What bugged me was not that Neeson likened Aslan to Mohammed or Buddha. Maybe Aslan has qualities similar to Mohammed and Buddha. I won’t argue with that.
The problem is saying that Aslan is Christ-like or a Christ-figure. He isn’t. He is a fictional representation of Christ. Superman is a Christ figure. Neo is a Christ figure. Scorsese’s Jesus of Last Temptation of Christ is not a Christ figure. He is Christ, albeit a fictional representation. Last Temptation starts with “suppose Jesus didn’t die on the cross. what would Jesus be like?”. Narnia starts with “what if God’s creation included a parallel sort of fairyland. What would the 2nd person of the Trinity look like when He showed up in that other land?”
Alsan does not represent Christ figuratively. He represents Christ literally. So many writers, including Christian writers, fail to understand this distinction.
Well, me being the first person to actually read the OP, let me ask you, what’s the difference between “Christ-like” and “fictional representation of Christ”? I’m not seeing a meaningful distinction to be made. Can you elaborate?
I would guess analogy vs. actuality. We aren’t intended to believe Superman and Christ are the same person, but there is something analogistic to Christ in his sacrifice (also: The Omega Man!). Aslan, on the other hand, isn’t Christ-like; he’s an actual manifestation of the actual Christ, just in a different guise and in a different setting.
I disagree with the OP. Aslan is not the One True Christ, he’s a fictitious construct. He’s a Christ figure, a Krishna figure, a Jack’s-idea-of-God figure.
(But likened to Mohammed? Really?)
In Neeson’s defense, “Aslan” is an Islamo-Turkic name. And Aslan is pretty far from being a straight representation of any (pre-Jack Lewis) religion’s god or prophet. (However much post-Jack Christians want to reinvent Jesus to be Aslan.) So it’s smart of Neeson to play the movies like they’re not Christianist as such, for the international market.
The reference to The Last Temptation of Christ sounds like it’s based on a second-hand understanding, not an actual watching of the film. This was a common problem among certain kinds of Christians when it came out. See it if you haven’t (worth your time for the soundtrack alone); see it again if you think TGWATY calls it correctly.
It does not posit that Jesus doesn’t die on the cross. Not-dying-on-the-cross (and having a normal life) is a hallucinatory temptation, offered by Satan in the “moment of doubt and pain,” as Jesus hangs on the cross. Jesus ultimately rejects Satan’s offer, and dies, thereby accomplishing God’s purpose as Christ. This is not nitpicking; it’s central to the theme.
Otherwise, I think the OP is making a little much of a distinction that is no difference in most eyes,* and perhaps misunderstanding Neeson. I don’t read the remarks as a denial of the Christian aspect of the story, but rather an effort to say that it need not be only and strictly that–people can take something spiritual from it without literally being Christians.
Notice that William Oddie, one of the people criticizing Neeson’s remarks, himself says “Aslan is clearly…a Christ figure.”
I read a great article when the first Narnia movie came out about how CS Lewis obviously had some religious conflict going on, because his Aslan is really more of a Mithras-sort of dude. If he were supposed to be Christ shouldn’t he be a particularly ratty looking donkey or something?
When I saw the title, I thought this was going to be a completely different argument.
But having read it, yes, if you go to that level of nuance (and hey, we’re Dopers; subtle nuance is what we do), you’re right. IIRC, Lewis himself used the same sort of argument to argue that the series was not, strictly speaking, allegorical.
Somewhat ironic. I’m an atheist now, my faith having been trounced by the Problem of Evil after a long and drawn out battle, but what started my conversion to Christianity–not my actual conversion, but just the beginning of my conversion–was while re-reading eleven years ago the Narnia books as adult I kept thinking, “If only Jesus was more like Aslan, I would be tempted to believe in him.” And then later reading the Bible and being surprised to find they are more similar than I had thought.
Of course he is a fictitious representation. I said that. But he is a fictitious representation of Christ, not of someone who happens to be like Christ.
It’s like in the film Bubba Hotep. Bruce Campbell is playing Elvis, though a wholly fictional Elvis. Within the context of the story however, he is the One True Elvis, not just someone who looks and sounds like Elvis.
Or George Burns as God. within the film he is God. Not a God-like figure, or a metaphor for God. But really God.
Of course, this differs from Abraham Lincoln in the Star Trek episode “The Savage Curtain.” While he is not merely a Lincoln-figure, neither is he a fictional representation of the historical Abraham Lincoln. Rather, he is an alien re-creation of the historical Lincoln. It is a subtle distinction.
One minor nitpick, the recreation is based on Kirk’s understanding and expectations of Lincoln. So the Lincoln in the episode is a fiction, based on the historical knowledge of a man 400 years removed from Lincoln.
Aslan is a Christ figure. It doesn’t matter how close to the original the character is. It doesn’t matter how much the fiction parallels the Bible. If it’s not portraying Jesus himself, it’s portraying a Christ figure.
If one of the characters in Narnia had asked Aslan “Are you the same entity who became manifest on Earth as Jesus son of Mary, born in Bethlehem?”, Aslan would have answered “Yes”. Not “I’m a lot like that guy”, or “He and I are good friends”, or “I can see how you might make that mistake”, or whatever. That’s the distinction that’s being made here.
The OP is exactly right. When we read the New Testament we don’t say “Hey! That Jesus character is a Christ figure!” No shit he’s a Christ figure; he is the Christ. In the same way, Aslan is not “a Christ figure.” He’s Lewis’ idea of what Christ – the actual Christ we know as Jesus – would look like if there were a land of talking animals like Narnia.
As alluded to above, Lewis rejected the label of “allegory” for the Chronicles because Aslan didn’t “represent” Jesus. Aslan was Jesus.
