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The Real C.S. Lewis

Part 3His Life and Writings: Myth, Narnia (and other writings)

“You’ll never get to the bottom of him.”

J.R.R. Tolkien

Complied by

Paulo F. Ribeiro

MBA, PhD, PE, IEEE Fellow

March 21, 2004, ADGrand Rapids

LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church

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C.S. Lewis: Making Pictures

“To forbid the making of pictures about God would be to forbid thinking a about God at all, for man is so made that he has no way to think except in pictures.” Dorothy Sayers

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Evangelical (and Reformed) Christians have often lacked an effective method and a language for addressing the challenges of our current age.

We have the will and the passion to defend our faith, the biblical knowledge and charity to support our arguments, but something is missing in our language/vocabulary. We seem powerless to engage, and transform the secular world.

CS Lewis can help us with his gift of Precise ThinkingImagination

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Precise Thinking and Imagination:

1- Lewis spent the first half of his life as an atheist and a materialist for whom the Gospels shared the same mythic (nonhistorical) status as Greek and Norse mythology but lacked their aesthetic beauty and imaginative power.

2 - The tendency for intellectual precision and emotional self-protection grew during the early years of World War I, when Lewis got the chance to study under a private tutor who was an obsessively rational thinker who beat into Lewis head the need for clear, rational thinking free from all subjective speculation and emotion. Most students would have crumbled under such relentless logic; to Lewis it was "red beef and strong beer."

But had Lewis brought to Christian apologetics only his skills as a logician, his works would not have been as effective. The mature Lewis tempered his logic with a love for beauty, wonder, and magic. His conversion to Christ not only freed his mind; it freed his heart to embrace fully his earlier passion for mythology.

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“Human intellect is incurably abstract . . . Yet the only realities we experience are concrete—this pain, this pleasure, this dog, this man. While we are loving the man, bearing the pain, enjoying the pleasure, we are not intellectually apprehending Pleasure, Pain or Personality.

This is our dilemma—either to taste and not to know or to know and not to taste—or, more strictly, to lack one kind of knowledge because we are outside it. As thinkers we are cut off from what we think about; as tasting, touching, willing, living, hating, we do not clearly understand. The more lucidly we think, the more we are cut off: the more deeply we enter into reality, the less we can think. You cannot study Pleasure in the moment of the nuptial embrace, nor repentance while repenting, not analyze the nature of humor while roaring with laughter.

‘If only my toothache would stop, I could write another chapter about Pain.’ But once it stops, what do I know about pain?

Myth Became Fact

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“Of this tragic dilemma myth is the partial solution. In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction.

When we translate we get abstraction—or rather, dozens of abstractions. What flows into you from the myth is not truth but reality (truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is), and, therefore, every myth becomes the father of innumerable truths on the abstract level. Myth is the mountain whence all the different streams arise which become truths down here in the valley. Or, if you prefer, myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with that vast continent we really belong to. It is not, like truth, abstract; nor is it, like direct experience, bound to the particular.”

Myth Became Fact

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“The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens—at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. … God is more than god, not less: Christ is more than Balder, not less. We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. We must not be nervous about "parallels" and "pagan Christs": they ought to be there—it would be a stumbling block if they weren't. We must not, in false spirituality, withhold our imaginative welcome. If God chooses to be mythopoeic—and is not the sky itself a myth—shall we refuse to be mythopathic?

Myth Became Fact

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“It must not be supposed that I am in any sense putting forward the imagination as the organ of truth. We are not talking of truth, but of meaning: meaning which is the antecedent condition both of truth and falsehood, whose antithesis is not error but nonsense. I am a rationalist. For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition. It is, I confess, undeniable that such a view indirectly implies a kind of truth or rightness in the imagination itself.”

Selected Literary Essays, Bluspels and Flalanspheres: A Semantic Nightmare

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Lewis rigorously defends the fairy tale against any who claims that it gives a false conception of life. The fact is that this is the direct opposite of the truth and it is the so-called realistic stories which deceive children. The fairy tale, like the myth, on the one hand arouses longing for more ideal worlds and on the other gives the real world a new dimension of depth.

The boy "does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little more enchanted." The child reading the fairy tale is delighted simply in desiring, while the child reading a "realistic" story may establish the success of its hero as a standard for himself and, when he cannot have the same success, may suffer bitter disappointment.

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From a theological perspective Lewis saw true myths as memories or echoes of God Himself and He left us with human imagination as their receptor. He explained this relationship in describing how he came to write the Narnia Chronicles, as a mythological expression of the Gospel story:

"It was he [the imaginative man] who, after my conversion, led me to embody my religious belief in symbolical or mythopoeic form, ranging from Screwtape to a kind of theological science fiction. And it was of course he who has brought me, in the last few years, to write the series of Narnian stories for children; not asking what children want and then endeavoring to adapt myself but because the fairy tale was the genre best fitted for what I wanted to say."

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“The things I have symbolized by North and South, which are to me equal and opposite evils, each continually strengthened and made plausible by its critique of the other, enter our experience on many different levels. In agriculture we have to fear both the barren soil and the soil which is irresistibly fertile. In the animal kingdom, the crustacean and the jellyfish represent two low solutions of the problem of existence. In our eating, the palate revolts both from excessive bitter and excessive sweet. Everyone can pick out among his own acquaintance the complexions, dryness and taciturnity of the one, the open mouths, the facile laughter and tears, the garrulity and (so to speak) general greasiness of the others. The Northerners are the men of rigid systems whether skeptical or dogmatic, Aristocrats, Stoics, Pharisees, Rigorists, signed and sealed members of highly organized "Parties". The Southerners are by their very nature less definable; boneless souls whose doors stand open day and night to almost every visitant, but always with readiest welcome for those who offer some sort of intoxication. Every feeling is justified by the mere fact that it is felt: for a Northerner, every feeling on the same ground is suspect. An arrogant and hasty selectiveness on some narrow a priori basis cuts him off from the sources of life.

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In Theology also there is a North and a South. The one exaggerates the distinctiveness between Grace and Nature into a sheer opposition and by vilifying the higher levels of Nature makes the way hard for those who are at the point of coming in. The other blurs the distinction altogether, flatters mere kindliness into thinking it is charity and vague optimisms or pantheisms into thinking that they are Faith, and makes the way out fatally easy and imperceptible for the budding apostate. The two extremes do not coincide with Romanism (to the North) and Protestantism (to the South).

With both the "North" and the "South" a man has, I take it, only one concern--to avoid them and hold the Main Road. We must not hearken to the over-wise or to the over-foolish giant." We were made to be neither cerebral men nor visceral men, but Men. Not beasts nor angels but Men--things at once rational and animal.”

Pilgrim’s Regress

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Lewis’s Concept of Nature: Spoiled Goodness

Nature is more than a background setting for the action of his characters“Either there is significance in the whole process of things as well as in human activities, or there is no significance in human activity itself.” C.S. Lewis, The Personal Heresy, 1939.

Fresh exuberance of nature (This is no thaw; this is spring) - Glimpses of Redeemed Creation

Creation, Fall, Redemption

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Lewis’s Concept of God: The Coming of the Lion

"Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David,

has prevailed. Rev. 5:5

“’They say Aslan is on the move – perhaps has already landed’

And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don’t understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning – either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again. It was like that now. At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and and realize that its the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.”

The LWW

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Into Narnia:

•At the age of sixteen: picture in his mind of a faun carrying parcels and an umbrella in a snowy forest.

•Other pictures during the war; idea of Aslan (the greatest literary achievement of Lewis) came during the writing of the LWW; “he pulled the other stories after him.”

•Tolkien hated it (almost worthless, jumble or unrelated mythologies).

•If were not for Roger Green Lewis would not have completed the first book.

•LWW published in the autumn of 1950, followed by the six other books.

•Mixed reviews

•Theology of the heart;

•I would rather be in Narnia, wouldn’t you?

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The Origins of the Chronicles of Narnia

“In the process of writing the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis gradually expanded the breadth and scope of his literary ambitions. What was foreseen from the outset as a collection of stories for children developed into a complex depiction of an entire moral universe. As the seven books progress, Lewis unfolds the whole Divine plan for this universe from its creation to its apocalypse. However, the uniqueness of Lewis' literary achievement stems from the fact that Lewis manages to do two things at once. That is, he remains faithful to his original intention to write stories for children while adding in subtle moral and spiritual complexities. Thus, the Chronicles of Narnia are a series of books that can delight the senses as they challenge and stir the soul.”(Mark Bane)

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Narnia

Many Christian doctrines (Classical Christianity)

Doctrines fall into three categories:

Nature, God, Man’s Relationship to Nature, God and his fellow man.

Stories

-(1-4)London Children being evacuated to the country during WW II. Children Transported from this world into a world faire-tale creatures belonging to a great lion (four books on this scheme). The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe,

- (5)The tale of two native children of that world who are also chosen by the great lion to serve the land of Narnia and to know him in a special way.

- (6)The beginning of the world of Narnia - the intrusion of two Victorian children into the newborn world begins the complications which give rise to all the later adventures. (The Magician’s Nephew)

-(7)The end of Narnia (Last Battle)

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The Magician's Nephew

Digory Kirke (12) and Polly Plumber (11) are children living in London. After Digory moves in with his Aunt Letty and crazy Uncle Andrew, he meets Polly and they do some exploring. They make their way to Narnia, the new world created by the Great Lion, Aslan. They must save it from the evil witch, Jadis. The book is usually numbered either first or sixth, but some people recommend reading it second

The Main Theme: Power of (Pride, Temptation, Sin and Evil)

Key Symbol: Fruit of the Tree of Life

When and WhereChapter 1,2 LondonChapters 3,4,5 Trip to CharnChapters 6,7,8 LondonChapters 9,10,11 NarniaChapters 12, 13 Western WildChapters 14 NarniaChapters 15 London

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The Magician's Nephew

To discover the very beginnings of Narnia one should read The Magician's Nephew, actually the sixth book in the series of seven. The book might well be called The Beginnings of Narnia, or How the Wardrobe Gained Its Magic.

Digory was an old white-haired man when Peter and his friends first discovered that the wardrobe was a doorway into Narnia, yet the story really began when Digory was a boy in London and one morning stuck his head over the garden wall and found Polly looking up at him. Digory and his invalid mother were living with his uncle and aunt Ketterley while his father was away in India.'

Before the adventure was over they were to plant in Digory's yard the seeds of an apple brought back from Narnia, and long afterwards the wood from that same tree was to be used in making the magical wardrobe.

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The Magician's Nephew

The original adventure started when Digory and Polly accidentally discovered that Digory's unpleasant uncle was a dabbler in magic. This uncle's godmother, one of the last mortals on earth to possess any fairy blood, just before her death had given him a box containing dust from the lost island of Atlantis. She warned him as she was dying to burn the box. Instead he experimented with its contents and was able to make some little colored rings, yellow and green, with which he caused guinea pigs to disappear. The uncle was too cowardly to become his own subject but when Polly touched one of the yellow rings she disappeared. Digory, thoroughly disgusted with his uncle, took two of the green rings into his pocket and put a yellow one on his finger. Immediately he was transported to the Wood between the Worlds, where he found Polly. They discovered that by putting on the yellow rings and jumping into one of many' small lakes in the Wood they could go into other worlds.

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The Magician's Nephew

In this world of Nothing they saw Narnia created by a great Lion, Aslan. All, including the horse, were delighted except Uncle Andrew and Jadis who flung her iron guy at the Lion. It stuck in the ground, and because Aslan’s great creativity was at work making grass, trees, and all sorts of beings, the iron grew into a lamp post just like the one in London. The whole world seemed filled with right magic as Aslan worked. Jadis ran away and Uncle Andrew hid himself. An created fauns, dwarfs, and talking beasts.

Before this new world was five hours old evil had entered into it. Uncle Andrew, refusing to believe that Aslan was anything more than a beast, was unable to hear Asian's beautiful song as he created things and could not even hear the animals talk and laugh. But Jadis was even a greater evil in Narnia. Digory had brought the evil in, said AsIan to the beasts, but he promised to see that the worst fell upon himself.

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The Magician's Nephew

Aslan told the cabby - and also his wife Helen, who had been brought to Narnia by Aslan's magic - that they were to be the first king and queen of the land and were to name and rule all the creatures. Also that their children would be kings of Narnia and of Archenland. Then Aslan, that Digory might help to undo the wrong he had done in bringing in evil sent him far away into the mountains of the Western Wild to a beautiful valley where in a garden on a hilltop grew an apple tree.

After a wonderful farewell and parting advice from Aslan about evils that would come on Narnia, they were transported back to their own world. The apple which Digory had brought along cured his mother.. Digory buried the core of it in his back yard, and, to prevent Digory’s uncle from further mischief with his magical rings, he had Polly buried them near the apple seeds. This was the tree which Digory much later fashioned into a wardrobe. He did not know that it retained some of its Narnian magic, for that was a discovery to be made a long time afterwards by Peter, Edmund, Susan, and Lucy.

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The Magician's Nephew

Back in Narnia King Frank and Queen Helen ruled. Their second son became King of Archenland. The boys married nymphs and the girls wood-gods and river-gods. The lamp-post which had grown up in Narnia shone always in the Narnian forest and the place where it stood came to be known as Lantern Waste. '"

 Narnia was quite a different world from ours. This is the manner in which it was created. As Digory and the others stood in the dark and empty land of Nothing, they heard a far-off song that appeared to come from every direction at once, even from the very earth beneath their feet. Though it was hardly a tune at all, it was almost too beautiful to bear. Suddenly the voice of AsIan, for it was he who began it all, was joined by many other voices. At the same time the black sky above was filled with blazing stars which seemed to join their own voices to the swelling music. Then in the east, to the sound of still more glorious music, the sun rose splendidly and revealed fresh and colorful valleys and rivers and mountains. Yet it revealed no trees nor even a blade of grass.

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The Magician's Nephew

The capital of Narnia was Cair Paravel, located in a beautiful spot on the east coast near the River of Narnia, and this was where Aslan established Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy as kings and queens of Narnia and where they reigned for many years. A little to tenor of Cair Paravel lived the marsh-wiggles, and above them one crossed the River Shribble and came to a desolate moorland called Ettinsmore which led, finally, to mountainous country and the giants' stronghold of Harfang. Nearby were the ruins of a great city underneath which once lay the kingdom of the Green Witch and her unwilling vassals. Here also in a deep cave had slept Father Time until AsIan awakened him to sound his final horn over Narnia.

On the east of Narnia lay the ocean, over which, if one were courageous enough, he could sail to alma, Terebinthia, the Seven Islands, the Lone Islands, Dragon Island, Deathwater Island, Darkness Island, and World's End Island to the Silver Sea and the very end of the world, and there he could look beyond the sun itself into the high mountains of Aslan's own country.

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The Magician's Nephew

“The Lion, whose eyes never blinked, stared at the animals as hard as if he was going to burn them up with his mere stare. And gradually a change came over them. The smaller ones - the rabbits, moles, and such-like - grew a good deal larger. The very big ones - you noticed it most with the elephants - grew a little smaller. Many animals sat p on their hind legs. Most put their heads on one side as if they were trying very hard to understand. The Lion opened his mouth, but no sound came from it; he was breathing out, a long, warm breath; it seemed to sway all the beasts as the wind sways a line of trees. Far overhead from beyond the veil of blue sky which hid them the stars sang again; a pure, cold, difficult music. Then there came a swift flash like fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children's bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying: "Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.”(The founding of Narnia)

                   

Uncle Andrew

The Tree with Silver Apples

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The Magician's Nephew

"Child," he (Aslan) replied, "that is why all the rest are now a horror to her. That is what happens to those who pluck and eat fruits at the wrong time and in the wrong way. The fruit is good, but they loath it ever after."

"Oh I see," said Polly. "And I suppose because she took it in the wrong way it won't work for her. I mean it won't make her always young and all that?"

"Alas," said Aslan, shaking his head. "It will. Things always work according to their nature. She has won her heart's desire; she has un-wearing strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it."

(The Planting of the Tree)

The Wood Between the Worlds

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The Magician's Nephew

They looked and saw a little hollow in the grass, with a grassy bottom, warm and dry."When you were last here," said Aslan, "that hollow was a pool, and when you jumped into it you came to the world where a dying sun shone over the ruins of Charn. There is no pool now. That world is ended, as if it had never been. Let the race of Adam and Eve take warning." "Yes, Aslan," said both the children. But Polly added, "But we're not quite as bad as that world, are we, Aslan?" "Not yet, Daughter of Eve," he said. "Not yet. But you are growing more like it. It is not certain that some wicked one of your race will not find out a secret as evil as the Deplorable Word and use it to destroy all living things. And soon, very soon, before you are an old man and an old woman, great nations in your world will be ruled by tyrants who care no more for joy and justice and mercy than the Empress Jadis. Let your world beware. That is the warning." (The End of This Story and the Beginning of All The Others)

Fledge, Polly and Digory

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The Magician’s Nephew and The Bible

1 – The Wrong Door

In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak, who are caught in the schemes he devises. Ps 10:2

The two children share an active imagination and love for mystery and adventure. The Bible encourages believer to seek out hidden truths and spiritual treasures: : It is the of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” Prov. 25:2

2 – Digory and His Uncle

The righteous detest the dishonest; the wicked detest the upright. Prov. 29:27

Uncle Andrew prides himself of his superior intellect. He believes that he is above the law – that the rules don’t apply to him. Isaiah 5:21 warns, “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.”

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The Magician’s Nephew and The Bible

8 – The Fight at the Lamp-Post

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation … while stars sang together and all the angles shouted for joy? Job 38:4,7.

Polly, Digory and others begin to realize that they are witnessing the birth of a new world. Compare this scene to Genesis 1:1-10, 14-19.Aslan is not only Narnia’s savior, but also its creator.

9 – The Founding of Narnia

God saw all that he had made, and it was good. Gen. 1:31

Aslan continues his creation of Narnia. Compare this scene to Genesis 1:9-11, 20-25, and 2:19.Aslan breaths on the animals and gives them the gift if speech.

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Dear Editor,

Have you been to Narnia? If not, I would strongly recommend you to do so. This fascinating land will not disappoint you. I have been there myself. As a matter of fact I visit Narnia almost everyday.

Some of you might argue that Narnia is not a real place. The fact that Narnia is an imaginary country does not make it unreal, or untrue. Yes, we need reality and reason to find truth. But without imagination we cannot find meaning.

Some may say that Narnia is a story for children. I would respond with a quote by the author of the Narnia Chronicles (CS Lewis): "No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally worth reading at the age of fifty. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all. "

Some might even fear imagination and think it as inevitably evil. They forget that they can't believe something they cannot first imagine to be true.

That’s when visiting Narnia may help rekindle and restore our humanity and promise of eternity. In the Chronicles, the children are taught to act with courage, honesty, responsibility and moral values. Corruption, expediency and dishonesty are not tolerated. Love, gentleness, peace, goodness and faith are valued. The Narnian stories give us a greater understanding of our fallen nature, and at the same time give us hope. With the arrival of Aslan (the great Lion) the beauty of the land is restored and all possibilities expanded.

The Chronicles are not just good stories, nor are they primarily religious, Christian allegories. They are much more than that. They serve to enhance moral education and build character, independent of our age.

Read the Chronicles - you will be transported not to an artificial virtual reality, but to a true, sound imaginary land. See you there.

Yours truly, Paulo F. Ribeiro

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The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

The Main Theme: Frozen to Thawed – Winter to Spring

Key Symbol: The Stone Table

When and Where in LWW

1. Lucy accidentally found herself in Narnia

2. After a visit with Mr. Tumnus the Faun, Lucy returned to England

3. Edmund accidentally found himself in Narnia and met the Queen of Narnia

4. Edmund became addicted to magic candy (Turkish Delight)

5. Peter and Susan assumed that Lucy’s Narnia was unreal

6. All four children found themselves in Narnia

7. The four learned about Narnia while visiting Mr. And Mrs. Beaver

8. Edmund sneaked away to betray the others to the White Witch

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN: C.S. Lewis played in this wardrobe as a child.

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The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

The Main Theme: Frozen to Thawed – Winter to Spring

Key Symbol: The Stone Table

When and Where in LWW

9. Edmund made his way to the Witch’s castle and became captive there

10. As the children and the Beavers fled, Father Christmas arrived with gifts

11. The Witch discover that her perpetual winter was beginning to thaw

12. Aslan appeared, greeted his friend ands knighted Peter

13. The Witch demand her right to kill Edmund

14. Aslan gave himself to the Witch to die in Edmund’s place

15. Aslan came back to life

16. Aslan revived all victims of the Witch who had turned to statues

17. The children ruled Narnia for many happy years before returning to England

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The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and The Bible

In addition to Salvation, Redemption and restoration the LWW also includes illustrations of the following:

-The wickedness and deceitfulness of the enemy of our souls (John 8:44)

-The power of sin and its consequences (James 1:14-15)

-Maintaining a holy fear of and reverence for God, who is both good and terrible at the same time (Deut. 7:21, Ps 99:3)

Lucy and Mr. Tumnus

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The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

The first of the adventures, after the creation of Narnia by Asian, began about sixty years later when the four Pevensie children, Peter, Edmund, Susan, and Lucy, left London because of air-raids during the war and went to stay with old Professor Kirke in his great country mansion. One day Lucy, while playing in an old wardrobe, accidentally discovered it was a doorway - one never reached Narnia twice in the same way – to Narnia and eventually all four of the children got in. Just inside was the lamp-post of Jadis the White Witch. She was now queen of Narnia, having slain most of its inhabitants and turned its weather to perpetual winter yet with never any Christmas.

Prof. Digory

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The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and the Bible

And I saw a strong angel, who shouted in a loud voice: "Who is worthy to break the seals on this scroll and unroll it?" But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll and read it. Then I wept because no one could be found who was worthy to open the scroll and read it. But one of the twenty-four elders said to me, "Stop weeping! Look, the LION of the tribe of Judah, the heir to David's throne has conquered. He is worthy to open the scroll and break the seven seals." Rev 5:2-5

And Aslan stood up and as he opened his mouth to roar his face became so terrible that they did not dare to look at it. And they saw all the trees in front of him bend before the blast of his roaring as the grass bends in a meadow before the wind. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

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The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

"Is--is he a man?" asked Lucy.

"Aslan a man!" said Mr. Beaver sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion--the Lion, the great Lion."

"Ooh!" said Susan, "I'd thought he was a man. Is he--quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."

"That you will, dearie, and no mistake,' said Mrs. Beaver, 'if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."

"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King I tell you."

"I'm longing to see him," said Peter, "even if I do feel frightened when it comes to the point.“

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Christian Creed in Narnian terms:

I believe in the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea who has put within time the Deep Magic, and, before all time, the Deeper Magic.

I believe in his Son Asian who sang into being all the worlds and all that they contain: Talking Beasts and humans, dumb animals and shining spirits. And I believe that Asian was a true beast, the king of beasts, a Lion; that for Edmund, a traitor because of his desire for Turkish Delight, he gave himself" into the power of the White Witch, who satisfied the requirements of the Deep Magic by killing him most horribly. At the dawn following that darkest, coldest night, he was restored to full life by the Deeper Magic, cracking the Stone Table and, from that moment, setting death to work backwards. He exulted in his new life and went off to rescue all those who had been turned into stone by the Witch’s want and to deliver the whole land from everlasting winter. He will be behind all the stories of our lives; and, when it is time, he will appear again in our world to wind it up, calling all of his creatures whose hearts' desire it is to live "farther in and farther up" in his country which contains all real countries.

I believe that upon us all falls the breath of Asian and that ours are the sweet waters of the Last Sea which enable us to look steadily at the sun. I believe that all who have thrilled or will thrill at the sound of Asian's name are now our fellow voyagers and our fellow kings and queens; that all of us can be for ever free of our dragonish thoughts and actions; and that one day we will pass through the door of death into "Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read; which goes on for ever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.” (Paul Ford)

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The Last Battle

A false Aslan is roaming Narnia, commanding everyone to work for the cruel Calormemes. Can Eustace and Jill find the true Aslan and restore peace to the land? The last battle is the greatest of all and the final struggle between good and evil.

The Main Theme: Death to Life

Key Symbol: The Stable

The Last Battle and the Bible:

Rev. 5:1-14

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When, Where

1. Trouble in Narnia, Chapters 1-4: three weeks

2. Hope from our World, Chapters 5-8: less than 48 hours

3. Utter Hopelessness on the Stable Hill, Chapters 9-12: one night

4. Farther Up and Further In, Chapters 13-15: timelessness

The Last Battle

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The Last Battle

It is hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it if you think like this.You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking-glass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking- glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different--deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can't describe it any better than that: if you ever get there you will know what I mean.

It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right forehoof on the ground and then cried:

"I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!"

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One of these days, we are going to be in the Father's house. That is the Christian's certain destiny. We are going to be together forever. We will see, in their redeemed bodies, our loved ones who have gone on before us. One day we are going to step into eternity. Death, the thing that we dread so much, will be a mere transition. And the Lord will be there to greet us and gather us into the Father's house, where there is warmth and security and nothing to fear.

Lewis description in The Last Battle:

"There was a railway accident," said Aslan softly. "Your father and mother and all of you are--as you used to call it in the shadowlands--dead. The term is over; the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning." And as he spoke he no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia have only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter one of the Great story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

That is why Paul says in 1 Thess 4:18:

"Therefore comfort one another with these words."

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And the elderly lady in my adult education class on the Chronicles of Narnia who answered my question about what had attracted each of the students to the Narnia books and to a course on them by saying that they had saved her sanity and her daughter's soul. When she was "sweet sixteen" her daughter had said to her, "Mother, I hate you and this whole family. I especially hate your God. I never want to see you again," left for California (where else), and became a drug addict and a prostitute. Her mother said, "I knew she would come back to us and to God because I had read her the Chronicles of Narnia when she was ten, and she had loved them. And she did.“

Peter Kreeft