"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
The beautiful bride in her gown stands up in front of the altar and reaches out for the hand of her handsome groom in his bow tie and tux…they pledge their love to one another, declare their vows, and flip the Altar Switch – instantly becoming the man and woman, the husband and wife they always dreamed they’d be
– Sarah Swafford, Emotional Virtue
Continuing my notes for Book IV of C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”…
1. Begin with a thought experiment
(a) Imagine two books on top of one another
“I begin this chapter by asking you to get a certain picture clear in your minds. Imagine two books lying on a table one on top of the other… It is because of the underneath book that the top one is resting, say, two inches from the surface of the table instead of touching the table. Let us call the underneath book A and the top one B. The position of A is causing the position of B”
(b) and imagine that these two books have been like this forever
“…let us imagine that both books have been in that position for ever and ever. In that case B’s position would always have been resulting from A’s position. But all the same, A’s position would not have existed before B’s position. In other words the result does not come after the cause”
2. When we speak about the different persons of the Trinity, it can sound like some existed before others…
“…as soon as I begin trying to explain how these Persons are connected I have to use words which make it sound as if one of them was there before the others”
(a) It makes sense to speak of Father and Son since one “begets” the other
“The First Person is called the Father and the Second the Son. We say that the First begets or produces the second; we call it begetting, not making, because what He produces is of the same kind as Himself. In that way the word Father is the only word to use”
(b) However, this suggests that the father exists before the son
“But unfortunately it suggests that He is there first – just as a human father exists before his son. But that is not so. There is no before and after about it. And that is why I have spent some time trying to make clear how one thing can be the source, or cause, or origin, of another without being there before it. The Son exists because the Father exists: but there never was a time before the Father produced the Son”
(c) Compare the act of imagination and the mental picture which “results” from it
“I asked you just now to imagine those two books, and probably most of you did. That is, you made an act of imagination and as a result you had a mental picture. Quite obviously your act of imagining was the cause and the mental picture the result. But that does not mean that you first did the imagining and then got the picture. The moment you did it, the picture was there. Your will was keeping the picture before you all the time. Yet that act of will and the picture began at exactly the same moment and ended at the same moment. If there were a Being who had always existed and had always been imagining one thing, his act would always have been producing a mental picture; but the picture would be just as eternal as the act”
(d) It is similar with the Father and Son
“In the same way we must think of the Son always, so to speak, streaming forth from the Father, like light from a lamp, or heat 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.
(e) We must be careful with our images and stay close to the Scriptural language
“All these pictures of light or heat are making it sound as if the Father and Son were two things instead of two Persons. So that after all, the New Testament picture of a Father and a Son turns out to be much more accurate than anything we try to substitute for it. That is what always happens when you go away from the words of the Bible. It is quite right to go away from them for a moment in order to make some special point clear. But you must always go back. 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. Much the most important thing to know is that it is a relation of love. The Father delights in His Son; the Son looks up to His Father”
Today I’d like to share the new single from Audrey Assad entitled “Deliverer”.
Rather than sharing the lyrics (which are in the video anyway), I’d like to share Audrey’s words explaining the origin of this song:
I grew up with some rather terrible and terrifying ideas about who God was. Mostly, I believed that God only loved me because Jesus stepped in between us and God couldn’t see me anymore—this contributed to many years of a tormented and broken-down relationship with God, based mostly in fear and shame.
Jesus is often called ‘Immanuel’, which means ‘God with us.’ Imagine the deep healing that took place when I came to recognize that Jesus came not to defend us from God, but to display in His life, death, and resurrection exactly who God has always been.
When I took a good honest look at the ruins in my heart, it is no surprise that I found Him there, ‘preaching His gospel to the poor’ (T. Merton) — He had been with me and within me all along, delivering me not from God, but from my own inner death.
I truly hope you are blessed and ministered to by this song. It was a healing experience to write it.
In today’s episode we begin Book I of “Mere Christianity”, which is entitled “Right and wrong as a clue to the meaning of the universe”. In this book, C.S. Lewis builds an argument for the existence of God based upon the idea that there is a Moral Law.
If you enjoy this episode, you can subscribe using iTunes or Google Play. As always, if you have any objections, comments or questions, please send us an email through my website or tweet us @pintswithjack.
Episode 3: “The Law of Human Nature” (Download)
Picking back up my notes for C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”…
1. Some people struggle with the idea of prayer
(a) It relates to how God hears prayer
“A man put it to me by saying ‘I can believe in God all right, but what I cannot swallow is the idea of Him attending to several hundred million human beings who are all addressing Him at the same moment.'”
(b) Specifically, how God can hear prayers at the same time
“Most of us can imagine God attending to any number of applicants if only they came one by one and He had an endless time to do it in. So what is really at the back of this difficulty is the idea of God having to fit too many things into one moment of time”
2. Our trouble stems from how we experience life in time
“Our life comes to us moment by moment One moment disappears before the next comes along: and there is room for very little in each. That is what Time is like”
(a) They assume that God experiences things in the same way
We tend to assume that the whole universe and God Himself are always moving on from past to future just as we do. But many learned men do not agree with that. It was the Theologians who first started the idea that some things are not in Time at all: later the Philosophers took it over: and now some of the scientists are doing the same.
(b) However, God is not in Time
“His life does not consist of moments following one another. If a million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty-and every other moment from the beginning of the world-is always the Present for Him”
My Godson and I went to a Bible Study last night and it inspired me to create this meme…
“Why is it, Lord, that your feet delay?
Did you forget that this was the day?”
Then soft in the silence a voice he heard,
“Lift up your heart, for I have kept my word.
Three times I came to your friendly door;
Three times my shadow was on your floor.
I was a beggar with the bruised feet;
I was the woman you gave to eat;
I was the child on the homeless street!”
– Edwin Markham, How the Great Guest Came