A Category Mistake?
November 30, 2007
In criticizing The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I fear that Carl Trueman may be committing a category mistake. It is true, of course, and widely known, that C. S. Lewis did not have a fully Reformed theology of the atonement.
It is a mistake, though, to expect a work of fiction to carry the weight of careful doctrinal distinctions in its story line. Literature has the capacity to draw analogies, and to incarnate aspects of spiritual truth, but not to communicate full theological propositions. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe does a marvelous job of incarnating many central truths of the Christian faith in literary form, including important aspects of the atoning, substitutionary work of Jesus Christ. Perhaps we should be careful not make more of this than it is, but we should not make less of it, either.
It is a mistake, though, to expect a work of fiction to carry the weight of careful doctrinal distinctions in its story line. Literature has the capacity to draw analogies, and to incarnate aspects of spiritual truth, but not to communicate full theological propositions. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe does a marvelous job of incarnating many central truths of the Christian faith in literary form, including important aspects of the atoning, substitutionary work of Jesus Christ. Perhaps we should be careful not make more of this than it is, but we should not make less of it, either.
