“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
Jeremiah 17:9
“I don’t think you’re a bad Faun at all,” said Lucy. “I think you are a very good Faun. You are the nicest Faun I’ve ever met.”
C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe
“Oh—oh—you wouldn’t say that if you knew,” replied Mr. Tumnus between his sobs. “No, I’m a bad Faun. I don’t suppose there ever was a worse Faun since the beginning of the world.”
Articles in this Series
See the first article for the list.
The Bad Faun
To many, the Christian view of sin is repulsive. It is not fair, they reason, that we are born sinful. In fact, it is ludicrous that we are born sinful: we are all born in either a state of amorality, untouched by sin, like with Rosseau’s notion of the “noble savage”, or we are born with a potential to create our own meaning and engage in authentic existence, which is the existentialist notion, or we are to exercise our autonomous reason to act for the common good, which is the humanist notion. Or we are to engage in self-actualisation, connecting with the universe, acting in manifestation, as the New Age spirituality would claim. Or whatever they would claim. Whatever that means.
This optimistic view of humanity is found in Christianity. Pelagianism states that man without God’s grace can be saved. Semi-Pelagianism takes a step towards orthodoxy by saying that man is intrinsically sinful, but it still places some emphasis on the cooperation and initiative of man in salvation. Total depravity is the Biblical view that both Arminians (at least one-point Calvinists in this regard) and Calvinists affirm. The sole initiator in salvation is God. Of course, Arminians invoke prevenient grace and reject other flowery points, but it is neither the time nor the place to discuss this.
I give this small philosophical or theological overview to demonstrate the many views of human nature that have been given throughout the centuries, even in the context of Christianity. I also give it because I think that Mr. Tumnus, out of all these views, would have been a Calvinist.1 He recognised that he was a “bad Faun” and did not leave it at that but continued saying “I don’t suppose there ever was a worse Faun since the beginning of the world.” Tumnus echoes Paul’s cry that he was the worst of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). He does not accept Lucy’s consolation or find an excuse in what she says. As we will read later in this chapter, Tumnus, despite his façade of goodness, intended to kidnap Lucy and give her over to the White Witch. But why do I highlight this?
The Gospel is based on four fundamental assertions: the nature of man, the nature of God, the work of Christ, and our justification by faith alone. These points are so simple that a child could understand it, but so profound that angels desire to look into it (1 Pet. 1:12). What Tumnus highlights here, despite being a Faun, is the first point. I do not desire to claim that mythical creatures are subject to the same moral demands as humans. But if Tumnus were a man, he would do a very good job of realising this first Gospel point. The Bible presents man as radically depraved: we are not as sinful as we possibly could be, though sin pervades our every faculty (Rom. 3:10-18). We use every fibre and strand of our being to rebel against the God in whom we have our being (Ac. 17:28). The Scriptures describe us as not partially alive, not unconscious, but dead, enslaved to the unholy trinity of the world, flesh, and devil (Eph. 2:1-3). It is not that we choose not to follow God, but that we cannot choose to follow Him. A dead corpse, rotting in its grave, cannot choose to be made new.
This description means that when Tumnus says that there was no worse Faun since Creation, our initial reaction should not be to console or excuse him, but to agree with him, and apply the label to ourselves (with “human” replacing “Faun”, of course). It should not be a statement of hyperbole or pride clothed as humility in this peculiar act of taking refuge in our repentance or contrition rather than the God to whom this repentance ought to be directed; rather, we are to realise that in a sense, we are all the worst sinners to ever exist because we all have sinned against an infinite God and fallen short of His glory (Rom. 3:23). We, creatures from the dust, have rebelled against the thrice-holy God (Isa. 6:3) and even now, when we are saved, still are wretched (Rom. 7:24). On Judgement Day, the unsaved will not be able to point to Adolf Hitler, Margaret Sanger, or other orchestrators of mass image-shattering and say, “I was not as bad at them”, because God will reply, “But you have utterly fallen short of the same standard.” My point is not to deny that there are differing degrees of punishment, which the Bible clearly teaches (Matt. 11:20-24, etc.), but that there is no point of escape through appealing to the depravity of others.
This pessimistic view of humanity may seem dreary, and one may wonder why I recount it. Let me explain by an illustration. This recounting is like a schoolboy on a train entering a tunnel where interminable darkness stretches before him. The boy forgets the light that was present before entering a tunnel, and he is swallowed up by this awful blackness. After an eternity, the boy emerges out of the other side of the tunnel, and the same light is there, only more blazingly bright and resplendently refulgent than before. The boy is forced to strain his eyes. My goal here is not to point to our depravity and stop there; it is to point to our depravity and then to Christ who bore our depravity and clothes us with His righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21). It is to enter the tunnel of our human darkness and through that to recognise the light of Christ all the more (Jn. 1:5). And every step of salvation, from recognition of our sin to looking unto Christ, which are acts that can really occur simultaneously, is by the sovereign grace of God (Rom. 8:30).
One practical application of this (and I am sure you can think of more) is that when we are accused by Satan like Zechariah was when he was clothed in dirty robes, our response should not be to deny the accusations. When Satan cries, “You are dirty, depraved, and naturally destined to damnation. You do not deserve God’s grace. Look at your festering wounds and rampant sins, gaze upon your prodigal past, contemplate your hardness of heart towards God before and even now.” our response should not be to deny these things but to say, “Amen.” And then we should add “But I am far worse, Satan. You see only the exterior, but you do not see the heart. I am far worse than you have said, and my rebellion is far greater than you can imagine.”2 Now, we have to be careful not to let our gaze perpetually reside in this dark tunnel, and neither should we use our sinful pasts as a license to sin in a rationalised antinomianism. Our response ought to involve shifting our gaze to Christ, who died for us while we were still sinners (Rom. 5:8), and to realise with joy that it is a thought utterly foreign to the Biblical atmosphere that God, having seen us at our lowest point as unregenerate wretches and still sending His Son (Jn. 3:16), would now reject His children who are advancing in sanctification and in their love for Him (2 Cor. 3:18, etc.).
All this is to say that Mr. Tumnus had the first fundamental point of the Gospel correct. He was a bad Faun. Similarly, we are bad humans. We have rejected God. But God, in His love and while in full recognition of our sinfulness, sent His Son (Jn. 3:16). In a divine logic that boggles human comprehension, the Triune God decided that what would render Him the most glory would be to orchestrate a plan of redemption and sweep up creatures of dust and place them as notes in this redemptive symphony, out of tune though we may be. This orchestration is all unto His glory. God uses bad people, clothes them with the robes of His good Son, and smites their evil as it rests upon His Son’s shoulders. This fact is the light at the end of the dark tunnel. This is why the lowest view of man produces the highest view of God. And, fellow wretched sinners, how much ought we to praise God for this Gospel reality.
Footnotes
- I can explain.
- I believe this point was made by John Bunyan and likely other Puritans. I came across this idea from Bunyan through The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters by Sinclair Ferguson. Ferguson’s work is a masterpiece of practical, pastoral theology.