The Creation of Narnia

It is all too easy in the darkened days and daze in which we live to become despondent. It is all too easy to forget the happy ending that is promised to those who keep faith in the God of the happy ever after. We who are not dumb and witless do not always need to be grave. We are creatures of a good-humoured God. There is every reason to laugh and fear not!

In “Narnia and Middle-Earth: When Two Worlds Collude”, a chapter in my book, Beauteous Truth: Faith, Reason, Literature and Culture, I explore the inspirational friendship of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S Lewis. The coming together of these two great men in friendship was a catalytic collision which led to creative collusion, each inspiring and encouraging the other in their respective work. It is intriguing, for instance, that Tolkien’s mythical depiction of Ilúvatar’s Creation of Middle-earth parallels Lewis’s description of Aslan’s Creation of Narnia. Middle-earth is brought into being by Ilúvatar as the Great Music, whereas Narnia is sung into being by Aslan. In both cases, the Supreme Being is seen as the Supreme Artist, the Great Composer, who rejoices in His own creativity and the beauty that it shines forth.

For Lewis and Tolkien, beauty is never an afterthought, tagged on behind the truth and goodness of God, it is part of the Trinitarian splendour of God Himself, who is the Good, the True and the Beautiful, as He is the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, the three transcendentals being as inseparable as they are transcendent.

The deep theology that animates the Creation of Narnia, as told in The Magician’s Nephew, is made manifest in the “unspeakable thrill” that Polly feels as she realizes that all the flowers and trees were being sung into being by Aslan. They were being created “out of the Lion’s head”, Aslan’s thoughts becoming incarnate, the words of his song becoming flesh. We are told that “every drop of blood tingled in the children’s bodies” as they heard the Lion proclaim, in the “deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard”, the words that bestowed the gift of his own image into his newly-created creatures: “Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.”

There is so much rich theology packed into these few words that we will need to take some time to unpack them.

The fact that Aslan’s voice is described as being wild, indeed the “wildest”, does not indicate that he is in some sense lawless or chaotic. It simply means that he cannot be domesticated. He is not a tame Lion. He cannot be commanded. He is not subject to the law of any man because he is the maker of the law itself. This is not to say, however, that he does not choose to be bound by his own laws, as we shall see in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He is the wildest because, in comparison, it is we who are meant to be tame, docile and domesticated. We are to honour, obey, revere and even worship the one who is our creator. He is “wild” because he is free of any dependence upon us; we are “tame”, or at least we are meant to be, because we are dependent upon him.

The repetition of the word “Narnia” three times is not merely a poetic refrain, uttered by Aslan for purely aesthetic reasons, though, as part of Aslan’s song, it may be that as well. It is also an echo of the Trinitarian image of the Divine which Aslan is now bestowing upon his newly created creatures. We know this, at least implicitly, from the manner in which Aslan chooses to reveal himself to Shasta in The Horse and His Boy. “Who are you?” asks Shasta. Aslan responds to this direct question by answering three times that he is “Myself”. In this ingenious way, Lewis shows us that Aslan is the Triune God. He is One, “Myself”, and yet he is Three. I am, I am, I am.

After the repetition of “Narnia” three times, the creatures are commanded to “awake”. As for what this wakefulness entails, we are told instantly in another Trinitarian incantation that wakefulness is to “love”, “think” and “speak”. In this beautiful juxtaposition, we see the Trinitarian God making the cosmos in His image, weaving the Trinity, which is Himself, into the very fabric of the newly created world. The command to “love”, “think” and “speak” is a reflection of the good, the true and the beautiful. This transcendental or metaphysical dimension of reality, as described by Plato and by the great Christian scholastic philosophers, places a trinity at the heart of all metaphysics. When Christ tells us that He is the way, the truth, and the life, He is connecting Himself with this Trinitarian foundation of all that is real. The good can be seen as “the way” of virtue, which is love (caritas); the true is “the truth” of right reason leading to knowledge (scientia); the beautiful is “the life” of creation or creativity (poiesis). In Aslan’s phraseology, “love” is synonymous with the good, “think” is synonymous with the true (reason), and “speak” is synonymous with the creation and praise of the beautiful. In uttering these words, Aslan is making creatures in his own image as loving, rational and creative beings, freeing them from the slavery of instinct so that they can be fully awake to the Real. “Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.”

Having received this priceless gift of the divine image within them, the newly-created creatures respond with a hymn of rational praise to their Creator. “Hail, Aslan. We hear and obey. We are awake. We love. We think. We speak. We know.” Having been awakened from the dumbness of mere instinct, they understand that the purpose and the fruit of love, reason and beauty is to know the fullness of truth, which is God Himself. Love, reason and beauty lead to knowledge of the True and that knowledge moves all of creation to praise the Creator: Hail, Aslan.

There is, however, one other facet of God’s image that Aslan bestows on his creatures, which is all too often overlooked, and that is the gift of humour. “Laugh and fear not, creatures,” Aslan proclaims. “Now that you are no longer dumb and witless, you need not always be grave. For jokes as well as justice come in with speech.” Humour, like love, rational thought, and speech, is something that shines forth the divine image in a manner that separates man, and the talking beasts of Narnia, from the dumb beasts of the field. Animals do not choose to lay down their lives in love for their friends (and enemies); animals do not contemplate the wonders of the cosmos through the power of rational thought; animals do not create beautiful things as a living expression, a speaking forth, of the goodness of truth; and nor do animals have the gift of humour, and the laughter which is its speaking forth. Animals do not tell jokes because “jokes as well as justice come in with speech”. God does not merely give us his goodness, truth and beauty, he gives us his mirth. He shows us that being good is being good humoured.

This mirthful aspect of the divine image was emphasized by G. K. Chesterton, a writer whose works were influential on both Lewis and Tolkien. Chesterton’s beguiling novel The Man Who was Thursday shows the divine comedy of human interaction with Creation as a manifestation of the divine sense of humour, which Chesterton highlights and accentuates in the closing lines of his book, Orthodoxy: “There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.”

It is all too easy in the darkened days and daze in which we live to become despondent. It is all too easy to forget the happy ending that is promised to those who keep faith in the God of the happy ever after. We should heed Aslan’s words. We who are not dumb and witless do not always need to be grave. We are creatures of a good-humoured God. There is every reason to laugh and fear not!

Joseph Pearce’s book Further Up and Further In: Understanding Narnia is available from TAN Books.

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The featured image, uploaded by Misty, is a photograph, “A touch of Narnia in Den Haag.” This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.