Narnia By Jove!

I subscribe to Touchstone magazine. As the magazine itself says “Touchstone is a Christian journal, conservative in doctrine and eclectic in content, with editors and readers from each of the three great divisions of Christendom — Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox”. In any case I find a fascinating and sometimes theologically challenging read.

The December issue contains an article entitled “Narnia’s Secret” by Michael Ward. We enjoy the Narnia stories in our household. I’ve read them all probably 2 or 3 times in my life and my 6 year old daughter is already on her second time through them. In the article Mr. Ward attempts to make the argument that C.S. Lewis actually had a kind of secret thread running through the entire series that corresponds to the seven gods of the heavens in medieval cosmology or, in other words, the “personalities” of the various planets.

Here’s how the author breaks down the books:

Mr. Ward is not trying to say that Lewis was secretly a pagan worshipper, but simply that Lewis found the personalities assigned to these heavenly bodies “to have a permanent value as spiritual symbols”. I found the arguments provided in the article, if not convincing, as least interesting enough to make me wonder if there, perhaps, is something to it.

You can read the article for yourself here (be sure to read the “Planets of Narnia” sidebar at the bottom).

Juice
P.S. Apparently Michael Ward has written a larger treatise in book form.