Making and Begetting

"In a way I quite understand why some people are put off by Theology. I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the R.A.F., an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, `I've no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I'm a religious man too. I know there's a God. I've felt Him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that's just why I don't believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who's met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!'"

I agree with the hard-bitten old officer, actually. If you've experienced the divine directly I imagine that the images and words that we use to try and approach that divinity pale and seem useless in comparison. The problem is that most of us will never have such a direct experience. So we're only left with the descriptions of those who have had them, or the logical wonderings and conclusions of our own minds. Which we then apply to the descriptions the people who have experienced the divine directly give us. So it becomes rather like a game of telephone when you start to think about it.

God/god(s)/the universe/whatever you would like to call it communicates directly to one human being. Because humans are limited by their very nature, the experience is already a simplified or boiled down version of the actual presence of the divine. Then you take that and filter it through the recipients perception which is formed by their culture, their time and their individual experiences. Have them try and put that into words to convey it to other people. Then have those people translate what they took away from the talk/book/interview and filter it through *their* perceptions which are formed by their culture, time and individual experiences. Rinse and repeat. It's very easy to see how what is believed to have been the message of any divine encounter could be vastly different from what it actually was.

And I've wandered off on a rabbit trail there. My point remains! I think that theology pales in comparison to an actual encounter with the divine and anyone who has had one might have less need for the 'scientific' understanding that the rest of us are left with. Which is not to say that we should do away with theology of course. It's fascinating and I think that we can, in some small ways, use it to get a faint reflection of an idea of the divine. And it's fun to argue as long as it doesn't get to the insulting, personal attack side.

"Theology is like the map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God—experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map."

Must we? Again, I enjoy theology. It's fascinating. But do we *have* to use it? Or does it perhaps get more in our way than help us out? Block us from seeing the simple evidence of the divine around us because we're too busy arguing about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin?

"You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion—all about feeling God in nature, and so on—is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work: like watching the waves from the beach."

I disagree. All religion *starts* from that point. From a person having a singular experience of the divine. And who's to say that, as I said earlier, our obsession with theology and defining everything as closely as we can, on 'mapping' the way to the divine isn't preventing us from the very experience we seek?

Lewis goes on to state that since we're so educated now, since we are capable of such wide range discussion amongst ourselves, that we have to have theology. When everyone was ignorant it was okay to have 'simple' ideas about the divine.

"Consequently, if you do not listen to Theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of wrong ones—bad, muddled, out-of-date ideas. For a great many of the ideas about God which are trotted out as novelties today are simply the ones which real Theologians tried centuries ago and rejected. To believe in the popular religion of modern England is retrogression—like believing the earth is flat."

Aren't all ideas about god theology to one extent or another? Whether they're simplistic or not. And how do you judge which theology is correct in any case? Just because it was rejected centuries ago doesn't make it incorrect. The parallel of comparing old, rejected theologies to the Flat Earth Theory is a false one. We can prove that the earth is not flat. You can't prove that one idea about god is more or less right than another idea about god. We just think that we can because we've been thinking in the same general path for so long that it's become an automatic assumption. Also, there are apparently people out there who do, in fact, still believe that the earth is flat. So...yeah.

"For when you get down to it, is not the popular idea of Christianity simply this: that Jesus Christ was a great moral teacher and that if only we took His advice we might be able to establish a better social order and avoid another war? Now, mind you, that is quite true. But it tells you much less than the whole truth about Christianity and it has no practical importance at all."

Is that the popular idea of Christianity? Maybe it was at the time. Or maybe this is another case of my not having encountered this in my life. My understanding is that the majority of Christians do believe that Jesus Christ was God, which belief brings with it varying degrees of belief that salvation (eternal life in heaven) comes only through him. Now if you went outside of Christianity, among those who even believe that the man Jesus lived at all, I think you would find many who would say that he was a great moral teacher and if more people followed his examples the world would be a better place, none of which requires him to be of any more than mortal origins. And really, I think that following Jesus to a kinder, more accepting and generally better world has the most practical importance of anything relating to his life.

After all, how much practical importance is there to what may or may not happen to you after you die? Perhaps it's more accurate for me to say that the social teachings of Jesus have a more wide spread and applicable practical importance than the theology behind his being God. After all, no matter what your faith or lack thereof, you can follow the concepts of equality and treating others as well as you would want to be treated

Right. So Lewis says all this to say that even though people have told him he shouldn't talk about theology, he's going to anyway. And he does this by jumping into the difference between Christ who, as the third person of the Trinity is the *begotten* Son of God and humans who are the *made* Sons (and Daughters, though that phrase is never used) of God. 

"We don't use the words begetting or begotten much in modern English, but everyone still knows what they mean. To beget is to become the father of: to create is to make. And the difference is this. When you beget, you beget something of the same kind as yourself. A man begets human babies, a beaver begets little beavers and a bird begets eggs which turn into little birds. But when you make, you make something of a different kind from yourself. A bird makes a nest, a beaver builds a dam, a man makes a wireless set—or he may make something more like himself than a wireless set: say, a statue. If he is a clever enough carver he may make a statue which is very like a man indeed. But, of course, it is not a real man; it only looks like one. It cannot breathe or think. It is not alive.

Now that is the first thing to get clear. What God begets is God; just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God; just as what man makes is not man. That is why men are not Sons of God in the sense that Christ is. They may be like God in certain ways, but they are not things of the same kind. They are more like statues or pictures of God."

(edited for clarity): The Father, in Christian theology, begets the Son but not in exactly the same way that we would understand a human father begetting a son. After all, if it did work in exactly the same way then the Father and the Son would be two distinct entities rather than one.

Let's all just say out loud what we all know. The doctrine of the Trinity is a hard one to get your head around. It's easy enough to lay out: There is one God. That one God, however, is comprised of three Persons. These Persons are, as we call them, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost/Spirit. While these three Persons exist, they are not separate gods. That's the simple, surface idea of it. And you're already going, 'But...' and raising your hand. You know you are, don't deny it.

It just gets worse from there. This post would get *incredibly* long if I went into it. Suffice it to say most Christians believe in the Trinity and acknowledge that it is impossible for us to understand how it works.

Back to the begetting. So the Son was 'begotten', but not in the same way, precisely, that humans beget. Because if he was then we've got one god spawning/birthing/fathering *other* gods which drops us right out of monotheism.

We, however, are made. Like statues. We kind of resemble the living thing, God in this case, but there's no life to us. What Lewis is saying that Christianity says to us is that we are created things who have the chance to become alive.

Like there's a warehouse full of statues created by the Father. Along comes his Son who wants to make the statues live. So the Father says, 'Sure. We can adopt them if they want us to.' and the Son runs around inside the warehouse making whichever of the statues want to be alive in the same way that he and his Father are alive, live. Only it's not exactly the same, since they're God and the statues can never be God. And the Father and the Son aren't separate entities but aspects of the same entity.