On the New Year: Reflections on Eternity

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Audio reading of this post

“But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”

2 Peter 3:8

“The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.”

C. S. Lewis

On the New Year: Reflections on Eternity1

Human recollection is a fickle thing. We quickly lose memories. For an event that occurred recently, we can recall more. But for an event that was further away, our minds hold blurred memories; mere snapshots and vague remembrances of atmosphere. For instance, in my first year of high school, our class went on an overnight tramp to Waitawheta. I can now remember snapshots of verdure, glimpses of swift rivers, chiaroscuros cast by swaying trees, a starry multitude residing in the night sky, glowworms nestled in rocks, the excitement of playing tag outside the hut, and an inordinate amount of tomato sauce ordered at a fast food joint. I still remember small details, like an elderly stranger advising me to roll up my sleeping bag because it would damage the seams less. But most of my memories have been consumed by time. Think of similar examples for yourself. How much could you remember right after the event occurred, and how much can you remember now? Perhaps there is a nostalgic veil over the entire thing, and you cannot remember much more.

Though human memory swiftly evanesces like a firework, God is different. The Scriptures tell us in bewildering, fascinating, and terrifying fashion that “from everlasting to everlasting [He is] God” (Ps. 90:2). “[W]ith the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day (2 Pet. 3:8). God “inhabits eternity” (Isa. 57:15). Traditional Christianity has interpreted these passages, along with a multitude of other passages, as teaching the eternity of God. Geerhardus Vos, the great Reformed Dutch theologian, described the eternity of God as the “attribute of God whereby He is exalted above all limitations of time and all succession of time, and in a single indivisible present possesses the content of His life perfectly (and as such is the cause of time)”.2 What I want to centrally focus on here is the phrase “in a single indivisible present”. This concept, upon further reflection, is mind-boggling. Let me explain.

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Fragments from Narnia – Part Nine: Of Fauns and Forgiveness

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“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

Colossians 3:12-13

“Lucy looked very hard between the trees and could just see in the distance a patch of light that looked like daylight. ‘Yes,'”‘ she said, ‘I can see the wardrobe door.’
‘Then be off home as quick as you can,’ said the Faun, ‘and—c-can you ever forgive me for what I meant to do?’
‘Why, of course I can,’ said Lucy, shaking him heartily by the hand. ‘And I do hope you won’t get into dreadful trouble on my account.'”

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

Articles in this Series

See the first article for the list.

Of Fauns and Forgiveness

In this article, I will discuss Tumnus’ plea for forgiveness and Lucy’s response. The material covered in this article will be rather basic, but that is not to say that it is unprofitable. When it is said (and I have no idea who originally said this) that the Scriptures are shallow enough for a child to wade in and deep enough for an elephant (or another suitably large animal) to drown in, this saying surely applies to the seemingly basic parts of Christianity, including something like the forgiveness of sins. I will focus primarily here on asking forgiveness of other humans.

We should note something that was not included in the above quote. Previously, Tumnus was highly distressed and cried, “And she’ll have my tail cut off, and my horns sawn off, and my beard plucked out, and she’ll wave her wand over my beautiful cloven hoofs and turn them into horrid solid hoofs like a wretched horse’s. And if she is extra and specially angry she’ll turn me into stone and I shall be only a statue of a Faun in her horrible house…”.1 But notice how Tumnus does not now use this fact to manipulate Lucy. He simply says: “Then be off home as quick as you can”. He could have said, “Well, get out of here. Just leave me here to suffer cruel torture. I will probably never see the light of day again, but you go live your life. Have sweet dreams, Lucy. I really have the short end of the stick.” The lesson here is that we ought not to make excuses when asking for forgiveness, appealing to the negative consequences of our sin or even the drawbacks of not committing an intended sin (which was Tumnus’ predicament) to lessen the significance of our sin. In other words, we ought not to give excuses, even sophisticated ones, and especially not to God.

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Fragments from Narnia – Part Eight: The War Against Children

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“Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, ‘When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.'”

Exodus 1:15-16

“You are the child,” said Mr. Tumnus. “I had orders from the White Witch that if ever I saw a Son of Adam or a Daughter of Eve in the wood, I was to catch them and hand them over to her. And you are the first I ever met. And I’ve pretended to be your friend and asked you to tea, and all the time I’ve been meaning to wait till you were asleep and then go and tell her.”

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

Articles in this Series

See the first article for the list.

The War Against Children

I do not believe Lewis’ mention of the White Witch’s command against any “Son of Adam” or “Daughter of Eve” was arbitrarily chosen. Namely, when the White Witch commanded Tumnus to catch any child of Adam or Eve and give them to her, it was not merely because of her general malice. She, like her real-world analogue Satan, has a specific agenda against children. In addressing this agenda, this article will be split into two parts. The first part addresses why this agenda is the case. The second part discusses specific cultural manifestations of this agenda. However, before all this, a few preliminary comments on supernaturalism must be made.

Supernaturalism simply refers to belief in the supernatural. The supernatural is stuff outside the natural, things that cannot be accounted for through empirical evidence or scientific experiments. The supernatural includes God, demons, Satan, angels, and so on. Though these supernatural entities exert influence on the natural world, they themselves are not part of it. God is spirit (Jn. 4:24), angels are called “ministering spirits” (Heb. 1:14), and demons and Satan, on account of being fallen angels (Rev. 12:7-8), are spirits too.

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Fragments from Narnia – Part Seven: After Darkness, Light

Hubble snap a beautiful supernova explosion some 160,000 light-years from Earth
Hubble snap a beautiful supernova explosion some 160,000 light-years from Earth by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC-BY 2.0

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Ephesians 2:8-9

“The White Witch? Who is she?”
“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!”

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

Articles in this Series

See the first article for the list.

After Darkness, Light

I must immediately confess that I have gone back to a previous passage. I originally intended to proceed through the text without skipping to and fro. I must also confess that the topic discussed in this article has very little to do with the Narnia quote. In other words, because it is Reformation Day, I have essentially highjacked this Narnia series to discuss Reformation doctrine, which hopefully will not cause too much distress. The only semblance I can draw between the Reformation and the quote above is that just as Christmas followed winter in Narnia, light followed darkness in the Reformation. Post tenebras lux is the Latin phrase for this; after darkness came light. The obvious dissimilarity is that Lewis intended for Christmas in Narnia to symbolise the consequences of Christ’s earthly ministry. So, the connection of this article to the Narnia quote may be extremely tenuous, but as the New Zealand saying goes, “she’ll be right”.1 My goal in this article is twofold: to briefly discuss Reformation doctrine and secondly, what the Reformation can teach about our times.

Justification by faith alone (sola fide) is called the material cause of the Reformation. This language, which borrows Aristotelian categories, refers to how sola fide was the stuff at the heart of the Reformation. Just as marble is the material cause of a Renaissance statue because it is the stuff out of which that statue is made, sola fide was the stuff that constituted the Reformation. Without it, you had no Reformation. Martin Luther called sola fide the “chief article”.3 John Calvin declared that it was the “principal ground on which religion must be supported”.4 Moving to contemporary times, R. C. Sproul proclaimed that “[w]ithout the doctrine of justification by faith alone, the gospel is not merely compromised, it is lost altogether”.5 J. I. Packer wonderfully articulates that “to declare and defend God’s justification publicly as the only way of life for any man was at once an act of confessing their [the Reformers’] faith, of glorifying their God by proclaiming his wonderful work, and of urging others to approach him in penitent and hopeful trust just as they did themselves”.6 Scripture alone (sola scriptura) was the formal principle of the Reformation, giving shape and form to the Reformers’ arguments.

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Fragments from Narnia – Part Six: On Grace and Truth

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“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.”

Proverbs 25:11

“Well,” said Lucy rather slowly (for she wanted to be truthful and yet not to be too hard on [Mr. Tumnus]), “well, that was pretty bad. But you’re so sorry for it that I’m sure you will never do it again.”

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

Articles in this Series

See the first article for the list.

On Grace and Truth

One great blessing of stories is that they incarnate virtue. Stories take propositional truths like obeying God and treasuring Him as first (Mk. 12:30-31) and flesh these truths out. They incarnate these truths in scenes like Peter and the apostles standing before the high priest and saying that their allegiance was first to God (Ac. 5:29). An application of this is that we should read the Biblical stories for their incarnation of virtue. However, we must distinguish between narrative and didactic portions of Scripture. This distinguishing must be done as not all things recorded in the narrative sections are morally correct, like David’s adultery with Bathsheba (2 Sam. 11). Hence, these sections, in some instances, obviously do not establish a normative standard for believers. The didactic portions teach this normative standard, like the Seventh Commandment, which says, “You shall not commit adultery.” (Ex 20:14). Therefore, we ought to read the narrative sections in light of the didactic sections: David committed evil. We must also read fictional books in light of the didactic sections of Scripture, with the crucial recognition that they, unlike the narrative portions of Scripture, are uninspired and, hence, susceptible to authorial error.

With that brief preface stated, I want to discuss what Lewis parenthetically noted about Lucy’s speech: “she wanted to be truthful and yet not too hard on [Tumnus]”. There is a particular balance or equilibrium that Lewis mentions here. Lucy desired to tell the truth about Tumnus as what the Faun did, namely planning to kidnap a child and give him or her to the White Witch, was “pretty bad”. But she was “not too hard” as she recognised Tumnus was upset and repentant. It would have been easy for Lucy to go to either extreme. There is a caveat here that one cannot be too truthful or too gracious, and the two are heavily interconnected as they both belong to God’s character and actions (Eph. 2:8-9; Heb. 6:18). So, when I speak of “either extreme”, it is really shorthand for saying that one prioritises an overly harsh and insensitive presentation of partial truth, or compromises by regarding peoples’ feelings more than their eternal destiny. I am not saying that it is impossible to simultaneously demonstrate truth and grace.

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Fragments from Narnia – Part Five: Always Winter and Never Christmas

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“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”

Ecclesiastes 1:2

“The White Witch? Who is she?”
“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!”

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, THe Witch, and the Wardrobe

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.

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Fragments from Narnia – Part Four: Service under the White Witch

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“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

Ephesians 2:1-3

“Like what I’ve done,” said the Faun. “Taken service under the White Witch. That’s what I am. I’m in the pay of the White Witch.”

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, THe Witch, and the Wardrobe

Articles in this Series

See the first article for the list.

Service under the White Witch

In our current cultural climate, freedom is valued as a kind of highest good. This valuing can be found in the feminist or LGBTQ cry for “reproductive freedoms” or “sexual liberation”, which includes abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, abhorrence of traditional Christian views on gender and marriage, and so on. Another example is the Marxist cry for the proletariat to throw off their chains inflicted by capitalism and the unjust bourgeoise. Eastern religions teach freedom from the flow of life and ceaseless suffering as we are subsumed into Hinduism’s Brahma or Buddhism’s Nirvana. Secularists call for freedom from the restrictive bonds of religion and its allegedly toxic impact on families and society. Humans desire freedom. Contrarily, the Christian view is considered harsh, restrictive, Victorian, Puritanical, and a list of other pejoratives. Our culture claims that being a Christian is a stultifying, soul-crushing affair.

But the question, Biblically speaking, should not be whether we are enslaved to anyone or anything, but who or what we are enslaved to. The Apostle Paul presents only two alternatives: we are slaves to sin or slaves to righteousness (Rom. 6:15-23).1 Logically, this dichotomy means that there is no middle ground. There is no neutral space of agnosticism when approaching God. To be a slave to God means that we give our all to Him and that we pray “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10) not with an empty formality but with a deep desire to align our will more with His, and from then on to do His will. This notion of slavery is one that seems deeply repulsive, but really it is not one in which the slave’s identity is crushed under the domineering spirit of the master. Biblically, submission, servitude, or slavery to God is the opposite: it is one wherein our identity is found in Him and our service for Him. More on this later.

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Fragments from Narnia – Part Three: The Bad Faun

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“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.”
“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.”

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

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.

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Fragments from Narnia – Part Two: Daughter of Eve

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“[T]hen the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”

Genesis 2:7

“Good evening, good evening,” said the Faun. “Excuse me—I don’t want to be inquisitive—but should I be right in thinking that you are a Daughter of Eve?”
“My name’s Lucy,’ said she, not quite understanding him.”

C. S. LEWIS, the lion, the wtich, and the wardrobe

Articles in this Series

See the first article for the list.

Daughter of Eve

Now would be a good time to reiterate that my reflections on Narnia will not be strictly exegetical. I will not be noticing everything Lewis may have wanted me to notice, and I may be commenting on things that Lewis did not intend to imply. As long as this is done responsibly and in moderation, I think this is quite fine. I mention all of this because I want to provide a few thoughts on the passage above, which occurs at the start of the second chapter of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. It is an incidental comment: Lucy did not understand what Mr. Tumnus meant by “Daughter of Eve”. I do not know if what I will say here is what Lewis intended.1 Nevertheless, I chose to highlight this because in modern times, due to belief in Darwinian evolution, society no longer considers humanity as sons and daughters of Adam and Eve; rather, we are the mere product of naturalistic mechanisms. I will argue here that this is not without consequence.

To launch instantly into a drastic example, take the comments of Peter Singer, a moral philosopher at Princeton. In a section on his website about commonly asked questions, he responds to a question asking whether he would rather save a mouse or a human being from a fire. He says: “Yes, in almost all cases I would save the human being. But not because the human being is human, that is, a member of the species Homo sapiens. Species membership alone isn’t morally significant, but equal consideration for similar interests allows different consideration for different interests.” This comment is already significant enough: he does not say “in all cases” but “in almost all cases”. I am not sure whether Singer means that there would be one case where he rescues the mouse over the human, but that is not my primary focus here. Note what Singer says next; the reason that he would save the human is “not because the human being is human” because just being part of a species “isn’t morally significant”.

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Fragments from Narnia – Part One: Welcome to the Wardrobe

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.”

jAMES 1:17

“I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result, you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it.”

C. S. Lewis to his goddaughter

Articles in this Series

As the heading suggests, this little expandable bubble contains all the articles in this series.

Part One: Welcome to the Wardrobe

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe: 2: Daughter of Eve, 3: The Bad Faun, 4: Service under the White Witch, 5: Always Winter and Never Christmas, 6: On Grace and Truth, 7: After Darkness, Light, 8: The War Against Children, 9: Of Fauns and Forgiveness, 10: Truth and Spite, 11: Just Like a Girl , 12: The Ambiguity of Evil, 13: On the Fear of Doors, others WIP

Prince Caspian: WIP

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: WIP

The Silver Chair: WIP

The Horse and His Boy: WIP

The Magician’s Nephew: WIP

The Last Battle: WIP

A Few Words Before the Wardrobe

Firstly, before I explain what this series is about, I want to make it very clear what it is not. I am not primarily aiming at a literary analysis of Lewis’ work, though this may augment my goal. Neither do I seek to relate Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia series to his broader canon, for I have yet to read all of his books. I am the furthest thing from an expert on Lewis; other books will serve a biographical and literary purpose. This wonderful tool called technology will undoubtedly point you towards those. I will probably read a few books on Lewis as I write this series, so please bear with the differing quality.

Secondly, what I aim to do in this series is to provide theological and philosophical reflections on Lewis’ work. The approach will be simple: I will go through Lewis’ series in the order in which the books were published, and for each book, I will plod through, passage by passage, book by book. The book names in the above section will not be mentioned explicitly in article titles; they may nevertheless serve as a useful marker. The passages are somewhat arbitrarily chosen insofar as they were the passages highlighted by me on my Kindle. I will not be providing a sentence-by-sentence commentary on Lewis the same way theologians comment on books of the Bible as it would be far too laborious of a task and also ignore the fact that Lewis himself did not intend for his Narnia chronicles to have a one-to-one correspondence to Biblical Christianity. Each article will deal with one passage, and the time between articles will hopefully be weekly at the very most. Also, each article will probably be shorter and more readable than my usual input. One hopes, at least.

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