Aslan in our world?
- Thread starter Jolle
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Copperfox
Well-known member
At the end of "Dawn Treader," when Lucy is grieving about not seeing Aslan anymore, He assures her that He is present in our world also--and says that she and Edmund must learn to know Him by the name He uses on Earth. You see, Aslan is not just "somebody who sort of reminds you of Jesus;" the whole point of the CoN is that Aslan **IS** Jesus, merely assuming a different exterior shape.
At the very end of "The Last Battle," any remaining doubt on that score is removed. Not only has Aslan/Jesus appeared in the form of a LAMB, but Mr. Lewis here gives Him capitalized pronouns--a mark of recognizing Deity. That's why I also use capitalized pronouns whenever I write about Aslan: I'm writing about my Savior, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.
At the very end of "The Last Battle," any remaining doubt on that score is removed. Not only has Aslan/Jesus appeared in the form of a LAMB, but Mr. Lewis here gives Him capitalized pronouns--a mark of recognizing Deity. That's why I also use capitalized pronouns whenever I write about Aslan: I'm writing about my Savior, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.
Jolle said:
Actually it's in Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It's at the end of the last chapter...on the last page in my copy. Aslan says it to Edmund and Lucy...and sort of Eustace.
Hope this helps.
C.S. Lewis wrote the Chronicles of Narnia from a Christian perspective in mind. He made it plain that Aslan was an allegory of Jesus. In fact he tells Lucy and Edmund in the VOTDT that they could no longer come to Narnia as they were too old, and told them that they must get to know who He was in their world. From the Creation story of Narnia in the MN to the type of antichrist and the end of the world of Narnia and everything in between is a picture of our own story here on earth through the Bible as C.S. Lewis stated.
1. Magician's Nephew - The Creation story
2. Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - the telling of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection.
3. Prince Caspian - The restoration of true religion after corruption
4. A Horse and His Boy - the story of the calling and conversion of a 'heathen'
5. Voyage of the Dawn Treader - Portrays the spiritual life, especially in Reepicheep's quest for Aslan's Country
6. The Silver Chair - concerns the continuing spiritual battle against dark powers.
7. The Last Battle - tells of the coming, in Shift the ape, of the antichrist leading to the prophesied end of the world and the Last Judgement*
*Field Guide to Narnia by Colin Duriez
Aslan'sFriend410
New member
Well, most of us tend to think about it that way because Lewis wrote a lot of Christian allegory into his stories and they are also embraced by many as appropriate and fitting literature for children of the Christian faith to read, however, you don't have to be a Christian to enjoy them. That's the beauty of it!
Sir Benjamin the Lion
New member
I guess you haven't watched the third disc to Narnia EE. I love the way he protrays Aslan. It seems to remind me of someone I know personally.
I think you're getting kind of confused.
C.S. Lewis was a mature Christian by the time he wrote the Chronicles. You are correct in the fact that originally it was simply a children's story. I guess as he wrote the Holy Spirit guided him to write it with Christian meaning. I might be a bit off, though...
As he wrote in Of Other Worlds:
"Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument, then collected information about child psychology and decided what age group I'd write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out 'allegories' to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn't write in that way. It all began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn't anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord."
Lewis, an expert on the subject of allegory, maintained that the books were not allegory, and preferred to call the Christian aspects of them "suppositional". This is similar to what we would now call fictional parallel universes. As Lewis wrote in a letter to a Mrs Hook in December of 1958:
"If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair [a character in The Pilgrim's Progress] represents despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality however he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, 'What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as he is said to have actually done in ours?' This is not allegory at all." (Martindale & Root 1990)
The Narnia series is not an allegory.
So Aslan wasn't supposed to be christ, only a jesus-like figure. It also said that there was the same amount of pagan elements as there was christian. I'm sure if there was a forum of non-christian fans they would find the same amount of their beliefs within the chronicles than you do.
It depends on who is reading the books, so no. I'm not confused.
"Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument, then collected information about child psychology and decided what age group I'd write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out 'allegories' to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn't write in that way. It all began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn't anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord."
Lewis, an expert on the subject of allegory, maintained that the books were not allegory, and preferred to call the Christian aspects of them "suppositional". This is similar to what we would now call fictional parallel universes. As Lewis wrote in a letter to a Mrs Hook in December of 1958:
"If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair [a character in The Pilgrim's Progress] represents despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality however he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, 'What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as he is said to have actually done in ours?' This is not allegory at all." (Martindale & Root 1990)
The Narnia series is not an allegory.
So Aslan wasn't supposed to be christ, only a jesus-like figure. It also said that there was the same amount of pagan elements as there was christian. I'm sure if there was a forum of non-christian fans they would find the same amount of their beliefs within the chronicles than you do.
It depends on who is reading the books, so no. I'm not confused.
Read carefully, Valkyrie. What Lewis is stating is that he intended to write no allegory (a specific style of literature, e.g. Pilgrim's Progress), and that he intended no moral or message. That is not the same as saying that Aslan was not a Christ figure; in fact, at the end of Dawn Treader, Aslan comes out and admits that He is Christ, and that Lucy and Edmund are not being allowed to return to Narnia because it is their time to learn to know Him by His name in our world.
There's much confusion over this point, and it seems to me that it centers around two points. The first is most modern people's misunderstanding of the term allegory. Many moderns refer to any story with a message or meaning as an "allegory". This is not true; an allegory is a very specific style of such story, such as the aforementioned Pilgrim's Progress or Dante's Inferno. There are plenty of stories with meaning that are not allegories; Lewis' The Great Divorce would be an example of such.
The other point of confusion lies in the misapprehension that if there is meaning in a story, the author must have set out to put it there; i.e. to write a "morality tale". Speaking as an author, I can tell you that this is untrue. I have written stories just to write stories, only to have someone come up later and say, "Wow, that was a tremendous message in that story!" My response is "what message?" Lewis experienced the same phenomena, as did Tolkien: neither set out to embed a message in their stories, but the message crept in nevertheless.
Now, if you're an anthropocentric thinker, the question is settled by the issue of what the author intended. If no message was intended, then there's no message, period. But if you're not an anthropocentric thinker, and admit that there can be greater forces at work than just one man's thought and imagination, then the possibility exists that the message ended up in the story not because of the author's will, but because of the intentions of Someone Else. Lewis and Tolkien (and I) are not anthropocentric thinkers; in fact, Lewis admitted that his experience of writing Narnia was that a great golden Lion kept leaping into the picture and demanding a place in the story. If you think like Lewis, or have even written a story and had one of your characters "run away with it", then you can understand how a story can have a meaning that you never intended - but perhaps Someone did.
There's much confusion over this point, and it seems to me that it centers around two points. The first is most modern people's misunderstanding of the term allegory. Many moderns refer to any story with a message or meaning as an "allegory". This is not true; an allegory is a very specific style of such story, such as the aforementioned Pilgrim's Progress or Dante's Inferno. There are plenty of stories with meaning that are not allegories; Lewis' The Great Divorce would be an example of such.
The other point of confusion lies in the misapprehension that if there is meaning in a story, the author must have set out to put it there; i.e. to write a "morality tale". Speaking as an author, I can tell you that this is untrue. I have written stories just to write stories, only to have someone come up later and say, "Wow, that was a tremendous message in that story!" My response is "what message?" Lewis experienced the same phenomena, as did Tolkien: neither set out to embed a message in their stories, but the message crept in nevertheless.
Now, if you're an anthropocentric thinker, the question is settled by the issue of what the author intended. If no message was intended, then there's no message, period. But if you're not an anthropocentric thinker, and admit that there can be greater forces at work than just one man's thought and imagination, then the possibility exists that the message ended up in the story not because of the author's will, but because of the intentions of Someone Else. Lewis and Tolkien (and I) are not anthropocentric thinkers; in fact, Lewis admitted that his experience of writing Narnia was that a great golden Lion kept leaping into the picture and demanding a place in the story. If you think like Lewis, or have even written a story and had one of your characters "run away with it", then you can understand how a story can have a meaning that you never intended - but perhaps Someone did.
Copperfox
Well-known member
Aslan is MORE THAN an allegory of Jesus, He just plain IS Jesus. As a devoted Christian--who in his essays commented on the impossibility of anyone else BUT God having the kind of sovereign power God has--Mr. Lewis would NEVER have depicted Aslan creating a world out of nothing (in "The Magician's Nephew") if He was supposed to be just a small-g god. Aslan Himself stated that He existed in our world too, where He was known by another name, and that the children should learn to know Him by that name. If Aslan was not Jesus Himself, whom was He telling the kids they needed to know, Spiderman? Finally, at the end of the very last book, Mr. Lewis gives Deity-capitalization to the pronouns for Aslan; he would not do that if Aslan were just "someone sort of like Jesus."
Sir Benjamin the Lion
New member
I would like to say one thing. IT is your own opinion on what the book's characters represent. C. S. Lewis knows exactly what they were supposed to represent, ask him when you get to heaven. Or if you don't believe in Heaven, well, you don't have a way to.
Copperfox
Well-known member
It's beyond opinion. Mr. Lewis could hardly have made it any more obvious if he had taken out an ad in the New York Times proclaiming, "ASLAN IS JESUS!" Jesus being the Lamb of God, do you really think it's an accident that Aslan was also seen assuming the form of a lamb?
Sir Benjamin the Lion
New member
My dear fellow, I merely said it was your opinion because they are not going to listen to the writer because they are unwilling to let such a big hit in the movie industry become in any way christian. I am confinced that Aslan is Jesus because I read about C. S. Lewis, but they do not see it that way, and are unwilling to.
Copperfox
Well-known member
BENJAMIN: Thanks for clarifying what you meant. My former boss before I retired is essentially a humanist plus cafeteria-pagan and Buddhist dilettante. He enjoys Narnia immensely, but is downright _desperate_ to convince himself that Aslan is not Jesus. This is of course primarily because of his resistance to the gospel of Jesus (the same man is a "DaVinci Code" fan, wanting to believe that the made-up "facts" of that novel are true). But another factor at work there is one which I addressed in a past article over on the main page.
If Aslan is God, He's like Superman with no kryptonite to worry about. For viewers and readers who want a hero rather than a Deity, this appears to _diminish_ Aslan's moral status, because He can't lose. Persons like my former boss want Aslan to be just one player, though a potent one, in a give-and-take struggle. It's human nature. But for those who understand, the conflict in the Narnian books is not about whether Aslan wins in a toe-to-toe brawl with a theoretically equal opponent. It's about the same thing the Bible is about: the rest of us having to "Choose this day whom you will serve." Thus in "The Last Battle," although Tirian, Eustace, Jill, Jewel, Poggin and Puzzle _don't_ have the means to overcome the Calormene army, they nonetheless "win"--by the very fact that they ARE on Aslan's side.
If Aslan is God, He's like Superman with no kryptonite to worry about. For viewers and readers who want a hero rather than a Deity, this appears to _diminish_ Aslan's moral status, because He can't lose. Persons like my former boss want Aslan to be just one player, though a potent one, in a give-and-take struggle. It's human nature. But for those who understand, the conflict in the Narnian books is not about whether Aslan wins in a toe-to-toe brawl with a theoretically equal opponent. It's about the same thing the Bible is about: the rest of us having to "Choose this day whom you will serve." Thus in "The Last Battle," although Tirian, Eustace, Jill, Jewel, Poggin and Puzzle _don't_ have the means to overcome the Calormene army, they nonetheless "win"--by the very fact that they ARE on Aslan's side.
Sir Benjamin the Lion
New member
Have you read the Magician's Nephew. If so, Aslan tells the Christian from our world that would reign that he knew him alreeady.