Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Three-Personal God | C. S. Lewis

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The Three-Personal God | C. S. Lewis · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are shifting gears today.
• 0:03
  We're stepping into a series we are calling Reformed Thinking.
• 0:08
  Now, I want to be clear right off the bat, the title might
• 0:12
  sound a bit intimidating. It might conjure up images of,
• 0:15
  you know, guys in 17th century wigs arguing about things that
• 0:18
  don't really matter to anyone with a job and a mortgage.
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  Yeah, dusty books and doctrines. Exactly.
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  But that is not what we are doing here.
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  We are here to look at how robust historic theology well,
• 0:31
  how it changes the way you see the actual world you live in and
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  today. Again, we're going big.
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  Today we are swinging for the fences.
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  We really are. We are tackling the doctrine
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  that most people, I think, would say is the most abstract, the
• 0:43
  most confusing, and frankly, the least practical thing in the
• 0:47
  entire Christian faith. We are talking about the Trinity
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  and I have to be honest with you, and I think I speak for a
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  lot of people listening right now.
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  When I the Trinity, my brain kind of it just shuts down a
• 0:58
  little. It's understandable it.
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  Feels like high level math. It feels like one of those
• 1:02
  things you have to sign off on to join a church, but then you
• 1:05
  stick it on a dusty shelf and you never look at it again.
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  Yeah, because it doesn't help you deal with your anxiety or
• 1:09
  your kids or your job. Right.
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  It feels like a puzzle that doesn't have a solution, so why
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  bother trying? Yeah, exactly.
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  It is the white whale of theology.
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  And you are right, the average person in the Pew, or even the
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  average person who's just sort of interested in spirituality,
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  tends to view it as unnecessary baggage.
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  But that assumption that theology is distinct from real
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  life is exactly what CS Lewis is attacking in the text we're
• 1:34
  covering today. OK, what's the source?
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  We're looking at Mere Christianity, specifically Book
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  4, chapter 2. The chapter is titled The Three
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  Personal God. Lewis argument is well, it's
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  aggressive. He says theology is practical.
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  Not just that, it can be practical.
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  No, that it is. It isn't a hobby for
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  intellectuals, he says. It is a map.
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  A map that sounds a bit dry. I mean, most of us use GPS now,
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  we don't really look at maps anymore, do we?
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  OK, well, think about it this way.
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  If you just want to hang out on the beach, you don't need a map
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  of the Atlantic Ocean. You can look at the waves.
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  You can stick your toes in the water.
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  It feels good. It's refreshing.
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  That's nice, that's simple. And that is like simple feel
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  good religion. It's nice, it comforts you.
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  But if you want to go anywhere, if you want to cross that ocean
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  to get to America, say, you are going to need a map.
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  And that map might look boring. It's just a piece of paper with
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  colored lines on it. It's not as exciting as the
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  beach. But I'll tell you what, if you
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  are out in the middle of the Atlantic and a storm hits, you
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  are going to be very, very glad you have that boring piece of
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  paper. So you're saying the Trinity is
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  the map of the ocean of God? That is the claim.
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  If you want to get to the destination, which is God
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  himself, not just a feeling about God, you need the map.
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  You cannot just drive blindly and hope you arrive.
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  And Lewis is effectively saying that the Trinity is the only map
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  that actually matches the coastline.
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  I see. So if the map is wrong, you
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  crash the ship. OK, so our job today is to open
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  up this map. You want to take this text and
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  dismantle the idea that God is some vague, impersonal mist.
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  We want to show how the doctrine of the Trinity explains the very
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  structure of reality. It's foundational.
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  And honestly, looking at this through our Reformed lens, you
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  know, holding to the Westminster Standards, I really appreciate
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  how Lewis defends the specific personality of God.
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  He just refuses to let us settle for a vague spirituality.
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  He demands precision, and that is something we value in our
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  tradition, isn't it? We believe God has revealed
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  himself clearly, not vaguely. And Lewis starts that
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  clarification with a very sharp distinction.
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  It is a distinction that, I will be honest, most people miss
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  completely. What's that?
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  It is the difference between making and begetting.
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  OK, let's stop there because in modern English we pretty much
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  use these words as synonyms. If I say I made a sandwich or a
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  father made a cradle, it makes sense.
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  We don't really use the word bigot anymore unless we are
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  reading the King James Bible. It sounds archaic.
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  It does. So why does Louis think this
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  distinction is the key to the whole universe?
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  Because it is the hinge upon which the distinction between
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  the creator and the creature turns.
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  It's everything. Louis breaks it down so simply.
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  To bigot is to become the father of something that is the same
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  kind as yourself. A man begets a human baby.
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  A Beaver begets a Little Beaver. A bird begets an egg, which
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  turns into a bird. The offspring shares the nature
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  of the parent 100%. Right.
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  Same species, same essence. A human doesn't give birth to a
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  puppy. You get what you are.
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  Correct. But when you make something, you
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  are creating something of a different kind.
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  A bird makes a nest. A Beaver makes a dam.
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  A man makes a wireless set. Or, to update the language, a
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  man makes a smartphone. Or, to use Lewis's specific
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  example, a man makes a statue. The statue analogy.
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  I want to dig into this one because it's a bit haunting if
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  you really think about. It it is.
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  Imagine a master sculptor. He spends years on a piece of
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  marble. He carves a man.
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  It is perfect. It has the nose, the eyes, the
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  muscle definition. If you stand 10 feet away, you
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  might actually think it is a real person.
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  It has the likeness of a man. The perfect likeness, but walk
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  up and touch it. It's cold.
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  It's stand. It is our rock.
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  It does not breathe, it does not think.
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  It does not have blood pumping through its veins.
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  It has the shape of a man, but it does not have the life of a
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  man. It is a different category of
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  existence entirely. So applying this to God, this is
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  where we get the distinction between Jesus and well and us.
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  This is the Orthodox Christian position, and it is the bedrock
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  of everything. We believe God begets Christ.
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  That means Christ is the Son of God.
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  He is of the same nature as God. He is God.
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  Just as a human son, as human. Exactly.
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  The Son of God is God, eternal, uncreated.
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  That is the begotten side of the equation.
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  But then you have us humans, anything else in the universe
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  for that matter. And we were made in Genesis.
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  God says let us make man in our image.
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  We are like the statue in the analogy.
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  It's a humbling thought. It is.
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  We are like God, We have reason, we have will, we can love, but
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  we do not have the same nature as God.
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  We are a different species of being entirely.
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  We are creatures. He's the creator.
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  This is such a vital point for Reformed thinking.
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  We talk a lot about the creator creature distinction.
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  It sounds so obvious, but so many modern spiritualities try
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  to blur that line, don't they? Constantly they act like we are
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  just little gods who forgot who we are, like we have a spark of
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  the divine essence inside of us that just needs to be fanned
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  into a flame. And Lewis and frankly, the whole
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  of Scripture says no, you do not have the same life as God.
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  Naturally, Lewis uses the Greek words here to make it really
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  helpful. He distinguishes between BIOS
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  and Zoe. BIOS and Zoe.
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  OK, let's define those because they sound a little bit like
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  sci-fi terms. They do, but they're simple.
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  Think of BIOS as the biological life we have.
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  We see it in nature. It is temporary.
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  It runs down. It needs food and water to keep
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  going. It is always, always decaying.
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  From the moment you are born, your BIOS is slowly running out.
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  It is a shadow. It's a finite resource.
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  It's the battery that is slowly draining.
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  That is a perfect way to put it. Now compare that to Zoe.
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  Zoe is the spiritual life. It is the life that has existed
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  in God from all eternity. It is the life that made the
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  whole universe. It does not need food.
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  It does not rundown. It's the power source itself.
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  It is explosive, infinite, self-sustaining energy.
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  It is a completely different power source.
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  So naturally humans have BIOS. We do not have Zoe.
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  We might have a likeness of it, just like a statue has a
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  likeness of a man, but a statue cannot talk to you.
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  And in the spiritual sense, a natural human being without
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  about Christ does not have Zoe. We are spiritually inorganic in
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  a sense compared to God. This really hits home why the
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  message of Christianity is not just be a nicer person.
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  I think that is the default setting for so many people.
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  Jesus came to teach us how to be good.
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  The Moral Improvement project. Right, but we follow this making
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  versus beginning logic. That is like trying to teach a
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  statue how to jump rope. That is the perfect image.
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  You can carve the statue better. You can Polish the marble, you
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  can paint it to look incredibly realistic.
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  You can make it the most polite, well behaved statue in the
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  museum, but you cannot teach a stone to breathe.
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  So what's the goal then? The goal of salvation is not
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  just moral improvement. It is not just rule keeping.
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  It is that we who were merely made are actually taken up into
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  the life of the one who was begotten.
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  We are invited to share in the Zoe.
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  We are changed from statues into sons.
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  That is a massive shift. It means the gospel is a
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  transplant operation, not a self help seminar.
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  It is a change in status and substance.
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  And this leads us directly into the problem of how people view
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  God today. Because if you do not understand
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  this distinction, that God has a specific definite nature that he
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  wants to share, you drift into this vague soupy idea of God.
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  Yes, let's talk about that. Lewis brings up this sentiment
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  that is absolutely everywhere. I hear it at dinner parties.
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  I see it on social media. Someone says, well I believe in
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  God, but I don't believe in a personal God.
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  It is the preferred spirituality of the modern age.
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  It sounds so much more sophisticated.
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  It really does. And usually when people say
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  that, they think they're being very enlightened.
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  They feel like a personal God is too small.
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  It sounds like an old man with a beard sitting on a cloud.
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  You know, judging you for not flossing.
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  Yeah, an overgrown human. Being They want something
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  bigger, they want a force, they want something vast and
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  mysterious and, well, impersonal.
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  And Lewis is brilliant here. He points out a linguistic trap
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  that we all fall into. People feel that personality
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  implies limitation. I am a person, so I am limited
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  to this body, this time, this space.
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  I can get confused, I get tired. So they think if God is
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  infinite, he cannot be a person. He must be beyond personality.
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  And Lewis says, sure, Christians agree.
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  Christians absolutely agree that God is more than a person.
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  He isn't less. But here is the trap.
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  If you take away personality, If you take away will, love,
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  speech, intent, what are you left with?
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  Not much. You are not left with something
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  super personal. You were left with something sub
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  personal. You were left with electricity,
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  Yeah. Or gravity.
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  Or just. Stuff.
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  Think about gravity. Gravity is vast.
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  It covers the entire universe. It holds the galaxies together.
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  It is incredibly powerful. But gravity does not know you.
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  Gravity does not love you if you slip off the edge of a Cliff.
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  Gravity does not decide to catch you because you are a good
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  person, or drop you because you are bad.
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  It just acts. It is a machine, a blind force,
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  and Lewis argues that when people say they want an
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  impersonal God, they're usually swapping a father for a battery.
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  That is a downgrade. It is a massive downgrade, but
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  ask yourself why people want that.
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  What's the appeal of a battery over a father?
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  I think I know why a battery doesn't ask you to change your
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  life. That is it.
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  A battery doesn't have moral opinions.
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  A force doesn't care if you are greedy or kind.
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  You can plug into a force when you need energy and then unplug
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  when you want to do your own thing.
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  It's convenient. It's safe.
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  It's safe. A personal God, a living God, is
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  not safe. He has opinions.
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  He can speak. He can forbid things.
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  That is terrifying to us. It's the difference between
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  having a radiator in your room and having a roommate.
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  The radiator keeps you warm and shuts up.
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  The roommate has thoughts, feelings, and might tell you to
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  pick up your socks. And Christianity says God is the
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  ultimate roommate. To use your analogy, he is the
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  living one. If you are looking for something
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  that is super personal, something that has all the
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  vitality of a person but without the limitations, Christianity is
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  literally the only option on the market.
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  What do you mean by that? Well, every other philosophy
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  either gives you a finite God, like the Greek gods who are just
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  big people with superpowers and bad tempers.
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  Right, very limited. Or it gives you an impersonal
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  absolute, like a cosmic soup. Only Christianity says God is
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  alive, commutative and personal, yet infinite.
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  There's another aspect of this impersonal view that Lewis
• 12:02
  attacks, and I think this is fascinating.
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  It is the drop in the ocean idea.
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  You hear this in pantheism, you hear it in some Eastern
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  philosophies, and you hear it in pop spirituality, all of that.
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  The idea is that when we die or when we reach enlightenment, we
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  are absorbed into God. Like a drop of water falling
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  back into the ocean. Right.
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  And people say this with a sigh of relief.
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  It sounds so peaceful. You just, you blend in, you stop
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  worrying, you stop hurting, you just become part of the O soul.
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  But. Analyze the analogy.
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  Lewis demands we look at the facts of the analogy.
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  What actually happens to the drop of water when it hits the
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  ocean? It is gone.
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  I mean, the water molecules are there, but the drop, the
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  distinct entity that was me, it's ceases to exist, it's
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  annihilated. For the drop, absorption is
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  death. It is the end of individual
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  existence. If that is what happens to us,
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  then salvation is just a nice word for annihilation.
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  It means you do not exist anymore, you are erased.
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  It's not very appealing when you put it that way.
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  Not at all. But the Christian view of
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  entering into God's life is completely different.
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  How? So because we talk about being
• 13:08
  one with Christ, that sounds a lot like absorption.
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  It sounds like it, but the mechanics are the polar
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  opposite. In the Christian view.
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  When we are taken up into the life of God, into that Zoe, we
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  do not become less of ourselves, we become more of ourselves.
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  That is a paradox. Usually if I give myself up to
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  something, I lose my independence, I lose a part of
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  me. In the physical world, yes, but
• 13:30
  in the spiritual world, no. Think about our Reformed
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  theology regarding effectual calling.
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  God calls you. He calls you by name.
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  He does not call a generic BLOB of humanity.
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  He calls individuals. He calls individuals and when
• 13:44
  you are united with Christ, you do not dissolve, you are
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  restored. The sin that was blurring your
• 13:50
  true personality is washed away. The selfish neuroses that make
• 13:53
  you you. Those are actually the things
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  suppressing your real self. I see when those are gone, the
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  real you. The you God intended from before
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  the foundation of the world finally emerges.
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  So union with God actually validates your personhood, it
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  doesn't erase it. That is the claim.
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  You are never more truly yourself than when you are
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  completely given over to Christ. The force absorbs you.
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  The Father adopts you. That is a critical difference.
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  Adoption implies you remain a person.
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  You become a son or a daughter, not a molecule of water.
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  I really like that distinction. The force absorbs you, the
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  father adopts you. That crystallizes.
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  Why? This impersonal spirituality is
• 14:32
  actually quite bleak when you drill down into it.
• 14:35
  It promises peace, but the price is the suicide of the self.
• 14:39
  While Christianity promises life, but the price is the
• 14:42
  surrender of the will. And that surrender leads to the
• 14:45
  restoration of the self, the great paradox of the faith.
• 14:48
  It is, but now we have to get to the mechanics of how God can be
• 14:53
  this super personal being because the critics will say OK
• 14:57
  you want a personal God who was also infinite but you Christians
• 15:01
  claim God is 3 persons. That is just bad math. 1 + 1 + 1
• 15:04
  = 3, not one. We've all heard that one.
• 15:06
  Exactly. And honestly, is a valid
• 15:09
  objection on the surface. If I told you I had three apples
• 15:11
  in my bag but also only one apple, you would tell me to go
• 15:14
  back to kindergarten. It sounds irrational.
• 15:16
  It sounds irrational if you say on one level of reality, But
• 15:20
  Lewis brings out his most famous analogy here to show us why it
• 15:23
  isn't irrational, it is just multidimensional.
• 15:25
  He gives us a little geometry lesson.
• 15:27
  I am terrible at math so walk me through this slowly.
• 15:30
  We are going to Flatland. We are going to flatland.
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  I want you, the listener, to visualize this with us.
• 15:36
  Imagine a world that is only one-dimensional, just a straight
• 15:39
  line. The beings on it can only move
• 15:42
  forward and backward. They have no concept of
• 15:44
  sideways. Can a dot on the line?
• 15:47
  Now let's go up a dimension to a world that is 2 dimensional, a
• 15:51
  flat sheet of paper. And on this paper you have
• 15:54
  beings living there. They are flat Landers.
• 15:56
  They have length and width, but they have no depth.
• 15:59
  They literally cannot conceive of up or down off the page.
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  Right, I'm a 2D stick figure. My whole world is flat.
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  In your world, you know what a square is.
• 16:06
  It is 4 lines connected together.
• 16:09
  Now if you see a square drawn on the page, that is one separate
• 16:12
  shape. If you see another square next
• 16:13
  to it, that is 2 shapes. Two distinct objects.
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  They cannot be in the same place at the same time.
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  They are distinct. If I try to put them on top of
• 16:20
  each other, they just become one messy square.
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  Right? Now imagine IA 3D human.
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  Come along, I have a cube, a die like from a board game, and I
• 16:29
  place it down on your paper world.
• 16:31
  What do I see as the stick figure?
• 16:33
  Well, where the cube touches the paper, you just see a square.
• 16:36
  You see the bottom face of the cube.
• 16:38
  That's all your TDI's can perceive.
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  But I from the 3D World tell you, hey stick figure, this
• 16:44
  object you are looking at is actually made of 6 squares.
• 16:47
  And I would tell you that you were lying or that you're crazy.
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  You would say that is impossible. 6 squares cannot be
• 16:54
  one thing. They would have to be spread out
• 16:55
  flat next to each other, but in the third dimension in my world,
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  I can fold those six squares together to create a solid body.
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  Ah, the squares are still there. They have not lost their
• 17:06
  squareness, but they are combined in a way that the 2D
• 17:09
  world simply cannot comprehend so.
• 17:12
  Lewis is arguing that the Trinity is essentially a higher
• 17:14
  dimensional reality. That is the claim.
• 17:16
  As you go up in reality from lines 1D to shapes, 2D to bodies
• 17:21
  3D, things do not get simpler, they get richer, they get more
• 17:23
  complex. In one DA, line is just a line.
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  In 2D lines combined to make a shape.
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  In 3D shapes combined to make a body.
• 17:30
  And notice the pattern here. As you advance to higher levels,
• 17:34
  you do not leave behind the things you found on the simpler
• 17:38
  levels. You still have lines, you still
• 17:40
  have squares, but they are combined in new ways, ways you
• 17:44
  could not imagine if you only lived on the lower level.
• 17:47
  And this is exactly how we match the Trinity.
• 17:49
  Let's look at the human level. Let's call that the 2D world for
• 17:52
  our analogy. On our level, one person is 1
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  being. I am one being.
• 17:58
  You are a separate being. If you have two people, you have
• 18:00
  two separate beings. That is the rule of our
• 18:03
  dimension. That's our reality.
• 18:04
  So when we look at God. We are looking at the divine
• 18:07
  level, a higher dimension, and just like a cube combines 6
• 18:10
  squares into one object, the divine level combines 3 persons
• 18:14
  into one being. So it isn't that the math is
• 18:16
  wrong, it is that it is higher math.
• 18:18
  It's super personal math. In God's dimension you find a
• 18:21
  being who is 3 persons while remaining one being, just as a
• 18:25
  cube is 6 squares while remaining one cube.
• 18:28
  To the stick figure it looks like a contradiction.
• 18:30
  To the person holding the cube, it is just geometry.
• 18:33
  This really helps with the logical objection because if we
• 18:36
  are just 2D stick figures trying to understand a 3D God, of
• 18:41
  course it is going to break our categories.
• 18:42
  We shouldn't expect to be able to draw it perfectly on our flat
• 18:45
  piece of paper. Exactly.
• 18:47
  We can get a glimpse of it like the square on the page, but we
• 18:50
  can't see the whole cube from our perspective.
• 18:53
  And Lewis makes a brilliant apologetic point here.
• 18:55
  He says this very paradox actually makes him trust
• 18:59
  Christianity more. Why is that?
• 19:02
  Usually people want religion to be simple.
• 19:04
  Simple is easy to sell. Because if we were making this
• 19:07
  up, if a bunch of guys in a room were inventing a religion 2000
• 19:10
  years ago, we would have made God simple.
• 19:12
  We would have made him like us. One person, one being.
• 19:15
  Easy to understand, no headaches.
• 19:17
  We would have made a big king in the sky, or we would have made
• 19:20
  an impersonal force. We wouldn't have invented this
• 19:23
  bizarre 3 in one-dimensional complexity.
• 19:26
  No, you wouldn't. The fact that the Christian God
• 19:28
  fits this cube model, something we could not have guessed,
• 19:32
  something that breaks our categories but ultimately makes
• 19:34
  sense of the data, suggests it is real.
• 19:37
  Reality is usually stranger than our guesses.
• 19:40
  That is a great point. Reality is weird.
• 19:42
  I mean, the table in front of me looks solid, it feels like
• 19:45
  hardwood, but physics tells me it's mostly empty space and
• 19:49
  vibrating atoms. That is weird.
• 19:51
  It contradicts my senses, but it is true.
• 19:54
  It is. The Trinity is weird, but that
• 19:57
  strangeness is a mark of authenticity.
• 19:59
  It smells of reality, not invention.
• 20:01
  And it fulfills personality. It does not negate it.
• 20:04
  We do not lose the father or the son in the mix.
• 20:07
  They are distinct yet one, just as the squares in the cube are
• 20:11
  distinct yet they make up one solid body.
• 20:14
  So we have established the what of the Trinity using this
• 20:18
  dimensional analogy. It gives us a framework.
• 20:19
  It helps us not to feel like it's just nonsense, but Louis,
• 20:23
  being Louis, immediately pivots. He knows that you can understand
• 20:26
  the geometry of a cube and still be a miserable person.
• 20:28
  Right. Knowledge about the map is not
• 20:30
  the same as taking the journey. You can memorize the map of the
• 20:32
  Atlantic and still never leave the dock.
• 20:34
  Exactly. So he takes us from high theory
• 20:37
  into a bedroom, and this scene really stopped me in my tracks
• 20:40
  when I reread it. This time he describes an
• 20:42
  ordinary, simple Christian kneeling down to say his
• 20:45
  prayers. This is one of the most
• 20:46
  important passages in the book because it takes the abstract
• 20:49
  and makes it breathtakingly concrete, Lewis says.
• 20:52
  Look at what is actually happening in that messy bedroom
• 20:55
  with the clothes on the floor. The man is praying.
• 20:59
  Who is he praying to? He is praying to God the Father.
• 21:02
  That is the goal, the one he's trying to reach.
• 21:05
  Correct. But why is he praying?
• 21:07
  What is the push? What is the thing inside him
• 21:10
  prompting him to ignore his phone, ignore his tiredness and
• 21:13
  actually speak to God? Well, I would usually say that
• 21:16
  is my conscience or my willpower, my discipline.
• 21:20
  But if we go back to our earlier point that we are naturally
• 21:22
  statues made of stone, why would a stone want to talk to the
• 21:26
  living God? We are dead in our trespasses.
• 21:29
  As the Apostle Paul says, we don't naturally seek God.
• 21:31
  So the impulse itself isn't from US.
• 21:33
  Lewis argues that the motive power, the engine inside him
• 21:36
  driving that prayer is God the Holy Spirit.
• 21:39
  God is inside him, acting as the battery pack, pushing Him toward
• 21:42
  the Father. OK, so God is the destination
• 21:45
  Father and the engine spirit, but there's a third element.
• 21:48
  The bridge How does he know what to say?
• 21:50
  How does he have access? How does he know he won't be
• 21:53
  rejected? He knows God through the man who
• 21:55
  was God, Jesus Christ. Christ is standing beside him,
• 21:59
  figuratively acting as the bridge.
• 22:01
  Christ is the road. So he prays through Jesus.
• 22:05
  The man is praying in the name of Jesus.
• 22:07
  He is standing inside the status of the Son.
• 22:09
  So in that simple act of a bedtime prayer, you have the
• 22:12
  whole Trinity in action. It's not a theory anymore.
• 22:15
  It's happening in the room. You are being pulled into God
• 22:19
  the Father by God the Spirit through God the Son.
• 22:22
  The Trinity isn't a doctrine on a dusty shelf.
• 22:25
  It is the dynamic structure of the spiritual life.
• 22:28
  You are caught up in the flow of the triune life.
• 22:31
  This brings a very, very Reformed emphasis to mind for
• 22:34
  me. It highlights our total
• 22:36
  dependence. We can't even pray correctly
• 22:38
  without God doing it for us. Absolutely.
• 22:40
  This is the heart of Reformed piety.
• 22:42
  We do not reach up to God by our own strength.
• 22:44
  We do not initiate the contact. God is the road, the destination
• 22:48
  and the engine. All of it.
• 22:49
  If the Spirit does not prompt you, you do not pray.
• 22:52
  If the sun does not bridge the gap, you are not heard.
• 22:55
  If the Father does not receive you, you have no hope.
• 22:58
  It is all of grace from start to finish.
• 23:00
  The man is being pulled into the Zoe.
• 23:02
  Yes, he is being pulled into the Zoe while remaining himself.
• 23:06
  He isn't dissolving into the ocean.
• 23:08
  He is being invited into the family conversation that has
• 23:10
  been going on since before the foundation of the world.
• 23:13
  It is a dance and he is being taught the steps by the dancers
• 23:17
  themselves. That is beautiful, and it leads
• 23:19
  us to the next big claim Lewis makes, which is just as
• 23:23
  profound. He says that theology is
• 23:25
  experimental knowledge. Now when we hear experimental,
• 23:28
  we think of test tubes and lab coats.
• 23:30
  And he means that he says theology is a science, but we
• 23:33
  have to understand what kind of science it is.
• 23:35
  It is not a science where you make things up.
• 23:37
  It is a science based on data. What is the data?
• 23:40
  The data is the historical reality of Jesus Christ and the
• 23:43
  experience of the Christian community, Lewis argues.
• 23:47
  People had a vague idea of God. Then a man showed up claiming to
• 23:51
  be God. He said wild things, he was
• 23:53
  killed for it, and then he proved it by rising from the
• 23:56
  dead. The central fact of history.
• 23:58
  Then he sent his spirit, and the early church found God living
• 24:02
  inside them when they tried to make sense of all these facts.
• 24:06
  God above them, God among them, God inside them.
• 24:09
  They had to come up with the definition of the Trinity.
• 24:11
  So they didn't just sit around and say, hey, wouldn't it be
• 24:13
  cool if God was three people? It wasn't a philosophical
• 24:16
  brainstorming. Session No.
• 24:18
  They were forced into it by the facts.
• 24:20
  It was the only hypothesis that fit the data.
• 24:23
  If you threw out the Trinity, you had to throw out the
• 24:25
  historical facts of Jesus or the lived experience of the Spirit.
• 24:29
  It was an explanation of reality, not an invention.
• 24:32
  But here is where the science analogy gets tricky, and this is
• 24:35
  a crucial section for understanding our relationship
• 24:37
  to God. Lewis sets up a hierarchy of
• 24:41
  observation. This is vital because people ask
• 24:44
  if God is real, why can't I test him like a chemical in a lab?
• 24:48
  Lewis answers this by looking at how we study different things in
• 24:51
  the world. OK, let's walk through the
• 24:52
  levels. He starts at the bottom with
• 24:54
  geology rocks. If you are studying rocks, you
• 24:57
  are the boss. The rocks do not care about you.
• 24:59
  They cannot run away, they cannot hide.
• 25:02
  You walk up, you hit them with a hammer, you analyze them.
• 25:06
  The initiative is 100% with the scientists.
• 25:08
  You are the dominant subject. The rock is the passive object.
• 25:11
  Exactly. OK, next level up, zoology
• 25:15
  animals. Now it changes.
• 25:17
  Animals have a little bit of initiative.
• 25:19
  They can run away, they can hide.
• 25:21
  If you want to photograph a wild deer, you have to be quiet.
• 25:24
  You have to respect its nature. You cannot just demand it show
• 25:27
  up. But still, you have a lot of
• 25:28
  control. You can trap it, you can track
• 25:30
  it. Okay, next level sociology.
• 25:33
  We're just friendship, knowing another human being.
• 25:36
  Now the game has changed completely.
• 25:38
  If a human being decides they do not want you to know them, you
• 25:40
  will not know them. Period.
• 25:42
  You cannot force a friendship with a hammer.
• 25:43
  You cannot just stalk them like a deer.
• 25:45
  You have to earn their trust. You have to win their
• 25:47
  confidence. The initiative is divided.
• 25:50
  It takes 2. If I refuse to speak to you, you
• 25:52
  will never know my thoughts. And then the top level, the
• 25:55
  highest level, knowing God. And here the initiative is
• 25:59
  entirely reversed. With rocks, you have the
• 26:01
  initiative. With God, he has the initiative.
• 26:04
  Total initiative. If he does not show himself, you
• 26:07
  cannot find him. You cannot summon God.
• 26:09
  You cannot trap God in a test tube.
• 26:11
  You cannot force him to appear. This is so consistent with our
• 26:14
  Reformed understanding of revelation.
• 26:16
  We believe in a God who speaks. If he stayed silent, we would
• 26:20
  know nothing. We would be agnostics at best.
• 26:22
  The only reason we know anything about God is because he chose to
• 26:25
  reveal it. And this leads to a very hard
• 26:27
  question. Why does he reveal himself to
• 26:29
  some and not others? Why is God so hidden to so many
• 26:32
  people? Lewis uses the analogy of the
• 26:34
  mirror here. He does think of sunlight.
• 26:37
  Sunlight does not have favorites.
• 26:38
  It shines on everything equally. But if you have a mirror that is
• 26:41
  covered in dust or mud or is cracked, it will not reflect the
• 26:46
  light. It will just look dark.
• 26:47
  So the problem isn't the sun, the problem is the mirror.
• 26:51
  The problem is the instrument, and the instrument for knowing
• 26:54
  God is your own self, your mind, your character, your heart.
• 26:57
  That is the mirror. Connect this to our theology.
• 26:59
  This sounds like total depravity to me.
• 27:01
  It is the essence of it. We are born as dusty mirrors.
• 27:05
  Our nature is corrupted by sin. We are self-centered, jealous,
• 27:09
  fearful, proud because our instrument is flawed, Our view
• 27:14
  of God is flawed. So we see what we want to see.
• 27:17
  We see a reflection of ourselves, Lewis says.
• 27:19
  That is why horrible nations have horrible religions.
• 27:22
  They are looking at God through a dirty lens.
• 27:24
  They project their own cruelty and fear onto the screen of the
• 27:27
  heavens and call it God. So we need our mirrors cleaned.
• 27:30
  We can't do it ourselves. We need to be regenerated, we
• 27:33
  need the Holy Spirit to come and clean the glass because God can
• 27:36
  only show himself as He really is to real men, meaning people
• 27:40
  who are being restored to what? Humanity was meant to be If your
• 27:44
  mirror is full of pride, you cannot see a humble God.
• 27:47
  If your mirror is full of hate, you cannot see a God of love.
• 27:50
  And this brings us to the final major point, which I think is
• 27:53
  going to ruffle some feathers in our individualistic culture.
• 27:56
  Lewis asks If the self is the instrument, how do we calibrate
• 28:01
  it? Can I just go into the woods
• 28:02
  alone and find God, me and Jesus?
• 28:04
  We've got our own thing going. You can find something, but you
• 28:07
  will not find the full picture. Lewis is very, very firm here.
• 28:11
  We are not meant to do this alone.
• 28:13
  The true instrument for knowing God is not the solitary
• 28:16
  individual, it is the Christian brotherhood, the Church, the
• 28:19
  church, he says. We are like organs in a body or
• 28:22
  players in a band. You can't be a hand on your own,
• 28:25
  no. You cannot play a Symphony by
• 28:27
  yourself, and you cannot be a Christian in isolation because
• 28:30
  Christianity is about love, and love requires relationship.
• 28:34
  God is a Trinity, a community of persons, and so he shows himself
• 28:38
  to a community of relationships. The Church is the laboratory.
• 28:42
  That is a strong statement. The church is the laboratory.
• 28:45
  It is the technical equipment. This is why Lewis is so
• 28:48
  dismissive of the people who say I like Jesus, but I don't need
• 28:51
  the church. I have my own simple religion.
• 28:53
  I find God on the golf course. The spiritual but not religious
• 28:56
  crowd. The Jesus without the Religion
• 28:59
  crowd. Lewis compares that person to a
• 29:02
  man with a cheap pair of old field glasses trying to correct
• 29:05
  the astronomers at the Royal Observatory.
• 29:08
  It's harsh, but his point is about equipment.
• 29:11
  The church has the collective experience of millions of
• 29:14
  Christians over thousands of years, led by the Holy Spirit.
• 29:18
  They have the telescope. The solitary guy has binoculars.
• 29:21
  He might be a clever guy. He might be sincere.
• 29:24
  He might be brilliant, but he does not have the equipment.
• 29:28
  He isn't giving himself a chance to see clearly.
• 29:30
  And Lewis notes, rather bitingly, that these new simple
• 29:33
  religions usually last about two years and then vanish.
• 29:37
  But the real science, historic orthodox Christianity, keeps
• 29:41
  going. Complexity is evidence of truth.
• 29:43
  That is the bottom line. He says anyone can be simple if
• 29:46
  he has no facts to bother about. If you ignore the Trinity, the
• 29:50
  atonement, the dual nature of Christ, sure you can have a
• 29:52
  simple religion be nice to people, but that religion does
• 29:56
  not match the hard facts of reality.
• 29:58
  It's a map of a different country.
• 29:59
  A country that doesn't exist. Christianity deals with the hard
• 30:03
  facts. Sin, death, history, redemption,
• 30:06
  and therefore it is complex, just like reality is complex.
• 30:10
  So to bring this all together, we have covered a lot of ground
• 30:13
  today, a lot of big idea. We have.
• 30:15
  It's a dense chapter. We started with the distinction
• 30:17
  between making and begetting. We are made like statues.
• 30:21
  Christ has begotten a son. We need to catch the Zoe life to
• 30:25
  become sons ourselves, right? We talked about the Super
• 30:28
  personal God. He isn't less than a person.
• 30:30
  He is more like a cube is more than a square.
• 30:33
  We looked at prayer as the practical application of the
• 30:36
  Trinity, God pulling us into himself.
• 30:38
  God the goal. God the engine, God the road.
• 30:41
  The whole divine life in action. And finally we saw that theology
• 30:44
  is a science where God holds the initiative and we need the
• 30:47
  church, the clean mirror, the laboratory to see him clearly.
• 30:51
  It is a robust, demanding and incredibly rewarding picture of
• 30:55
  reality. It takes the math of the Trinity
• 30:58
  and turns it into the music of the Christian life.
• 31:00
  I love that turning math into music.
• 31:02
  Now before we go, I want to leave you with a thought, a
• 31:05
  final thing to chew on. We talked about how God has the
• 31:09
  initiative, how He is the one who prompts.
• 31:13
  Us the motive power. Right, so here's the question
• 31:16
  for you, the listener. If God is the one who initiates
• 31:19
  contact, and if our mirror is naturally dusty and incapable of
• 31:24
  finding him on its own, what does that say about the very
• 31:28
  first impulse you ever felt to pray?
• 31:31
  Maybe it was when you were a kid.
• 31:32
  Maybe it was in a moment of crisis.
• 31:34
  Maybe it was just a quiet curiosity, a feeling of what if.
• 31:38
  If Lewis is right, that wasn't you.
• 31:41
  That wasn't just your brain firing neurons.
• 31:43
  That was the cube reaching down into the square.
• 31:46
  That was the Zoe life already at work, pulling you into a higher
• 31:49
  dimension before you even knew what was happening.
• 31:51
  So you think you're the scientist looking for the
• 31:53
  specimen? But you're the specimen, and the
• 31:54
  scientist has been looking for you.
• 31:56
  You thought you were searching for God, but the whole time he
• 32:00
  was the one drawing you. That changes everything.
• 32:02
  It means the search itself is evidence that you have been
• 32:05
  found. Something to chew on.
• 32:07
  Thanks for diving in with us. We'll see you next time on
• 32:10
  Reformed Thinking.