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.