Continuing my consideration of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, let’s turn to his views on theology – the science of God (pages 130-100).
A map or photo is not as exciting as the experience of the real thing, but the map gives the “big picture” that makes sense of the local experience. In the same way, any experience of the presence of God will be more authentic for us than any work of theology, but experience alone gives a “vague religion” which is all thrills and no work.
If we took Jesus’ advice on how to treat one another, would the world be a better place? Yes, but the human race has never been very good at embracing the teachings of its moralists. If Jesus is the very best moralist, that only makes it even less likely that his lofty values will be attained than any other teacher’s!
There is more to Christianity than simply making this world a better place (though that matters too). Full Christianity goes beyond this “populist” Christianity be claiming that we become sons of God by attaching ourselves to Christ – our sonship is not automatic.
Here AspiePriest is relieved to see that Lewis follows the logic of Scripture which says we are adopted as sons of God through baptism, and therefore those not baptised are not God’s children – though still made in the image of God. In my experience most churchgoers will claim that all human beings are, by virtue of their humanity, children of God.
Man has biological life but is called to spiritual life – these are of such different orders that it is misleading to use the same word “life” for both. Lewis uses Bios for physical life and Zoe for spiritual life. We are like statues promised we will one day actually come to life!
How can God be more than a person without being “impersonal”? A human trying to understand God is like an inhabitant of Flatland trying to contemplate a cube when all that can be seen is a square passing through that two-dimensional world; the evidence suggests God is three persons and one nature, though we cannot comprehend the whole of God from our limited experience. God is Love – which means God cannot be a solo identity. But that’s not the same as making “feelings of love” into a god!
A group of people working together might be said to have the “group spirit”. In the same way, that which is common to Father and Son is the Holy Spirit, which can get into us and work through us – giving us the good infection of Zoe, which we are called to spread.
If you want to study an animal, watch it without frightening it. If you want to study another human person, enter conversation as equals. But if you want to study God, you must allow God to reveal Himself to you; and this He can do only insofar as your soul is pure. The best tool for seeing God is the Christian community as a whole.
God is outside time, and does not experience its passage. So we need not fret about God having to listen to millions of people praying “at once” and Christ was not sustaining the universe “at the same time” as spending 33 years on Earth; rather, he who inhabited timeless eternity was also present in the constraints of human time.
Christ (his spirit, as opposed to the physical body of Jesus) was begotten by the Father at the beginning of time. Imagine book B resting on book A. Now imagine this had always been the case. But B’s position can’t be understood without A’s. This is how we can imagine the son being begotten by the Father eternally.
From God’s timeless perspective, all human beings are connected. All are therefore affected when one of them is God incarnate. But each individual must appropriate the Zoe on offer by an act of will.
Why did God not simply beget many sons? Our “adoption” would not have been a painful process were it not for the Fall. And if more than one Son were begotten, what would make them distinct?
Our connectedness does not deny our individual distinctiveness. To emphasise either to the exclusion of the other would be a serious error; as in so many things, the truth lies in the via media.
This post has been largely a summary of Lewis’s writing. AspiePriest is pleased that Lewis’s thinking corresponds with his own in all of these matters. The question of whether there can be more than one distinct Son is rather like the questions in particle physics about how many distinct kinds of particle can exist…
aspiepriest 