C.S.Lewis

Mere Christianity - Chapter - Making and Begetting

That's a very well thought out response. I had to research quite a bit. As introduction, we must establish what the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is.

“The Trinity is the term employed to signify the central doctrine of the Christian religion . . . Thus, in the words of the Athanasian Creed: ‘the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God.’ In this Trinity . . . the Persons are co-eternal and co-equal: all alike are uncreated and omnipotent.”—The Catholic Encyclopedia.




This is a very important question indeed. Because according to the doctrine of Trinity, The Father and the Son are "co-eternal" and all parts or persons of this union "are uncreated". Well, consider what the Scripture tells us of Jesus.


"And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God". Revelation 3: 14 King James Version

Although other versions offer slightly different renderings of this verse, we can compare them with what the rest of the Bible teaches us to arrive at the best understanding of it:

Referring to Jesus, Paul wrote:

"He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation". Colossians 1: 15 Revised Standard Version

Jesus is the embodiment of wisdom as he is called by the apostle:

But to those who are called, whether Jew or Greek (Gentile), Christ [is] the Power of God and the Wisdom of God. -1st Corinthians 1: 24 (see also verse 30) Amplified Bible

Depicting the Son of God as wisdom is appropriate, since he was the One who revealed God Almighty’s wise purposes and decrees. And what is said of the Wisdom of God? Chapter 8 of Proverbs speaks about Wisdom personified.

The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. -Proverbs 8: 22, 23 Revised Standard Bible.

During his prehuman existence, Jesus was God’s Word, or Spokesman, and he is said to have been created.

Therefore we can learn, by reasoning in the Scriptures, that Jesus is not of the same age as God Almighty Jehovah, but was the very first of his creatures, and chief worker in the rest of the creative process.

In addition, Jesus was dead for part of 3 days. That makes him, at the very least, 3 days less eternal than God.

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Secondly, as regards Hebrews 1: 8.

The words that the apostle is quoting are in Psalms 45: 6. The words of this psalm were originally addressing a good human king of Israel.

The one speaking to the king is God Himself. Obviously, the writer of Psalm 45 did not think that this human king was God Almighty, but a worshiper of God. That is why on the Revised Standard Version we read:

"Your divine throne endures for ever and ever. Your royal scepter is a scepter of equity; you love righteousness and hate wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows" -Psalm 45: 6, 7

Strangely enough, the same version translates this same verse differently when Paul cites it in Hebrews. That's because it is a syntactically correct rendering, but it overlooks the context it was written around.

The throne is God, or more accurately, God is the one giving the authority of the throne to the king. Therefore it is said of that king that "God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows".

Again, is this understanding reasonable in light of the Scriptures? Consider that it was most likely Solomon of which Psalm 45 was referring to. What do we read in regards of his throne?

"And Solomon sitteth on the throne of Jehovah for king instead of David his father". -1st of Chronicles 29: 23 Young's Literal Translation

The same "throne of Jehovah" that Solomon was given would be given to Jesus Christ to seat on, which is in perfect accordance with the aforementioned understanding of Hebrews 1: 8:

"He shall be great, and Son of the Highest he shall be called, and the Lord God shall give him the throne of David his father".

The point of all this is that Hebrews 1: 8 and Psalm 45: 6 tell us that the throne is of Godly origin, not that the one seating on the throne is also God Almighty.

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Having said all this, we must meditate on whether or not the relation between God and His Son is one of being "co-eternal" and "uncreated", as the Athanasian Creed states, or if they are separate individuals with difference in age, authority and might.

Remember, even at the time this decision was made back in the 4th century, there was heated debate about God and Jesus being one or two. It wasn't at all a clear and well-established doctrine. And back then the holy spirit hadn't even been added to the formula yet. That came later.

The Encyclopædia Britannica relates: “Constantine himself presided, actively guiding the discussions, and personally proposed . . . the crucial formula expressing the relation of Christ to God in the creed issued by the council, ‘of one substance with the Father’ . . . Overawed by the emperor, the bishops, with two exceptions only, signed the creed, many of them much against their inclination.”

Also another thing that needs to be taken into consideration - the atonement. According to Trinitarian Christian doctrine God sacrificed his Son for the salvation of humanity. Would it cost God the Father more to sacrifice part of himself or a demi-god or an angel on his behalf.

What was lost in Eden was Adam's perfect human life. God's justice demands Eye for an eye, hand for a hand, tooth for a tooth, soul for a soul.

To illustrate, if your car is a total loss, the insurance company wouldn't give you the manufacturer as compensation, but an equivalent of what you lost.

It was not God who sinned as for Himself or 'a part of himself' to need to die. Otherwise it would be overcompensation. Humanity needed to pay the price. The problem being that no man, or even all of us, amount to the price of what Adam lost.

In His loving kindness, God determined that Adam's loss would be compensated, or atoned by, the sacrifice of another perfect human being.

Jesus came here to be that man. Not a 'demigod', but a perfect human being equivalent in all respects to Adam.

First was Plato's account of the death of Socrates, "such was the end of our friend, the wisest, and justest, and best of all men whom I have ever known."
Platonic love. The love for a friend.

It's all philosophy.

Not to be outdone, you then see the love a father has for his son...

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Its romantic philosophy, because really, ask yourself this, if you were God, and you loved your son, would you let the Roman's crucify him?

What sort of God would you be if you did that? And what about him on the cross? Where he says hey! what is going on??? Why have you forsaken me? Right?

Oh come off of it. You think it is better to sit and mediate in the snow outside the gates of the palace or to be in there with your 40 virgins eating hummingbird tongues?

Are people so brainwashed, as to not see the billionaires who walk around today like Gods, and the ones who did then too?

Yet people are programmed into this idea of some sort of justified suffering.

Like the crucifixion of the Apostles, while there is a God who was on their side? And the Romans go about living like gods claiming to be Gods, worst, far worst than Sodom and Gomorrah, and no fire and brimstone, no pillars of salt for them?

You can just imagine a Jew telling a Roman the story of Sodom and Gomorrah...

"oh they were wicked people, they fornicated they practiced all manner of depravity..

Roman: "hmmm...me"
"uh huh uh huh" me, me, AND me... go on..." mm hm.. mm hm... yes that's me also...mmhm mm hm. that's me too, mm hm.. I had that for lunch! What a wonderful story, now join the others over there, they are about to release the tigers, now remember what I said, sway a little bit if you want the end to be quick. There's a good chap"

I can show you the real deal if you want to see it.

Benny Hinn shuttin' em down on cue, as the conscious computer who is sending the signal to their brain for consciousness, stops sending that signal on cue as he plays along with Benny Hinn.

Would Caesar have messed with Benny Hinn?

Turn the volume down or mute it before you watch these...
(people try to use heavy metal to make him look like a freak)
It doesn't change what you see though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lvU-DislkI

and here he is again, only this time on a rampage with his magic poofing jacket...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THRKrXMDHss

Don't get me wrong I am not anti-religion, on the contrary, other than the death of Socrates, and maybe a few other places, the most spiritually uplifting and inspiring writings come from religious texts.

They serve a very useful purpose in helping people cope with life.

You see there is a sort of contest, amongst the great human writers, to try to write the most moving passage.

To tap into their humanity to the degree you fill the reader with agony and ecstasy at the same time.

Another example is in A Tale of Two Cities, during the French Revolution, where an aristocrat, poses as another who is slated for the guillotine, to sacrifice his life for his, against the other's will, because he has a family. Even with the woman that he secretly loved, and they have a young child.

He bribes the guards in the Bastille, he drugs the man, impersonates him as his double, and goes to the guillotine in his place, and in the cage on the way there down the road, he says, "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known"

But we shouldn't be blind to the reality of the world, where there are a lot of people, not tools of Satan either, good people, doing charity work, who are happy, filthy rich, and live a charmed life.
And there have always been people like that, while the prophets lived in barrels, begging for scraps of food.

Nietzsche had a way of seeing through all of that as did Voltaire...in Candide. It would be enough to read this chapter...
http://ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/voltaire/candide/chap30.htm

In case you didn't know, it was Voltaire, who started the French Revolution, by circulating a pamphlet he had written, anonymously, which told a sordid tale, of the rape of a farm girl in the country, and the death of her brother, trying to defend her.

A fictional account, that so moved the people, they went on a rampage and stormed the Bastille. The pamphlet or letter, was supposed to have been found, in a crack in a cell.

The pen is mightier than the sword some times.

So you see Dickens wrote a tale of Two Cities in response to Voltaire, to redeem the aristocracy, with this great sacrifice, of the aristocrat Marquis Evrémonde.

Today the government uses propaganda in the same way, as a means to an end. The horrors of Bin Laden, as a for instance.

So religious texts like the Bible as a for instance, work slowly to change the tide.

But they can only do so much. In the Bible the Jews are always the chosen people of God, but all through history, they have been rounded up and massacred, including during the Black Death, they were accused of poisoning the wells, rounded up and burned.

They were always being burned or fed to animals in Rome.

So really if that is what it means to be chosen, then pick someone else.

Lets get real. God is not a masochist, nor a sadist.
People are just all mixed up.

yea tho I walk, in the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.

Even Shakespeare couldn't write like that.