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Number 4: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis | 100 Books That Changed The Church
C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity began as wartime BBC radio talks and became the most influential work of Christian apologetics of the 20th century. Find out why it still matters.
Estimated Reading Time - 2 minutes
If you had to recommend one book to someone who wanted to think seriously about Christian faith — or one book to hand to a sceptical friend — this would likely be on the list. Premier Christianity's list of books that changed the Church places it among the top titles for good reason: Mere Christianity has probably brought more people to faith than any other book of the twentieth century, outside the Bible itself.
It began as a series of radio talks broadcast by the BBC during the Second World War, when Lewis was already a celebrated literary scholar at Oxford. His approach was to start not from the Bible but from a universal human intuition — the sense that there is such a thing as right and wrong — and to show, step by careful step, that this points unmistakably towards the God of Christian faith. The argument is rigorous without being dry, warm without being sentimental, and honest about the difficulties without being dismissive of them.
The famous trilemma — that Jesus was either Lord, liar, or lunatic — remains one of the most quoted passages in apologetics, and rightly so. But the whole book repays reading slowly.
About the Author: C.S. Lewis (1898–1963) was a Belfast-born literary scholar, novelist and Christian apologist. His other works include The Screwtape Letters (Number #14), The Abolition of Man, Surprised by Joy and the seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia — collectively among the most widely read Christian writings in the English language.
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