C.S. Lewis on The Trinity

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Recently I've been reading C.S Lewis' "Mere Christianity" - a book I highly recommend reading if you have not. In my book, C.S. Lewis is one of the greats of the 20th century - an all around brilliant man, apologist, thinker, and writer who has had significant influence on Christians and Christianity.

One thing that struck me, however, was Lewis' chapters on the Trinity called "The Three-personal God" and "Good infection"

Here are some quotes from this chapter of interest:

Originally Posted by C.S. Lewis

"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. Of course, we cannot fully conceive a Being like that: just as, if we were so made that we perceive only two dimensions in space we could never properly imagine a cube.

Originally Posted by C.S. Lewis

An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get into touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God--that Christ is standing right beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying - the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on - the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along 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 bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers.

Originally Posted by C.S. Lewis

"I said a few pages back that God is a Being which contains three Persons while remaining one Being. . . . But as soon as I begin trying to explain how these Persons are connected I have to use words which make it sound as if one of them was there before the others. The First Person is called the Father and the Second the Son. We say that the First begets or produces the second; we call it begetting, not making, because what He produces is of the same kind as Himself. In that way the word Father is the only word to use. But unfortunately it suggests that He is there first -- just as a human father exists before his son. . . . we must think of the Son always, so to speak, streaming forth from the Father, like light from a lamp, or heat from a fire, or thoughts from a mind. He is the self-expression of the father -- what the father has to say. And there was never a time when He was not saying it.

Originally Posted by C.S Lewis

Before going on, notice the practical importance of this. All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that 'God is love.' But, they seem not to notice that 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.

Originally Posted by C.S. Lewis

. . . God is not a static thing--not even a person--but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance. The union between the Father and Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person. I know this is almost inconceivable, but look at it thus. You know that among human beings, when they get together in a family, or a club, or a trade union, people talk about the 'spirit' of that family, or club, or trade union. They talk about its 'spirit' because the individual members, when they are together, really develop particular ways of talking and behaving which they would not have if they were apart. It is as if some sort of communal personality came into existence. But of course, it is not a real person: it is only rather like a person. But that is just one of the differences between God and us. What grows out of the joint life of the Father and Son is a real Person, is in fact the Third of the Three Persons who are God.

Those are some of the quotes that got me thinking a bit, and I had certainly never heard such a view of the Holy Spirit before. So, my question is simple: What do you think?

Do you think Lewis' views are Biblical? Unbiblical? Accurate? Heretic?

Discuss.


*All quotes taken from "Mere Christianity," copyright 1952, C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed 1980, C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd.
Copyright extends to allow for "brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews." I see no reason why a discussion on the above quotes would be in violation of the copyright.