GOD IN THE

DOCK

ESSAYS ON THEOLOGY AND ETHICS

by

C. S. LEWIS

edited by

WALTER HOOPER

An Imprint of HapperCollinsPublishers

First published in the United States by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company in 1970. This text taken from the 1994 edition.

god in the dock. Copyright © 1970 by C. S. Lewis Pte Ltd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

first edition

EPub Edition © APRIL 2014 ISBN: 9780062349286

CONTENTS

Preface by Walter Hooper

PART I

1 Evil and God

2 Miracles

3 Dogma and the Universe

4 Answers to Questions on Christianity

5 Myth Became Fact

6 ‘Horrid Red Things’

7 Religion and Science

8 The Laws of Nature

9 The Grand Miracle

10 Christian Apologetics

11 Work and Prayer

12 Man or Rabbit?

13 On the Transmission of Christianity

14 ‘Miserable Offenders’

15 The Founding of the Oxford Socratic Club

16 Religion without Dogma?

17 Some Thoughts

18 ‘The Trouble with “X” …’

19 What Are We to Make of Jesus Christ?

20 The Pains of Animals

21 Is Theism Important?

22 Rejoinder to Dr Pittenger

23 Must Our Image of God Go?

PART II

1 Dangers of National Repentance

2 Two Ways with the Self

3 Meditation on the Third Commandment

4 On the Reading of Old Books

5 Two Lectures

6 Meditation in a Toolshed

7 Scraps

8 The Decline of Religion

9 Vivisection

10 Modern Translations of the Bible

11 Priestesses in the Church?

12 God in the Dock

13 Behind the Scenes

14 Revival or Decay?

15 Before We Can Communicate

16 Cross-Examination

PART III

1 ‘Bulverism’

2 First and Second Things

3 The Sermon and the Lunch

4 The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment

5 Xmas and Christmas

6 What Christmas Means to Me

7 Delinquents in the Snow

8 Is Progress Possible?

9 We Have No ‘Right to Happiness’

PART IV

Letters

Index

PREFACE

Dr Johnson, speaking of an eighteenth-century theologian, remarked that he ‘tended to unsettle every thing, and yet settle nothing’.1 I wonder what the robust Doctor would make of our age: an age in which one sees in most bookshops and Sunday papers the controversial—and, oftentimes, apostate—works of clergy who ‘unsettle’ every article of the Faith they are ordained and paid to uphold. It is, partly because of this, a pleasure for me to offer as an antidote this new book by C. S. Lewis.

I say ‘new’ because, though these essays and letters were written over a period of twenty-four years, almost all are published in book-form for the first time. Considering how rapidly theological fashions change, it might ...