C.S. Lewis on the Atonement: Part 1 (Intro)

I know I have blogged on the topic of atonement quite a bit, but understand that this is the issue I am going to be tackling for at least the next 3 years as I pursue one more degree. I tried in graduate school to focus my major projects on this issue in some way. What follows is some of the work I did in a class on C.S. Lewis.

One of the hot buttons on the rise as of late in the theological world (and especially its evangelical branches) is the nature and understanding of the atoning work of Christ in his Incarnation, suffering, death, and resurrection. The revival of interest in this central component of theology interestingly comes in the wake of the Trinitarian resurgence of the last half-century or so. This is not to say that these two theological themes were wholly absent until recently, but of late the details of the discussions are making their way more and more into the conversations of the laity, and scholars are becoming increasingly more involved in this hot topic by debunking the arguments and models of others in order to promote their own as more or “the” theologically “correct” or “orthodox.” Interestingly, however, the Church has never made a universal statement as to set up one particular model of the atonement as “the” orthodox position, unlike what we have done with the doctrine of God; the only option there is that we worship a Triune God (though the details of how God’s “three-ness” and “one-ness” relate to one another are understood slightly different in the various traditions in Christian orthodoxy).

C. S. Lewis, the great 20th century Christian apologist, spent not a few pages on highlighting the importance of both these doctrines and they are inseparably linked if you look carefully at his writings. In the coming posts, however, I want to address how Lewis approached and understood the doctrine of the atonement. Specifically, I will identify what matters most to Lewis when it comes to the atonement and point out how Lewis’ understanding of it fits within his overall soteriological framework. After viewing the controlling mechanism to Lewis’ soteriology, I will spend the rest of the paper on examining three models Lewis employs in his writings to illumine the atoning work of Christ. In each of the models I will draw from a specific encounter recorded in his Chronicles of Narnia to illustrate how each category is at play in his narrative. The encounter is one I have alluded to in an earlier post (Aslan's Claws and Papaw's Teeth-Pulling) and is about Eustace being "un-dragoned" in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

...to be continued...