Icons & Aslan

This semester I’m taking a 400 level C.S. Lewis course for which we are expected to read one of Lewis’ books a week. This past Monday our class discussed The Chronicles of Narnia. Doodling in my notes, I came across a visual reason that the lion Aslan might be such a potent Christ-figure.

According to Lewis, most of his stories began with powerful images, and it was the image of the lion Aslan that inspired The Chronicles of Narnia:

One thing I am sure of. All my seven Narnian books, and my three science fiction books, began with seeing pictures in my head. At first they were not a story, just pictures. The Chronicles of Narnia all began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself: ‘Let’s try to make a story about it.”
At first I had very little idea about how the story would go. But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it. I think I had been having a good many dreams about lions about that time. Apart from that, I don’t know where the Lion came from or why He came. But once He was there He pulled the whole story together, and soon He pulled the six other Narnian stories in after Him.

One reason that the image of a lion captured Lewis’ attention might be that the lion’s mane is a built-in halo (as seen in iconography of Jesus). During the execution of Aslan, we see that, like the halo, the mane is a symbol of Aslan’s power (and divinity, really)—and so the White Witch Jadis is eager to see that it is shaved.

“Stop!” said the Witch. “Let him first be shaved”

Another roar of mean laughter went up from her followers as an ogre with a pair of shears came forward and squatted down by Aslan’s head. Snip-snip-snip went the shears and masses of curling gold began to fall to the ground. Then the ogre stood back and the children, watching from their hiding-place, could see the face of Aslan looking all small and different without its mane. The enemies also saw the difference.
“Why he’s only a great cat after all!”

Christ’s enemies, watching Him die, also jeered, “Why he’s only a man after all!” The great irony is that Christ’s relinquishment of the privileges of divinity is ultimately Satan’s undoing. Satan attempts to snuff out Christ’s divinity—represented by his halo—by destroying Christ’s physical body. Yet because of Christ’s victory over death, and resurrection, Satan only magnifies Christ’s divinity all the more.

There shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.

~ by kevinwlester on March 29, 2007.