It has been some time since I have heard expositional preaching from the Old Testament, so “Face to Face with Consuming Fire” from Exodus 19 was a real blessing. After sharing the story of the children of Israel at Sinai, Tim showed the continuities and contrasts with Mount Zion drawn by the author of Hebrews 12.

I was also impressed by the beautiful prose of Scripture. Hebrews 12: 23b-24 (ESV):

God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, ²⁴and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

Isn’t that a beautiful phrase? The language is the same, which speaks to the continuity of man’s need for something transposed between him and divinity. But the blood of Abel declares our guilt whereas the blood of Christ declares us righteous!

PS – An interesting aside: I find the choice of “better word” (ESV), or “speaks better things” (NKJV), fascinating. God spoke the world into existence. His word speaks our salvation. It reminds me of the concept of “true names,” the idea that there are words that have power because they correspond with the underlying real nature of a thing. Examples abound in contemporary fiction, like Ursula LeGuin and The Wizard of Earthsea or CS Lewis and The Great Divorce, but the idea is really much older. The Plato’s Cave analogy portrays a world behind the world, that what we see as real is really just the shadow of reality. True reality is a transcendant, eternal form.

This concept fits perfectly with Scripture. When Paul writes to the Greeks at Corinth he used the language of Plato to say that on earth we but “see through a glass, darkly.” But once we transcend this world of shadows to the realm of true forms and see Him, “we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (I John 3:2). Heavenly reality, the true form, will transform us instantly.

After the evening service Dr. Michael Ward of Cambridge presented his dissertation work on the Chronicles of Narnia, recently published as Planet Narnia by Oxford University. Dr. Ward’s presentation was flawless and his evidence compelling. He titled the talk “Imagining God: CS Lewis and the Seven Heavens.”

Ward’s premise is that CS Lewis organized the seven books of the Chronicles of Narnia around a hidden theme. Lewis scholars have long posited a variety of themes, including the popular Christological motif with Aslan as the Christ figure and the tales organized as the story of redemption. The principle problem with a strictly Christological organization is that Aslan only directly appears in three of the books and has to share time with Father Christmas, dryads, nymphs, and other mythological creatures.

Ward’s epiphany came while reading a book of Lewis’s collected poems. He came to the Jupiter section from ‘The Planets’ and read the phrase, “Of wrath ended and woes mended, of winter passed, and guilt forgiven.” Realizing that he had heard that line before, in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Ward looked closer and found overwhelming evidence that Lewis had organized the seven books of the Chronicles around the seven heavens of the old geocentric cosmology.

Each book corresponds with one of the seven planets. In medieval and renaissance cosmology the planets were named after gods and assigned personalities. Lewis was an expert in medieval and renaissance literature and often lectured on the practice known as transferred classicism. Renaissance authors commonly used mythological figures and stories to illustrate Biblical truths. Lewis’s books were meant to illustrate different aspects of God’s character through transferred pagan and classical symbols.

Ward’s work should make literary scholars rethink the literary quality of Lewis’s work. The Chronicles had been considered something of a hodge-podge before, but a unifying theme tying in medieval cosmology should raise Lewis’s literary stock considerably.

I am not a literary critic by any stretch of the imagination, but his argument was so masterfully presented that Michael, Scott, and I were enrapt the entire time. All you literary scholar friends of mine (Lincoln, Abby, Jessica, and Timmy, I am talking to you) should check this book out. I also believe the argument clear enough to be understandable and enjoyable for the layman(myself) who enjoys literature.

For more information about Michael Ward and Planet Narnia here is his website: www.planetnarnia.com