Lupiverse(es)

David Stockhoff · 16 Mar 2012, 00:01 · from 2012-March.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2012 20:01:06 -0400
Subject: (urth) Lupiverse(es)
In-Reply-To: <4F6279D2.8000306 at gmail.com>
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On 3/15/2012 7:22 PM, James Wynn wrote:
> For the record, I never had any problem seeing the allegorical parts 
> in LWW or the Silver Chair (the most allegorical of all the stories). 
> TLB is not even allegorical. It's merely eschatological. Given who 
> Aslan was revealed to be in "The Magician's Nephew", it is inevitable 
> that he would play the role he did at the end of the the Narnian world.
>
> If one sees materialism as an "oppositional identity" to Christianity 
> (and all young materialist in the West do because that is almost 
> always their only counter-example), then you are likely to feel 
> chaffing at Aslan's role in TLB. But Aslan's plays the same role in 
> TLB as he does in ALL the other book. He shows up at the end to sort 
> things out and sends the characters on their way. But only if one  
> associates End-of-the-World stories SOLELY with Christianity would one 
> suddenly realize in TLB  that Aslan is Jesus.
>
> But there is sooo much more to Narnia than the Christian allegory. 
> Almost all of it is, as Lewis called it, a stew with lots of familiar 
> flavors rather than a lock-and-key allegory. It's just that there are 
> a few clumps of beefy allegory in there as well.
>
> In fact, being young and recognizing the allegories in the story made 
> "The Last Battle" quite confusing for me, I think.  Because Lewis has 
> a very idiosyncratic theology (it certainly wouldn't jive with 
> Presbyterianism).  If, because of one's youth, he is unaware that 
> there are so many subtle shades of Christian belief, he will surely 
> have a WTH reaction. And I did.
>
> So TLB would be better if it were read by an older, more worldly 
> person who can both recognize how different Aslan is from our Standard 
> Jesus and is willing to accept that that is okay. Or someone who has 
> had the time between the first book to the last to familiarize himself 
> with some of Lewis's other writers ("The Great Divorce", "Til We Have 
> Faces", "Pilgrims Regress")

I'm sure I would have done better with Aslan et al. had I realized that 
different points of view were permitted, let alone existed, within 
Christianity. I was probably more familiar with other religions than I 
was with the shades within it, and so assumed it was monolithic and 
thus---the worst crime of all to a kid---boring. Never mind that I 
didn't believe in it; I didn't believe in Middle-earth either.

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