Lewis’s first discussion of approaches to the Atonement is found in The Problem of Pain (1940). Lewis argues that any theory of the Atonement is secondary to the actuality of it. While these various theories may be useful to some, Lewis remarks, “they do no good to me, and I am not going to invent others.”609
Lewis returns to this theme in his broadcast talks of the 1940s. Lewis here remarks that, before he became a Christian, he held the view that Christians were obliged to take a specific position on the meaning of Christ’s death, and especially how it brought about salvation. One such theory was that human beings deserved to be punished for their sin, but “Christ volunteered to be punished instead, and so God let us off.” After his conversion, however, Lewis came to realise that theories about redemption are of secondary importance:
What I came to see later on was that neither this theory nor any other is Christianity. The central Christian belief is that Christ’s death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start. Theories as to how it did this are another matter.610
In other words, “theories of the Atonement” are not the heart of Christianity; rather, they are attempts to explain how it works.
We see here Lewis’s characteristic resistance to the primacy of theory over theological or literary actuality. It is perfectly possible to “accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works.” Theories are always, Lewis holds, secondary to what they represent:
We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That’s the formula. That’s Christianity. That’s what has to be believed. Any theories we build up as to how Christ’s death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary: mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they don’t help us, and, even if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself.611
These reflections are in no way inconsistent with actually adopting such a theory; they merely set a theory in context, insisting that it is like a plan or diagram, which is “not to be confused with the thing itself.”
One of the most shocking and disturbing scenes in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the death of Aslan. Where the New Testament speaks of the death of Christ as redeeming humanity, Lewis presents Aslan’s death as initially benefitting one person, and one person only—Edmund. The easily misled boy falls into the hands of the White Witch. Alarmed that the presence of humans in Narnia is a portent of the end of her reign, she attempts to neutralise them, using Edmund as her unwitting agent. In his attempts to secure her goodwill (and more Turkish Delight), Edmund deceives his siblings. And that act of deception proves to be a theological turning point.
The White Witch demands a meeting with Aslan, at which she declares that Edmund, by committing such an act of betrayal, has come under her authority. She has a right to his life, and she intends to exercise that right. The Deep Magic built into Narnia at its beginning by the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea laid down “that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to a kill.”612 Edmund is hers. His life is forfeit. And she demands his blood.
Then a secret deal is done, of which the children know nothing. Aslan agrees to act as a substitute for Edmund. He will die, so that Edmund may live. Unaware of what is about to happen, Lucy and Susan follow Aslan as he walks towards the hill of the Stone Table, to be bound and to offer to die himself at the hands of the White Witch. This scene is as moving as it is horrific, and parallels at some points—but not at others—the New Testament accounts of Christ’s final hours in the garden of Gethsemane and his subsequent crucifixion. Aslan is put to death, surrounded by a baying mob, who mock him in his final agony.
One of the most moving scenes in the entire Narnia series describes how Susan and Lucy approach the dead lion, kneeling before him as they “kissed his cold face and stroked his beautiful fur,” crying “till they could cry no more.”613 Lewis here shows himself at his imaginative best, reworking the themes of the images and texts of medieval piety—such as the classic Pietà (the image of the dead Christ being held by his mother, Mary), and the text Stabat Mater Dolorosa (describing the pain and sorrow of Mary at Calvary, as she weeps at the scene of Christ’s death).
Then everything is unexpectedly transformed. Aslan comes back to life. The witnesses to this dramatic moment are Lucy and Susan alone, paralleling the New Testament’s insistence that the first witnesses to the resurrection of Christ were three women. They are astonished and delighted, flinging themselves upon Aslan and covering him with kisses. What has happened?
“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.
“It means,” said Aslan, “that 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, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. 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 backward.”614
Aslan thus lives again, and Edmund is liberated from any legitimate claim on the White Witch’s part.
And there is still more to come. The courtyard of the White Witch’s castle is filled with petrified Narnians, turned into stone by the Witch. Following his resurrection, Aslan breaks down the castle gates, romps into the courtyard, breathes upon the statues, and restores them to life. Finally, he leads the liberated army through the shattered gates of the once-great fortress to fight for the freedom of Narnia. It is a dramatic and highly satisfying end to the narrative.
But where do these ideas come from? They are all derived from the writings of the Middle Ages—not works of academic theology, which generally were critical of such highly visual and dramatic approaches, but the popular religious literature of the age, which took pleasure in a powerful narrative of Satan’s being outmanoeuvred and outwitted by Christ.615 According to these popular atonement theories, Satan had rightful possession over sinful human beings. God was unable to wrest humanity from Satan’s grasp by any legitimate means. Yet what if Satan were to overstep his legitimate authority, and claim the life of a sinless person—such as Jesus Christ, who, as God incarnate, was devoid of sin?
The great mystery plays of the Middle Ages—such as the cycle performed at York in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—dramatised the way in which a wily and canny God tricked Satan into overstepping his rights, and thus forfeiting them all. An arrogant Satan received his comeuppance, to howls of approval from the assembled townspeople. A central theme of this great popular approach to atonement was the “Harrowing of Hell”—a dramatic depiction of the risen Christ battering the gates of hell, and setting free all who were imprisoned within its realm.616 All of humanity were thus liberated by the death and resurrection of Christ. In Narnia, Edmund is the first to be saved by Aslan; the remainder are restored to life later, as Aslan breathes on the stone statues in the Witch’s castle.
Lewis’s narrative in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe contains all the main themes of this medieval atonement drama: Satan having rights over sinful humanity; God outwitting Satan because of the sinlessness of Christ; and the breaking down of the gates of Hell, leading to the liberation of its prisoners. The imagery is derived from the great medieval popular religious writings which Lewis so admired and enjoyed.
So what are we to make of this approach to atonement? Most theologians regard Lewis’s narrative depiction of atonement with mild amusement, seeing it as muddled and confused. But this is to misunderstand both the nature of Lewis’s sources and his intentions. The great medieval mystery plays aimed to make the theological abstractions of atonement accessible, interesting, and above all entertaining. Lewis has brought his own distinct approach to this undertaking, but its historical roots and imaginative appeal are quite clear.
The Seven Planets: Med
ieval Symbolism in Narnia
Each of the seven Chronicles of Narnia has its own distinct literary identity—a “feel” or “atmosphere” that gives each novel its own place in the septet. So how did Lewis maintain the unity of the narrative as a whole, while giving each novel its own characteristic individuality?
It is a classic issue in literary history. Lewis would have known that Richard Wagner (1813–1883) managed to maintain the thematic unity of his massive operatic cycle The Ring of the Nibelungs by using musical motifs that recurred throughout the four operas of the drama, acting as threads that hold its fabric together. So what did Lewis do?
Lewis’s reading of the Elizabethan Renaissance poet Edmund Spenser (ca. 1552–1599) led him to discover and appreciate the importance of a unifying device that allowed Spenser to bind together complex and diverse plots, characters, and adventures. Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1590–1596) is a vast work, which Lewis realised maintained its unity and cohesion by a superb literary device—one that he himself would use in the Chronicles of Narnia.
What is this unifying device? Quite simply, according to Lewis, it is Faerie Land, which provides a place that is “so exceeding spatious and wide” that it can be packed full of adventures without loss of unity. “‘Faerie Land’ itself provides the unity—a unity not of plot, but of milieu.”617 A central narrative holds each of Spenser’s seven books together, while at the same time providing space for “a loose fringe of stories,” which are subordinate to its central structure.
The land of Narnia plays a role in Lewis’s narrative which parallels that of Faerie Land for Spenser’s. Lewis realised how a complex narrative can easily degenerate into a bundle of unrelated stories. Somehow, they had to be held together. It is perhaps no accident that there are seven books in the Chronicles of Narnia, paralleling the structure—though not the substance—of Spenser’s Faerie Queene. The land of Narnia allows Lewis to give an overall thematic unity to the septet. But how did he give each novel its own distinct literary aura? How did he ensure that each constituent part of the Chronicles of Narnia had a coherent identity in its own right?
Lewis’s critics and interpreters have devoted much attention to decoding the significance of the seven Narnia novels. Of the many debates, the most interesting is this: why are there seven novels? Speculation has been intense. We have already noted that Spenser’s Faerie Queen has seven books, perhaps suggesting that Lewis saw his own work as paralleling this Elizabethan classic. And maybe it does—but if so, only in some very specific respects, such as the unifying role of Faerie Land for a complex narrative. Or perhaps it is an allusion to the seven sacraments? Possibly—but Lewis was an Anglican, not a Catholic, and recognised only two sacraments. Or perhaps there is an allusion to the seven deadly sins? Possibly—but any attempt to assign the novels to individual sins, such as pride or lust, seems hopelessly forced and unnatural. For example, which of the Narnia Chronicles majors on gluttony? Amidst the wreckage of these implausible suggestions, an alternative has recently emerged—that Lewis was shaped by what the great English seventeenth-century poet John Donne called “the Heptarchy, the seven kingdoms of the seven planets.” And amazingly, this one seems to work.
The idea was first put forward by Oxford Lewis scholar Michael Ward in 2008.618 Noting the importance that Lewis assigns to the seven planets in his studies of medieval literature, Ward suggests that the Narnia novels reflect and embody the thematic characteristics associated in the “discarded” medieval worldview with the seven planets. In the pre-Copernican worldview, which dominated the Middle Ages, Earth was understood to be stationary; the seven “planets” revolved around Earth. These medieval planets were the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Lewis does not include Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, since these were only discovered in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, respectively.
So what is Lewis doing? Ward is not suggesting that Lewis reverts to a pre-Copernican cosmology, nor that he endorses the arcane world of astrology. His point is much more subtle, and has enormous imaginative potential. For Ward, Lewis regarded the seven planets as being part of a poetically rich and imaginatively satisfying symbolic system. Lewis therefore took the imaginative and emotive characteristics which the Middle Ages associated with each of the seven planets, and attached these to each of the seven novels as follows:
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: Jupiter
Prince Caspian: Mars
The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader”: the Sun
The Silver Chair: the Moon
The Horse and His Boy: Mercury
The Magician’s Nephew: Venus
The Last Battle: Saturn
For example, Ward argues that Prince Caspian shows the thematic influence of Mars.619 This is seen primarily at two levels. First, Mars was the ancient god of war (Mars Gradivus). This immediately connects to the dominance of military language, imagery, and issues in this novel. The four Pevensie children arrive in Narnia “in the middle of a war”—“the Great War of Deliverance,” as it is referred to later in the series, or the “Civil War” in Lewis’s own “Outline of Narnian History.”
Yet in an earlier phase of the classical tradition, Mars was also a vegetation deity (known as Mars Silvanus), associated with burgeoning trees, woods, and forests. The northern spring month of March, during which vegetation comes back to life after winter, was named after this deity. Many readers of Prince Caspian have noted its emphasis on vegetation and trees. This otherwise puzzling association, Ward argues, is easily accommodated within the range of ideas associated with Mars by the medieval tradition.
If Ward is right, Lewis has crafted each novel in the light of the atmosphere associated with one of the planets in the medieval tradition. This does not necessarily mean that this symbolism determines the plot of each novel, or the overall series; it does, however, help us understand something of the thematic identity and stylistic tone of each individual novel.
Ward’s analysis is generally agreed to have opened up important new ways of thinking about the Narnia series, although further discussion and evaluation will probably lead to modification of some of its details. There is clearly more to Lewis’s imaginative genius than his earlier interpreters appreciated. If Ward is right, Lewis has used themes drawn from his own specialist field of medieval and Renaissance literature to ensure the coherency of the Chronicles of Narnia as a whole, while at the same time giving each book its own distinct identity.
The Shadowlands: Reworking Plato’s Cave
“It’s all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at these schools!”620 Lewis places these words in the mouth of Lord Digory in The Last Battle, as he tries to explain that the “old Narnia,” which had a historical beginning and end, was really “only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always will be here.”621 A central theme of many of Lewis’s writings is that we live in a world that is a “bright shadow” of something greater and better. The present world is a “copy” or “shadow” of the real world. This idea is found both in the New Testament in different forms—especially the letter to the Hebrews—and in the great literary and philosophical tradition which takes its inspiration from the classical Greek philosopher Plato (ca. 424–348 BC).
We see this theme developed in the climax of the epic of Narnia, The Last Battle. Lewis here invites us to imagine a room with a window that looks out onto a beautiful valley or a vast seascape. On a wall opposite this window is a mirror. Imagine looking out of the window, and then turning and seeing the same thing reflected in the mirror. What, Lewis asks, is the relationship between these two different ways of seeing things?
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 and the new 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.622
We live in the shadowlands, in which we hear echoes of the music of heaven, catch sight of its bright colours, and discern its soft fragrance in the air we breathe. But it is not the real thing; it is a signpost, too easily mistaken for the real thing.
The image of a mirror helps Lewis explain the difference between the old Narnia (which must pass away) and the new Narnia. Yet perhaps the most important Platonic image used by Lewis is found in The Silver Chair—Plato’s Cave. In his dialogue The Republic, Plato asks his readers to imagine a dark cave, in which a group of people have lived since their birth. They have been trapped there for their entire lives, and know about no other world. At one end of the cave, a fire burns brightly, providing them with both warmth and light. As the flames rise, they cast shadows on the walls of the cave. The people watch these shadows projected on the wall in front of them, wondering what they represent. For those living in the cave, this world of flickering shadows is all that they know. Their grasp of reality is limited to what they see and experience in this dark prison. If there is a world beyond the cave, it is something which they do not know and cannot imagine. They know only about the shadows.
Lewis explores this idea through his distinction between the “Overworld” and the “Underworld” in The Silver Chair. The inhabitants of the Underworld—like the people in Plato’s Cave—believe that there is no other reality. When the Narnian prince speaks of an Overworld, lit up by a sun, the Witch argues that he is simply making it up, copying realities in the Underworld. The prince then tries to use an analogy to help his audience understand his point:
C. S. Lewis – A Life Page 31
