Some thoughts on the Trinity

Lewis makes some interesting and unique points on the trinity at the center of the Christian faith.

First, he points out that God is love. Many people, even non-Christians love to claim that God is love.  In reality however, they are making the claim that love is God - whenever, however and to whatever end, when love arises in man we ought to regard that as sacrosanct and adore it. The Christian claim that God is love is vastly different than the world's same vapid pronouncement. When a Christian claims God is love, the Christian is claiming that a "dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else" (Lewis, 41).

Second, by pointing out that God is love he notes that God must at least be two persons. If He were only one person, then He would not have been love prior to creation. The fact that God is love is evidence for at least a two-personed God, and in the case of Christianity, a triune one.

He makes an interesting point about the Father and the Son. The New Testament paints a good picture of the relationship between the Father and the Son. It is clear and gives a good idea of what that relationship is. When we try to go further and give more in depth we struggle because we end up painting a picture of two separate things rather than one thing with two persons. "Naturally God knows how to describe Himself much better than we know how to describe Him" (Lewis, Mere Christianity).

Lewis calls the Son, "the self-expression of the Father". He states that relationship between God the Father and Jesus the son is simple, "The Father delights in His Son; the Son looks up to His Father" (Lewis, Mere Christianity).

On the subject of the Holy Spirit, Lewis makes a startling analogy. When you get a group of individuals together like a family or a club you hear people talk about the 'spirit' of that family or club. That spirit is a naturally developed way of talking, a developed way of behaving and other qualities that wouldn't have developed had not it been for that union of individuals. The spirit of the family or club is like another member. Of course, it is not a real entity in the case of the family or club. But the union of Father and Son in love creates a Spirit and because Father and Son is God that Spirit is a real entity and the third person of the Trinity.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this analogy. On the one hand it's a good description of the Spirit. But on the other hand, it almost makes it seem like the Spirit is a created being. I'm on the fence about this one.

"If you think of the Father as something 'out there', in front of you, and the Son as someone standing at your side, helping you to pray, trying to turn you into another son, then you have to think of the third Person as something inside you, or behind you" (Lewis, Mere Christianity). Because the Holy Spirit works from inside you or behind you, he is harder to understand, harder to pin down.