As created beings, as human persons created in God’s image, we are inexorably related to our Creator. There is within all of us the need not only to know what our Creator thinks of us, but since the separation of that relationship due to the Fall of man into sin, there is also a longing for the restoration of that relationship. As Augustine expressed it, “…you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they can find peace in you.” C. S. Lewis elaborates on the theme of human longing and potential in his essay titled The Weight of Glory.[1] In it he contemplates how we as sinful creatures can be a source of pleasure to the Creator. He discusses this as a real possibility because the Creator desires such a relationship with his human creatures. Even after the Fall, God has made a way for this to be so. Indeed, the creature is ultimately fulfilled when it does just that – “pleases God” his Creator. God alone has made this possible for each of us. Lewis writes,
“In the end that Face which is the delight or terror of the universe must be turned upon each of us either with one expression or with the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised. I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of Him is of no importance except in so far as it is related to how he thinks of us. It is written that we shall “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive the examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God…to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son – it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”[2]
In the previous section we saw the importance of being assured of God’s good intentions to each of us individually. Here, Lewis reflects upon the joy of the thought that any of us could possibly be a source of pleasure to God. But again, all this is predicated upon what God thinks of us. It is based upon the fact that God has made a way for the fulfillment of this internal desire he has placed in us for himself. Our Creator desires that we be, and we really can be, an “ingredient in the divine happiness.” Interestingly, Vanhoozer acknowledges this desire on God’s part for his creatures. He writes,
“The good God wills for human beings is communion: fellowship with one another and fellowship with God.”[3]
Vanhoozer also talks about God “consummating” persons according to what “they were always meant to be.” He states,
“Triune dialogical consummation is a matter of God’s acting not on persons but within and through them in such a way that, precisely by so acting, God brings them to their senses and makes them into the creatures they were always meant to be.” (RT, 370)
It is obviously critical to know what God thinks of us and for it to be a true fact that God has only good and not evil in mind towards us. Only upon such a basis can our God-given spiritual longings be fulfilled, and we can properly respond to God as individual persons. The inflicting of “shame that can never be cured or disguised” will be the result of failing to partake in “the promise of glory” that is made possible by “the work of Christ.” That “promise of glory” is that “any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive the examination, shall find approval, shall please God.”
Each of us, because we were created by God in his image, must know, and indeed can know, here and now, that it is a real possibility to “find approval,” “to please God…to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness.” We must be assured that we are truly loved by God and may partake in “the promise of glory,” a promise “almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ.” Lewis offers us a glimpse into our innate need to be in right relationship with God and the assurance that we can truly be an “ingredient in the divine happiness.” What God was doing “in Christ” reveals that He intends just that for all of us. God has in mind a good end for each of his human creatures. Essential to the gospel message, and consonant with our being, is that this promise is for “any of us who really chooses.” This is the biblical testimony to the necessity of a response of faith to what God has already determined to do for us, a response that is possible only on the assurance that “how God thinks of us” is always and only good. He is not indifferent to us, he does not wish us harm, what he has communicated “in Christ” surely applies to all of us without exception for we are all sinners in need of salvation. This is the “good news” which is in stark contrast to the possibility that God may have unconditionally and unalterably predetermined any one of us to eternal separation from him. The divine thoughts and actions must offer eternal life and hope, not suggest the possibility of a very real, fixed predestination by God himself to separation from him, death and eternal damnation. Faith, worship, and praise, as a personal response to God, can only be realized in the context of a message of hope that surely applies to the individual hearing it. It requires that God’s thoughts about us be of good intention. Every person must know that God truly loves them for them to respond positively to God and not despair in this life and for eternity. How can we be assured of God’s love? We know this by his work “in Christ” on our behalf. He has expressed his love for all “in Christ.”
In accord with Vanhoozer’s themes of “God-in-communicative-act” and “dialogical relation,” Lewis goes on to point out that there is a fundamental longing in each of us not to be “treated as strangers” but rather “to meet with some response,” “to be called in, welcomed, received, acknowledged.” These desires are instilled in every person by God himself. Would he then not seek to open a way by which they may be fulfilled? Although we are sinners who will one day stand before the sovereign Creator of the universe and supreme Judge of all, yet, his name is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex. 34:6). This God has made a way for us to rightly understand these desires and for them to be properly fulfilled. Lewis writes about the glory God has planned for us and desires us to experience as those created to please Him.
“We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory meant good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgement, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.
Perhaps it seems rather crude to describe glory as the fact of being “noticed” by God. But this is almost the language of the New Testament. St. Paul promises to those who love God not as we would expect, that they will know Him, but that they will be known by Him (1 Cor. viii. 3). It is a strange promise. Does not God know all things at all times? But it is dreadfully re-echoed in another passage of the New Testament. There we are warned that it may happen to any one of us to appear at last before the face of God and hear only the appalling words: “I never knew you. Depart from Me.” In some sense, as dark to the intellect as it is unendurable to the feelings, we can be both banished from the presence of Him who is present everywhere and erased from the knowledge of Him who knows all. We can be left utterly and absolutely outside – repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored. On the other hand, we can be called in, welcomed, received, acknowledged. We walk every day on the razor edge between these two incredible possibilities. Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing, to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honor beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.”[4]
An essential element of the Christian gospel is to state the case that to be in Christ by faith is for us to one day be “summoned inside” and to finally know “the healing of that old ache.” It is to proclaim that God had from all eternity decided to be for us as sinners, to provide a savior – Jesus Christ – and on that basis to call all men to faith in Christ so we can actually please God (Heb. 11:6), that we can experience glory which is that “good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgement, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.” This grand design is all of God. In our helplessness and hopelessness God himself comes to us in Christ who is the light of the world. The reality of this longing which we all have – “to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off” – stems from the original intent of God that we commune with him; a communion that was broken by man’s disobedience and fall into sin. When we presently attempt to fill this longing with anything other than God, we of course remain unfulfilled. The gospel comes to heal this “old ache” with the “good news” that God has made a way whereby we can find acceptance with him, that we will indeed “stand before him” and “survive the examination, shall find approval, shall please God.” There is from God himself acknowledgement, a response, “a welcome into the heart of things.” The “good news” is that thanks to God “we can be called in, welcomed, received, acknowledged.” “To be a real ingredient in the divine happiness…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son.” Lewis argues for the fact that we all have a desire to be on “the inside” and that this is the “truest index of our real situation.”
If this is so, then this is God’s true desire for us. We must conclude that as far as God is concerned He does not possess “two wills” in conflict with each other. One will expressing his desire that we come to him and be saved and another will that has determined that many should not be saved. This is not to advocate universalism, for Lewis certainly points out the possibility that “we can be both banished from the presence of Him who is present everywhere and erased from the knowledge of Him who knows all. We can be left utterly and absolutely outside – repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored.” But such an end is not anyone’s fixed destiny by God’s predetermination. If this were the case, it would be inconsistent with the biblical truths Lewis has brought to our attention. It would be a distortion of Vanhoozer’s own claims that it is the Creator’s desire to be in “communion” with his human creatures made in his image and for them to be part of what pleases God. God also desires to take pleasure in his human creatures and to be pleased with his creation. It is of his very nature to make a way for this to be a possibility. It would be highly problematic in light of Lewis’ discussion and Vanhoozer’s own claims to perceive God as having no such good intentions whatsoever towards a multitude of his creatures made in his image for relationship with him by suggesting an “effectual call” with all its deterministic implications, that is, that God predestined a multitude of people to “be left utterly and absolutely outside – repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored.” The point is that we cannot reconcile the fact that God made man in his own image with a desire for mutual communion and that Scripture clearly states that “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8, NIV), with a doctrine of an “effectual call” that requires a dark, mysterious unknown decision of God in which he unchangeably predestined many to eternal death. Rather, God has made the way possible by the response of faith “in Christ” to come inside and not “be left utterly and absolutely outside.”
Lewis’ position is more in accord with the biblical depiction of God’s nature and human freedom. He speaks of “two incredible possibilities” echoing the overwhelming testimony in Scripture to contingency and human decision with regard to one’s eternal destiny. He rightly speaks of the biblical “warning” that we not “appear at last before the face of God and hear only the appalling words: “I never knew you. Depart from Me.”” And he stresses the gospel message, when he says “the promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive the examination, shall find approval, shall please God.” Lewis’ position, that the work of Christ demolishes all human merit yet presents us with the choice of believing or remaining in unbelief better accounts for the Creator/creature relationship, man as made in God’s image, salvific possibility, warning and promise, and the nature of faith. This position can more coherently account for the many corresponding biblical truths that are otherwise left in abeyance by Calvinist thought (e.g., the reality of moral responsibility, the single gospel call, the response of faith, ethical accountability and action which affirm the reality of contingency that we find throughout Scripture).
Lewis elaborates on the ethical imperative involved in this possibility of “glory” for each man.
“The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You never talked to a mere mortal…it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”[5]
Therefore, it is certainly inconsistent with the biblical “good news” to suggest that we may be predetermined by God himself, before we even come into existence, to be an “immortal horror.” This is a thought “as dark to the intellect as it is unendurable to the feelings,” that is, the thought that God himself predestined that certain of his creatures were made for the very purpose that they would be “repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored.” And furthermore we can never know why God would do this to one person and not another and whether or not we ourselves are destined to receive the “effectual call” regardless of hearing the “general” gospel call. Rather, the biblical gospel is that God has made a way in Christ for the fulfillment of that desire for himself that resides within each human person being made in his image for fellowship with him. What God thinks of us is rooted in the way God has made us all as human beings. “There are no ordinary people.” God’s thoughts to us are “yea and amen” in Christ. He presently welcomes us through faith in Christ, and will therefore welcome in the future those who are believing “into the heart of things.” The point to note is that Vanhoozer’s theology is inconsistent here. For although he speaks as does Lewis about God’s desire to be in communion with his human creatures, he goes on to inexplicably contradict that theological truth with the doctrines of an unconditional election and effectual call which teach that God, in arbitrary fashion, does not desire such communion with a host of his human creatures.
Back to “The Vanhoozer Essays”
[1] C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949).
[2] Ibid., 10.
[3] Kevin J. Vanhoozer, First Theology: God, Scripture & Hermeneutics, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 91.
[4] C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949), 10-12.
[5] Ibid. 14-15.
The Truth of the Gospel 