C. S. Lewis on Death and Rebirth: A Central Turning Point

...Having examined the theme of myths, nature, and stories as a backdrop or reflection of the central instance of death and rebirth, let us now turn to Lewis’ views concerning this event. One of the main ideas in Lewis’ works is that Christ’s death and resurrection is a central turning point in redemptive history. When Christ becomes a man, writes Lewis, “It is like dropping into a glass of water one drop of something which gives a new taste or a color to the whole lot” (Mere Christianity 156). As a result of sin, all of creation is on a downwards spiral of decay. The reversal of this cosmic process begins with the resurrection (cf. Lewis, God in the Dock 33). Although it is only a single event in history, Lewis writes that the resurrection is part of a much larger process of death and rebirth. It is a “huge pattern of descent, down, down, and then up again. What we ordinarily call the Resurrection being just, so to speak, the point at which it turns” (Lewis, God in the Dock 82).⁵ The same idea is present in Perelandra. Tinidril, the “first woman” on Venus, is aware that when Maleldil (Christ) became a man on Earth, the universe was changed forever: “Among times there is a time that turns a corner and everything this side of it is new… Times do not go backward…your world [was] chosen for time’s corner” (Lewis, Perelandra 62,67)...

⁵ Tolkien’s idea of “eucatastrophe” (a “sudden joyous turn” from very bad to very good; cf. The Tolkien Reader 68-73) as the essential component of any complete fairy story is somewhat analogous to the death and rebirth theme throughout Lewis’ writings. For both authors, the Incarnation is the central occurrence of the more general pattern.

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C. S. Lewis on Death and Rebirth: “Christ Figures” in Perelandra and Narnia

...The theme of death and rebirth can also be identified in Lewis’ works of fiction. In Perelandra, Dr. Ransom is a Christ figure of sorts, passing through suffering to new life in order to bring salvation to Venus. David Downing, an expert on Lewis’ “Ransom Trilogy,” writes:

“Ransom’s adventure on Perelandra offers a number of parallels with Christ’s mission on earth. He enters a world to fulfill God’s purpose for it; he is tempted to give up his mission; he undergoes a kind of Gethsemene of anxiety and loneliness the night before he must suffer; he experiences a symbolic death and rebirth in being dragged below the surface and spending three days there; he reemerges to have his mission celebrated by others.” (“Paradise Retained” 44)³

The most transparent instance of death and rebirth in Lewis’ fiction is Aslan’s sacrificial death and return to life in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Many details of Aslan’s killing at the hands of the White Witch, such as his silence in response to the mocking of his enemies, and his return to life, such as his resurrection appearance to female characters, parallel events in the Gospels (Clark, Theology 59-66). Although these two characters are Christ figures in very different ways (Aslan being a “supposal” of Christ in another world and Ransom being a participant in Christ’s death and resurrection and a means of redemption in another world), both demonstrate the same “key principle.” In fact, C. S. Lewis scholar David Clark writes that “If we combine the two accounts [of Ransom’s struggle with the Un-man and Aslan’s sacrificial death], nearly everything [pertaining to Christ’s passion] in the gospels is accounted for” (Theology 71).⁴ It is also worth noting that Psyche plays a somewhat similar role in Till We Have Faces; she is bound to a tree as a sacrifice but passes through the experience and attains a new divine life. Each of these stories is saturated with mythical components as well; thus Lewis crafts his own myths with elements of death and rebirth as signposts of the true myth for readers and as “supposals” of what the true myth would look like in different contexts...

³ Downing also notes the similarity between Lewis’ imagery of the descent and reascent of a deep-sea diver in Miracles and his description of Ransom’s nearly fatal descent into the ocean at the hands of the Un-man (Downing 44).
⁴ Clark notes that there is little overlap between the two accounts. It appears that Lewis’ own stories reflect his idea that God does not repeat himself (Clark 71): “All his acts are different, but they all rhyme or echo to one another” (God in the Dock 37).

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C. S. Lewis on Death and Rebirth: A Signpost for the Cross

“Death and Rebirth – go down to go up – it is a key principle” (Miracles 402), writes C. S. Lewis in his description of the “grand miracle” of Jesus Christ. What Lewis describes as a great pattern in all of creation is also an important theme in his own writings. The role of death and resurrection in the redemption of humanity (and revelation to humanity) is a topic treated by Lewis in such books as Miracles and Mere Christianity, but it can also be identified in a number of his works of fiction, most prominently in Perelandra. In both cases, Lewis portrays Christ’s death and resurrection as a critical turning point in the process of redemption – an event hinted at through death and rebirth in the natural world and in history, and an event with permanent redemptive effects on an enormous scale.

First, death and resurrection reflects a facet of God’s nature that is also reflected in creation in a number of other ways. At the cross we witness the primary and central manifestation of this pattern, but there are other places and things that, like “joy” (the primary theme in Lewis’ writings), function as signposts or reflections of the real thing. For example, we witness an annual “death and resurrection” of sorts in the form of plant growth in the natural world (Lewis, Miracles 402, cf. John 12:24). Supernatural events also point towards the “grand miracle”; Lewis writes that “Every other miracle prepares for this...every particular Christian miracle manifests at a particular place and moment the character and significance of the Incarnation” (Miracles 398).

Among these pointers or lesser images of death and rebirth, Lewis writes most commonly of pagan mythology as a reflection of the true myth. There is a “real connection” between pagan myths and the truth, as Lewis writes in Reflections on the Psalms:

“The resemblance between these myths and the Christian truth is no more accidental than the resemblance between the sun and the sun’s reflection in a pond, or that between a historical fact and the somewhat garbled version of it which lives in popular report, or between the trees and hills of the real world and the trees and hills in our dreams.” (107-108)¹

Furthermore, in his essay “Is Theology Poetry,” Lewis writes, “The Divine light, we are told, ‘lighteneth every man.’ We should, therefore, expect to find in the imagination of great Pagan teachers and myth makers some glimpse of that theme which we believe to be the very plot of the whole cosmic story – the theme of incarnation, death, and rebirth” (The Weight of Glory 128). As beings in the image of God, we are created with some knowledge of this divine theme. Pagans, writes Lewis in The Pilgrim’s Regress, were given revelation in the form of mythological “pictures” which contained a “divine call” (Hooper 569, 597). Just as Lewis had mistaken “joy” for the “real thing” when it was actually a reflection of or pointer towards the reality, so the Pagans misunderstood this “call” and were corrupted in their desires (Hooper 583). This theme of the “true myth” and of the reflection of Christ’s death and rebirth in nature and pagan religion is common in Lewis’ works and a key component of his thought. Only after realizing this connection did Lewis, a lifelong lover of myths, embrace Christianity as fact.²

All creation testifies to the cross as the central event in history, which Lewis describes as the unifying main theme in a great symphony (Miracles 399). The reality, writes Lewis, “hangs in the clouds of myth and ritual, vast and vague, then it condenses, grows hard and in a sense small, as a historical event in first century Palestine” (The Weight of Glory 129). And just as Christ is the supreme revelation of God to us, so the lesser images of Christ reveal a facet of God’s character to all people: “[T]he Corn-King is derived...from the facts of Nature, and the facts of Nature from her Creator; the Death and Rebirth pattern is in her because it was first in Him” (Lewis, Miracles 405). Like “joy,” death and rebirth is a means of revelation to us of who God is...

¹ The theme of primary truth being reflected in fictional myths or stories was also an important element in the literary philosophy of J. R. R. Tolkien, who was instrumental in Lewis’ conversion. In his poem Mythopoeia, a response to the skeptic Lewis before his conversion, man is described as “the refracted light”; his stories and sub-created worlds reflect the primary world and the true Story.
² In his essay “On Fairy-stories,” Tolkien develops the same idea: “History often resembles ‘Myth,’ because they are both ultimately of the same stuff” (The Tolkien Reader 30).

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