C.S. Lewis on the Atonement: Part 5 (Christus Victor)

There is an atonement model often referred to as the Christus Victor theory, which presents the cross in dramatic language, where Christ, our "victor" or hero, defeats the powers of evil and achieves freedom for humanity from bondage. This model for Lewis comes to the forefront in the most popular installment of the Chronicles: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. When the Disney version of the movie came out last year, I intuited that many would read “penal substitution” into the story at the point of the lion’s death and resurgence to life, obviously the scene in which Lewis seeks to convey a type of crucifixion and resurrection. While a substitutionary element is present in the reference to “a willing victim who had committed no treachery [being] killed in a traitor’s stead,”[i] the type of substitution is not necessarily “penal” or “punitive,” but is probably more akin to the notion of substitutionary repentance, which we have touched upon in a couple of threads prior to this. Even if this is the type of substitution operating here, the element of substitution itself is not the central focal point of the narrative. It revolves, rather, on the exchange between the witch and the lion and employs a model showing more affinity with a "ransom" model, closely related to the Christus Victor theory mentioned above. Aulen names the Christus Victor model as the “classic” Christian model (of which he categorizes "ransom" as a sub-type of Christus Victor) of the atonement and defines its central theme as “the idea of the Atonement as a Divine conflict and victory; Christ – Christus Victor – fights against and triumphs over the evil powers of the world, the ‘tyrants’ under which mankind is in bondage and suffering, and in Him God reconciles the world to Himself.”[ii]

The Christus Victor theory provides us with an operative model of the atonement that locates itself in a cosmic dualistic drama, where the victory will be achieved over the hostile powers. The problem (i.e., sin), according to this model, is that humans have submitted to the powers of evil and are now in the grip of evil’s leader, Satan (resembled by the white witch in Lewis’ narrative). The significance of Christ’s death, accordingly, is neither in what it does for us, per se, nor what it does for human evil, but in how it deals with the evil powers. Christ’s victory on the cross (though the enemy, the witch saw it as his defeat) cannot be seen disjointed from his resurrection, because this is evidence that a greater power is now at work. This victory is made manifest in Lewis’ narrative in the lion’s telling of the “Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time,” which included an “incantation” the witch never read, which would serve as her demise.[iii] It is precisely here where Aulen related his Christus Victor model with the framework set up by Irenaeus’ notion of “recapitulation”:

"The Divine victory accomplished in Christ stands in the centre of Irenaeus’ thought, and forms the central element in the recapitulatio, the restoring and the perfecting of the creation, which is his most comprehensive theological idea. The Recapitulation does not end with the triumph of Christ over the enemies which had held man in bondage; it continues in the work of the Spirit."[iv]

The language of “victory” is continued by Lewis in the following scenes of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, as Aslan leads the forces of good to victory in battle against the evil one. Note that this takes place after he went back to the witch’s palace in order to begin reversing and undoing death itself by breathing new life into the statues. This model welcomes language of conflict, war, and surrender into the discussion of atonement and soteriology. Lewis brings this out in the prior chapter to his treatment on the atonement and elsewhere when he speaks of God landing on an “enemy-occupied” territory, world, etc.[v]

Here, however, we might begin to see Lewis taking the Christus Victor model in a direction unlike what Aulen proposes in his work. In the presentation Lewis has established, which is quite congruent with an eastern framework, we can reiterate the notion of forgiveness as a means in order to achieve something. Forgiveness comes when the offended party (in such a case, God) goes to the offending party (humanity) to offer forgiveness not as an end, but as a means to enable humans to respond in “surrender” and repentance. Note that this language also employs battlefield and war imagery, but Lewis instead shifts the localization of the drama to the personal rather than keeping it in the cosmic battle of the powers. Hence, we can incorporate Lewis’ chapter devoted to the atonement when he speaks of “The Perfect Penitent.” This repentance, or “surrender” if you will, done by Christ is not done merely on behalf of those who need to but cannot; nor is it one of mere “example” as though someone who literally cannot repent could be able to by merely “observing” an exemplar; rather, it is one of enablement so that by entering our world Christ identifies with our existence so that he repents and surrenders “in” us, or more accurately, enables us to repent and surrender by having perfectly done so himself in obedience to the Father, even to the point of death on the cross. Hence, we can see the atonement not specifically in terms of substitution here, but in the language of participation and enablement.

We could maintain that Lewis’ appropriation of the atonement in terms of the cosmic battle between Christ and the powers of evil is sufficiently portrayed in the account described in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. However, I would still like to make good and visualize how this model is employed in Eustace’s encounter with Aslan in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The Christus Victor model is seen at the point where Eustace comes to a realization. After being told by the lion that he must peel off his dragon layers in order to be washed, Eustace began peeling off his scaly flesh and after he successfully removed three layers, he recognized his layers went so deep that he could not “un-dragon” himself. The lion told him, “You must let me undress you…so I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.”[vi] This might be too much of a stretch to say the Christus Victor model is operative here, and I would likely concede. However, it is not an insignificant point to recognize that Eustace identified the need to surrender to the claws of the lion to make him human again. Although the cosmic battle is not seen herein, the localization of the battle and its appropriation on the personal level is, because Eustace realizes his inability to free himself from the body of the dragon. Not only so, but he does speak of his newfound strength and excitement over his new muscles (evoking fighting/war motif?) by the reference to the strength of Caspian.[vii] Walls and Burson beautifully give an alternative accounting of such an encounter in the war/battle imagery. They contend that according to Lewis, we are rebels and we must start by putting down our weapons and “crawl out of enemy territory and back to the divine encampment.”[viii] This language portrays God as the great Commander against the forces of evil; much like the character of Aslan is depicted in the Chronicles of Narnia.

...to be continued...

References:
[i] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, (New York: Macmillan, 1950), 160, italics mine.
[ii] Gustav Aulen, Christus Victor, (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972), 4.
[iii] Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, 160.
[iv] Aulen, Christus Victor, 21-22, bold mine.
[v] Lewis, Mere Christianity, 36.
[vi] Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 90.
[vii] Ibid., 91.
[viii] Burson & Walls, Lewis & Schaeffer, 60.