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THE THREE-PERSONAL GOD

The last Chapter was about the difference between begetting and ets a child, but he only ets Christ but He onlythat, I have illustrated only one point about God, na of the saetting a human son But not quite like it So I ood many people nowadays say, `I believe in a God, but not in a personal God&039; They feel that the s ree But the Christians are the only people who offer any idea of what a being that is beyond personality could be like All the other people, though they say that God is beyond personality, really think of Hi less than personal If you are looking for sobetween the Christian idea and the other ideas The Christian idea is the only one on the ain, some people think that after this life, or perhaps after several lives, human souls will be &039;absorbed&039; into God But when they try to explain what theyabsorbed into God as oneis absorbed into another They say it is like a drop of water slipping into the sea But of course that is the end of the drop If that is what happens to us, then being absorbed is the sa to exist 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 face, be very much more they is practical The whole purpose for which we exist is to be thus taken into the life of God Wrong ideas about what that life is will make it harder And now, for a few minutes, I must ask you to follow rather carefully

You know that in space you can ht, backwards or forwards, up or down Every direction is either one of these three or a compromise between them They are called the three Di only one di two; you could draw a figure: say, a square And a square is ht lines Now a step further If you have three dimensions, you can then build e call a solid body: say, a cube - a thing like a dice or a luar And a cube is made up of six squares

Do you see the point? A world of one diht line In a two-diht lines, but ure In a three-diures make one solid body In other words, as you advance to more real and s you found on the simpler levels: you still have theine if you knew only the simpler levels

Now the Christian account of God involves just the same principle The human level is a simple and rather e, and any two persons are two separate beings - just as, in two diure, and any two squares are two separate figures On the Divine level you still find personalities; but up there you find them combined in nehich ho do not live on that level, cannot i who is three Persons while re, just as a cube is six squares while re like that: just as, if ere so made that we perceived only two diine a cube But we can get a sort of faint notion of it And e do, we are then, for the first ti so super-personal - so we could never have guessed, and yet, once we have been told, one aluess it because it fits in so ith all the things we know already

You , what is the good of talking about Hi about Hi actually drawn into that three-personal life, and that ht, if you like

What I mean is this An ordinary si to get into touch with God But if he is a Christian he knows that what is pro him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside hie of God coh Christ, the Man as God - that Christ is standing beside hi for hi to which he is praying the goal he is trying to reach God is also the thing inside hi hi which he is being pushed to that goal So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroo his prayers The her kinds of life - what I called Zoe or spiritual life: he is being pulled into God, by God, while still rey started People already knew about God in a vague way Then came a man who claimed to be God; and yet He was not the sort of man you could disain after they had seen Him killed And then, after they had been formed into a little society or co thes they could not do before And when they worked it all out they found they had arrived at the Christian definition of the three-personal God

This definition is not soy is, in a sense, an experiions that are the made-up ones When I say it is an experimental science &039;in a sense,&039; I mean that it is like the other experieologist studying rocks, you have to go and find the rocks They will not coo to them they cannot run away The initiative lies all on your side They cannot either help or hinder But suppose you are a zoologist and want to take photos of wild animals in their native haunts That is a bit different fro rocks The wild animals will not come to you: but they can run away froinning to be a tiny little trace of initiative on their side

Now a stage higher; suppose you want to get to know a huet to know him You have to win his confidence In this case the initiative is equally divided-it takes two toGod, the initiative lies on His side If He does not show Hi you can do will enable you to find Him And, in fact, He shows much more of Himself to some people than to others - not because He has favourites, but because it is impossible for Him to show Hi condition Just as sunlight, though it has no favourites, cannot be reflected in a dusty mirror as clearly as in a clean one

You can put this another way by saving that while in other sciences the instrus like h which you see God is your whole self And if a lih a dirty telescope That is why horrible nations have horrible religions: they have been looking at God through a dirty lens

God can show Himself as He really is only to real ood, but toone another, helping one another, showing Him to one another For that is what God ans in one body

Consequently, the one really adequate instru about God is the whole Christian coether Christian brotherhood is, so to speak, the technical equipment for this science - the laboratory outfit That is why all these people who turn up every few years with soion of their own as a substitute for the Christian tradition are really wasting time Like a lasses setting out to put all the real astronoht He may be a clever chap - he may be cleverer than so hiotten all about hi on

If Christianity was so up, of course we could make it easier But it is not We cannot coions How could we? We are dealing with Fact Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about