By Randy Alcron
Eternal Perspectives Ministry
(based in Oregon)
In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Edmund betrays Aslan and his friends, including Edmund’s brother and sisters:
“You have a traitor there, Aslan,” said the Witch…
“Well,” said Aslan. “His offense was not against you.”
“Have you forgotten the Deep Magic?” asked the Witch.
“Let us say I have forgotten it,” answered Aslan gravely. “Tell us of this Deep Magic.”
“Tell you?” said the Witch, her voice growing suddenly shriller. “Tell you what is written on that very Table of Stone which stands beside us?…You at least know the magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to kill…And so, that human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property.”
…“Oh, Aslan!” whispered Susan in the Lion’s ear, “can’t we – I mean, you won’t, will you? Can’t we do something about the Deep Magic? Isn’t there something you can work against it?”
“Work against the Emperor’s magic?” said Aslan, turning to her with something like a frown on his face. And nobody ever made that suggestion to him again.
C. S. Lewis is borrowing from the ransom theory of atonement which has some serious weaknesses compared to orthodox substitutionary atonement.
But in an incredibly sad scene, Susan and Lucy observe the terrifying death of Aslan. They are in utter despair that the best being they had ever known had been mocked and killed.
Suddenly, they hear a great noise. The Stone Table was broken into two.
Susan says, “Who’s done it? …Is it more magic?”
“Yes!” said a great voice from behind their backs. “It is more magic.” They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.
“Oh, Aslan!” cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad….
“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.
“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”
Lewis captures here the resurrection of Jesus which holds within it the promise of our own resurrections, and the resurrection of the original creation itself, in the form of the New Heavens and New Earth. Ultimately, the redemptive work of Christ will entirely reverse the Curse, and all God’s people will experience death working backwards to life itself—but not just God’s people, but also animals and all the rest of His original creation (see Romans 8:19-24).
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