|
The Hall and the Side Rooms
By Dwight Longenecker
At the beginning of Mere Christianity C.S.Lewis says he is introducing the reader to a simple no-frills version of the faith. But he warns that this is only a rest stop,
‘I hope no reader will suppose that ‘mere’ Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of the existing communions—as if a man could adopt it in preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else. It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into the hall I shall have done what I attempted to do. But it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in.’
In other words, you have to belong to a church if you want to be a Christian. Finding the right church is not always easy, and Lewis implies that some people have to visit various rooms before they find the right one. The quest may take a long time, and one may end up waiting during the search. Then he says,
‘When you do get into your room you will find the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise, but you must regard it as waiting, not as camping. You must keep on praying for light; and of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house. And above all you must be asking which door is the true one, not which pleases you best by its paint and panelling. In plain language, the question should never be: Do I like that kind of service?’ but ‘Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to knock at this door due to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike of this particular doorkeeper?’
There is a little inconsistency here which even the most fervent of Lewis’s admirers must see. Lewis implies that all the rooms off the central hall are of equal value, but he recommends choosing a denomination not according to taste, but according to what is true. But if we must choose according to what is true, then some rooms must be more true than others. If this is the case, then the different rooms are not of equal value.
On the other hand, if all the rooms are equally true, then the only criterion for choice is taste and preference after all. Lewis is not so relativistic or individualistic as that. He actually says we must choose a church that is true—not a church we like best. If this is the case, then we must keep on searching until we find that church which is most true. If we find it, according to Lewis, then we must join that church even if we don’t necessarily like it.
Lewis never followed his own logic home to Rome. The reasons for this were manifold. Some said he was too much of a Protestant Ulsterman to swim the Tiber. He would have said that he found ‘mere Christianity’ in his local church and that happened to be Anglican. Whatever Lewis’s own reasons for remaining Anglican, the little inconsistency in his introduction to Mere Christianity is an excellent stepping-stone for Catholic apologists.
Lewis is a kind of patron saint for thinking evangelicals. He enables them to combine classic conservative Christianity with a cultured and intellectual approach to their faith. Catholics can use Lewis’s observations about the hall and the side rooms to challenge evangelicals about their search for the true church. If they are looking for a church which is ‘most true’ then they need to consider the claims of the Catholic Church.
Therefore it is vital to portray Catholicism as ‘more Christianity’. When speaking and writing on this topic I constantly repeat the truth that in becoming a Catholic I did not deny the riches of my evangelical boyhood nor the riches I gained during my sojourn in the Anglican Church. Instead I simply added to the previously unimagined riches of the Catholic Church.
F.D.Maurice wrote, ‘A man is most often right in what he affirms and wrong in what he denies.’ The churches of the Reformation were constructed on sincere denials of Catholic truth. The underlying attitude of many Evangelical Christians is still one of protest, suspicion and an instinctive denial of things Catholic. One of the best apologetic approaches is to challenge that attitude of denial and ask our Evangelical friends what they are so frightened of. Have they really examined with an open mind what Catholics really believe? Why have ‘mere Christianity’ when they can have ‘more Christianity’?
I think Lewis’s analogy should be extended. If becoming a Christian is like entering a great hall, then becoming a Catholic is not stepping from that hall into a side room, but into a vast and magnificent palace that contains not only the hall, but all the side rooms as well. In becoming a Catholic one has entered not a little side room like dozens of others, but that ancient and glorious mansion that Christ himself has prepared for us.
Dwight Longenecker is the author of More Christianity. His latest book is Mary-A Catholic/Evangelical Debate co-authored with David Gustafson.
|
