Into the Wardrobe

I am going to throw out a radical idea for comment:

Do we know at all whether Till We Have Faces is a Christian book?

The supernatural being in the story is Psyche's husband. And he is "really there", not a myth. At the end, Orual describes him as "Lord", and in terms that seem monotheistic, but is that perhaps only our monotheistic background being read into the story?

Some would say since Lewis was a Christian, surely the book must be Christian? Does this argument make sense, or is it an example of the Personal Heresy (interpreting a book in the light of the author's personal experience). Maybe it does. I think most of what Lewis condemned in the term personal heresy was interpretation based on opinions the critic believes the author holds unconsciously. And Lewis certainly didn't hold his Christian convictions unconsciously.

PS. My throwing out this idea does not mean I dislike the book.

Hi Steve,

I will be interested in responses to your question (I, myself, have not yet read Till We Have Faces).

But your post prompts another question:

Just what is a Christian book?

Pax et bonum,
~Karl

This is a shorter reply than the question deserves, but perhaps can be developed as we go along. One of Lewis's key ideas was that all myths contain to a greater or lesser degree pointers to Christian truth, e.g. the myths of a dying and rising god "dying, who knows where or when" point to an event - the Crucifixion and Resurrection - that happened at a particular point in history, in a specific place once and once only. I think Till we have Faces is - as Lewis specifically states - a retelling "with a twist" of a classical myth that already existed, but that Lewis would say that even the original myth contained a kernel of truth, a pointer, and that his reworking contains allusions and themes that "harmonise" with the nature of reality seen from a Christian worldview. In a similar way the Space Trilogy, while not intended to be literally true, points to ideas - angelic beings who are tutelary spirits, the destiny of Creation to be fulfilled "as all things are brought together in Christ" - which are truer than literal statements of fact by, say, materialists (or as Lewis called them "everythingists" - "what we see is everything there is")

I suppose this idea makes sense. Although the narrative is far too factually based to be a myth, it seems to me. The story is written as direct eyewitness testimony of a real encounter with a supernatural being. And in a Christian world view, supernatural beings are either God, angels or demons. And Psyche's husband is which then?

I would say a Christian book is one that expresses a Christian world view.

I read Till We Have Faces so long ago that I can't answer the question of whether it is Christian or not, but I wanted to mention the strange effect the book had on me (which is why I haven't read it again).

I'm the oldest of three sisters, and the three sisters in the book seemed so much like me and my sisters that I felt that Lewis was looking straight into my soul.

Does anyone have any idea what I'm talking about? Have you ever met a character in a book that seemed too much like yourself?

In Lewis's own words:

26 March 1963

Dear Patricia
Your letter was cheering, for Till We Have Faces has attracted less attention than any book I ever wrote. The names are just "made up". I expect some Jungianisms do come in but the main conscious prose work is Christian, not Jungian. Divine Love gradually conquers, first, a Pagan (and almost savage) soul's misconception of the Divine (as Ungit), then, shallow "enlightenment" (the Fox), and, most of all, her jealousy of the real God, whom she hates till near the end because whe wants Psyche to be entirely hers.
Yours sincerely,
C.S. Lewis

from Letters to Children Macmillan Publishing, 1985

Thank you, loeee. It will be good to reread TWHF with this overriding theme of "the gradual conquest of Divine Love". I'm reminded of Lewis's parable of our selves as a house into which we invite God to do some "fixing up", and at first God does what we'd expect, unblocking the gutters and the like, but then He gets more radical, tearing down and rebuilding till we feel like our very foundations are shaken. "God loves us as we are, but too much to leave us that way". Or, one of my favourites, we are sculptures and a rumour is going around that we are to become real - "the blows of the chisel that hurt us so much, are what make us perfect". As a famous sculptor said when asked how he created a horse from a block of marble, "I just remove everything that doesn't look like a horse" (or in God's case, removes everything that isn't like Christ).

Tom

I know that Faces is fiction, what I was trying to say is that the story comes across as meaning to portray something that could have happened.

And I'm wondering whether it isn't too far of an imaginative leap, to think of God or the angels appearing to Psyche and Orual playing the role of the God of the mountain.

I am now reading Till We Have Faces a 2nd time. This is definetly a Christian work, but we cannot read it like The Chronicles and we sure cannot read it like Pilgrim's regress. If there is any allegory at all, it is of the weakest kind. I think Lewis was telling a myth, a fictional story that has entwined within it those truths that mankind seems to have always known. Through this, we learn those truths better.

of course it is christian, and just so happens to be my favourite book of all time! lewis wrote the myth as it would be in the christian mind set. he believed that all myths were actually the story of salvation in a corrupted sense. so, he just retold the story of psyche as it would be in the christian sense.

Glad to see you jumping right in swinging an axe :)