Into the Wardrobe

Hope you have a pleasant stay here in the War Drobe, Spare Oom.

Steve,

TWHF is my favorite Lewis book and I have been disturbed by this same question many times. I've reccomended the book to my oldest and wisest Christian friends, who are very conservative, and they all think that it is a "Christian" book. I think so also. Although a person probably would not come to faith in Christ from reading this book alone, Orual's sins are exposed and her she admits her need for forgiveness and redemption.

The best part of the book is when Orual reads her complaint to the gods.

I will have to beg forgiveness for a tremendous amount of ignorance regarding Lewis and his works. I have read (and as a child had read to me) the Chronicles of Narnia somewhere upwards of 10 times, but am only truly beginning to explore his other works. I am currently enraptured by the Space Trilogy which has brought me to this and a number of other C.S.Lewis related sites. In my wanderings (don't ask me where) I read something that Lewis had said in response to questions about the "christianness"of his writings.
The gist of it was that he would like to see more works of fiction in which christian values and concepts were presented in a form that was not necessarily immediately identifiable as such. Wishy washy as that may sound - his point was that if we could somehow take the reader for even a breif stay to a place where christian values and morals were the accepted norm, and take him there in such a way as to convince him that these are normal healthy values, then maybe he will leave the book still holding those values as a normal healthy thing.
So much of his writing is brilliant allegory that there is a temptation to interpret all of it as such. Isn't there a possibility that he was writing a brilliant story (even a morality play of sorts) without any intention of leaning toward the allegorical?

I picked up on many Christian themes when I read Till We Have Faces a few years ago. The Christian theme that stands out most to me in this book is in the title and in the fact that the heroine was unattractive and always wore a mask. This theme was very similar to Lewis's discussion of the Beauty and the Beast myth in Mere Christianity.

This discussion has compelled me to give it another read.

Take care,

Brian

My POV of Lewis' writing of "Till We Have Faces," was that it was still a pagan myth, but, with Lewis adding his own spin on the story, in order to show the individual's own spiritual struggle, over the loss of a loved one.

I also believe that was his intention for cutting Susan Pevensie loose, in the the final book of the Chronicles of Narnia.

I think he intended to keep her for a post Narnia story(stories)about struggling to rediscover one's faith, after personal tragedy, but, died before writing the story.

(The reason I believe this is because apparently when young fans of the series wrote to him upset with his decision to write Susan off as "No longer of friend of Narnia," was because "Susan's story isn't finished yet.")

keeping with the idea that lewis thoroghly believed that all myths conatained the 'kernel' of the actual Truth, i've always thought that twhf was how he explained how a pre-Christ gentile could still come to an understanding and even salvation faith in the redeemer, Christ. in other words, he was answering the question, "what about the kid in africa who has never heard about Jesus? is he screwed because of an accident of birth?" what i thought, long before twhf and reinforced by it with a clear example, was that God knows what a person is capable of understanding and judges them based on that, not on whether or not the were born at the right time to hear the right name. here lewis shows that such a person could come to understand their need for forgiveness, that their claims against the gods/God of the universe is incorrect, and that they must turn in faith to the gods/God for salvation.

does this make sense to everyone?