Book Review
The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis &
the Gospel of Narnia
Fr. Rand York
“And if there’s life on other planets, then I’m sure
that he must know
And he’s been there once already and has died to
save their souls”
– Larry Norman, UFO
You can only get there by magic, so
Narnia is not properly another planet, but Larry Norman’s words make an
important and relevant point: The Creator will not countenance evil to have a
free hand in destroying what he has made and proclaimed to be “very good”
(Genesis 1:31). The Lion, The Witch, and
The Wardrobe is a work of fiction, since made into a successful movie, but
it is very much a monograph, as a treatise on the gospel story of sin and
salvation. As fiction, however, it comes into the hall of debate by the back
door, which is in this case by the wardrobe door.
I had the privilege of working part-time
with Dr. Clyde S. Kilby from 1977 to 1979 in the Wade Collection at Wheaton
College (unpaid of course – for me it was a passion), answering mail containing
questions about Narnia. It struck me at the time how many people were so moved
by the story of Aslan that their very hearts became insatiable sponges longing
to know more. Many years later, I knew an atheist attorney-turned-trader at the
Chicago Board of Trade who began reading The
Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe to his little girl, only to put it away
in horror, once he recognized the gospel connection. He thought he had picked up
a children’s story, and found he had in his hands a “full-blown Christian
treatise on sin and salvation.” He and I had many long conversations after this
“discovery,” moving him from atheism to agnosticism, and eventually to
Christian belief that landed him in the Episcopal Church.
The
Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, published by Macmillan, is the first
book of The Chronicles of Narnia, a
series of seven children’s books written with C.S. Lewis. An Oxford don
teaching at Magdalene College for most of his career, Lewis spent his final
years holding the chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge. He
was a successful author in a wide range of endeavors, including poetry, adult
fiction, Christian apologetics, literary criticism, and of course, children’s
books.
The
Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is set initially in the context of a
visit by four children to a professor in the countryside in order to escape the
London air raids of World War II. It was first published in 1950, only a few years
after Lewis himself had four children stay with him to get away from the dangers of living in London during World
War II.
To retell the story of Narnia here
would not be helpful and would not do it justice, but there are many aspects of
it that are reflective of the gospel story itself and are for that very reason
worth highlighting. The publishing success not only of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, but of the entire Narnia
series is due in great measure to its proximity to the gospel story, which is
indeed “the greatest story ever told” and the story we are made for.
Lewis did not set out to do this. He
intended to write a simple children’s story for his goddaughter, Lucy Barfield.
In that sense, the story simply wrote itself, beginning with a girl, Lucy,
meeting a faun, Tumnus, in a snowy wood. It is not long before the reader
discovers that the winter beauty of that world is in reality a permanent
blanket of cold evil over the land: “Why, it is [the White Witch] that has got
all Narnia under her thumb. It’s she that makes it always winter. Always winter
and never Christmas; think of that!” (p. 16)
Winter is a time when things do not
grow, and in nature life itself slows nearly to a standstill. To complete this
attack on life, the witch reserves for her special enemies the distinction of
turning them into cold stone statues to decorate her frozen palace. Dante used
the imagery of a block of ice to show hell as a place of no more becoming. This
was the witch’s goal in her rule of Narnia.
But Father Christmas does come to
Narnia, heralding the arrival of Aslan. Just as the coming of Christ breaks
Satan’s hold on creation, so the coming of Aslan breaks the witch’s hold on
Narnia, destroying her winter spell and bringing spring and new life. Aslan’s
very breath imbues the warmth of life to the frozen stone statues. This is
restoration filled with joy. This is healing.
Salvation is the central theme of
the gospel story, and so it is here as Aslan offers his own life in place of
the traitor Edmund. An image of fallen mankind, Edmund is also a figure of
Judas Iscariot. It was Edmund who left during the dinner in the Beavers’ house
in order to betray them all to the White Witch, just as it was Judas who left
during the dinner in the upper room in order to betray Jesus to the chief
priests (Luke 22:4; John 13:30). Both acted to complete a betrayal they had
already managed beforehand. As a traitor, Edmund’s life becomes forfeit, but
unlike Judas, Edmund faces Aslan, rejoins Aslan’s followers, and is restored to
himself as he was made to be (see Psalm 23:3).
Peter is aptly named, as the one to
whom Aslan gives ultimate authority as high king in the kingdom of Narnia, even
as Christ gave to the Apostle Peter the keys of authority in the kingdom of
God. Neither were called to rule alone as autocrats, but both were called to
serve and defend: the Apostle Peter as a shepherd to defend the flock of his
Christian brothers and sisters from figurative wolves, and Peter Pevensie as a
knight to defend his real sisters against real wolves.
Lucy, as the youngest of the four
Pevensie children, is closest to Aslan’s heart and is the first of them to
enter Narnia. “Let the children come to me” (Luke 18:16) is applicable to all
the Pevensie children (which is the very reason it is children from our world whom Aslan calls to Narnia in this story,
and not grown-ups), but it is especially true of Lucy. She is also given the
gift of healing in the form of a diamond bottle containing “a cordial made of
the juice of one of the fire-flowers that grow in the mountains of the sun” (p.
112), with which she is to anoint the sick and wounded, and they will be healed
(see James 5:14).
In the gospels, women have a
preferred place in witnessing Christ’s death and resurrection, and so it is
also in Narnia. Susan and Lucy are the only ones among Aslan’s followers who
are with him in his final hour and see him die, and they are the first to see
him after his resurrection. In Aslan’s death, the Deep Magic from the dawn of
time is satisfied. In his resurrection, it is superceded by the Deeper Magic
from before the dawn of time in which the sacrifice of “a willing victim who
had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table itself
would crack and Death itself would start working backward” (p. 169). The Easter
Orthodox celebrate Christ’s resurrection by singing, “Christ has risen from the
dead, trampling down death by death!” It is the Deeper Magic in which death
brings about the death of death.
The story culminates in a great
battle between the forces of good and evil, of Aslan and the White Witch, that
is reminiscent of Armageddon. Overall, The
Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is both a children’s book and a
theological treatise exploring God’s love, salvation, and healing in a
magically fresh setting.
©2013 Rand York
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