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.
The Un-man
Weston arrives on Perelandra and something else is wearing him. Lewis's tempter argues tirelessly and wins by attrition.
Genesis 3:1-5, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: what does a tempter actually do? A salesman who never gets tired and never takes no. Lewis's Un-man talks to the Lady day after day. How closely his method follows the serpent in Genesis 3 is the question.
Ransom watches Weston's body move as if an outside force were managing it, an imitation of living motion that lacks the master touch, and names it the Un-man, a managed corpse. It talks to the Lady day after day. Ransom finds it ripping open small frogs, slowly, almost surgically. When it finally speaks to Ransom it pronounces his name, and when he answers, it says, "Nothing."
In Genesis 3 the serpent begins with a question that distorts the command and then contradicts the penalty. Paul fears the Corinthians will be led astray as the serpent deceived Eve by its cunning, and warns that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:3, 14).
The tactics are Genesis 3. The possession of a human body draws on the Gospels' accounts of demons inhabiting people.
The Un-man's tirelessness and its torture of animals are Lewis's additions, made to show that what wears down the Lady is persistence, not brilliance.
Not a talking snake. Lewis deliberately puts the tempter in a human body to remove any cartoon from the scene.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/divine-council-index\/genesis-3-1-15\/","n":"Genesis 3:1-15","s":"The nachash in the garden, and the sentence passed on it.","r":"Genesis 3:1-15"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/divine-council-index\/ephesians-6-10-12\/","n":"Ephesians 6:10-12","s":"The struggle is not against flesh and blood but against rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers.","r":"Ephesians 6:10-12"}
- Lewis, Perelandra (1943), chs. 9-11
