The Rival Conceptions of God

Big idea

Summary

Opening Book Two, Lewis first clarifies what Christians are not required to believe: that every other religion is entirely mistaken. He contrasts this with the atheist's position, which must regard humanity's near-universal religious impulse as one enormous error. Christians can instead see partial truth scattered across world religions, even while still holding that where Christianity conflicts with another religion, Christianity is correct, much as in arithmetic only one answer is fully right, though some wrong answers come closer to the truth than others.

He then maps the major division among believers in God: pantheism, which regards God as beyond the categories of good and evil entirely, so that everything is in some sense equally 'of God,' versus the Jewish-Muslim-Christian view of a God who is definitely, actively good, one who takes sides, loving some things and hating others. Tied to this is a further contrast: pantheists tend to see God as identical with or diffused through the universe, the way a person's life animates a body, whereas Christians hold that God made the universe as an author invents a story or a painter creates a picture, distinct from His work and not dependent on it, and free to judge some of it as having gone wrong.

This sets up the chapter's central turn: if a good God made a world where things have gone wrong, why is the world unjust? Lewis recounts that this very question of injustice was once his own argument against God's existence, but he came to see that it backfired. To call the universe 'unjust' requires already possessing some standard of justice by which to measure it, a standard that could not itself have arisen from a universe that were meaningless through and through. His own outrage at the universe, in other words, was itself evidence that some part of reality, his own sense of justice, was not meaningless, undermining the very atheism the outrage was meant to support.

Key points

• Christianity does not require believing all other religions are wholly wrong; atheism, by contrast, requires believing humanity's religious sense is entirely mistaken.
• Pantheism holds that God is beyond good and evil and identical with the universe; the Jewish-Muslim-Christian view holds God is definitively good and separate from His creation.
• Christians regard the world as authored by God rather than as an extension of God's being, meaning parts of it can be genuinely contrary to His will.
• Lewis's own former argument against God, that the universe is unjust, required assuming a real, objective standard of justice.
• If reality were entirely meaningless, we would have no basis for recognizing meaninglessness at all, just as darkness would be undetectable without any concept of light.
• Lewis concludes that atheism, on closer inspection, turns out to be a less simple position than it first appears.

Illustrations & analogies

• Lewis compares religious belief to arithmetic: there is only one fully correct answer, but some wrong answers are closer to right than others, illustrating how Christianity can affirm partial truth in other religions while still claiming to be uniquely correct.
• He compares the pantheist's God, diffused through the universe like life animating a body, to the Christian God, who relates to His creation the way a painter relates to a painting, not dependent on it and able to judge it.
• He uses the image of a crooked line, recognizable as crooked only by comparison to a straight one, to explain how his complaint that the universe is 'unjust' presupposed the very standard of justice his atheism denied.
• He compares a person feeling wet upon falling into water, because a person is not a water animal, to humans feeling moral outrage at the world, because we are not simply an amoral part of it.

Notable lines

For Christianity is a fighting religion.

C. S. Lewis Book II, Ch. 1 — The Rival Conceptions of God

A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.

C. S. Lewis Book II, Ch. 1 — The Rival Conceptions of God

Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple.

C. S. Lewis Book II, Ch. 1 — The Rival Conceptions of God

For reflection and discussion

1. Lewis says his own outrage at the world's injustice actually undermined his atheism. Have you encountered a similar tension between complaining about the world and denying any real standard of right and wrong?
2. What is the practical difference between believing God is 'beyond good and evil,' as in pantheism, and believing God is definitively good, as Christians, Jews, and Muslims hold?
3. Why does Lewis think Christianity can affirm partial truth in other religions while still claiming to be the fullest truth?