The Narnia Connection
A recent “New Yorker” review of the big-budget, special-effects-laden retooling of C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" goes far beyond commenting on the film and is, in effect, a review of Lewis himself, and of his unorthodox approach to orthodoxy. Some illuminating passages about his relation to J.R.R. Tolkien (and to Tolkien's frustrations with Lewis truculent refusal to accept Catholicism) make it interesting reading for anyone who enjoys the discourse here on Detente.
Since this blog grew out of a series of peripatetic discussions, here's a relevant excerpt:
The New Yorker: The Critics: A Critic At Large: "It was through the intervention of the secretive and personally troubled Tolkien, however, that Lewis finally made the turn toward orthodox Christianity. In company with another friend, they took a long, and now famous, walk, on an autumn night in 1931, pacing and arguing from early evening to early morning. "
Since this blog grew out of a series of peripatetic discussions, here's a relevant excerpt:
The New Yorker: The Critics: A Critic At Large: "It was through the intervention of the secretive and personally troubled Tolkien, however, that Lewis finally made the turn toward orthodox Christianity. In company with another friend, they took a long, and now famous, walk, on an autumn night in 1931, pacing and arguing from early evening to early morning. "
posted by Rick Broussard at 11:20 PM
3 Comments:
I think the reviewer reveals a bit about his own positions on these matters, as well, but that's fair enough and the piece is interesting nevertheless. Here's a 'graph that caught my eye:
"This was a new turn in the history of religious conversion. Where for millennia the cutting edge of faith had been the difference between pagan myth and Christian revelation, Lewis was drawn in by the likeness of the Christian revelation to pagan myth. Even Victorian conversions came, in the classic Augustinian manner, out of an overwhelming sense of sin. Cardinal Manning agonized over eating too much cake, and was eventually drawn to the Church of Rome to keep himself from doing it again. Lewis didn’t embrace Christianity because he had eaten too much cake; he embraced it because he thought that it would keep the cake coming, that the Anglican Church was God’s own bakery. 'The story of Christ is simply a true myth,' he says he discovered that night, 'a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened.'"
While I did not get to read the original posting, I am very leary and suspicious of just how much the traditional media and hollywood will muddle the theological doctrine of lewis's work. Perhaps I am just too much of a skeptic
out of curiousity, have either of you read any of the writtings of AB Simpson?
Larry,
Well, I just saw Narnia last night and thought it was fine. I frankly think that, as a theological or doctrinal work, the Narnia series was a bit of a muddle to begin with. But Lewis's exercise in myth-making does somehow speak the essence of Christianity to open ears in a fresh way. I think the movie version succeeds in carrying the message to the eyes.
I've never read AB Simpson. Never heard of him (her?). I'll look the name up online and see what I can see. Any specific writings or recommendations?
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