Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 06:2 (Fall 2024)
Article: C.S. Lewis On The True Nature Of Morality And The Sexes
Author: Louis Markos

Eikon 6.2 (Fall 2024) p. 16

C.S. Lewis On The True Nature Of Morality And The Sexes

Louis Markos

Louis Markos, Professor in English and Scholar in Residence at Houston Christian University, holds the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities; his 26 books include The Myth Made Fact, From Plato to Christ, C.S. Lewis for Beginners, Restoring Beauty: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful in the Writings of C. S Lewis, and Lewis Agonistes. His Passing the Torch: An Apology for Classical Christian Education and From Aristotle to Christ are due out from IVP in 2025.

In Book I of Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis argues that moral/ethical standards are not arbitrary but connected to a universal moral/ethical code. Since that code transcends any given time or place, it must have an origin that is supernatural and meta-physical. If it were a product of nature, it could not stand outside and above it; if it were manmade, it would not possess the cross-cultural binding power it does.

All people know this standard exists, for it defines the way we expect other people to treat us, even if we do not reciprocate in kind. If this universal, cross-cultural code did not not exist, or were it not engraved in the conscience of all men, then the Nuremberg Trials, during which Nazi war criminals were tried for crimes against humanity, could not have taken place.

Many European philosophers had long prior embraced naturalism, relativism, and nihilism, but when Europe mounted the trials, they proclaimed to the world their belief in three things: 1) there are actions that are objectively wrong; 2) the Nazis knew such actions were wrong; 3) they did those actions anyway. Of course, the Nazis could have claimed that they did not know that what they were doing was wrong. Had they done that, however, the court would not have let them go. They would have taken their ignorance of right and wrong as proof that they were sociopaths and put them in an asylum for the criminally insane.

Many in Lewis’s day, as well as many today, claimed that this universal moral/ ethical law code is neither divine nor transcendent, but a product of natural instincts we share with the animal kingdom. Lewis concedes that we all possess, and are driven by, natural instincts, but that is not the whole story:

“If two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in a creature’s mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger of the two must win. But at those moments when we are most conscious of the Moral Law, it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two impulses. You

Eikon 6.2 (Fall 2024) p. 17

probably want to be safe much more than you want to help the man who is drowning: but the Moral Law ...