Fragments from Narnia – Part 13: On the Fear of Doors

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“I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.'”

-Genesis 3:15

“I—I opened a door and just found myself here, your Majesty,” said Edmund.
“Ha!” said the Queen, speaking more to herself than to him. “A door. A door from the world of men! I have heard of such things. This may wreck all. But he is only one, and he is easily dealt with.”

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

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On the Fear of Doors

As I mentioned in the last article, the White Witch is “taller than any woman Edmund had ever seen”, with a “proud and cold and stern” face. To the reader, she seems frightening and invincible. But, before the passage I quoted above, she inquires whether Edmund is a “Son of Adam” or “human”. Upon Edmund’s confirmation, she remarks that there is “A door from the world of men” which “may wreck all”. The first chink in the Witch’s armour and the first weakness that readers should detect is a fear of doors. But why is that the case? The answer is that she knew the ancient rhyme, recounted by Mr Beaver: “When Adam’s flesh and Adam’s bone / Sits at Cair Paravel in throne, / The evil time will be over and done.” When Adam’s children are enthroned in Cair Paravel, the Witch’s reign will be shattered. In this article, I want to examine our immediate passage in light of Christ’s incarnation. Yes, Christmas has recently passed, but reflection on the incarnation should not to be restricted to Advent or Christmas. In later articles, we will surely be able to look at different nuances of this theme of enthronement.

There are at least two ways (and these ways are not mutually exclusive) in which we can theologically understand the prophecy recounted by Mr Beaver. The first option is that when Christ, who took on flesh in the incarnation, sits enthroned at the Father’s right hand, then Satan’s dominion will be shattered. The ascension follows after Jesus’ incarnation, life, death, and resurrection, and the result of all these actions in His ministry is Satan’s defeat. The second option is that when the children of God are “seated… in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:6), Satan’s rule is defeated. It is this strange idea that is echoed in passages like the Spirit’s words to the church in Thyatira: “The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father.” (Rev. 2:26-27). Note that the first option is causal. Namely, the cause of the Witch’s defeat is Christ, the God-man, enthroned at Cair Paravel. The second option is indicative of a cause. Namely, the enthronement and reign of God’s people is not the cause of Satan’s defeat but indicative of what causes this defeat, namely the person and work of Jesus Christ, which enabled this enthronement in the first place. This article will focus on the first option.

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Fragments from Narnia – Part 12: The Ambiguity of Evil

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“…for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”

2 Corinthians 11:14

“On the sledge, driving the reindeer, sat a fat dwarf who would have been about three feet high if he had been standing. He was dressed in polar bear’s fur and on his head he wore a red hood with a long gold tassel hanging down from its point; his huge beard covered his knees and served him instead of a rug. But behind him, on a much higher seat in the middle of the sledge sat a very different person—a great lady, taller than any woman that Edmund had ever seen. She also was covered in white fur up to her throat and held a long straight golden wand in her right hand and wore a golden crown on her head. Her face was white—not merely pale, but white like snow or paper or icing sugar, except for her very red mouth. It was a beautiful face in other respects, but proud and cold and stern.”

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

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The Ambiguity of Evil

In this passage, Lewis describes the first appearance of the White Witch. She will be this book’s main antagonist and will reappear in later books (later in publication order, not in chronological order). His description is striking because he describes her face as “beautiful”. She is “great”, “taller than any woman that Edmund had ever seen”, adorned with “white fur”, a “golden wand”, and a “golden crown”. Her face was “white like… icing sugar”, and her mouth was “very red”. This description is almost positive. The first encounter that the readers have with the White Witch is ambiguous. If Lewis had not said she was also “proud and cold and stern”, we might be tempted to consider the Witch a benign queen or a kind benefactor. Or, anyhow, her beauty may entrance us into diminishing her pride, coldness, and sternness. She could not be that bad, after all.

Peculiarly and similarly, the Scriptures also describe what I will call the ambiguity of evil. Evil, of course, is not morally ambiguous. Evil is morally bad, and that is that. But evil is aesthetically ambiguous insofar as it can sometimes allure and other times repulse. Note this aesthetic ambiguity in Proverbs 5, where the immediate focus is on adultery or sexual temptation. Solomon says that the “lips of a forbidden woman drip honey” and that “her speech is smoother than oil” (Prov. 5:3). That is one side of the ambiguity. “[B]ut in the end she is bitter as wormwood, / sharp as a two-edged sword. / Her feet go down to death; / her steps follow the path to Sheol; / and she does not ponder the path of life; / her ways wander, and she does not know it” (Prov. 5:4-6). That is the other side of the ambiguity. Although the forbidden woman superficially possesses sweetness and smoothness, in reality, she is bitter, sharp, and destined to damnation.

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Fragments from Narnia – Part 11: Just Like a Girl

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“You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!”

James 2:19

“She’s angry about all the things I’ve been saying lately,” thought Edmund. And though he did not like to admit that he had been wrong, he also did not much like being alone in this strange, cold, quiet place; so he shouted again.
“I say, Lu! I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. I see now you were right all along. Do come out. Make it Pax.”
Still there was no answer. “Just like a girl,” said Edmund to himself, “sulking somewhere, and won’t accept an apology.”

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

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Just Like a Girl

This article will examine Edmund’s disingenuous repentance and the lessons we can learn from his false repentance. In a previous article1, I already detailed some things that we can learn about forgiveness from Narnia. Here, I will detail more. One of Lewis’ brilliancies was his insight into the human condition. Just read his The Screwtape Letters2 to see what I mean. The man understood things, especially people, and could express this understanding in a simple yet deep manner. He said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it, I see everything else.”3, and he was not lying. He saw “everything else” sharper than most Christian writers do.

The clearest indication of Edmund’s disingenuous repentance is his statement, “Just like a girl”. When Lucy gives no response to Edmund’s apology, his immediate reaction is to insult her and assume that she is “sulking somewhere, and won’t accept an apology.” Contrast Edmund’s plea with Tumnus’ genuine repentance when the Faun asks Lucy, “can you ever forgive me for what I meant to do?”. While Tumnus recognised that Lucy may be so angry that she did not want to extend forgiveness, Edmund thinks he is owed forgiveness. Of course, Lucy would be required to forgive Edmund, for the Scriptures adjure us into “forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:32). But when we ask for forgiveness, we should not use this requirement as leverage. We should not say, “Well, I may or may not be genuinely sorry, but I guess you have to forgive me anyways. It is Biblically mandated.” As if that would work.

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Fragments from Narnia – Part Ten: Truth and Spite

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“For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.”

2 Peter 1:16

“For the next few days [Lucy] was very miserable. She could have made it up with the others quite easily at any moment if she could have brought herself to say that the whole thing was only a story made up for fun. But Lucy was a very truthful girl and she knew that she was really in the right; and she could not bring herself to say this. The others who thought she was telling a lie, and a silly lie too, made her very unhappy. The two elder ones did this without meaning to do it, but Edmund could be spiteful, and on this occasion he was spiteful. He sneered and jeered at Lucy and kept on asking her if she’d found any other new countries in other cupboards all over the house.”

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

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Truth and Spite

There are two lessons I want to draw from Lewis’ brief description here. The first lesson is that an uncompromising devotion to truth, and indeed the Truth (Jn. 14:6), must characterise Christians. The second lesson concerns rotten fruit and a “pour lemon juice” mentality exemplified by Edmund. I will focus primarily on the first point, particularly relating it to apologetics and cultural interaction. Let me preface this article by reiterating what I have stated in previous articles. Lewis, through simple stories, communicates practical truths. Stories incarnate virtue. This incarnation is not only important for children to understand but for adults too. Even if what I discuss here is simple, and it is, that does not mean it is simplistic.

Firstly, Lewis describes Lucy as a “very truthful girl”. Already, we see something that our culture frowns upon. Our culture does not appreciate describing people in objective categories. A Stuff article from 2009 describes a then 54-year-old man, an “overweight bloke, with a moustache, who drove a 4WD and was into heavy drinking”, who decided that he was a “woman trapped in a man’s body”. He then changed his identity to Rebeka and began to wear female clothes.1 Notice the separation of psychology and biology. One can fit into the category of “man” biologically, but this category is not so objective that it extends also to psychology. The category is flexible and subjective, subordinated to your feelings or thoughts. Another example of the cultural frowning upon objective categories is a lecturer in forensic psychology who I remember declaring that we should not call people “pedophiles” but instead say they have a “pedophilic disorder”. To categorise them as “pedophiles” would be stigmatising. We would not want to hurt their feelings, of course. But the Biblical view is that people are objectively and categorically one way or the other. You are either truthful or a liar. You are either a man or a woman. You are either dead in sin (Eph. 2:1) or alive in Christ (Eph. 2:4). You are either unrighteous or justified (1 Cor. 6:9-11). We would do well to talk in objective categories.

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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

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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

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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 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

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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

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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

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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

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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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