September 2008 In My Good Books

The release of the second Narnia movie “Prince Caspian” was my impetus to revisit the series I’m recommending this time. This series was one I read as a child and have kept coming back to — again and again and again. Most of my copies are from c 1971 - 37 years ago, which is pretty scary — and the copies are by no means in mint condition.

The stories are a fascinating mix of pure storytelling and allegory. “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” Lewis’ first Narnia book, is an entertaining recasting of elements of the Jesus story, salvation, treachery and sacrifice all play their part. There is a prequel, “The Magicians Nephew,” which gives a creation narrative for the land of Narnia, and particularly function as a description of temptation and the entry of evil into a pure world. Similarly “The horse and his boy” is a story about keeping faith in the face of opposition. But “Prince Caspian,” seems to have little contact to any theological theme. It is simply a good adventure story. The sequel to “Prince Caspian” is “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” again an adventure, although this time with more of a pilgrimage feel to it. “The Silver Chair” is the next story, which is much more clearly a moral tale, as the two children from our world have to follow (and fail to follow) a series of clues/commands in order to rescue a captured prince. It is “The Last Battle,” which I most frequently return to as it forms an “end-times” account (theologians please note — not an apocalypse) for Narnia. It continues to inform and nourish my vision of life beyond the grave.

The Narnia series has inspired many copycats, particularly those with theological agendas. Phillip Pullman’s “Dark Materials” trilogy is a successful one, but many are not. Lewis’ strength is in his storytelling and characters. The stories are good stories. You can read them simply at that level. That is exactly why I have a set of them — they were great reading for me as a child, and you could enjoy them at any age. Lewis is of course also a significant theologian of the 20th century. Lewis would not have called himself a theologian for he was an English professor at Cambridge, and a contemporary of Eliot and Tolkein. He was not an academic or experimental theologian, but an apologist. His gift was in explaining theology to the wider public. Through the Second World War he talked on the BBC about theology. He wrote fictional and non-fictional theological books, including “The Screwtape Letters,” “The Problem of Pain,” and “The Four Loves.” All of them are good theology. But in the Narnia books Lewis does something that is remarkable. He uses symbolic language to explain theology, without attempting to decode it. Most equivalent stories have explanations or the symbolism is very thinly veiled. The stories generally suffer for being vehicles of theology. This is not true of Lewis. The story comes first. The characters have an integrity that is enhanced by the symbolism. At one level this is very post-modern, but then, of course, it reminds me of someone else who told stories and did not explain them...