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Thank you for the ping.

I am not all that familiar with C.S. Lewis I am sorry to say. I’ve been catching up on reading many different Christian writers after being agnostic for many years.

I did find an apologetic response to the Mormon assertion of Lewis’ view on Mormonism.

C. S. Lewis Misquoted In Robert L. Millet’s
A Different Jesus?: The Christ of Latter-day Saints?

by Ronald V. Huggins, Th.D.
Salt Lake Theological Seminary

A number of years ago I read a small Mormon apologetic booklet entitled Latter-day Christianity 10 Basic Issues, edited by Robert L. Millet and Noel B. Reynolds.1 Millet’s name also appeared along with a number of other well known Mormon writers as one of the booklet’s author/contributors. When I got to page 2 of the booklet I was surprised to find words from the Preface of C. S. Lewis’s book Mere Christianity taken out of context and quoted in such a way as to make them appear to support the exact opposite point Lewis had actually been trying to make:

Latter-day Saint beliefs are in harmony with what the Bible calls Christian. The terms Christian or Christians occur only three times in the New Testament (at Acts 11:26; 26:28; and 1 Peter 4:16). In each case these terms simply refer to those who follow Christ, which applies fully to Latter-day Saints.

Members of the restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints fail to find other definitions of Christianity persuasive—definitions based on interpretations of the Bible by particular denominations or on the interpretations of the classical creeds from the early Christian centuries. Latter-day Saints doubt that anyone has the authority to exclude others from Christianity based on these definitions. As C. S. Lewis observed:

It is not for us to say who, in the deepest sense, is or is not close to the spirit of Christ. We do not see into men’s hearts. We cannot judge, and are indeed forbidden to judge. It would be wicked arrogance for us to say that any man is, or is not, a Christian in this refined sense….

…When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.2

A portion of this same quotation is taken and set off as a side-bar in turquoise print:

It is not for us to say who, in the deepest sense, is or is not close to the spirit of Christ. We do not see into men’s hearts.

C. S. Lewis

As quoted in the Mormon tract, C. S. Lewis appears to be saying that we have no right to judge who is or who is not a Christian based upon whether or not they hold to traditional Christian doctrines about God, Christ, sin, salvation and so on. But that is far from the point Lewis was actually making in the context, and so it becomes clear that whoever wrote this portion of the booklet has merely snatched at words in Lewis without reading him carefully in context.

In the context, Lewis is expounding “not…’my religion’, but…’mere’ Christianity, which is what it is and what it was long before I was born and whether I like it or not.” Lewis’s term mere Christianity corresponds closely to what the fifth-century theologian Vincent of Lerins meant when he identified authentic catholic tradition as that which has been held ubique, semper ab ominibus (everywhere, always, by all). This perspective, shared by Lewis, places other teachings that might be held by one Christian group but not another in the category of non-essentials, causing them to be regarded in light of another famous guideline: “in necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas (in necessary, or essential, things, unity, in disputable things, liberty, and in all things love, or charity).3 Lewis’s mere Christianity is also reflected in the attitude of the staff of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, as seen in a doctrinal summary drawn up at the senior staff council meeting gathered at Bear Trap Ranch in January 1960:

We accept the formulations of Biblical doctrine represented by large areas of agreement in such historic declarations as the Apostle’s and Nicene Creeds, the Augsburg, Westminster and New Hampshire Confessions, and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.

We desire to safeguard individual Christian liberty to differ in areas of doctrine not common to these formulations, provided that any interpretation is sincerely believed to arise from and is based upon the Bible.4

In other words, we agree with the great creeds where they agree with each other, and leave room for differences in other matters.5

It is only when we come to the place where Lewis turns to answering objections brought “against my use of the word Christian to mean one who accepts the common doctrines of Christianity,”6 that the kind of language quoted in the Mormon booklet begins to appear, and then only in the mouths of Lewis’s detractors:

People ask: ‘Who are you, to lay down who is, and who is not a Christian?’ or ‘May not many a man who cannot believe these doctrines be far more truly a Christian, far closer to the spirit of Christ, than some who do?’ Now this objection is in one sense very right, very charitable, very spiritual, very sensitive. It has every available quality except that of being useful. We simply cannot, without disaster, use language as these objectors want us to use it.7
When used this way, Lewis goes on to argue, the word Christian looses all meaning. He begins by tracing the history of the alternate word gentleman, which he says, “originally meant something recognisable; one who had a coat of arms and some landed property.”8 Hence when you called somebody a gentleman “you were not paying him a compliment, but merely stating a fact.” So far so good. “But then,” continues Lewis,

there came people who said—so rightly, charitably, spiritually, sensitively, so anything but usefully—`Ah, but surely the important thing about a gentleman is not the coat of arms and the land, but the behaviour? Surely he is the true gentleman who behaves as a gentleman should?…They meant well. To be honourable and courteous and brave is of course a far better thing than to have a coat of arms. But it is not the same thing.

Furthermore,

it is not a thing everyone will agree about. To call a man ‘a gentleman’ in this new, refined sense, becomes, in fact, not a way of giving information about him, but a way of praising him.

And so, Lewis concludes, “When a word ceases to be a term of description and becomes merely a term of praise, it no longer tells you facts about the object: it only tells you about the speaker’s attitude to that object.”9

The same thing happens to the word Christian when it comes to be used as an adjective of praise, rather than as a noun describing someone “who accepts the common doctrines of Christianity.” And this brings us to the passage containing the words quoted in the Mormon booklet. I present it with the quoted portion in bold:

Now if once we allow people to start spiritualising and refining, or as they might say ‘deepening’, the sense of the word Christian, it too will speedily become a useless word. In the first place, Christians themselves will never be able to apply it to anyone. It is not for us to say who, in the deepest sense, is or is not close to the spirit of Christ. We do not see into men’s hearts. We cannot judge, and are indeed forbidden to judge. It would be wicked arrogance for us to say that any man is, or is not, a Christian in this refined sense. And obviously a word which we can never apply is not going to be a very useful word. As for the unbelievers, they will no doubt cheerfully use the word in the refined sense. It will become in their mouths simply a term of praise. In calling anyone a Christian they will mean that they think him a good man. But that way of using the word will be no enrichment of the language, for we already have the word good. Meanwhile, the word Christian will have been spoiled for any really useful purpose it might have served.

We must therefore stick to the original, obvious meaning. The name Christians was first given at Antioch (Acts 11:26) to ‘the disciples’, to those who accepted the teaching of the apostles. There is no question of its being restricted to those who profited by that teaching as much as they should have. There is no question of its being extended to those who in some refined, spiritual, inward fashion were ‘far closer to the spirit of Christ’ than the less satisfactory of the disciples. The point is not a theological or moral one. It is only a question of using words so that we can all understand what is being said. When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.10

It is interesting that the lines immediately preceding the place where the Mormon author begins his quotation of Lewis had said: “Now if once we allow people to start spiritualising and refining, or as they might say ‘deepening’, the sense of the word Christian, it too will speedily become a useless word.” Is it not also somewhat remarkable that the Mormon author quoting Lewis missed the point of the words that immediately follow the section he quotes: “And obviously a word which we can never apply is not going to be a very useful word”?

Our Mormon author wants to appeal to C. S. Lewis against the idea that one can determine who is and who is not a Christian based upon whether or not they believe the common doctrines of Christianity. In the section quoted Lewis was actually refuting the very idea he is now being called upon to support.

Lewis argues further in the immediate context of the quotation that when the term Christian is used “in this refined sense,” that is to say as an adjective of praise, “Christians themselves will never be able to apply it to anyone,” yet “unbelievers…will no doubt cheerfully use the word in the refined sense.”

In saying this Lewis is almost prophetic in that he has predicted what appears to be what is going on in the Mormon booklet. Christians are ruled out of bounds for evaluating Mormon belief on the basis of its relationship to historic Christian doctrine and New Testament teaching, while Mormons appeal to the “refined” but meaningless sense of the term in order to be able to apply the title Christian to their own set of very different religious beliefs, and to their new very different Jesus.

But reading Lewis also provides a helpful perspective for taking some of the hurt out of the debate over whether or not Mormons are Christians. To say somebody is not a Christian in the refined sense is to say he is a bad person in some sense. But using the term as a noun, as Lewis suggests, keeps things more neutral and objective, less personal and offensive. That the Bible and Christian tradition do not teach Mormonism is clear, and has often been proven beyond reasonable doubt. Mormons themselves regularly point out that their doctrines are different from those found in Christian tradition. At present they are too optimistic about finding their doctrines in the Bible and the early Church, but attempts to correct and clarify this on the part of Christians need not be taken badly, as often happens, due to the Mormons’ using the term Christian as an adjective of praise.

Whoever quoted Lewis in this section either failed to read him in context or else took the quotation over from someone else who, in his or her turn, had not read Lewis carefully. In any case, now the misquotation (in the identical form we find it in Latter-day Christianity 10 Basic Issues) is being repeated on the internet. Cooper Johnson in an article posted at the FAIR website suggests that the Christian Research Institute should “take the advice of one of the most well known religious minds in this generation, C.S. Lewis,” and then follows with the misquotation we have been discussing in the precise form in which we have been discussing it.11 Then a writer cleverly calling himself JLingo (presumably after the character in the Mormon movie) quotes the misquote on Beliefnet, again in the identical form discussed here, and concludes: “don’t tell us we aren’t Christian. If you do, then in the words of C. S. Lewis, you are wickedly arrogant.”12 Finally, Robert L. Millet himself was asked in a question and response session he did during the 2002 Olympics for WashingtonPost.com:

I’m a little confused on the question of whether or not Mormonism is “Christian.” You described Mormons as a “Christian people”, yet on many important doctrines — such as whether there is one God in the entire universe or many gods over individual planets, whether or not God exists as a Trinity, whether or not humans are born sinful, whether or not salvation is by grace alone through faith alone — Mormon doctrine seems to differ with historic Christianity. Can you help clear this up?

To this Millet responded:

Latter-day Saints claim to be Christians on the basis of our doctrine, our defined relationship to Christ, our patterns of worship, and our way of life. We resonate with the words of C. S. Lewis, beloved Christian thinker: “It is not for us to say who, in the deepest sense, is or is not close to the spirit of Christ. We do not see into men’s hearts. We cannot judge, and are indeed forbidden to judge. It would be wicked arrogance for us to say that a man is, or is not, a Christian in this refined sense.”

Here Millet begins the quotation at the same point as Latter-day Christianity 10 Basic Issues, but only takes it as far as the ellipsis points (the three dots) and so excludes the final statement “When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.” However, the misquotation, with the ellipsis points and the last statement restored, now appears in Millet’s book A Different Jesus?: The Christ of the Latter-day-Saints (2005):

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints claim to be Christians on the basis of their doctrine, their defined relationship with Christ, their pattern of worship, and their way of life. They resonate with C. S. Lewis’s words: “It is not for us to say who, in the deepest sense, is or is not close to the spirit of Christ. We do not see into men’s hearts. We cannot judge, and are indeed forbidden to judge. It would be wicked arrogance for us to say that any man is, or is not, a Christian in this refined sense…When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.13

Notice that Millet introduces the misquote in an almost identical way to his response for the Washington Post.

One thing that seems clear from the fact that the Lewis misquote has been repeated in identical form is that the Mormons using it are getting it from each other rather than from reading Lewis.

It is for me somewhat surprising and a little disappointing to discover that the bevy of Evangelical interlocutors Millet has surrounded himself with (and the editorial department at Eerdmans), has failed at helping Millet jettison this unhelpful and misleading misquotation of Lewis from his apologetic repertoire. Can it really be the case that none of them are sufficiently up on their Lewis, in touch with trends in LDS apologetics, or both, to have helped him at this point? Or was Millet simply not listening? My only purpose in bringing forward this clarification is to add precision to authentic Mormon/Evangelical dialogue, should a credible paradigm ever be established enabling such a thing to get underway, should we ever move ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem.

Notes

1 Latter-day Christianity: 10 Basic Issues (eds. Robert L. Millet and Noel Reynolds; Provo Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies and Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1998).

2 Latter-day Christianity, p. 2.

3 This saying has often been wrongly attributed to Augustine, but now appears to have been arisen among seventeenth century German Lutheran theologians. See Hans Rollmann, “In Essentials Unity: The Pre-history of a Restoration Movement Slogan,” Restoration Quarterly 39.3 (1997): http://www.restorationquarterly.org/Volume_039/rq03903rollmann.htm. This statement is quoted broadly among traditional Christians including Roman Catholics. Pope John XXII quotes it as a saying “expressed in various ways and attributed to various authors,” in his first encyclical Ad Petri Cathedram 72 (29 June 1959) and John Paul II returns to it in his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliation and Penance 2:9 (2 Dec 1984).

4 C. Stacey Woods, The Growth of a Work of God: The Story of the Early Days of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1978) 48.

5 The Bear-Trap statement is interesting in that it seeks to combine the traditional Reformation concept of Sola Sciptura with the more intuitive Sensus Fidei (sense of the faith) by which Christians by virtue of having been born of God by the Holy Spirit on the basis of Christ’s death and resurrection, innately sense the authenticity of spiritual doctrines and teachings, and so come to a consensus with regard to the true and essential teachings of Christ. It is here, to pursue for a moment a side issue, that legitimate Mormon/Evangelical or for that matter Mormon/Christian dialogue of any kind, is bound to face seemly insurmountable difficulties, since getting Christians to accept the Mormon Jesus will ultimately require much more than the tweeking of language in which he is described to make him sound more like the Biblical Christ. The Holy Spirit within Christians has to cease testifying against him as “another Jesus” and begin to recognize and testify to him as the true Jesus. This according to what is written:

When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice…. I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me (John 10:3-5 and 14)

Since we are dealing with spiritual realities and not mere words, this impediment may indeed turn out to be insurmountable.

6 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (HarperSanFrancisco, 2000 [orig. 1952]) xii.

7 Ibid., pp. xii-xiii.

8 Ibid., p. xiii.

9 Ibid., p. xiv.

10 Ibid., xiv-xv.

11 http://www.fairlds.org/apol/antis/200205.html#enloc30: Cooper Johnson “Mormons—Can They Be Considered Christians? The Perspective of The Christian Research Institute.”

12 See http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/message_list.asp?boardID=5605&discussionID=169698.

13 Millet, A Different Jesus?, p. 66.