Mere Christianity - Book Four - Good Infection

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Four

 

 

Beyond Personality:

Or First Steps In The Doctrine Of The Trinity

 

 

 

4. Good Infection

     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.
Obviously the bottom  book is  keeping the other one up-supporting it. 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. That is clear? Now let us imagine-it could not really happen,
of course, but it will do for an illustration-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. Of course, results usually do: you eat
the  cucumber  first  and have the  indigestion afterwards. But it is not so
with all causes,  and  results. You  will see in  a  moment why I think this
important.

     I said  a few  pages  back  that God  is a  Being  which contains three
Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube contains six squares while
remaining one  body. But 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. 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.  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 tune before the Father produced the Son.

     Perhaps the best way  to think of it  is this.  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.

     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. But
have you noticed what is happening? 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.

     Before going on, notice the practical importance  of this. All sorts of
people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that "God is love," But
they seem  not  to notice that the words "God is love" have  no real meaning
unless God contains at least two Persons. Love  is something that one person
has for another person. If  God was a single person, then before the  world
was made, He was not love. Of course, what these people mean when they say
that God is love is often something quite different: they really  mean "Love
is God."  They really mean that  our feelings of love,  however and wherever
they arise,  and whatever results they produce, are to be treated with great
respect. Perhaps they are: but  that is something quite different from  what
Christians mean  by  the  statement "God is  love."  They  believe that  the
living, dynamic activity of love has been going  on in  God for ever and has
created everything else.

     And that, by the  way, is perhaps the most important difference between
Christianity and  all other  religions:  that  in Christianity God is not  a
static thing-not  even  a  person-but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life,
almost a kind  of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind
of dance. The union between the Father and Son is such a live concrete thing
that   this  union  itself  is  also  a  Person.  I  know   this  is  almost
inconceivable, but look at it  thus. You know that among human beings,  when
they  get together in a family,  or  a club, or  a trade union,  people talk
about the "spirit" of that family, or club, or trade union. They talk  about
its "spirit"  because  the individual  members, when  they  are together, do
really  develop particular ways of talking and behaving which they would not
have if they were apart. (*)

     ----
     [*] This corporate behaviour may, of course, be either better or  worse
than their individual behaviour.
     ----

     It  is  as  if a sort of  communal personality came into existence.  Of
course, it is not a real  person:  it is only rather like a person. But that
is just one of the  differences between God  and us. What  grows out of  the
joint life of the Father and Son is a real Person, is  in  fact the Third of
the three Persons who are God.

     This third Person is called, in  technical language, the Holy Ghost  or
the "spirit" of God. Do not be worried or surprised if  you find it (or Him)
rather vaguer or more shadowy in your mind than the other two. I think there
is a  reason why that must be so. In the Christian  life you are not usually
looking at Him: He is always acting through you. If you think  of the Father
as something "out  there,"  in  front of you,  and  of the  Son  as  someone
standing at your side, helping you to pray, trying to turn you  into another
son, then you have to think of the third Person as something  inside you, or
behind you. Perhaps some people might find it easier to begin with the third
Person  and  work  backwards.  God is  love,  and  that  love  works through
men-especially through the whole community of Christians. But this spirit of
love is, from all eternity, a love going on between the Father and Son.

     And now, what does it all matter? It matters more than anything else in
the world. The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life
is  to be played out in each one of  us: or (putting it the other way round)
each one of us has got to  enter that pattern, take his place in that dance.
There is no other way to  the happiness for which we were made. Good  things
as well  as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to
get warm you must  stand near the fire:  if you want to be  wet you must get
into the water. If you want joy,  power, peace,  eternal life, you must  get
close to, or  even into, the  thing that has  them. They are not  a  sort of
prizes which God could, if He chose, just hand  out to anyone.  They  are  a
great  fountain of energy and  beauty  spurting up at  the  very  centre  of
reality. If you are dose to it, the spray will  wet you: if you are not, you
will remain dry. once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever?
Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?

     But  how  is  he to be united  to God? How is it possible  for us to be
taken into the three-Personal life?

     You remember what I said in Chapter II about  begetting  and making. We
are not  begotten by God, we  are only made by Him: in our  natural state we
are  not  sons  of God, only (so to speak)  statues. We have  not got Zoe or
spiritual life: only Bios or biological life which is presently going to run
down and die. Now the whole offer  which Christianity makes is this: that we
can, if we let God have His way, come to share  in the life of Christ. If we
do, we shall  then be  sharing a life  which  was begotten,  not made, which
always has  existed and  always will exist Christ  is the Son of God. If  we
share in this kind of  life we also shall be sons of God.  We shall love the
Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world
and became  a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has-by
what I call "good infection." Every Christian is to become a little  Christ.
The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lewis discusses how the persons of God are connected.

1. How does Lewis relate two books, one on top of the other, to God eternal and Christ the Son?
2. As Lewis explains the Father and the Son, he points out one of the problems of getting away from the words of the bible. What is the problem he encountered and why is it good to go back to the bible?
3. Why does the phrase, "God is love" have no meaning without at least two persons?
4. How is the phrase, "love is God" different from "God is love"?
5. What does Lewis say is perhaps the most important difference between Christianity and other religions.
6. According to Lewis, where does the third person of the Trinity come from?
7. Lewis describes the relationship of the Father, Son, and Spirit as a dance. He also says that we acquire life by "good infection". Can you describe the dance and the concept of good infection?

 

 

 

 

 

• Example of the books and the relations between, then removing time... so the relationships existed as they appear without a time when the relationships didn't exist.
• This is an introduction to thinking about things outside of time.
• Uses the example of a cube being made up of six squares, but remaining a cube...

The Trinity:

• God the Father
• God the Son, Jesus, The Word, the Logos
• God the Holy Spirit, the Spirit, Comforter, Counselor

Editor: I am convinced that the language of begetting and begotten used by the authors of the Bible are inadequate to fully explain God. We know that the Logos (Word), existed from "before time," and before (in time) the Word took on human flesh in the person of Jesus. I am very uncomfortable with Lewis' analogies of the Son flowing from the Father, "like light from a lamp, or heat from a fire, or thoughts from a mind."

Lewis' images:

• The Son 'streaming forth' from the Father like light...
• The Son is the ｅxpression of the Father
• These analogies break down because the lamp and the light, the Father and the ｅxpression are two things, not two persons of the same thing... "that is what always happens when you go away from the words of the Bible."
• Only God will be able to explain himself, [but he is still limited by what his creatures can comprehend.]
• The relationship between the Father and the Son is one of love.

Lewis explores "God is Love" in the context of multiple persons being required for Love. That God has been Love eternal, not only since the beginning of creation.

The Christian God is dynamic (reflected in His love):

And that, by the way, is perhaps the most important difference between Christian and all other religions: that in Christianity God is not a static thing - not even a person - but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.

Lewis here begins to describe the Spirit (Holy Spirit) as the being that is the relationship between the Father and the Son. While this is a beautiful image, it does not seem to be supported by scripture.

The person of the Spirit is the most vague of the persons of the Trinity. Lewis explains, "In the Christian life you are not usually looking at Him. He is always acting through you." There's a lot to that.

• the Spirit stands with us
• prays through us
• works through us to transform us into God's sons

So, what's the point in this exercise?

It matters more than anything else in the world. The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made. Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prizes which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?

• The physical life we have is made, not begotten
• The Christ life that we get is the begotten life, but must be placed into us in a union with Christ
• In sharing in this begotten life, we become the Sons of God as the Spirit works in/through us
• The Son/Logos became a man so that He could spread this Zoe/begotten life to us, like a 'good infection'

Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://lib.ru/LEWISCL/mere_engl.txt 

http://www.opendiscipleship.org/Mere_Christianity_leaders_notes

http://www.gordy-stith.com/Mere%20Christianity/mere_christianity_study_guide.htm