OT: The Problem of Susan

David Duffy · 03 Nov 2004, 15:27 · from 2004-November.txt.gz

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From: davidD at qimr.edu.au (David Duffy)
Date: Wed Nov  3 15:27:11 2004
Subject: (urth) OT: The Problem of Susan
In-Reply-To: <1f76173704110311063b87614f at mail.gmail.com>
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Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0411040918510.9480 at orpheus.qimr.edu.au>

On Wed, 3 Nov 2004, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:

> ... it's currently fashionable to trash Lewis and especially the
> Narnia books, and Gaiman is nothing if not fashionable. In this case,
> I wish he hadn't been.
>
> Charles and Rostrum are quite right in their interpretation of Susan's
> obsession with "lipstick, boys, and invitations," but they miss
> something even more important - Susan is most emphatically _not_
> "denied Heaven." This is the "Pullman Heresy" that is, I think, at the
> heart of the trash-Lewis fad.
>
> Susan is not damned; she simply doesn't die in the train crash. The
> books neither say _nor imply_ anything about her eternal fate, and
> in the one place that I know of where Lewis had anything to say
> about it - in a letter to a child - he was of the opinion that God kept
> her alive so that she could come back to Him by some other route.
> (That's from memory, so the wording is probably nowhere near
> CSL's.)
>

I am irresistibly reminded of Luther explaining how dogs also go to
heaven:  "Be comforted, little dog, thou too in the Resurrection shalt
have a tail of gold." ;)

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