The Many Houses Analogy and the Problem with the Attic

Before he was a household name, C. S. Lewis was a hardened atheist. From his teens to his early thirties, he vocalized many of the objections to Christianity that animate doubt in our age. After his surprising conversion Lewis famously portrayed Christianity as a house with many rooms. He invited people through the front door of the house and into the hallway of faith rather than into a specific room. His aim was to offer a “mere Christianity”—by which he meant an account that included the core elements of the faith and didn’t get into intra-Christian debates and differences—as a way into…