Mere Christianity

I just finished reading C.S. Lewis' book "Mere Christianity", a book I've been meaning to read for some time. It is a short book, but boy does it pack alot. I could hardly put it down. It is a stimulating and captivating read, which definitely ranks as one of my personal favourites.

Lewis has an unique ability at breaking down complex ideas, and presenting them logical and persuasive bite size pieces. There are too many to list them all, though there are some that I particularly enjoyed.

His explanation of the trinity - the three personal God gave me a new way of looking at the concept. Lewis uses the notion of dimensional space and explains how God can exist actively as three persons whilst remaining as one being.

"You know that in space you can move in three ways - to left or right, backwards or forwards, up or down. Every direction is either one of these three or a compromise between them. They are called the three Dimensions. Now notice this. If you are using only one dimension, you could draw only a straight line. If you are using two, you could draw a figure: say, a square. And a square is made up of four straight lines. Now a step further. If you have three dimensions, you can then build what we call a solid body: say, a cube - a thing like a dice or a lump of sugar. And a cube is made up of six squares...

A world of one dimension would be a straight line. In a two-dimensional world, you still get straight lines, but many lines make one figure. In a three-dimensional world, you still get figures but many figures make one soild body. In other words, as you advance to more real and more complicated levels, you do not leave behind you the things you found on the simpler levels: you still have them, but combined in new ways - in ways you could not imagine if you knew only the simpler levels...

The human level is a simple and rather empty level. On the human level one person is one being, and two persons are two separate beings - just as, in two dimensions (say on a flat sheet of paper) one square is one figure, and any two squares are two separate figures...

In God's dimension, so to speak, you find a being who is three Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube..............".


In the chapter 'good infection', Lewis provided me with an insight I hadn't acknowledge regarding the nature of God's love. In 1 John 4:7-9 John speaks of God's love and our love. It is one of the books in the bible that speaks plainly on the topic of God being love. Though I have understood the notion of the love between the Father and the Son, particularly evident in the book of John, Lewis offered me an alternate perspective in understanding of what is known as the 'intra-trinitarian love' of God.

Lewis states, "the words 'God is Love' have no real meaning unless God contains at least two persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love."

Seems self explainatory... but it was a new way of looking at the concept of God's active, as oppose to his being love, and how it related with the concept of God the father, God the son (or word), and God the Spirit existing before creation.

Lewis also touches on issues such as morality, law, prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude, pride, humility, forgiveness, charity, faith, hope, concepts of time, and marriage, drawing on an effective use of illustrations, and analogies. I could not begin to try to encapsulate everything the book presents.

The book alone speaks for itself.