Mere Christianityintermediate
Why does Lewis say that Christ’s human and divine identities matter to his account of redemption?
Answer
A strong answer should explain that humans need to surrender, suffer, and die, while God, in Lewis’s account, does not undergo these processes in the same way. Christ’s humanity makes him able to undergo human surrender and death; his divinity makes that surrender perfect and enables him to help humanity share in it. Lewis presents this as an explanatory picture rather than the only required theory of the Atonement.
Explanation
### Why this is right
Lewis’s reasoning links the human need for surrender with Christ’s capacity to perform it fully. Christ’s humanity makes the experience genuinely human, while his divinity makes his obedience complete and effective for others.
### The concept
Lewis describes human beings as unable to repent perfectly because the same disorder that makes repentance necessary also weakens their ability to do it. He argues that Christ can help because he enters human life and undergoes surrender and death. His account is one way of picturing the Atonement, not a demand that every Christian accept one complete mechanism.
### What a good answer covers
- Why human beings need help to surrender.
- The role of Christ’s humanity in suffering and death.
- The role of Christ’s divinity in perfect obedience and assistance.
- The distinction between the central belief and a particular explanatory model.
### Remember
In Lewis’s account, Christ’s humanity makes solidarity possible and his divinity makes perfect help possible.
Related Questions
- In Lewis’s piano analogy, what corresponds to the Moral Law?(intermediate)
- Explain how Lewis responds to the objection that moral rules are merely social conventions.(intermediate)
- Reconstruct Lewis’s inference from the Moral Law to a power behind the universe, and identify one limit he places on that inference.(intermediate)
- In Lewis’s account, what makes free will valuable despite making evil possible?(intermediate)
- Lewis argues that the Moral Law is simply a description of what human beings usually do.(intermediate)
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