1

The Triune God

The LORD bless you and keep you.
The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.
The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.
Numbers 6:24-26

Gerald Bray argues that “the early Christians accepted everything that Judaism taught them
about the nature of God. No orthodox Christian ever questioned God’s eternity, invisibility,
omnipotence, omniscience, or absolute uniqueness. For them, as for Jews, there was only one
God in heaven and earth, the One who had revealed himself to the Jewish patriarchs as
Yahweh….”1

In the words of the Synoptic Gospels, the veil in the temple was torn in two when Jesus
was crucified, and the way into the holy of holies was opened up (Matt. 27:51; Mark
15:38; Luke 23:45). We who are Christians have gone into that inner sanctum, and in
Paul’s words, God has now seated us in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:6). To
put it another way, whereas ordinary Jews were kept out of the holiest place in the
temple, Christians have been admitted into the inner life of God. Only in that context, and
based on that understanding, can we reconcile Christian theology with the Old Testament
revelation. The God who appears as One to those who view him on the outside, reveals
himself as a Trinity of persons, once his inner life is opened up to our experience. The
Christian doctrine that has resulted from this is nothing more nor less than a description
of what that experience of God’s inner life is like.2

In the first centuries after Jesus’s ascension, Christians were united in their love of Jesus and
their desire to follow Him; they were even united in their desire to worship Him. But they were
still not united in just who they thought Jesus was. Jesus had claimed to be God, and He also
claimed to be sent from His Father in heaven, and claimed that He was going to send the Holy
Spirit to the Church after He returned to heaven, claims that we’ll look at in more detail when we
consider the doctrines of Christ and the Holy Spirit in later chapters, but the first Christians were
Jews who knew absolutely that there was only one God. So how could Jesus be God, and His
Father be God, and the Holy Spirit be God?

Christians tried to make sense of this in many different ways. It was a long process. Someone
would suggest a possible way of explaining how this might work, and then the Church would
pray and talk and read and re-read the Old Testament Scriptures and whatever accounts of the
teachings of Jesus they could find to check whether that explanation worked. Often, the
explanation needed to be rejected. So if someone said that perhaps there were really three gods,
not just one (a heresy known as tritheism), other Christians would point to the clear teaching
about YHWH in the Old Testament as the One God. Or if someone said that perhaps there was
really just one God who played different roles, who was sometimes known as Father, other times

1
Gerald L. Bray, “Out of the Box: The Christian Experience of God in Trinity,” God the Holy Trinity: Reflections
on Christian Faith and Practice, ed. Timothy George (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), p. 41.
2
Bray, pp. 45-46.
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as Son, other times as Spirit (a heresy known as modalism), other Christians would point to
accounts of the ministry of Jesus in which He spoke of His Father and of the Spirit as persons
with whom He had a relationship.

Ultimately, Christians carved out what I think of as an “arena of mystery” within which we must
stand when we speak of the Trinity. God Himself is not contained or limited, but if I want to
avoid saying misleading things about God, or thinking of God in ways that are inadequate and
small, or speaking of God in ways that are offensive and blasphemous – then I need to set limits
on the language I use to think or speak about God. Imagine a mysterious, empty space defined by
walls on every side. This is the space we stand in when we speak about and when we speak to
God. The walls are statements about what is not in the space. One wall is a rejection of tritheism.
When we speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we are not saying that there are three
gods. Another wall is the rejection of modalism. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit interact with
one another as genuine persons, so modalism cannot be true.

Another wall is the rejection of any subordination among the three persons. We reject the idea
that the Father is really and completely God, whereas the Son and Spirit are junior partners. We
reject the idea that there is a chain of command or a ranking among the three persons with any
one being more fully divine than another. This sort of ranking between the persons of the Trinity
made very good sense to early converts out of paganism, since a pagan understanding of the gods
sees them as linked to humans by an unbroken chain of mediating beings, like demi-gods (more
about that later). But the Biblical teaching of creation (which we will think about in the next
section) knows nothing of semi-divine beings.3

Another wall is the rejection of what one contemporary theologian has called partialism. This
wrong way of thinking is quite modern, so it doesn’t have a widely agreed upon name, but
partialism is a good way of describing it.4 This is the idea that the One God is “made up of” three
parts. This idea is everywhere in the contemporary church. But remember our discussion of
divine simplicity in the last section. God is not composite in any way. Speaking of the three
persons as “parts” suggests that the unity of the three is optional, as if the Trinity is a group that
could disband, a family in which one person could decide to leave. The three persons are one
essence, one being. God is not a friendship group that decided to live together at some point in
the past. This is who God is, always has been, and always will be: a loving community of three
persons inseparably joined.

These walls tell us what does not belong in the arena, but they tell us very little about what is
inside. That is because the doctrine of the Triune God is a mystery that we will never fully

3
My experience suggests that many of you reading this have a habit of speaking about the Trinity as “God, Jesus,
and the Holy Spirit.” That habit has probably arisen because you think that God the Father is really God, and then
you think of Jesus and the Holy Spirit as something less. Then, by constantly using that sort of language, you’ve
reinforced this wrong way of thinking, and now it’s deeply embedded. If I’m describing you, then it would be a
good idea to stop using such language. When you mean “God the Father,” say “God the Father.” In this textbook,
the word “God” always means the Triune God, because there is no other.
4
That would be The Rev. Hans Fiene, pastor of River of Life Lutheran Church (LCMS), Channahon, IL, and the
creator of Lutheran Satire, which defines itself as “a project intended to teach the Lutheran faith through comedic
videos, music, writings, industrial welding supplies, and other forms of media” (lutheransatire.org). In particular, see
the YouTube video “St Patrick’s Bad Analogies,” which, as of this writing, has been viewed 1.4 million times.
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understand. Augustine once said that if you think you have understood the doctrine of the
Trinity, then you must be thinking about something else. C. S. Lewis provides us with a helpful
analogy for our failure to understand the Trinity. He says that a human being trying to
understand God’s triune nature is like a two-dimensional being trying to understand a three-
dimensional being. What would a two-dimensional being think of the claim that a cube is a
single object made of six squares? From a two-dimensional perspective, such a claim would be
nonsensical. Just as I have no difficulty interacting with a flat piece of paper, or drawing in two
dimensions, even though I myself am three-dimensional, so God has no difficulty interacting
with me, even though I cannot understand nor correctly perceive Him. But I am never going to
be able to grasp His reality with any completeness, any more than the two-dimensional being
will ever grasp the reality of the three-dimensional world.5 When I stand in the arena where I
meet God, my proper posture is of adoration and praise, of awe and wonder, not of certainty or
confident knowledge.

In the book of Numbers, Aaron – the first High Priest of Israel – is told to proclaim a three-fold
benediction (or blessing) on the people when he emerges from the tabernacle, a benediction seen
at the beginning of this section. In its original context, the fact that there are three blessings is not
commented upon, but from a New Testament vantage point it is significant that there are three,
for in the New Testament we learn that YHWH the One God is also three persons. The three
statements of blessing correspond with the distinctiveness of the three persons: Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. The Father holds us in being, the Son is the radiant expression of the Father, and the
gift of the Spirit is the gift of peace. The One God, YHWH, the LORD, was and is the Triune
God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and every time YHWH’s blessing was proclaimed over the
people of Israel, the three persons were invoked, even if the Israelites didn’t realize that. It’s as if
the people of Israel saw YHWH as a bright, hazy figure approaching them from far away. Jesus
brings that distant figure close to us, and He mediates the brightness so that we can bear to look
at Him closely. When we do that, we discover that the one figure is also, somehow,
mysteriously, three persons.

In the last chapter we looked at the Apostles’ Creed. Another ancient, ecumenical creed is the
Athanasian Creed. This creed is named for Athanasius, a 4th-century Egyptian bishop who was a
powerful defender of the doctrine of Trinity. Athanasius almost certainly was not the author, but
the creed summarizes ideas that he taught. You will notice that it is quite repetitive, which makes
it easy to memorize and easy to recite together. The creed starts with a claim that the catholic
(that is, “worldwide”) faith requires belief in the Trinity and warns against two possible errors,
failing to distinguish the three persons from one another and failing to maintain the oneness of
their shared Being.

Now this is the catholic faith:

    That we worship one God in trinity and the trinity in unity,
    neither blending their persons
    nor dividing their essence.
        For the person of the Father is a distinct person,
5
Lewis drew this analogy from the book Flatland: A Romance in Many Dimensons by Edwin Abbott (Seeley & Co,
1884). Abbott was an Anglican priest as well as headmaster of a boys school, and his tale of a two-dimensional
square who discovers new dimensions of reality through his encounter with a sphere was always intended to have
religious meaning.
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        the person of the Son is another,

        and that of the Holy Spirit still another.
        But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one,
        their glory equal, their majesty coeternal.
    What quality the Father has, the Son has, and the Holy Spirit has.
        The Father is uncreated,
        the Son is uncreated,
        the Holy Spirit is uncreated.
        The Father is immeasurable,
        the Son is immeasurable,
        the Holy Spirit is immeasurable.
        The Father is eternal,
        the Son is eternal,
        the Holy Spirit is eternal.
            And yet there are not three eternal beings;
            there is but one eternal being.
            So too there are not three uncreated or immeasurable beings;
            there is but one uncreated and immeasurable being.
    Similarly, the Father is almighty,
        the Son is almighty,
        the Holy Spirit is almighty.
            Yet there are not three almighty beings;
            there is but one almighty being.
        Thus the Father is God,
        the Son is God,
        the Holy Spirit is God.
            Yet there are not three gods;
            there is but one God.
        Thus the Father is Lord,
        the Son is Lord,
        the Holy Spirit is Lord.
            Yet there are not three lords;
            there is but one Lord.

This creed isn’t recited very often anymore because it’s quite long, but I love the poetry of it,
with its straight-forward affirmations of the Triune mystery, without any pretense of being able
to understand that mystery. This creed illustrates exactly what it means to stand and worship in
the arena of mystery. We simply assert that God, whom we worship, is one Being and three
persons.

The creed continues, now focusing on how the three persons are distinct from one another.

Just as Christian truth compels us

    to confess each person individually
    as both God and Lord,
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    so catholic religion forbids us

    to say that there are three gods or lords.
    The Father was neither made nor created nor begotten from anyone.
    The Son was neither made nor created;
    he was begotten from the Father alone.
    The Holy Spirit was neither made nor created nor begotten;
    he proceeds from the Father and the Son.

    Accordingly
there is one Father, not three fathers;
    there is one Son, not three sons;
    there is one Holy Spirit, not three holy spirits.
   
Nothing in this trinity is before or after,
    nothing is greater or smaller;
    in their entirety the three persons
    are coeternal and coequal with each other.
    So in everything, as was said earlier,
    we must worship their trinity in their unity
    and their unity in their trinity.

The three persons are distinguished, not by any differences of substance or essence since they are
one Being, but by the fact that each person stands in a unique set of relations to the other two.
This means they are not interchangeable. Only the Father is always source, always generating,
always out-pouring. Only the Son is begotten by the Father, while joining the Father in the
procession of the Spirit. Only the Spirit joins the Father and the Son by receiving His procession
from both.

My favorite “image” of the Trinity is a piece of music, a trio for three tenors by Claudio
Moneteverdi (1567-1643). It’s a movement from his Vespers, and in this movement (“Duo
Seraphim”) he begins with the two seraphs who are calling to one another in Isaiah 6, praising
God’s holiness. But soon a third tenor joins the mix, and the text moves to a New Testament
passage praising the Trinity.

Duo Seraphim clamabant alter ad alterum: and these three are one.6
Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth: Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Hosts:
plena est omnis terra gloria eius. the whole earth is full of His glory.
Treus sunt quite testimonium dant in coelo:
Pater, Verbum et Spiritus Sanctus:
et hi tres unum sunt.
Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth:
plena est omnis terra gloria eius.

Two Seraphim were calling one to the other: 6

In some manuscripts, 1 John 5:7-8 reads: “For there
Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Hosts:
are three that testify in heaven: the Father, the Word
the whole earth is full of His glory.
and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. And
There are three who give testimony in heaven:
there are three that testify on earth: the Spirit, the
the Father, the Word, and the Spirit:
water, and the blood, and these three are in
agreement.”
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The three tenor voices sound very much alike, reinforcing the idea that they are one even as they
are distinct. Sometimes they chase each other in a sort of round, and sometimes they sing in
harmony, forming chords, and at one spot (a rather obvious spot if you look at the text) they all
sing in perfect unison. Monteverdi uses music to explore the relations between the three persons
of the Trinity in a way that respects the mystery.

In the twentieth century it became fashionable to claim that there is no difference between the
“economic Trinity” and the “immanent Trinity.” “Economic Trinity” refers to the Trinity as
known in the economy, or ordering, of salvation, that is, the triune God in relation to and for us.
“Immanent Trinity” refers to the relationship of the three persons within God’s Being, without
reference to his saving actions in the world. The equivalence of the economic and immanent
Trinity was popularized by the Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner’s formulation, “The
economic trinity is the immanent trinity.” Rahner thought that the way we encounter the three
persons working to save us is the way God really is and all that God really is.

There are two problems with this view. The first problem is that equating the economic Trinity
(the way we see God working to save us) with the immanent Trinity (everything that is true of
God “within” the community of the Trinity), we can easily start to think that God is triune in
order to meet our needs. This isn’t a necessary conclusion from Rahner’s claim, but it’s quite a
common conclusion. For example, we may start thinking that the reason there is a Son is that we
need a savior. But that’s backwards. It would be more accurate to say that the reason we exist is
because God is three persons whose love for one another is so generous and overwhelming that it
overflows into a creation.

The second problem with equating the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity is that in the
work of salvation, we see Jesus at work far more clearly than we see the Father or the Spirit. So
what Rahner’s rule can end up meaning in practice is that everything that’s true of Jesus is true
of the immanent Trinity. However, Jesus is both fully God and fully human. In making
deductions about what God is like from looking only at Jesus, we may sometimes get His two
natures confused. Jesus suffers and dies on the cross, but that does not mean that God suffers and
dies. Jesus is born to a human mother, but that does not mean that God is born or has a
beginning. While God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ is reliable and truthful, showing us his
very nature, the revelation of Jesus also shows us what it means to be a full and perfect human
being. So not everything that we see in Jesus is telling us about God’s nature; sometimes He’s
telling us about ourselves. We’ll talk much more about the two natures of Jesus in a later section.

We must also affirm that God is both sovereign and free. Who God is cannot be reduced to his
relationship to us, even though it is a relationship of love and grace. Although the economic and
immanent understandings of the Trinity are not contradictory, it is misleading to say that they are
identical. We are always being tempted to pull God down to our level, to make Him more
comprehensible, to domesticate or tame Him. But God warns against this over and over in the
Bible. “My ways are not your ways,” He says. “You thought that I was just like you.” The Son
has taken a human nature to Himself in order to live among us and show us God’s glory, but we
must not therefore conclude that we now know everything there is to know about God.
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Creation
Poetic Theology
I sing the mighty pow’r of God, that made the mountains rise,
That spread the flowing seas abroad, and built the lofty skies.
I sing the wisdom that ordained the sun to rule the day;
The moon shines full at His command, and all the stars obey.

I sing the goodness of the Lord, who filled the earth with food,
Who formed the creatures through the Word, and then pronounced them good.
Lord, how Thy wonders are displayed, where’er I turn my eye,
If I survey the ground I tread, or gaze upon the sky.

There’s not a plant or flow’r below, but makes Thy glories known,
And clouds arise, and tempests blow, by order from Thy throne;
While all that borrows life from Thee is ever in Thy care;
And everywhere that we can be, Thou, God, art present there.
Isaac Watts

And Ezra said, “You are the LORD, you alone; you have made heaven, the heaven of
heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in the.
To all of them you give life, and the host of heaven worships you.”
Nehemiah 9:6

How should we read the creation story at the beginning of the Bible? This has become a highly
contested question among Christians. Some would suggest that it is a mistake to read Genesis 1-3
as having anything at all to do with history. The claim is that these chapters are telling us
something about ancient Israel’s understanding of their origins, which is a theological, not an
historical claim.

As we saw in chapter 1, we must always read Scripture with an awareness of the questions it is
answering. When we go to the Bible looking for answers that are not in fact addressed in the
Bible, we will misunderstand the message of the text. There certainly are many parts of the Bible
that are not concerned with recounting historical events, but rather are concerned with
communicating theological claims. There are even parts of the Bible that communicate
theological claims by telling stories that make no pretense to be based in history. Jesus Himself
did this by telling parables, which communicate truth, whether or not they ever really happened.
But does it make any sense to read Genesis 1 – 3 in this way? If the creation accounts in the
Bible are a sort of parable, what is their meaning? If the beginning of the Bible is about theology,
just what theological claim is being made?
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Christians throughout history have understood that the most fundamental claim being made in
the creation accounts in the Bible is that YHWH is the one Creator of everything that exists.7 If
the creation accounts are something like a parable, then this claim should make sense even if
there is no history behind the stories. Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan to teach us
about loving our neighbor, and that lesson remains clear in the parable even though it’s a story
that He invented to use as an illustration. The truth of the lesson does not depend on the
historicity of the story. But the claim being made in Genesis is not a general claim about how we
ought to behave; it is a claim that does not make sense apart from history. If God did not really,
truly, in fact create the universe in history, then the theological claim that God is the Creator is
false. This theological claim is precisely an historical claim. The theological claim is only true if
the historical claim is also true.

Now, this does not mean that the creation accounts in Genesis should be read as if they are
exercises in investigative journalism. The Bible is first and always a theological book; that is, it
is always teaching us about God and His work with us. The Bible is never concerned with
relating stories about past events to satisfy our curiosity or to entertain us. When the Bible tells
us about historical events, those events are presented in ways that highlight their meaning. For
instance, when the gospel writers tell the story of the resurrection of Jesus (another story in
which the theological claim being made is only true if it is also true historically), they don’t
present interviews with the soldiers who were guarding the tomb and then knocked unconscious
by the power of the event. Instead, the gospel writers tell us about different people who met the
resurrected Jesus and who had to grapple with the meaning of that encounter. The theology
controls the way the event is presented.

That is also true in Genesis 1, which contains the first creation account. This telling of the
creation of the world is presented as a poem, a poem that underscores the beautiful order of the
creation and God’s gracious care to provide a welcoming environment for every creature that He
brings into existence. The poetic structure also makes obvious the complementary nature of the
creation, the ways in which God uses difference to create harmony and order. So God’s first act
is the creation of light, and the distinction of light and darkness; His second act is the separation
of sky and sea; His third act is the separation of the sea and the dry land. By the end of the third
day, God has designed the environment in which everything that He makes on days four through
six can live and flourish. On the fourth day, God makes the sun, moon, and stars, which rule over
the light and darkness made on day one. On the fifth day, God makes the birds and the fish,
which live in the sky and the sea. And on the sixth day, God makes all the creatures that live on
the dry land, including human beings. On the seventh day, God takes His throne and rests in His
authority over all that He has made. The structure of this account combined with the repetitive
and parallel language makes clear that this a poem and that this account of something historical
is a poetic account.

Christians often toss around the word “literal” as if that is the most faithful way to understand all
of the Bible. But reading a poem as if it is a journalistic account or reading a metaphor as if it is a
7
This is typically expressed by saying that God created ex nihilo, or from nothing. Genesis 1 can perhaps be read
(and was read by some early Christians) as suggesting that God made everything out of pre-existent matter; even if it
is read that way, most Christians would say that the “pre-existing” matter (or in the words of Genesis the chaotic
waters over which the Spirit hovers) were also made by God.
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description of technical specifications is not a faithful way to read any text. All but the very
youngest readers of Scripture know that when the Bible describes God as a hen protecting her
chicks, that should not be read to mean that God is a great winged bird. It should be equally
obvious that a poem covering seven days, in which the sun and moon do not appear until the
fourth day, must be using the word “day” in a metaphorical sense. In a literal sense, a day on
earth is defined in terms of the earth’s relationship to the sun, and it makes no sense to speak of
days before the sun’s creation.8 The creation story is communicating something beyond our
experience and understanding, something that nonetheless is rooted in an historical claim about
God as the source of all existing things apart, and so the story is told in poetry, using metaphors
and images that will help us to comprehend the incomprehensible.9

Other ancient civilizations also told poems about the beginning of the world, but this poem says
some things that those poems did not. The beginning of the world is not the result of a violent
accident; it is not the by-product of a war or a collision between a power of good and a power of
evil. It’s not a mix of bad stuff (usually matter) and good stuff (usually spirit). Instead, there is
one God who is at the beginning of everything, who makes everything with intention and design,
and who declares that everything He has made, including all the material stuff of the world, is
good. Everything He makes is good because He is all good. Indeed, as we discussed earlier, He
is Goodness Itself, the standard by which all other goodness can be known. Nothing that comes
from His hand can be anything but good, which has deep implications for the worth and
excellence of the world in which we live.

God really did make the world. Why would we expect that act to be something that we should be
able to understand? We are ourselves creatures, contained within the created world, and we have
no vantage point from which to view the act that brought the whole of existence into being. God
is translating something beyond our experience into language that makes sense to us in order to
communicate what we need to know about the meaning of our lives, about our relationship of
dependence on Him, and about His authority over all the exists – all of which is rooted in the real
historical fact that God’s sovereign creative act is at the root of all reality.

The End for Which God Created the World

Your creation has its beings from the fullness of your goodness. In consequence a good
which confers no benefit on you, and which not being from you yourself is not on your
level, can nevertheless have its existence caused by you and so will not lack being.
Augustine, Confessions XIII.2.2

When I was a child, my mother used to play a recording for me of a poem about the creation of
the world. It was written by James Weldon Johnson. It’s a beautiful poem, and I recommend that
8
The structure of the poem according to days communicates that the seven-day week established in the Bible is built
into the creation order, and that we should see the rhythm of life that we experience every week as part of God’s
design.
9
This is very similar to the way that the Bible discusses the final judgment and the new creation that will follow –
historical events that are promised for the future. They are beyond our experience or understanding, so the language
is highly poetic, full of images and symbols that make sense only if you know the rest of the Bible really well.
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you read it or listen to it.10 However, one aspect of the poem troubles me. Johnson suggests that
God created the world in order to meet some need in Himself. The poem begins:

And God stepped out on space

And he looked around and said:
I’m lonely –
I’ll make me a world.11

This is in many ways an appealing view. If God made the world because He was lonely, and if
our purpose in existing is to fill a void in God, we might think that this means we are deeply
loved. But this is because all our experiences of human love involve neediness. If God is needy,
lonely, and hungry for companionship, that would suggest that the Creator of the world is not
capable of putting an end to neediness, loneliness, and hunger. But in fact, as we considered
when looking at God’s attributes, God is self-sufficient: He has no needs. He is fully actual: there
is nothing missing in God that will be filled in later, nothing potential that has yet to emerge.
God is also a communion of three persons who are joined together in love. Nonetheless, it is
common for us in thinking about God to talk as if He finds us necessary to His own happiness, as
if He makes us, and loves us, and redeems us primarily because we add something to His joy.
This cannot be true.

But if it is not true, this raises the question of why God would bother to make anything at all. If
God is so complete in Himself that we add nothing to Him, then why create something else?

The 18th-century American theologian Jonathan Edwards wrote an important essay (or what he
called a “dissertation”) to answer this question. It is called Concerning the End for Which God
Created the World, and the word “end” in the title should be understood to mean “purpose.”12
Edwards attempts a thought experiment. If there were some disinterested third party observing
the creation of the world – someone who was not God but was also not a creature whose
existence depended on this act – what would that being see as the purpose of creating?13 Edwards
thinks it’s clear that such a dispassionate observer would reach a clear conclusion.

He would … determine that the whole universe, including all creatures animate and
inanimate, in all its actings, proceedings, revolutions, and entire series of events, should
proceed from a regard and with a view to God, as the supreme and last end of all….14

10
The whole work in which this poem is included is called God’s Trombones, and my mother owned the old Fred
Waring recording, including both spoken word and music. It’s easily found online.
11
James Weldon Johnson, “Creation,” God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (New York: Viking,
1927), p. 17.
12
It’s the same usage as in the Westminster Catechism question we considered in chapter 1: “What is the chief end
of man?”
13
Edwards knows that there is no such disinterested observer who can determine that God must be the goal. Such a
being cannot exist, since God is the Creator of everything and everyone. Everything that exists and is not God is
creation, and everything that exists and is not creation is God. That’s why this is an imaginative thought experiment.
In the absence of such an independent arbiter, it must be God Himself who determines His purpose. Edwards
concludes that God Himself does the work of creation for the sake of His own glory.
14
Vol. 8, p. 424
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After all, nothing within creation has as much worth as God, and surely the point of the whole
project must be directed to the highest possible goal. God Himself must be the end, purpose, and
goal of the creation.

This may sound oddly selfish. And certainly, if you or I or any other person did a great work for
no other reason than self-glorification, that would be a prideful, selfish, and disordered work. But
remember that God is not like us, that God’s way of existing is not like ours, and that even
attributes that we share with God do not operate in the same way for us as they do for Him. In
thinking about the Bible, we said that God is always translating truths about Himself into
language that makes sense to us, because the experience of a Being who is eternal, immutable,
impassible, omnipresent, and self-sufficient is simply not accessible to beings like us who are
temporal, changing, suffering, spatially limited and radically dependent.

Here too we see that same analogical gap. The reason that it would be arrogant for us to do our
work with our own glory as its goal is because we are not God; we are not the final cause toward
which Aquinas’s arrow of creation is moving. Pretending that we are would be hubristic. But
God really is creation’s final cause. Of course, the act of creating is directed toward Him and
toward His glory.

And this is to our benefit! The first idea we considered in this book is that we are made to give
God glory, that this is the purpose of our lives. So how should we be surprised to find out that the
creation, of which we are made to be the head, is oriented in the same direction, toward
glorifying and enjoying God? Edwards says:

That God in seeking his glory therein seeks the good of his creatures: because the
emanation of his glory (which he seeks and delights in, as he delights in himself and his
own eternal glory) implies the communicated excellency and happiness of his creature.
And that in communicating his fullness for them, he does it for himself: because their
good, which he seeks, is so much in union and communion with himself. God is their
good. Their excellency and happiness is nothing but the emanation and expression of
God’s glory: God in seeking their glory and happiness, seeks himself: and in seeking
himself, i.e. himself diffused and expressed (which he delights in, as he delights in his
own beauty and fullness), he seeks their glory and happiness.15

By creating toward His own glory, God catches us up in an experience of His own, over-flowing
goodness and joy. Over and over in the creation story, God declares that what He has made is
good. This goodness can only come from God; it has been communicated to the creation. Thus,
creation toward His own glory is not a selfish act for God; it is an act of grace. We often think of
grace only in connection with God’s kindness to us when we sin, but already in creation there is
grace, that is, an unearned gift. God does not need the creation; He does not need to be further
glorified since His glory is already infinite. But He does create anyway out of His own
overflowing, generous goodness. Edwards says:

15
p. 459
12

As there is an infinite fullness of all possible good in God, a fullness of every perfection,
of all excellency and beauty, and of infinite happiness. And as this fullness is capable of
communication or emanation ad extra16; so it seems a thing amiable and valuable in itself
that it should be communicated or flow forth, that this infinite fountain of good should
send forth abundant streams, that this infinite fountain of light should, diffusing its
excellent fullness, pour forth light all around. … [T]hus it is fit, since there is an infinite
fountain of light and knowledge, that this light should shine forth in beams of
communicated knowledge and understanding: and as there is an infinite foundation of
holiness, moral excellence and beauty, so it should flow out in communicated holiness.
And that as there is an infinite fullness of joy and happiness, so these should have an
emanation, and become a fountain flowing out in abundant streams, as beams from the
sun.17
This language of God’s fontal fullness is old language in the Christian tradition, a way of talking
about God as the source and the beginning. So is the language of emanation, that everything
good emanates from God, and then returns back to Him, since He is both the beginning and the
end.

The Trinity in Creation

By the time of the Council of Nicea in 325, when the first draft of the Nicene Creed was written,
there was a new, very popular way of making sense of how God could be truly one and yet all
three of these persons could be God. It was called Arianism, because it was taught by a man
named Arius. Arius said that the Father was really God, but a sort of semi-divine being, the first
and highest creature. As God, the Father did not want to contaminate himself by being involved
in the work of creation, which would mean working with matter. So the Son was God’s
representative in making the world, after having been made himself.

This account was immediately popular, in part because it made so much sense in light of a pagan
view of the world. A pagan Greek or Roman understanding of reality saw everything on a chain
of existence or being, including the gods. The chain was unbroken because things that were very
different – such as gods and humans – were united by things that bridged the gap – like heroes
and demi-gods. The whole chain of beings was contained within the natural world. In the Greco-
Roman system of thinking, the gods whom they worshipped were themselves natural beings,
existing in the same way that we do but further up the chain, being bigger and stronger but not
fundamentally different. Arius had found a way of talking about God the Father and God the Son
as if they fit into that sort of structure.18

But in fact, God does not belong on that chain of being at all. Instead, He is the maker of the
chain. God’s way of Being is not ours. The pagan world thought that the great division in life
16
ad extra = to what is beyond or outside of God
17
p. 433
18
Greek philosophy did recognize some things that transcended the chain of existence, like truth, beauty, and the
One. But these were not personal deities.
13

was between matter (which was bad) and spirit (which was good), a divide that was present all
along the chain of being, from rocks, which have very little spirit, but still have some, to the gods
themselves, who were not purely spiritual beings but a mix of spirit and matter. The goal of
everything in the world was to escape from the prison of matter. But Jews and Christians affirm
that the material world is good.

When Christians started talking about Arius’s view, many of them found his ideas horrifying.
He was suggesting that God was only able to relate to the world indirectly. He was suggesting
that Jesus was not really God. Christians pointed out to Arius that the church encouraged people
to worship Jesus, which would be inappropriate if he were simply a creature. But Arius’s
domesticated understanding of God remained popular. In response, the Councils of Nicea (325),
Constantinople (381) and Chalcedon (451) affirmed a creed in which Jesus and the Holy Spirit
were both clearly recognized as God along with the Father.

The Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed are the two great ecumenical creeds affirmed by
almost all Christians through history, and each of these creeds speak of God’s work in creation.
The Apostles’ Creed begins by saying, “I believe in God the Father almighty, Maker of heaven
and earth.” The Nicene Creed begins in a similar way by saying, “We believe in one God, the
Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.” But then the
Nicene creed goes on to affirm our “one Lord Jesus Christ” by claiming: “Through Him all
things were made.” Finally, the Holy Spirit is affirmed as “the Lord, the Giver of Life.”

Both these emphases are true. Each work of God is the work of all three persons, since the three
are one undivided Being. And yet we may acknowledge that the way in which each person
participates in a given work will be distinct to that person, shaped by the relations between the
three persons within the triune communion. We also acknowledge that particular works may be
appropriated to one person more than the other two; that is, a particular work may be spoken of
both in the Bible and in Christian tradition as especially associated with one of the three persons.
So we especially speak of the inspiration of Scripture as a work of the Spirit, and the redemption
of humanity as a work of the Son, while also acknowledging that all three persons are active in
the inspiration of the Bible and all three persons are active in our redemption.

It is in this sense that the work of creation is appropriated to the Father, while at the same time
we see all three persons active in creation. This is because it is the Father who is the source of all
that exists. He makes there to be something rather than nothing. Just as the Father is the person
of the Trinity from whom the other two proceed without Himself proceeding from anyone, so
here in the creation He is the person of the Trinity who functions as the fontal fullness from
whom everything springs. Edwards’ language of emanation applies especially to the Father, from
whom everything proceeds.

The Son, who is the full expression of all that is in the Father, the One who emanates from the
Father, is the Word that the Father speaks when He creates. The Son names each thing into
being. When Adam names the animals, he is imitating this act in a small way, but the Son’s
power of naming does not simply recognize what exists; rather, He calls creatures into existence
when He names them. As the Word and Namer, the Son is the agent of particularity. He is the
one who will someday give to each of His people our true name, the name that will then bring
14

our true nature into full existence. He does all this both to express the Father and to give back to
the Father.

The Spirit connects all these particulars into what Charles Williams calls “a web of glory.” The
Spirit is the bond of love between the Father and the Son; in redemption, He is the bond of love
between each believer and Jesus; and in creation He binds each of us to the rest of the creation. It
is a perennial puzzle to think about how our internal life of consciousness and reason is able to
interact with the physical world around us, including with other people. The Spirit is the one who
builds the connections that make such interactions possible. He is one who animates and brings
life to the ideas of the Father that are named by the Son.

HUMANITY
Human Origins
All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners

or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—

did you not know

what the Holy One
can do with dust?
Jan Richardson, “Blessing the Dust: For Ash Wednesday”

You make beautiful things

You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us
Gungor, “Beautiful Things”
15

There are two accounts in the book of Genesis of the making of human beings. The first chapter
tells us that God made human beings, both male and female, in His own image.

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let
them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the
cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that
creeps upon the earth.”
So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and
subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and
over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:26-28)

The first thing to notice is that God speaks about “us” in this moment of creation. The first
readers of this text knew nothing of the doctrine of the Trinity, and they tended to hear this plural
either as addressing the angels or as a “royal we,” the sort of plural reference that Queen Victoria
was fond of using.19 But for a Christian reader it is hard to avoid the Trinitarian reference. In
commenting on this passage, Basil of Caesarea points out that God not only speaks in the plural
about the work of creating but also about creating human beings “in our image.” Basil notes that
this image is not an image shared between God and angels, but rather the image of God, as is
made explicit in the next verse.20 The God who speaks in the creation is the Triune God, and
human beings are made in His image, in the image of the three persons.21

The creation of human beings is likewise plural. Male and female are in His image – both in the
sense that men and women are equally made to reflect God, and in the sense that they do this
work of reflecting God partly through their relationship with one another. In the contemporary
church, there are often disagreements between people who call themselves “complementarians”
regarding how men and women should interact and people who call themselves “egalitarians”
regarding how men and women should interact. But the creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2 make
clear both that men and women are equal (equally human, equally in God’s image, and equally
commissioned as His stewards and representatives) and also that they complement each other,
that is, that they are not identical or inter-changeable but are different in ways that strengthen and
help one another. Humanity is not complete without both male and female, and this distinction
between male and female is essential to God’s design for human beings.

By the time God creates human beings, He has already made all the birds, the fish, and the
animals that live on the land, yet in none of those acts of creation does the text specify that He
creates them male and female. This tells us that the difference between men and women in

19
Most famously, “We are not amused.”
20
Basil, Homily IX, Hexaemeron, trans. Philip Schaff (Aeterna Press, 2016). p. 86.
21
Yes, it’s confusing that we typically use a singular pronoun to refer to the Trinity, but using a plural pronoun
creates an impression of three separate beings, which is tritheism. Although God uses plural pronouns in Genesis (let
us make), I can find no instances of plural pronouns for God in the third person, when we are speaking about Him.
This is true even when the noun for God is sort of plural: one of the Old Testament words for God is Elohim, which
is a grammatical plural word, but it’s always treated as a singular. The lesson is that it’s better to use confusing
language than language that promotes heretical thinking.
16

humanity is something more than the sexual difference between animals. As with animals, this
difference makes procreation possible, and that is certainly an important part of the creation of
human beings, as is seen in that God’s first word to His new creatures is that they should “be
fruitful and multiply.” Such fecundity is one way in which human beings reflect God, since He is
the source of all fruitfulness and generativity.

But the difference between male and female in human beings also communicates something
more. In the New Testament we learn that in a mysterious way the loving union of a man and a
woman in marriage can reflect something of our union with Christ. In both instances, the union is
between two who are simultaneously the same and different, who are made to fit each other. This
is reinforced in the second creation account, where the man and the woman are made separately
and their relationship to each other is considered from a different vantage point.

In that account, God says that the woman is made to be the man’s helper (Genesis 2:18). This has
often been heard to mean that she is to be his subordinate, but in fact the word “helper” is most
typically used in the Bible to refer to God Himself, who is our help. The creation of the woman
is a way of addressing the deep loneliness of the man, a loneliness that is the first “not good”
thing in the new creation. It is a puzzling loneliness, since at this point in the story the man has
perfect, sinless communion with God. Why should he be lonely? The fact that the woman is
created to fulfill a helping role that is properly God’s suggests that she is to function as a
connector between the man and God, helping the man to experience the helping presence of God
by being “bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh.” In other words, the creation of the woman
prefigures our need for God in human form, for the incarnation of God in Christ.

In this second account, the woman is described as one who corresponds to the man, or stands
facing the man. Older English translations of this word say that she is “meet” for him, one who
encounters him the way one puzzle piece fits into another. This is where the old English word
“helpmeet” comes from: the woman bears God’s helping presence to the man in a way that meets
and fits him. The Genesis story does not talk about the man being God’s helping presence to the
woman, but other Biblical teaching about marriage allow us to expect that this reflection of God
to one another should be mutual, particularly after the redemptive work of Jesus.

The second creation account also includes the fact that the first human being, Adam, is made
both from the dust of the ground and from God’s own breath. “Then the LORD God formed man
from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became
a living being (Genesis 2:7). There is some word play here, in that the word for man is adam and
the word for the ground is adamah. Saying that Adam was not only made from the ground but
from the “dust” of the ground makes the connection even wider. It’s like saying that we’re made
from matter, or from atoms, from the particles that make up the physical world. As Joni Mitchell
sings, “We are stardust, we are golden / We are billion year old carbon.” We are made of the
same stuff as the stars, and the animals, and rocks and trees.

This is why we have no need to be afraid of scientific claims about our connections to the world
around us. Our distinctiveness as human beings does not lie in our bodies; our bodies are the
place of commonality with the rest of creation, our point of contact with the world around us. In
the United States, representatives to Congress must live in the district they represent. The New
17

Testament makes a similar argument about Jesus and His representation of us: He can be our
priest only because He is one of us, fully human. So too our creation from the dust as physical
creatures, sharing in the world of matter, means we are allowed to represent the rest of the
creation. We share part of our nature with the other creatures of the earth, and so we may be
priestly in our care for them.

The first creation account says that this representative role is expressed in ruling authority: we
are to have dominion over the earth, that is, we are to be the lords or rulers of the earth. This does
not mean that we are use the earth for our own purposes, but rather that we are to govern and
tend and care for the earth. Good rulers are servants and stewards, not despots. The poet George
Herbert says that our primary function in relationship to the rest of the creation is to serve as
“secretaries of creation’s praise,” offering God the doxology on behalf of the creation that other
creatures are not equipped to give. We are enabled to do all this because we are connected to the
earth; we are of it.

Our distinctiveness from the rest of creation is not found in a break between our bodies and the
substance of plants and animals; it is found in the fact that in addition to being of the dust we are
also made from God’s own breath. Not only are we essentially connected to the earth from which
we are made and to which we return at our death, but we are also essentially connected to God
Himself. This is an astonishing claim, and one that we must make with care because it is very
easily misunderstood. When we were discussing God’s attributes, we made the point that simply
existing is a connection with God, and that is a connection we share with everything else in
creation. Puppies and trees and planets all exist only because God has shared existence with
them.

That connection does not erase the great distinction between God and the creation. Similarly
here, with our more intimate connection of both breath and image. We borrow spirit from God as
well as existence, but in this case what we borrow is essential to us; it’s a function of human
nature. The essence of being a dog, the dog nature, is not borrowed from God, though God
designed it. When that dog nature is brought into existence, the existing is borrowed, since to
exist belongs properly to God. But in the case of human beings, the quality that makes us human,
that sets our essence apart from other creatures, is also borrowed from God. Our humanness is
established by God’s willingness to create a connection of relationship with us, so that we are
God-receivers. God’s breath equips us to reflect Him, to enjoy Him, and to glorify Him.

This is what it means to be made in God’s image. We are beings who are tied to God in a
particular way. We are not mini gods. Rather, we bear His imprint. He has created a space inside
us that He then fills with His own presence. The Christian tradition has often expressed this by
saying that we capax Dei, that God has given us a capacity for receiving Him and being shaped
by Him according to His will. This capacity is found not in what we share with the earth and
with animals but with what is unique to us, not in our bodies but in our souls.

Later in the Bible we will encounter a much more extensive discussion of what it means to
receive abundant life from God, what it means to experience Jesus as the Life, what it means to
be “born again” into a way of life that consists of abiding in God and having God abide in us.
We will be told that God the Holy Spirit is taking up residence in us; that we are His temples.
18

From the perspective of such New Testament teaching, we can see that already at creation human
beings are made to be temples of the Holy Spirit; already at creation human beings are
capacitated to receive God. Already at creation we are made in God’s image.

Christians throughout history have attempted to understand just how it is that we’re made in the
image of God by identifying various ways in which we seem to be different from the rest of
creation, trying to understand if there is a structure in us or a status that we’ve been given that
makes it possible for us to stand in this relationship. We are rational; we are language users; we
are self-aware, able to notice our own thinking and analyze our own inner lives; we are able to
imagine states of reality that are not yet real, even states of reality that are beyond our
experience. God has given us a calling that He has not given to any other animals: a calling to be
responsible for the world, to care for other creatures and to have authority over them; a calling to
be priestly mediators of God’s grace to the creation who lift up the praises and the needs of the
creation to God. These claims are all true. No one of them is sufficient to explain what it means
to be made in God’s image, and yet all of them are features of humanity that contribute to our
capacity for relationship with God and make it possible for us to be both temples and priests,
such that our existence is the place that God chooses as the focus of His interaction with the
world He has made. In making us human, God equipped us with a suite of abilities that allowed
us to receive His presence when He offered it to us.

The context for that suite of abilities is that we humans are not merely physical beings; we are
also spiritual beings, both body and soul. In recent years I have noticed a new trend in my
students’ writing: the widespread use of the word “physically” to mean “really.” The assumption
that only the physical is real is so pervasive in our culture that even students who claim not to
believe this find themselves using language that suggests maybe on some level they do. But
reality is not merely physical. God Himself is Spirit, and so the Most Real One, the Being who is
the source and ground of all beings, is not physical. This tells us that the spiritual is more real
than the physical, not less.

C.S. Lewis thought about that level of reality more than most writers, and those of you who have
read some Lewis may be thinking already of places in his writing where this scale of reality is
discussed or imagined. Later, when we think about heaven and hell, we’ll refer to his story The
Great Divorce, in which this scale is graphically portrayed.22 For now, we’ll consider another
piece of his imaginative theology. Lewis has an amazing poem called “Adam at Night” in which
he imagines what Adam was like before the fall. Lewis speculates that Adam would not have
experienced sleep the way we do as the “dominion / Of the blind brother of death who occults
the mind” (lines 3-4). Instead, he would have consciously “set ajar / the door of his mind” so as
to experience a connection with the earth from which he was made.

Gradually he felt
As though through his own flesh the elusive growth
Hardening and spreading of roots in the deep garden,
In his veins, the wells re-filling with the silver rain

22
The Silver Chair also contains a discussion of this scale, though less explicitly, in the scene where the Green
Witch is trying to convince the children and their friends that her underground realm is the whole of reality.
19

And thrusting down far under his rock-crust

Finger-like, rays from the sky that probed bringing
To bloom the gold and diamond in his dark womb;
The seething central fire moved with his breathing. (lines 13-20)

Lewis is meditating on what it means that Adam is made from the dust, sharing a nature with the
Earth. He imagines that not only was Adam aware of everything happening on and in the Earth,
but he was also controlling, ordering, and holding together all that happened on the Earth: the
cycles of plant growth and the replenishment of water through rain, and the slow formation of
metals and minerals. Lewis even imagines Adam controlling the fire at the Earth’s core.

But this is not the full extent of what Lewis imagines. Adam’s lordship was even more extensive,
reaching out into the heavens: “He guided his globe smoothly in the ether, riding / At one with
his planetary peers around the sun….” (lines 21-22). In Lewis’ imagination, it is Adam’s deep
connection to the Earth as one made from dust combined with his transcendence as God’s
representative that would allow him to be the cosmic lord of the earth.

Granting the speculative nature of Lewis’ poem, he has a great deal of theology on his side. For
the Second Adam, Jesus, is now ascended at the right hand of the Father ruling over the Earth in
just this cosmic way, and He is not doing this in His divine nature, for God the Son did not need
to be enthroned, but has always joined His Father and the Spirit in ruling heaven and earth. No,
Jesus is presiding over the Earth and over all the cosmic creation in His human nature. God’s
intention in creating beings who could stand between Earth and Heaven was some such role.

Longing for Eden

One reason that it is important for us think deeply about the story of creation is that it tells us so
much about God’s design for our lives. We were made to live in a different way than we do now.
We were made to be intimately connected with the beauties of the creation, to understand from
inside the life of a tree and the power of a waterfall and the speed of a cheetah. We were made to
live directly before God’s face, to see Him and know Him intimately. Because we were made for
such a life, we still long for it. We are still being called to it.

Gerard Manley Hopkins was a 19th-century poet, writing during the Industrial Revolution in
England. During his lifetime, the English landscape went through an immense change. In the
early days of industrialization, no one understood just how damaging the pollution created by
factories and coal furnaces could be, and things had to get quite damaged before people started
passing laws and developing habits to protect the beauty of the natural world. This is the context
for the Hopkins’s famous sonnet “God’s Grandeur.”

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
20

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

The poem begins by recognizing that God’s grandeur or glory runs through the world like an
electrical current. There is nothing in the world that is untouched by God’s presence, and so the
world is lifted and made great, by its participation in God’s greatness. This grandeur sometimes
shines out of the world, since the world reflects its Creator the way a piece of foil reflects the
light when you shake it. The grandeur is sometimes hidden deep inside the natural of creation,
pooling together in places of intensity, just as olive oil will pool when the olives are crushed.23

But then Hopkins poses his pressing question. Given that God is so present in the world, why do
people not take Him into account (or “reckon” with Him)? Why do we ignore His presence and
ignore His commandments, especially given the clear teaching of the Bible and of history that
when we ignore God we will be subject to His discipline (or “rod”)? And yet, generations of
human beings have ignored God’s presence in the world.

The disobedience that Hopkins has in mind is specifically being disrespectful of the creation.
God made human beings to be His representatives or stewards in ruling the world, which is both
a privilege and a responsibility. Hopkins points out that we have failed in this, both by harming
the world rather than caring for it and also by being alienated from it. The result is “the soil is
bare” or infertile, and we are incapable of feeling the earth, having separated ourselves from it.

Despite this grim view of the current state of human/earth relations, Hopkins remains hopeful.
Despite human neglect, nature is not used up, or “spent.” There is still a “freshness,” a precious
fertility that includes hope for new life, built deep into the creation. Even if human civilization
were to self-destruct, that fertile freshness would persist, because even when our stewardship
fails, God remains a faithful steward of the world He has made. Specifically, the Holy Spirit is
brooding over the world, the way a hen broods over her eggs in order to bring them to the point
of hatching. Even though human beings have done our best to extinguish the life of the world,
still life remains, and the Spirit who is the Lord of Life continues to “renew the face of the earth”
(Psalm 104:30). When we come to ourselves, this is what we long for.

The experience of longing is common to all human beings, as can be seen in the history of
philosophy and the works of all different religions. As Traherne said at the beginning of the first

23
An interesting question is how the experience of being crushed might be necessary in a creation without sin. Does
the experience of being crushed or pressed reveal God’s glory only in our sinful state, or would this sort of discipline
be necessary even in a perfect world?
21

chapter, we are drawn to something we do not know. This experience of being pulled toward
something, longing for something, that seems to be missing in our lives, is a sort of love.

As you may know, Greek has several different words that are all translated as “love” in English:.
storge, the affection that grows from familiarity; philia, the love between friends or siblings;
eros, the love of romance or attraction more generally; and agape, God’s sort of love, in which
love is offered without any expectation of return.24 So which sort of love are we supposed to
show to God? Even though we are made in God’s image, there are things about God that we
cannot imitate. We may be able to show love that is somewhat selfless to some people for whom
we feel pity or affection, but we are not able to show agape love to God. That’s because we
cannot be selfless or disinterested when it comes to God. We are radically dependent on God.
We have no life without Him. We cannot be human without Him.

More than that, many great Christian thinkers have taught that all our other longings and loves
are really pale versions of the longing that we are meant to experience for God. Sometimes
people who are attacking Christian faith will argue the other way round, saying that a Christian’s
love for God is “really” love for one’s father, or repressed sexual desire, or desire for safety…
But Christians believe that our first and most basic duty of love is toward God. As we discussed
in the first chapter, we’re made to desire God, to be drawn to Him, to be attracted by His glorious
beauty. When our acts of loving are functioning properly, what most delights us in other
creatures is precisely the things in them that reflect something of God’s loveliness. These other
loves train us in how to love well, and when we do that properly we should find that our loving
desire for God grows stronger and stronger. In other words, the sort of love that should be
dominant in our love for God is eros, attraction and longing. Earlier we’ve talked about a
gravitational pull toward God that is embedded in us; that is the love of eros.

Therefore, Augustine speaks of our “restless hearts,” our longing and desperate hearts, that can
only rest in God, even though we spend a great deal of time trying to get them to rest somewhere
else. Therefore, Jonathan Edwards speaks about “the sense of the heart,” a specific kind of love
that is tied up with the will, motivating us to turn toward the Good and let it draw us. Therefore,
Francis of Assisi cheerfully embraces radical poverty and even physical injury because his
overwhelming experience of longing for God made everything else pale in comparison.
Therefore, C. S. Lewis builds a whole argument for the existence of God and the supernatural
realm from the common human experience of longing for something that we cannot find in the
world around us. Therefore, the Psalmist says he desires God the way a deer pants for water
when it is being chased in the hunt (Psalm 42). We long for the life for which we were made. We
long for the home from which we have been exiled.

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C. S. Lewis didn’t make these up; they’re ancient ideas. But he did write a book called The Four Loves, and then
he delivered the four chapters as lectures, which were recorded. So you can get the audio book with Lewis himself
as the reader. And then – to make things even better – the great public servant behind “C. S. Lewis Doodle” has
posted real-time illustrations accompanying each of the four lectures on YouTube. Not to be missed.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9boiLqIabFjljx2sUeqOz_0QDlYL_Hoi .
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