Mere Christianity -- Book 4, Chap. 6
Two Notes
Here Lewis responds to possible criticisms of his last chapter, “The Obstinate Toy Soldiers.”
Criticism # 1: “One sensible critic wrote asking me why, if God wanted sons instead of ‘toy soldiers,’ He did not beget many sons at the outset instead of first making toy soldiers and then bringing them to life by such a difficult and painful process.”
This criticism is really just the question of evil. Why did God create this world, able to fall, instead of a world that would remain perfect?
Lewis answers in two parts:
a.
First, the easy answer – We were the ones who chose to rebel. We were created with free will and chose to use it to sin against God – the Free Will Defense.
First, the easy answer – We were the ones who chose to rebel. We were created with free will and chose to use it to sin against God – the Free Will Defense. The process of being turned from a creature into a son would not have been difficult or painful if the human race had not turned away from God centuries ago. They were able to do this because He gave them free will: He gave them free will because a world of mere automata could never love and therefore never know infinite happiness.
b.Second, the difficult answer – As Christians we all agree that there was only one – begotten Son of God. To ask, “But could there be many?” doesn’t make sense when applied to God. How can a finite ask the infinite “could have been” anything? You can keep asking that question into infinity and never arrive at a satisfactory answer.
Second, the difficult answer – As Christians we all agree that there was only one – begotten Son of God. To ask, “But could there be many?” doesn’t make sense when applied to God. How can a finite ask the infinite “could have been” anything? You can keep asking that question into infinity and never arrive at a satisfactory answer.When talking about God you have arrived at “irreducible Fact” on which all other facts depend. There is no such thing as “could have been” with God. “It is what it is and there is the end of the matter.”
But how could we even speak of two perfect Sons from all eternity? If there were two Sons then they would have to be different from one another. At this point in Lewis’ argument I think we could just leave it at how do you have two different, yet perfect Sons? Doesn’t the difference imply a change in perfection? What is that?
But Lewis goes on: At the very least they would occupy different places and contain different atoms. And to speak of them as different, we would then have to bring concepts like space and matter (Nature) into eternity.
While the Father and Son relate through the latter being begotten, how would different Sons relate to one another? To think of two Sons you really have to smuggle in the picture of a universe and put the picture of the two Sons into it.
Criticism # 2: “The idea that the whole human race is, in a sense, one thing – one huge organism, like a tree – must not be confused with the idea that individual differences do not matter or that real people, Tom and Nobby and Kate, are somehow less important than collective things like classes, races, and so forth.”
The parts of a single organism may be very different from one another and therefore equally necessary for the body to work properly. See Paul’s discussion in 1 Cor. 12. Who would say that because the ear is not the hand that it is not important? Yet the ear and the hand are interconnected together in the same body – they share a common life.
When you find yourself wanting to turn your children, or pupils, or even you neighbours, (or your spouse), into people exactly like yourself, remember that God probably never meant them to be that. You and they are different organs, intended to do different things.
On the other hand, when you are tempted not to bother about someone else’s troubles because they are “no business of yours,” remember that through he is different from you he is part of the same organism as you (all equally created in the image of God).
To forget both of these will produce either an individualist, who doesn’t believe that he is interconnected with all other human beings, or a totalitarian, who simply wants to crush and suppress all differences and make everyone alike.
We might argue which of these is worse – the devil loves to play on our differences – to use your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one – but we must stay focused on the goal before us and steer clear of both errors.
