Mere Christianity -- Book 4, Chap. 4

Good Infection

Lewis has been slowly, step-by-step, unfolding the doctrine of the Trinity for us.  In chap. 1, he distinguished between God’s actions of “making” and “begetting,” pointing out that God “makes” or creates human beings, created in His image, but He “begets” God (i.e. Son of God).  In other words, the Son of God is unique – we will never be God or become God.

In chap. 2, Lewis explained that the idea that God is 3 persons and yet one being is unexplainable.  We can catch a glimpse of the truth even as a two-dimensional figure can catch a glimpse of a 3 dimensional figure – a one square figure can only begin to understand what a six-square figure can be like.

No matter what figure we use to attempt to explain the unexplainable we tend towards some form of heresy – either Unitarian (focus on one being only) or Tri-Theism (focus on three beings rather than persons).

Lewis adds that the fact that this is ultimately unexplainable shows us that it must be from God.  Those religions that are “easy” to understand are clearly made-up by man.

In chap. 3, Lewis explains that the relationships within the Trinity are eternal.  In other words, the Father “begetting” the Son is from all eternity.  There was never a time when the Son was not.  Equally, when the Son became a man, He never ceased being wholly God and therefore had both properties of God and man at the same time.  As Augustine said, “Christ became what He was not, without ceasing to be what He already was.”  Therefore, Christ was both eternal God, holding the universe together and man, dependent upon the elements of the universe for His existence – at the same time.   

Now in chap. 4, Lewis wants to unfold the nature of the Holy Spirit within the Trinity. 

He begins with a helpful analogy of their relationship.  Imagine two books stacked upon one another.  The bottom one is book A and the one on top is book B.  You can say that book A is the cause of the position of book B, it being dependent or effected by A’s position. 

Now, imagine those books sitting there, in the same position forever and ever – for all eternity.  On the one hand, B’s position is caused by A’s position.  But on the other hand, there never was a time when B did not exist to be in its position.  B’s position is the eternal result or effect of A’s position even though B does not come after A. 

Here is an example of a cause and effect relationship that is not separated by time.

Father and Son Eternal

Using this illustration may help at getting at the relationship between eternal Father begetting eternal Son.  The Father begets – produces or causes – the Son but without there ever being any time that the Son was not.  The Father is not first in time, followed by the Son.  There is no before or after in regards to the Son.  The Father is the source, cause, or origin of the Son without being there before Him. 

The Son exists because the Father exists:  but there never was a time before the Father produced the Son.

Here Lewis turns to another illustration.  He tells you to imagine the two books sitting upon one another on the table.  Now as soon as you perform the “act” of imagination there is instantly a “mental image” in your mind of the two books. 

Now, it is clearly the act of the imagination that causes the mental image in your mind.  But we could equally say that you did not first perform the act of imagination and then the picture in your mind came some time latter.  No.  The image was instantaneous.  The moment you acted, the image was there, as if the two were one and the same moment. 

Now think of a being that is eternal and always imagining one thing.  Not only would the being exists who has acting in his imagination but the image would be eternally present with the act.

In the same way, the Son always “streams forth” from the Father, like “light from a lamp, or heart from a fire, or thoughts from a mind.”

He is the self-expression of the Father – what the Father has to say. And there never was a time when He was not saying it.

Father and Son One Being

But as soon as we speak of light AND lamp, heat AND fire, thoughts AND mind we speak as if these are two separate things.  But the Father and Son are NOT two beings (Bi-Theism) but two persons of the same being. 

In a way, we can never escape this problem because there is no analogy in creation that perfectly images the Trinity.  The Bible alone is our supreme authority for “understanding” the nature of the Trinity. 

Naturally God knows how to describe Himself much better than we know how to describe Him.  He knows that Father and Son is more like the relation between the First and Second Persons than anything else we can think of.  

The Spirit of Love

And just what is the relationship between the Father and Son?  It is LOVE.  The Father delights in His Son; the Son looks up to His Father.

Now, what do we normally mean when we say “God is love”?  Normally, we really think that “love” is God.  We think that our feelings of sentiment, however and wherever they arise and whatever they produce in us – is ultimate love. 

But that is not what Christians mean when we speak of God being love.  To speak of a person as love MUST mean that there is at least one other person. 

“God is love” has no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons.  Love is something that one person has for another person.  If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love.

But if God “is Love” then it is not possible for Him to be both God and at the same time a being that was not love at one point and became love at another.  If God is God he cannot change.  And if he cannot change and He is love then there must be at least two persons from all eternity.  Christians believe

that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else. 

And this is what sets Christianity off from all other religions.  The Christian God is not:

a static thing  -- not eve a person – but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama.  Almost if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.

What does Lewis mean?  The absolute center of Lewis’ theology is joy – it was the one goal in life that always evaded him in his life as an unbeliever (sehnsucht).  It was only as a Christian that Lewis realized that joy is not what he was looking for all along.  Rather, it was God who is joy and only in relationship with Him is joy found.  Joy is not the end of the longing (sehnsucht) but the result of the relationship with God.  

Now, in order to speak of God as love or joy or delighting you must have two persons.  In fact, “God is love” is meaningless unless there is at least two persons.  God is not static but a drama, a dance.  This union between the Father and Son (of love, joy, delight) is so alive, vibrant, energetic that “it” is a person, the Holy Spirit. 

Screwtape says to Wormwood:

The whole philosophy of Hell rest on recognition of the axiom that one thing is not another thing, and, specially, that one self is another self.  My good is my good and your good is yours.  What one gains another loses.  Even an inanimate object is what it is by excluding all other objects from the space it occupies; if it expands, it does so by thrusting other objects aside or by absorbing them.  A self does the same.  With beasts the absorption takes the form of eating; for us, it means the sucking of will and freedom out of a weaker self into a stronger.  “To be” means “to be in competition.”

Now the Enemy’s philosophy is nothing more nor less than one continued attempt to evade this very obvious truth.  He aims at a contradiction.  Things are to be many, yet somehow also one.  The good of one self is to be the good of another.  This impossibility He calls love, and this same monotonous panacea can be detected under all He does and even all He is – or claims to be.  Thus He is not content, even Himself, to be a sheer arithmetical unity; He claims to be three as well as one, in order that this nonsense about Love may find a foothold in His own nature (Letter 18).

As Lewis writes:

The union between the Father and the Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person . . . What grows out of the joint life of the Father and Son is a real Person, is in fact the Third of the three Persons who are God.

We usually use similar language when speaking about a good fellowship or communion we were a part of.  We talk about the “spirit” of the family reunion.  There is a sense of closeness and love that is not there when each individual is apart from one another.  But that “spirit” is not a real person – but it is like one.  That is a difference between our relationships and God’s.  The love between the Father and Son is the person of the Holy Spirit.

But just who is the Holy Spirit?  Lewis says:

Do not be worried or surprised if you find it (or Him) rather vague or more shadowy in your mind than the other two. 

Because in the Christian life our focus is usually not on Him.  He is “acting through you” or in you moving you towards Christ and ultimately to the Father.

Perhaps some people might find it easier to begin with the third Person and work backwards.  God is love, and that love works through men – especially through the whole community of Christians.  But this spirit of love is, from all eternity, a love going on between the Father and the Son. 

So what?  What does it all matter?

It matters more than anything else in the world.  The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us:  or each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made. 

But how do we take our place in the dance?  Lewis writes:

Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection.  If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire:  if you want to be wet you must get into the water.  If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them.

You must get infected!  This is Lewis’ language for “union with Christ.”  You have to enter into the life or drama or dance of the Trinity.  But how?

Remember that in our natural state we are really like statues, not real, living beings.  We have not been begotten by God – we have only been made -- we have only Bios – natural life.  But “real” life is found only in Christ – Zoe or spiritual life.  This is the whole offer of the Christian life:

That we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ.  If we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always has existed and always will exist.  Christ is the Son of God.  If we share in this kind of life we also shall be sons of God.  We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. 

Christ came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has – by what I call “good infection.”  Every Christian is to become a little Christ.  The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.