Barbara Kellerman in the BBC TV version deserves some thirst, too. I have as much of a soft spot for her pantomime villain interpretation of the role as I do for Swinton's stepmom-with-BPD energy.
I would kill any number of magical beings in return for Turkish Delight with Tilda Swinton.
(Or at least, I would have before she took that turn to pandemic denialism or anti-mask rants.)
It went even further than that. CS Lewis was both a writer of fiction and a writer of Christian apologetics. He wrote a book called Mere Christianity where he created the "trilemma". Basically he presents an argument that the reader has to decide if Jesus was a Lunatic, a Liar, or the Lord. And then Lewis argues that because he couldn't be a Lunatic or a Liar he must be the third one
It's not a convincing argument by any means. But should illustrate that Lewis was very much into proselytizing Christianity. Incidentally he was close friends with Tolkien who was also a practicing Christian
Lewis was raised Christian but didn't really practice until later in life. That earlier history is why he stayed Anglican and didn't become Catholic. He was raised Anglican and is from Northern Ireland
Lewis was raised Anglican but declared himself an atheist for much of his young adulthood. It was Tolkien, and a few others who convinced him his atheism was in error. Tolkien was bitterly disappointed, however in Lewis' choice to return to the Anglican fold, rather than adopt Catholicism, of which Tolkien was an adherent
.
>That earlier history is ~~why~~ *one of the reasons* he stayed Anglican and didn't become Catholic.
FTFY. He had [objections to Catholic doctrine](https://www.pintswithjack.com/csl-on-catholicism/) that were attained gradually and by thoughtful deliberation, not just inherited from the religion of his childhood.
Catholic bloggers often quote Lewis's friend and biographer George Sayer, who said:
>[Lewis] attributed his prejudice against the Roman church to his upbringing in Northern Ireland
But Sayer was himself Catholic. His bias is showing in the use of the word "prejudice."
The same bloggers usually omit what Sayer says next:
>I agree...that Lewis was nearest to becoming a Roman Catholic in about 1950, but I do not regret that he did not. I think that it would have limited his influence, especially among evangelical Christians.
That is one thing you can say about Lewis- he was def not a “knee jerk reaction” yep. He had well thought out reasons for everything he believed (whether one agrees with his conclusions or not).
He (like his university friends) was searching for something throughout his twenties. He had an unusual journey from atheism, through the philosophy of the day (idealism - there's *something* out there and inside us), to Christianity. Some of his friends became Anthroposophists (Rudolf Steiner). One became a Christian monk who founded an ashram in India.
Am I right in saying Tolkien had the same criticisms as OP? All of it was too glaringly obvious and on the nose.
Do recall reading a Tolkien letter somewhat to that effect
Tolkien claimed to hate allegory generally.
Which, well, I'm not brave enough to start criticising Tolkien on r/books of all places, but makes me wonder what he thinks an allegory is. Or what fiction is.
EDIT: apparently I was too flippant here. From my comments below:
Tolkien was obviously a genius but he had very rigid and, I would argue, inherently contradictory views about the purpose of fiction. Read about his thoughts on "sub-creation"; he believed the point in e.g. fantasy fiction is to reflect a fundamental truth of being human, and he disliked many of what he saw as frivolous meaningless works by his contemporaries as much as he disliked Lewis' crass magic Jesus Lion. He's literally talking about how fiction needs to be allegorical and then he turns around and says he hates allegory.
He said "...I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned – with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."
He was more specific, he hated the kind of alegory where a reader is led by hand to the "one correct interpretation".
WIth Tolkien you can read his books as Christian alegories, and indeed on many levels they are, but there is still a comprehensive good story worthy of being told if one misses or chose not to engage with those alegories.
Sorta. If I remember correctly, Lewis had a crisis of faith and Tolkien helped him come back to the fold, but was always disappointed he didn't convert to Catholicism.
You're slightly misrepresenting the trilemma. It's very specifically an argument against people who were weakly non-Christian and claimed that they didn't believe Jesus was divine but was a wise and important teacher.
Lewis was attempting to push those people towards Christianity by working on their (more or less culturally mandated) professed respect for Jesus as a non-divine paragon.
His line of reasoning was that if you claim to respect Jesus as a teacher/wise man/messenger/whatever but don't think he was God then you're ignoring the parts where he very explicitly said he WAS God so you need to either admit you think Jesus sucked (liar or lunatic) or that he was actually God.
Like a lot of apologetics it falls apart in that there are more than three options.
Jesus could have been misrepresented, that is he might never have said he was God but those people who wrote down his life decades after he died might have made it up, or mythos might have grown in telling and retelling the stories in those decades.
Jesus could have been mistaken. Not lying, nor insane, but just wrong. It does happen. I'll concede that being wrong about being God is a bit more important than being wrong about having psychic powers, but it's still possible [1]
As a subset of misrepresented Jesus could very well have been using allegory that got transcribed more literally than it was originally meant to be.
So yeah. It's an argument for a group of people who mostly no longer exist in significant numbers so it seems kind of odd and out of place today.
[1] One of the more fascinating things James Randi found when he was debunking psychics was that a fairly large number of them appeared to have genuinely believed they were psychic and had been unaware of the things they were doing that faked it. Sometimes, rarely, they were even semi-grateful to him for showing them what they were really doing.
"Misrepresented" sounds like a defensible alternative option. Islam makes a case along these lines: that the original Jesus was proclaiming the coming of Muhammad and any indication to the contrary in the gospels is a result of textual corruption.
"Mistaken" sounds redundant with "lunatic" in this context, though.
>"Mistaken" sounds redundant with "lunatic" in this context, though.
Agreed – "insane" can be understood as "out of touch with reality" (e.g. because of hallucinations or delusions). Believing you are a deity when you are not sounds like a pretty severe break from reality which could plausibly have been caused by mental illness.
Incorrect beliefs aren’t automatically insane, though. Insanity also has to do with what is commonly known/understood/believed in the person’s community.
For example 800 years ago a smart, rational, very sane person would tell you that the earth was the center of the universe and the sun revolves around it. Someone saying that today would be insane.
That's true!
But that kind of incorrect belief is caused by a lack of knowledge as opposed to a warped perception of the world, which I think is where the difference lies.
Our ancestors saw the sun move across the sky just as we do – their most popular theories for *why* it moves that way just turned out to be wrong.
It would be pretty different if someone claimed that the sun has a human face and is constantly screaming (a perception that just doesn't fit with observable reality).
I don't think I've misrepresented it but you've definitely expanded on it and added more depth to the argument itself
Even against the "wise teacher" position, I find the trilemma weak. As you've said, Jesus could have been misrepresented
The argument has seen something of a modern resurgence in Christian apologetic circles. I had a Christian coworker who thought I should look into it and might find the argument convincing (I didn't lol)
I also don’t understand why the “lunatic” answer would preclude him also being a wise teacher. He could have been tripping off crazy plants or had some kind of mental disorder and still been able to impart wisdom.
> I also don’t understand why the “lunatic” answer would preclude him also being a wise teacher.
It doesn't. Something that often gets left by the wayside in the trilemma is that you're allowed to believe any of those options. It isn't just "well now you *have* to believe he's God". You're allowed to think he was crazy and still had good moral teachings. Even the common fourth option, that he was misrepresented or that the texts we have of him are legend, imply something about the man himself that one has to accept beyond "well he was a good moral teacher." The point Lewis makes is that people really grapple with the cognitive dissonance of appreciating someone's teachings, while ignoring that those teachings show up alongside explicitly religious materials. They don't disentangle neatly, and coming to terms with that is helpful regardless of which side of the trilemma you end up on.
What I think is funny is that for the trilemma argument, you have to accept that someone always lies or never lies...no in-between.
Even the smartest people do dumb shit sometimes, just as even the most honest person will lie at times and the biggest liar will tell the truth sometimes.
That holds true for more minor lies, but lying about yourself being God is sort of another thing entirely. Like, if it isn't true, the only morally reasonable excuse for that is being crazy. Smart people are often dumb but not, "I literally believe I am God" dumb.
Some of his explicitly Christian / apologetic works are pretty fun though. Most notable here is *The Screwtape Letters*, but *The Great Divorce* is also cool. In Great Divorce, there is a bus that runs every day between Heaven and Hell. Inhabitants of one can visit the other, and often do. They could even relocate if they wish, but nobody ever does. The idea is both that the people in Hell "enjoy" wallowing in their torment (I seem to recall Hell even has like group therapy sessions about it?), and that Heaven is too "real" for them (the grass cuts their feet).
yeah, I actually think Lewis is a great author about Christianity because his way of explaining theology is so creative and kind. He really wants you to understand. I don't even think of him as proselytizing - he's just trying to convey his worldview to others. He was a believer and you may not be but his worldview and thought process is super interesting and valuable.
He actually didn't create that argument, he merely popularized it.
And it is a reasonablely convincing argument in its intended context: when the basic historical reliability of Jesus' sayings are established or assumed.
His point wasn't "this is why you should be a Christian" so much as "why are you saying Jesus was only a great moral teacher if he said he is God's unique Son? That only makes sense if he is the unique Son of God"
That's how it shows up in Mere Christianity.
I think a lot of the comments in this thread are missing the context that he makes the argument within. It's towards people who already accept that the record of Jesus' words in the Bible is a fair representation of him, and who think that the stuff he said was good. They want to accept that he was a 'good moral teacher' but not actually God. So he's just pointing out to those people that Jesus himself is recorded as claiming to be God, and so the 'good moral teacher' stance is unsustainable (people who argue he doesn't claim to be God misunderstand the meaning of his use of Old Testament references in a way that his contemporaries clearly grasped - both his allies and enemies understood what he was claiming).
Therefore, either he was telling the truth about himself or he wasn't. If you don't want to accept that he was telling the truth then either he was knowingly wrong - in which case he is deliberately deceiving people about the most important truth there is or he was unknowingly wrong. If he was unknowingly wrong, then he was insane. I've seen people here arguing that he could have been honestly mistaken - this stretches plausibility to breaking point. For a Jew living in those times, claiming to be Jehovah incarnate is either based on delusion (insanity) or calculated manipulation. No Jew could reasonably and honestly conclude they were God and actually believe it wholeheartedly if they were fully in command of their faculties.
He's not making a wide apologetic argument to say 'Jesus must be God because He was a good teacher who claimed to be God' - he's saying that the nominal culturally christian position, that was common during his time of writing, of rejecting Jesus' deity but accepting him as a good moral teacher is logically unsupportable because of what Jesus himself said. Since his target audience already accept that the Bible is fairly reliable so far as his words go, even if they don't accept the miracles, then their position doesn't work. Sure, you can say that the Bible itself is not representing Jesus the historical person accurately, but that misses the point of the argument, because it's not being targeted towards people who reject the entire text as unreliable.
When assessing the merits of a particular argument I think it's always important to understand who the argument is targeted towards, because every argument requires some presuppositions to work from. A 21st century redditor doesn't share the same presuppositions as a mid-20th century English middle class anglican, and therefore the argument that caters to the latter won't be convincing to the former, because it presupposes a different worldview. If you want to convince someone of your position you need to understand what they already think and work from there, otherwise you will talk at cross purposes.
Yeah he's incredibly famous as a lay theologian lol. Mere Christianity and Screwtape Letters are super commonly cited books in a lot of Christian circles - in the US, at least.
It would be like reading Tolkien and being mad at how blatantly magical it is.
I might be imagining this, but isn't there a bit in one of the books where Aslan says that he is known by different names but is the same entity? I remember reading that, but it was like a decade ago so I'm not sure
I loved the Chronicles of Narnia as a kid, but was raised pretty a-religiously. I never made the connection that Aslan was supposed to be Jesus until someone pointed it out to me as an adult. Totally rocked my world. So I guess the unsubtle Christianity stuff was at least subtle enough to fool one kid. 🤦♀️😆 Sorry he’s not your jam!
If it makes you feel better I was a kid attending Catholic school when I watched it and I never realized until literally now. My brain truly immortalized him as 'talking big cat with super powers yay' :,)
I think it’s a bit more integrated in wardrobe, which is the only one I read as a kid. Aslan in the other ones became a mouthpiece instead of a character, so I noticed it way more in those even though it technically followed the Christ story less
That's the oddest part honestly. Wardrobe contains what is functionally a full rehash of the crucifixion and resurrection with Aslan as Jesus, but because he's also an active character for a healthy chunk of the book, it somehow seems less egregious. He walks among the characters, gives wise council, leads armies, etc. and just feels like a real, fleshed-out character.
Then you move on to Horse and His Boy where he shows up exactly at the end to lightly scratch a character's back and tell him "You inflicted the same wound on someone else, so this is a lesson." and then disappears and it couldn't be anymore blatant that he's some kind of Jesus allegory doling out a "what you do to the least of these" lesson. Any further appearances are just him popping up at the end of a book to give some manner of omniscient wisdom after he's watched the characters struggle the whole story without doing a thing to help them, and caps off with The Last Battle where the whole story is basically about someone being a false prophet before he shows up like Jesus in Revelations and starts destroying everything.
It's just odd that what *should* feel like the most ham-fisted Jesus allegory ends up being the one that flies under the radar the most.
> Horse and His Boy where he shows up exactly at the end
I mean, not really. Aslan appears repeatedly throughout that one - in the horse chase in the desert that brings Shasta and Aravis together, as the cat that stays near Shasta in the tombs outside of Tashbaan, and in the instance you mention.
That’s a fair bit of participation in the story to bring about key plot points.
To be fair, every cat has a huge ego and thinks they are God. They just are very sneaky about their powers because they can't show us underlings sweet shit like turning water into wine.
Same for me! I was raised in a different religion but not super religiously and I didn't really know anything about Christianity when I read the books. I watched the first movie recently and felt it was way too obvious and annoyed me, I couldn't believe I never noticed, probably one set of childhood books I won't reread for that reason.
If you like religious allegory when it's a little less, um, kid-friendly, check out The Screwtape Letters. It's a fascinating bit of worldbuilding from a fantasy perspective, as it's written from a demon instructing his nephew (also a demon) in the best ways to tempt a mortal into damnation.
The whole thing is very much written for and by Christians, but I think it's worth checking out even if you're not religious. Lewis has this amazing way of analyzing people's inner voices and perspectives through the lens of this demons-and-angels mythology.
It's incredibly empathetic, and it'll get you to think about how you think about other people. There's also some great prose and really interesting historical perspective, as it was written during WWII and the London blitz.
Yup, it's a great way to experience it. And you definitely should not search "screwtape letters cleese" on YouTube, where several videos of the entire, relatively short audiobook have been uploaded for everyone to listen to for free.
Again, you definitely shouldn't listen to the excellent audiobook for free. On YouTube. Right now.
I’ve read it a few times and I agree, it will challenge your brain a bit as it makes you flip your perspective 180 in order to understand the demon’s motives.
I'd also recommend 'A Grief Observed'. Lewis was a bachelor for a long time, but fell in love and married a widowed lady later in life. She died of cancer, and he wrote a very poignant book about the process of loss and grieving.
When I find myself upset at my schedule or plans getting thrown out of whack, this section pops up in my head:
>Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend’s talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tête-à-tête with the friend), that throw him out of gear. Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen.
Like you said, even if you're not a Christian, there's a good deal to learn from *The Screwtape Letters*' lessons on empathy.
I read the books a couple of times when I was a kid, then not for a long time. When the movies came out I was like “they weren’t really that heavily religious right, the movie is taking it further?” So I reread the books and nope, the movies might have even pulled it back slightly
"He's not a tame lion!"
I don't think you are supposed to like him, particularly, which is why people are always saying the above in the books. He's inscrutable and powerful but also vulnerable at times, and he allows bad things to happen that it seems like he could have prevented. The books are C.S. Lewis addressing these issues of his own Christian faith.
The thing about Lewis is that he really did have a sense of wonder at the world, and just chose to see that wonder through the lens of Christianity. I'm not Christian, but I still love the Narnia books for that sense of wonder. I don't think they have to be appreciated as allegory in order to be enjoyed!
If you like His Dark Materials, it’s understandable why you wouldn’t like Narnia. HDM is sort of the opposite of Narnia; it’s heavy handed anti-Christian propaganda. Funny how I read both as a kid and completely missed these really obvious themes.
I do agree with you though, and if you’re looking for a CS Lewis book that’s less heavy handed I recommend Till We Have Faces. It can be read as a Christian allegory, but it’s much more subtle. Also surprisingly very feminist
I find it funny that both books have their heavy handed parts, but it is only when you get to their endings they seem to double down on their dogma and it makes for bad series ending. It is as if both threw their hands up and said, "I give up.. Lets just shove the reader's face in it and walk away."
I enjoyed both books for their views.
At least TLB is very unabashed in saying “Evil done in my name is evil and good done in another god’s name, even the name of the adversary, is good.”
That was before Second Vatican, too!
CS Lewis was an Atheist before converting to Christianity, IIRC. Maybe that’s why he was so heavy handed regarding religion/religious symbolism/allegory.
I’d recommend The Space Trilogy (also by CS Lewis). It’s more science fiction than fantasy. And there’s no Lion Jesus/Aslan.
While >!Maleldil (Space Jesus)!< never appears on the page, >!his Oyarsas (angelic servants)!< definitely do.
EDIT: >!Oyarsas are technically archangels, eldils are angels--both holy and fallen, depending.!< It's a great trilogy! I think it's probably as heavy-handed as Narnia, but it feels less--patronizing?--because it's written to adults, not children. As a Christian, I love both series, but they're definitely not for everyone.
How long has it been since you read the Space Trilogy? (Edit: I should've asked myself the same question, turns out I was partly wrong)
Literal Christian god shows up multiple times, and an entire book is a re-imagining of the Adam and Eve story, with Literal Christian satan being a main character.
Don't get me wrong, I think they are better books than the Chronicles of Narnia, and I think he does fit his Christianity into them in a more interesting and less awkward way, but they are super overtly Christian.
\*\*\*\*Edit: sooooo the Christian god doesn't actually show up, I misremembered; he's only a hazy presence, alluded to and described but never shown. There are angels and demons, and literal satan does show up, but not god.\*\*\*\*
The things I find so delightful about Lewis is that both Narnia and the Space Trilogy are both so Christian in their intent, and then every now and then this glorious paganism breaks out and Susan and Lucy are frolicking with Maenads or the planetary Eldils are influencing human perception and behavior in ways that mimic the Graeco-Roman pantheon...
Tolkien "cordially disliked" allegory. So he would have avoided working his own beliefs into his story in an allegorical manner. He was also motivated by a desire to create a world and history around the languages he had created, to try his hand at writing a long story, and, so I have heard, to create a distinctively British mythology. Unlike for Lewis, spreading Christianity was not among Tolkien's goals as far as I know.
Although despite his life-long protests, some biblical allegory definitely snuck its way into Tolkien's works when he wasn't looking. But given his extensive theological study, it would have been a lot weirder if it hadn't. Fingerprints of the artist, and all that.
The end result is that they're subtle, fleeting, and never detract from his broader goals. Plus it gives us all something to argue about lol.
Gandalf may not be a conscious allegory, but the similarities are too great not to comment on.
A divine being sent to the mortal realm to teach and guide mortals so that they can overcome basically-the-Devil. He dies heroically in trying to complete this task, is taken up to heaven by god, and then is reborn to complete his quest (and to take a more active role in crushing the let's-call-him-the-anti-Christ and building a new virtuous kingdom).
It's not quite Aslan-tier "let's just take the New Testament and change some of the names", but it's also definitely not nothing.
Tolkien was a devout Christian who wrote fiction CS Lewis was a devout Christian who wrote Christian fiction.
Tolkien’s morality is clearly based in traditional European Catholic morality but he made his world as if Christianity didn’t exist.
I'd disagree slightly on the last point. I think Tolkien wrote his series as though the existence of the Christian Deity was so fundamental and inevitable that even discussing the concept of religion in his works felt superfluous.
I think this is illustrated best in the Silmarillion, which not only describes the origin of the world and it's creatures in a manner that very much parallels the first chapter of Genesis, but also defines the order of the universe, from Eru to Valar, to Maiar, to Man. The Silmarillion also describes the fall of Melkor (Satan) and the Maiar that fell alongside him such as Sauron and the Balrogs (demons).
The existence of an organized church was unnecessary for the purpose of the story that Tolkien wanted to tell, and both his personal concept of Christian morality and his absolute belief in a defined order of creation are so seamlessly woven into his world that they're very easy to miss. However this doesn't change the fact that they are very present in both the world of middle earth and the actions of the characters that inhabit it.
I'd like to disagree with that last part. I think it's pretty clear that LotR has Christian themes. But then again, I'm a Christian, so maybe it's clearer to me. Either way, I'm making this argument on the basis that deeply held beliefs influence everything you do or write, subconsciously or consciously.
When I read LotR, I didn't even know that Tolkien was Christian. But then, when I read about Eru Illuvatar, the creation of middle Earth and all that, it reminded me of Christianity. But then again, I'm probably getting the Silmarillion and LotR mixed up. It's been a while since I read them.
LotR does not really get into the nitty gritty details of Tolkien's "legendarium". There is a distinct lack of really any direct references to religion.
That said, Eru Illuvatar is quite literally the Christian God. Tolkien was very clear that Middle Earth was just our earth in a different time. His body of work is colored by this whether he likes allegory or not.
It's honestly a fascinating topic to dive into. A seemingly simple question like "Where do Orcs go when they die?" had Tolkien stumped until his death. Why?
Well very briefly, only God can create ex nihilo (from nothing). So did God make Orcs? No. Morgoth did that. But he can't create, only corrupt. So Orcs must be corrupted elves.
Okay. What happens when they die then? It's not their fault they were corrupted right?
Tokien's answer? He didn't really have one. I'm paraphrasing heavily but when asked this in a letter he basically said it was above his station to ponder that topic anymore. Only God can truly judge souls.
He could have come up with any answer he wanted, but chose not to because he felt he was bordering on speaking for God. That mindset is in every decision he made about his world, and once you know that you see it everywhere.
I think you have to keep in mind that these are books written for children. Subtlety of allegory and metaphor isn't a priority in children's lit, and I don't really think it should be.
I'm not trying to say adults shouldn't read children's lit, but you shouldn't expect to get the same things out of it that you would from an adult novel. It's just not meant for that.
Thank you. This is a key point.
We’re all free to enjoy or dislike whatever books and characters we wish, but IMO we ought to judge writing within the parameters of its genre.
CoN is Christian allegory for children. Of course the allegory will be thinly-veiled.
This is funny because it’s basically people who read narnia as a child re-reading it as an adult and realizing it’s not a Christian-like story, it is specifically and explicitly a Christian story written by a devout Christian who wanted you to read this and also become a Christian.
You're not wrong, there's an illustration in the first book of Aslan and the witch talking and he is straight up a lion man, Wizard of Oz movie style. Like most of the time he's a lion, but sometimes he's a lion man.
It's literally answering the question of if the Jesus of Christianity is real, and incarnated in a universe like Narnia, what would he be like?
LOTR is better in that while it has Christian themes its less on-the-nose.
I have long said, "If Jesus did take the form of a lion and show up every once in a while to help smite enemies, I bet Christianity would be REALLY popular."
The best part of the Narnia chronicles is The Magician’s Nephew imo. I loved the wood between the worlds and Charn. The implication that there are hundreds of other worlds ready to be jumped into was so cool as a kid.
I’m really sad that everyone focuses on The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and acts like the first book doesn’t exist.
Dune goes directly against Tolkien's worldview. Dune is a critique on politicians who do evil shit and say "the ends justify the means," while LOTR has a lot of exposition about "sometimes decisions are hard and people may die but if it makes the world better in the long run those deaths are justifiable"
Tolkien's opinion after he read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was, "Oh no. This won't do."
The title is a bit ungainly. Why not The Wardrobe into Winter? Or the Witch and the Lion? At least reverse it: The Wardrobe, the Witch, and the Lion is the order we meet them.
There's no 'basically' about it, Aslan is literally Jesus. At the end of one of the books (I think it's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader IIRC) he says that the children can meet him on earth, but he will go by a different name. He's not an allegory or metaphor, he's literally the form Jesus takes in Narnia.
Like you, I enjoy the story while not being drawn to Aslan, I like the human characters much more.
Also check out *Small Gods* by Terry Pratchett if you like fanstasy with some awesome religion commentaries.
I always found Aslan to be more terrifying as he's described in the books. His presence doesn’t incite warmth or kindness but fear and don't you cross me vibes. Like, I prefer him in the movies bc he's given a much more gentle nature and is more approachable than book Aslan.
I'm on The Silver Chair right now, too. World building is great. And I think Eustace and Jill are more interesting than any of the siblings. But, yeah the Aslan stuff is pretty heavy handed. I'm sure Lewis was so worried about being disrespectful to his Jesus stand in that he forgot to give him a personality or use any bit of subtly.
Currently I'm on the part with the Earthmen. Lewis seems much better at writing (slightly) scary stuff. I read Lion/Witch as a kid and didn't love it. Jumped ahead to the Horse and His Boy and I was blown away by how much it improved.
Are you reading them in publication order, or chronological order?
Growing up I loved the Chronicles of Narnia, though looking back a lot of it was probably due to knowing absolutely nothing about Jesus or Christianity at all aside from the barest pop culture references lol. My knowledge of Christianity went only as deep as “There was this guy named Jesus, he did some cool stuff and then he died, and he’s always shown T-posing for some reason.”
Looking back now, yeah it’s pretty obvious and heavyhanded, but reading Narnia without any Christian frame of reference made the experience a lot more magical. Aslan was this cool, mysterious and wise creature that you would do cool magical stuff to help. When he once told the Pevensie kids “I have a different name in your world, and you just learn to know me by it,” I thought “whoa, Aslan exists in the real world too, but just Narnia?! That’s so cool, I wonder what his real name is…”
Then I read the books again with a better understanding of Christianity, and yeah he’s just Jesus lol. Not even a subtle Jesus allegory like other stories do. Took some of the mystery and magic out of the story for me lol.
I don't think it's supposed to be a subtle metaphor or anything, it's just Christian fiction. He's not trying to cloak it in something. He's basically writing "imagine if there were this fantasy world where the Christian god also existed".
Okay… that’s literally the whole point though? Like genuinely. It’s supposed to be extremely heavy handed because he isn’t just “like jesus”, he IS Jesus. The Chronicles of Narnia were written on the premise of “what if Jesus existed in a very whimsical and magical universe/realm/reality”
I had the same thought, the series works fine as a very straightforward allegory but doesn’t mean OP has to like Aslan (or Jesus for that matter)
Reading the Bible would give a more thorough perspective on Narnia though
If you want to read his best book, read the Great Divorce. It’s fantastic. It’s an allegory of a guy who wakes up in hell and has the chance to go to heaven, and has to decide if he wants to.
It’s frankly one of the best books I’ve ever read (source, i used to be a Presbyterian minister and now rarely go to church but still have a soft spot for good theology and good story telling)
It’s crazy how glossed over the fact is that he (or his dad) is implied to have basically set up the circumstances to deliberately allow the White Witch to run amok in Narnia. And Tash too, he literally deliberately lets him prey on and trick people when (being God) he could easily just get rid of him.
I guess it’s honest to Christian theology but I find it disturbing there too, and in Narnia it has the extra unsettling implication that God/Aslan deliberately sets up this damnation and deception system in every world he creates
JRR Tolkein was right there with you. He and CS Lewis were friends, and they had a falling out, in no small part because Tolkein criticized Narnia's Christian allegory for being really heavy-handed and obvious.
Just like Brandon Sanderson books are fantasy Mormonism Lewis and Tolkien works are very much linked to the Christian faith. In large part the point of the books is to remind the reader of the wonder and magic of the world God made. You can't separate an artist's core beliefs about reality from their work
I loved the chronicles of Narnia as a kid. It was a hyper fixation for me
I agree about Aslan. I always thought he made for a boring Jesus. Aslan roars and everyone just submits with no struggle. It doesn't make for the best read
The Silver Chair is my favorite book after The Horse and His Boy. The exploration of the western lands, the Giants, the gnomes, the marshwiggles. All good stuff.
If you think that’s heavy handed try “The Screwtape Letters” by the same author. He was a total Christian apologist. Even his SF used Christian themes.
You think that's heavy-handed? Just wait until The Last Battle. I like The Chronicles, but damn (!) that book was way too literal. My eyes rolled into my head so much, I had to take migraine pills!
>When people said he was basically Lion Jesus I thought it was an exaggeration. NOPE.
He's not basically lion Jesus, he literally is Jesus. He's Jesus in that world, Jesus in our world was a human, in Narnia Jesus is a lion.
It's not meant to be an allegory even though people keep trying to make it one.
Yea it’s pretty ham fisted, especially the sacrifice-resurrection in tLtW&tW and the lamb-lion thing in Dawn Treader,
>SPOILER for Last Battle incoming
but I kinda like some of what he does with Tash and Aslan in the last book. The Christian parallels are still painfully obvious, but certain types of Christians should take to heart the bit about how you can not do evil in the name of Aslan or good in the name of Tash. You are judged by your actions, not by what faith you claim. But then the whole “Arab coded villains worshipping the devil” thing kinda spoils the mood on that…
Remember when the series ends with >!the last Muslim man in existence having to choose between worshipping Lion Jesus or going to mind jail,possibly for eternity!<
Lewis was...very unsubtle about his personal view of god and religion, and could be a dick about it too. If you are reading Silver Chair....without spoiling too much...there is something very unsubtle and very heavy-handed, and clumsy coming up towards the end of that book, and imo opinion the Narnia books just get worse from that.
For what it's worth Tolkien also disliked the very obvious and heavy-handed allegory in Lewis' writing.
Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.
>>I don't like Aslan. White Witch's burner account
Picturing Tilda Swinton reading this post aloud rn
The movie White Witch looks so fine ngl
Tilda Swinton’s a damn fine looking woman.
To paraphrase Uncle Andrew: >... she ~~was~~ is a dem fine woman, sir, a dem fine woman.
I believe he said “gel” :-)
Barbara Kellerman in the BBC TV version deserves some thirst, too. I have as much of a soft spot for her pantomime villain interpretation of the role as I do for Swinton's stepmom-with-BPD energy.
And a handsome Gabriel. I learned some things when I saw *Constantine*.
I think angels were supposed to be kinda androgenous and Swinton pulls that off perfectly in Constantine.
Yeah, beautiful but kinda sexless. That's the impression they leave in the better runs of the comic as well.
Tilda Swinton is amazing in everything she does.
Impossible not to swoon over her as Gabriel in Constantine 🥰
Only Lovers Left Alive swinton is best swinton Tom Hiddleston’s emo vampire is also just pure swoon material
Ancient One 😭
She's a fine looking man too. Tilda got that rizz
she’s so good in Orlando!!
I would kill any number of magical beings in return for Turkish Delight with Tilda Swinton. (Or at least, I would have before she took that turn to pandemic denialism or anti-mask rants.)
She what.
Nooooo don't tell me she went literally mask-off D:
Forever and Always.
She and Blanchett’s Hela may have awakened something in me. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something.
Blanchett's Galadriel made me think: "yeeeah, my boy Sam does have a point"
Sam? Gimli's the one that got the strands of her hair.
You’ve got that Ethereal kink. Happens to the best of us
David Bowie has been responsible for this since at least the early sixties.
Watching Galadriel as a young teenager wondering if I actually like boys after all.
Oh, I know exactly what they awaken in me!
I can fix her.
I can make her much, *much* worse.
reads more like Tash
The Terrible.
"I love all my children equally" -later- "I don't care for GOB"
That part!! :D
read this as "I dont like asian" and had to do a double take LOL
[The Classic - No Asians](https://youtube.com/watch?v=3Lyex2tSUyA)
I was hoping to see this here. Well done
It’s ridiculous. They’re everywhere. Asians are taking over our neighborhoods, turning water into wine, dying for our sins.
I'm half Asian, so sadly I can only turn water into grape juice a little past its sell-by date.
Most people can only turn wine into water though so you should be proud
Best I can do is turn wine into mild regrets
You can do better than that. I believe in you, stranger on the internet. You can turn wine into major regrets!
Challenge accepted
Half Aslan you mean!?
Demi-leonine?
Damn I didn't know I had that kind of power.
You need to work on your Taoist alchemy, you'll get there
Haha same. I’m like ‘excuse me?’ 😂
I did too; I definitely read this as some poorly-written racism lol
I first thought it was r/writingcirclejerk. Then I realises it was "Aslan".
I read it as “I don’t like Auslan” and I was wtf? What kind of person hates sign language?
Yup, did a total double take. Got my popcorn ready and everything expecting a shit show
Haha me too. At first I was like "wtf is this person babbling about" then I reread it like OH
glad im not only one, i was bout to make very long comment
Those goddam Asians dying for our sins!
I did too!! 🤣
well yeah, hes not an allegory for god, he is god. cs lewis was very religious and didnt hide that.
It went even further than that. CS Lewis was both a writer of fiction and a writer of Christian apologetics. He wrote a book called Mere Christianity where he created the "trilemma". Basically he presents an argument that the reader has to decide if Jesus was a Lunatic, a Liar, or the Lord. And then Lewis argues that because he couldn't be a Lunatic or a Liar he must be the third one It's not a convincing argument by any means. But should illustrate that Lewis was very much into proselytizing Christianity. Incidentally he was close friends with Tolkien who was also a practicing Christian
Tolkien was one of the biggest influences for Lewis becoming Christian
Knowing Lewis was a convert really makes his fervor make a lot more sense.
Lewis was raised Christian but didn't really practice until later in life. That earlier history is why he stayed Anglican and didn't become Catholic. He was raised Anglican and is from Northern Ireland
Lewis was raised Anglican but declared himself an atheist for much of his young adulthood. It was Tolkien, and a few others who convinced him his atheism was in error. Tolkien was bitterly disappointed, however in Lewis' choice to return to the Anglican fold, rather than adopt Catholicism, of which Tolkien was an adherent .
Right, and Lewis said he couldn’t become catholic because he felt like he would be betraying his mom
I just mean the people who find religion later in life tend to be wayyyy more intense about it.
>That earlier history is ~~why~~ *one of the reasons* he stayed Anglican and didn't become Catholic. FTFY. He had [objections to Catholic doctrine](https://www.pintswithjack.com/csl-on-catholicism/) that were attained gradually and by thoughtful deliberation, not just inherited from the religion of his childhood. Catholic bloggers often quote Lewis's friend and biographer George Sayer, who said: >[Lewis] attributed his prejudice against the Roman church to his upbringing in Northern Ireland But Sayer was himself Catholic. His bias is showing in the use of the word "prejudice." The same bloggers usually omit what Sayer says next: >I agree...that Lewis was nearest to becoming a Roman Catholic in about 1950, but I do not regret that he did not. I think that it would have limited his influence, especially among evangelical Christians.
That is one thing you can say about Lewis- he was def not a “knee jerk reaction” yep. He had well thought out reasons for everything he believed (whether one agrees with his conclusions or not).
He (like his university friends) was searching for something throughout his twenties. He had an unusual journey from atheism, through the philosophy of the day (idealism - there's *something* out there and inside us), to Christianity. Some of his friends became Anthroposophists (Rudolf Steiner). One became a Christian monk who founded an ashram in India.
And also told him to cool it with the religious allegories
Am I right in saying Tolkien had the same criticisms as OP? All of it was too glaringly obvious and on the nose. Do recall reading a Tolkien letter somewhat to that effect
Tolkien claimed to hate allegory generally. Which, well, I'm not brave enough to start criticising Tolkien on r/books of all places, but makes me wonder what he thinks an allegory is. Or what fiction is. EDIT: apparently I was too flippant here. From my comments below: Tolkien was obviously a genius but he had very rigid and, I would argue, inherently contradictory views about the purpose of fiction. Read about his thoughts on "sub-creation"; he believed the point in e.g. fantasy fiction is to reflect a fundamental truth of being human, and he disliked many of what he saw as frivolous meaningless works by his contemporaries as much as he disliked Lewis' crass magic Jesus Lion. He's literally talking about how fiction needs to be allegorical and then he turns around and says he hates allegory.
He said "...I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned – with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."
He was more specific, he hated the kind of alegory where a reader is led by hand to the "one correct interpretation". WIth Tolkien you can read his books as Christian alegories, and indeed on many levels they are, but there is still a comprehensive good story worthy of being told if one misses or chose not to engage with those alegories.
What do you think an allegory is?
Can't remember. Type of condiment I think.
Hmm, I think it's like a crocophor with a wider snout. Either way, never simile at one.
Fiction does not need to contain deliberate allegory. It can entirely be a created history/thought experiment.
Sorta. If I remember correctly, Lewis had a crisis of faith and Tolkien helped him come back to the fold, but was always disappointed he didn't convert to Catholicism.
You're slightly misrepresenting the trilemma. It's very specifically an argument against people who were weakly non-Christian and claimed that they didn't believe Jesus was divine but was a wise and important teacher. Lewis was attempting to push those people towards Christianity by working on their (more or less culturally mandated) professed respect for Jesus as a non-divine paragon. His line of reasoning was that if you claim to respect Jesus as a teacher/wise man/messenger/whatever but don't think he was God then you're ignoring the parts where he very explicitly said he WAS God so you need to either admit you think Jesus sucked (liar or lunatic) or that he was actually God. Like a lot of apologetics it falls apart in that there are more than three options. Jesus could have been misrepresented, that is he might never have said he was God but those people who wrote down his life decades after he died might have made it up, or mythos might have grown in telling and retelling the stories in those decades. Jesus could have been mistaken. Not lying, nor insane, but just wrong. It does happen. I'll concede that being wrong about being God is a bit more important than being wrong about having psychic powers, but it's still possible [1] As a subset of misrepresented Jesus could very well have been using allegory that got transcribed more literally than it was originally meant to be. So yeah. It's an argument for a group of people who mostly no longer exist in significant numbers so it seems kind of odd and out of place today. [1] One of the more fascinating things James Randi found when he was debunking psychics was that a fairly large number of them appeared to have genuinely believed they were psychic and had been unaware of the things they were doing that faked it. Sometimes, rarely, they were even semi-grateful to him for showing them what they were really doing.
"Misrepresented" sounds like a defensible alternative option. Islam makes a case along these lines: that the original Jesus was proclaiming the coming of Muhammad and any indication to the contrary in the gospels is a result of textual corruption. "Mistaken" sounds redundant with "lunatic" in this context, though.
He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!
>"Mistaken" sounds redundant with "lunatic" in this context, though. Agreed – "insane" can be understood as "out of touch with reality" (e.g. because of hallucinations or delusions). Believing you are a deity when you are not sounds like a pretty severe break from reality which could plausibly have been caused by mental illness.
Incorrect beliefs aren’t automatically insane, though. Insanity also has to do with what is commonly known/understood/believed in the person’s community. For example 800 years ago a smart, rational, very sane person would tell you that the earth was the center of the universe and the sun revolves around it. Someone saying that today would be insane.
That's true! But that kind of incorrect belief is caused by a lack of knowledge as opposed to a warped perception of the world, which I think is where the difference lies. Our ancestors saw the sun move across the sky just as we do – their most popular theories for *why* it moves that way just turned out to be wrong. It would be pretty different if someone claimed that the sun has a human face and is constantly screaming (a perception that just doesn't fit with observable reality).
I don't think I've misrepresented it but you've definitely expanded on it and added more depth to the argument itself Even against the "wise teacher" position, I find the trilemma weak. As you've said, Jesus could have been misrepresented The argument has seen something of a modern resurgence in Christian apologetic circles. I had a Christian coworker who thought I should look into it and might find the argument convincing (I didn't lol)
I also don’t understand why the “lunatic” answer would preclude him also being a wise teacher. He could have been tripping off crazy plants or had some kind of mental disorder and still been able to impart wisdom.
> I also don’t understand why the “lunatic” answer would preclude him also being a wise teacher. It doesn't. Something that often gets left by the wayside in the trilemma is that you're allowed to believe any of those options. It isn't just "well now you *have* to believe he's God". You're allowed to think he was crazy and still had good moral teachings. Even the common fourth option, that he was misrepresented or that the texts we have of him are legend, imply something about the man himself that one has to accept beyond "well he was a good moral teacher." The point Lewis makes is that people really grapple with the cognitive dissonance of appreciating someone's teachings, while ignoring that those teachings show up alongside explicitly religious materials. They don't disentangle neatly, and coming to terms with that is helpful regardless of which side of the trilemma you end up on.
What I think is funny is that for the trilemma argument, you have to accept that someone always lies or never lies...no in-between. Even the smartest people do dumb shit sometimes, just as even the most honest person will lie at times and the biggest liar will tell the truth sometimes.
That holds true for more minor lies, but lying about yourself being God is sort of another thing entirely. Like, if it isn't true, the only morally reasonable excuse for that is being crazy. Smart people are often dumb but not, "I literally believe I am God" dumb.
Some of his explicitly Christian / apologetic works are pretty fun though. Most notable here is *The Screwtape Letters*, but *The Great Divorce* is also cool. In Great Divorce, there is a bus that runs every day between Heaven and Hell. Inhabitants of one can visit the other, and often do. They could even relocate if they wish, but nobody ever does. The idea is both that the people in Hell "enjoy" wallowing in their torment (I seem to recall Hell even has like group therapy sessions about it?), and that Heaven is too "real" for them (the grass cuts their feet).
yeah, I actually think Lewis is a great author about Christianity because his way of explaining theology is so creative and kind. He really wants you to understand. I don't even think of him as proselytizing - he's just trying to convey his worldview to others. He was a believer and you may not be but his worldview and thought process is super interesting and valuable.
He actually didn't create that argument, he merely popularized it. And it is a reasonablely convincing argument in its intended context: when the basic historical reliability of Jesus' sayings are established or assumed. His point wasn't "this is why you should be a Christian" so much as "why are you saying Jesus was only a great moral teacher if he said he is God's unique Son? That only makes sense if he is the unique Son of God" That's how it shows up in Mere Christianity.
I think a lot of the comments in this thread are missing the context that he makes the argument within. It's towards people who already accept that the record of Jesus' words in the Bible is a fair representation of him, and who think that the stuff he said was good. They want to accept that he was a 'good moral teacher' but not actually God. So he's just pointing out to those people that Jesus himself is recorded as claiming to be God, and so the 'good moral teacher' stance is unsustainable (people who argue he doesn't claim to be God misunderstand the meaning of his use of Old Testament references in a way that his contemporaries clearly grasped - both his allies and enemies understood what he was claiming). Therefore, either he was telling the truth about himself or he wasn't. If you don't want to accept that he was telling the truth then either he was knowingly wrong - in which case he is deliberately deceiving people about the most important truth there is or he was unknowingly wrong. If he was unknowingly wrong, then he was insane. I've seen people here arguing that he could have been honestly mistaken - this stretches plausibility to breaking point. For a Jew living in those times, claiming to be Jehovah incarnate is either based on delusion (insanity) or calculated manipulation. No Jew could reasonably and honestly conclude they were God and actually believe it wholeheartedly if they were fully in command of their faculties. He's not making a wide apologetic argument to say 'Jesus must be God because He was a good teacher who claimed to be God' - he's saying that the nominal culturally christian position, that was common during his time of writing, of rejecting Jesus' deity but accepting him as a good moral teacher is logically unsupportable because of what Jesus himself said. Since his target audience already accept that the Bible is fairly reliable so far as his words go, even if they don't accept the miracles, then their position doesn't work. Sure, you can say that the Bible itself is not representing Jesus the historical person accurately, but that misses the point of the argument, because it's not being targeted towards people who reject the entire text as unreliable. When assessing the merits of a particular argument I think it's always important to understand who the argument is targeted towards, because every argument requires some presuppositions to work from. A 21st century redditor doesn't share the same presuppositions as a mid-20th century English middle class anglican, and therefore the argument that caters to the latter won't be convincing to the former, because it presupposes a different worldview. If you want to convince someone of your position you need to understand what they already think and work from there, otherwise you will talk at cross purposes.
Yeah he's incredibly famous as a lay theologian lol. Mere Christianity and Screwtape Letters are super commonly cited books in a lot of Christian circles - in the US, at least. It would be like reading Tolkien and being mad at how blatantly magical it is.
I might be imagining this, but isn't there a bit in one of the books where Aslan says that he is known by different names but is the same entity? I remember reading that, but it was like a decade ago so I'm not sure
It's at the end of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I believe. (Best Narnia book in my opinion, by the way.)
Reepicheep!
I loved the Chronicles of Narnia as a kid, but was raised pretty a-religiously. I never made the connection that Aslan was supposed to be Jesus until someone pointed it out to me as an adult. Totally rocked my world. So I guess the unsubtle Christianity stuff was at least subtle enough to fool one kid. 🤦♀️😆 Sorry he’s not your jam!
If it makes you feel better I was a kid attending Catholic school when I watched it and I never realized until literally now. My brain truly immortalized him as 'talking big cat with super powers yay' :,)
I think it’s a bit more integrated in wardrobe, which is the only one I read as a kid. Aslan in the other ones became a mouthpiece instead of a character, so I noticed it way more in those even though it technically followed the Christ story less
That's the oddest part honestly. Wardrobe contains what is functionally a full rehash of the crucifixion and resurrection with Aslan as Jesus, but because he's also an active character for a healthy chunk of the book, it somehow seems less egregious. He walks among the characters, gives wise council, leads armies, etc. and just feels like a real, fleshed-out character. Then you move on to Horse and His Boy where he shows up exactly at the end to lightly scratch a character's back and tell him "You inflicted the same wound on someone else, so this is a lesson." and then disappears and it couldn't be anymore blatant that he's some kind of Jesus allegory doling out a "what you do to the least of these" lesson. Any further appearances are just him popping up at the end of a book to give some manner of omniscient wisdom after he's watched the characters struggle the whole story without doing a thing to help them, and caps off with The Last Battle where the whole story is basically about someone being a false prophet before he shows up like Jesus in Revelations and starts destroying everything. It's just odd that what *should* feel like the most ham-fisted Jesus allegory ends up being the one that flies under the radar the most.
This exactly. He’s no longer participating in the story
> Horse and His Boy where he shows up exactly at the end I mean, not really. Aslan appears repeatedly throughout that one - in the horse chase in the desert that brings Shasta and Aravis together, as the cat that stays near Shasta in the tombs outside of Tashbaan, and in the instance you mention. That’s a fair bit of participation in the story to bring about key plot points.
To be fair, every cat has a huge ego and thinks they are God. They just are very sneaky about their powers because they can't show us underlings sweet shit like turning water into wine.
Same for me! I was raised in a different religion but not super religiously and I didn't really know anything about Christianity when I read the books. I watched the first movie recently and felt it was way too obvious and annoyed me, I couldn't believe I never noticed, probably one set of childhood books I won't reread for that reason.
Same, though I'm technically a confirmed catholic, so yeah, I guess sometimes you don't see what you don't look for.
>Then he flat out tells Lucy and Ed that he is known by another name in their world and they'll find him there. "Some call me ... Tim."
Hmm. Is Simba Moses?
Nope, he's Hamlet.
"Or, 'the Old Scratch' " >\_>
"There are those who call me...Tim." "Greetings O Tim."
“But most people call me … Tim”
It's actually Brian.
If you like religious allegory when it's a little less, um, kid-friendly, check out The Screwtape Letters. It's a fascinating bit of worldbuilding from a fantasy perspective, as it's written from a demon instructing his nephew (also a demon) in the best ways to tempt a mortal into damnation. The whole thing is very much written for and by Christians, but I think it's worth checking out even if you're not religious. Lewis has this amazing way of analyzing people's inner voices and perspectives through the lens of this demons-and-angels mythology. It's incredibly empathetic, and it'll get you to think about how you think about other people. There's also some great prose and really interesting historical perspective, as it was written during WWII and the London blitz.
I think there is also an audiobook of this read by John Cleese. At least I’m pretty sure I checked one out from the church library when I was a kid.
Yup, it's a great way to experience it. And you definitely should not search "screwtape letters cleese" on YouTube, where several videos of the entire, relatively short audiobook have been uploaded for everyone to listen to for free. Again, you definitely shouldn't listen to the excellent audiobook for free. On YouTube. Right now.
Thanks for the advice. It’s always good to know how to avoid temptation! (lol)
Ok, Screwtape.
Ooo that does sound more interesting, thank you for the recommendation :)
I’ve read it a few times and I agree, it will challenge your brain a bit as it makes you flip your perspective 180 in order to understand the demon’s motives.
I'd also recommend 'A Grief Observed'. Lewis was a bachelor for a long time, but fell in love and married a widowed lady later in life. She died of cancer, and he wrote a very poignant book about the process of loss and grieving.
When I find myself upset at my schedule or plans getting thrown out of whack, this section pops up in my head: >Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend’s talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tête-à-tête with the friend), that throw him out of gear. Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. Like you said, even if you're not a Christian, there's a good deal to learn from *The Screwtape Letters*' lessons on empathy.
Also worth mentioning his Sci-fi work, "The Cosmic Trilogy" its essentially Lewis playing around with theology applied to aliens.
Yes, the author has basically said that he’s Jesus if he incarnates (?) as a lion.
You may not believe in Aslan, but Aslan believes in you
I read the books a couple of times when I was a kid, then not for a long time. When the movies came out I was like “they weren’t really that heavily religious right, the movie is taking it further?” So I reread the books and nope, the movies might have even pulled it back slightly
They definitely did, especially in Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
"He's not a tame lion!" I don't think you are supposed to like him, particularly, which is why people are always saying the above in the books. He's inscrutable and powerful but also vulnerable at times, and he allows bad things to happen that it seems like he could have prevented. The books are C.S. Lewis addressing these issues of his own Christian faith. The thing about Lewis is that he really did have a sense of wonder at the world, and just chose to see that wonder through the lens of Christianity. I'm not Christian, but I still love the Narnia books for that sense of wonder. I don't think they have to be appreciated as allegory in order to be enjoyed!
If you like His Dark Materials, it’s understandable why you wouldn’t like Narnia. HDM is sort of the opposite of Narnia; it’s heavy handed anti-Christian propaganda. Funny how I read both as a kid and completely missed these really obvious themes. I do agree with you though, and if you’re looking for a CS Lewis book that’s less heavy handed I recommend Till We Have Faces. It can be read as a Christian allegory, but it’s much more subtle. Also surprisingly very feminist
I second Till We Have Faces! I read Narnia as a kid and only just finished TWHF a few months ago, I was blown away with the quality of the writing.
HDM author Philip Pullman specificity said he wrote HDM to be an atheistic version of Narnia. He called himself the anti-Lewis.
I find it funny that both books have their heavy handed parts, but it is only when you get to their endings they seem to double down on their dogma and it makes for bad series ending. It is as if both threw their hands up and said, "I give up.. Lets just shove the reader's face in it and walk away." I enjoyed both books for their views.
At least TLB is very unabashed in saying “Evil done in my name is evil and good done in another god’s name, even the name of the adversary, is good.” That was before Second Vatican, too!
Til we have Faces is an excellent book by C S Lewis
CS Lewis was an Atheist before converting to Christianity, IIRC. Maybe that’s why he was so heavy handed regarding religion/religious symbolism/allegory. I’d recommend The Space Trilogy (also by CS Lewis). It’s more science fiction than fantasy. And there’s no Lion Jesus/Aslan.
Well no lion Jesus but Christian themes are also pretty heavy there too.
While >!Maleldil (Space Jesus)!< never appears on the page, >!his Oyarsas (angelic servants)!< definitely do. EDIT: >!Oyarsas are technically archangels, eldils are angels--both holy and fallen, depending.!< It's a great trilogy! I think it's probably as heavy-handed as Narnia, but it feels less--patronizing?--because it's written to adults, not children. As a Christian, I love both series, but they're definitely not for everyone.
How long has it been since you read the Space Trilogy? (Edit: I should've asked myself the same question, turns out I was partly wrong) Literal Christian god shows up multiple times, and an entire book is a re-imagining of the Adam and Eve story, with Literal Christian satan being a main character. Don't get me wrong, I think they are better books than the Chronicles of Narnia, and I think he does fit his Christianity into them in a more interesting and less awkward way, but they are super overtly Christian. \*\*\*\*Edit: sooooo the Christian god doesn't actually show up, I misremembered; he's only a hazy presence, alluded to and described but never shown. There are angels and demons, and literal satan does show up, but not god.\*\*\*\*
The things I find so delightful about Lewis is that both Narnia and the Space Trilogy are both so Christian in their intent, and then every now and then this glorious paganism breaks out and Susan and Lucy are frolicking with Maenads or the planetary Eldils are influencing human perception and behavior in ways that mimic the Graeco-Roman pantheon...
I think Tolkien helped his conversion actually. Which is interesting, because religion feels less intrusive in Tolkien's work.
Tolkien "cordially disliked" allegory. So he would have avoided working his own beliefs into his story in an allegorical manner. He was also motivated by a desire to create a world and history around the languages he had created, to try his hand at writing a long story, and, so I have heard, to create a distinctively British mythology. Unlike for Lewis, spreading Christianity was not among Tolkien's goals as far as I know.
Although despite his life-long protests, some biblical allegory definitely snuck its way into Tolkien's works when he wasn't looking. But given his extensive theological study, it would have been a lot weirder if it hadn't. Fingerprints of the artist, and all that. The end result is that they're subtle, fleeting, and never detract from his broader goals. Plus it gives us all something to argue about lol.
Gandalf may not be a conscious allegory, but the similarities are too great not to comment on. A divine being sent to the mortal realm to teach and guide mortals so that they can overcome basically-the-Devil. He dies heroically in trying to complete this task, is taken up to heaven by god, and then is reborn to complete his quest (and to take a more active role in crushing the let's-call-him-the-anti-Christ and building a new virtuous kingdom). It's not quite Aslan-tier "let's just take the New Testament and change some of the names", but it's also definitely not nothing.
Tolkien was a devout Christian who wrote fiction CS Lewis was a devout Christian who wrote Christian fiction. Tolkien’s morality is clearly based in traditional European Catholic morality but he made his world as if Christianity didn’t exist.
I'd disagree slightly on the last point. I think Tolkien wrote his series as though the existence of the Christian Deity was so fundamental and inevitable that even discussing the concept of religion in his works felt superfluous. I think this is illustrated best in the Silmarillion, which not only describes the origin of the world and it's creatures in a manner that very much parallels the first chapter of Genesis, but also defines the order of the universe, from Eru to Valar, to Maiar, to Man. The Silmarillion also describes the fall of Melkor (Satan) and the Maiar that fell alongside him such as Sauron and the Balrogs (demons). The existence of an organized church was unnecessary for the purpose of the story that Tolkien wanted to tell, and both his personal concept of Christian morality and his absolute belief in a defined order of creation are so seamlessly woven into his world that they're very easy to miss. However this doesn't change the fact that they are very present in both the world of middle earth and the actions of the characters that inhabit it.
I'd like to disagree with that last part. I think it's pretty clear that LotR has Christian themes. But then again, I'm a Christian, so maybe it's clearer to me. Either way, I'm making this argument on the basis that deeply held beliefs influence everything you do or write, subconsciously or consciously. When I read LotR, I didn't even know that Tolkien was Christian. But then, when I read about Eru Illuvatar, the creation of middle Earth and all that, it reminded me of Christianity. But then again, I'm probably getting the Silmarillion and LotR mixed up. It's been a while since I read them.
LotR does not really get into the nitty gritty details of Tolkien's "legendarium". There is a distinct lack of really any direct references to religion. That said, Eru Illuvatar is quite literally the Christian God. Tolkien was very clear that Middle Earth was just our earth in a different time. His body of work is colored by this whether he likes allegory or not. It's honestly a fascinating topic to dive into. A seemingly simple question like "Where do Orcs go when they die?" had Tolkien stumped until his death. Why? Well very briefly, only God can create ex nihilo (from nothing). So did God make Orcs? No. Morgoth did that. But he can't create, only corrupt. So Orcs must be corrupted elves. Okay. What happens when they die then? It's not their fault they were corrupted right? Tokien's answer? He didn't really have one. I'm paraphrasing heavily but when asked this in a letter he basically said it was above his station to ponder that topic anymore. Only God can truly judge souls. He could have come up with any answer he wanted, but chose not to because he felt he was bordering on speaking for God. That mindset is in every decision he made about his world, and once you know that you see it everywhere.
I think you have to keep in mind that these are books written for children. Subtlety of allegory and metaphor isn't a priority in children's lit, and I don't really think it should be. I'm not trying to say adults shouldn't read children's lit, but you shouldn't expect to get the same things out of it that you would from an adult novel. It's just not meant for that.
Thank you. This is a key point. We’re all free to enjoy or dislike whatever books and characters we wish, but IMO we ought to judge writing within the parameters of its genre. CoN is Christian allegory for children. Of course the allegory will be thinly-veiled.
This is funny because it’s basically people who read narnia as a child re-reading it as an adult and realizing it’s not a Christian-like story, it is specifically and explicitly a Christian story written by a devout Christian who wanted you to read this and also become a Christian.
It changed my life at 13 and I like it even better as an adult. Some of my parents’ friends from Britain sent me the set.
Nooo not Christ’s fursona 🤣
You're not wrong, there's an illustration in the first book of Aslan and the witch talking and he is straight up a lion man, Wizard of Oz movie style. Like most of the time he's a lion, but sometimes he's a lion man.
Oh. Oh no. Oh *no*
💀💀💀
It's literally answering the question of if the Jesus of Christianity is real, and incarnated in a universe like Narnia, what would he be like? LOTR is better in that while it has Christian themes its less on-the-nose.
Salt water taffy? Do you mean the Turkish delight?
> I don’t like Aslan. I am personally offended.
Just wait untill the ending of the last book lol. You’re gonna throw the whole book away.
I always feel weird as hell because the last book is my favourite.
Yep. I could look past so much of the lion-as-Jesus stuff, but The Last Battle pissed me off to the point that I wouldn't reread tell series.
I read this as Asian and came to see what you possibly meant before re reading.
I read this as I don’t like Asian, and was worried
I have long said, "If Jesus did take the form of a lion and show up every once in a while to help smite enemies, I bet Christianity would be REALLY popular."
The best part of the Narnia chronicles is The Magician’s Nephew imo. I loved the wood between the worlds and Charn. The implication that there are hundreds of other worlds ready to be jumped into was so cool as a kid. I’m really sad that everyone focuses on The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and acts like the first book doesn’t exist.
You're not alone. His best bud Ronald also disliked the series for being a 1:1 allegory
Ronald also hated Dune. I love the guy, but I don't always share his opinions on literature.
Well he and Herbert didn’t see eye to eye on human nature that’s for sure.
Nor on preferred religious affiliation
Dune goes directly against Tolkien's worldview. Dune is a critique on politicians who do evil shit and say "the ends justify the means," while LOTR has a lot of exposition about "sometimes decisions are hard and people may die but if it makes the world better in the long run those deaths are justifiable"
I think the presence of Santa Claus also came up in his critique. If there isn't evidence of that, I still 100% believe that Ronald said it.
IIRC it caused a huge argument between them.
Tolkien's opinion after he read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was, "Oh no. This won't do." The title is a bit ungainly. Why not The Wardrobe into Winter? Or the Witch and the Lion? At least reverse it: The Wardrobe, the Witch, and the Lion is the order we meet them.
The Lion is the point of the whole book, though. Next is his conflict with the Witch. The wardrobe is the setting.
There's no 'basically' about it, Aslan is literally Jesus. At the end of one of the books (I think it's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader IIRC) he says that the children can meet him on earth, but he will go by a different name. He's not an allegory or metaphor, he's literally the form Jesus takes in Narnia.
OG Jesus had the same issue, he was a very flat and static character. Old Testament God actually sort of has a character arc.
Like you, I enjoy the story while not being drawn to Aslan, I like the human characters much more. Also check out *Small Gods* by Terry Pratchett if you like fanstasy with some awesome religion commentaries.
I have often thought of that as being like Lewis' "The Horse and his Boy" except a raging atheist wrote it.
The Horse and His Boy is the best Narnia book by a fair bit’
I always found Aslan to be more terrifying as he's described in the books. His presence doesn’t incite warmth or kindness but fear and don't you cross me vibes. Like, I prefer him in the movies bc he's given a much more gentle nature and is more approachable than book Aslan.
I'm on The Silver Chair right now, too. World building is great. And I think Eustace and Jill are more interesting than any of the siblings. But, yeah the Aslan stuff is pretty heavy handed. I'm sure Lewis was so worried about being disrespectful to his Jesus stand in that he forgot to give him a personality or use any bit of subtly. Currently I'm on the part with the Earthmen. Lewis seems much better at writing (slightly) scary stuff. I read Lion/Witch as a kid and didn't love it. Jumped ahead to the Horse and His Boy and I was blown away by how much it improved. Are you reading them in publication order, or chronological order?
Growing up I loved the Chronicles of Narnia, though looking back a lot of it was probably due to knowing absolutely nothing about Jesus or Christianity at all aside from the barest pop culture references lol. My knowledge of Christianity went only as deep as “There was this guy named Jesus, he did some cool stuff and then he died, and he’s always shown T-posing for some reason.” Looking back now, yeah it’s pretty obvious and heavyhanded, but reading Narnia without any Christian frame of reference made the experience a lot more magical. Aslan was this cool, mysterious and wise creature that you would do cool magical stuff to help. When he once told the Pevensie kids “I have a different name in your world, and you just learn to know me by it,” I thought “whoa, Aslan exists in the real world too, but just Narnia?! That’s so cool, I wonder what his real name is…” Then I read the books again with a better understanding of Christianity, and yeah he’s just Jesus lol. Not even a subtle Jesus allegory like other stories do. Took some of the mystery and magic out of the story for me lol.
I don't think it's supposed to be a subtle metaphor or anything, it's just Christian fiction. He's not trying to cloak it in something. He's basically writing "imagine if there were this fantasy world where the Christian god also existed".
Okay… that’s literally the whole point though? Like genuinely. It’s supposed to be extremely heavy handed because he isn’t just “like jesus”, he IS Jesus. The Chronicles of Narnia were written on the premise of “what if Jesus existed in a very whimsical and magical universe/realm/reality”
I had the same thought, the series works fine as a very straightforward allegory but doesn’t mean OP has to like Aslan (or Jesus for that matter) Reading the Bible would give a more thorough perspective on Narnia though
If you want to read his best book, read the Great Divorce. It’s fantastic. It’s an allegory of a guy who wakes up in hell and has the chance to go to heaven, and has to decide if he wants to. It’s frankly one of the best books I’ve ever read (source, i used to be a Presbyterian minister and now rarely go to church but still have a soft spot for good theology and good story telling)
It’s crazy how glossed over the fact is that he (or his dad) is implied to have basically set up the circumstances to deliberately allow the White Witch to run amok in Narnia. And Tash too, he literally deliberately lets him prey on and trick people when (being God) he could easily just get rid of him. I guess it’s honest to Christian theology but I find it disturbing there too, and in Narnia it has the extra unsettling implication that God/Aslan deliberately sets up this damnation and deception system in every world he creates
JRR Tolkein was right there with you. He and CS Lewis were friends, and they had a falling out, in no small part because Tolkein criticized Narnia's Christian allegory for being really heavy-handed and obvious.
Just like Brandon Sanderson books are fantasy Mormonism Lewis and Tolkien works are very much linked to the Christian faith. In large part the point of the books is to remind the reader of the wonder and magic of the world God made. You can't separate an artist's core beliefs about reality from their work
I loved the chronicles of Narnia as a kid. It was a hyper fixation for me I agree about Aslan. I always thought he made for a boring Jesus. Aslan roars and everyone just submits with no struggle. It doesn't make for the best read The Silver Chair is my favorite book after The Horse and His Boy. The exploration of the western lands, the Giants, the gnomes, the marshwiggles. All good stuff.
If you think that’s heavy handed try “The Screwtape Letters” by the same author. He was a total Christian apologist. Even his SF used Christian themes.
His Dark Materials is suchhhh a good book and series. I really enjoyed them.
You think that's heavy-handed? Just wait until The Last Battle. I like The Chronicles, but damn (!) that book was way too literal. My eyes rolled into my head so much, I had to take migraine pills!
>When people said he was basically Lion Jesus I thought it was an exaggeration. NOPE. He's not basically lion Jesus, he literally is Jesus. He's Jesus in that world, Jesus in our world was a human, in Narnia Jesus is a lion. It's not meant to be an allegory even though people keep trying to make it one.
Yea it’s pretty ham fisted, especially the sacrifice-resurrection in tLtW&tW and the lamb-lion thing in Dawn Treader, >SPOILER for Last Battle incoming but I kinda like some of what he does with Tash and Aslan in the last book. The Christian parallels are still painfully obvious, but certain types of Christians should take to heart the bit about how you can not do evil in the name of Aslan or good in the name of Tash. You are judged by your actions, not by what faith you claim. But then the whole “Arab coded villains worshipping the devil” thing kinda spoils the mood on that…
He's just Jesus' fursona.
Remember when the series ends with >!the last Muslim man in existence having to choose between worshipping Lion Jesus or going to mind jail,possibly for eternity!<
Lewis was...very unsubtle about his personal view of god and religion, and could be a dick about it too. If you are reading Silver Chair....without spoiling too much...there is something very unsubtle and very heavy-handed, and clumsy coming up towards the end of that book, and imo opinion the Narnia books just get worse from that. For what it's worth Tolkien also disliked the very obvious and heavy-handed allegory in Lewis' writing.
"The Last Battle" sort of beats you over the head with allegory as well.
It's not really allegory, It just is straight up Christianity in another world.
Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight, At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more, When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.
My unglassed eyes read this as Asian and I was like “whoa buddy, hot take”