SOME THOUGHTS ON THE ESCHATOLOGY OF C.S. LEWIS, PT. 3
In the last of the Narnian Chronicles, The Last Battle, Lewis accomplishes an extraordinary feat of writing by managing to give an outline of eschatology - or "end times" - that manages to avoid falling into any of the conventional "millenialisms", while maintaining what might be called a strict, credal orthodoxy. In the novel, the last King of Narnia, Tirian, is relaxing with his chief counsellor, a unicorn names Jewel, when word begins to reach him that Aslan - the Lion-God Christ figure of the novels - has returned to Narnia. Then, this is followed almost immediately by reports that Aslan has begun mistreating his subjects, and soon a flood of refugees from where Aslan has been "seen" rouses the King and his counsellor to action. As the crisis progresses, it is discovered that "Aslan" is not Aslan at all, but a slow-witted donkey named Puzzle in a lion skin, which he has been persuaded to wear and impersonate Aslan by a clever, power-hungry (and lazy) monkey named Shift. Shift gradually has his "Aslan-Puzzle" sequester himself inside a tent, or stable, from which he occasionally emerges - usually by torchlight at night - to issue new and onerous commands to his subjects. Shift soon throws his weight behind a new scheme to enlist Aslan-Puzzle in a scheme to combine religions with the Islam-like religion of Narnia's southern neighbor, the Calormenes, who worship a god called Tash. Shift comes up with a scheme to combine the names of their respective gods into a syncretistic display of ecumenism called "Tashlan", and even more chaos ensues. (It is interesting to note that there is a movement among some American evangelicals to take advantage of the fact that within Islam, Christ is viewed as a prophet, and to "convert" Muslims to a "personal relationship" with the Christ-Prophet shorn of Christian religious trappings, i.e., shorn of standard confessional orthodoxy. In some areas of Africa this movement to combine aspects of Islam and Christianity is actually called "Chrislam", another illustration of how prescient Lewis was. For more on this, see the works of Jeff Sharlett, C Street and The Family. Sharlett is a liberal Jewish journalist who views many of these types of schemes, as do I, with a very skeptical eye.)
King Tirian of Narnia calls out for help to Aslan, but no help arrives, and then he remembers that sometimes help came not in the form of Aslan, but sometimes through Aslan's "assistants", and calling upon that help, it actually arrives in the form of children from our world of Earth. During the final scenes, people are made to prove their loyalty to the new regime by entering the stable, which Shift and his new Calormene allies think holds only their own fake Aslan-Puzzle. But unbeknownst to Shift and his allies, Tash himself has actually shown up, much to the horror of some Calormenes, and others entering the stable encounter the real Aslan, who closes the door of access to the stable. The Old Narnia is destroyed by a bombardment of stars, and the inside of the stable is discovered to contain an entirely new Narnia.
Now this may not seem like much, until one compares it to the various millenial doctrines, and then one notices something quite peculiar. While the stable may represent a rebuilt temple: there is no time frame involving a Millenial reign of Aslan once he shows up. Rather, once he's on the scene, the whole show ends with a new Narnia. His return is real, even the stable itself is real, but the "millenium" turns out to be an unending "new Narnia." On the post-millenial view, the church (or in some versions, the saints) usher in the millenium, and by doing so, Christ returns after this period. This is present in The Last Battle when the King calls for the help of the old Narnian kings, who do, in fact, show up. But they don't usher in a millenium. As was seen, the show is over once Aslan shows up, and he ushers in the new Narnia while separating the old (and its servants, including Shift and his lackeys).
In other words, Lewis' eschatology partakes at once of elements of the various millenialisms, without being committed to any of them and in fact while avoiding the peculiarities of each millenial "doctrine" . This view he foreshadowed in Perelandra in a rather remarkable but not oft-noticed passage:
"Your own world," said Tor, "Thulcandra. The siege of your world shall be raised, the black spot cleared away, before the real beginning. In those days Maleldil will go to war - in us, and in many who once were hnau (hnau: rational intelligent creatures) on your world, and in many from far off and in many eldila, and, last of all, in Himself unveiled, He will go down to Thulcandra - scarred with many a blow. We shall break her. Her light shall be put out. Her fragments shall fall into your world and the seas and the smoke shall arise so that the dwellers in Thulcandra will no longer see the light of Arbol. And as Meledlil Himself draws near, the evil things in your world shall show themselves stripped of disguise so that plagues and horrors shall cover your lands and seas. But in the end all shall be cleansed, and even the memory of yoru Black oyarsa blotted out, and your world shall be far and sweet and reunited to the field of Arbol and its true name shall be heard again. (Emphases added)
Again, the "end" begins with a combat between the various servants of good and of evil, until the process is consummated by the appearance of the Good Himself. But beyond this broad chronological scaffolding, Lewis does not venture.
A glimpse at one of the Church Fathers, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, may be helpful to understand what Lewis was attempting to do with this approach. St. Cyril delivered a series of lectures to adult baptismal candidates. It was customary for the bishop of a local church or his priests to superintend the catechesis of people joining the church personally, and such catechesis typically consisted of an exposition of the articles of the creed. In this case, the final articles of the section of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed having to do with Christ read "And he shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end." In St. Cyril's catechical lectures, this portion becomes the focus for an extended treatment of the ends times, anti-Christ, the restored Jewish temple, and so on. All the usual verses of the Bible are cited in all the usual ways, but there is an important distinction between St. Cyril and what a modern dispensationalist or millenialist would do: the rebuilt temple plays no role in Cyril's thinking in some sort of special dispensation. It merely is associated with anti-Christ: there is no return of Christ to that temple, but rather, the return simply ends the the whole process, and ushers in the judgement and eternal kingdom. Cyril goes out of his way to note that this restored temple "is not the one in which we now are," i.e., the temple of Christ's body (John 2:19), the Church. the Jewish temple, like the stable for Shift's Aslan-Puzzle, is simply and only associated with anti-Christ. When in Lewis' Narnian version of events "the real McCoy" does show up, he does indeed show up "inside" that stable, but in a very different way than is the case in dispensationalist views, for he shows up not in order to usher in a millenium, but to end history, and begin the "new Narnia."
By handling things in this manner, Lewis avoids the abuses that often attach themselves to any form of millenialism. One may think, for example, of the Radical Abolitionists of the pre-bellum period of American history prior to the War Between the States, and their insistence on "doing God's work" to bring in "the kingdom" by ending slavery, even by violent means (think John Brown's murderous career in Kansas or his raid on Harper's Ferry). The post-millenial secularism was enshrined in the well-known "Battle Hymn of the Republic" in the lines "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword..." and so on. Equally, Lewis avoids the excess of identifying some "dispensationalisms" where the sacrifices of the old law are renewed, and in complete contradiction to the statements of Christ Himself that "it is finished," a statement understood traditionally to mean that the old dispensation with its animal sacrifices is concluded. Something can only be finished "once for all".
With that, we have reached then end of these remarks, and I hope people will find them helpful as they read and explore these writings.
See you on the flip side...
