Boreas
05-07-2008, 12:46 PM
C. S. LEWIS’S NARNIA AND THE EDUCATION OF THE IMAGINATION
By Herman A. Middleton
This article originally appeared in AGAIN Vol. 27 No. 4, Winter 2005.
"C. S. Lewis? He has nothing to teach the Orthodox. After all, we have the Church Fathers, the services of the Church, the lives of the saints!"
"C. S. Lewis? He is a teacher of the Church! A Church Father! A saint!"
Although conversations between Orthodox Christians regarding C. S. Lewis often reveal a great disparity of opinion, one fact cannot be pushed aside: Lewis is here to stay. With over two hundred million books sold - many of those to Orthodox Christians - C. S. Lewis is arguably the most widely read Christian writer of the twentieth century. The release this month of the hundred-million–dollar Walt Disney production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - the first of seven planned movies based on Lewis’s fantasy series, The Chronicles of Narnia - will undoubtedly ensure his continuing popularity.
Many converts to Orthodoxy note that Lewis was instrumental in their path towards Orthodoxy, while others credit his apologetic works with having saved their faith from the shipwreck of modern atheism. Through both his fiction and his nonfiction, Lewis has secured a place for himself in the minds and hearts of many Orthodox Christians. That being the case, how can Orthodoxy make use of Lewis's work? In particular, what benefit can Orthodox Christians derive from The Chronicles of Narnia?
At the heart of Lewis's imaginative works is his use of allegory, which is the representation of ideas by characters, figures, or events in a narrative. Although he did not intend The Chronicles of Narnia to serve primarily as a didactic device, Lewis's imaginative stories do illustrate eternal truths. In the Chronicles, Lewis uses a device akin to allegory, which he calls supposal. As he wrote in a 1959 letter, "I don't say, ‘Let us represent Christ as Aslan.’ I say, ‘Supposing there was a world like Narnia, and supposing, like ours, it needed redemption, let us imagine what sort of Incarnation and Passion and Resurrection Christ would have there.’" Lewis uses supposal to provide a setting where his readers might encounter Christian truth.
The Fathers on the Imagination
Lewis’s non-romantic approach to the imagination places him on common ground with the Fathers of the Church. A self-avowedly "pre-modern man," Lewis took a practical approach to his imaginative works, which may be contrasted with the modern tendency to spiritualize man's creative and imaginative powers - a tendency that he decried. In his 1939 sermon, "Learning in War-Time," he wrote:
I reject at once an idea which lingers in the mind of some modern people that cultural activities are in their own right spiritual and meritorious - as though scholars and poets were intrinsically more pleasing to God than scavengers and bootblacks. . . . Let us clear it forever from our minds. The work of a Beethoven, and the work of a charwoman, become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God, of being done humbly "as to the Lord."
The Fathers of the Church also do not romanticize man's imaginative faculty. In his classic work, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Saint John of Damascus describes the imagination with scientific precision and objectivity, neither condemning it nor praising it as such: "Imagination is a faculty of the unreasoning part of the soul. It is through the organs of sense that it is brought into action, and it is spoken of as sensation."
While regarding the imagination as an important aspect of man’s being, the Fathers also note that it may be used by the evil one to confuse and deceive. Although the Fathers' main concern as regards the imagination is with the dangers of the imagination in prayer, their caution may also be heeded in the reading of imaginative literature. As with all non-ecclesiastical literature, Orthodox Christians need to carefully separate the wheat from the chaff and to consider all things in light of the Church's teaching.
In his essay, "To young men, on how they might derive profit from pagan literature," St. Basil the Great explains how pagan literature can be useful for the education of the soul: "And since it is through virtue that we must enter upon this life of ours, and since much has been uttered in praise of virtue by the poets, much by historians, and much more still by philosophers, we ought especially to apply ourselves to such literature."
In The Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis offers much more than stories of virtue. Through the Chronicles, discerning Orthodox Christians are provided with the opportunity to draw closer to the eternal truths of the Gospel.
Aslan: Lewis's Christ Figure
"They say Aslan is on the move - perhaps has already landed." And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different . . . At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in his inside." - The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
We learn about Aslan initially through the legends surrounding him and from the awe that his name inspires: "’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you." As Christ is prefigured through the ancient myth of a god who dies and is resurrected, so the myth of Aslan's return and the liberation of Narnia from the reign of the White Witch points to the earthly ministry of Christ.
Aslan inspires awe in those in his presence: "People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time. If the children had ever thought so, they were cured of it now. For when they tried to look at Aslan's face they just caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great, royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes; and they found they couldn't look at him and went all trembly."
The mighty Aslan suggests both Christ's human and His divine nature. Although he is an earthly creature, the holy fear Aslan inspires emphasizes the spiritual reality: while God is all-loving, His presence is a consuming fire, worthy of awe and reverence. Compared to weak and revisionist modern literary portrayals of Christ, Lewis's Aslan is closer to the reality. As renowned scholar and translator Richard Pevear explains in an essay on Aslan and Christ, "Aesthetically, the effect of these literary portrayals of Christ is . . . to reduce the two natures of [Christ] to one that is 'human, all too human.'"
Aslan, in contrast, often functions successfully as an image that points to Christ. At the same time, Lewis preserves a certain distance between Christ and Aslan by making Aslan a lion and by placing him in an imaginary world. If Aslan represents Christ in some ways, it is clear that he is an imperfect representation.
From an Orthodox perspective, the most important effect of Aslan's return to Narnia is the new life that he brings with him. We are aware of his presence long before we meet him, as the White Witch's icy reign over Narnia begins to melt. We learn of this through one of the witch's dwarves: "This is no thaw . . . This is spring. What are we to do? Your winter has been destroyed, I tell you! This is Aslan's doing."
The effect of the mere presence of Aslan reminds us of the new life brought about through Christ's birth into the world. Even before Christ's death and Resurrection, His complete identification with mankind through sharing our humanity was the first and decisive step in the salvation of the world. The completion of Christ's redemption of the world is effected through His Resurrection.
Aslan's resurrection is accompanied by a great sense of liberation and joy, as he shares in a joyful romp: "such a romp as no one has ever had except in Narnia; and whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or playing with a kitten Lucy could never make up her mind. And the funny thing was that when all three finally lay together panting in the sun the girls no longer felt in the least tired or hungry or thirsty."
Soon afterwards, Aslan extends the life of the resurrection to those imprisoned by the witch. Aslan breathes on the faces of the animals turned to stone by the witch and brings them back to life in a scene reminiscent of Christ's harrowing of Hades. Finally, in the battle at the end of the story, we learn of the death of the White Witch and the end of her reign.
A Christian Cosmology
As a Christian of traditional convictions, Lewis provides throughout the Chronicles a cosmology that educates the imagination to look beyond this world to a deeper spiritual reality. From the beginning of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lewis challenges the reader’s perception of reality and attacks the modern bias against the supernatural:
"Well, sir, if things are real, they're there all the time."
"Are they?" said the Professor; and Peter did not know quite what to say . . .
"But do you really mean, sir," said Peter, "that there could be other worlds - all over the place, just round the corner - like that?"
"Nothing is more probable," said the Professor, taking off his spectacles and beginning to polish them, while he muttered to himself, "I wonder what they do teach them at these schools."
Our sense of space and physical reality is relative: the world is not all that exists, there are mysteries of which we are as yet unaware. We soon discover that time is also relative. The four Pevensie children disappear into Narnia, have an adventure that lasts decades (according to time in Narnia), and return to England minutes after they left.
Continuing to develop the Narnian cosmology, Lewis’s account of the creation of Narnia in the sixth book in the series, The Magician’s Nephew, echoes certain biblical truths. Creation begins in darkness and formlessness, and it is through a "creation song" Aslan sings that Narnia springs up. We are reminded that God is the fount of creation and creativity and that nature is not primarily mathematical equations and science, but inspiration and beauty. It is the place where we meet God's creativity and enter into a relationship with Him. Soon afterwards we learn of Narnia's fall - the introduction of evil into the pure, new creation, and that "as Adam's race has done the harm, Adam's race shall help to heal it."
The Fall and Redemption
Chronologically, the events of The Magician’s Nephew are followed by those of the first volume of the series, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Here we meet those members of Adam's race who will facilitate the reversal of the effects of the fall. Lewis uses supposal to suggest how the Passion of Christ would appear, were it to happen in Narnia.
For example, Edmund is a kind of Judas, as he betrays his brethren and Aslan. Happily, in this version Edmund finds redemption through choosing repentance. Lewis always emphasizes that man has free will, and with Edmund’s redemption he refutes a deterministic interpretation of Judas’s suicide. Although Edmund chooses the path of repentance and redemption, his sin still requires some kind of reparation.
Unfortunately, Lewis’s language here suggests that Edmund's sin (and thus, it seems, Adam's sin) was primarily the transgression of a law. This point raises legitimate concerns for Orthodox Christians. Although the Fathers occasionally discuss the salvation that Christ offers in terms of the payment of a ransom for Adam's sin, their focus is always on man’s liberation from sin and death. At the same time, as we saw above, Lewis does include a very real sense of the new life that Aslan brings to Narnia - new life that appears even before Aslan's death.
Also, if one takes all of Lewis’s works into consideration, it becomes clear that his understanding of salvation has less of a legal focus than appears in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Some would still argue that Lewis’s lack of nuance in this novel gives a lopsided view of the meaning of salvation. Again, this should remind Orthodox Christians that all non-ecclesiastical literature needs to be interpreted in light of the teaching of the Church.
Although Lewis does not follow the biblical accounts precisely, through his story we enter, as "through a glass, darkly," into Christ's Passion. Thus, the Orthodox Christian is provided with an opportunity to enter into the key moments and experiences the liturgical texts of Holy Week depict, without presuming to replace them. In a scene reminiscent of the garden of Gethsemane, we share the bewilderment and sorrow of Susan and Lucy as they keep Aslan company before his crucifixion-like execution. We burn with indignation at the mocking and taunting of the noble Aslan before he is killed. Because we have suffered through Aslan's trials, his resurrection fills us with the joy of rebirth and victory. As the myrrh-bearing women came to Christ, Susan and Lucy come to the murdered Aslan.
The Last Days of Narnia
The Narnian cosmology is brought to a close in The Last Battle, the final book of the Chronicles. We are presented with the ascent of an anti-Aslan (a kind of antichrist), whose deceit ushers in the end of Narnia and also the triumph of the new creation. Lewis has provided glimpses of heaven throughout the Chronicles, but it is in this last book that he provides the greatest detail. The new Narnia reminds the story’s heroes of the old Narnia:
"And yet they're not like," said Lucy, "they're different. They have more colors on them and they look further away than I remembered and they're more . . . more . . . oh, I don't know . . ."
"More like the real thing," said the Lord Digory softly . . .
It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed and then cried: "I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!"
The vision of eternal life Lewis presents reflects the teaching of many of the Fathers. As Bishop Kallistos Ware explains in his essay, "God of the Fathers":
Many of the Greek Fathers . . . envisage eternal life (in so far as it can be envisaged at all) in terms of epektasis, of infinite progress and unending advance. The perfection and blessedness of heaven is not static but dynamic, not fixed but inexhaustibly creative . . . Such is exactly the picture of eternal life that Lewis presents at the end of The Last Battle.
Throughout the Chronicles and especially in The Last Battle, Lewis plants seeds of divine longing in his readers’ hearts, awakening within them the desire to experience their own resurrection.
C. S. Lewis wrote The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for his goddaughter, Lucy Barfield, and the rest of The Chronicles of Narnia came as a sort of afterthought. Lewis did not have an agenda, as some have uncharitably suggested, but wrote his children's fiction out of a love for story. It was perhaps inevitable that such a devoted Christian and such a gifted writer would include a great deal of Christian imagery and mythology in any fiction he wrote. As we have seen, there are many Christian themes to be found in The Chronicles of Narnia. Certainly, well-disposed and discerning Orthodox readers will find a great deal more that is familiar and that may be profitably used.
**********
Herman A. Middleton is the author of Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit: The Lives and Counsels of Contemporary Elders of Greece, published by Protecting Veil Press (www.protectingveil.com (http://www.protectingveil.com)).
A fan of C. S. Lewis for many years, Herman is a doctoral candidate in theology at the University of Thessalonica, Greece, where he is studying various aspects of Lewis's theology in light of the teaching of the Orthodox Fathers.
Source:
http://www.stjohn-mb.org/history/atricles.htm
By Herman A. Middleton
This article originally appeared in AGAIN Vol. 27 No. 4, Winter 2005.
"C. S. Lewis? He has nothing to teach the Orthodox. After all, we have the Church Fathers, the services of the Church, the lives of the saints!"
"C. S. Lewis? He is a teacher of the Church! A Church Father! A saint!"
Although conversations between Orthodox Christians regarding C. S. Lewis often reveal a great disparity of opinion, one fact cannot be pushed aside: Lewis is here to stay. With over two hundred million books sold - many of those to Orthodox Christians - C. S. Lewis is arguably the most widely read Christian writer of the twentieth century. The release this month of the hundred-million–dollar Walt Disney production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - the first of seven planned movies based on Lewis’s fantasy series, The Chronicles of Narnia - will undoubtedly ensure his continuing popularity.
Many converts to Orthodoxy note that Lewis was instrumental in their path towards Orthodoxy, while others credit his apologetic works with having saved their faith from the shipwreck of modern atheism. Through both his fiction and his nonfiction, Lewis has secured a place for himself in the minds and hearts of many Orthodox Christians. That being the case, how can Orthodoxy make use of Lewis's work? In particular, what benefit can Orthodox Christians derive from The Chronicles of Narnia?
At the heart of Lewis's imaginative works is his use of allegory, which is the representation of ideas by characters, figures, or events in a narrative. Although he did not intend The Chronicles of Narnia to serve primarily as a didactic device, Lewis's imaginative stories do illustrate eternal truths. In the Chronicles, Lewis uses a device akin to allegory, which he calls supposal. As he wrote in a 1959 letter, "I don't say, ‘Let us represent Christ as Aslan.’ I say, ‘Supposing there was a world like Narnia, and supposing, like ours, it needed redemption, let us imagine what sort of Incarnation and Passion and Resurrection Christ would have there.’" Lewis uses supposal to provide a setting where his readers might encounter Christian truth.
The Fathers on the Imagination
Lewis’s non-romantic approach to the imagination places him on common ground with the Fathers of the Church. A self-avowedly "pre-modern man," Lewis took a practical approach to his imaginative works, which may be contrasted with the modern tendency to spiritualize man's creative and imaginative powers - a tendency that he decried. In his 1939 sermon, "Learning in War-Time," he wrote:
I reject at once an idea which lingers in the mind of some modern people that cultural activities are in their own right spiritual and meritorious - as though scholars and poets were intrinsically more pleasing to God than scavengers and bootblacks. . . . Let us clear it forever from our minds. The work of a Beethoven, and the work of a charwoman, become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God, of being done humbly "as to the Lord."
The Fathers of the Church also do not romanticize man's imaginative faculty. In his classic work, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Saint John of Damascus describes the imagination with scientific precision and objectivity, neither condemning it nor praising it as such: "Imagination is a faculty of the unreasoning part of the soul. It is through the organs of sense that it is brought into action, and it is spoken of as sensation."
While regarding the imagination as an important aspect of man’s being, the Fathers also note that it may be used by the evil one to confuse and deceive. Although the Fathers' main concern as regards the imagination is with the dangers of the imagination in prayer, their caution may also be heeded in the reading of imaginative literature. As with all non-ecclesiastical literature, Orthodox Christians need to carefully separate the wheat from the chaff and to consider all things in light of the Church's teaching.
In his essay, "To young men, on how they might derive profit from pagan literature," St. Basil the Great explains how pagan literature can be useful for the education of the soul: "And since it is through virtue that we must enter upon this life of ours, and since much has been uttered in praise of virtue by the poets, much by historians, and much more still by philosophers, we ought especially to apply ourselves to such literature."
In The Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis offers much more than stories of virtue. Through the Chronicles, discerning Orthodox Christians are provided with the opportunity to draw closer to the eternal truths of the Gospel.
Aslan: Lewis's Christ Figure
"They say Aslan is on the move - perhaps has already landed." And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different . . . At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in his inside." - The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
We learn about Aslan initially through the legends surrounding him and from the awe that his name inspires: "’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you." As Christ is prefigured through the ancient myth of a god who dies and is resurrected, so the myth of Aslan's return and the liberation of Narnia from the reign of the White Witch points to the earthly ministry of Christ.
Aslan inspires awe in those in his presence: "People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time. If the children had ever thought so, they were cured of it now. For when they tried to look at Aslan's face they just caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great, royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes; and they found they couldn't look at him and went all trembly."
The mighty Aslan suggests both Christ's human and His divine nature. Although he is an earthly creature, the holy fear Aslan inspires emphasizes the spiritual reality: while God is all-loving, His presence is a consuming fire, worthy of awe and reverence. Compared to weak and revisionist modern literary portrayals of Christ, Lewis's Aslan is closer to the reality. As renowned scholar and translator Richard Pevear explains in an essay on Aslan and Christ, "Aesthetically, the effect of these literary portrayals of Christ is . . . to reduce the two natures of [Christ] to one that is 'human, all too human.'"
Aslan, in contrast, often functions successfully as an image that points to Christ. At the same time, Lewis preserves a certain distance between Christ and Aslan by making Aslan a lion and by placing him in an imaginary world. If Aslan represents Christ in some ways, it is clear that he is an imperfect representation.
From an Orthodox perspective, the most important effect of Aslan's return to Narnia is the new life that he brings with him. We are aware of his presence long before we meet him, as the White Witch's icy reign over Narnia begins to melt. We learn of this through one of the witch's dwarves: "This is no thaw . . . This is spring. What are we to do? Your winter has been destroyed, I tell you! This is Aslan's doing."
The effect of the mere presence of Aslan reminds us of the new life brought about through Christ's birth into the world. Even before Christ's death and Resurrection, His complete identification with mankind through sharing our humanity was the first and decisive step in the salvation of the world. The completion of Christ's redemption of the world is effected through His Resurrection.
Aslan's resurrection is accompanied by a great sense of liberation and joy, as he shares in a joyful romp: "such a romp as no one has ever had except in Narnia; and whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or playing with a kitten Lucy could never make up her mind. And the funny thing was that when all three finally lay together panting in the sun the girls no longer felt in the least tired or hungry or thirsty."
Soon afterwards, Aslan extends the life of the resurrection to those imprisoned by the witch. Aslan breathes on the faces of the animals turned to stone by the witch and brings them back to life in a scene reminiscent of Christ's harrowing of Hades. Finally, in the battle at the end of the story, we learn of the death of the White Witch and the end of her reign.
A Christian Cosmology
As a Christian of traditional convictions, Lewis provides throughout the Chronicles a cosmology that educates the imagination to look beyond this world to a deeper spiritual reality. From the beginning of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lewis challenges the reader’s perception of reality and attacks the modern bias against the supernatural:
"Well, sir, if things are real, they're there all the time."
"Are they?" said the Professor; and Peter did not know quite what to say . . .
"But do you really mean, sir," said Peter, "that there could be other worlds - all over the place, just round the corner - like that?"
"Nothing is more probable," said the Professor, taking off his spectacles and beginning to polish them, while he muttered to himself, "I wonder what they do teach them at these schools."
Our sense of space and physical reality is relative: the world is not all that exists, there are mysteries of which we are as yet unaware. We soon discover that time is also relative. The four Pevensie children disappear into Narnia, have an adventure that lasts decades (according to time in Narnia), and return to England minutes after they left.
Continuing to develop the Narnian cosmology, Lewis’s account of the creation of Narnia in the sixth book in the series, The Magician’s Nephew, echoes certain biblical truths. Creation begins in darkness and formlessness, and it is through a "creation song" Aslan sings that Narnia springs up. We are reminded that God is the fount of creation and creativity and that nature is not primarily mathematical equations and science, but inspiration and beauty. It is the place where we meet God's creativity and enter into a relationship with Him. Soon afterwards we learn of Narnia's fall - the introduction of evil into the pure, new creation, and that "as Adam's race has done the harm, Adam's race shall help to heal it."
The Fall and Redemption
Chronologically, the events of The Magician’s Nephew are followed by those of the first volume of the series, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Here we meet those members of Adam's race who will facilitate the reversal of the effects of the fall. Lewis uses supposal to suggest how the Passion of Christ would appear, were it to happen in Narnia.
For example, Edmund is a kind of Judas, as he betrays his brethren and Aslan. Happily, in this version Edmund finds redemption through choosing repentance. Lewis always emphasizes that man has free will, and with Edmund’s redemption he refutes a deterministic interpretation of Judas’s suicide. Although Edmund chooses the path of repentance and redemption, his sin still requires some kind of reparation.
Unfortunately, Lewis’s language here suggests that Edmund's sin (and thus, it seems, Adam's sin) was primarily the transgression of a law. This point raises legitimate concerns for Orthodox Christians. Although the Fathers occasionally discuss the salvation that Christ offers in terms of the payment of a ransom for Adam's sin, their focus is always on man’s liberation from sin and death. At the same time, as we saw above, Lewis does include a very real sense of the new life that Aslan brings to Narnia - new life that appears even before Aslan's death.
Also, if one takes all of Lewis’s works into consideration, it becomes clear that his understanding of salvation has less of a legal focus than appears in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Some would still argue that Lewis’s lack of nuance in this novel gives a lopsided view of the meaning of salvation. Again, this should remind Orthodox Christians that all non-ecclesiastical literature needs to be interpreted in light of the teaching of the Church.
Although Lewis does not follow the biblical accounts precisely, through his story we enter, as "through a glass, darkly," into Christ's Passion. Thus, the Orthodox Christian is provided with an opportunity to enter into the key moments and experiences the liturgical texts of Holy Week depict, without presuming to replace them. In a scene reminiscent of the garden of Gethsemane, we share the bewilderment and sorrow of Susan and Lucy as they keep Aslan company before his crucifixion-like execution. We burn with indignation at the mocking and taunting of the noble Aslan before he is killed. Because we have suffered through Aslan's trials, his resurrection fills us with the joy of rebirth and victory. As the myrrh-bearing women came to Christ, Susan and Lucy come to the murdered Aslan.
The Last Days of Narnia
The Narnian cosmology is brought to a close in The Last Battle, the final book of the Chronicles. We are presented with the ascent of an anti-Aslan (a kind of antichrist), whose deceit ushers in the end of Narnia and also the triumph of the new creation. Lewis has provided glimpses of heaven throughout the Chronicles, but it is in this last book that he provides the greatest detail. The new Narnia reminds the story’s heroes of the old Narnia:
"And yet they're not like," said Lucy, "they're different. They have more colors on them and they look further away than I remembered and they're more . . . more . . . oh, I don't know . . ."
"More like the real thing," said the Lord Digory softly . . .
It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed and then cried: "I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!"
The vision of eternal life Lewis presents reflects the teaching of many of the Fathers. As Bishop Kallistos Ware explains in his essay, "God of the Fathers":
Many of the Greek Fathers . . . envisage eternal life (in so far as it can be envisaged at all) in terms of epektasis, of infinite progress and unending advance. The perfection and blessedness of heaven is not static but dynamic, not fixed but inexhaustibly creative . . . Such is exactly the picture of eternal life that Lewis presents at the end of The Last Battle.
Throughout the Chronicles and especially in The Last Battle, Lewis plants seeds of divine longing in his readers’ hearts, awakening within them the desire to experience their own resurrection.
C. S. Lewis wrote The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for his goddaughter, Lucy Barfield, and the rest of The Chronicles of Narnia came as a sort of afterthought. Lewis did not have an agenda, as some have uncharitably suggested, but wrote his children's fiction out of a love for story. It was perhaps inevitable that such a devoted Christian and such a gifted writer would include a great deal of Christian imagery and mythology in any fiction he wrote. As we have seen, there are many Christian themes to be found in The Chronicles of Narnia. Certainly, well-disposed and discerning Orthodox readers will find a great deal more that is familiar and that may be profitably used.
**********
Herman A. Middleton is the author of Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit: The Lives and Counsels of Contemporary Elders of Greece, published by Protecting Veil Press (www.protectingveil.com (http://www.protectingveil.com)).
A fan of C. S. Lewis for many years, Herman is a doctoral candidate in theology at the University of Thessalonica, Greece, where he is studying various aspects of Lewis's theology in light of the teaching of the Orthodox Fathers.
Source:
http://www.stjohn-mb.org/history/atricles.htm