This fall, the Mattone Center  hosted a reading group that brought together students and alumni to explore questions of faith, morality, law, and the human experience through C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Mark Lanier, an attorney, scholar, and founder of the Lanier Theological Library in Houston led the four-part series at his firm’s office in Midtown Manhattan. He guided participants through Lewis’s influential work, which began as a series of BBC radio broadcasts during World War II and later appeared as a book. The group examined Lewis’s effort to articulate the core beliefs shared across Christian traditions, using his arguments as a starting point for thoughtful discussion about morality, responsibility, and what it means to live a good life.

The discussions began with Lewis’s argument that people recognize a moral law they did not create, yet repeatedly fail to live up to it. From there, the group considered Lewis’s Christian explanation for the gap between moral knowledge and human behavior, including the roles of human freedom, evil, and Christ’s atonement. The sessions then turned to the practical demands of Christian conduct, exploring forgiveness, pride, humility, and the limits of law in shaping individual character and a just society. These themes raised questions particularly relevant to the legal profession: Can law establish the standards necessary for a good society without being able to make people good? Can forgiveness coexist with punishment and accountability? When does professional ambition become pride? In the final session, participants considered Lewis’s reflections on the Trinity, individualism and community, the purposes of church and state, and his central claim that Christianity seeks not merely outwardly respectable behavior, but the transformation of the whole person.

For law students, the reading group offered an opportunity to step beyond the rules, doctrines, and analytical frameworks that ordinarily shape legal education and reflect on the moral questions underlying the practice of law. Lewis’s arguments invited participants to consider both the power and the limitations of legal institutions: law can establish standards, identify wrongdoing, assign responsibility, and provide remedies, but it cannot by itself cultivate the virtues on which a healthy society depends. Discussions of forgiveness and accountability also offered a way to examine the distinction between pursuing justice and seeking vengeance, while reflections on pride challenged students to think critically about competition, ambition, and professional success. By connecting a classic work of Christian thought with questions about legal responsibility, public life, and personal character, the group created space for students to engage with difficult ideas, test their assumptions, and consider not only what lawyers do but what kind of people they aspire to become.