Teachings of the Catholic Church - Questions     

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (selections on the Trinity)

1. Making and Begetting

1. According to Lewis, what does it mean to become a “son of God”?  Aren’t we sons of God already?

2. The Three-Personal God

2. As Lewis says, some people think that after this life, or perhaps after several lives, human souls will be “absorbed” into God.  What does Lewis think?

3. Lewis talks about “being actually drawn into [God’s] three-personal life,” and he gives the example of prayer.  How does prayer manifest this three-personal life?

4. Lewis says that “God can show Himself as He really is only to real men.”  Why does this imply that the one really adequate instrument for encountering and learning about God is the whole Christian community?

3. Time and Beyond Time

5. What is Lewis’s response to the question: How can the eternal God who is everywhere and keeps the whole universe going, once become a human being?  How, for example, did the whole universe keep going while He was a baby, or while He was asleep?

6. Explain how similar reasoning applies to the objection that, if God knows what you are going to do tomorrow, how can you still be free in doing it?

4. Good Infection

7. Lewis says (p. 154) that the most important thing to know about the relations between the Father and the Son is that it is a relation of love.  What is the practical importance of this?  In other words,  the words “God is love” have no real meaning, according to Lewis, unless what?

8. What is the Holy Spirit on this view?

9. Once a man is united to God, says Lewis, what is the ineluctable result?  On the contrary, once a man is separated from God, what is the result?

10. How, according to Lewis, is a person to be united to God?  (In this regard, you should also recall your answer to question #2 above.)
   
5. The Obstinate Toy Soldiers

1. According to Lewis, what difference has Christ’s life, death, and resurrection made to the “whole human mass”?  To put it another way, what is the significance of the fact that “The Man is Christ rose again: not only the God”?

6. Two Notes

2. Having suggested in his discussion “the idea that the whole human race is, in a sense, one thing – one huge organism,” Lewis is quick to correct a possible misconception that might arise from this statement.  What is the misconception he wishes to avoid?

7. Let’s Pretend

3. At the bottom of p. 162, Lewis tells the humorous story of the woman who, during the First World War, said that if there were a bread shortage, it would not bother her house, because they always ate toast.  How does Lewis apply this little story?  How does his point relate to the point we’ve made several times in class about the relationship between divine causality and natural causality?

4. Lewis claims that it is natural for us “to see the man who helps us without seeing Christ behind him.  But why is it also madness not to (see the Christ behind him)?

5. Why, according to Lewis, is a Christian’s relationship to Christ different from, say, a Platonist’s relationship to Plato or a Marxist’s relationship to Marx?

6. Why is it the case, as Lewis says, that “everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God”? (p. 165).

11. The New Men

15. According to Lewis, the next stage in the “evolution” of the human creature has already appeared, and as he says:  “It is not a change from brainy men to brainier men.”  Rather, “it is a change that goes off in a totally different direction” (185).  How does the “New Step” differ from all previous ones?

16. If these “new men” that Lewis talks about (borrowing the term from St. Paul) are all like Christ, then isn’t it the case that they will all be alike?

17. When, according to Lewis, does a person get a “real personality” of his or her own?  What, on the other hand, are “Myself” and “My wishes” – what I think of as my personality –  now?

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