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.
Thulcandra, the silent planet
Earth is the one world whose ruler went bent, was bound in its air, and was cut off from the rest of the heavens.
Ephesians 2:2, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: is Lewis's picture of Earth as a planet under a rebel ruler just a story, or does it come from somewhere? A town under occupation goes quiet on the radio. No messages in, none out. Everyone else on the network knows something has gone wrong there. That is Thulcandra, the silent planet. Where Lewis got each piece of it is what the boxes below sort out.
The Oyarsa of Malacandra tells Ransom that Earth is "the world we do not know." Its own Oyarsa was once brighter and greater than he, became bent before any life came on Earth, tried to spoil other worlds, and was driven back in a great war and bound in the air of his own world. Since then no message comes from it. The other worlds have heard stories that Maleldil has wrestled with the Bent One there.
The New Testament calls Satan the ruler of this world (John 12:31), the god of this age who blinds unbelievers (2 Corinthians 4:4), and the ruler of the authority of the air (Ephesians 2:2). Jesus's ministry is presented as an invasion of occupied ground. Lewis's detail of the Bent One bound in the air of his own world sits close to Ephesians 2:2. That pairing is drawn here; the novel does not cite the verse.
Lewis said in Mere Christianity that Christianity sees this world as enemy-occupied territory, a part of the universe held by a rebel, which is the same idea in prose. The planetary dress, a ruler per planet, is from the medieval model; see the entry on the Oyarsa.
The silence, the quarantine and the timing are Lewis's. Scripture does not say Earth is cut off from the rest of the heavens, and the Bent One's attacks on the moon and Mars are pure invention.
Not a claim that Lewis read Heiser's sources. He reached a cosmos with a rebel ruler over Earth through medieval cosmology and the New Testament, not through Ugaritic or the Dead Sea Scrolls reading of Deuteronomy 32.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/divine-council-index\/deuteronomy-32-8-9\/","n":"Deuteronomy 32:8-9","s":"The Most High divided the nations, and the number He divided them by is where the whole argument turns.","r":"Deuteronomy 32:8-9"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/divine-council-index\/daniel-10-13-20-21\/","n":"Daniel 10:13, 20-21","s":"A prince of Persia resists for twenty-one days, a prince of Greece is coming, and Michael fights for Israel.","r":"Daniel 10:13, 20-21"}
- C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Bodley Head, 1938), ch. 18
- Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952), Book 2, ch. 2, The Invasion
