Inklings Forever Volume 8 A Collection of Essays Presented at the Joint Meeting of The Eighth Frances White Ewbank Article 18 Colloquium on C.S. Lewis & Friends and The C.S. Lewis & The Inklings Society Conference
5-31-2012 "A Wild Hope": Resurrection Bodies and Lewis's The Last Battle Michael P. Muth Wesleyan College
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INKLINGS FOREVER, Volume VIII A Collection of Essays Presented at the Joint Meeting of
The Eighth FRANCES WHITE EWBANK COLLOQUIUM ON C.S. LEWIS & FRIENDS and
THE C.S. LEWIS AND THE INKLINGS SOCIETY CONFERENCE Taylor University 2012 Upland, Indiana
“A Wild Hope”: Resurrection Bodies and Lewis’s The Last Battle
Michael P. Muth Wesleyan College
Muth, Michael P. “ ‘A Wild Hope’: Resurrection Bodies and Lewis’s The Last Battle.” Inklings Forever 8 (2012) www.taylor.edu/cslewis 1
“A Wild Hope”: Resurrection Bodies and Lewis’s The Last Battle
Michael P. Muth Wesleyan College
In his rather strange discussion of interpretation that is uncharitable at best Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia in The Natural and willfully perverse at worst, and which History of Make-Believe, John Goldthwaite echoes rather palely the work of a much chastises Lewis for even conceiving to more coherent and insightful atheist – write The Last Battle, which brings the Friedrich Nietzsche. Pullman’s disgust Chronicles and Narnia to a conclusion with The Last Battle centers on two with the end of a world and its judgment incidents – the death of the Pevensies and by its Creator – though Goldthwaite their friends in a railroad accident that thinks this was a poor decision because brings them inside the stable and into the he believed Lewis bereft of the humility heavenly Narnia; and Susan’s absence needed to pull off such an apocalyptic from the stable, which Pullman judgment (243). Philip Pullman is equally perversely misreads as Lewis’ offended by The Last Battle, calling the condemnation of her to hell for, as best I end of the book “one of the most vile can make out, her developing sexuality. moments in the whole of children’s These two incidents for Pullman mark literature,” proof of Lewis’ “life-hating Lewis’ “hatred for the physical world” ideology” in which “death is better than since, as Pullman sees it, they represent life” (“Darkside”). Narnia, Pullman says, his rejection of the natural change and always seemed to him “to be marked by a development of human bodies – the hatred of the physical world” (“Dark Pevensies are not allowed to grow up and Agenda”). I find it is hard to take do good works in the world and Susan is Goldthwaite’s virulent attack very sent to hell for becoming a sexually seriously, since it is largely an ad awakened teenager. The Chronicles are hominem – Goldthwaite interprets Narnia thus mere “propaganda in the service of a as a literary expression of Lewis’ warped life-hating ideology,” in which death is personality – his reactionary alienation preferred over life. Pullman, of course, is from modernity and his apparent really a sort of third-rate Nietzsche neuroses (especially, it seems, a ventriloquist – or perhaps he’s the pathological hatred of women, or perhaps dummy, since the charges against Lewis just of Elizabeth Anscombe). are really Nietzsche’s against Christianity Goldthwaite’s diatribe thus bypasses and Western thought as a whole – the argument and even the literature he is claim that Christianity (as well as its supposedly interpreting in favor of a secular imitators) is life-denying because pathetic attempt at psychoanalysis (by, of it hates bodies, the locus of the senses and course, a non-expert). thus of pain as well as pleasure, and the Pullman’s attack is at least natural processes of bodies, sex and child- substantive, though it too is based on an birth in particular.
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I am sure that you already gather body is merely an inessential aspect of the that I think Goldthwaite and Pullman – as self, like an old suit that can be cast off well as Nietzsche – to be quite wrong. when outworn – is a perfect target for the Neither the Lewis of The Chronicles of Nietzschean attack that Christianity hates Narnia nor Christianity hate life, bodies and rejects the body. and their processes (even sex), and the This popular view bears a physical world in general (Christianity superficial resemblance to Eastern claims that God made the world, after all). reincarnation and Platonic In particular I think their charges involve metempsychosis, which both seek the a misunderstanding (willful or not) of soul’s escape from a body that is the Christian views – including Lewis’ – about source of suffering and delusion, but none the body. I’m not sure that a detailed of them has anything to do with direct response to Pullman and traditional Christian views on the Goldthwaite would be particularly helpful aftermath of death – God’s act of – though Michael Ward has written a nice recreation in the resurrection of bodies response to Pullman – since their vision and the renewal of the world He created. of reality is so very different from Lewis’ The bodiliness of continued human and the larger Christian tradition (which existence in the doctrine of the is quite odd in the case of Goldthwaite resurrection is stated emphatically in the who seems to be a Christian himself). Gospel accounts of Jesus’ Easter and post- Instead of a direct assault on these Easter appearances, where He invites readings and misreadings, I want to use Thomas to put his hand in His wounds Lewis’ The Last Battle as an expression of and eats meals with the disciples, and by Christian hope and desire about and for Paul, especially in 1 Corinthians 15, bodies. The resurrection bodies of Narnia where the meaning of Christian faith and present “a wild hope” that has been a part hope is contained in the resurrection of of Christianity since the beginning – the Christ and the promise of the resurrection hope that our bodies are our bodies, that of the dead in general. What we find in they are part of who and what we are and both Paul and the Gospels are two that the whole of us – soul and body – will intertwined themes of the resurrection – be saved. This hope however is grounded the bodiliness or corporeality of the in the belief that our bodies are more than resurrection, as well as the idea of some our bodies, i.e., that our bodies are our sort of transformation of the body, i.e. own only when they are incorporated into themes both of continuity of body – the Christ’s body. resurrection body is a body that comes Much popular thinking about the from my present body – combined with afterlife in contemporary American transformation or change of the body – culture is shaped not by Scripture or the resurrection body is a body, but Christian tradition, but by nineteenth and somehow also different. Paul’s image of twentieth century spiritualism and its the seed or kernel that dies in the earth background in the works of the but then sprouts into wheat captures both eighteenth-century mystic and prophet, of these themes – the seed is somehow Emanuel Swedenborg – heaven is a sort of carried into the mature plant, but the cloud-place (or really, an ethereal or plant is other, and perhaps more, than the spiritual place) where our souls go once seed: they leave the body behind in death, So it is with the resurrection of the where we meet all our loved ones who we dead. What is sown is perishable, have missed since their own deaths. In what is raised is imperishable. It is many ways, of course, such a vision of sown in dishonor, it is raised in human existence after death – where the
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glory. It is sown in weakness, it is Surely the bodies that endured so much raised in power. It is sown a for their love of Christ, and whose every physical body, it is raised a spiritual part can bring healing, would not be body. (1 Cor. 15: 42-44) abandoned by Christ on the day of resurrection. Thus, thinkers such as So what is raised is changed and yet in Augustine, while not rejecting Paul’s seed continuity with what was there before – image, turn to different images, some of we are raised, not something else in our them less organic – such as a potter place, so there is continuity, but that body rethrowing a pot or a sculptor recasting a will be transformed in some way. What is sculpture – and others organic but a far raised Paul calls a “spiritual body,” cry from the seed, such as the image of without explaining exactly what that the earth and animals regurgitating parts means – the term seems oxymoronic, but of bodies so that God can reassemble Paul seems quite serious and Christian them into the person they used to thinkers after Paul struggled to make compose. What Augustine and others sense of this peculiar term. All of them, believed they needed in order to make however, emphasized the continuity sense of the resurrection body was both between our present bodies and our continuity of matter and integrity of resurrection bodies. Certainly Lewis structure in order to preserve the identity reflects this sense of continuity in The and wholeness of the person – if the Last Battle. Each of the characters in the resurrected person was to be , the New Narnia is recognizable (to other me body must be , right down to the characters and the reader) as that mine material constituent bits, though they character – Lucy is clearly Lucy, Edmund don’t have to be in the same place as Edmund, and even Mount Pire is before. recognizable as Mount Pire. And of The details of the speculations – course Lewis depicts the characters as which can seem comical or even bizarre physically present – they run, talk, hug, to us, such as when they asked: “If a lion and eat fruit. eats a martyr’s arm and the lion is then I do not wish to go into the entire eaten by another person, who gets the history of Christian discussions of material bits of the arm in the resurrection bodies. Caroline Walker resurrection?” – are not as important to Bynum’s The Resurrection of the Body in my present purposes as the clear Western Christianity, 200-1336 does an dedication they exhibit on the part of admirable job of bringing many themes these Christian thinkers to the and concerns to light (though she has an particularities of the body. They are not annoying penchant for interpreting texts imaging a disembodied soul entering in terms of the cultural “anxieties” they some ethereal, spiritual realm, but bodies supposedly reveal). But this history of flesh and blood. Which introduces a makes clear the commitment of Christian seeming problem, for Paul writes that thinkers to the very physical stuff of the “Flesh and blood will not possess the resurrection body and its continuity with kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 15:50). An our present bodies. From fairly early on, interesting response to this, echoed in Christian thinkers became almost Lewis’ , comes from Hugh of St. obsessed with the desire for all the matter Miracles Victor in the twelfth century, who argues that composes the body to be brought that what Paul means is not that spiritual back together into an integrated body; bodies will not be flesh – after all, Luke their principle concern seems to have informs us that Jesus Himself referred to been the integrity of the bodies of martyrs His resurrection body as flesh and bones and the power of their relics to heal. (Luke 24:40) – but rather that the
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harmony between flesh and spirit will be restore the proper relation of soul and so restored that the body could be called body. spiritual: This transformed relationship of soul and body that Hugh and Lewis Now in so far as pertains to [the] suggest – soul having perfect mastery of substance [of the resurrected body and body delighting in and body], even then there will be flesh. responding perfectly to the soul – leads to Thus the Apostle says: “It is sown a bodies that are strange, as Lewis depicts natural body, it shall rise a spiritual in the last chapters of . It is body,” (1 Cor. 44), because so great The Last Battle worth noting that the story begins with will be the harmony of flesh and the apparent transformation of a body – spirit that, while the spirit vivifies the seeming transformation of the body of the subject flesh without the Puzzle from a donkey-body into a lion- support of any insatiable desire, body, or even as Shift claims into Aslan’s nothing from ourselves will oppose body. This is not, of course, a real ourselves but, just as we suffer no transformation – Puzzle is not really enemy outwardly, so we shall not changed into a divine being, but remains suffer ourselves as enemies within. merely Puzzle the donkey. We have only (Sacraments 460) the simulacrum of transformation, a Lewis speculates much the same thing in parody of the real change that comes Miracles: “The whole conception of the later: the God-effected transformation of New Creation includes the belief that the earthly bodies, including Puzzle’s, into estrangement [of the soul and body] will spiritual bodies. It is the truly be healed….Every state of affairs in the transformed body that Lewis depicts in New Nature will be the perfect expression the last chapters of The Last Battle, bodies of a spiritual state and every spiritual that are youthfully whole (even bodies state the perfect informing of, and bloom that had been injured or grown old), upon, a state of affairs…” (261-2). capable of focusing the eyes on incredibly This argument is key for Hugh’s distant objects, able to run as fast as a understanding of the second theme of unicorn runs or an eagle flies without resurrection bodies, i.e., their tiring, and even able to swim up transformation or change – they both are, waterfalls, “the sort of thing,” the narrator and yet are not, the same bodies that we tells us, “that would have been quite possess now. For Hugh, the body is impossible in our world. Even if you different because the resurrection body is hadn’t been drowned, you would have fit for existence in the heavens, which he been smashed to pieces by the terrible imagines quite spatially, as the area above weight of water against the countless jags the sublunar realm, the region composed of rock. But in that world you could do it” of four elements, earth, water, air, in fire, (174). Even the topography of the Real in ascending order. Our bodies, made Narnia is recognizably like the old Narnia, primarily of earthy stuff, belong down at Mount Pire and the pass into Archenland the center of the universal system, yet are like the ones they knew, “‘And yet resurrection bodies can exist out of place, they’re not like,’ said Lucy. ‘They’re in the regions above even air and fire, in different. They have more colors on them apparent violation of the laws structuring and they look further away than I the physical world (463). The remembered and they’re resurrection body is different, capable of more…more…oh, I don’t know….’ ‘More things our present body is not, because, like the real thing,’ said the Lord Digory Hugh claims, the resurrection will reverse softly” (168-9). the fallen relation of bodily rebellion and
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The model, of course, for the into an integral whole through those resurrection body, for Augustine and forces and eventually dismantled by Hugh as well as Lewis, is the body of them. But Jesus’ body insists on Christ, the only example Scripture gives extending beyond the boundaries of its us of a resurrected body, and that is itself skin. At the final Passover meal shared a strange body indeed, and becomes with His disciples, Jesus “took bread, and stranger the more we consider it. Christ’s blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them resurrection body seems capable of and said, ‘Take; this is my body’” (Mark moving through walls – on several 14:22). It is, of course, possible to occasions He comes to the disciples inside understand Jesus’ words as symbolic or locked rooms (John 20). It can disappear, metaphorical, the breaking and handing as it did from the two He walked and ate over of the bread being a symbol for the with on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24). It coming crucifixion, where His body is can be strangely hard to recognize, as the broken and salvation extended to two on the road did not recognize Him, humanity. But another long-standing nor did Mary, when she mistook Him for tradition of the Church has been to take the gardener (John 20). Yet His is this literally – that the bread, broken and definitely a very physical body – when the extended to His disciples, is the breaking Disciples in fear believe Him to be a ghost, and handing over of Jesus’ body, a He responds, “See my hands and my feet, metaphysical absurdity, or as Graham that it is I myself; handle me and see; for a Ward puts it “an ontological scandal” spirit has not flesh and bones as you see (168): that I have” (Luke 24:39-40), and then What had throughout the Gospel eats a piece of broiled fish. story been an unstable body is now The strangeness of Jesus’ body to be understood as an extendable was actually there even before the body. For it is not that Jesus, at this resurrection. As Graham Ward puts it: point, stops being a physical “From the moment of the incarnation this presence. It is more that his body…is physically human and subject to physical presence can extend to all the infirmities of being such, and yet is incorporate other bodies, like also a body looking backward to the bread, and make them extensions of perfect Adamic corporeality and forward his own. (167) to the corporeality of the resurrection” (164). It is a body not conceived as all It is this strange body, that extends itself other post-Adamic bodies are, and is beyond its expected boundaries (its skin) capable of walking on water, healing in the Eucharist, that extends itself infirmities, transforming water into wine, further through its breaking and spilling and multiplying the physical matter of out in the crucifixion, its defeat of death bread and fish to feed thousands. It is a and promise for the future in the body transfigured on the Mount of Olives, resurrection, and its absencing as an becoming radiant or translucent, in face object presence in the Ascension – all of and even clothes. which extends and enlarges Christ’s body But the body of Jesus, both before so that, not just incorporating bread and and after the crucifixion and resurrection, wine into itself, it incorporates other is stranger still, a body that in fact bodies – those of His followers – into it as disturbs our metaphysical expectations the Church. And so Christ’s body violates about bodies, which we think of as or explodes our expectations of the discrete, individual, and unified wholes, nature of body: not a discrete whole, but dependent upon and following all the an extended organism; not a bounded laws of natural forces, brought together individual, but an interpenetrating
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community. And yet still an integral body, natural and so he cannot imagine such identifiable as the Body of Christ (even if hopes and desires, which in his world not obvious to each of us). must collapse continually back into the As Lucy and Peter and Edmund limited, individual, self-contained, skin- and their friends go further up and wrapped body. It is perhaps only natural further in, they encounter more and more that his trilogy, His Dark Materials, ends characters that have inhabited the Narnia with two teenagers having sex in a stories – Reepicheep, Bree, the Beavers, garden. Certainly this is a self-conscious Trumpkin, Trufflehunter, Puddleglum, parody of Adam and Eve, but it is also the Tumnus (even their own parents at a best Pullman can imagine to satisfy the distance). It would be easy to see this as a desire, as real for him as for Lewis or capitulation to the sentimental, Paul, to get beyond oneself into true Swedenborgian notion of heaven – and communion with others. It is then almost, perhaps to an extent it is (I admit that I but not quite, a parody of the Body of tear up a little at this point in the story). Christ. Lewis has a better imagination But I will read these moments as instead and thus can have a wild hope – the wild Lewis’ expression of this extended body hope of all Christians – that our bodies of Christ (of Aslan?) – this is not just a are ours and yet not alone – that through sentimental moment where we meet all their incorporation into a larger reality, our loved ones, but the recognition that into the extended body of Christ, our these characters are the members of the bodies are both ours and God’s. extended body of Christ, the cells and organs of the Church. It is not nostalgia and saccharine sentimentalism that drives these incidents and our emotional reaction to them – it is that “wild hope” of the believer that they and we are incorporated into one corpus, the body of our Lord and Savior. I began this paper with references to Goldthwaite and Pullman and I wish to return to them, or at least to Pullman (though it feels like returning into Plato’s cave after struggling out into the light). I hope it is clear why I think a direct response to Pullman is difficult. The metaphysical and ontological divide between Pullman and Lewis (as well as the larger Christian tradition) is so large that communication is itself seemingly impossible. Lewis’ Christian vision of reality is of a world wider than the natural world and its laws, a reality that is only because God is, and where Christ extends His body so as to incorporate all who would into it, a reality where human hopes and desires, aimed beyond self to Christ and to others in Christ, are not locked within the boundaries of our lonely skins. Pullman’s reality is only
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Works Cited
Bynum, Caroline Walker. The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200- 1336. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. Print. “A Dark Agenda? An Interview with Philip Pullman.” Surefish. Nov. 2002. Web. 20 Jan. 2012.
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