I have to get started someplace, and where better than on a topic thread to which my kindred spirit (and fellow old guy) Evening Star has contributed? Mr. Lewis believed in things like free will and individual responsibility, but Deism holds no patent on these things. And the amount of direct, visible, concrete appearing and intervening which God in the form of Aslan does in the Narnian world is utterly incompatible with Deism.
If one wants to accuse anyone of deism, it ought to be the writer of LOTR, not Narnia.
American deists have the problem that they dont have a lion who appears from time to time (even if, as in PC and TLB, it was only historically and not within living memory).
Should one accuse most amerindians because they too have no doctrines, temples, books, hymns etc? In this regard, some have said that Christians are all about "ortho-doxy" versus amerindians who focus on "ortho-praxy". The one is more interested in correct beliefs, whilst the other is focused on correct practice. Deism is not a religion, it is a philosophical construct. One belives in "deism" like one belives in the efficient market hypothesis at least insofar as there is no church to join, and no creed to recite. Strangely, the amerindian view is similar: nobody really cares WHAT you believe. So long as you behave yourself you will be well thought of.
Narnians do not have a religion, they have a cosmology. They share aspects of both christian and native. Recall, that the DO share a corpus of wisdom:
"...When Adams Flesh and Adam's bone
Sit at Caer Paravel enthroned..."
and the more evolved ones share a finely honed ethics. In any case, Lewis wasn't interested in doctrine, but as he says in mere christianity "I think god wants christians to be a certain kind of people." Thus the Narnia stories focus on that, and only tangentially on "What Narnians Belive." (to parody the focus of his non-fiction). To think in terms of allegory is I think a very limiting chain.
Middle Earth is a bit harder nut to crack without the silmarilion.
In any case, one cant "sneak true tales past the watchful uruloki at the sunday school door" unless one ACTUALLY SNEAKS.
God says in His word that (John 1:1c) "...the Word was God". God can not be separated from the Word. The Word can not be separated from Him.
I think it should be noted here that "the word" was an analogy of Christ; the verse properly reads "Jesus was with God, and Jesus was God."
As for the futility of applying deism to Narnia, I think our beloved Ransom said it very well:
Also, Lewis's understanding of Christ, echoed in the character of Aslan, was certainly not "Deist." This itself does not prove Deism(s) is/are wrong. But it is a reminder not to cast Lewis or the Chronicles as what they were not.
Whether or not deism is true in the real world, it is not true in Narnia. Narnia is at its heart an analogy of biblical stories and beliefs.
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It's late, so I don't have time to read all the posts, I just want to add this thought: Lewis may have not put in all sorts of religious practices because it would have distracted from the story. Also, from the mythical elements of the series. And one more thing, Narnia was not our world, they didn't have a Bible that told them "you should behave such and such". Rather, it was governed by magic.
Just my quick thoughts.
I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls
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I'm struggling to understand where in the books Lewis could have taken the time to have a good old fashioned camp meeting tent revival and Come to Jesus session without interrupting the narrative flow.
Exactly Bookwyrm... my point exactly. The point of the books were for him to have fun with his stories. Not give an inclusive review of theology. He wrote several other books for that. But even there he wrote that he did not consider himself an expert.
I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls
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