Letters to Malcolm and the trouble with Narnia: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their 1949 crisis

Mythlore, Fall-Winter, 2007 by Eric Seddon

Letters to Malcolm is unique in Lewis's output; so much that it may be rightly considered his last theological will and testament. It is the work of an older man--one who had chosen to shy away from the public debates of his middle age only to find that the nostalgia for battle remained. But nostalgia is selective: it seeks to relive only the more pleasant emotions associated with former trials, while avoiding the realities of actual hardship or suffering. Thus, while in Malcolm Lewis would reinvent a verbal battle reminiscent of his middle age, this one would be different. Being nostalgic, the constructed debate would be entirely safe. To accomplish this he would dictate the topics, inventing his own, less intelligent sparring partner, named Malcolm, as his foil. By casting him as an old friend in no danger of falling out with him (a sort of theological Watson to his own Holmes), Lewis could set the limits of the debate entirely himself. And as both the prosecution and the defense, able to fictionalize both parties' reactions to the argument posed, Lewis would have complete control. The end result is remarkable: such is the magic of fiction that this most relaxed, conversational, and open-ended book, in style and appearance, is actually Lewis's most sectarian and antagonistic in substance--a fact that would not have been lost on Tolkien or any other reflective Catholic of his generation.

In this carefully balanced literary structure, which is a monologue cast as one side of a dialogue, we find Lewis's most overtly Anglican work. It is filled with theological barbs--most of them aimed at Roman Catholicism. As such it provides us with the very clearest contrast between his and Tolkien's beliefs. Reading the book from the Roman Catholic perspective of Tolkien, it is not difficult to glean what aspects of it might have distressed and even horrified him. When investigated, they shed light on Tolkien's permanent rejection of Narnia, but before delving fully into these, it is important to show just how much of a break Letters to Malcolm was from Lewis's usual style.

As a lay theologian and writer of apologetics, Lewis's general approach was to focus only on those doctrines that most Christians of his day held in common. He referred to this as 'Mere' Christianity, which operated not on the principle that such a discussion could function, in itself, as a religion, but that it would lead a person into one of the various denominations. 'Mere' Christianity was therefore explained by Lewis as being a sort of hallway in God's mansion--he allegorized the various denominations as the rooms themselves, suggesting that the hallway was no place for a soul to rest, but rather a passageway toward a more substantial goal (Lewis, Mere Christianity 11.) The approach of discussing only what he felt common to all Christian perspectives was maintained by Lewis not only in public, but privately, with only very few exceptions. The testimony of those who knew him are firm on this point. For example, when his friend Alan Griffiths (Dom Bede Griffiths after converting to Roman Catholicism) wanted to debate the differences between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, Lewis refused to engage. Griffiths was confused, as they had always argued theological matters openly--indeed, argument had aided each others' conversions from atheism. Yet Lewis was unequivocal: he would neither debate nor speak on the subject (Collected Letters Vol. II 135). This is fairly typical of Lewis's treatment of the subject (though, to be honest, there are some exceptions to be found in the Collected Letters--usually in regards to the differences between Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism). In terms of his working theory, however, Lewis summed up his position most succinctly in "Christian Reunion: An Anglican speaks to Roman Catholics" thus: