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Beyond Personality - The Christian Idea of God
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64 pages
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The Christian Idea of God
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Geoffrey Bles
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Christianity
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N/A
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1944
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N/A
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N/A
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L-00148
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"I found this short book by C.S. Lewis the other day - I thought I would share a quote from it that I found to be very compelling.
The following is one of the best explanations for our inability (yet strong desire) to understand the nature of the triune God. Often our metaphors and explanations of the doctrine of the trinity are grounded in concrete ideas (i.e. "aqua trinity" - liquid, gas, ice) and while these are helpful in grasping the basic concepts of the trinity they miss the mark in vital aspects of analogy because they are by nature concrete. The doctrine of the trinity is by nature an abstract idea - warranting of an abstract metaphor.
"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're using only one dimension, you could
draw only a straight line. If you're 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 world of straight lines. 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 don't leave
behind you the things you found on the simpler levels; you
still have them, but combined in new ways in ways you
couldn't imagine if you knew only the simpler levels..... "
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