Return to Narnia

 From The Catholic Herald:

The story came about because Lewis felt, he said, he had to write a children’s story or burst, and there are some things that can only be said in a children’s book. And what he wrote about in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (no other title could have worked so well) was nothing less than the doctrine of the Atonement. That medieval formula, that the death of Christ was necessary “to give the devil his due” as a result of the sin of Adam, has never been so perfectly expressed. But the theology is worn lightly; it is possible for a godless child to read the book without taking it on board. Not in my case; I was scandalised as a child reading the story because I could see instantly (I was educated by nuns) what the Stone Table meant as an altar of sacrifice.

Aslan the lion (emblematic of Christ) summed up the Atonement when he told the girls of the story: “Though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back... she would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards...”

C. S. Lewis argued that one never really grows out of children’s books, not good ones. He observed that he liked lemon squash as a child and, as an adult, he liked port, but he still also liked lemon squash. Our growth does not mean discarding our previous self; it means adding to it. Reading the book later on, you note other things: when Aslan jumps into the Witch’s castle to breathe on the creatures she had turned to stone to bring them, flickering, back to life, we have nothing less than the Harrowing of Hell, when Christ descended to the underworld to release all those held by the sin of Adam, except in this case they include a dim but nice giant, a conceited lion and centaurs. (Read more.)

 

On living as a Narnian in exile. From Hilary White:

I keep seeing people unsure of what to do, caught between awareness of the world’s increasing disorder and the sense that everything happening is far beyond our reach, controlled by forces far above our heads. The weight of it can be paralysing. So, I’d like to suggest something we can do: live in the Real, no matter what spell the world is trying to cast.

I was talking with a friend about that pivotal moment in The Silver Chair. The Green Witch doesn’t simply lie, she does something worse, that lives at the heart of the Modernian proposal: she tries to reshape reality, to lull her victims into accepting a smaller, duller, and false version of the world - but one that seems safe, easy and comforting. She offers them comfort in exchange for surrender.

Puddleglum’s defiance is a heroic refusal to accept the world on false terms, however tempting. (Read more.)

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