C.S. Lewis on the Actuality of the Incarnation: Triune Simultaneity and the Will of God

Abstract

C.S. Lewis eschewed the multifarious and apparently contradictory atonement theories, yet he implicitly promulgated specifically ‘debt’ and ‘ransom’ models. Within his understanding of the Cross as the central mechanism of atonement Lewis tackled the paradox of Incarnation through a proposition, almost a motif, of analogical narrative in which he sought to explain the actuality of the Incarnation: how God could be made in human flesh (John 1:14a), grounded in triune simultaneity – how God could be both eternal and actual After examining the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of revelation, we can analyse Lewis's statement: ‘if Shakespeare and Hamlet could ever meet, it must be Shakespeare's doing’. Lewis's proposition raises questions about temporality, and modernist objections to theistic belief, but essentially about the will of the triune God.