Through the Lens with C.S. Lewis discusses Jesus Christ's claim to be God and the implications of that claim. Lewis argues that if Jesus' teachings are followed, he must either be who he said he was (God), or he must be a liar or lunatic. There are no other options. Lewis also discusses how Christianity provides redemption through Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, which is central to the Christian faith. Overall, the document examines the logical conclusions one must draw from Jesus' own words and actions, and argues that he was either God or a false prophet.

1. Through the
Lens with C.S.
Lewis
November 2012

2. Well?
―I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the
really foolish thing that people often say about Him:
I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral
teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.
That is the one thing we must not say. A man who
was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus
said would not be a great moral teacher. He would
either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who
says he is a poached egg — or else he would be
the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either
this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a
madman or something worse. You can shut him up
for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a
demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord
and God, but let us not come with any patronizing
nonsense about his being a great human teacher.
He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

3. Book Two
What Christians
Believe

4. Rival Conceptions of God
• What is the defining • How did you respond
difference in regards to the idea that
to religion between ―…Christianity is a
Christians and fighting religion‖?
Atheists? (29) (30)
• Is God beyond good • How should that fight
and evil? (29) be waged?
• What is a pantheist? • How well is the
(29) Church fighting that
fight?
• Why is the Christian
POV superior to the • What can YOU do
Pantheist? about it?

5. • Is the universe cruel
and unjust?
• How do you know?
• How does this line of
logic lead to the
idea that atheism is
too simple?
• What gives words
meaning?

6. Reconstructing the Tree of Life
The Invasion
• One key issue in reconstructing the Tree of Life is the development of algorithms and
computational infrastructure to allow scientists around the world to apply the same methods.
• A common approach is to identify the simplest hypothesis of relationships that explains as much
different evidence as possible. Increasingly, however, scientists prefer the tree that renders the
observed species data the most likely, given an underlying model of the evolutionary process.
• But finding the simplest or the most likely hypothesis can be very challenging. As phylogenetic
datasets grow larger, it becomes more difficult to analyze them properly. With more and more
species under study, the number of alternative phylogenetic hypotheses that must be
considered to select the best tree increases dramatically.
• For example, for 3 species there are just 3 possible phylogenetic trees, and for 5 species there
are 105. From there the number of possible trees grows amazingly quickly. For 50 species there
are more possible trees than the number of atoms in the universe. For 100 species there are
more trees than the volume of the entire universe measured in the smallest possible units,
assuming expansion at the speed of light since the ―big bang‖ 20 billion years ago.
• No computer, no matter how powerful, can examine every possible tree
for even a moderate number of species. Therefore, computer scientists
have had to devise clever strategies to avoid examining every possible
tree; so-called heuristic search algorithms.
• One method quickly builds a starting tree and then rapidly swaps branches around to find
better trees.
• Another strategy breaks large problems down into smaller ones, solves these, and then puts
them back together again.
• Much remains to be done to improve the performance of phylogenetic methods.

7. That’s all one number.
Science agrees with Christianity on this point:
Real things are not simple. They look simple,
but they are not.

8. The Three Types Of Tears
Basal, the tears that keeps the eyes
moist. Without them, blinking would
feel like sandpaper scratching our Need another example?
eyes. We produce between five and
10 ounces a day.
Reflex, the tears that come from
cutting onions or a finger in the eye.
Emotional, they are the only tears
that dispel toxins.
Women produce 60 percent more
prolactin – the same hormone used for
breast-feeding – in their tears than
men.
Crying is hard in space – gravity issues.
British psychologist John Siaboda
concluded that the most tear-inducing
musical passage of all time is the
beginning of the third movement in
Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony.
Humans are the only animals known
to cry, not counting Walt Disney
cartoons.
Tear contains mucus, water and oil.

9. • What does Lewis mean • What is the fatal flaw
when he talks about of dualism? (32)
―Christianity and
water‖? (31)
• God did not invent
religion. What exactly IS
religion anyway? (31)
• Why are things in nature
not perfectly
symmetrical?
• How can that be
evidence • Can there be two
(circumstantial) of equally powerful
Christianity’s validity? opposing forces?

10. Is wickedness a twisted pursuit of
something good?
Can one be bad for the mere sake of badness? (32)
How is ―badness‖ only spoiled ―goodness‖?

11. Lucifer ―To be bad, he must exist and have intelligence
and will. But existence, intelligence, and will are
in themselves good. Therefore he must get them
“…evil is a from the Good Power: even to be bad he must
parasite, not an borrow or steal from his opponent. And do you
original thing.” now begin to see why Christianity has always
said that the devil is a fallen angel?‖ (33)

12. How does
Lewis’s
description of
the spiritual
war we are in
encourage
you to go to
church—even
when you
aren’t in the
mood?
Civil War:
We live in enemy occupied territory. (33)

13. The Shocking Alternative
• How does the will of an authority give
―subjects‖ the freedom to disobey it? (34)
• Why was God willing to grant his higher
creatures (that’s us) the ability to rebel against
His will?
• What is the difficulty in disagreeing with God?
• How do you know that God intended you to be
the highest of His creation? (35)

14. • Why do we persist in trying to find happiness for
ourselves outside God and apart from God?
• Why will we never succeed? (35)
• What has been the result over the millennia?

15. This page brought to you by
the C.S. Lewis Foundation
According to Lewis, God’s rescue plan for
humanity took the form of four things (the Moral
Law, good dreams of a dying god, the revelation
given to the Jews, and finally the coming of
Jesus).
• Is ―good dreams‖ a strange inclusion in this list?
• Can you think of any examples of good dreams
in pagan/heathen cultures?
• Why was the Judaic revelation so important?
• Are there any other ways in which God could be
said to have revealed himself to humanity?

16. So what do we do with Jesus? (36)
• What made Jesus do If Jesus claimed to
shocking? forgive sin as
• What makes Him though HE were the
different from other one offended, what
religious icons? are the only two
• What makes the possibilities to His
claim to forgive sins doing so?
unique?
• What did the first
century religious
leaders get right?

17. So what do we do with Jesus? (36)
• What made Jesus do If Jesus claimed to
shocking? forgive sin as
• What makes Him though HE were the
different from other one offended, what
religious icons? are the only two
• What makes the possibilities to His
claim to forgive sins doing so?
unique?
• What did the first Arrogance
century religious or
leaders get right? Actuality

18. The Perfect Penitent
• Lunatic, fiend, or ? (37)
• What did Jesus come
to do? (37)
• What is the central
Christian belief? (37)
• How is that different
from many
perceptions?
• Why do redemption
theories matter? Or do
they? (37)

19. “The thing itself
cannot be
The Ether Constant
pictured…” (38)
• What is the hardest thing
about believing
Jesus, especially for the
rational materialist?
• What is the most
Those bubble tracks from important
cern, above are showing thing, according to
the exact resistance of EM Lewis?
packets to the ETHER.

20. What makes repentance so hard?
What makes it possible?
Is there another way?
(38-39)

21. The Practical Conclusion
• How did you acquire your life? (40)
• How is the ―new life‖ acquired?
• Should anyone expect it to be free from the
usual pains of birth and growth?
• Why do people think that Christianity should be
all rainbows and unicorns?
• Why does Lewis choose baptism, belief, and
communion as three essential elements to
growing the Christ-life?
• Why does he believe these three are
fundamental? (40)

22. Authority
How much of what
you believe is based
on authority? (41)
Why do we put so
much emphasis on
questioning authority
now?

23. What is the difference between a person
trying to be good (based on the Moral
Law) and the Christian? (41)

24. The Choice
“When the author walks on to the stage the play is over.
God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of
saying you are on His side then, when you see a whole
natural universe melting away like a dream and something
else—something it never entered your head to conceive—
comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and
so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice
left? For this time it will be God without disguise;
something so overwhelming that it will strike irresistible
love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too
late then to choose your side…That will not be the time for
choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side
we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not.
Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right
side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not

25. Homework
Read Book Three (Mere Christianity)
Sections 1,2,3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Write a response to the section of your
choice.
Create an image that symbolizes your
response
Prepare a presentation of your
response and image