Mystery Artist, Take 3

This mystery artist seems to be harder to identify than any of the others, so I’ll show you another picture clue, a sketch done by this author-illustrator. (You”ll find the first two clues here and here, and an explanation of the game at the bottom of this post.)

And for good measure here’s another hint: This artist’s illustrations in children’s books are not from sketches or paintings.

Directions to this game: I post a work done by a fairly well-known author/illustrator of classic children’s books—a piece that isn’t an illustration for a children’s book—and your job is to guess who the artist is. If no one guesses correctly with the first piece, I keep posting works until someone gets it right.

How Not to Write

To mark the day, Kim of Hiraeth has posted a sample of her handwriting and asks other bloggers to do the same.

Notice the smudges so typical of left-handed writing. Let’s just say I’m very thankful for keyboards.

Why don’t you post a sample of your handwriting and send her the link?

Reading the Classics: Mere Christianity

I’ve been reading C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity along with Tim Challies in his Reading the Classics Together reading program. This week’s reading was the first 5 chapters of Book IV, and Tim has a good summary of this section at Challies.com. Once again, I’ll be commenting briefly on what interested me in the portion read.

Begotten, Not Made
The word begotten as used in the Nicene creed has always bothered me a little, because it makes it sound as if the Father existed before the Son and became a Father to him similar to the way a human father beomes a father when a son is comes into being. I know that isn’t right. The Father doesn’t become a father because the Son exists eternally just like the Father does.

In what sense, then, is the Son “begotten”? How is being begotten different that being created? What is the distinction intended when the creed says Christ is “begotten, not made”? Here’s what Lewis says:

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 wirelessset-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.

Lewis’s explanation of the meaning of this word as used to describe the relationship between the Father and the Son is the clearest I’ve heard.

The word begotten, then, is meant to convey that the Father and Son have the same nature. The creed says Christ was begotten “before all ages” (or as Lewis says, “before all worlds”), so he is eternally begotten. The Son does not come into being and the Father does not become a father. But they are the same essence or nature, and that’s what the word begotten is meant to convey to us.

I want to write something on Lewis’s view of God and time as explained in chapter 3, but I’ll do that tomorrow.