Wednesday, April 1, 2020

The faith once delivered...

C.S. Lewis, "Christian Apologetics":
.... Apologetics means, of course, Defense. The first question is—what do you propose to defend? Christianity, of course....

We are to defend Christianity itself—the faith preached by the Apostles, attested by the Martyrs, embodied in the Creeds, expounded by the Fathers....

The great difficulty is to get modern audiences to realize that you are preaching Christianity solely and simply because you happen to think it true; they always suppose you are preaching it because you like it or think it good for society or something of that sort....

Secondly, this scrupulous care to preserve the Christian message as something distinct from one's own ideas, has one very good effect upon the apologist himself. It forces him, again and again, to face up to those elements in original Christianity which he personally finds obscure or repulsive. He is saved from the temptation to skip, or slur, or ignore what he finds disagreeable....
Delivered in 1945, the lecture can be found in God in the Dock, p. 89.

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