Mere Christianity: Book 3, Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

The previous chapter, Lewis explains, was originally meant to be broadcast on the radio—therefore, Lewis missed his chance to mention some important points. In this chapter, Lewis will fill in some of the details about Christian virtue. Christian thinkers have divided virtue into seven categories: four Cardinal virtues and three Theological virtues. For now, he’ll look at the Cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude.

Prudence is defined as “taking the trouble to think out what you are doing.” Critics argue that Christians celebrate stupidity and childishness; Christians are discouraged from understanding the universe. But although God wants people to be innocent and, in a sense, child-like, he also wants them to be intelligent during the course of their time on the Earth. One cannot be very moral without prudence.

Temperance, nowadays, means teetotalism, but it used to mean restraint and moderation in all pleasures, not just drinking. Christianity never says that it’s necessary to be a teetotaler. Indeed, it’s generally not the Christian way to say that anything is inherently bad; when a good Christian gives up drinking, meat, or cinema, they recognize that they have a problem with the item in question, rather than saying that drinking, meat, or films are intrinsically “evil.”

Justice encompasses many different ideas, including honesty, truthfulness, and fairness. Fortitude represents two distinct kinds of courage: first, the kind of courage that faces danger; second, the kind of courage that remains under pain (i.e., “guts”).

There’s a difference between moral behavior and being a moral person, Lewis says, just as there’s a difference between occasionally making a good shot in tennis and being a good tennis player. The problem with mixing up moral behavior with being a moral person is that it creates the mistaken impressions that 1) it doesn’t matter why we do things, provided that we do them; 2) God wants his followers to obey him blindly instead of understanding why they obey moral law; and 3) the only reason for moral behavior is to resolve a problem of some kind (e.g., if there’s no danger, there is no need for the virtue of bravery). In general, humans should engage in moral actions in order to reshape themselves into moral people.