watching your own mind to see if it is  coming along.  That puts a man
quite on the wrong track. When the most important  things in our life happen
we quite often do not know, at the  moment, what is going on. A man does not
always say to himself,  "Hullo! I'm  growing up." It is  often only  when he
looks back  that he realises  what has  happened and recognises it  as  what
people call "growing up." You can see it even in  simple matters.  A man who
starts anxiously watching to see whether he is going to sleep is very likely
to remain wide awake. As well, the thing I  am talking of now may not happen
to every one in a sudden flash-as  it did to St Paul or Bunyan: it may be so
gradual  that no  one  could  ever point to  a  particular  hour  or even  a
particular year. And what matters is the nature of the change in itself, not
how we  feel while  it is happening.  It is the change from  being confident
about our own efforts to the state in which we despair of doing anything for
ourselves and leave it to God.
     I know the words "leave it to God"  can be misunderstood, but they must
stay for the moment. The sense in which a Christian leaves it to God is that
he puts all his trust in Christ: trusts that Christ  will somehow share with
him  the perfect human obedience which He carried out  from His birth to His
crucifixion:  that  Christ  will make the  man more  like Himself  and, in a
sense, make good his deficiencies.  In Christian language, He will share His
"sonship"  with us, will make us, like Himself, "Sons of God": in Book  IV I
shall attempt to analyse the meaning of those words a little further. If you
like to put it that way, Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers
everything for nothing.  In a  sense, the whole Christian  life consists  in
accepting that very  remarkable offer. But  the difficulty is  to reach  the
point of recognising that  all we  have done and can do is nothing. What  we
should have liked would  be for God to count our good  points and ignore our
bad ones. Again, in a sense, you may say that no temptation is ever overcome
until we stop trying to overcome it- throw up the sponge. But then you could
not  "stop trying" in the right  way and for the  right reason until you had
tried your very hardest. And, in yet another sense,  handing everything over
to  Christ does  not, of  course, mean that you  stop  trying.  To trust Him
means, of course,  trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in
saying you trusted a person if you  would not take  his advice. Thus  if you
have really handed yourself over to Him, it must  follow that you are trying
to obey Him. But  trying  in a new way, a less  worried way. Not doing these
things in  order to be saved, but because He has begun  to save you already.
Not hoping to  get to  Heaven as  a  reward for your actions, but inevitably
wanting to  act  in a  certain  way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is
already inside you.
     Christians have often disputed as  to whether  what leads the Christian
home is good actions, or Faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on
such a difficult question, but it does seem to me like asking which blade in
a  pair of scissors  is  most necessary.  A serious moral effort is the only
thing that will bring you to the point where you throw up  the sponge. Faith
in  Christ is the only thing to save you from despair at that point: and out
of that Faith in  Him  good  actions  must inevitably  come.  There are  two
parodies of the truth which different sets  of Christians have, in the past,
been  accused by other  Christians of  believing: perhaps they  may make the
truth clearer. One set were accused of  saying, "Good actions  are all  that
matters. The best good action is charity. The best kind of charity is giving
money. The best thing  to  give money  to  is  the Church.  So hand  us over
£10,000 and  we  will see  you through."  The answer  to  that  nonsense, of
course, would be that good  actions done for that motive, done with the idea
that  Heaven  can be  bought, would  not be good  actions at  all,  but only
commercial speculations. The other set were accused of saying, "Faith is all
that matters.  Consequently, if you have  faith, it doesn't  matter what you
do. Sin away, my lad, and have a good time and Christ will see that it makes
no difference  in the end." The answer to that nonsense is that, if what you
call your "faith" in Christ does not  involve taking the slightest notice of
what He says, then it is  not Faith at all-not faith or  trust in  Him,  but
only intellectual acceptance of some theory about Him.
     The Bible really seems to clinch the matter when it puts the two things
together into one amazing sentence. The  first  half is, "Work out  your own
salvation  with fear and trembling"-which looks as if everything depended on
us and  our good actions:  but the  second half goes on, "For it is  God who
worketh in you"- which looks  as if God did everything  and we nothing. I am
afraid  that is  the sort of thing we  come up against in Christianity. I am
puzzled, but I am not surprised. You see, we are  now trying to  understand,
and  to  separate into  water-tight compartments, what  exactly God does and
what man does  when God  and  man are working together. And,  of course,  we
begin by  thinking  it is like two men  working together, so  that you could
say, "He did this bit and I did that." But this way of thinking breaks down.
God is not like that. He is inside  you as well as outside: even if we could
understand  who  did  what,  I do not  think  human language  could properly
express it. In  the attempt to express it  different Churches  say different
things.  But you will find that even those who insist  most strongly  on the
importance of good actions tell  you  you  need Faith;  and  even those  who
insist most strongly on Faith tell you to do good actions. At any  rate that
is as far as I go.
     I think  all Christians  would agree  with me  if  I  said  that though
Christianity seems at first to  be all about morality, all  about duties and
rules  and guilt  and virtue, yet it leads  you on, out of  all  that,  into
something beyond. One has a glimpse of  a  country where they do not talk of
those things, except perhaps as a joke. Every one there is filled  full with
what  we  should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light But  they do
not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of
it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes. But this is
near  the stage  where  the road passes over the rim  of our world. No one's
eyes can see very far beyond that:  lots of  people's eyes can  see  further
than mine.

         * Book IV. Beyond Personality: Or First Steps In The Doctrine Of The Trinity



        1. Making and Begetting


     Everyone  has warned me not to tell you what I am  going to tell you in
this last book.  They  all say "the ordinary reader does  not want Theology;
give  him plain practical religion." I  have rejected their advice. I do not
think the  ordinary reader  is  such  a fool. Theology means "the science of
God," and I think any man who wants to think about God at all  would like to
have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available. You
are not children: why should you be treated like children?
     In a way I quite  understand why some people are put off by Theology. I
remember  once  when  I  had  been giving  a  talk  to  the  RA.F., an  old,
hard-bitten officer got  up and said, "I've no use  for all that stuff. But,
mind you,  I'm a religious man too. I know there's a God. I've felt Him: out
alone in the desert at night: the tremendous  mystery. And that's just why I
don't believe all your neat little  dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone
who's met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!"
     Now in a  sense I quite agreed  with that man.  I think he had probably
had a real experience of God in  the  desert.  And when he  turned from that
experience  to  the  Christian creeds, I think  he really was  turning  from
something real to something less real.  In the same  way,  if a man has once
looked at the Atlantic  from the beach,  and then goes and looks at a map of
the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real  to something less
real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the
point. The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but  there are  two things
you  have  to remember about  it. In the  first place,  it is  based on what
hundreds  and  thousands  of  people  have found  out  by  sailing the  real
Atlantic. In that way it  has behind it masses of experience just as real as
the one you could have  from the  beach; only, while yours would be a single
isolated glimpse, the map fits all those  different experiences together. In
the  second  place,  if  you want  to  go  anywhere,  the  map is absolutely
necessary. As long  as  you are  content with walks on  the beach,  your own
glimpses are far more fun than  looking at a map. But the map is going to be
more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.
     Now, Theology  is like the  map. Merely learning and thinking about the
Christian doctrines, if  you stop there, is less real and less exciting than
the sort  of thing my friend got  in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they
are only a  kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds
of people who really were  in touch with God-experiences compared with which
any thrills or  pious feelings you and I  are likely to  get on our own  are
very  elementary  and  very  confused. And  secondly, if you want to get any
further, you  must  use the map. You  see, what  happened to that man in the
desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes  of
it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it In fact, that  is just
why  a vague  religion-all  about feeling God  in nature,  and so  on-is  so
attractive. It is all  thrills and no work; like watching the waves from the
beach. But you will not get to  Newfoundland  by studying  the Atlantic that
way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God
in  flowers or music. Neither  will  you  get anywhere  by looking  at  maps
without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if  you go to sea  without a
map.
     In  other words, Theology is practical: especially now. In Ac old days,
when there was less education and discussion, perhaps it was possible to get
on with  a very few simple ideas about God. But it  is not  so now. Everyone
reads, everyone hears things discussed.  Consequently,  if you do not listen
to Theology, that will not mean  that  you have no  ideas about God. It will
mean that you have a lot  of wrong ones-bad, muddled, out-of-date ideas. For
a great many of the ideas  about  God which  are  trotted out  as  novelties
today, are  simply  the ones which real  Theologians tried centuries ago and
rejected.  To   believe  in  the  popular  religion  of  modern  England  is
retrogression-like believing the earth is fiat.
     For when you get down  to it, is not the  popular  idea of Christianity
simply this: that Jesus Christ was a great moral teacher and that if only we
took his advice we might be able to  establish  a  better  social  order and
avoid another war? Now, mind you, that  is quite true. But it tells you much
less than  the  whole  truth  about  Christianity  and  it has no  practical
importance at all.
     It  is quite true  that if we  took Christ's advice we  should  soon be
living in a happier world. You need not even  go as far as Christ. If we did
all that Plato or Aristotle or Confucius told us, we should  get on  a great
deal better than we do. And so what? We never have followed  the  advice  of
the great  teachers. Why are we likely to begin now? Why  are we more likely
to  follow  Christ  than any of the  others? Because he  is the  best  moral
teacher? But that makes it even less likely that  we shall follow him. If we
cannot  take the elementary lessons, is  it likely we  are going to take the
most advanced one? If Christianity  only means one  more bit of good advice,
then Christianity is of no importance. There has been no lack of good advice
for the last four thousand years. A bit more makes no difference.
     But as soon as  you look at any real Christian writings,  you find that
they are talking about something quite different from this popular religion.
They say that Christ is the Son of God (whatever that  means). They say that
those who give Him  their confidence can also become Sons  of God  (whatever
that means). They say that His death saved  us from our sins (whatever  that
means).
     There  is no  good  complaining that  these  statements  are  difficult
Christianity  claims  to be  telling us about another world, about something
behind the  world we  can touch and  hear  and see. You may think  the claim
false;  but  if  it  were  true, what  it  tells us  would be  bound  to  be
difficult-at least as difficult as modern Physics, and for the same reason.
     Now the point in Christianity which gives us the greatest  shock is the
statement that by  attaching ourselves to  Christ, we  can  "become Sons  of
God." One asks "Aren't we Sons of God  already? Surely the fatherhood of God
is one of  the main Christian ideas?" Well, in a certain sense, no doubt  we
are sons of God already. I mean, God has brought us into existence and loves
us and looks after us, and in that way is  like a father. But when the Bible
talks  of our  "becoming" Sons of  God, obviously  it  must  mean  something
different. And that brings us up against the very centre of Theology.
     One  of  the creeds  says that Christ is the Son of God "begotten,  not
created"; and it  adds  "begotten by his Father before all worlds." Will you
please get it quite clear  that this has  nothing  to do  with the fact that
when Christ was born on earth as a man, that man was the son of a virgin? We
are not now thinking about the Virgin Birth. We are thinking about something
that happened before  Nature was created at all, before time  began. "Before
all worlds" Christ is begotten, not created. What does it mean?
     We  don't use the words  begetting or  begotten much in modern English,
but  everyone still  knows  what they mean. To beget is to become the father
of:  to create is  to make. And the difference is this. When  you beget, you
beget something of  the same kind as yourself. A man begets human babies,  a
beaver begets  little  beavers and a bird begets eggs which turn into little
birds. But when  you  make,  you make  something  of a  different  kind from
yourself. A bird makes a nest, a beaver builds a dam, a man makes a wireless
set-or he  may make  something more like himself than a wireless set: say, a
statue. If he is a clever enough carver  he may make  a statue which is very
like a man indeed. But, of  course, it is not a real man; it only looks like
one. It cannot breathe or think. It is not alive.
     Now that is the first thing to get clear. What God begets  is God; just
as  what man begets is man.  What God creates  is not God; just as  what man
makes is not man. That is  why men are not Sons of  God in  the  sense  that
Christ is. They may be like God in certain ways, but they are not things  of
the same kind. They are more like statues or pictures of God.
     A statue  has the shape of a man but  it is not alive. In the same way,
man has  (in a sense I am going to explain) the "shape" or  likeness of God,
but he has  not got the kind of  life  God has. Let us  take the first point
(man's resemblance to God)  first. Everything God has made has some likeness
to Himself. Space is like  Him in  its  hugeness: not that the  greatness of
space is the same  kind of greatness as God's, but it is a sort of symbol of
it, or a translation of it into non-spiritual terms. Matter is  like  God in
having energy: though, again, of course, physical energy is a different kind
of thing from the power of God. The vegetable world  is like Him because  it
is alive, and He is the "living God." But life, in this biological sense, is
not the same as the  life there is in God:  it is only  a kind of  symbol or
shadow  of it.  When we  come  on  to the  animals, we find  other  kinds of
resemblance  in  addition  to  biological life.  The  intense  activity  and
fertility of the insects, for  example, is a first  dim  resemblance to  the
unceasing activity and the creativeness of God. In the higher mammals we get
the beginnings of instinctive  affection. That is not  the same thing as the
love that exists in God: but it is like it-rather in the  way that a picture
drawn on a flat piece of  paper can nevertheless be "like" a landscape. When
we  come  to  man,  the  highest  of  the animals,  we  get  the  completest
resemblance to God which we know of. (There may be creatures in other worlds
who are more like God  than man is, but we  do not know about them.) Man not
only lives, but loves and reasons: biological life reaches its highest known
level in him.
     But what  man,  in  his natural condition,  has not  got, is  Spiritual
life-the  higher and different sort of life that exists in God.  We use  the
same word life for both: but  if you thought that both must therefore be the
same  sort  of  thing, that would be like thinking  that the  "greatness" of
space  and  the  "greatness" of  God  were  the  same  sort of greatness. In
reality, the  difference between  Biological  life and spiritual life  is so
important that  I  am  going to give them two distinct names. The Biological
sort which comes  to us through Nature, and  which (like  everything else in
Nature) is always  tending to run down and decay so that it can only be kept
up by incessant subsidies from Nature in the form of air, water, food, etc.,
is Bios. The Spiritual life  which is in  God from  all eternity, and  which
made the whole natural  universe, is Zoe. Bios has,  to  be sure, a  certain
shadowy or  symbolic resemblance  to  Zoe: but only  the sort of resemblance
there is between a photo  and  a  place, or  a statue  and a man. A  man who
changed from  having Bios  to having Zoe  would have gone through  as big  a
change as a statue which changed from being  a carved stone to being  a real
man.
     And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great
sculptor's  shop. We are the  statues and there is a  rumour going round the
shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.

        2. The Three-Personal God


     The last chapter was about the difference between begetting and making.
A man begets a child, but  he only makes a statue. God begets Christ  but He
only makes men. But by saying that, I have  illustrated only one point about
God, namely, that  what God the Father begets is God, something of  the same
kind as Himself.  In that  way it  is  like a human father begetting a human
son. But not quite like it. So I must try to explain a little more.
     A good many  people  nowadays say,  "I believe in a  God, but not in  a
personal God."  They feel that the mysterious something which is behind  all
other things must be more than a person. Now the Christians quite agree. 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 Him as something impersonal:
that  is, as something less than personal. If you are looking  for something
super-personal,  something more than a person, then it is not  a question of
choosing between the Christian  idea and the other ideas. The Christian idea
is the only one on the market.
     Again, some people think that after this life, or perhaps after several
lives, human souls will be "absorbed" into God. But when they try to explain
what they  mean, they seem to be  thinking of our being absorbed into God as
one  material thing is 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 same as ceasing 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 fact, be very  much
more themselves than they were before.
     I warned you that Theology 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 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.
     Do  you see the  point? 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 solid 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.
     Now the Christian account of God involves just the same  principle. The
human  level is  a simple and  rather empty  level. On  the human level  one
person is one being, and any 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. On the Divine level you still find
personalities; but up there you find them combined in new ways which we, who
do not live on that  level, cannot imagine. 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  perceived
only  two dimensions in space we could never properly imagine a cube. But we
can  get a sort of faint notion of it. And when we do, we are  then, for the
first  time in  our  lives,  getting some positive idea,  however  faint, of
something super-personal-something  more  than a person. It  is something we
could never have guessed, and yet,  once we have been told, one almost feels
one ought to have been able to guess it because it fits in  so well with all
the things we know already.
     You  may ask, "If we cannot imagine a three-personal Being, what is the
good of talking about Him?" Well,  there isn't  any  good talking about Him.
The  thing that matters  is being  actually  drawn into  that three-personal
life, and that may begin any time -tonight, if you like.
     What I mean is this. 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  that  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 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.
The man is being caught up into the higher kind of life-what I called Zoe or
spiritual life: he is being pulled  into God, by God,  while still remaining
himself.
     And that  is  how  Theology 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 dismiss as a  lunatic. He made  them believe Him. They
met Him again after they had seen Him killed. And then, after they had  been
formed into  a  little society or community,  they found  God somehow inside
them as well: directing them, making  them able to do things 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  something we have made up;  Theology is, in a
sense, experimental  knowledge.  It  is  the  simple religions that are  the
made-up ones. When  I say it is an experimental science "in a sense," I mean
that  it is like  the other experimental sciences in  some ways,  but not in
all. If you  are a geologist studying  rocks,  you  have to go and  find the
rocks.  They  will not  come to you, and if you go 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 from studying rocks.
The wild animals  will  not come to  you:  but they can run  away from  you.
Unless you keep  very  quiet, they will. There  is  beginning to be  a  tiny
little trace of initiative on their side.
     Now a stage higher; suppose you want to get to know a human  person. If
he is  determined not to let you, you will not  get to know him. You have to
win his confidence. In this  case the initiative is equally divided-it takes
two to make a friendship.
     When  you come to knowing God, the  initiative lies on  His side. If He
does not show Himself, nothing 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
Himself to a man whose whole  mind and character are in the wrong condition.
Just  as  sunlight,  though it has  no favourites, cannot be reflected  in a
dusty mirror as clearly as a clean one.
     You can put this another way by saying that while in other sciences the
instruments you use are things external to yourself (things like microscopes
and telescopes),  the instrument through which  you  see God  is  your whole
self. And if  a man's self is not kept clean and  bright, his glimpse of God
will be  blurred-like the Moon seen through 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 men. And that means
not  simply  to  men who are  individually good,  but to  men who are united
together in  a body, loving one another, helping one another, showing Him to
one another. For that is what God meant humanity to be like; like players in
one band, or organs in one body.
     Consequently,  the one really adequate instrument  for  learning  about
God,  is the whole Christian community, waiting for Him  together. 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 some patent simplified religion of  their  own as a substitute  for the
Christian  tradition  are  really  wasting  time.  Like  a man  who  has  no
instrument but an old parr of field glasses setting out to put all  the real
astronomers right.  He may be a clever chap-he may be cleverer than some  of
the real astronomers, but he is not  giving himself  a chance. And two years
later everyone has forgotten  all about him,  but the real science is  still
going on.
     If Christianity  was something we  were making up,  of course  we could
make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people
who are inventing religions.  How could we?  We  are dealing  with  Fact. Of
course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about.

        3. Time And Beyond Time


     It is a very silly idea that in reading  a book  you must never "skip."
All sensible people skip freely when they come to a chapter which they  find
is going to  be no use to them. In  this  chapter  I am  going to talk about
something which may be helpful to some readers, but which may seem to others
merely  an  unnecessary complication. If you are  one of the second sort  of
readers,  then I advise you not  to  bother about this chapter at all but to
turn on to the next.
     In the last chapter I had to touch  on the subject of prayer, and while
that  is still fresh in  your mind and  my own, I should like to deal with a
difficulty that  some people find about the whole idea of prayer. A man  put
it  to me  by saying  "I can believe in God  all  right, but  what  I cannot
swallow is the idea of Him attending to several hundred million human beings
who are all addressing Him at  the same moment." And I have found that quite
a lot of people feel this.
     Now, the first thing to notice  is that the whole sting of it comes  in
the words at the same moment.  Most  of us can imagine God  attending to any
number of applicants if only they came one by one and He had an endless time
to do it in. So what is really at the back of this difficulty is the idea of
God having to fit too many things into one moment of time.
     Well that is of course what happens to us. Our life comes to  us moment
by moment One moment disappears  before  the next  comes along: and there is
room for very little in each. That is what  Time  is like. And of course you
and I tend to take it for granted  that this Time series-this arrangement of
past, present and future-is not simply  the way life comes to us but the way
all  things really exist We tend to assume that  the  whole universe and God
Himself are  always moving on from past  to future just as we  do.  But many
learned men do not agree with that. It was the Theologians who first started
the idea that some  things are  not in  Time  at all: later the Philosophers
took it over: and now some of the scientists are doing the same.
     Almost certainly  God  is  not in  Time. His life  does not consist  of
moments following  one another. If  a million  people are praying to  Him at
ten-thirty tonight,  He  need not  listen  to  them  all in that  one little
snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty-and every other moment from the
beginning of  the world-is always the Present for Him. If you like to put it
that  way,  He has all eternity in  which to  listen to the split  second of
prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames.
     That is difficult, I know.  Let me try to give something, not the same,
but a bit like it. Suppose I am writing a novel. I write "Mary laid down her
work; next moment came a knock at the door!" For Mary who has to live in the
imaginary  time of my story  there is no  interval between  putting down the
work and hearing the knock. But I, who am  Mary's maker, do not live in that
imaginary time at all. Between writing the first half  of  that sentence and
the  second, I might sit down for three hours and think steadily about Mary.
I could think about Mary as if she were the  only character in the  book and
for as long as I pleased, and the hours I spent in doing so would not appear
in Mary's time (the time inside the story) at all.
     This is not a perfect  illustration, of course. But it may give  just a
glimpse of what I believe  to be  the truth. God is not hurried along in the
Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the
imaginary  time of his own novel He has infinite attention to spare for each
one of  us. He does not have  to deal  with us in the mass.  You are as much
alone  with Him as if you were the  only  being He  had  ever created.  When
Christ died,  He died for you individually just as much  as  if you had been
the only man in the world.
     The way in  which my illustration breaks down is this. In it the author
gets out of one Time-series (that of the novel)  only  by going into another
Time-series  (the  real one).  But  God,  I  believe,  does  not live  in  a
Time-series at all. His life is not dribbled out moment by moment like ours:
with Him it is,  so to speak,  still 1920 and already 1960. For  His life is
Himself.
     If you picture Time as  a straight line along which we  have to travel,
then you must picture God as the whole page on which the  line  is drawn. We
come to the parts  of the line one by one: we have  to leave A behind before
we get to B, and  cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from above or
outside or all round, contains the whole line, and sees it all.
     The idea is worth  trying  to grasp because it  removes  some  apparent
difficulties  in  Christianity.  Before  I  became  a  Christian  one of  my
objections was as follows.  The  Christians said that the eternal God who is
everywhere and keeps the whole  universe going,  once became a human  being.
Well  then, said I, how  did the  whole universe keep  going while He was  a
baby, or while He was asleep? How could He at the same time be God who knows
everything  and also a man asking his  disciples "Who  touched me?" You will
notice that  the sting lay in  the time  words: "While  He was a  baby"-"How
could He at the same time?" In other words I was assuming that Christ's life
as God  was in time, and that  His  life as the man Jesus in Palestine was a
shorter period taken out of that  time-just as my service in  the army was a
shorter period  taken  out  of my total life.  And  that is how  most of  us
perhaps tend to think about it.  We picture God living through a period when
His human life was still in  the future: then coming to a period when it was
present: then  going  on  to a period when  He could  look  back  on  it  as
something in the past. But probably these ideas correspond to nothing in the
actual  facts.  You cannot  fit Christ's earthly life  in Palestine into any
time-relations with His life as God beyond all space and time. It is really,
I  suggest,  a timeless  truth about  God that human nature,  and  the human
experience of weakness and sleep and ignorance, are somehow included in  His
whole divine  life.  This  human life  in  God is  from our  point of view a
particular period in  the history of our world (from  the year A.D. one till
the Crucifixion). We therefore imagine it is also a period in the history of
God's  own  existence.  But God  has  no  history. He is too completely  and
utterly real to  have one. For, of  course,  to have a  history means losing
part of your reality (because it had already slipped away into the past) and
not  yet  having another part  (because it is still in the  future): in fact
having nothing but  the tiny  little  present, which has gone before you can
speak about it. God forbid we should think God was  like that.  Even  we may
hope not to be always rationed in that way.
     Another difficulty  we get if we believe God  to  be  in time  is this.
Everyone  who believes in God at all believes that He knows what  you and  I
are  going  to do  tomorrow. But if He knows I am going to do so-and-so, how
can  I be free to do otherwise? Well, here once again,  the difficulty comes
from thinking  that God is progressing along the Time-line like us: the only
difference being  that He can see ahead and we cannot.  Well,  if that  were
true, if God  foresaw our acts,  it would be very hard  to understand how we
could be  free not  to  do  them. But suppose  God is outside and above  the
Time-line. In that case, what we call  "tomorrow" is visible to  Him in just
the same way as what  we call "today."  All the days  are "Now" for Him.  He
does not remember you doing things yesterday; He simply sees you doing them,
because, though you have lost yesterday. He has  not. He does not  "foresee"
you doing  things tomorrow;  He simply sees you doing  them: because, though
tomorrow  is not yet  there for you, it is for Him.  You never supposed that
your actions at this moment were any less  free because God  knows what  you
are  doing.  Well,  He  knows  your  tomorrow's  actions  in just  the  same
way-because He  is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense,
He does not know your action  till you have done it: but then the moment  at
which you have done it is already "Now" for Him.
     This idea  has helped me a good deal. If it does not help you, leave it
alone. It is a "Christian idea" in the sense that great  and wise Christians
have  held it and there is nothing in it contrary to Christianity. But it is
not in the Bible or any of the creeds. You can be a perfectly good Christian
without accepting it, or indeed without thinking of the matter at all

        4. Good Infection


     I  begin this chapter by asking you to  get a  certain picture clear in
your  minds. Imagine  two books lying  on a table  one on  top of the other.
Obviously the bottom  book is  keeping the other one up-supporting it. It is
because of the underneath book that the top one is resting, say,  two inches
from the surface of the table instead of touching the table. Let us call the
underneath  book  A  and the top  one B.  The position  of  A is causing the
position of B. That is clear? Now let us imagine-it could not really happen,
of course, but it will do for an illustration-let us imagine that both books
have  been in that position  for  ever and ever. In  that  case B's position
would  always have  been resulting from A's position.  But all the same, A's
position  would  not have existed  before B's position.  In other  words the
result does not come after the cause. Of course, results usually do: you eat
the  cucumber  first  and have the  indigestion afterwards. But it is not so
with all causes,  and  results. You  will see in  a  moment why I think this
important.
     I said  a few  pages  back  that God  is a  Being  which contains three
Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube contains six squares while
remaining one  body. 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. But that is  not so. There  is  no before and  after
about it. And that  is why I have spent some time  trying  to make clear how
one  thing can be the source, or cause, or origin,  of another without being
there before  it. The Son  exists because the Father exists: but there never
was a tune before the Father produced the Son.
     Perhaps the best way  to think of it  is this.  I asked you just now to
imagine those two books, and probably most of you  did. That is, you made an
act of imagination and as a result you had a mental picture. Quite obviously
your act of  imagining was the cause and the mental picture  the result. But
that does not  mean  that  you  first  did  the  imagining and then got  the
picture. The moment you did it, the picture was there. Your will was keeping
the picture before  you all  the time.  Yet that act of will and the picture
began at exactly the same moment and ended at the same moment. If there were
a  Being who had always existed and had always been imagining one thing, his
act would always have been producing a mental picture; but the picture would
be just as eternal as the act.
     In the same way 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 never was a time when He was not saying it. But
have you noticed what is happening? All these  pictures of light or heat are
making it  sound  as if the  Father and Son were  two things  instead of two
Persons. So that