God in the Dock, by C. S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper#

One of the essays is about dogma and naturalism:#

It is a common reproach against Christianity that its dogmas are unchanging, while human knowledge is in continual growth. Hence, to unbelievers, we seem to be always engaged in the hopeless task of trying to force the new knowledge into moulds which it has outgrown. I think this feeling alienates the outsider much more than any particular discrepancies between this or that doctrine and this or that scientific theory. We may, as we say, `get over' dozens of isolated `difficulties', but that does not alter his sense that the endeavour as a whole is doomed to failure and perverse: indeed, the more ingenious, the more perverse. For it seems to him clear that, if our ancestors had known what we know about the universe, Christianity would never have existed at all: and, however we patch and mend, no system of thought which claims to be immutable can, in the long run, adjust itself to our growing knowledge. [p. 38]

Lewis responds to another's opinion which is summarized thus:#

My friend Corineus has advanced the charge that none of us are in fact Christians at all. According to him historic Christianity is something so barbarous that no modern man can really believe it: the moderns who claim to do so are in fact believing a modern system of thought which retains the vocabulary of Christianity and exploits the emotions inherited from it while quietly dropping its essential doctrines. [p. 63]

Note that the purpose of this argument is that therefore it should be abolished, not that historic Christianity should be restored.

Let's consider Lewis's view of Christianity:#

We are to defend Christianity itself---the faith preached by the Apostles, attested by the Martyrs, embodied in the Creeds, expounded by the Fathers. [p. 90]

Notice he does not say the truth or what was testified by Christ, God the Father, or continually by the Holy Ghost.

On old books:#

If one has to chose between reading the new books and reading the old, one must choose the old: not because they are necessarily better but because they contain precisely those truths of which our own age is neglectful. [p. 92]

This mistaken preference for the modern books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology. Wherever you find a little study circle of Christian laity you can be almost certain that they are studying not St Luke or St Paul or St Augustine or Thomas Aquinas [curiously, a Saint at the time] or Hooker or Butler, but M. Berdyaev or M. Maritain or Mr Niebuhr or Miss Sayers or even myself. [p. 201]

Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them. [p. 202]

Quotes:#

All that is not eternal is eternally out of date. [p. 10]

I was a professional literary critic and I thought [...] that the Gospels were certainly not legends (in one sense they're not good enough) [p. 101]

Men fail so often to repent their real sins that the occasional repentance of an imaginary sin might appear almost desirable. [p. 189]

On cause mieux quand on ne dit pas Causons. [p. 280]