The Three Personal God
Mere Christianity - Book Four, Chapter Two
Thanks for reading my Substack section, Read Along With Me, where we journey through impactful books together. We’ve been exploring CS Lewis’ seminal work, Mere Christianity, for some time, but it’s been a blessing. Thanks for coming along. Your comments are coveted.
In the last chapter, Lewis explained the difference between making and begetting in reference to God’s Son. In one way, the difference is the same as that of a man begetting a child and making a statue. But it’s not exactly the same, Lewis warns, and in this chapter he expounds on that. He writes,
A good 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.
The people Lewis refers to are those who believe that if there is a God, we can’t know him personally. Would it surprise you that they are right! God by definition is unknowable because he is beyond anything we are able to understand or perceive. Modern Western Christians have a hard time with this. We tend to shrink God down into a box or a Book. But that is impossible. If God’s an infinite being capable of speaking reality into existence, then there is no way we could know him in the same way a painting could ever know its painter—unless he showed himself to us in some way. He did that through his creation, his Word, and his Son. It is in this sense that the Christian idea of a personal God we can know and be in relationship with is the only one on the market. No other faith allows for that.
Lewis goes on to illuminate one of the hardest teachings about God to comprehend. He, unlike any other being, is one in three; one God in three distinct persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). That is a component of mere Christianity because the Scripture reveals it and the whole of church history confirms it. But making it make sense is quite another matter. Many try because their understanding of God, as I mentioned, is packaged neatly in something like a Systematic Theology. All attempts to “systematize” God are helpful and needed but fall short because everything that can be known about the Creator must be left open ended. It makes sense that something about God, especially the nature of his very being, wouldn’t make sense, doesn’t it? Augustine, while puzzling over the doctrine of the Trinity, was walking along the beach one day when he observed a young boy with a bucket, running back and forth to pour water into a little hole. Augustine asked, “What are you doing?” The boy replied, “I’m trying to put the ocean into this hole.” Then Augustine realized that he had been trying to put an infinite God into his finite mind.1
And yet analogies and illustrations of the Trinity abound. God is a trinity in the same way water is a liquid, gas, and solid; an egg has a shell, a yolk, and white; and a man is a husband, father, and son. They all end up leading us into heresy if we take them too far. So, should we avoid explaining it? No, but we must do so with caution. Lewis’ effort is the best out there.
You know that in space you can move in three ways—to left or right, backwards or forwards, up or down. Every direction is either one of these three or a compromise between them. They are called the three Dimensions. Now notice this. 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.
Do you see the point? 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. In other words, as you advance to more real and more complicated levels, you do not leave behind you 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.
Now the Christian account of God involves just the same principle. The human level is a simple and rather empty level. 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. 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. And when we do, we are then, for the first time in our lives, getting some positive idea, however faint, of something super-personal—something more than a person. It is something we could never have guessed, and yet, once we have been told, one almost feels one ought to have been able to guess it because it fits in so well with all the things we know already.
The trinity is everywhere. Space is a trinity of three dimensions. Time is a trinity of three tenses: past, present, and future. Our existence is a trinity of space, time, and matter. For Lewis, these truths hinted at the triune God himself, or at the very least prepared the way for believing in one.
The amazing guys at The Bible Project used Lewis’ thoughts here to make the penultimate video on explaining the Godhead-three-in-one. You should really check it out.
Lewis, in his characteristic fashion, divides the wheat from the chaff when he writes, “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.”
Do you struggle with the doctrine of the Trinity? Are Lewis’ words helpful? let me know in the comments.
Green, M. P. (Ed.). (1989). Illustrations for Biblical Preaching: Over 1500 sermon illustrations arranged by topic and indexed exhaustively (Revised edition of: The expositor’s illustration file). Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.
I’m like one of the narrators who said, it hurt his brain. So, for myself, it (the trinity) “is” because it “is”. It takes Faith. But my trying to explain it to someone who doesn’t rely on faith, is difficult for both of us. I’m sure their brain is hurting, too. A young man, a Buddhist, was in our area for a temporary work assignment and came to our church several times. His family was in Thailand so the church took him in, loved him and “adopted” him. Not long before his return home he came home with us one Sunday for lunch. He had questions about Christianity and God being three people, three beings. Yikes! The dreaded question. I had to fall back on the egg example thinking he thinks I’m nuts. But you know, he paused, mulled it over and said “I see!”. Maybe it’s ok to keep it simple sometimes. We, our church, only hope the seeds that were planted sprouted and grew in Thailand.
Interesting point about the trinity being all around us in time, creation, etc. Pretty cool!
It occured to me while reading this chpt that the Christian religion is the only one that I know of that allows (and even encourages) a relationship to God as friend, lover, counselor, father, savior, and more. What a gift, and how lacking this relationship would be without it.
I don't really struggle with the idea of a triune God, at least at the moment ha, but it's likely because I've been taught it all my life, and also I don't think about it too deeply. I agree with Regina that He just is, the I Am, so I simply accept it.
But yeah, explaining it to others... I tend to fall back on the ice/water/steam or daughter/sister/mother example. Although these examples work well, as CS said, "If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not."