PWJ: S1E30 – MC B4C2 – “The Three-Personal God”
As we move into Chapter 2 of Book IV, we dive into the Trinity! What does it mean to say that God is a Trinity and how do we come to know this God better? How can we become one with God and yet not lose all individuality? All will be revealed in the latest episode of “The Eagle and Child”…
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Episode 30: “The Three-Personal God” (Download)
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— Show Notes —
• The Quote-of-the-week from Mere Christianity:
“The union between the Father and Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a person”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 4)
• The drink-of-the-week was Guinness. I spoke about how the Guinness is better in Ireland, probably due to the water from the Liffey River. I explained that, at one point, pregnant women were encouraged to drink Guinness for their health!
• Lewis says that he think many people believe in God, but not in a personal God:
“They feel that the mysterious something which is behind all other things must be more than a person”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 2)
I suggested that this comes from the idea of thinking that God must be something beyond our comprehension. Lewis goes on to say that Christianity is the only religious system which offers such a God:
“Christians are the only people who offer any idea of what a being that is beyond personality could be like. All the other people, though they say that God is beyond personality, really think of Him as something impersonal: that is, as something less than personal. If you are looking for something super-personal, something more than a person, then it is not a question of choosing between the Christian idea and the other ideas. The Christian idea is the only one on the market”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 2)
• Lots of religions have the idea that when we die we are “absorbed” into God, but Lewis says that this implies a loss of individuality:
“…some people think that after this life… human souls will be ‘absorbed’ into God… they seem to be thinking of our being absorbed into God as one material thing is absorbed into another… like a drop of water slipping into the sea. But of course that is the end of the drop. If that is what happens to us, then being absorbed is the same as ceasing to exist”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 2)
He says that Christianity solves this problem:
“It is only the Christians who have any idea of how human souls can be taken into the life of God and yet remain themselves – in fact, be very much more themselves than they were before”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 2)
Recalling the previous chapter, we saw that we have natural life (“bios”), but to be drawn into the Trinity is to receive supernatural life (“zoe”):
“The whole purpose for which we exist is to be thus taken into the life of God”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 2)
• In an attempt to explain the three-personal God, Lewis makes use of geometry, where geometric shapes progressively “build on” each other. The earlier dimensions are not lost, but become greater as they are combined in new ways:
“If you are using only one dimension, you could draw only a straight line. If you are using two, you could draw a figure: say, a square. And a square is made up of four straight lines. Now a step further. If you have three dimensions, you can then build what we call a solid body, say, a cube-a thing like a dice or a lump of sugar. And a cube is made up of six squares.”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 2)
The same principle can work in the account of the Trinity:
“On the human level one person is one being, and any two persons are two separate beings-just as, in two dimensions (say on a flat sheet of paper) one square is one figure, and any two squares are two separate figures… On the Divine level you still find personalities; but up there you find them combined in new ways which we, who do not live on that level, cannot imagine… In God’s dimension, so to speak, you find a being who is three Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube.
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 2)
This also explains how we can become one with God, but also remain ourselves.
• All this is hard to imagine since we don’t experience three-personal beings in day-to-day life, but it still helps us grasp these mysteries a little more deeply:
“Of course we cannot fully conceive a Being like that: just as, if we were so made that we perceived only two dimensions in space we could never properly imagine a cube. But we can get a sort of faint notion of it”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 2)
• I asked Matt about neural networks, computer programmes which Matt writes for a living. These also have multiple dimensions (or layers) which allow computers to do amazing things. I joked that Matt is building Skynet, but has somehow never watched The Terminator movies.
• Lewis asks what’s the point in talking about this three-personal God:
“You may ask, ‘If we cannot imagine a three-personal Being, what is the good of talking about Him?’ Well, there isn’t any good talking about Him. The thing that matters is being actually drawn into that three-personal life, and that may begin any time – tonight, if you like”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 2)
This is the entire point of Christianity! We connect to God through prayer and Lewis says that our experience makes sense of the three-personal nature of God:
“[A man praying] is trying to get into touch with God…he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God-that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying – the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on – the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers.
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 2)
The fact that the whole Trinity is involved in our prayers is one of the reasons Christians typically cross themselves and begin “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit…”.
• Theology began through experience:
“People already knew about God in a vague way. Then came a man who claimed to be God; and yet he was not the sort of man you could dismiss as a lunatic. He made them believe Him [Lunatic, Liar or Lord argument from Book III]… after they had been formed into a little society or community, they found God somehow inside them as well: directing them, making them able to do things they could not do before. And when they worked it all out they found they had arrived at the Christian definition of the three-personal God”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 2)
Speaking about them being able “to do things they could not do before”, I commented that when the New Testament speaks about the “power” of God, the Greek word is “dunamis” and is the root is the root word of our English words “dynamite”, “dynamo” and “dynamic”.
Regarding the Christians arriving “at the Christian definition of the three-personal God”, I described the early Christians as “experiential Trinitarians”. They might not have been able to fully articulate the Church’s latter definitions of the Trinity, but they knew the Father, walked with the Son and were in-dwelt by the Spirit and they also knew that there was only one God:
“…Before me no god was formed,
nor shall there be any after me”
– Isaiah 43:10
We joked about Trinity Sunday, or as I called it, Bad Analogy Sunday. Matt told a story of St. Augustine. The very fact that the Godhead is complicated is a suggestion that it is true:
“It is the simple religions that are the made-up ones”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 2)
• Lewis then starts unpacking the idea that theology is experimental knowledge. He takes a tour through creation and shows that the study of different things requires different levels of cooperation with that entity, depending upon whether we are studying rocks, animals, people or God. When it comes to God, we require His cooperation:
“If He does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him. And, in fact, He shows much more of Himself to some people than to others-not because He has favourites, but because it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition. Just as sunlight, though it has no favourites, cannot be reflected in a dusty mirror as clearly as a clean one”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 2)
Like any science, there are instruments to help us. The first is your self:
“….the instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man’s self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred-like the Moon seen through a dirty telescope. That is why horrible nations have horrible religions: they have been looking at God through a dirty lens…”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 2)
“God can show Himself as He really is only to real men. And that means not simply to men who are individually good, but to men who are united together in a body, loving one another, helping one another, showing Him to one another. For that is what God meant humanity to be like; like players in one band, or organs in one body.
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 2)
…but the study of God also requires the whole Church:
“God can show Himself as He really is only to real men. And that means not simply to men who are individually good, but to men who are united together in a body, loving one another, helping one another, showing Him to one another. For that is what God meant humanity to be like; like players in one band, or organs in one body… Christian brotherhood is, so to speak, the technical equipment for this science”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 2)
Without the Church, we’re sure to go wrong. Matt paraphrased this Chesterton quotation:
“We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong”
– G.K. Chesterton, The Catholic Church and Conversion
• Does all this seem complicated? Well, once again we have to say that’s a good sign that it’s true…
“If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 2)
Heresy is using focussing on one text or idea to the detriment of others.
“What this world needs
Is for us to stop hiding behind our relevance
Blending in so well that people can’t see the difference
And it’s the difference that sets the world free“
– Casting Crowns, What this world needs
• I shared my review of Dr. William-Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith podcast:
Dr. William-Lane Craig is one of the most accessible philosophers alive today. He has a real gift for clarity when speaking about the Christian faith. If you’re a budding apologist (as every Christian should be!), you should listen to this podcast!