The Three-Personal God—Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis writes, "Many people nowadays say, 'I believe in a 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. Now the Christians quite agree. But the 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."

Dante's Paradisio: "Look, someone comes who shall augment our love!"

"Some people think that after this life, or perhaps after several lives, human souls will be 'absorbed' into God.... They say it is like a drop of water slipping into the sea. But of course that is the end of the drop.... 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. I warned you that Theology is practical. The whole purpose for which we exist is to be thus taken into the life of God."
 

"A world of one dimension would be a straight line. In a two-dimensional world, you still get straight lines, but many lines make one figure. In a three-dimensional world, you still get figures but many figures make one solid body.... As you advance to more ... complicated levels, you do not leave behind ... the things you found on the simpler levels: you still have them, but combined in new ways—in ways you could not imagine if you knew only the simpler levels.... The Christian account of God involves just the same principle.... On the human level one person is one being, and any two persons are two separate beings.... On the divine level you still find personalities; but ... combined in new ways.... In God's dimension ... you find a being who is three Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube.... We cannot fully conceive a Being like that: just as, if we ... perceived only two dimensions ... we could [not] properly imagine a cube. But we can get a sort of faint notion of it. And when we do, we are then ... getting some positive idea ... of something super-personal—something more than a person."

"The thing that matters is being actually drawn into that three-personal life, and that may begin anytime.... What I mean is this. An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get into touch with God. But ... 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 [God-Man] beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. God is the [Person] to [whom] he is praying—the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the [Person] inside him [who] is pushing him on—the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal.... The whole three-fold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on ... [when] an ordinary man is saying his prayers. The man is being caught up into ... Zoe or spiritual life: he is being pulled into God, by God, while still remaining himself."

"That is how [trinitarian] Theology started. People already knew about God in a [somewhat] 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 [that Jesus is fully God and fully man]. They met Him again after they had seen Him killed. And then, after they had been formed into a little ... 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. This definition is not something we have made up." Trinitarian theology is NOT 1 + 1 + 1 = 3 but 1 x 1 x1 = 1.

"Theology is, in a sense, an experimental science. It is simple religions that are the made-up ones.... While in other sciences the instruments you use are things external to yourself (things like microscopes and telescopes), 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.... The one really adequate instrument for learning about God is the whole Christian community, waiting for Him together. Christian brotherhood ... is the technical equipment for this science—the laboratory outfit. That is why ... people who turn up every few years with some ... religion of their own as a substitute for the Christian tradition are really wasting time. Like a man who has no instrument but an old pair of field glasses, setting out to put all the real astronomers right. He may be a clever chap—he may be cleverer than some of the real astronomers, but he is not giving himself a chance. And two years later everyone has forgotten all about him, but the real science is still going on. 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."

Highlights from Chapter 2: The Three-Personal God from Book 4: Beyond Personality, or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity in Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Click here for a clear view of how this chapter relates to the whole book.

For more on the Trinity, see this illustrated summary of Christianity Is Jewish, chapter 12.

First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity—Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

"Everyone has warned me not to tell you what I am going to tell you in this last book," begins C.S. Lewis. What is supposedly the problem? "They all say, 'The ordinary reader does not want Theology; give him plain, practical religion.' I have rejected their advice. 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?"

"If a man has ... looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then ... looks at a map of the Atlantic, he ... will be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of colored paper. But ... the map ... is  based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic.... If you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary.... Theology is like the map ... 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 confused.... A vague religion—all about feeling God in nature, and so on ... is all thrills and no work: like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map. In other words, Theology is practical.... If you do not listen to Theology ... it will mean that you have a lot of wrong...muddled, out-of-date ideas.... Many of the ideas about God ... trotted out as novelties today are ... ones that real theologians tried centuries ago and rejected.

"To believe in the popular religion of modern England is retrogression—like believing the earth is flat. For when you get down to it, is not the popular idea of Christianity simply this: that Jesus Christ was a great moral teacher and that if only we took His advice we might be able to establish a better social order and avoid another war? Now, mind you, that is quite true. But it tells you much less than the whole truth about Christianity...."

"By attaching ourselves to Christ, we can 'become Sons of God.' One asks, 'Aren't we Sons of God already?'... God has brought us into existence and loves us and looks after us, and in that way is like a father. But when the Bible talks of our 'becoming' Sons of God, obviously it must mean something different.... One of the creeds says that Christ is the Son of God 'begotten, not created'; and it adds 'begotten by His Father before all worlds'.... When you beget, you beget something of the same kind as yourself. A man begets human babies ... but when you make, you make something of a different kind from yourself. A bird makes a nest.... What God begets is God.... What God creates is not God.... That is why men are not Sons of God in the sense that Christ is.

"What man, in his natural condition, has not got is Spiritual life—the higher and different sort of life that exists in God.... The Biological sort that comes to us through Nature ... is always tending to run down and decay so that it can only be kept up by incessant subsidies ... in the form of air, water, food ... is Bios. The Spiritual life, which is in God from all eternity and which made the whole natural universe, is Zoe.... A man who changed from having Bios to Zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue that changed from being a carved stone to being a real man. And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumor going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life."

 

Highlights from Chapter 1: Making and Begetting from Book 4: Beyond Personality, or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity in Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Click here for a clear view of how this chapter relates to the whole book. 

Where There Are Fires and Chairs and Meals!—Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

The hallway is only for passing through to where life is lived in full.

C.S. Lewis wraps up his preface to Mere Christianity by expressing this desire: "I hope no reader will suppose that 'mere' Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of the existing communions—as if a man could adopt it in preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else.  It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms....It is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals.

"The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in.  For that purpose the worst of the rooms (whichever that may be) is, I think, preferable.  It is true that some people may find they have to wait in the hall for a considerable time, while others feel certain almost at once which door they must knock at.  I do not know why there is this difference, but I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait.  When you do get into your room, you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise.  But you must regard it as waiting, not camping.  You must keep on praying for light: and, of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house.

"And above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and paneling.  In plain language, the question should never be:  'Do I like that kind of service [or music]?' but 'Are these doctrines true:  Is holiness here?  Does my conscience move me towards this?  Is my reluctance to to knock at this door due to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike of this particular door-keeper?'

"When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall.  If they are wrong, they need your prayers....That is one of the rules common to the whole house."

Highlights from the Preface to Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Click here for a clear view of how this Preface relates to the whole book.