Wednesday, October 21, 2015

C.S. Lewis and Other Worlds


Rereading so much of C.S. Lewis' writings recently, I noticed a particular theme of "other worlds" starting to emerge. This hobby of his created some of his best (and best loved) works, but also brought him close to dangerous theology. The obvious one is, of course, Narnia in the Chronicles of Narnia fantasy series. However, one series (especially a fantasy one) does not make a theme, however, this topic comes up numerous times in both his fiction and nonfiction writings.

For example, in his essay, "Horrid Red Things," Lewis discusses how the language of heaven being "up" and hell being "down" is anthropomorphizing and perhaps using philosophical or scientific language might be a different way of thinking about Christianity. Maybe we could discuss Christ coming into the world from and leaving the world to another dimension. He concluded in the end to stick with historic language for consistency, but in my mind this thought has peril in that things like "dimensions" have definition in science and philosophy that are not Biblical.

The next series that has this theme is the science fiction "Space Trilogy." The main point of these books is that the other planets in the solar system are habited and some are unfallen. Lewis brings this up again in his book on Miracles. He states that the universe may be filled with unfallen creatures on unfallen worlds, that never needed redemption. The important ramifications of this is that in this view is that the fall into sin by Adam and Eve did not effect the whole universe, which is contrary to scripture. First of all, the Bible states that all of creation fell in Romans 8:22. Secondly, Lewis' view of the 6 day creation is suspect and in his book the Problem of Pain, he states that he does not necessarily agree that humans were created on the sixth day and are the crowning achievement of God's creative work.

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