The law of nature is also like playing a piano. We look at a piece of sheet music and strike the appropriate keys to bring forth a tune. Lewis uses this metaphor to explain how we often do right even when it goes against a competing desire to protect ourselves (what he calls our “instincts”). Yet there are people who jump into the water to save someone from drowning even when they know they might end up drowning themselves. Lewis says obeying the little voice to rescue a drowning swimmer is like playing the right notes on the sheet music. We could choose not to jump into the water, thus, playing cords unrelated to the sheet music, but then we would not be “in tune” with the piece in front of us.

Theologians who now write on natural law often begin by first acknowledging the long dry spell during the twentieth century. They cite that Reformed-minded scholars were either distrustful or even hostile to the theory that there was a knowable system of right and wrong held in common by all human beings—which was derived from nature. This century-long gap is somewhat surprising when one considers that natural law was never a divisive subject for someone like John Calvin. Even the Westminster divines commonly recognized what they called the light of nature. Fortunately, there has been a recent resurgence of natural law scholarship by Reformed theologians who seek to retrieve a classical Reformed view of apologetics.[1]

Natural law theorists often apply their thinking to civil society—to questions of positive law and public policy. However, this post and those that follow will seek to examine the specific notion of “moral law” in C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. Lewis’ use of the moral law can be placed within a broader framework of covenant theology, specifically the post-fall imago Dei that still reverberates from the covenant of works made with Adam. Furthermore, Lewis’ approach to revealing the divine Lawgiver as presented in Book I, “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe,” provides a number of important insights for modern apologetics.

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In his biography on Lewis, Alister McGrath describes the situation leading up to the publication of Mere Christianity in 1952.[2] At the onset of World War II, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) realized its central role in providing morale for England. While church attendance dropped among the British during the twentieth century, religion was still considered to be an important aspect of national life. The BBC already possessed numerous “voices” on a variety of topics (gardening, medicine, etc.,) but it lacked a “voice of faith.” Lewis was chosen as that voice, having already received some notoriety for The Problem of Pain. The BBC’s administrators sensed a trans-denominational tone in Lewis’ book, a layman’s perspective that could clearly articulate the essence of Christianity.

The original broadcasts were intended to be apologetic in nature, not evangelistic. Lewis wanted to convince his listeners there was such a thing as “moral law” derived from a divine Lawgiver and that we fail to live up to that law. An earlier title of “Inside Information” was eventually changed to “Right and Wrong: A Clue to the Meaning of the Universe?” The first set of broadcasts were generally well received. A BBC producer, a Presbyterian named Eric Fenn, encouraged Lewis to continue the series addressing the subjects of Christian belief and behavior. By the end of the broadcasts, Lewis had become a notable figure—though not everyone responded positively. It’s an old story, Lewis remarked to Fenn; they either love it or hate it.[3]

One must also remember that Mere Christianity must be understood in the larger context of what was worrying other Christian thinkers at the time. As Alan Jacobs documents in The Year of Our Lord 1943, Christian humanists were concerned with how ideological and technological shifts within the culture threatened to vanquish the established Christian ethos that had so long endured. An underlying concern in the face of Hitler was whether democracy was sufficient in itself to resist various forms of totalitarianism. Nazism came about, in part, because Germany had a generation of youth, not unlike the rest of Europe, that possessed diminished religious commitments. Intellectuals like Lewis, Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil, saw the need for a comprehensive educational effort “to restore Christianity to a central, if not the dominant, role in the shaping of Western societies.”[4]

While this was largely a rational task, Lewis and other humanists also recognized the importance of the imagination.[5] For Lewis, imagination was an important consideration in how he approached his audience. One is well-advised, therefore, to pay attention to not only what Lewis says in Mere Christianity, but also how he says it.

In the first book, “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe,” Lewis sets out to establish the reality of what he calls “the law of human nature.” This phrase is synonymous with “the law of nature,” “the moral law,” “natural law,” or if one prefers Lewis’ term in The Abolition of Man, the Tao. Lewis says the law of nature is the “foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.”[6] One primary metaphor and a series of secondary metaphors are used to reveal to his audience the law of human nature, which includes a conversation between two quarrelling people (primary), following the rules of a football game, playing a piano, following the rules of the road, applying math to solve problems, the clothes we wear, and listening to the conversation of an architect (secondary).

When two people quarrel, it almost always involves showing the other person is wrong. To suggest the other person is wrong means both of them are assuming there is such a thing as getting it wrong, as with the rules in a football game. Lewis anticipates the objection that different societies have different rules, but counters this objection by pointing out that all societies operate by rules, or notions of right and wrong, which are actually more similar to each other than different. The odd thing about all human beings, no matter where they might live on earth, is that while they believe they should behave a certain way, they do not behave that way. They know the law of nature; they even might try to obey it, but then they always end up breaking it.

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