When Narnia Falls Short: Rethinking C.S. Lewis's Theology of Redemption

There’s a unique thrill to critiquing great theological writers, and C.S. Lewis has not escaped my reach. Simply put, I cannot stand The Last Battle from the Chronicles of Narnia; now I know I am hugely in the minority here, so stick with me. I am an avid Lewis fan, with many of his works sitting on my shelves. While at times he is as subtle as a two-by-four, his use of imagery and story to communicate complex theological truths is breathtaking.

But when it comes to The Last Battle, he falls short of his typical genius by failing to capture the Christian view of Redemption and Resurrection by doing what so many of us tend to do in our lives. We don’t trust the actual pattern of resurrection, the belief that God can bring good out of the darkest times. Instead, we want to throw away what’s old and broken and replace it with something new. God’s better than that, though.

For those who haven’t read the book (or haven’t read it in a while—spoiler alert?), the book’s closing chapters depict the annihilation of Narnia, where every last piece down to time itself is reduced to nothing. Then, as the main characters turn away from this (watching it all occur through a doorway), they discover that what they just watched be destroyed “was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia.” If this sounds tolerable to you, let’s imagine this another way. Imagine a biblical account where, after three days, the women found a pile of ashes in the tomb with Jesus appearing behind them scarless, stating, That was not the real Jesus; only an image of who the real Jesus is. I am who you were always looking for. We’d find that unsettling.

What moves me about the resurrection is the fact that it is the same body, still carrying the scars. There is visceral proof that meaning can come from suffering, and evil does not have the last word. The way Lewis writes it, it’s as if old Narnia is the scapegoat that traps all the evil that existed in that world. Then Aslan destroys it, and all the good people can live happily ever after in heaven. This is not good redemptive theology.

Good redemptive theology understands that the stuff of resurrection comes from the stuff of suffering. It’s why Jesus’s body on the cross is the same body of the resurrection; it’s why Christians believe that the resurrection of our bodies is the restoration of the one we’re living in, not a replacement with a new model. And the redemption of the world isn’t that God is hiding a Platonic ideal in the clouds (as Lewis suggests), waiting for the right time to get rid of the old to make way for the new; no, the redemption will be the restoration of the world we’re already living in. We are already living in what will be heaven.

The problem is that C.S. Lewis thought he wrote himself into a corner in The Last Battle. He writes to a point where Narnia appears unredeemable. The land is destroyed, trust in Aslan seems broken beyond repair, and all notions of good and evil seem lost. Even when Aslan does come back, it doesn’t fix things, and people still reject him. How do you redeem the unredeemable?

This question came up in my mind when I first had to reconcile my faith and sexuality. For years, I sat with this notion that if something was disordered, then my work in the spiritual life was to re-order it—simple enough. But I learned after years of trying to overcome same-sex attractions with no effect, and after reading what Psychology has to say on this subject, I had to come to terms with the reality that my attractions weren’t going away. I couldn’t get rid of them, I couldn’t fix them, I couldn’t re-order them. My original mindset was far more like Lewis’s. I desperately hoped that the old way would be done away with, I’d have all my desires fixed, and I wouldn’t be gay anymore. But that feels more like a resurrected Jesus without any scars.

With this revelation, I struggled to reconcile how an all-loving and all-powerful God could allow me to be created in such a way that how I fundamentally felt drawn to give and receive love was simultaneously ordered toward an intrinsic evil and unchangeable. That was the cruelty of the first degree. But the longer I sat with this, the more I realized that the God I believed in, and the God I experienced could see and bring good out of any situation. I had to let go of how I wanted God to redeem this aspect of my life and ask God how he wanted to redeem this part of my life.

Because it is far easier to place parts of our life out of God’s reach by taking Lewis’s approach. Those things we feel are too far gone, too unchangeable, something that just needs annihilating, we merely wait until the other side of eternity when God will fix everything. That keeps God at arm’s length and can keep us closed to the unexpected nature of God’s redemptive work. Redemption isn’t replacing the bad with the good; it is the work of God healing us through the imperfections of this world. It is the reason why Jesus could hold up a Canaanite, a Roman soldier, an ostracized woman, and a tax collector as images of faith in his day. In these stories, it is not in spite of their situation that they are held in high esteem; it is precisely because of their situation that they are models of faith.

What in your life feels unredeemable or would be better if it were done away with? That might just be exactly where God most wants to meet you.

Photo by Matthew Kerslake on Unsplash