C.S. Lewis On Queen Elizabeth II

On June 2nd, 1953, an Englishman sat watching the coronation of his queen. Due to his dislike for crowds, he had decided to take advantage of the accesability first fully televised coronation. This Englishman was C.S. Lewis and a month later he expressed his thoughts on the event in a letter to a friend (Letters, 3:343):

"You know, over here people did not get that fairy-tale feeling about the coronation. What impressed most who saw it was the fact that the Queen herself appeared to be quite overwhelmed by the sacramental side of it. Hence, in the spectators, a feeling of (one hardly knows how to describe it) — awe — pity — pathos — mystery.

The pressing of that huge, heavy crown on that small, young head becomes a sort of symbol of the situation of humanity itself: humanity called by God to be His vice-regent and high priest on earth, yet feeling so inadequate. As if He said, ‘In my inexorable love I shall lay upon the dust that you are glories and dangers and responsibilities beyond your understanding.’

Do you see what I mean? One has missed the whole point unless one feels that we have all been crowned and that coronation is somehow, if splendid, a tragic splendor."

Two Guys Named John Explain the Trinity

Okay, I lied. It's actually a guys named John and a guy named Jonathan. But that doesn't work as well in the title. The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the hardest for us to get our heads around. However, taking a clue from Jonathan Edward's "An Unpublished Essay on the Trinity" (which you should definitely read), John Piper does a breathtaking job of summarizing that doctrine.

---

Human language is never wholly adequate to communicate personal life. How I feel when I look at four sons leaving their childhood behind cannot be wholly carried by words. But we still try. We stammer. We use metaphors (it’s like throwing things overboard on a voyage). We write poems and songs. The inadequacy of language is only surpassed by its indispensability. What else have we got? Inadequate does not mean useless. Language may not carry all there is, but what it carries can be true and valuable.

So with talk about the Trinity. No doubt it will always exceed our full comprehension. No doubt our language is inadequate to carry this deep reality. But the depth and value of the Trinity is precisely why we must speak. You don’t throw out the love poem because it falls short of the love. It is precious nonetheless. So is the doctrine of the Trinity.


In a nutshell (following Jonathan Edwards), I would describe the Trinity like this: The Father is God existing in the primal, unoriginated, most absolute manner. The Son is God eternally generated by the Father’s having a clear and distinct idea or image of himself, so much so that his image or reflection of himself is God—the Son. The Holy Spirit is God existing as the infinite Spirit of love and delight flowing eternally between the Son and the Father.

The Father has always existed. And there never was a time when he did not have a perfectly exact and full Idea or Image of himself. This is the Son who therefore is equally eternal with the Father. “God’s idea of himself is absolutely perfect and therefore is an express and perfect image of him, exactly like him in every respect; there is nothing in the pattern but what is in the representation—substance, life, power nor anything else…But that which is the express, perfect image of God in and in every respect like him is God to all intents and purposes…” (Jonathan Edwards, An Essay on the Trinity, p. 101). Biblical passages that point to this understanding of God the Son are 2 Corinthians 4:4; Philippians 2:6; Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3.

When God is said to “be love” (1 John 4:7, 16), we must think that there has always been two Persons in God between whom love could flow. And the Scriptures teach plainly that the Father loves the Son (Matthew 3:17; Ephesians 1:6; John 5:20; 17:26) and the Son loves the Father (John 14:31). God’s infinite love for his own glory (Isaiah 48:11) was satisfied from eternity in his beholding and enjoying his own glorious Image in the person of his Son.

Therefore, the Father and the Son never existed without an infinite delight and love flowing between them. It was not possible they could be indifferent to each other’s glory. 1 John 4:12-13 shows that the love that God is (v. 7) is the Holy Spirit: “If we love one another God dwells in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him…because he has given us of his Spirit.”

The Spirit of God is the river of love and delight flowing between God the Father and God the Son. The Holy Spirit is the esprit de corps of the Godhead. In responding to each other’s infinite glory, the Father and Son put all that they are into the act of love. And therefore the Spirit is all that they are and exists as a Person in his own right, yet one with the Father and
the Son.

We grope. We stammer. We reach for ways to say the mystery. Why? Because something has gone before. Falling in love always precedes the love poems (no matter how bad they are).

By John Piper. ©2012 Desiring God Foundation. Website: desiringGod.org Used by Permission.

3 Reason I Appreciate My Mom

There are many, many that I appreciate my mom. Too many to count. But on this Mother's Day, I'd like to share three of them with you.

1. Her care for people.

I naturally ask "why?". My dad taught me to ask "what?". But my mom taught me to ask "who?". I love my mom's tender heart which touches everything she does. Even little things like listening to people come from her desire to serve others. Without making airs or stirring up commotion, my mom makes an impact on everyone she gets to know. Her quiet spirit can penetrate hearts and silence storms. She cares for people like a bird flies. It's just a part of who she is. It's a marvelous gift and I'm so thankful for it.

2. Her faithful service.

My mom has an unassuming nature about her and thus much of what she does goes unnoticed. But that doesn't seem to bother her. Though I'm sure she's had her down moments, I'm so very grateful for the faithful, consistent service of my mother. She gladly performs the little things that no would notice unless she didn't do them. She's never felt the need to grab the spotlight. Rather, for the past twenty years I've seen her cheerfully serve everyone around her.

3. Her love for God.

But above all I'm thankful that my mom's highest priority is glorifying God. I know that everything else I appreciate in my mom - her openness, her sincerity, her compassion, her faithfulness - all stem from her love for God. I'm so very grateful that she saw fit to instill that in me.

For all that you are and all that you've done, thank you mom! Happy Mother's Day!

In Defense of Magic

Most of you know that I'm a bit of a fantasy nerd. I have an entire bookshelf dedicated to Lewis and Tolkien. One of the reasons I'm so fond of fantasy is that I believe it to be the most inherently spiritual genre. It deals with the supernatural almost by definition. This is both it's biggest strength and weakness. When done correctly it can powerfully portray biblical truths in a way that no lecture could. The imagination helps to link the mind and the heart. As I've written about before, I believe that good Christian fantasy is essentially theology in 3D. It's no coincidence that the founders of the genre (Bunyan, MacDonald, Lewis, Tolkien, Williams, ect.) were all Christians. However, when it's done wrong, the genre can be very pagan and almost satanic.

For this reason, many Christians have rejected the genre and "magic" altogether. Now, there's certainly a concern that needs to be raised about the misuse of magic. J.R.R. Tolkien himself disapproved of his friend Charles William's use of occult imagery. However, I feel that it's an overreaction to dismiss all stories that deal with the supernatural. I'm not trying to molest anyone conscience. If your conscience doesn't all you to read about Gandalf the White than don't read about Gandalf the White. However, I would like to explain why my conscience not only allows me to read about "magic" but rejoices in it.

Or rather, I'm going to allow a couple of men a lot smarter than I explain it. The following is a couple of videos done by theologian Doug Wilson and his son, novelist Nate Wilson. The first one lays the ground work and talks about (among other things) the difference between "Gandalf wizards" and "Harry Potter wizards". The second one is a follow up video that answers some objections raised to the first interview.

I found them well worth my time and I hope you too enjoy them.

G.K. Chesterton: Misplaced Modesty

Aside from being incredibly handsome (*cough*), G.K. Chesterton was very good as articulating distinctions. In his book Orthodoxy, Chesterton makes an observation about the misplacement of our "modesty":

"But what we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himeslf, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays, the part of man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert - himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt - the Divine Reason."

The Atheist C.S. Lewis: Filth and Strain

I recently came across a collection of poems entitled Spirits in Bondage. Though written under the pen name of Clive Hamilton, these are the first published works of C.S. Lewis. However, I was struck by how un-Lewisian they were. This is because the poems were written directly after the First World War, an era that deeply scarred the young Lewis and sealed his turning from the Christainity of his youth to the militant atheism of his middle years.

The later C.S. Lewis would be characterized by joy and wit. Even a causual reading of his works will reveal to the reader that the author was a happy man. However, the godless Lewis was anything but happy. I desire to share one of these poems with you in order to illustrate the hopelessness of a world without God. Reading this poem made me very greatful for the God who is. It caused me to realize that He alone is my hope and without Him the world is a cruel place. Even as an atheist Lewis understood this (at least in part). Though the first lines of the peom expressly deny the existence of anything outside of the physical universe, the poem is interestingly titled "Satan Speaks". In other words, if there is no God than all that's left is Satan (i.e. Evil and Cruelty).

"Satan Speaks:

I am Nature, the Mighty Mother,
I am the law: ye have none other.

I am the flower and the dewdrop fresh,
I am the lust in your itching flesh.

I am the battle's filth and strain,
I am the widow's empty pain.

I am the sea to smother your breath,
I am the bomb, the falling death.

I am the fact and the crushing reason
To thwart your fantasy's new-born treason.

I am the spider making her net,
I am the beast with jaws blood-wet.

I am a wolf that follows the sun
And I will catch him ere day be done."

All is vanity of vanities. All is Satan. Unless God is real. Thus the later Lewis would discover that in the worship of God joy could be found and completed: "I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation."

Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder?

During the recent TeenPact Iowa event, someone posed a question to me that I haven't been able to get out of my mind. It's continually come up in conversation and has taken on new relevancy with the recent death of painter Thomas Kinkade. The question is this: is beauty in the eye of the beholder?

Another way of asking it is this: is art and beauty objective or subjective. In a previous post ("Butterflies and Growingdown") I talked about the artistry of God. God is the great Artist who painted the cosmos and the grasshoppers and you with His voice. But He's more than that. He's the Source of all other art. The only reason you are artistic is because you're created in the Image of an artistic God.

All artists make things based on their personality. Likewise, God made things springing from His own divine character. Is that character beautiful or ugly? Naturally, He's beautiful. Everything about Him is objectively beautiful. More than that He is the Standard and the Sourse of beauty. The Beauty that is God can't be in the eye of the beholder for if that were the case He could not be soveriegn. Were that Divine Beauty subjective than God would be the mercy of His creature's personal tastes.

Thankfully, such is not the case. God is Beautiful. The Trinity is Beautiful. The Father is Beautiful. The Son is Beautiful. The Spirit is Beautiful. Likewise, all His attributes are objectively Beautiful. Love, mercy, justice, grace, compassion, holiness, righteousness are all objectively Beautiful because they spring from Beauty Himself. Even if every creature on the planet called those things ugly they would still be beautiful.

Furthermore, everything that reflects God and His attributes are also beautiful. Thus, everything that reflect God and His attributes are objectively beautiful. Just like love and justice, if everything single person in existence came together and decided sunsets were ugly it wouldn't matter. They'd still be beautiful. Thus, beauty is not the eye of a beholder but in the eye of the Beholder, the Lord. Everything He declares to be beautiful is objectively beautiful and everything He declares to be ugly is objectively ugly.

Now, I can see at least two possible questions that may arise from this assertion. One, how does this work in a fallen world? Two, what about personal tastes?

Firstly, how does this work in a fallen world? For example, are cockroaches beautiful? Most people would say no. But they were created by an objectively beautiful God weren't they? Well, here's the problem, sin has corrupted God's beautiful world. Therefore, we find ourselves in a mixed up world where beauty and ugliness often appear on the same canvass. However, this need not lead us to despair.

Since God is the standard of beauty, ugliness is anything opposed to Him. A similar definition could be used to describe sin. Sin is the Standard and Source of Ugliness, just as God is the Standard and Source of Beauty. However, God, though not the author of sin or ugliness, is such a good Artist that He can use sin to make Goodness more good and ugliness to make Beauty more beautiful. Every artist (whether your art is painting, music, writing, mechanics, drawing, landscaping, ect.) needs to apply a good dose of Romans 8:28.

Here's an example: I would call a painting that featured only black and gray splotches to be ugly. However, I would describe a painting that uses black and gray to draw attention to beautiful shapes and colors to be beautiful. Ugly things are only beautiful in as much as they draw our attention to true beauty. Thus, the "blacks and grays" of this world can be beautiful in their own way in that they point us to God. We'd better all be very thankful for this truth for we are ugly splotches of black and gray that are only beautiful in as much as we draw attention to our Beautiful God.

Second question: where do personal tastes come in? Well, let me first say that some personal tastes are just warped. There's a lot of people calling sunsets ugly and garbage dumps beautiful and they're simple wrong. Period. End of statement. However, within what God has defined as objective beauty, I do believe that there's room for personal tastes. The objectiveness of beauty doesn't limit creativity and personal artistry. It enables it.

In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, Melkor, the Lucifer figure, attempts to create creatures that are superior to God's creation and free of His influence. However, he finds that the farther away he gets from God's standard the less he's able to create. Eventually he can't create at all but can only corrupt that which is already made; turning Elves into orcs and Ents into trolls. Standards don't limit creativity but empower it.

Nor is objective beauty a monist one-size-fits-all mold. That would be ugly. Remember God is the Standard of Beauty and God is triune. In other words, within the Beauty that is God there's diversity. Thus, within the objective standard of beauty there can also be diversity as long as it remains true to the Source.

In closing, I would just like to point out that we all desire beauty. That pursuit may take different forms, but it's the same basic human desire in every case. That pursuit may express itself through art and creativity. However, the highest fulfillment of that desire is a relationship with Beauty's Source. Take some time today to praise God that through Jesus Christ you can stare into the eyes of Beauty Himself.