ENTER J.R.R. TOLKIEN
At the age of twenty-seven, having been elected Fellow and Tutor in
English Language and Literature at Magdalen College, Lewis met John Ronald Reuel
Tolkien at a meeting of the English faculty at Menton College. J.R.R. Tolkien,
though wary of Lewis at first, enrolled him in the "Coalbiters," a
club he had founded for the study and propagation of Norse mythology.
The two began to meet regularly in Lewis's rooms at Magdalen,
sometimes talking far into the night of the gods and giants of Asgard. Tolkien,
a Roman Catholic, considered himself a Christian and argued for the truth of
Jesus Christ being the Son of God.
With the aid of a mutual friend, Hugo Dyson (Lecturer in English
Literature at Reading University), Tolkien worked on Lewis's "theism"
to convince him of the meaning of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, and the role
of Christ in Christianity.
To prove their point, Tolkien and
Dyson argued that there is an inherent truth of mythology: all pagan religions
point in the direction of God. Through this faulty argument, Lewis reasoned the
story of Christ to be a "true myth"—a myth much the same as others,
but a myth that really happened. Thus Lewis declared that he had "passed
on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ—in
Christianity," but embracing the Anglican Church to the consternation of
the Catholic Tolkien.10
It was during their long
association that both Lewis and Tolkien developed their most prestigious
"sword and sorcery" material. Tolkien became well known for his
mythological tale, The Hobbit, and his later work, The Lord of the
Rings. Lewis turned to writing fantasy and expounding intermittently on
Christian apologetics.
ALLEGORY OR PURE MYTH?
Perhaps the best-known fantasy from Lewis's pen is the seven-volume
The Chronicles
of Narnia. In it some see a parallel to the warfare between God and Satan.
Many of Lewis's fans see the great lion, Aslan, as Christ. This because Aslan
lays down his life to free the children from the curse of the evil witch
(believed to represent Satan). Aslan possesses knowledge of a greater
"magic" than that of the witch—a magic that brings him back to life
and destroys the witch's power.
Contrary to popular belief, it was
not Lewis's intention to blend fantasy with allegory of Christian truth. Rather,
he was
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genuinely enamored of mythology and believed the "Story" to
take precedence over any preconceived moral:
Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could
say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an
instrument; then collected information about child-psychology and decided what
age group I'd write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and
hammered out "allegories" to embody them. This is all pure moonshine.
I couldn't write in that way at all. Everything began with images; a faun
carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there
wasn't even anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its
own accord.11
In response to critics' claims of Christian allegory in his fantasies,
Lewis stated,
No story can be devised by the wit of man which cannot be interpreted
allegorically by the wit of some other man.... The mere fact that you can
allegorize the work before you is of itself no proof that it is an allegory. Of
course you can allegorize it. You can allegorize anything.... We ought not to proceed
to allegorize any work until we have plainly set out the reasons for regarding it as
an allegory at all.12
Yet even if Christian allegory was his intention, the fact is that
God's truth, when couched in terms less than accurate, is open to question. No
understanding can arise without prior knowledge of the truth—in which case the
allegory is useless.
It is also wrong to depict evil as good, and magic as synonymous
with the power of the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 5:20; Acts 8:9-23). Many of Lewis's
characters in his fantasies, depicted as "good," are really products
of witchcraft, pagan mythology, and the Norse mysteries. They are demon gods of
nature.
One of the more pronounced confusions of good and evil is Till
We Have Faces, Lewis's retelling of the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche,
written just a few years before his death. In it several pagan concepts are
espoused as valid truths. One such concept is a strong hint at universalist
doctrine:
We're all limbs and parts of one Whole. Hence, of each other. Men,
and gods, flow in and out and mingle.13
When such ideas are presented by one of the chief protagonists,
heralded as a purveyor of wisdom by the auther, one cannot but think the author
also believed
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that way. So, too, one might for this same reason think Lewis
looked upon suicide as an acceptable act:
Have I not told you often that to depart from life of a man's own
will when there's good reason is one of the things that are according to nature?14
Not that Lewis was necessarily aware of his error. His imagination,
welded upon fantasy in preference to what he considered a faulty reality, set the
themes for his writings and resulted in confusion by readers who perceived them as
Christian allegory.
RESOLVING A DILEMMA
Many forget that Lewis was a fallible human whose writings must be subject
to testing by God's Word. Thus we see in Christian bookstores his treatises on Christian
thought alongside his occult fantasies.
It has escaped the notice of most Christians that Lewis is highly respected
among occultists. There has developed a cult of sorts which venerates his fantasies along
with those of non-Christians. Evidence of this is the fact that The Chronicles of Narnia
is listed with other occult writings as recommended inspirational reading by the makers of the
demonically-oriented game, Dungeons and Dragons.
One may accept C.S. Lewis's brilliant apologetics, but let's not deceive ourselves
into thinking that everything he wrote bears the mark of the Holy Spirit.
NOTES
1. Kathryn Ann Lindskoog, C.S. Lewis, Mere Christian (Glendale, CA: G/L Publications,
1973), p. 1.
2. C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1955), p. 6.
3. Ibid., p. 14.
4. Ibid., p. 17.
5. Ibid., p. 19.
6. Ibid., p. 55.
7. Ibid., p. 23.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 35
10. Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien: A Biography (New York: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1977), p. 164.
11. C.S. Lewis, Of Other Worlds (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), p. 36.
12. Ibid., pp.57, 58.
13. C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), pp. 300, 301.
14. Ibid., p. 17.
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