sillytrippy ([info]sillytrippy) wrote,
@ 2008-12-27 01:20:00
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Christmas in Narnia
Watched "The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe" today... quite like the film, but what's the deal with Christmas in it? Seems to me that Narnia hasn't had Christ, and so wouldn't have Christmas. Maybe I'm being picky, but this is CS Lewis after all, it seems odd. Is there some simple explanation I'm missing?

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[info]caramel_betty
2008-12-29 03:52 pm UTC (link)
The thing to remember with CS Lewis is that, at one point, he had various long discussions about what ancient myths and legends were all about, and how they could incorporate them into their world view. Though I don't pretend to be a theologist, Lewis and Tolkien basically came to the conclusion that a lot of the ancient world was about preparation for the true revelation of Christ. Think of it, perhaps, in the mould of John the Baptist - all these other things were about shaping people's hearts so that they could appreciate Christ when he came.

e.g. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3777/is_200307/ai_n9284459/pg_14
With the early Christian apologist justin Martyr, Tolkien and Lewis also believed that pagan myth served as a preparation for the Gospel. Yet Lewis turned this general intuition into a carefully-elaborated argument as Tolkien did not. he held that all religions and civilizations are built on what he called Sehnsucht, the mystical desire for fulfillment beyond the walls of the world.


So on one hand, you might argue that, for example, the introduction of Christmas in Narnia serves as a preparation for appreciating the reason for the real Christmas.

However, Lewis was himself explicit (though not very often) that Narnia had received Christ.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article745604.ece
In the letter, sent to a child fan in 1961, Lewis writes: “The whole Narnian story is about Christ.”
...
“Supposing there really was a world like Narnia . . . and supposing Christ wanted to go into that world and save it (as He did ours) what might have happened?” he wrote.

“The stories are my answer. Since Narnia is a world of talking beasts, I thought he would become a talking beast there as he became a man here. I pictured him becoming a lion there because a) the lion is supposed to be the king of beasts; b) Christ is called ‘the lion of Judah’ in the Bible.”


In tLtW+tW, we don't have any reason to believe that Aslan has sacrificed himself before, or anything equivalent - indeed, we might well think he hasn't, or the White Witch might guess something is going to happen at the Stone Table. But it's not clear whether Narnia has the same prophecies as the Christian Bible or need for the sacrifice, until Edmund comes along. (e.g. does Narnia have original sin?)

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