New!
Author resources • Lorehaven Guild
Podcast sponsors • Subscribe for free
Crew manifest Faith statement FAQs
All author resources Lorehaven Guild Subscribe for free

The Chase
Book Quests, Apr 1, 2023

Once Upon a Ren Faire
Reviews, Mar 31, 2023

How to Disciple Your Kids With Dangerous Books
Ticia Messing in Articles, Mar 30, 2023

Library

Find fantastical Christian novels

fantasy · sci-fi · and beyond
middle grade · teens + YA · adults
All novels Search Add a novel
Enhanced, Candace Kade
Bear Knight, James R. Hannibal
The Wayward, Tabitha Caplinger
Fortified, V. Romas Burton
Canaan Sleeps, Daniel Camomile
Silver Bounty, Victoria McCombs
A Sword for the Immerland King, F. W. Faller
Calor, J. J. Fisher
Once Upon A Ren Faire, A. C. Castillo
The Genesis 6 Project, Michael Ferguson
Exile, Loren G. Warnemuende
Aberration, Cathy McCrumb
The Truth Beyond the Lies, Kathleen Bird
Frost, Winter's Lonely Guardian, E. E. Rawls
Podcast

Get the Fantastical Truth podcast

Podcast sponsors | Subscribe links
Archives Feedback

155. How Might Sentimentalism Threaten Christian Fiction?
Fantastical Truth, Mar 28, 2023

154. What If You Had to Fake Being Genetically Modified? | Enhanced with Candace Kade
Fantastical Truth, Mar 21, 2023

153. When Can Deconstructionism Threaten Christian Fiction? | with Michael Young aka ‘Wokal Distance’
Fantastical Truth, Mar 14, 2023

152. How Can Christian Fantasy Fans Heal from Church Trauma? | with Marian Jacobs and L. G. McCary
Fantastical Truth, Mar 7, 2023

151. How Can Fantastical Satire Sharpen Our Theology? | The Pilgrim’s Progress Reloaded with David Umstattd
Fantastical Truth, Feb 28, 2023

150. Is the U.S. Government Covering Up Spy Balloons or Alien Spaceships? | with James R. Hannibal
Fantastical Truth, Feb 21, 2023

Quests

Join our monthly digital book quests.

Lorehaven Guild Faith statement FAQs
Reviews

Find fantastical Christian reviews

All reviews Request review
Gifts

Find new gifts for Christian fans

Archives

The original SpecFaith: est. 2006

Speculative Faith | archives

Lorehaven issues (2018–2020)

Order back issues online!
New
Library
Podcast
Quests
Reviews
Gifts
Archives
Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
Subscribe free to Lorehaven
/ SpecFaith /

C. S. Lewis and Sub-creation

Lewis and Tolkien both claimed that fantasy could reveal Truth in a way that reality fiction could not.
Rebecca LuElla Miller on Oct 22, 2018
6 comments

In memory of C. S. Lewis and the upcoming 55th anniversary of his death on November 22, 1963, I am re-posting this article (and others) featuring an aspect of his writing.

Much misinformation abounds in regard to C. S. Lewis and his intentional inclusion of Christian allusions and themes in his fiction, particularly in The Chronicles of Narnia. For example, in an otherwise excellent article published at Breakpoint [and no longer available], Richard Doster wrote in “A Lost Art,” the following:

When Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, he had no theological agenda. There was no ulterior, evangelistic motive; he simply hoped to create likable stories. But the man’s worldview was as elemental to him as blood and bone. And his characters, plots, symbols, and themes are—unavoidably—products of it.

Actually this statement misrepresents Lewis’s position. Certainly, he stated clearly he was not intending to write an allegory when he penned The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. And Lewis thoroughly understood allegory. After all, his first work of fiction was Pilgrim’s Regress, an imitation in style of John Bunyan’s definitive allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress.

But between allegory and no intentional evangelistic motive lies considerable territory, and I believe Lewis made it clear, along with J. R. R. Tolkien, that he was aiming for neither extreme. From a Wikipedia article on mythopoeia:

Lewis’s mythopoeic intent is often confused with allegory, where the characters and world of Narnia would stand in direct equivalence with concepts and events from Christian theology and history, but Lewis repeatedly emphasized that an allegorical reading misses the point (the mythopoeia) of the Narnia stories.

The key here is that Lewis did write with intention, just not allegorical intention. Too many voices today in writing circles assume that his statements to debunk the idea that The Chronicles of Narnia were allegorical consequently mean he had no “ulterior evangelistic motive” or “theological agenda.” And therefore, no intentional purpose at all except to write “likable stories.”

Actually he intended to write a great deal more. He and Tolkien both claimed that fantasy could reveal Truth in a way that reality fiction could not.

So what was his intention?

According to Bill Smith, Director of the C. S. Lewis Institute, Lewis utilized what he termed “supposal.” From the C. S. Lewis article in Wikipedia:

His most famous works, the Chronicles of Narnia, contain many strong Christian messages and are often considered allegory. Lewis, an expert on the subject of allegory, maintained that the books were not allegory, and preferred to call the Christian aspects of them “suppositional”. As Lewis wrote in a letter to a Mrs. Hook in December 1958:

    If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair [a character in The Pilgrim’s Progress] represents despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality however he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, ‘What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?’ This is not allegory at all. (Martindale & Root 1990)

The idea, then, was not to disguise Christianity, as some suggest. But neither did Lewis include Christian messages and allusions unintentionally on the way to writing an entertaining story. Rather, he simply asked, “Suppose …” Suppose God would come in incarnate form to this world, what would that look like, what would that mean?

My questions. Where are the stories today, written using supposal? And since the Chronicles of Narnia remain so popular sixty plus years after they first came out, shouldn’t we in the publishing industry want to find many more stories written with supposal intent? Because apparently, readers still want to read them.

Rebecca LuElla Miller
Best known for her aspirations as an epic fantasy author, Becky is the sole remaining founding member of Speculative Faith. Besides contributing weekly articles here, she blogs Monday through Friday at A Christian Worldview of Fiction. She works as a freelance writer and editor and posts writing tips as well as information about her editing services at Rewrite, Reword, Rework.
Website ·
  1. Shannon Dittemore says:
    October 22, 2018 at 1:58 pm

    Fantastic thoughts here! And yes! Where are the supposal stories? I do think they’re being written. Whether they find an audience or not is another discussion altogether.

    Reply
    • Rebecca LuElla Miller says:
      October 25, 2018 at 12:11 pm

      Shannon, finding the audience is definitely a significant element in the process. Which books do you have in mind?

      Becky

      Reply
  2. Autumn Grayson says:
    October 22, 2018 at 4:49 pm

    I have a somewhat hard time answering this because I haven’t really looked into the supposal thing very much. I don’t really think a lot of people are writing straight up allegory, though. In fact, I think a lot of people try to make stories that vaguely feel like Narnia since that’s what they know and love. So from that standpoint, a lot of people are writing supposals. But maybe in some cases people might stay so much in the Narnia paradigm that their story doesn’t stand out on its own as much as it could.

    I don’t think I really write allegory much, or at least not in the sense of making the entire story an allegory. What tends to happen is that I come up with a world/character/what if scenario/etc. and try to figure out how it would realistically function. God, Christianity, etc. are usually one of the elements involved, whether or not those things actually appear in the story(the universe a story takes place in might have God, but sometimes characters won’t encounter him). From the standpoint of using what if scenarios like Lewis did, I guess my stories are supposals?

    At the same time, though, some of my characters and stuff do exist to represent and discuss things. One of my stories uses a Faust-like premise, and the main female character in that has a fully fleshed out personality and character arc, so she feels like an actual person. At the same time, she somewhat does represent humans and their relationship with God. But I don’t think she’s actually going to be an allegory to those things, mainly instead just following a lot of the patterns of behavior that humans have in their relationship with God, and thus she can be useful for opening up conversations about those matters?

    I don’t know. You can tell me if all that sounds like an allegory, supposal or a mix. But I think maybe a lot of modern Christian fiction stories might be a mix. The Dragons In Our Midst series seems like one, at any rate.

    Reply
    • Rebecca LuElla Miller says:
      October 25, 2018 at 12:22 pm

      Autumn, I think mix is a good way to describe it. I don’t recall, for example, Christianity existing in Narnia. Rather, Lewis supposed Christ to come to a world with talking animals as the King of the animals, a Lion.

      I don’t think Davis does any supposal in his Dragons in Our Midst. He simply invented the equivalent of hell (Circle of Seven, for example), and took characters through experiences in which they had to defeat evil.

      I think allegory might actually becoming more popular again. A client of mine has written a four book series of allegory, right from the mold of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. His name is Walter Cantrell, and the first book is Disciple’s Quest. Here’s the link if you’re interested. https://www.amazon.com/Disciples-Quest-Adventure-Walter-Cantrell-ebook/dp/B017MBVZEE/

      Then not so long ago in a Facebook group, I saw a couple others who have written allegories, too. I’m glad that this genre is coming out of the mothballs.

      Becky

      Reply
  3. Rachel says:
    October 26, 2018 at 12:05 pm

    Your post makes me think of a letter featured in a kids biography of Lewis where he states what each book is about and how it is a supposition if another word fell like ours how Christ would go and save it. I copied it here:

    The Magician’s Nephew tells the Creation and how evil entered Narnia
    The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe tells the Crucifixion and Resurrection
    Prince Caspian tells the Restoration of the true religion after a corruption
    The Horse and His Boy tells the calling and conversion of a heathen
    The Voyage of the Dawn Treader tells of spiritual life (especially in Reepicheep)
    The Silver Chair tells of the continued war against the powers of darkness
    The Last Battle tells of the coming of the Anti-Christ (The Ape) the end of the world and the last judgement.

    Reply
    • Rebecca LuElla Miller says:
      October 26, 2018 at 12:42 pm

      Love that, Rachel. Thanks.

      Becky

      Reply

What do you think? Cancel reply

  • Holidays And CelebrationsHolidays And Celebrations
  • Randy Alcorn on Story, Courage, and The New Earth, Part 1Randy Alcorn on Story, Courage, and The New Earth, Part 1
  • Speculative Faith Reading Group 8: The Stone TableSpeculative Faith Reading Group 8: The Stone Table
  • The Last Battle, C.S. LewisRefuting Universalism Slanders Of C.S. Lewis, Part 2
Lorehaven magazine, spring 2020

Wear the wonder:
Get exclusive shirts and beyond

Listen to Lorehaven’s podcast

Authors and publishers:
Reach new fans with Lorehaven

Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
Website · Facebook · Instagram · Twitter