As a kid, I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and thought it was an okay fairy tale. It wasn't until I was older that I heard it was a fairly obvious Jesus-story. By that time, I'd forgotten most of the particulars of the story, and just remembered the sacrifice and fight between good and evil. On our drive into town yesterday, we listened to it as an audio book. The similarities were very striking, but two things jumped out at me.
1) The professor (a very obvious author-insert) used Lewis' liar-lunatic-lord apologetic. He was talking about Lucy (before the kids believed her about Narnia), but that jumped out at me, as I know it's one of his favorite arguments.
2) Not only did the story catch a whole bunch of Jesus motifs, he even captured the pointlessness of the sacrifice. I've seen people complain about how Jesus' "sacrifice" was both not really a sacrifice (he knew he'd come back) and was done to make payment for an arbitrary system that could have just as easily been dropped. Aslan does the exact same thing in the story. Edmund was a traitor to the others and the White Witch (Satan) get automatically take ownership or all traitors. Aslan is powerless to stop this, because this rule is contained in "deep magic" referred to as "the Emperor's (God's) rules". Aslan decides to take Edmund's place, which the witch gladly agrees to. They kill him after torturing and mocking him, and then at sunrise, he comes back to life. He explains to the girls that another deep magic rule is that if someone innocent is sacrificed in someone's place, death will "work backward".
So, we basically have the exact same setup, here. Aslan "sacrifices" himself, knowing full well that he'll come back anyway, all to appease an arbitrary set of rules. In remaining so close to the source material, Lewis left his story open to the some of the same criticism of the crucifixion story.
1) The professor (a very obvious author-insert) used Lewis' liar-lunatic-lord apologetic. He was talking about Lucy (before the kids believed her about Narnia), but that jumped out at me, as I know it's one of his favorite arguments.
2) Not only did the story catch a whole bunch of Jesus motifs, he even captured the pointlessness of the sacrifice. I've seen people complain about how Jesus' "sacrifice" was both not really a sacrifice (he knew he'd come back) and was done to make payment for an arbitrary system that could have just as easily been dropped. Aslan does the exact same thing in the story. Edmund was a traitor to the others and the White Witch (Satan) get automatically take ownership or all traitors. Aslan is powerless to stop this, because this rule is contained in "deep magic" referred to as "the Emperor's (God's) rules". Aslan decides to take Edmund's place, which the witch gladly agrees to. They kill him after torturing and mocking him, and then at sunrise, he comes back to life. He explains to the girls that another deep magic rule is that if someone innocent is sacrificed in someone's place, death will "work backward".
So, we basically have the exact same setup, here. Aslan "sacrifices" himself, knowing full well that he'll come back anyway, all to appease an arbitrary set of rules. In remaining so close to the source material, Lewis left his story open to the some of the same criticism of the crucifixion story.
