When we describe God as the three-personal Being, it sometimes seems to suggest that one part of His personhood came first and was followed by the other two; that because God the Father begets God the Son, one existed before the other. But that is not the case. "The Son exists because the Father exists, but there was never a time before the Father produced the Son."
Lewis goes back to the subject of the Trinity in this chapter and begins by asking us to imagine two books stacked on top of each other. The one on the bottom (Book A) is supporting the one on top (Book B) so the bottom book is causing the position of the top one. But imagine that both books have been in this same position for all of time, from the moment they both came into existence. If that were possible, then yes, the position of Book B would be the result of Book A's position, but Book A would never have existed before Book B. "In other words, the result does not come after the cause" but is a simultaneous occurrence. When we describe God as the three-personal Being, it sometimes seems to suggest that one part of His personhood came first and was followed by the other two; that because God the Father begets God the Son, one existed before the other. But that is not the case. "The Son exists because the Father exists, but there was never a time before the Father produced the Son." Lewis then says that maybe the best way to understand it is this. When you were previously asked to imagine the two books, the picture that came to your mind and the act of imagining it were a simultaneous experience. As soon as you imagined it, the picture was there. Even though the act of imagination was the cause and the mental picture the result, they were not isolated events. They occurred together and were linked in such a way that one really could not have existed without the other. So the Father and the Son are two distinct personalities that exist in the same Being and have always existed together. Lewis then goes on to discuss the third personality that makes up the Trinity: the Holy Spirit. He says that if we understand God as being not a static thing or person but rather a dynamic, pulsating activity, we can begin to see "the union between the Father and the Son [as] such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person." The Holy Spirit may not seem as clear in our minds as the other two Persons in the Trinity. It is a little more vague and cloudy than the Father and the Son, but that is to be expected because it is the part that is inside us or behind us, that moves and motivates and shapes us, pushing us along the path laid out by the Son, the path that leads us to the Father. *This post is part of a 31 day series on C.S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity. If this is your first stop along the way, I am so glad you’re here! I would love to interact with you in the comments, or you can email me by clicking on the "Contact Me" tab at the top right of the page. All of the blog posts in this series will be linked together on the intro page if you are interested in reading more. Click here to be taken to the introduction post, and if you want to follow along with the whole series, enter your email address in the box toward the top right corner to subscribe to the blog. Thanks for reading!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
About Shelby
|