“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
Ecclesiastes 1:2
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”
“The White Witch? Who is she?”
C. S. Lewis, The Lion, THe Witch, and the Wardrobe
“Why, it is she that has got all Narnia under her thumb. It’s she that makes it always winter. Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!”
Articles in this Series
See the first article for the list.
Always Winter and Never Christmas
When Lucy asked Mr. Tumnus who the White Witch was, he answered with two intriguing statements. The first was that the White Witch had dominion over all of Narnia, and the second was that this dominion resulted in Narnia’s perpetual winter. Before we examine the Biblical undertones of these statements, we should consider the Narnian winter. Of course, this will be mainly conjecture, but we can imagine that it was not the benign winter that belongs to modern Christmastime, where children build snowmen, make snow angels, and go sledding.1 That is Aslan’s winter, not the White Witch’s winter. Aslan’s winter is a joyous occasion during which we celebrate that we have been counted white as snow (Is. 1:18).
Presumably, the Narnian winter was a frigid assailant, with chillingly sharp winds that pierced the Narnians’ core. Maybe it obscured visibility in a whirlwind of heavy snow, sometimes hailing so heavily that the younger, more restless Narnian creatures looked outside their houses in a mournful yearning and deep indignancy, accepting no comfort from their parents. Perhaps the winter attacked so bitterly and fiercely at times that Narnians often contracted lethal diseases. The eternally white landscape potentially became tiresome, something awfully dull and plain, causing the older Narnians to reminisce on the emerald verdancy and widespread cornucopia that once marked their lands. The idea of winter would not have been fun for the Narnians, unlike how it appears to those in countries who do not see much snow. Winter would have become a malevolent, oppressive, and tedious thing.
The imagery that Lewis uses here is profoundly Biblical. Satan has all the world under his thumb, so to speak. He is the “prince of the power of the air” (Eph. 2:2). The Bible goes so far as to call him the “god of this world” who enacts his evil agenda through “blind[ing] the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). Elsewhere, the Scriptures speak of the “whole world [lying] in the power of evil one” (1 Jn. 5:19). We know too that Satan is the “prince of demons” (Matt. 12:24) from the Pharisees who at least had their demonology correct if not their Christology. Satan’s rule over demons can be seen in the Gospels (see the entire of Matt., Mk., Lk., Jn.) as he “marshaled all of his minions, his whole host of demons, to manifest his satanic power in the region where the Son of God carried out His ministry”.2 In other words, Satan unleashed the full force of hell against Jesus of Nazareth, giving no quarter, seeking to overcome Christ before Christ could overcome him. Satan himself came against Jesus during the start of His earthly ministry (Lk. 4:1-13, recorded in other Gospels too). Two millennia later, in the year of our Lord, we rejoice that Satan was, remains, and will ultimately be unsuccesful.3
But there is more. Mr. Tumnus does not, in a merely propositional manner, declare: “Why, Lucy, what a great question. Let me tell you of the geographical effects wrought by the White Witch. Here is a temperature graph of the past fifty years; my, observe the decline! We could really start burning more fossil fuels. Oh, and she really has exerted an epistemological influence on some Narnians. Narnians have been doing worse in their philosophy courses.” Mr. Tumnus’ instantaneous focus was on the existential effects of the White Witch’s winter. We know that Tumnus was considering existential effects because he says, “think of that!”. He does not want to think of it. He cannot bear the thought.
An interesting note here is that such recognition of Narnia’s winter as undesirable already indicates a responsive conscience. The Bible describes the heart of unbelievers as stony but the heart of believers as fleshy (Ezek. 36:26). Stone does not respond to the cold (excepting erosion over time), but flesh can. That is a metaphorical way to say that those with a heart of stone do not perceive the White Witch’s winter or, in our world, what is called Satan’s dominion. Their body becomes accustomed to the cool as they suppress Christmastime in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18), so to speak, and the Christocentric festive jovialities accompanying that season. They do not want the snow to melt. Now, I do not want to deny that unbelievers sometimes realise the undesirability of their situation. Lewis felt a searing Joy through his reading that pointed to the inadequacy of his naturalism.4 But, without the Spirit’s regeneration, such realisation is merely a selfish seeking for the benefits of God without God and will often be suppressed again.
Now, I want to focus briefly on the existential effects of Satan’s dominion. I mentioned before the potential impact of the literal Narnian winter on the Narnians. Now, we shift to its spiritual analogue. I do not think the Scriptures speak much on this issue, particularly given that the tendency toward introspection and the societal shift to the “psychological man” (to use Rieff’s sociological term) has been a relatively modern phenomenon.5 I think the closest we get is the philosophical and theological ruminations of Ecclesiastes and Christ’s cry for those who are weary and are heavy-laden to come to Him (see entire of Ec., Matt. 11:28-30). But we must be cautious not to import modern societal notions and superimpose them onto the Biblical text. Jesus was not an existentialist any more than Joseph Smith was a Reformed Baptist. The Scriptures certainly address existential, and even existentialist, longings. But, in doing so, it does not seek to reinforce the worldview wherein these longings may be valued excessively, but to point to a better, more robust foundation, namely that of God and His Word.6 The Bible answers existentialism without endorsing it. The rest of this article will briefly examine this existential aspect and some more metaphysical concerns.
In one part of his work, the author of Ecclesiastes, who I shall call the Preacher (Ec. 1:1) ruminates on the vanity of pleasure (Ec. 2:1-11). He filled himself with wine, albeit not to the point of debauchery (Ec. 2:3). He built architecture and planted vegetation (Ec. 2:4-6). He bought slaves and owned livestock (Ec. 2:7), and amassed great riches, singers, and concubines (Ec. 2:8). He declares that he “kept [his] heart from no pleasure, for [his] heart found pleasure in all [his] toil” (Ec. 2:10). And then sounds the melancholic punchline: “it all was vanity and a striving after wind” (Ec. 2:11). The Preacher was in winter. Now, I must be diligent to state that the converse of the Preacher’s vanity is not a lack of evanescence. Christians do not live twice as long as unbelievers. What we do does fade away. Our goods are not promised to increase. The prosperity gospel is anathema. We are described as “sojourners” (note the title of this website!) and “exiles” (1 Pet. 2:11). The converse of the Preacher’s vanity is the glory of God (Rom. 11:36) attained through the performance of evanescent works and the joy derived from this performance. That is why it is not winter for the Christian. There is also eschatological hope, of course. But space limits me.
Metaphysically, if there is no God as atheists conceive, then there is absurdity. Nietzsche’s madman cried in a dizzying atheistic verbal vertigo: “How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning?”7 Nietzsche echoes Lewis’ statement of winter: it has “become colder” and we need to “light lanterns in the morning”. Camus’ Meursault found a hollow, platitudinous refuge in the “benign indifference of the universe” after he senselessly killed an Arab man.8 The philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig states that “though I know now that I exist, that I am alive, I also know that someday I will no longer exist, that I will no longer be, that I will die. This thought is staggering and threatening: to think that the person I call ‘myself’ will cease to exist, that I will be no more!”.9 There is winter.
I do not intend to paint this wintery portrait so we remain stuck here. I have covered so far the reality that the world is under the thumb of Satan, to use Mr. Tumnus’ language. This inflicts a terrible frigidity that devastates us both existentially and metaphysically. But the Bible does not tell a story in which evil has the final say: the Lion is not fond of glacial environments. I will detail this resolution in a later article. I am sure you can guess what I will say.
Footnotes
- For those of us who live in the Southern Hemisphere, which, of course, is the superior hemisphere, it is summer during Christmas. But we can imagine a winter Christmas.
- This quote comes from R. C. Sproul. See https://www.ligonier.org/learn/sermons/legion for the sermon in which this quote was found.
- I want to note here that I do not intend to convey the idea that the supernatural realm was unaffected by Christ’s work. However, even after Christ’s work, in the apostolic epistles, like I quoted above, there is still significant evidence that the world is under Satan’s thumb.
- See C. S. Lewis’ Surprised by Joy for his wonderful autobiography.
- See Carl Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self for this point. I merely added this point as an interesting incidental note. It is not central to my argument.
- See my Hollow Men – Part Three: Confluent Christianity and Heart, and the section entitled Augustinian Restlessness for a more thorough examination of these topics. The link is: https://sojournal.co.nz/hollow-men-part-three.
- See Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Gay Science.
- See Albert Camus’ The Stranger.
- See https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/existence-nature-of-god/the-absurdity-of-life-without-god. I by no means agree with much of Craig’s philosophy or theology, but his statement here is accurate.