Insight from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Trinity in The Horse and His Boy
The Horse and His Boy (HHB) is occupied with the
importance of discovering one’s true identity and living out of that identity. Shasta
and Aravis, along with their horses Hwin and Bree, learn through their
adventures fleeing Calormene across the desert to the north that they are not
who they believed themselves to be and that their true longings were fulfilled
only in learning and living into their true identities
Lewis
wrote this series of stories out of the Christian convictions that grounded and
shaped his own life. The emphasis on identity in HHB is consistent with those convictions. However, there is one
other identity that comes into clearer focus in this story. And that is the
identity of God. Throughout the series we have heard of the
Emperor-beyond-the-sea (analogous to God the Father in Christianity), seen
Aslan in action (analogous to God the Son), and, if we’ve read carefully,
noticed how Aslan’s “breath” brings life to whatever it is breathed on. Aslan
is the Emperor’s Son, Creator and Lord of Narnia, but Aslan’s breath is never
related to the Emperor the way we find the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are
occasionally in the New Testament (2 Corinthians 13:13).
Lewis writes in Mere Christianity of the fundamental importance of God’s
triunty: “The whole dance or drama or pattern of this three-Personal
life is being played out in each one of us: or putting it the other way round,
each of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There
is no other way to the happiness for which we are made.”
Narnia and Aslan and all that happens
there is analogous in certain ways to the Christian story. As we have just
seen, Lewis believed the triune character of the Christian God is integral to
that story. It would be surprising, then, if some trace of that view of God did
not find its way into The Chronicles in
spite of the obvious difficulties involved. Such a trace is found, in my view,
in the following interaction between Shasta and a Presence Shasta suddenly
realizes is at his side as he wanders alone on a mountain trail.
“Who are you?” asked Shasta. “Myself,” said the
Voice, very deep and low so that
the earth shook: and again “Myself,” loud and clear and gay: and then the third time “Myself,” whispered
so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all round
you as if the leaves rustled with it.”
It is hard to think this is not an allusion to
the Christian understanding of God as triune. The deep, low, earth-shaking “Myself”
is the voice of the Father. The “loud, clear, and gay” voice that of the Son,
and whispered “Myself” that of the Spirit. The “Myself” alludes to Exodus 3:14,
“I am who I am.”
Lewis stands dead-center in the heart of the
historic Christian faith with his views on the trinity. Participating in the
dance of love of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit is human fulfillment, God’s
intention for us. Graciously invited and welcomed to share in this relationship
we experience and practice the love that brought us and our world into being.
Baxter Kruger tells this lovely story to illustrate what this participation in
God’s life is like:
“Many years ago
when my son was six (he’s 18 now), I was sitting on the couch in the den sorting through junk
mail on a Saturday afternoon. He and his buddy came in and they were decked
out in their camouflage, face paint, plastic
guns and knives, the whole nine yards. My son peers around the corn- er of the door and looks at me, and
the next thing I know, he comes flying through the air and jumps on me. We start
wrestling and horsing around and we
end up on the floor. Then his buddy flies into us and all three of us are just like a wad of laughter.
“Right in the
middle of that event the Lord spoke to me and said to pay atten- tion. I’m thinking, it’s Saturday
afternoon, your son comes in and you’re hors- ing around on the floor, it happens
every day all over the world, so what’s the big deal? Then it started to dawn on me
that I didn’t know who this other kid was. I had never met him. He had never
met me. So I re-wound the story and thought about what would have
happened if this little boy would have walked into my den alone. Remember, he didn’t
know me and I didn’t know him, and he didn’t know my name and I didn’t
know his name. So he looks over and sees me, a complete stranger, sitting on
the couch. Would he fly through the air and engage me in play? Would we end up
in a pile of laughter on the floor? Of course not. That is the last thing that
would have happened.
“Within himself,
that little boy had no freedom to have a relationship with me. We were strangers. He had no
right to that kind of familiarity and fellowship. But my son knows me. My son knows that I love
him and that I accept him and that he’s
the apple of my eye. So in the knowledge of my love and affection, he did the most natural thing in the world. He
dove into my lap. The miracle that hap- pened
was that my son’s knowledge of my acceptance and delight, and my son’s freedom
for fellowship with me, rubbed off onto that other little boy. He got to
experience it. That other little boy got to taste and feel and know my son’s
relationship with me. He participated in my son’s life and communion with me.”[1]
Unless God
is triune, the mystery of the one-in-three and three-in-one deity, he has no
shared life to invite us to share in. Love requires an other and shared love
requires a third outside itself for genuine community. The Father loves the Son,
the Son returns the love of the Father, and both love the Spirit who is the
eternal bond of their shared love. However abstract and inadequate such
language may seem, and it is, it points beyond itself to the reality Lewis
gestures toward with his three-fold “Myself” in HHB. And to the experience Baxter Kruger shares which is a real but
dim expression of the difference God’s tri-unity makes. It seems appropriate,
then, to close with the Pauline expression of this truth I referenced above, 2
Corinthians 13:13: “The grace of the Lord Jesus
Christ, the love of God, and the communion of[a] the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”
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