...in anything I've ever read (which isn't much) is the last page of The Last Battle:And the very first person whom Aslan called to him was Puzzle the Donkey. You never saw a donkey look feebler and sillier than Puzzle did as he walked up to Aslan, and he looked, beside Aslan, as small as a kitten looks beside a St. Bernard. The Lion bowed down his head and whispered something to Puzzle at which his long ears went down, but then he said something else at which the ears perked up again. The humans couldn't hear what he had said either time. Then Aslan turned to them and said:
"You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be."
Lucy said, "We're so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often."
"No fear of that," said Aslan. "Have you not guessed?"
Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.
"There was a real railway accident," said Aslan softly. "Your father and mother and all of you are--as you used to call it in the Shadowlands--dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning."
And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
4 comments:
What do you think of the part in The Last Battle where Aslan tells a man that the service done unto(Tash?) Aslan will count as done unto him. Kind of universalist?
What a glorious day that will be!
Dad
Erin - honestly, off the top of my head, I don't have much difficulty with it. I wouldn't have written it that way, but I appreciate what Lewis is doing in that passage, and while I would not agree in that Lewis seems to be insinuating that one can be made righteous by another name than the true name (which would be contra Ac 4:12 + Rom 10:9ff), I think he has hit a profound truth: gentleness, kindness, hobility, honor, courage, and so on are not rendered worthless simply b/c they are disconnected from explicitly Christian service (I think this is what Lewis is getting at in calling the figure Emet, Heb for truth). And though it has certainly been decontextualized by some overzealous inclusivists, John 10:16, while speaking, I think, of Gentiles, not pagans, is indicative of something in the heart of God to be "inclusivist" in the best sense of the term (generous, open-armed, impartial). I would also see a lot of echoes with what Lewis is doing in Rom. 2 about Gentiles who do not know the Jewish Torah doing by nature the things the law requires and becoming a law unto themselves (though that itself is a very disputed point: are those Gentiles regenerate, or not).
So, I recognize the dangers (e.g. in motivation in missions) in sliding toward a more inclusivist understanding b7y which anyone is put right with God so long as one is sincere--we can be sincerely wrong; and, sincereity alone proclaimed as sufficient dishonors Jesus and his cross--but the impulse in this part of Lewis' story is right on.
What do you think?
Thanks Dane! Very interesting response. It seems like Lewis may be expressing a belief that God's mercy is wider than Christians traditionally think. I like that passage and I would love it if that's how it really was on judgment day--but I can see there could be danger in assuming it will be that way, if you know what I mean?
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