Posted on 04/27/2005 3:34:58 AM PDT by logos
Love is the final apologetic. Schaeffer made it utterly clear that this kind of love is of a distinctly Christian variety. It is not a mere "humanistic, romantic oneness among men in general". Rather, it is the same kind of love that Jesus showed his followers. For Christians this is nothing less that the same kind of love demonstrated by the Son of God incarnate. But there is more. The love Christians are to demonstrate and exemplify is ultimately the same kind of love that the Father had for his Son from all eternity. This love should produce a unity among Christians that is nothing less than an image of the Trinity. Schaeffer cited in this connection John 17:21, a part of Jesus' high-priestly prayer: "that all of them may be one, Father, just as your are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me."
The flow of love is as follows. From all of eternity, there was love and unity among the Persons of the Trinity. Then, the Son of God incarnate loved his disciples with the same kind of love with which his Father loved him before the world was created. Next, the disciples are commanded to love each other as Christ loved them. Thus, their love should model and display the eternal love of the Trinity. The final apologetic is finally nothing less that the breathtaking notion that the ultimate reality of Trinitarian relationship and love should be on display among Christians.
Indeed, the Trinitarian resources for making sense of personality is another important part of Schaeffer's apologetic. In The God Who Is There Schaeffer argued with great vigor that human personality could not be adequately explained if ultimate reality is impersonal. The impersonal plus time plus chance simply do not provide a plausible explanation for the existence of personality. By contrast, Christianity has a satisfactory answer to this otherwise mysterious phenomenon: "Within the Trinity, before the creation of anything, there was real love and real communication. Following on from this statement, the Bible states that this God who is personal created man in His own image. ... He is the image of this kind of God, and so personality is intrinsic to his makeup. God is personal, and man is also personal."
Not surprisingly, the same sort of emphasis is in Lewis. Indeed, the fourth book of Mere Christianity is entitled "Beyond Personality: or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity." Lewis makes it immediately clear that what he means by going beyond personality is not reverting to impersonality, as is often the case when people say they do no believe in a personal God because they believe God is beyond personality. If God is impersonal, then he is less than we are. In Lewis's argument, the Christian view of God is the only option that explains how God can be beyond personality, that is, more than a person in the ordinary sense, without being impersonal. According to Christianity, there is only one God, but he exists in three eternal persons.
This conception of God makes sense of how human persons can be united to God while retaining their individual identity. By contrast, when pantheists try to explain how they are absorbed into God, it is like a drop of water falling into the ocean. All personal and individual identity is lost. "It is only the Christians who have any idea of how human souls can be taken into the life of God and yet remain themselves - in fact, be very much more themselves than they were before."
Moreover, Lewis points out that the great idea that God is love is an implicitly Trinitarian claim: for God's very nature to be love, he must contain at least two persons. "If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love." But Christians believe God did not only begin loving when the world was created. Rather, love is his eternal, essential nature. Christians "believe that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God for ever and has created everything else."
Lewis goes on to expound Christian life and experience in Trinitarian terms. The whole offer of Christianity for Lewis is to share in the life of Christ, in fact to become "little Christs". This means that the ultimate goal of the Christian life is to be taken up into the fellowship of the Trinity. This is salvation and this is eternal life. Lewis makes this point in his characteristically inviting way:
The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made....If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them....They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry.
In short, the joy of eternal life is to partake of the joyous life of the source of life himself, the triune God. The doctrine of the Trinity not only explains where we came from (personality), it also tells us where we are going.
Thus in the Christian view, love, communication, personality and relationship go down to the very bottom of reality. They are not newcomers that emerged accidentally from an impersonal source. We earlier stressed the power of a relational model for theology and apologetics. The ultimate reason for this emphasis has now emerged. The Trinity is relational. A relational apologetic flows naturally from a theology that is fully and consciously Trinitarian. This is the radiant vision we must communicate to our age. Nothing less will illuminate the shadowlands of this shrouded world. Nothing less will disclose the breathtaking final reality of the infinite-personal, triune God who is there.
Thank you all for reading along. I am informed that the book is still available at Amazon.com. It would be well worth your while to read the entire treatment of the work of these two giants.
So beautiful, logos! The book finally shipped, and I received it yesterday -- along with God in the Dock and Schaeffer's Escape from Reason. It turns out I already had Escape from Reason, which is included in Schaeffer's magnificent Trilogy (another recommendation of yours of a couple years back). So now I have the pleasing task of finding a person to give my spare copy to! :^)
Thank you ever so much for posting this series of excerpts from this wonderful work, logos.
What a beautiful end to this enriching journey! Thank you so much for taking us there with you, logos!
To all, this has been for me a very rewarding discussion group. We have not all agreed on every point, but your contributions have enriched me tremendously. What's next?
I feel the same way, blue-duncan and also hope there will be more (hint, hint...)!
Sorry, folks, but right at the moment, I don't have any more...
sniff... Oh well, remember us when God leads you to something to be shared.
As Larry Norman (a fan of Lewis) put it, "Love is a dancer."
"The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made.."
Oh no, here we go with the liturgical dance again. I had to speak at an African-American Pentecostal Convention recently. Their worship band was one of the best I had experienced, and their "jazz" organist was better than Brother Jack Duff. All that is to say, there I was on the stage with professional rhythm people and I can't clap in time to nursery rhymes. Not only can't I jump, my wife won't let me dance. Now you are trying to tell me it is part of my spirituality. Wow! I have a 92 year old father who is a Pastor to live up to; a 92 year old Old Testament scholar for a mother to live up to; a brother who is the prize of the family because he became a Pastor and I'm a lawyer to live up to; an aunt who is a "victorious liver" to live up to; and scholars and some of the most spiritual people that I have had the privilege to communicate with on this thread to live up to, and now you tell me I have to learn to dance? Does the old "twist" count?
You know logos, yesterday's thing on love was one thing, but it is really low to spring this dance one on us so late in the game!
You know those literalists, they make a joke of everything!
Thanks for the insight, I was beginning to worry.
Life is a dance ... you learn as you go.
The reason why that makes me leery is that God presented rule 1 to Israel as thus: "Hear O Israel, the LORD is your God, the LORD is One. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might."
We too have three essences, a body, a soul, and a spirit, yet we wouldn't confuse them for three persons. If God is indeed echad, One, then His essences must be bound together in far greater unity than ours, for where our body, soul, and spirit may war against each other (per Romans 7), but in God, the Son can do nothing but what the Father does, and neither does the Spirit war against the other two.
I'm not out to make huge theological hay over this, but it's something that's bugged me (no pun intended) for a while about our treatment of the Godhead that I thought I'd share for (loving, non-confrontational) discussion.
Dear blue-duncan,
So learn to dance!!! Just like King David!!!
But if all else fails, then The Twist still counts!!!
And if you need lessons, I'll be glad to come right on over! :^)
[Just kidding, of course.]
Have much enjoyed your company, blue-duncan, in the recent conversations here. Thank you oh so very much!
I do agree with you that there is a danger here of misunderstanding what Schaeffer has said and what he meant by it, just as there is a danger in reducing the Last Supper to a mere rote exercise if we do it too often too carelessly. Wouldn't you agree, though, that the danger lies in our humanity rather than in the truth of the reality of the Trinity? Personally, I think there is more than enough mystery surrounding the Trinity that we walk on dangerous ground (again, the danger lying in our misunderstanding, and therefore mis-describing) when we discuss it in anything more than the simplest of terms.
At the risk of being accused of something heretical, let me make my point thusly: we speak of Father, Son, Holy Spirit, or "three faces of God" or "three personalities of God" because those have been revealed to us. We know from the biblical record of those three so we cannot ever suggest only two or one "face" or "personality". The Bible does not speak of any more than three, but - and here is where the ice gets exceedingly thin - it does not say that three is all there is. By omission one might surmise a fourth "face" or a fifth.
I don't say any such thing, of course, but the Bible doesn't tell me I would be wrong to do so; it just mentions the three and we assume three is all there is. I am only suggesting that to speak with absolute certitude about something like the Trinity is to venture onto shaky ground.
blue-duncan, as a parting "tip": you can 'dance' by simply standing there hugging someone you care about and swaying (optional). For most Texas dance hall slow dances, it's the caress that matters anyway. Let the kids do the fancy moves. LOL!
While at Baylor, I married this long suffering lady from Plainview who kept trying to teach me the Texas Shuffle. Now after 42 years of bliss (she gave up a while ago) we have settled for just what you recommend. Don't cover much distance on the floor but close off a lot of distance in the heart.
Thank you all very much; you have made me understand the blessing to be found in bad knees - a perfect excuse for not going out on the dance floor!
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