Common

There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. EPHESIANS 4:4–6

Lewis took the title of his most famous book from the seventeenth-century Puritan Richard Baxter, who in a quarrelsome age had described himself as a mere Christian — a man who belonged to no party but simply to Christ. Lewis meant the same thing by it. His aim in the broadcast talks was not to defend his own church, nor to settle the disputes between Christians, but to set out the faith that Christians of almost every century and every church have confessed together. Before publishing one of the series he sent the script to four clergymen — an Anglican, a Methodist, a Presbyterian and a Roman Catholic — to make sure he had not slipped into the special views of any one of them.

The common house and its rooms

He described this common faith with a picture: a great entrance hall with doors opening into many rooms. Mere Christianity, as he meant it, is the hall. It is a real place, and a man may stand in it and be a Christian. But it is not a place to live. The rooms are the different churches, each with its own warmth and table and household, and the newcomer who has come into the hall must eventually choose a room — and must choose it not for its comfort or its company but because he believes its teaching to be true. And once inside, he must be kind to those who have chosen other doors, and pray for them.

Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. EPHESIANS 4:3

This was a generous vision, and it shaped all his work. He wrote, as far as he could, for the hall and not for any one room. That is why Christians of every tradition have found him useful, and why some evangelical readers have found him frustrating: on questions they regard as essential, he deliberately refused to say.

Reading old books

One of the ways Lewis guarded the common faith was by reading, and urging others to read, the books of earlier centuries. In 1944 he wrote an introduction to a new English translation of Athanasius’ On the Incarnation, the fourth-century defence of the deity of Christ that is now in the Ochorus library. In it he made a case that has become famous in its own right. Every age, he argued, has its own characteristic mistakes — mistakes so widely shared at the time that no one notices them. Modern books share the mistakes of the modern age, and so cannot correct them. Old books have different mistakes, which we can easily see, and they are free of ours. Reading them lets the air of other ages into a stuffy room. He urged readers who could not manage more to let at least some old books into their reading alongside the new.

Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. JEREMIAH 6:16

In the same introduction he made another observation that has helped many believers. He said that he often found books of doctrine more helpful to his devotion than books written to be devotional. A reader whose heart grows cold over a book of pious reflections may find it warming over a careful book of theology, read slowly and attentively. The mind and the heart, again, were not rivals.

Against the spirit of the age

Lewis had himself been a victim of the assumption that whatever is newer must be truer. As a young man he had looked down on the beliefs of the past simply because they were old, without asking whether they had ever been refuted. His friend Owen Barfield cured him of this by pressing him on what reason he had for thinking that the ideas of his own century were right where those of earlier centuries were wrong. Once he saw the question, Lewis could not unsee it. Throughout his life he insisted that a belief should be judged by whether it is true, not by when it was held. Christianity was not out of date, because truth does not go out of date.

Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever. Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. HEBREWS 13:8–9

The church

Lewis did not come easily to church. In the early years after his conversion he disliked hymns, which he thought poor poetry set to poor music, and he found the company of many churchgoers uncongenial. He went anyway, because he became convinced that a Christian is not a solitary believer but a member of a body, and that the body meets. Over time he came to see that the very things he disliked were good for him: the rubbing of shoulders with people of different tastes and backgrounds, the humility of singing words he would not have chosen, the discipline of being one among many. He remained a faithful member of his parish church in Headington Quarry for more than thirty years.

Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching. HEBREWS 10:25

He took communion regularly and, from 1940, made a regular confession to a priest, a practice he kept for most of his Christian life. His churchmanship was sacramental and, by the standards of many evangelicals, high. He was also suspicious of what he regarded as fashionable novelties in the Church of England, and he argued in print against the ordination of women to the priesthood on the grounds that it would change the church’s symbolic language about God.

Weighing it

Lewis’s mere Christianity is a precious thing. It reminds believers that the great creeds are a common inheritance, that our quarrels are among family, and that the faith once delivered is larger and older than any of our denominations. His counsel to read old books is wise and is almost universally neglected.

The caution is that the hall can become an excuse for never deciding anything. Lewis himself said that the hall was not a place to live; but because he wrote almost entirely for the hall, some of his readers have stayed there, treating every question beyond the creed as a matter of taste. The Reformation was not a quarrel about furnishings. Questions such as how a sinner is justified before God, what the Lord’s Supper is, and where final authority lies are not secondary to those who must answer them, and the New Testament speaks to them. Lewis’s generosity is to be imitated; his reticence on these questions is not always to be imitated. Evangelical readers will also note that his sacramental practices, such as confession to a priest, rest on convictions about ministry that they do not share.

For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 1 CORINTHIANS 3:11

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Read the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed slowly. Give thanks for the faith you share with believers of every age and tradition.

2. Think of a Christian of another tradition whom you find difficult. Pray for that person by name this week.

3. Choose an old book — Athanasius’ On the Incarnation is a good start, and it is in the Ochorus library — and read it alongside whatever modern book you are reading.

4. Is there a question of doctrine you have avoided deciding because it seemed divisive? Study what Scripture says about it, humbly and carefully.

5. If you have drifted from regular fellowship, take one concrete step back towards your local church this week.

A PRAYER

Father, You have called us into one body by one Spirit, under one Lord.

Forgive me for my party spirit, and for my pride in the room I have chosen. Forgive me too for the times I have stayed in the hall to avoid deciding what is true.

Teach me from the saints of other centuries, and correct the blind spots of my own.

Keep me faithful in Your church, among people I did not choose, and make me a builder of unity on the one foundation, Jesus Christ. Amen.