Aslan

In reality however he [Aslan] is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, “What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He has actually done in ours?” (C.S. Lewis)

Since studying C. S. Lewis’s best-selling fiction The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in intermediate school, the great lion king of Narnia, Aslan, has been permanently etched in my memory. However, I failed to retain Lewis’ “story within a story” and hence any deeper significance of this gentle but potentially ferocious lion. I waited in anticipation for The Chronicles of Narnia to be released at the cinema earlier this year, eager to re-discover Aslan afresh with Lewis’ deliberate parallels with my Lord Jesus.

Lewis presents images of Christ and Christ’s intervention through the character of Aslan. We see innocent Aslan lay down his life in an amazing act of love for the guilty Edmund. Edmund broke a law in Narnia that resulted in the death penalty. This story corresponds with the Bible’s teaching that we are all law-breakers and that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). Fortunately, just as Aslan died in Edmund’s place, help has been offered to us to escape eternal separation from God; Jesus Christ suffered and died on the cross taking the punishment for our sins on himself (Rom 5:8). He then rose from the dead three days later to offer forgiveness and new life to anyone who accepts this gift.

“The gospel summarizes what God does for man, whereas the law summarizes what he wants man to do”[1]. Lewis presents these two fundamental aspects of God’s Word in the Narnia stories. The law is the “deep magic from the dawn of time” on which Narnia is founded, and which rules over everyone’s destiny, including Aslan’s. The gospel is the “yet deeper magic from the dawn of time.”

After Aslan is resurrected he explains to the children that the Witch, a part of God’s creation like themselves and the animals, knows the Deep Magic, but her knowledge only goes back to the dawn of time. If she could look a little further back she would know that “when a willing victim who had not committed treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward”.

Aslan lays down his life, so no one takes it from him (John 10:17-19). Aslan cannot disobey the Deep Magic, for that would be a violation of his Father’s eternal law. “Aslan’s story, like Christ’s, is one of playing the rules, rules he himself has ordained in order to provide righteousness and justice.” [2] Aslan is willing to lay down his life in order to save Edmund and Narnia, to be taken up again under his Father’s embrace. The subsequent scene where Aslan breathes life back into those the Witch had turned into stone statues is a picture of our new life in Christ as he forgives us and resurrects us out of the death of our old selves.

I was surprised to find that in The Chronicles of Narnia there is a restraint of divine, miraculous intervention. For example, when Susan blows her magic horn, both Aslan and Peter come running to help, but Aslan does not simply defeat the enemy. Instead, Aslan takes down one wolf and calls on Peter to fight the second. This type of human agency may simply be to add drama to the story. But it also demonstrates that Aslan wanted humans to take an offensive role in the events of the world. I am reminded of Apostle Paul’s plea for believers to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power” and to “put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil” (Eph 6:10-11). Indeed, Christ never leaves us to fight our battles on our own; we have assurance that “the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one” (2 Thes 3:3).

Redemption, the gospel, believers’ ability to overcome evil, and other such theological themes that Lewis develops in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe are clearly based on his own personal conviction and experience. They serve to challenge readers and viewers alike to imagine the presence of Christ and the impact of his intervention. It was to my delight that after revisiting Narnia through the film I found Lewis’ alternative world created as an allegory with the gospel. I was left identifying with Lucy’s longing for Aslan, the king of Narnia, to return, as I too long for my Saviour, the King of kings, to do the same.

[1] Markus Muhling, A Theological Journey into Narnia. (Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006):90.
[2] Bruce Edwards, Further Up & Further In (Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman & Holman, 2005):90.