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).

In the next two chapters, which end this section, Lewis looks at two aspects of faith: reason and moral effort, simply put. I believe this is the rub in Christianity for a majority of people, both those who are “intrigued” by Christianity and those who profess to be Christian and wrestle to understand themselves before God. Lewis provides us a bit of insight on both matters.

First, especially in recent years, there has been a renewed interest in reason, especially as it relates to the discussions of faith and science. Language such as “evidence” is often used. Lee Strobel is an example. The title of his best selling book is The Case for Christ. Like a lawyer or investigator, he compiles the evidence. After a thorough “investigation” he concludes Christianity to be true and becomes a believer.

For Lewis, reason precedes faith. In many circles, this is a large debate. It’s much like asking “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” God has given us reason by being created in His image, and yet, our reason is faulty by our mere nature. However, as he indicates, I think many often think in terms of reason and faith as they relate to mood.

This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods ‘where they get off,’ you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. (125)

I believe that if we look at Faith from a Scriptural perspective, we would see that it is something much more than what we think. It is not a words used flippantly in Scripture. We see characters of the Bible use their reason over and over, and it only leads to heartache and pain. Don’t you think David reasoned about Bathsheba. But Faith is quite a different matter for it is a gift from God. It is the thing that turns our wayward hearts to something more than ourselves. Faith forces reason to look outward and upward. I think this is what Lewis means when he says, “Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given [to] you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already” (126).

Faith, as Lewis deals with it in the next chapter, focuses quite a different aspect. It is a faith that one knows from the inside. It is a familial faith. Many look at Faith from the inside and don’t quite understand it. Lewis puts it this way: “And as long as a man is thinking of God as an examiner who has het him a sort of paper to do, or as the opposite party in a sort of bargain – as long as he is thinking of claims and counterclaims between himself and God – he is not yet in the right relation to Him” (129).

Many have called this by different terms but essentially they mean the same thing. They use such terms as “moral perfectionism” or “legalism”. In either sense, the idea is to earn God’s favor through acts of goodness and kindness. Many Christians live their lives this way and feel tremendous discouragement and even possibly resentment to God.

But that is not the way of Christian; that is not the way the Bible has explained Faith. This is not the way Christ taught His disciples.

Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But in trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you. (131)

Faith is a multifaceted word, used throughout Scripture to understand our relationship with God, both as unbelievers and believers. It is clear from Scripture that it is essential to the Christian life, for one cannot stand before the Lord without it. It not only brings us into a right relationship with Him through the perfect obedience of Christ, but it also assures us of God’s everlasting love. Faith should not bring us assurance of our salvation but rest in the concrete reality of God’s grace.