Mere Christianity

Picking up where he left off, Lewis reiterates that Jesus, if not delusional or evil, must have been what he claimed to be: God. This, however, is not the full Christian story, which instead places heavy emphasis on His death and rebirth.

Here, Lewis attempts to clarify a misconception that he himself once had—namely, that Jesus volunteered to die in place of the rest of humanity so that God could “punish” someone for humanity’s sins. Although Lewis concedes that Jesus’s death did serve to “wash out our sins, and [...] disable death itself” (55), he contends that this is not quite the same thing. Of course, people have different theories about how this “putting right” works, but Lewis argues that it isn’t necessary to understand it in order to benefit from it, in much the same way that we can benefit from eating without understanding how digestion works.

Nevertheless, Lewis does outline a theory of Jesus’s death that he finds compelling. He first suggests thinking of the Christian story not in terms of punishment but in terms of debt (in which case, it’s reasonable and common practice for someone other than the debtor to pay the bill). The problem, from a Christian

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