# Aslan is not a "Christ-figure" **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 9, 2010, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559 "2010-12-09T18:44:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2010, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/81 "2010-12-11T17:39:23Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > That’s not necessarily true, though. Imagine if I wrote a Biblical satire, in which Jesus Christ is a greedy, black-hearted charlatan, who deliberately and cruelly manipulates people into believing that he’s the Son of God, and at the end, fakes his own death and resurrection, for the express purpose of founding a false religion. Have I written a story about Christ? Yes. Have I written a story about a Christ-like figure? Emphatically not. First of all, in order for the character to be Christ, he must be “Christ-like” in some aspect, even if it isn’t the non-greedy, non-manipulating, non-charlatan aspect. Second, even if you reject that, none of this describes Aslan. Aslan is unquestionable “Christ-like” so he is a “Christ-like figure” and also a “Christ figure,” if there is any distinction to be made there. As has been stated already, Christ himself is both a “Christ figure” and a “Christ-like figure.” ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2010, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/82 "2010-12-11T17:53:15Z")
> [@Gestalt](#): > > You call the president “Barry Obama” when referring to him in conversation? I literally have to catch myself from referring to him as merely “Barry” as if he were some other person named Barry. I think it’s a mental overcorrection due to some of my countrymen trying to use the exoticism of “Barackobama” to make him sound alien & frightening. But now I see the light. I shall refer to the Prez as B.H. Obama henceforth. …or not. ---
**Author:** ![Gestalt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/90ced4/32.png) [@Gestalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gestalt)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2010, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/83 "2010-12-11T18:09:21Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > First of all, in order for the character to be Christ, he must be “Christ-like” in some aspect, even if it isn’t the non-greedy, non-manipulating, non-charlatan aspect. > > Second, even if you reject that, none of this describes Aslan. Aslan is unquestionable “Christ-like” so he is a “Christ-like figure” and also a “Christ figure,” if there is any distinction to be made there. As has been stated already, Christ himself is both a “Christ figure” and a “Christ-like figure.” You would describe Jesus in the Old Testament as a “Christ-figure” and a “Christ-like figure”? So in discussing the Gospel of Mark or whatever, you would call the protagonist a “Christ-figure”? ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2010, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/84 "2010-12-11T20:06:01Z")
Actually, for those people who called Tolkien by his first name, he was “Ronald.” He always went by that name, not “John.” Many people, including some of his best friends, just called him “Tolkien.” Lewis was a professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature. He knew what an allegory was, since he taught courses on them, and he never considered the Narnia books to be allegories. The standard example of an allegory for him was _The Pilgrim’s Progress_ by John Bunyan. In it, every person was supposed to be an allegory for a particular sin, virtue, etc., as was every location. Lewis himself wrote an allegory in this sense called _The Pilgrim’s Regress_, and everything in it could be mapped to some particular sin, virtue, etc. What I usually say is that if you insist on using the term “allegory” for the Narnia books, at least let’s make the distinction between a strict allegory and a loose allegory. _The Pilgrim’s Progress_ is a strict allegory, while the Narnia books are a loose allegory. In a loose allegory there isn’t the complete one-to-one mapping of characters onto other things like in a strict allegory. The problem when you use “allegory” in a sloppy way is that pretty soon you start to call nearly everything an allegory if it has any “meaning” in it of a religious or philosophical sort. You have then taken a useful word (like "allegory’) which was a nice way to distinguish books like _The Pilgrim’s Progress_ and use it in a broad sense that applies to a vast number of books. Then you have to create a new word to describe the old narrow category. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2010, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/85 "2010-12-11T22:35:05Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > First of all, in order for the character to be Christ, he must be “Christ-like” in some aspect, even if it isn’t the non-greedy, non-manipulating, non-charlatan aspect. Absolutely incorrect. A “Christ-like” character is someone who embodies the classical virtues ascribed to Jesus as in the New Testament. Absent those virtues, it cannot be a Christ-like figure, even if the character is literally intended to be Jesus. > [@](#): > > Second, even if you reject that, none of this describes Aslan. Aslan is unquestionable “Christ-like” so he is a “Christ-like figure” and also a “Christ figure,” if there is any distinction to be made there. As has been stated already, Christ himself is both a “Christ figure” and a “Christ-like figure.” No, Christ is simply Christ. A Christ figure (or Christ-like figure: the terms are interchangeable) is a character who is supposed to be similar to the Biblical Christ, but not the actual character described in the New Testament. Aslan is not a Christ-like figure, he is the exact character from the New Testament. The Narnia books simply describe adventures he had after the end of the story in the Bible. A Christ figure is a metaphor for Jesus Christ. Jesus cannot be a metaphor for himself. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2010, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/86 "2010-12-11T23:18:16Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Aslan is not a Christ-like figure, he is the exact character from the New Testament. But, quite literally, he is not, because he does things and says things that Christ never said and appeared in forms and settings that Christ never did. So it is perfectly valid to view Aslan as something “like Christ” but really not the actual Christ. That’s true of any real person who appears in a work of fiction. It’s paradoxical, because the reader holds in his mind both the thoughts that A = B and also A isn’t really B. > [@](#): > > A Christ figure is a metaphor for Jesus Christ. Jesus cannot be a metaphor for himself. This is simply a failure of imagination. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2010, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/87 "2010-12-11T23:35:33Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > The standard example of an allegory for him was _The Pilgrim’s Progress_ by John Bunyan. In it, every person was supposed to be an allegory for a particular sin, virtue, etc., as was every location. Lewis himself wrote an allegory in this sense called _The Pilgrim’s Regress_, and everything in it could be mapped to some particular sin, virtue, etc. As is mentioned in post 31. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2010, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/88 "2010-12-11T23:54:20Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > But, quite literally, he is not, because he does things and says things that Christ never said and appeared in forms and settings that Christ never did. So it is perfectly valid to view Aslan as something “like Christ” but really not the actual Christ. That’s true of any real person who appears in a work of fiction. It’s paradoxical, because the reader holds in his mind both the thoughts that A = B and also A isn’t really B. Obviously, Aslan isn’t the “actual” Christ. No one’s suggesting that the Catholics need to adopt Chronicles of Narnia as official religious dogma. We’re discussing the role of Jesus as a literary figure. And as a literary figure, Aslan is Jesus. He’s not like Jesus, or similar to Jesus, or looks kind of like Jesus when viewed in a bad light. He is, literally, _in the context of Lewis’s story_, Jesus Christ. Lewis does ascribe to him words and deeds not ascribed to the Biblical Jesus, but that’s because the conceit of the story is that it describes what Jesus has been up to after the events described in the Bible - events which, in the Bible, make it clear that Jesus continues to exist and act in the physical world. Narnia is, in effect, a sequel to the NT. It’s “The Further Adventures of Jesus Christ.” Your argument is like saying the Bilbo Baggins we see in _Fellowship of the Ring_ isn’t the same character as the Bilbo Baggins we see in _The Hobbit_, because the Bilbo in FotR does things he didn’t do in _The Hobbit_. And that’s entirely consistent with how one would discuss the fictional treatment of any historical character. No one would describe, say, the Abe Lincoln who appears in Frasier’s Flashman novels as “a Lincoln-like figure,” or the version of Robert Lee who shows up in Harry Turtledove’s alt-history books as a “Lee-figure,” because none of these characters are intended to be metaphors: they’re intended to be the actual historical characters, in ahistorical settings. > [@](#): > > This is simply a failure of imagination. No, it’s a function of language. A metaphor is when you use one thing to describe some other thing. “A woman is like a cat,” is a metaphor\*. “A woman is like a woman,” is not. Saying that Jesus is a metaphor for himself is an entirely meaningless statement. It literally does not make any sense. [sub]\*Okay, technically, it’s a simile, but whatever.[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2010, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/89 "2010-12-12T06:20:51Z")
Using “metaphor” in that strained sense (where Christ is a metaphor for himself) is like using “allegory” to mean something other than the strict meaning where each thing in the story can be mapped to something else. It’s taking a word that has a useful definition and stretching it to mean something much more vague. You then have to go back and create a new term for the narrower category or you won’t be able to talk about it. Using the term “Christ figure” for Aslan is a somewhat similar case. To use the term for a case where Christ himself is in the story means that you need a new term for cases where the character is merely similar to Christ. My apologies, Andy L. I needed to repeat some of the same ideas to make the points that I wanted to. I didn’t mean to pretend that you hadn’t already mentioned those ideas. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2010, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/90 "2010-12-12T20:01:05Z")
Cite for any point in any Lewis work where he explicitly identifies Aslan with Jesus? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2010, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/91 "2010-12-12T20:39:05Z")
Aslan is regularly associated with symbolism that, in a Christian context, would never be associated with anyone but Jesus. I don’t know if that meets your standards of “explicit”. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2010, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/92 "2010-12-12T21:14:19Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > That would kick ass. Would his avatar be 100 stories tall and made of radiation? He kills children, but not Pandoran children. ---
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2010, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/93 "2010-12-12T21:27:34Z")
> [@Munch](#): > > Question: In the movie “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” did they go back in time and pick up Napoleon, or did they go back in time and pick up a Napoleon-figure? They picked up a fictional representation of Napoleon. The historical Napoleon is not believed to have ever enjoyed a day at a San Dimas waterpark named “Waterloo”. 🙂 > [@Miller](#): > > Is it? That’s not the read I get from posts 32 or 38. **Little Nemo** and **Apolloyon** both seem to be arguing that Aslan is not the same character as Jesus, regardless of what the text says. I think we may be arguing past each other. For myself at least I’m not disputing that Aslan is a fictional representation of Christ… I’m just not convinced that any / every fictional representation of an historical character becomes that actual person (regardless perhaps of the author’s claim). > [@Miller](#): > > That’s not necessarily true, though. Imagine if I wrote a Biblical satire, in which Jesus Christ is a greedy, black-hearted charlatan… Have I written a story about Christ? Yes. Have I written a story about a Christ-like figure? Emphatically not. Mmm… definitely the latter, but I’m not convinced of the former. By having your protagonist as a “black-hearted charlatan” I agree you haven’t written about a Christ-like / Christ-metaphor character… but I think there’s an argument possible there that the fictional representation isn’t Christ either. I’m trying to think how to explain this… it seems (to me) that you and **Munch** are making arguments similar to Plato’s theory of forms. If I claim an object is an apple but it’s a yellow cube that tastes like cheese is it possible that it is still essentially an apple? Hmmm… does the wine really undergo transubstantiation so that its accidents are still wine-like but its essence is now blood? This may not be a path of argument I want to go down; religious wars have started this way. 🙂 Basically, how far can an author legitimately take a fictional representation of an historical figure while claiming it is the actual figure? Is your “black-hearted charlatan” still Christ? Is Moorcock’s _Karl Glogauer_ of [Behold the Man](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behold_the_Man) Christ? > [@Miller](#): > > Obviously, Aslan isn’t the “actual” Christ. [snip] Saying that Jesus is a metaphor for himself is an entirely meaningless statement. It literally does not make any sense. But saying “Aslan is a metaphor for Jesus” is not meaningless. It may run counter to the author’s contention, but that doesn’t make it meaningless. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2010, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/94 "2010-12-12T23:34:30Z")
foolsguinea writes: \> Cite for any point in any Lewis work where he explicitly identifies Aslan with \> Jesus? In a letter of December 29, 1958 to Martha Hook (which is printed in his three-volume collected letters), Lewis says (in answer to her question about whether Aslan is an allegory for Christ), “If Aslan respresented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair represents Despair [in _The Pilgrim’s Progress_], he would be an allegorical figure. In reality however he 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 an allegory at all.” Here’s a website in which the author tells of talking to Martha Hook and confirming the authenticity of the letter: [http://www.fpcjackson.org/resources/family\_and\_culture/cslewis/narnia\_101.htm](http://www.fpcjackson.org/resources/family_and_culture/cslewis/narnia_101.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2010, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/95 "2010-12-12T23:47:36Z")
> [@Apollyon](#): > > I think we may be arguing past each other. For myself at least I’m not disputing that Aslan is a fictional representation of Christ… I’m just not convinced that any / every fictional representation of an historical character becomes that actual person (regardless perhaps of the author’s claim). > > Mmm… definitely the latter, but I’m not convinced of the former. By having your protagonist as a “black-hearted charlatan” I agree you haven’t written about a Christ-like / Christ-metaphor character… but I think there’s an argument possible there that the fictional representation isn’t Christ either. > > I’m trying to think how to explain this… it seems (to me) that you and **Munch** are making arguments similar to Plato’s theory of forms. > > If I claim an object is an apple but it’s a yellow cube that tastes like cheese is it possible that it is still essentially an apple? > > Hmmm… does the wine really undergo transubstantiation so that its accidents are still wine-like but its essence is now blood? This may not be a path of argument I want to go down; religious wars have started this way. 🙂 > > Basically, how far can an author legitimately take a fictional representation of an historical figure while claiming it is the actual figure? Is your “black-hearted charlatan” still Christ? Is Moorcock’s _Karl Glogauer_ of [Behold the Man](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behold_the_Man) Christ? Again, you need to understand that this claim is being made in the context of the story. In the context of the story, Aslan isn’t a metaphor for Jesus, he is Jesus. In the context of actual world history, or in the context of Christian theology, Aslan is not Jesus, because Aslan is an unambiguously fictional character whose author is not making any pretext of factuality. But in the context of the Chronicles of Narnia, is Aslan a character who happens to have many features in common with Jesus (a Christ-figure) or is he actually Jesus who has decided to incarnate himself in the form of a big fucking cat? The answer, according to the text, is the latter. > [@](#): > > But saying “Aslan is a metaphor for Jesus” is not meaningless. It may run counter to the author’s contention, but that doesn’t make it meaningless. You’re conflating two separate arguments I was making. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2010, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/96 "2010-12-12T23:54:29Z")
Incidentally, if you want to adopt a definition of “allegory” (or “Christ-figure”) that is different the way that Lewis (or Tolkien) defined the word, there’s no way that we can stop you. Obviously you can define a word anyway you want to if you don’t care what other people think. For that matter, you can write your Ph.D. thesis on the topic of what Lewis thought about this matter and why his definition was ill-conceived and why your definition explains everything much better than his does. Just don’t pretend that if you stick solely to your definition you will understand what Lewis meant when he was using the term. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2010, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/97 "2010-12-13T00:45:22Z")
> [@](#): > > …or is he actually Jesus who has decided to incarnate himself in the form of a big fucking cat? The answer, according to the text, is the latter. Huh, I had always gotten the impression that Aslan was celibate. ---
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2010, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/98 "2010-12-13T00:45:26Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Again, you need to understand that this claim is being made in the context of the story. In the context of the story, Aslan isn’t a metaphor for Jesus, he is Jesus. In the context of actual world history, or in the context of Christian theology, Aslan is not Jesus… OK. In the context of the story Aslan is Jesus. Accepted. (I already acknowledged that he was a fictional representation of Jesus). And in the context outside the story, in the context of the actual world, the character of Aslan is a Jesus-figure? Honestly not trying to be difficult here… just making what seems to me the logical deduction from the previous stipulation that the aforementioned “black-hearted charlatan” would be Christ within the context of the hypothetical story but not Christ-like in a broader context. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2010, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559/99 "2010-12-15T00:05:18Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > My apologies, Andy L. I needed to repeat some of the same ideas to make the points that I wanted to. I didn’t mean to pretend that you hadn’t already mentioned those ideas. No problem. Thanks for finding the Martha Hook letter - I had seen that phrasing of the role of Aslan in the Narnia books before but didn’t know where. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/aslan-is-not-a-christ-figure/563559.md?page=4)