"C.S.Lewis. Mere christianity " - читать интересную книгу автора

and bloodless H.C.F. The H.C.F. turns out to be something not only positive
but pungent; divided from all non-Christian beliefs by a chasm to which the
worst divisions inside Christendom are not really comparable at all. If I
have not directly helped the cause of reunion, I have perhaps made it clear
why we ought to be reunited. Certainly I have met with little of the fabled
odium theologicum from convinced members of communions
different from my own. Hostility has come more from borderline people
whether within the Church of England or without it: men not exactly obedient
to any communion. This I find curiously consoling. It is at her centre,
where her truest children dwell, that each communion is really closest to
every other in spirit, if not in doctrine. And this suggests that at the
centre of each there is a something, or a Someone, who against all
divergencies of belief, all differences of temperament, all memories of
mutual persecution, speaks with the same voice.
So much for my omissions on doctrine. In Book III, which deals with
morals, I have also passed over some things in silence, but for a different
reason. Ever since I served as an infantryman in the First World War I have
had a great dislike of people who, themselves in ease and safety, issue
exhortations to men in the front line. As a result I have a reluctance to
say much about temptations to which I myself am not exposed. No man, I
suppose, is tempted to every sin. It so happens that the impulse which makes
men gamble has been left out of my make-up; and, no doubt, I pay for this by
lacking some good impulse of which it is the excess or perversion. I
therefore did not feel myself qualified to give advice about permissible and
impermissible gambling: if there is any permissible, for I do not claim to
know even that. I have also said nothing about birth-control. I am not a
woman nor even a married man, nor am I a priest. I did not think it my place
to take a firm line about pains, dangers and expenses from which I am
protected; having no pastoral office which obliged me to do so.
Far deeper objections may be felt - and have been expressed -against my
use of the word Christian to mean one who accepts the common doctrines of
Christianity. People ask: 'Who are you, to lay down who is, and who is not a
Christian?' : or 'May not many a man who cannot believe these doctrines be
far more truly a Christian, far closer to the spirit of Christ, than some
who do?' Now this objection is in one sense very right, very charitable,
very spiritual, very sensitive. It has every available quality except that
of beinguseful. We simply cannot, without disaster, use language as these
objectors want us to use it. I will try to make this clear by the history of
another, and very much less important, word.
The word gentleman originally meant something recognisable; one who had
a coat of arms and some landed property. When you called someone 'a
gentleman' you were not paying him a compliment, but merely stating a fact.
If you said he was not 'a gentleman' you were not insulting him, but giving
information. There was no contradiction in saying that John was a liar and a
gentleman; any more than there now is in saying that James is a fool and an
M.A. But then there came people who said - so rightly, charitably,
spiritually, sensitively, so anything but usefully - 'Ah, but surely the
important thing about a gentleman is not the coat of arms and the land, but
the behaviour? Surely he is the true gentleman who behaves as a gentleman
should? Surely in that sense Edward is far more truly a gentleman than