Good infection! A third doodle on the Trinity from the pen of C.S. Lewis looking at the Holy Spirit. “God is Love” but this does not mean “Love is God”. It may not mean that all our feelings of love are necessarily godly...

This is an illustration of C.S. Lewis’ third talk from his fourth radio series called ‘Beyond Personality: Or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity’. This became Chapter 4 of Book 4 in his book called ‘Mere Christianity’...You can find the book here: amazon.com/Mere-Christianity-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652926

(0:06) Tuberculosis (also called consumption) is a potentially serious infectious bacterial disease that mainly affects the lungs & caused widespread public concern in the 19th & early 20th centuries as the disease became more common. In 1815 one in four deaths in England was due to "consumption". In the 1880s the infected poor were "encouraged" to enter sanatoria that resembled prisons.

(4:36) ". . . When people try to get rid of manlike, or, as they are called, 'anthropomorphic,' images, they merely succeed in substituting images of some other kinds. 'I don't believe in a personal God,' says one, 'but I do believe in a great spiritual force.' What he has not noticed is that the word 'force' has let in all sorts of images about winds & tides electricity & gravitation. 'I don't believe in a personal God,' says another, 'but I do believe we are all parts of one great Being which moves & works through us all'—not noticing that he has merely exchanged the image of a fatherly & royal-looking man for the image of some widely extended gas or fluid. A girl I knew was brought up by 'higher thinking' parents to regard God as perfect 'substance.' In later life she realized that this had actually led her to think of Him as something like a vast tapioca pudding. (To make matters worse, she disliked tapioca.) We may feel ourselves quite safe from this degree of absurdity, but we are mistaken. If a man watches his own mind, I believe he will find that what profess to be specially advanced or philosophic conceptions of God are, in his thinking, always accompanied by vague images which, if inspected, would turn out to be even more absurd than the manlike images aroused by Christian theology. For man, after all, is the highest of the things we meet in sensuous experience" (Lewis, Time magazine, 1947).

(6:53) “At this point we must remind ourselves that Christian theology does not believe God to be a person. It believes Him to be such that in Him a trinity of persons is consistent with a unity of Deity. In that sense it believes Him to be something very different from a person, just as a cube, in which six squares are consistent with unity of the body, is different from a square. (Flatlanders, attempting to imagine a cube, would either imagine the six squares coinciding, & thus destroy their distinctness, or else imagine them set out side by side, & thus destroy the unity. Our difficulties about the Trinity are of much the same kind.) (The Poison of Subjectivism).

(6:01) There are some instances where love of self, love of a friend, love of a child, love of a king & love of family had to be rebuked in Scripture to some degree, & these rebukes can still apply today.

See scriptural rebukes of love:
-God's rebukes of self-love ( biblehub.com/job/32-2.htm , biblehub.com/job/40-8.htm )
-God's rebuke of friendship love ( biblehub.com/2_chronicles/19-2.htm )
-A commanders rebuke of parental love ( biblehub.com/2_samuel/19-6.htm )
-God's rebuke of love for a King ( biblehub.com/1_samuel/16-1.htm )
-Christ's rebuke of his mother Mary & brothers ( biblehub.com/matthew/12-48.htm , biblehub.com/luke/8-21.htm , or even of maternal bonds when required: biblehub.com/luke/11-28.htm)

More on this in Lewis' talk on Agape love: youtu.be/gaVaGGpeQKM?t=425 (7m 6sec). More from Lewis on making a god of romantic love also: Eros youtu.be/WReLIE08Dnc?t=1393 (7m 5sec)

(12:04) John 1.1-5 "In the beginning was the Word, & the Word was with God, & the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, & without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, & the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, & the darkness did not comprehend it." biblehub.com/john/1-1.htm

(12:49) Anyone feel like joining a Greek dance line, smashin’ some plates & yelling ‘Opa!/ώπα!’? Music taken from the soundtrack to the ‘The Guns of Navarone’.

The magazine article shows italics as follows (in capitals): "Instead of being ON the table"; “does not come AFTER the cause”; “as if the Father & Son were two THINGS, rather than two persons”; “Love is what one PERSON has for another PERSON…”; "then before the world was made He was NOT love" ; "is a REAL person"; “How could he NOT die…” : "what CAN he do but wither and die?"

• Good Infection by C.S. Lewis Doodle (BBC Talk 21, Mere Christianity, Bk 4, Chapter 4) ( Download)
• Nice People or New Men by C.S. Lewis Doodle (BBC Talk 24B, Mere Christianity, Bk 4, Chapter 10) ( Download)
• Obstinate Toy Soldiers by C.S. Lewis Doodle (BBC Talk 22, Mere Christianity, Bk 4, Chapter 5) ( Download)
• Is Christianity Hard or Easy by C.S. Lewis Doodle (BBC Talk 24, Mere Christianity, Bk 4, Chapter 8) ( Download)
• The Three-Personal God by C.S. Lewis Doodle (BBC Talk 20, Mere Christianity, Bk 4, Chapter 2) ( Download)
• Let’s Pretend by C.S. Lewis Doodle (BBC Talk 23, Mere Christianity, Bk 4, Chapter 7) ( Download)
• Counting the Cost by C.S. Lewis Doodle (BBC Talk 24A, Mere Christianity, Bk 4, Chapter 9) ( Download)
• Morality and Psychoanalysis by C.S. Lewis Doodle (BBC Talk 13, Mere Christianity, Bk 3, Chapter 4) ( Download)
• Faith (‘Faith and Works’) by C.S. Lewis Doodle (BBC Talk 18, Mere Christianity, Bk 3, Chapter 12) ( Download)
• Charity, II. Love by C.S. Lewis Doodle (BBC Talk 16A, Mere Christianity, Bk 3, Chapter 9) ( Download)
• S1E32 – MC B4C4 – “Good Infection” ( Download)
• The Great Sin by C. S. Lewis Doodle (BBC Talk 16, Mere Christianity, Bk. 3, Chapter 8). ( Download)
• Mere Christianity: 4.6 - Two Notes ( Download)
• Hope by C.S. Lewis Doodle (BBC Talk 16B, Mere Christianity, Bk 3, Chapter 10) ( Download)
• Mere Christianity book 4 chapter 5 C S Lewis ( Download)