T
Thomas_Jennings
Guest
There I was, wondering if CS Lewis thought God was of an infinite nature when I stumbled upon this casual quote from one of his lesser known works ‘Case for the Christian Faith’ about his argument from desire (namely, that our deep desire must be for something that exists)…
“Someone who wanted to object to this argument might reply with the modern view that ‘divine dissatisfaction’, a constant search for something beyond what we have, is a characteristic valuable for survival. Thus its existence and persistence can be explained on grounds of evolution by natural selection. The price one pays for taking this line is that it makes the desires in question unsatisfiable in principle. If our ‘infinite longings’ do not mean that an infinite object exists to satisfy them, then they mean that we shall never be satisfied”
‘an infinite object’. It surprises me- a lot- why so little on the subject of God’s ‘infiniteness’ is written when it’s an astonishing thought! There we have just seen my favourite author mention it as if (should God exist) it were a given. Maybe it is! Facinating.
But what is He an infinite object of? Not JUST Love, for He’s evidently more beside…
But many writers use ‘infinite’ as hyperbole and it is hard to know when they are using it otherwise…
‘Infinite joy’ is often used to mean ‘it will feel amazing’ rather than ‘joy has infinite qualities that can allways expand and grow in the amount felt’.
“Someone who wanted to object to this argument might reply with the modern view that ‘divine dissatisfaction’, a constant search for something beyond what we have, is a characteristic valuable for survival. Thus its existence and persistence can be explained on grounds of evolution by natural selection. The price one pays for taking this line is that it makes the desires in question unsatisfiable in principle. If our ‘infinite longings’ do not mean that an infinite object exists to satisfy them, then they mean that we shall never be satisfied”
‘an infinite object’. It surprises me- a lot- why so little on the subject of God’s ‘infiniteness’ is written when it’s an astonishing thought! There we have just seen my favourite author mention it as if (should God exist) it were a given. Maybe it is! Facinating.
But what is He an infinite object of? Not JUST Love, for He’s evidently more beside…
But many writers use ‘infinite’ as hyperbole and it is hard to know when they are using it otherwise…
‘Infinite joy’ is often used to mean ‘it will feel amazing’ rather than ‘joy has infinite qualities that can allways expand and grow in the amount felt’.
(You’re a Lewis fan, I assume you get that joke.)