Aslan: no messing with this guy!
The third cinematic installment of the
Chronicles of Narnia comes to our screens on Thursday:
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I'm hoping to get to see it on Sunday evening, if the snow clears - we had a fall of half a foot last night in Rathkenny. The films are good enough, though a few changes have not helped - but then you expect film adaptations to differ. One thing about the movies is that they flesh out the novels and enhance our imaginative view of Narnia.
However, a little controversy has arisen in the last day or so. Liam Neeson, the Irish actor who voices Aslan, apparently sees the character as the embodiment not only of Our Lord, as C. S. Lewis intended, but also as Mohammad and Buddha. Now first of all I would go easy on the man. He lives in an age and works in a profession where artistic licence is heavily influenced by political correctness and Eastern philosophies and religions - a lot of actors dabble in Buddhism at some stage in their career, they are attracted to the meditation and apparent peace of the religion. As an actor he is trying to enter into the character of this great figure - Aslan, and probably sees him as a great soul (Mahatma, as the Hindus would call him), and so he compares Aslan with those considered to be great religious figures in the world.
Ironically, if that is the case, not only does he miss out on who Aslan is: he diminishes him (which I do not believe Neeson wants to do). Yet this approach reveals a failure to understand what this character symbolises, if one did understand it would be immediately clear that it is impossible to compare Aslan with any religious figure other than Christ. The moment which reveals who Aslan is, as fans of the novel have repeated in their response to Neeson's comparison, is that when he allows himself be sacrificed, and then, when all seems lost, rises to life again. This is Aslan's defining moment - it is also the moment when the reader realises that this symbolic character points to one figure and one figure only: Jesus Christ. To do otherwise is to ignore or to fail to understand this climatic event. But then again there are many Christians who do not understand the death and resurrection of Christ in their lives of faith, so Neeson is not alone.
From this event we can say, then, that Aslan is not Mohammad nor Buddha, nor Confucius nor Zoroaster nor L. Ron Hubbard nor can any parallels be made. With all due respect to those who believe in and follow these figures - none of these men allowed themselves be sacrificed for love and then rose from the dead. Aslan points to Christ and Christ alone. Mistake that and you lose not only the character of Aslan and what he does, you also lose Narnia which was sung into existence by a song sung by.....Aslan - another important moment in the novels. At the end of the series, Narnia goes out of existence, again at the prompting of.....Aslan. It is Aslan who judges the creatures at the end, and it is to Aslan's world that the "elect" go.
Political correctness has many shortcomings, but one of its greatest is its blandness: it is colourless and no where near the radical nature of many beliefs. Political correctness cannot fathom the scandal of the life and death of Christ, nor cope with the concept of his resurrection simply because it singles him out as different. Christ has to be reduced to the same level as every other "good" person, but as Fulton Sheen often taught in his theology lessons Jesus can be said to be many things, but he cannot be simply a "good" person. Nor is he a religious person or a founder - to make him such is to reduce him to a mere member of a pantheon of spiritual people. He is different, more fierce, more controversial, more radical. Like Aslan in the Narnia books, he is untamed and cannot be put in a box.
That is why Neeson's remarks are wrong, he tries to put Christ in a category and seeks to emulate the others who occupy that category: Christ is different, he defies categorisation. Those who do not believe in Christ will say I am biased - of course I am. But what I say is also objectively true. Mohammad never claimed to be God - every Muslim, casual, pious or fundamentalist will tell you that. Buddha never claimed to be divine, rather one who discovered the way of Enlightenment. Confucius was a philosopher etc, etc, etc. But Jesus did claim to be God. He is different from the others, see it as good or bad. He said he was the Way, Truth and the Life. He had a confidence and authority to say that. That's Aslan, the image for Christ. Rant over!
