PWJ: S1E29 – MC B4C1 – “Making and begetting”
And now we begin Book IV! Together with Lewis, we take our first steps into the mystery of the Holy Trinity. In today’s episode we begin by looking at the point of theology and make distinctions between “making” and “begetting”…
Please send any objections, comments or questions, either via email through my website or tweet us @pintswithjack or message us via Instagram!
Episode 29: “Making and begetting” (Download)
If you enjoy this episode, you can subscribe manually, or any place where good podcasts can be found (iTunes, Google Play, Podbean, Stitcher and TuneIn).
— Show Notes —
• The Quote-of-the-week:
“The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
• Today’s drink-of-the-week was Monkey Shoulder, a present Matt received for his birthday.
• Lewis said that he had been told that what most people want is not theology, but “plain, practical religion”. Lewis chose to proceed regardless, explaining why he thinks talking about theology is important:
“I do not think the ordinary reader is such a fool. Theology means ‘the science of God,’ and I think any man who wants to think about God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available. You are not children: why should you be treated like children?”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 1)
I spoke about a talk I heard from Bishop Barron where he railed against “dumbed down” Christianity. I also mentioned that I had picked up a 50’s High School religion textbook and commented on how substantial it was. Matt referred to another “old” book he’s been enjoying, The Evidence of Faith. I commented on how Lewis was against “chronological snobbery”, the idea that old ideas are automatically inferior to new ideas.
• Lewis tells the story of a man he met who disagreed with his theology:
“[I have been told:] I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a religious man too. I know there’s a God. I’ve felt Him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 1)
• Lewis uses the analogy of a map to show the limits of experience and the need for theology:
“…if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper…
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 1)
A map provides a broader context:
“…it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic… masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single isolated glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 1)
A map is necessary if you want to travel somewhere!
“…if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 1)
• He then connects this map analogy to theology:
“Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God – experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 1)
However, this is not to the exclusion of experience:
“Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrine, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than [direct spiritual experiences]”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 1)
Matt spoke about a priest warned him that you can miss Heaven by eighteen inches – the distance between the head and the heart.
• Lewis says that skipping theology doesn’t mean that you have no ideas about God – you’ll just end up with bad ones:
“For a great many of the ideas about God which are trotted out as novelties today, are simply the ones which real Theologians tried centuries ago and rejected”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 1)
• Rather than digging into theology, popular culture tries to reduce Christianity to Jesus’ moral teachings. In previous chapters we had already concluded that we can’t reduce Jesus to a great moral teacher.
However, Lewis points out that we don’t actually need Jesus to make moral advancement, Plato or Aristotle would do:
“It is quite true that if we took Christ’s advice we should soon be living in a happier world. You need not even go as far as Christ. If we did all that Plato or Aristotle or Confucius told us, we should get on a great deal better than we do”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 1)
…but the problem is that we didn’t even follow their advice! Why on earth would we follow Jesus’ advice which is even more exacting and costly?
“And so what? We never have followed the advice of the great teachers. Why are we likely to begin now? Why are we more likely to follow Christ than any of the others? Because he is the best moral teacher? But that makes it even less likely that we shall follow him. If we cannot take the elementary lessons, is it likely we are going to take the most advanced one? If Christianity only means one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance. There has been no lack of good advice for the last four thousand years. A bit more makes no difference”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 1)
• Lewis then comments that he noticed that in Christian writings, most notably the New Testament, focus not such much on morality, but elsewhere:
“But as soon as you look at any real Christian writings, you find that they are talking about something quite different from this popular religion. They say that Christ is the Son of God (whatever that means). They say that those who give Him their confidence can also become Sons of God (whatever that means). They say that His death saved us from our sins (whatever that means)”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 1)
• You shouldn’t complain that this is hard to understand:
“Christianity claims to be telling us about another world, about something behind the world we can touch and hear and see. You may think the claim false; but if it were true, what it tells us would be bound to be difficult – at least as difficult as modern Physics, and for the same reason”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 1)
• With the importance of theology established, Lewis now looks at what it means to be “begotten”. In particular, what does it mean to say that Christ is begotten? He emphasizes that this is what happened in eternity – it does not refer to the incarnation.
• To beget something means to produce something of the same kind. Making produces something of a different kind:
“A man begets human babies, a beaver begets little beavers and a bird begets eggs which turn into little birds… A bird makes a nest, a beaver builds a dam, a man makes a wireless set… If he is a clever enough carver he may make a statue which is very like a man indeed. But, of course, it is not a real man; it only looks like one. It cannot breathe or think. It is not alive”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 1)
So this is why Jesus is begotten, not made:
“What God begets is God; just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God; just as what man makes is not man. That is why men are not Sons of God in the sense that Christ is. They may be like God in certain ways, but they are not things of the same kind. They are more like statues or pictures of God”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 1)
Jesus is of the same stuff as the Father. In the Creed we call him “consubstantial with the Father”. The Greek term for this from the Council of Nicaea is “Homousious”. This is why we say Jesus is “God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God” as the Creed says.
• We are taken through a tour of creation, with Lewis showing us how different aspects of God’s creation reflect Him, culminating in man:
“When we come to man, the highest of the animals, we get the completest resemblance to God which we know of. (There may be creatures in other worlds who are more like God than man is, but we do not know about them.) Man not only lives, but loves and reasons: biological life reaches its highest known level in him”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 1)
• There are two kinds of life, natural life, which he calls “Bios”, and supernatural life, which he calls “Zoe”.
“In reality, the difference between Biological life and spiritual life is so important that I am going to give them two distinct names. The Biological sort which comes to us through Nature, and which (like everything else in Nature) is always tending to run down and decay so that it can only be kept up by incessant subsidies from Nature in the form of air, water, food, etc., is Bios. The Spiritual life which is in God from all eternity, and which made the whole natural universe, is Zoe. Bios has, to be sure, a certain shadowy or symbolic resemblance to Zoe: but only the sort of resemblance there is between a photo and a place, or a statue and a man. A man who changed from having Bios to having Zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real man”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 1)
• Christianity is all about acquiring the “Zoe” life…
“And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 1)
• I ended the episode by sharing my iTunes review for another C.S. Lewis podcast, The Lamp-post Listener:
“I love the Chronicles of Narnia. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve read the books. But if there’s one thing better than reading a great book, it’s reading a great book with other people. That’s why I was particularly delighted to come across this podcast last week. I get to read all the books again, but this time with Phil and Daniel. I’m really looking forward to journey ahead, gentlemen. Further up and further in! Cheers!”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 1)