As it concerns Lewis, I do wonder on that one truthfully - as others in the time of Lewis warned him on the dangers of bringing in so much of Greek/Roman and Indian mythology - with their discomfort being how it opens the door for others to not be pointed to CHrist. As said before, many note that they have serious issue with people continually digesting Chronicles of Narnia due to many of the concepts within it that are found in pagan cultures (i.e. Centaurs, Minotaurs,
Satyr and other creatures). The series borrows characters and ideas from Greek, Turkish and Roman mythology, as well as from traditional British and Irish fairy tales.. and granted, many understand that those creatures are used to teach on Biblical principles. And as C.S Lewis himself noted in
"The Weight of Glory":
The truth is that the resemblances tell nothing either for or against the truth of Christian Theology. If you start from the assumption that the Theology is false, the resemblances are quite consistent with that assumption. One would expect creatures of the same sort, faced with the same universe, to make the same false guess more than once. But if you start with the assumption that the Theology is true, the resemblances fit in equally well. Theology, while saying that a special illumination has been vouchsafed to Christians and (earlier) to Jews, also says that there is some divine illumination vouchsafed to all men . . . We should, therefore, expect to find in the imagination of great Pagan teachers and myth makers some glimpse of that theme which we believe to be the very plot of the whole cosmic story -- the theme of the incarnation, death, and re-birth. And the difference between the Pagan Christs (Balder, Osiris, etc.) and the Christ Himself is much what we should expect to find. The Pagan stories are all about someone dying and rising, either every year, or else nobody knows where and nobody knows when. The Christian story is about a historical personage, whose execution can be dated pretty accurately, under a named Roman magistrate, and with whom the society that He founded is in a continuous relation down to the present day. It is not the difference between falsehood and truth. It is the difference between a real event on the one hand and dim dreams or premonitions of that same event on the other.
-(The Weight of Glory, New York: Macmillan / Collier Books, revised and expanded edition, 1980, edited by Walter Hooper, New York: 83-84, from "Is Theology Poetry)
Nonetheless, even seeing how paganism can have many roadsigns pointing to truth (early windows into the glory of Christ previewed) can be dangeorus ground...and for many, it's an issue of how those things led into opening the door for fascination in studying mythology.
And for the many who actually went into paganism/never saw C.S Lewis's works as a Christian work on symbolism or applied it as such, it does make for interesting times. Something's very wrong, IMHO, when the books of Lewis have appeared in neo-pagan reading lists and parents say "Oh, it's just like reading Harry Potter - good reading!" (already a big problem since Potter is full of the occult and kids reading it have started to practice spells). For reference on some of what was mentioned in the aforementioned commentary:
Although I am a fan of Lewis's work, I'd be lying if I said I never had some level of discomfort going through some of his works. When I went through
Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (
which is the 1956 novel by C. S. Lewis that's a retelling of the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, which had haunted Lewis all his life), I had times wondering why there was so much focus on Greek Mythology in a way that both condemned it - and yet glorified/accepted it as if it was simply how things were.
For example, in C.S. Lewis' 'Till We Have Faces', the Priest of Ungit confronts the King of Glome, demanding the sacrifice of his daughter. And the kings adviser, a Greek war prisoner made slave known as Fox, speaks up to pick apart the pronouncements of the priest of Ungit and reveal how contradictory they are. In
regards to the priest response:
'We are hearing much Greek wisdom this morning, King,' said the Priest. 'And I have heard most of it before. I did not need a slave to teach it to me. It is very subtle. But it brings no rain and grows no corn; sacrifice does both. It does not even give them boldness to die. That Greek there is your slave because in some battle he threw down his arms and let them bind his hands and lead him away and sell him, rather than take a spear-thrust in his heart. Much less does it give them understanding of holy things. They demand to see such things clearly, as if the gods were no more than letters written in a book. I, King, have dealth with the gods for three generations of men, and I know that they dazzle our eyes and flow in and out of one another like the eddies of a river, and nothing that is said clearly can be said truly about them. Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.'
There've been many discussions on the aspects Lewis pointed out which many felt were a critique of the hollow nature of pagan culture in their views for sacrifice - and yes, there were aspects of it that were Biblical with Psyche seeming similar in situation to what occurred in
Judges 11:20-40 with Jephthah's daughter being sacrificed/set apart for a life of isolation -
for that as a big theme in Greek culture and something Lewis highlighted in other settings.
Nonetheless, for the most part, it seemed like some things never seemed necessary and many who read the work ended up having a greater love/appreciation for pagan culture.
It was always a trip to me seeing how J. R. R. Tolkien - already a close friend of Lewis - was instrumental in Lewis' own conversion to Christianity and yet Tolkien was not enthusiastic about the Narnia stories at all. One of the reasons for his dissaproval being due to the eclectic elements of the mythology and what he felt was haphazard incorporation, in part because he disapproved of stories involving travel between real and imaginary worlds. More was shared in the book entitled
"C.S Lewis: The Man Behind Narnia" . As a Catholic himself, it was the belief of Tolkien that fantasy should incorporate Christian values without resorting to the allegory Lewis employed.
Lewis was an expert on the subject of allegory and the author of
The Allegory of Love - maintaing that the books were not allegory, and preferred to call the Christian aspects of them "suppositional". This indicates Lewis' view of Narnia as a fictional parallel universe. As
Lewis wrote in a letter to a Mrs Hook in December 1958:
If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair [a character in The Pilgrim's Progress] represents despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality, however, he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, 'What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia, and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?' This is not allegory at all.
I do think it's worth taking seriously how Lewis (just like Tolkien) has received criticism from some Christians and Christian organizations who feel that
The Chronicles of Narnia promotes "soft-sell paganism and occultism. I can understand the concept of how Lewis felt things in pagan culture could be used as preparation for discussing Christ. Colin Duriez, author of three books on Lewis, suggests that Lewis believed that to reach a post-Christian culture one needed to employ pre-Christian ideas - as discussed best in
C.S. Lewis, the Sneaky Pagan | Christianity Today. And yet even Lewis was hesitant to say his stories were Christian Allegories....and it cannot be overlooked that there are some things others will not be able to handle well at any point. For parents not favoring their kids or adults reading Chronicles of Naria/other books by Lewis, I can't blame them - nor do I think it a good thing to wholesale endorse all aspects of what Lewis wrote simply because it was Lewis writing it.
Although Lewis disliked modernism which he regarded as mechanized and sterile, it is interesting to see how he had nearly no reservations about pre-Christian pagan culture - with Christian critics pointing out that Lewis disdained the non-religious agnostic character of modernity, but not the polytheistic character of pagan religion. One can see more in the essay by Lewis entitled
God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics - Page 172 - Google
A lot of it is like people trying to reach out to others in the music industry and choosing to make beats/tunes for others in the hopes that they'll reach them - and yet in the process, they open the door for cross-polinization in a negative sense. Saw it often whenever you'd hear of Christian musicians saying they were gonna reach the world by having secular/unsaved artist on their songs so that the unsaved would hear - and yet all it led to was the unsaved thinking their lifestyle/views were validated and believers being used to give a platform for others to promote things.
Paul seemed to experience the same in Acts 16 with the demon-possessed girl following them around saying "These are the men of the Most High God!!!" - a true statement - and later shutting it down since he didn't want others to look to a demonic source for confirmation. For she was making money for her masters as a fortune teller - and if others saw her associated with the apostles/telling the truth and the apostles confirming it without resistance, others would think "Hey she told the truth - can you tell us something else?"......and even the believers may've thought "Well, she's good since she's with Paul" and thus they would end up tolerating other aspects of where she was at. The issue of using others as enablers to get people into the market you're selling at.
