A Reflection on Narnia by Rev. Scott Hoezzee

Those of us who preach have recently found ourselves
in the crosshairs of a full-blown media P.R. blitz in
advance of the December 9 release of the new Narnia
film based on C.S. Lewis’ classic book, The Lion, the
Witch, and the Wardrobe. I myself attended one of
several local events aimed at pastors and church
leaders at which the folks at Walden Media loaded us
up with an entire box worth of posters, door hangers,
brochures, and other Narnia-related folderol as they
attempted to tell us that the release of this new
movie represented a huge evangelistic opportunity that
we as church leaders simply could not miss.

The people who ran these events were sincere and
clearly believe that we in the church can do some
kingdom good by taking advantage of what promises to
be a “movie with a message.” Of course, the folks who
have sunk $150 million into this movie won’t mind it a
bit if churches rent out whole theaters to see the
film. After years of failure in trying to get a
big-screen version of the Narnia books made, there can
be little doubt that two factors converged to finally
get the folks at Disney to agree to distribute this
movie. One is the grand success of The Lord of the
Rings films by director Peter Jackson—films that
revealed that you can now make a movie filled with
fantastic creatures and that audiences are hungry for
yarns that contain myth and mystery. But the second
reason behind Narnia’s finally getting to the big
screen was the meteoric success of Mel Gibson’s The
Passion of the Christ, which likewise revealed that
even films with overtly Christian themes can succeed
nicely at the box office.

So the media full-court-press that we pastors have
recently experienced is motivated in part by a sincere
desire to reach out to people with the gospel but also
in part because Hollywood is always after the bottom
line. Still, most of us like good movies, and so if
the new Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe film is
good, then we will be happy to pay for our tickets,
take our kids, maybe even invite our friends and
neighbors.

But what about this business that this is an
evangelistic opportunity? Recently here at Calvin
Theological Seminary, a local pastor and I hosted two
luncheons at which we gathered a dozen pastors each
time to talk about just this. In advance of those
lunch meetings, I consulted with Lewis scholars Alan
Jacobs of Wheaton College and Peter Schakel of Hope
College, each of whom recently wrote a book about C.S.
Lewis and specifically about his Narnia stories. I
also received a paper from John Bowen of Wycliff
College in Toronto, a version of which he will deliver
in a public lecture here at Calvin Theological
Seminary on Thursday, December 15.

I asked each of these scholars what he would tell his
own pastor if he heard his pastor say that he planned
to weave this new movie (and the larger Narnia story)
into some sermons even as the church itself was
planning to use The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
as an evangelistic tool by which to reach out to
unbelievers. Let me summarize what these scholars had
to say. Most of what follows clearly falls under the
heading of cautions.

* Not an Allegory: Unlike The Lord of the Rings,
which had broad resonance with Christian themes, many
parts of Lewis’ Narnia stories have much tighter
connections to specific Christian doctrines and even
gospel events. Hence, it’s easy to view something like
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as a
straightforward allegory, as a re-telling of the
gospel in which only the names of the characters have
been changed. But it is vital to note that Lewis
himself did not view the Narnia stories as allegorical
tales but rather as suppositional stories. That is to
say, SUPPOSE that the Son of God had been made
incarnate in a different world—a world with different
problems and contours than ours but still a world in
need of some kind of salvation. What might the Christ
look like in that world? This idea of suppositional
versus allegorical may seem subtle and yet it is
important. We don’t want Aslan on the cross nor Jesus
on the witch’s stone table. To do so—to assume that
Narnia is simply a re-telling of the gospel in
different guise—threatens to do harm to both stories.
It also can lead to some wrong ideas about Jesus.
There are analogies between what Aslan does and what
Jesus does, but analogies are the starting point for
discussion not a 1:1 correspondence between two
different worlds.
* Narnia as Evangelism? C.S. Lewis had his own
very definite ideas about evangelism, though we cannot
get into that here. However, there are serious
questions to ponder in terms of thinking we can bring
nonbelievers to this movie in order to give them
entrée into the gospel. Scholars Jacobs and Schakel
believe that Lewis himself saw the Narnia tales more
as analogies of sanctification for those who are
already Christians, not as the portal through which a
non-Christian might be converted. Beyond that point,
however, is a more significant one: Lewis saw the
Narnia tales as a way to “baptize the imagination.” As
John Bowen has written, in that sense the Narnia tales
could be seen as a kind of pre-evangelism experience
for people. That is, by having their
minds/imaginations opened up to new possibilities
involving myth, mystery, the power of sacrifice, etc.
they may become more open to similar ideas when they
encounter them in other stories (principally the
gospel story, of course). But if we tell our neighbors
that they can be converted via this movie, they may
stay away in droves. As Jacobs put it, doing so will
turn this movie into the equivalent of broccoli for
children: the more you tell the kid it’s good for him
and so he MUST eat it, the more he doesn’t want to
touch the stuff!
# There can be no doubting that Lewis
smuggled theology into his Narnia stories but he did
so in the guise of another world precisely to keep
people’s prejudices against theology/Scripture from
going up. If we do an end-run on Lewis in ways that
make people put up those very defenses all over again,
we may find that what evangelistic use the Narnia
stories may ultimately have will have been ruined from
the start.

As Frederick Buechner memorably wrote in his book
Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and
Fairy Tale, there can be no doubting the fairy
tale-like features to also the gospel story. We need
to uncover those wonderful elements and weave them
into our preaching because, as Tolkien also wrote, in
all fairy stories—including that one such story that
is also the truest story that ever was, the gospel
itself—in all such stories there is that moment when
one encounters the “turn” when the frog is revealed as
a prince, when the ugly duckling becomes a gorgeous
swan, when the baby in the manger is revealed as the
King of kings. And when that turns happens, joy
happens. If the recent success of The Lord of the
Rings and now the Chronicles of Narnia films helps us
to recover all that is spine-tinglingly mysterious and
joyous about the gospel, then that is a profoundly
good thing and a fitting use of the new movie.
Baptized imaginations—and also RE-baptized
imaginations—may indeed be a fertile field in which
gospel crops may grow. That should be our prayer for
all to whom we preach, both those for whom it is an
old, old story and those for whom it may be a new
story in which they find Life!

Rev. Scott Hoezee, Director
The Center for Excellence in Preaching
Calvin Theological Seminary
Grand Rapids, Michigan