The Lion of C.S. Lewis

 

C.S. Lewis had it right. ‘God’ did not. 

Lewis chose a massive lion with the power to speak and influence hearts as his representation of the ‘Christ’ in his Narnia series. 

 

Why, then, did ‘god’ determine that the best incarnation for a proposed ‘savior’ and deliverer of a ‘New Covenant’ to rule human society should be a member of a back-water, illiterate community subjugated by the Roman Empire without status, education or influence?

 

That is an immensely vital question to be answered by any who assert to being followers of the Christ or by anyone seeking to affirm or deny the veracity of the claim made by Christians for millennia that Y’shua ben Yosef of Nazareth was divine. 

Or at the least noteworthy.

 

Imagine if the god of the Old Testament had sent a creature of the characteristics of Lewis’ Lion, Aslan to deliver the new covenant. Would that have not been a most remarkable, historic and earth-shattering event? One which historians of the age would have most assuredly documented and broadcast throughout the Roman Empire? 

Would that not have been far more miraculous and divine incarnation than an itinerate preacher – one of dozens – who purportedly proclaimed the imminence of the ‘End Times’ and an establishment of ‘God’s Kingdom’ on Earth? Would not that have been the stuff of legends, irrefutable and well-reported? 

 

Imagine a majestic, massive beast, a golden lion with the power of speech to stir the hearts of men; who epitomized goodness, justice and mercy. Imagine that ‘Y’shua ben Yosef’ was not a lowly carpenter of questionable means and without the least appreciable pedigree. Imagine that he was endowed with super-human strength and wisdom. Combine that with the reported miracles – raising the dead, healing the leprous, walking on water, changing water to wine, etc. - performed by such an exceptional and astounding creature as a talking lion. Would that not have been reported and noted by every historian of the era?

 

If a human’s imagination can conceive of such a thing in the fantastical kingdom of Narnia, why then, it must be asked, would a maximally powerful and intelligent entity such as ‘god’ not do so? Why would ‘god’ choose to place the New Covenant in the hands of rag-tag group of disciples of an itinerate preacher who made nary a ripple amongst those of his provincial area?

 

To be clear, the person known as Jesus of Nazareth from the Christian gospels is almost totally unknown and unaccounted for; the circumstance surrounding his reported birth are seriously doubted by all historians. The single entry by Flavius Josephus, a first-century Romano-Jewish historian and military leader, has been adjudged a forgery. 

 

The supposed census declared by Augustus Caesar was never declared. There is no record of such a declaration ever being made; meaning that the instigation of Joseph and Mary’s trek from Nazareth of Bethlehem never happened. The story of the birth at Bethlehem falls apart like wet bread.

 

The Slaughter of the Innocents commanded by Herod the Great, king of Judea never happened, either. Such a command must surely have raised the hackles of the People of Judea but nothing outside the Gospel of Matthew was ever reported. The Slaughter never happened.

Further, as meticulous as the Romans were in record keeping, no trial before Pilate was ever recorded and by extension, reports of neither the torture nor crucifixion of Jesus have ever been discovered outside of the Gospels. 

 

Moreover, the multitude of parallels between the Jesus story and the tales of Gilgamesh, Osiris and Mithra most definitely call into question many of the details given of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection as simple plagiarism or generous ‘borrowings’.

 

None of these obvious vagaries would have been possible had ‘god’ been as creative and imaginative as the Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis.