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?