In the next two chapters, Time and Beyond Time and Good Infection, Lewis takes a deeper look at the eternal nature of God. Lewis wants the reader to understand that an understanding of God and how He relates to time is not a crucial aspect to Christianity, but it is helpful to understand how God has existed from all eternity.

I think it is important to remember that we are finite, limited people trying to grasp the infinite understanding of God, and we will always fall short. We can never truly grasp the complexity of God as He knows Himself. Adam and Eve attempted this, and we continue to experience the pains of their rebellion as it continues in ourselves.

Dr. John Currid, professor of Old Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary, drew attention to the fact that one of the greatest gifts the Jewish people gave mankind was a linear view of time. There was a distinct beginning, and we continue along a trajectory. However, as Lewis says, we have characterized God functioning in the same way. “We tend to assume that the whole universe and God Himself are always moving on from past to future just as we do” (147).

The problem with this view is that it makes God limited and reactionary. God, not knowing the “full” picture of time and eternity, is always reacting to the actions of humanity. Thus, it makes Him limited in His power and sovereignty over creation. I don’t think that is the God of the Bible; that’s not an accurate picture of the eternal nature of God.

At the same time, we have to avoid over-simplifying Lewis’ view as well. I fully believe God stands outside time in that He is not bound by the progression from past to future. The first word of the Hebrew Bible testifies to this: “In the beginning…”. That very word demonstrates God standing outside time, but it also shows God actively involved in His creation.

In other words, we do not want to underestimate the personal nature of God – the God who condescends and meets His people where they are. To argue that God is a “Divine Watchmaker” is a gross misinterpretation of Scripture and the character of God. He did not create Creation and then set things into motion, only to take a “hands-off” approach; He created the world and all that inhabits it and is actively involved in all aspects.

There is nothing, in all of Scripture and Creation, that exemplifies God’s personal nature more thoroughly than the relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the next chapter, Good Infection, Lewis’ premise lies in the eternal, personal nature of the Triune God: “The Son exists because the Father exists: but there never was a time before the Father produced the Son” (151).

A very important and crucial aspect of God’s personality is love, but it is a love very different than how the world now thinks of love.

Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love… They [Christians] believe that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God for ever and has created everything else… And that, by the way, is perhaps the more important difference between Christianity and all other religions: that in Christianity God is not a static thing – not even a person – but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama (152).

The loving quality of God is evident in the person and work of Christ and the Holy Spirit, who are God in being but different persons of the Trinity.

Lewis puts the person and work of the Trinity in perspective. He says, “In the Christian life you are not usually looking at Him: He is always acting through you. If you think of the Father as something ‘out there,’ in front of you, and of the Son as someone standing at your side, helping you to pray, trying to turn you into another son, then you have to think of the third Person as something inside you, or behind you” (153).

I think it is important to understand that the primary nature of God is characterized by love, a love that pursues a people that flee from the presence of God out of rebellion. Yet, God does not waver from His enduring and persistent love; He simply cannot! How is this most evident? He sacrifices His Son for the sins which one cannot atone by human means. It is only through the work of Christ that one can be forgiven and the Holy Sprit moves in the heart to believe.

We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has – by what I call ‘good infection,’ Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else (154).