Preface, Foreword, Chapters 1, 2, 3

Great start today, hope everyone enjoyed it.
Here's what I shared from the notes:
Lewis refers to Baxter for the term "Mere Christianity". For context, Richard Baxter wrote in the 1600's and was a Puritan. From the notes, "His writings are filled with zeal for the lost, genuine piety, and a desire for reconciliation of the warring division of the Christians of his day. Baxter believed that mere Christianity meant the basic form and beliefs of hristianity accepted by orthodox believers of all traditions and denominations.
Preface highlights:
p. xi - Hostility comes to his writings more from "borderline" members of various denominations than those bishops/leaders at the center of these communions indicating that perhaps the more... involved a person is in their religion, the less they may be concerned about the differences in details.
p. xiv - He is careful to say that we as Christians are forbidden to judge
p. x Analogy of the hall - Lewis describes his writing as a hallway and various denominations as doors through which you can choose to go. I especially liked the next to the last paragraph.

Also in the preface he is careful to say that he is not going to discuss specific denominations because:
1. He's not an expert in the points of division
2. There are better experts
3. The disputed points don't tend to turn non-believers into believers.

From the notes,
"C. S. Lewis 'remained aware that the progress in the practice of Christianity is both necessary and difficult. 'I am appalled...to see how much of the change I thought I had undergone lately was only imaginary. The real work seems still to be done.' He discovered that even the act of writing required the valley of humiliation...Lewis warned that the yen to publish is spriritually dangerous. 'One must reach the point of "not caring two straws about his own status" before he can wish wholly for God's kingdom, not his own, to be established." Death to ambition as such will be the beginning of new life. Above all, the part of a man which puts success first must be humiliated if a man is ever to be really free." Encouraging, eh?

Book I Thesis:
There is an innate sense of law and we need a belief in God for that sense to take on any meaning.
1. We have a natural idea of how to act
2. We don't act that way all the time (or even most of the time)

Chapter 1:
- There is a natural "moral law" defined essentially as the Golden Rule. He gives examples of how we do this every day (getting to the seat first, exchange of fruit).
- We believe in this "moral law" because we think the other guy does too, otherwise instead of arguing we'd fight.
- The "moral law" isn't physics - it doesn't describe the natural world. It is the innate choice - that feeling we have as part of the human condition about right and wrong.
- I discussed how Kan't posited that you can't prove God, but to make sense of this feeling we should pretend that there is.

Chapter 2:
- Moral law isn't instinct. It's that thing that judges between which instincts to follow.
- It's not instinct because the strong instinct doesn't always win.
- It's not insinct because "instincts" in and of themselves are not always right or always wrong - they just are.
Also moral law is not just social convention - we feel it the world over (all civilizations, all time, etc.). Moral law is as True always as math is True always.

Chapter 3:
The law of nature is just descriptions, it just explains.
Moral law shows what "ought" be done - even though humans don't.
This is where he first says - in order for this to be true, then there has to be more than one reality. It's real, but not physical. He's leading up to saying that it is from God.

Discuss!