C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity: Book 4:4–Good Infection

In my previous post on C.S. Lewis and Mere Christianity, I discussed Lewis’ take on the concept of eternity. In this post, I will now discuss Lewis’ attempt to explain the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Trying to explain the inner-relationship of the Trinity can be almost as difficult as discussing eternity—nevertheless, I think Lewis does a fairly good job. I starts by building on a few things he said regarding eternity and the triune life.

He asks the reader to imagine two books, one on top of the other, that have been that way for all eternity. The book on top would only be in its position because of the book below, but there was never a time when the book below caused the book on top to be in the position it is. Such is the situation when we discuss the relationship between God the Father and God the Son. The Son is there because of the Father, but the Father did not bring the Son into being at any point. They, as their relationship, is eternal. This is similar to what we see in the Creeds, when it says that the Son was “begotten by the Father before all worlds”—thus taking this “begetting” into the realm of eternity.

In any case, Lewis says that there can be other ways to explain the relationship between the Father and Son, like light from a lamp, or heat from a fire, or thoughts from a mind—but they all fall short in one key aspect: none imply relationship. And at the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity is the insistence on the relationality that exists within God Himself. The very phrase, “God is love,” can only be true if there are at least two persons involved. As Lewis says, “If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love.”

This relationality within God is what distinguishes Christianity from other religions. Other religions picture God as either an impersonal force or a personal yet distinct single person. But Christianity declares God is a Trinity. As Lewis says, “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.”

I certainly don’t find such an idea to be irreverent. I find it to be revelatory, for it not only explains the reality of God, but it also explains what the goal of salvation is on a much more vivid scale. Since the eternal life in God takes place within the Trinity, we must realize that salvation is us being taken up into the very Trinitarian dance of God.  As Lewis says, “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.”

So how does that happen? Lewis takes us back to what he said in an earlier chapter about “making” and “begetting.” Currently, in our biological, natural state, we have been made—we are like statues in the form of a man, but we do not yet have God’s eternal Zoe life within us. Christ, though, the eternally-begotten one, has come into God’s sculptor shop we know as the world, and he intends to breathe that Zoe life onto God’s created “biological statues.” That is the work of the Holy Spirit—it echoes the image of God’s Spirit blowing over the waters in Genesis 1; it can be seen in the resurrected Christ breathing on the disciples in the upper room.

And the purpose of all this is to take up God’s creation into the life of the Trinity. In the Orthodox Church, they make a distinction in Genesis 1:27 when God says, “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” “Image” denotes human beings being created to reflect God’s character in creation—it denotes who we were created to be. Yet “likeness” is something we must develop and grow into as we continue in our relationship with God. Because of sin, we have failed to grow into the likeness of God. We, if you will, remain merely statues, but we are not yet fully human beings in the way God intended to be. Hence the role of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit: to take us from being mere creatures who are made in God’s image, to being sons of God, just as Christ is the Son of God, who share in the Trinitarian life of God, and who thus grow into maturity in Christ, in the full likeness of God.

Or as Lewis says, “Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.” It’s what Lewis calls, “Good infection.” Once you put your faith in Christ and receive the Holy Spirit, the process of being turned from a creature in God’s image to a Son in God’s likeness has begun.