C.S. Lewis and Guessing Christianity

Expect the Unexpected

SNEAKY DEE

Skeptics have always had a problem with the concept of salvation in Christianity: they don’t understand why a being that is supposedly infallible decided that the only way to redeem humans was to have a miracle birth, sacrifice the child, and then resurrect him. I’m sure if we really thought about it, all of us can think of better ways to go about this task. For example, God could have erased our sins by snapping his fingers, or just make us good in the first place. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis argues that the improbability of the scenario establishes its truth: “Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. This is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion that you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up.” The argument is akin to the notion that God’s “hiddenness” proves his existence, that only a perfect being could conceal himself so perfectly. In fact, it goes somewhat further, asserting that the less likely the theory might seem to you, the more likely it is to be true. This type of reasoning is not entirely unprecedented. Prosecutors frequently argue that inconsistencies between the testimony of various police officers enhances their overall credibility, after all, if everything they said matched up perfectly, you’d know that they conspired to make the whole thing up.

However, one problem with Lewis’ claim might be that the resurrection story isn’t improbable enough. It may be ridiculous, but it’s not perfectly ridiculous. Quite a few people believe it and have “guessed” it, something you wouldn’t expect if there were a god who was truly trying to make it so queer as to defy expectations. Anyone of us could have thought of a way to make the story just a little less sensible, for example, having a 10-foot tall Jesus with the ability to shoot energy...