Dear fellow pilgrims,
Tomorrow we will be starting class at 7:30 p.m. just this one time to accommodate our making crosses for Palm Sunday at dinner. This will be our LAST CLASS on The Last Battle and we will START “The Weight of Glory” in class April 10 at 7:15 p.m.–that would be a great time to invite a friend to join you!
Last week we journeyed “Further up and further in!” as we hear Emeth’s story and learned more about Aslan;s country. We will conclude our journey through The Last Battle this week as we engage the deeply moving end of this marvelous story. Please come to St. Philip’s early if you like and join us for our informal Eucharist at 5:30 in the church and a delicious dinner in the Parish Hall starting around 6:30 p.m. If you cannot join us in person, we will be livestreaming the class at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/@StPhilipsChurch/streams
I have pasted in below the links from last week’s class. Hope to see you tomorrow–come and bring a friend!
Further up and further in,
Brian+
The Rev’d Brian K. McGreevy, J.D.
Assistant to the Rector
St. Philip’s Church
142 Church Street
Charleston, SC 29401
www.saintphilips.church
Video link for last class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBN7h61qgrI
Podcast link for last class: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-19-further-up-and-further-in/id1707060670?i=1000649421124Music link from last week:
SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK’S TEACHINGChapter 15: Further Up and Further In
–Emeth the Calormene recounts the tale of his devotion to Tash, his disgust for the ways of the Calormenes, his entering the stable, and his love for and conversion to following Aslan
–A beautiful and graceful gray creature appears, and they recognize it as Puzzle the Donkey, who after seeing Aslan has been feeling deep shame for the role he played in the deception
–The cry of “Further up and further in!” keeps being heard, so they join the other creatures who are moving ever westwards in the beautiful country
–As they try to figure out where they are, they realize some of the landscape seems familiar, and the Eagle and Digory are the first to see that they are now in the True Narnia, the true country of which the old Narnia was only the shadow
–The True Narnia is deeper and more beautiful and layered with meaning, the true country for which they had all been longing all their lives
Themes in Chapter 15
–Aslan and Tash are not the same; Evil that is purportedly done in Aslan’s name is actually done towards Tash, and Good purportedly done in Tash’s name is actually done towards Aslan
–Shame and guilt for collaborating with Evil can lead to a repentant heart
–Types and shadows are everywhere in our world, pointing us to the True Beauty of the heavenly kingdom
–Heaven is a deeply beautiful and meaningful place
–Our longing for a true homeland is one which God planted in us to help us seek after Him
Aslan and Tash are not the same; Evil that is purportedly done in Aslan’s name is actually done towards Tash, and Good purportedly done in Tash’s name is actually done towards Aslan
“I saw that the Tarkaan did not believe in it himself. And then I understood that he did not believe in Tash at all: for if he had, how could he dare to mock him? “When I understood this, a great rage fell upon me and I wondered that the true Tash did not strike down both the Monkey and the Tarkaan with fire from heaven…As soon as I had gone through the door, the first wonder was that I found myself in this great sunlight (as we all are now) though the inside of the hovel had looked dark from outside… Then I looked about me and saw the sky and the wide lands and smelled the sweetness. And I said, By the Gods, this is a pleasant place: it may be that I am come into the country of Tash. And I began to journey into the strange country and to seek him. “So I went over much grass and many flowers and among all kinds of wholesome and delectable trees till lo! in a narrow place between two rocks there came to meet me a great Lion. The speed of him was like the ostrich, and his size was an elephant’s; his hair was like pure gold and the brightness of his eyes, like gold that is liquid in the furnace. He was more terrible than the Flaming Mountain of Lagour, and in beauty he surpassed all that is in the world, even as the rose in bloom surpasses the dust of the desert. Then I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him. But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of Thine but the servant of Tash.“He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.” “Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one?”“The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, ‘It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him, for I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child?’ I said, ‘Lord, thou knowest how much I understand. But I said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days.’ ‘Beloved,’ said the Glorious One, ‘unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.’ “Then he breathed upon me and took away the trembling from my limbs and caused me to stand upon my feet. And after that, he said not much but that we should meet again, and I must go further up and further in. Then he turned him about in a storm and flurry of gold and was gone suddenly. “And since then, O Kings and Ladies, I have been wandering to find him and my happiness is so great that it even weakens me like a wound. And this is the marvel of marvels, that he called me, Beloved…”
You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit. I Cor. 12:2-3 John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us. For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward. Mark 9:38-41 God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. James 1:13 God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. I John 1:5 The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17
Deeper Dive: Was Lewis a Universalist?
Narnia is a “supposal” rather than an allegory
“In reality however Aslan is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, ‘What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?’ This is not allegory at all.” –Letters of C.S. Lewis
“But I’m not exactly “representing” the real (Christian) story in symbols. I’m more saying ‘Suppose there were a world like Narnia and it needed rescuing and the Son of God (or the ‘Great Emperor oversea’) went to redeem it, as He came to redeem ours, what might it, in that world, all have been like?” Perhaps it comes to much the same thing as you thought, but not quite.” –Letters to Children
“If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view. But, of course, being a Christian does mean thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong. As in arithmetic—there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong: but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others.” –Mere Christianity, ch. 1“The doctrine of hell, although barbarous to many, has the full support of Scripture, especially of our Lord’s own words; and has always been held by Christendom. And it has the support of Reason: if a game is played it must be possible to lose it. If the happiness of a creature lies in voluntary self-surrender to God, it also has the right to voluntarily refuse. I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully ‘All will be saved’. But my reason retorts, ‘Without their will, or with it’? In fact, God has paid the price, and herein lies the real problem: so much mercy, yet still there is hell. God can’t condone evil, forgiving the wilfully unrepentant. Lost souls have their wish – to live wholly in the Self, and to make the best of what they find there. And what they find there is hell. Should God increase our chances to repent? I believe that if a million opportunities were likely to do good, they would be given. But finality has to come some time. …The damned are successful rebels to the end, enslaved within the horrible freedom they have demanded. The doors of hell are locked on the inside. In the long run, objectors to the doctrine of hell must answer this question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins, and at all costs to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty, and offering every miraculous help? But he has done so in the life and death of his Son.”—The Problem of Pain, ch. 8
Shame and guilt for collaborating with Evil can lead to a repentant heart
“Someone was coming, rather timidly, to meet them; a graceful creature on four feet, all silvery-grey. And they stared at him for a whole ten seconds before five or six voices said all at once, “Why, it’s old Puzzle!” They had never seen him by day light with the lionskin off, and it made an extraordinary difference. He was himself now: a beautiful donkey with such a soft, grey coat and such a gentle, honest face that if you had seen him you would have done just what Jill and Lucy did — rushed forward and put your arms round his neck and kissed his nose and stroked his ears. When they asked him where he had been, he said he had come in at the door along with all the other creatures but he …had been keeping out of their way as much as he could; and out of Aslan’s way. For the sight of the real Lion had made him so ashamed of all that nonsense about dressing up in a lionskin that he did not know how to look anyone in the face. But when he saw that all his friends were going away westward, and after he had had a mouthful or so of grass (“And I’ve never tasted such good grass in my life,” said Puzzle), he plucked up his courage and followed. “But what I’ll do if I really have to meet Aslan, I’m sure I don’t know,” he added. “You’ll find it will be all right when you really do,” said Queen Lucy.”
I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Psalm 32:5 For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death. 2 Cor. 7:10 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” I John 1:9
There is, therefore, now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Romans 8:1
Types and shadows are everywhere in Narnia and our world, pointing us to the True Beauty of the heavenly kingdom
It still seemed to be early and the morning freshness was in the air. They kept on stopping to look round and to look behind them, partly because it was so beautiful but partly also because there was something about it which they could not understand. “Peter,” said Lucy, “where is this, do you suppose?” “I don’t know,” said the High King. “It reminds me of somewhere but I can’t give it a name…” “But look there.” [Lucy] pointed south ward to their left, and everyone stopped and turned to look. “Those hills,” said Lucy, “the nice woody ones and the blue ones behind — aren’t they very like the southern border of Narnia?” “Like!” cried Edmund after a moment’s silence. “Why they’re exactly like. Look, there’s Mount Pire with his forked head, and there’s the pass into Archenland and everything!” “And yet they’re not like,” said Lucy. “They’re different. They have more colours on them and they look further away than I remembered and they’re more… more… oh, I don’t know….” “More like the real thing,” said the Lord Digory softly. Suddenly Farsight the Eagle spread his wings, soared thirty or forty feet up into the air, circled round and then alighted on the ground. “Kings and Queens,” he cried, “we have all been blind. We are only beginning to see where we are. From up there I have seen it all — Ettinsmuir, Beaversdam, the Great River, and Cair Paravel still shining on the edge of the Eastern Sea. Narnia is not dead. This is Narnia.” “But how can it be?” said Peter. “For Aslan told us older ones that we should never return to Narnia, and here we are.””Yes,” said Eustace. “And we saw it all destroyed and the sun put out.” “And it’s all so different,” said Lucy. “The Eagle is right,” said the Lord Digory. “Listen, Peter. When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end.“It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia, which has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.” His voice stirred everyone like a trumpet as he spoke these words: but when he added under his breath “It’s all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at these schools!” the older ones laughed. It was so exactly like the sort of thing they had heard him say long ago in that other world where his beard was grey instead of golden. He knew why they were laughing and joined in the laugh himself. But very quickly they all became grave again: for, as you know, there is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.”
For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Hebrews 10:1 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Hebrews 9:11-14 Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered, not
into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Hebrews 9:23-24 For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, and to him Abraham apportioned a tenth part of everything. He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace. He is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest forever. Hebrews 7:1-3
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, from The Republic (380 BC)Heaven is a deeply beautiful and meaningful place
“It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia, as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it, if you think like this. You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking glass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different — deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more…”
But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” I Cor. 2:9 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. Rev. 22:1-5 How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. Psalm 84:1-2
Our longing for a true homeland is one which God planted in us to help us seek after Him
“It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed and then cried: “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!”
These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Hebrews 11:13-16 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? Psalm 42:1-2
I VOW TO THEE, MY COUNTRY
I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
The love that asks no questions, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.
And there’s another country, I’ve heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.
Text: Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, 1908, 1912
Tune: Gustav Holst, Thaxted, 1921
