Going Back to Narnia

Exact cover of the one I read as a kid

Recently I have been reading a lot of C.S. Lewis - some old, some new (Till We Have Faces.)  In my reading of the Last Battle (the last book in the Chronicles of Narnia) I was surprised to see something that I had never noticed before - a direct reference to Platonic thought.  In one of the best classes I have ever taken, Exegesis of the book of Hebrews, one of the best teachers I have ever had made the connection between Lewis and Plato (specifically - the Allegory of the Cave) in the context of Hebrews 8 (really Hebrews 7-10).  The indirect references were obvious to me after his explanation, but it was quite entertaining to see a direct reference that I had missed or not understood in one of my favorite books from my childhood.  See if you can see the connection in the following video, scripture, and book excerpt.

“Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.” But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises (it's better because it was enacted on the "real" things - not the shadows). For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.
For he finds fault with them when he says: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”
In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.”
(Hebrews 8:1–13 ESV - emphasis and comments mine)

"Kings and Queens," he cried, "we have all been blind. We are only beginning to see where we are. From up there I have seen it all - Ettinsmuir, Beaversdam, the Great River, and Cair Paravel still shining on the edge of the Eastern Sea. Narnia is not dead. This is Narnia."
"But how can it be?" said Peter. "For Aslan told us older ones that we should never return to Narnia, and here we are."
"Yes," said Eustace. "And we saw it all destroyed and the sun put out."
"And it's all so different," said Lucy.
"The Eagle is right," said the Lord Digory. "Listen, Peter. When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always will be here: just as our world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan's real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream." His voice stirred everyone like a trumpet as he spoke these words: but when he added under his breath "It's all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at these schools!" the older ones laughed. It was so exactly like the sort of thing they had heard him say long ago in that other world where his beard was grey instead of golden. He knew why they were laughing and joined in the laugh himself. But very quickly they all became grave again: for, as you know, there is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.
It is as 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 lookingglass. 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 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. I can't describe it any better than that: if ever you get there you will know what I mean.
It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed, 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!" (emphasis mine)

Is There a Deeper Magic?

Growing up I cut my reading teeth on C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia - I must have read Clive's Chronicles at least 6 or 7 times if not more (thanks Dad for doing the Reepicheep voice) - not to mention the dozens of times I have watched the buck-toothed Lucy, giant-sized Beaver (yes I capitalized Beavers - are they not speaking animals?) BBC series.  Which by the way is still better than the modern version - at least so far.  To be fair the first two books (Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe and Prince Caspian) are the most boring, still good, but not as entertaining as say The Magician's Nephew.  I hope and pray they don't blow that one.  I can't wait to see the dying world of Charn and her wicked queen over against the singing creation of the birth of the Lion's world.

The BBC went with the true "British look" for Lucy - a young Kathleen Kenyon in my opinion.

BBC's Reepicheep looked like the morbid offspring of Abu, the monkey from Aladdin, and the flying monkeys of the Wicked Witch of The Wizard of Oz.

One of Clive's main motifs in his writings is the idea of the "true myth."  In our minds that seems to be an oxymoron - how can something be both true and myth (insert dumb - Jumbo-Shrimp joke)?  But in Lewis' mind every myth, every legend has a true substantive reality lying behind it.  This has massive ramifications for a number of different aspects including but not limited to the following:

• The nature of the New Heavens and the New Earth - what he called "living in the Shadowlands" - living in a shadow of the true reality that belies this earth.
• Our spiritual and physical affections - every inkling of enjoyment that we have in this shadow earth is because we have come into contact with a shadow of the "true" reality (this includes the king of the coming true world). 

If you are wondering whether or not this type of thinking is biblically valid just read this passage:

“For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.” And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. 

Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” (Hebrews 9:19–26 ESV)

The book of Hebrews is full of this type of thinking (its Platonic - but let's not get into that).  It's why I named this blog Seeking a Homeland - because in chapter 11 of Hebrews this idea is picked up again as the author writes, 

“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. 

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.” (Hebrews 11:8–16 ESV)

What a passage! I think it might be my favorite Heaven passage.  It's my earnest desire that I "speak thus."

Clearly then Clive Staples was picking up on a biblical idea.  Perhaps the best example of this (or at least most well-known) is Aslan's sacrifice for Edmund (The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe) that leads to both Edmund's restitution and Aslan's resurrection.

At that moment they heard from behind them a loud noise—a great cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a giant's plate.... The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end; and there was no Aslan.

"Who's done it?" cried Susan. "What does it mean? Is it more magic?"

"Yes!" said a great voice from behind their backs. "It is more magic." They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.

"Oh, Aslan!" cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad....

"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."

Do you have gooseflesh after reading that?

In the coming days I hope to flesh this Deeper Magic idea out in the following Biblical examples:

1. A Deeper Priesthood - Melchizedek, king of Salem (Gen. 14:18-21)
2. A Deeper King - David, Son of Yahweh and Priest of Melchizedek (Psalm 110:4)
3. A Deeper Sacrifice - Mesha, king of Moab sacrifices his first-born son (2 Kings 3:27)

Piper's Lecture on C.S. Lewis

Great lecture on Lewis - I learned a lot about Clive Staples.


Enjoy! (sorry for the weird video angle - Desiring God's player is bigger than my blog template - if you want to watch it at Desiring God go here)

Beyond Personality by C.S. Lewis - Part 3

Well said Clive Staples, well said.

"And now we begin to see what it is that the New Testament
is always talking about. It talks about Christians 'being
born again'; it talks about them 'putting on Christ'; about
Christ 'being formed in us'; about our coming to 'have the
mind of Christ.'

Put right out of your head the idea that these are only
fancy ways of saying that Christians are to read what Christ
said and try to carry it out as a man may read what
Plato or Marx said and try to carry it out. They mean something
much more than that. They mean that a real Person,
Christ, here and now, in that very room where you're saying
your prayers, is doing things to you. It's not a question
of a good man who died two thousand years ago. It's a living
Man, still as much a man as you, and still as much God as He
was when He created the world, really coming and interfering
with your very self; killing the old natural self in you
and replacing it with the kind of self He has. At first, only
for moments. Then for longer periods. Finally, if all goes
well, turning you permanently into a different sort of thing;
into a new little Christ, a being which, in its own small way,
has the same kind of life as God; which shares in His power,
joy, knowledge and eternity. joy, knowledge and eternity.
And that reminds me of something which has been very
misleading in my talk up to now. I've been talking as if it
were we who did everything. In reality, of course, it is God
who does everything. We, at most, allow it to be done to
us. In a sense you might even say it is God who does the pretending.

The Three-Personal God, so to speak, sees before
Him in fact a self-centred, greedy, grumbling, rebellious
human animal. But He says 'Let us pretend that this is not
a mere creature, but our Son. It is like Christ in so far as
it is a Man, for He became Man. Let us pretend that it is
also like Him in Spirit. Let us treat it as if it were what in fact it is not.
Let us pretend in order to make the pretence
into a reality.' God looks at you as if you were a little
Christ; Christ stands beside you to turn you into one. I
daresay this idea of a divine make-believe sounds rather
strange at first. But, is it so strange really? Isn't that how
the higher thing always raises the lower? A mother teaches
her baby to talk by talking to it as if it understood long
before it really does. We treat our dogs as if they were
'almost human' that's why they really become 'almost
human' in the end." (Lewis, 37-38 - emphasis mine)

Beyond Personality by C.S. Lewis - Part 2

Another quote from this thought-provoking read:

"And the present state of things is this. The two kinds of
life are now not only different (they'd always have been
that, I think) but actually opposed. The natural life in each
of us is something self-centred, something that wants to be
petted and admired, to take advantage of other lives, to
exploit the whole universe. And specially it wants to be
left to itself: to keep well away from anything better or
stronger or higher than it, anything that might make it feel
small. It's afraid of the light and air of the spiritual world,
just as people who've been brought up to be dirty are afraid
of a bath. And in a sense it's quite right. It knows that if
the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centredness and
self-will are going to be killed and it's ready to fight tooth
and nail to avoid that." (Lewis, 25)

Technorati Tags: C.S. Lewis, Theology, Sanctification

Beyond Personality by C.S. Lewis - Part 1

I found this short book by C.S. Lewis the other day - I thought I would share a quote from it that I found to be very compelling.

The following is one of the best explanations for our inability (yet strong desire) to understand the nature of the triune God. Often our metaphors and explanations of the doctrine of the trinity are grounded in concrete ideas (i.e. "aqua trinity" - liquid, gas, ice) and while these are helpful in grasping the basic concepts of the trinity they miss the mark in vital aspects of analogy because they are by nature concrete. The doctrine of the trinity is by nature an abstract idea - warranting of an abstract metaphor.

"I warned you that Theology is practical. The whole purpose
for which we exist is to be thus taken into the life of
God. Wrong ideas about what that life is, will make it
harder. And now, for a few minutes, I must ask you to follow
rather carefully.

You know that in space you can move in three ways to
left or right, backwards or forwards, up or down. Every
direction is either one of these three or a compromise between
them. They are called the three dimensions. Now
notice this. If you're using only one dimension, you could
draw only a straight line. If you're using two, you could
draw a figure: say, a square. And a square is made up of four
straight lines. Now a step further. If you have three dimensions,
you can then build what we call a solid body: say, a
cube a thing like a dice or a lump of sugar. And a cube is
made up of six squares.

Do you see the point? A world of one dimension would
be a world of straight lines. In a two-dimensional world, you
still get straight lines, but many lines make one figure. In a
three-dimensional world, you still get figures but many
figures make one solid body. In other words, as you advance
to more real and more complicated levels, you don't leave
behind you the things you found on the simpler levels; you
still have them, but combined in new ways in ways you
couldn't imagine if you knew only the simpler levels.
principle. The human level is a simple and rather empty level.
On the human level one person is one being, and any two
persons are two separate beings just as, in two dimensions
(say on a flat sheet of paper) one square is one figure,
and any two squares are two separate figures. On the Divine
level you still find personalities; but up there you find them
combined in new ways which we, who don't live on that
level, can't imagine. In God's dimension, so to speak, you
find a being who is three Persons while remaining one Being,
just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube. Of
course we can't fully conceive a Being like that: just as, if
we were so made that we perceived only two dimensions in
space we could never properly imagine a cube. But we can
get a sort of faint notion of it. And when we do we are then,
for the first time in our lives, getting some positive idea,
however faint, of something super-personal something
more than a person. It is something we could never have
guessed, and yet, once we have been told, one almost feels
one ought to have been able to guess it because it fits in so
well with all the things we know already.

You may ask, 'If we can't imagine a three-personal Being,
what Is the good of talking about Him?' Well, there isn't
any good in talking about Him. The thing that matters is
being actually drawn into that three-personal life, and that
may begin any time tonight, if you like.

What I mean is this. An ordinary simple Christian kneels
down to say his prayers. He is trying to get into touch with
God. But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting
him to pray is also God; God, so to speak, inside him.
But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes
through Christ, the Man who was God that Christ is standing
beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You
see what is happening. God is the thing beyond the whole
universe to which he is praying the goal he's trying to
reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him
on the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along
which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole
threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going
on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is
saying his prayers. The man is being caught up into the
higher kind of life what I called Zoe or spiritual life: he is
being pulled into God, by God, while still remaining himself.

And that is how Theology started. People already knew
about God in a vague way. Then came a man who claimed
to be God; and yet He wasn't the sort of man you could dismiss
as a lunatic. He made them believe Him. They met
Him again after they'd seen Him killed. And then, after they
had been formed into a little society or community, they
found God somehow inside them as well: directing them,
making them able to do things they couldn't do before. And
when they worked it all out they found they'd got the
Christian definition of the three-personal God." (Lewis, 9-11 - emphasis mine)

If you are interested in reading the book online or downloading the entire book you can do so in a few different formats including pdf here.