God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics

“As a result, he set himself the task of ‘translating’ the Gospel into language which men use and understand. He believed that if you found it difficult to answer questions from men of different trades it was probably because ‘you haven’t really thought it out; not to the end, not to the absolute ruddy end.’”

God in the Dock collects mostly-unknown writings by C.S. Lewis which were originally published in small venues aimed at non-academic audiences. Since the essays are arranged chronologically, a pattern emerges where Lewis repeatedly uses certain arguments and examples in various contexts over time. The collection reflects this attempt to think these arguments through to the absolute end.

“Even to think and act in the natural world we have to assume something beyond it, and even assume that we partly belong to that something. In order to think, we must claim for our own reasoning a validity which is not credible if our own thought is merely a function of our brain, and our brains a by-product of irrational physical processes.”

This is the heart of Lewis’s repeated arguments about modern materialist philosophy, which finds a material cause for all experiences. Lewis argues that, if the materialists are right, then the very arguments they are making are nothing more than the byproduct of physical processes, and therefore fundamentally irrational. Since he knows that his opponents will not accept this logic, he often begins here, reflecting one of his Strategies for Evangelism in Postwar Britain.

“The doctrine of the Incarnation would conflict with what we know of this vast universe only if we knew also that there were other rational species in it who had, like us, fallen, and who needed redemption in the same mode, and that they had not been vouchsafed it. But we know none of those things. It may be full of life that needs redemption. It may be full of life that has been redeemed. It may be full of divine things quite other than life which satisfy the Divine Wisdom in fashions one cannot conceive.”

The essays in the first part of the book repeatedly return to the question of whether modern science disproves the existence of God. Here, he directly confronts the idea that the size of the universe and the relative insignificance of humanity make Christianity seem ridiculous. Lewis’s alternative theories suggest that it is the scientific mind that is lacking in imagination.