There are Narnia fans, on the explicitly Christian side of the house, who are just a little uneasy about elements in the recent movie which seemed, if only slightly, to diminish Aslan’s status as Deity. To them I would say, “Have confidence in Douglas Gresham’s hand at the helm.” I believe that Mr. Gresham, and those who pay heed to him, are trying to be diplomatic about Aslan’s identity as Christ. What I mean by that–what I believe they have in mind–is something with Scriptural precedent.
Some Christians have wondered why the Lord Jesus, in His earthly life, allowed thirty or more years to go by before He began His ministry and His miracles. I believe that it was because He did not intend, once beginning His public ministry, to use His power as a spiked club to frighten people into submission. Since God the Father (also known to some of us as the Emperor-Over-Sea) wanted to leave space for men’s free will, Jesus needed something besides force and fear to gain a hearing for Himself. What He needed was an earned REPUTATION for purity and goodness, which would make it hard for false accusations of immorality to stick. And in the environment of normal human life, it takes the passing of time to acquire a solid favorable reputation.
When, in my Navy career, I was stationed in Japan with my first wife Mary (who now dwells in Aslan’s country), we joined with many other Americans in aggressively cultivating friendships among the local Japanese. We attended events of theirs, and invited them to events of our own. This went on for the three years I was assigned there. Near the end of that tour, we heard news of a horrible rape committed in Okinawa by three American servicemen. As far as I could tell, none of the Japanese in our area changed their feelings toward us; they had cause to realize that we were NOT like those three traitors. (I say traitors, for their offense against the host country was also injurious to their own country, and they deserved to hang for it.) Our years of reaching out had paid off; but knowing that a small negative can sometimes cancel out many positives, I suspect that all the good we had done was only _just_ enough to prevent us from being hated along with the wrongdoers. Mere passive harmlessness on our part in the preceding years would not have protected us.
Thus with our Savior. He knew that He would be insituations where adversaries would be itching to contrive a plausible accusation against Him; so He prepared for this by piling up decades of indisputable, undeniable goodness in His conduct of life. He was going to have to rub men the wrong way eventually, but his earned reputation would help Him to choose His time to do it.
This brings us back to the strategy of the Narnia films. Mr. Gresham has said that Christians should not think thatthe stories belong only to them; but since he is a Christian himself, and since he knows that his stepfather DID intend Aslan to be recognized as Jesus, he certainly does not mean that we must acquiesce to some of the blatant (and silly) non-Christian interpretations that are being given to Narnia since the movie came out. Rather, Mr. Gresham wants to widen the circle to invite more seekers in. For this reason, he doesn’t want to grab secular moviegoers by the collar prematurely and say to them, “Aslan is Jesus, and you have to accept Him, so get down on your knees!” That would not enlarge the audience for “Prince Caspian.” If the film series can be kept going, there will in the end be no way for viewers NOT to realize Who Aslan is. But we have to get them to stick with us. As Jesus in our world built His reputation for virtue first, so His imagined alternate form of Aslan must first accumulate such a reputation.
Let me review now the points at which the L-W-W screenplay did seem to diminish Aslan’s divinity. Although I defend the moviemakers’ motives, this doesn’t mean that I would have made the same choices if I’d been in charge.
(1) Soon after Peter has been introduced to Aslan, Aslan reveals that He knows Peter’s name and hometown; but then, the remark about Mr. Beaver makes it seem as if Aslan might have merely picked up information from the Beavers, rather than knowing it by omniscience. This is left ambiguous.
(2) In the same dialogue, Aslan speaks of the Deep Magic as “greater than all of us.” This is a more serious point, since it makes Aslan sound like a mere created being. Now, we know that the Deep Magic is really the providential will of God the Father; we can reconcile the “greater than” by comparing it to Jesus in John’s Gospel saying “–the Father is greater than I.” Jesus is as truly God as are the Father and the Holy Spirit, but it is true that the Father holds leadership within the Trinity. The “damage” from this handling of the Deep Magic concept is also reduced by having Aslan say to the White Witch, “I was there when it was written.”
(3) I don’t like it that the Emperor-Over-Sea is not mentioned at all. Acknowledging Him (God the Father) would have helped with item (2); but then, of course, they would have had to reveal that Aslan was the Emperor’s Son, which would be the same as shouting, “Yes, Aslan is Jesus!”
(4) When Aslan springs on Jadis before she can kill Peter, He doesn’t kill her instantly. The moviemakers, in comments on the DVD, said that they made this change from the book because killing the Witch instantly would seem like taking revenge in mere anger; they said that the moment’s pause before Aslan bites her head off gives it more dignity, a sense of destiny. I don’t agree at all. The
necessity of saving Peter would be enough justification for killing Jadis in one stroke, without seeming vindictive; to me, if anything, it makes Aslan look _more_ vindictive to stand over her as if gloating before He finishes her off.
(5) In the same scene, when Jadis finds herself pinned helplessly under Aslan’s claws, she doesn’t show resignation to her fate until she has first tried to retrieve her dropped sword and found it out of reach. This allows viewers who don’t know better to infer that it would have made some
difference if she _had_ been able to reach it. Of course, anyone who knows about her flinging of the iron bar at Aslan’s head in “The Magician’s Nephew” can dismiss that thought. Now, the writers didn’t want the scene to become something ugly, like scenes of unfortunate minor characters vainly struggling in the clutches of man-eating lions in the old Tarzan movies; but since it was unthinkable for Jadis to beg for mercy, they had to show some hint of the will
to resist, so a futile grab for her sword served. I still think Aslan should have just killed her instantly; but that would have deprived Tilda Swinton of her final close-up shot.
(6) When the four Pevensies are crowned, and Aslan says “May your wisdom grace US–” that sounds as if Aslan Himself, as much as any ordinary Talking Animal, somehow needs to be taught and led by the children. In case you missed your Sunday school lessons, the Almighty does _not_ need our advice or instruction.
If I’d been in charge, I would have altered all of these points in favor of magnifying Aslan’s attributes as Deity. But none of them prevents the writers from being able to let Aslan’s true nature “come gradually into focus,” as Mr.
Lewis would put it, in subsequent movies. We would be foolish to withdraw our support over these fairly trivial complaints. In a time when Calormenish forces in society are trying to censor and silence _every_ outlet for the gospel, we would be shooting ourselves in the foot if we didn’t give the benefit of the doubt to this vitally important cinema project.
Meanwhile, as individuals leading our daily lives in a less romantic world, we need to be doing the same thing our Savior did in His NON-fictional incarnate life prior to His public ministry. We need to be practicing righteous
conduct, so as to bring no dishonor to the name of God. Just imagine if, next year, some agnostic were to come out of the premiere of “Prince Caspian” feeling deeply moved, and ready to give a fair hearing to real-world Christian testimony–only to run into some professed Christian who affronts him with rude, selfish behavior. What a loss! What a failure to have to answer for!
You know what? If more Christians were making a serious effort to walk the walk, maybe Mr. Gresham would not have felt a need to chide us that Narnia does not only belong to us–because he would not be afraid of us casting discredit on the intent of his stepfather’s work.
Yours in the Grace of Jesus,
Joseph “Copperfox Amadeus” Ravitts
