Tool Alpha
C. S. Lewis’s Cosmology
Where Lewis’s heavens follow Scripture, where they come from the medieval picture of the cosmos, and where he made them up.
Emeth
A Calormene who served Tash all his life finds himself welcomed by Aslan. Lewis's most debated scene.
Acts 10:34-35, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: can someone who served a false god in good faith be accepted by the true one? The letter was addressed wrong but delivered anyway. Aslan tells Emeth that good service done in Tash's name was really done to him. Lewis wrote it that way on purpose, and readers have argued about it ever since.
Emeth asks Aslan whether it is true that he and Tash are one. Aslan says it is false, and that because they are opposites he takes Emeth's services to Tash as done to himself: no service which is vile can be done to Aslan, and none which is not vile can be done to Tash. An oath kept for the oath's sake, sworn by Tash, was truly sworn by Aslan. A cruelty done in Aslan's name is accepted by Tash.
Peter tells Cornelius that God shows no partiality, but in every nation the one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him (Acts 10:34-35). Cornelius, though, is then told about Christ and believes. Scripture elsewhere ties salvation to knowing Christ (Acts 4:12).
Lewis's own. The scene works out his view that Aslan judges the heart's direction rather than the label.
This is where Lewis goes furthest beyond the text, and many readers who love Narnia think he went too far. The entry is filed as Lewis's own for that reason.
Not the Ape's claim. Aslan explicitly denies that he and Tash are one. Emeth is accepted because Tash and Aslan are opposites, not because they are the same.
- Lewis, The Last Battle (1956), ch. 15
