The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

It is not often that I sit in a cinema and see a movie trailer that convinces me immediately that the movie is a "must see". It did however happen when I saw the trailer to CS Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Already being a fan of Lewis' apologetic writings, I have only heard good things about his childrens fiction, especially his Chronicles of Narnia.

And so I read The Magician's Nephew, the first of the Chronicles. Next in line is TLTWATW. Suffice to say I am chomping at the bit to get to a theater on the 23rd December when the movie opens here. But Lewis and the upcoming move have not gone without their fair share of criticism.

Lewis wrote predominantly in the 1940s and 50s. These were times where the social conscience was turned towards issues of war, pain, death, family, society and moral obligation. Some of his works that characterise this time are the Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce. Even in Mere Christianity- a profoundly apologetic work - you can pick up how his context informed his writings i.e. his concept of marriage is very traditional. The role of women is also distinctly 50's-ish. Hence Lewis has been criticised for being racist, misogynistic and prejudicial.

For me, this raises the issue of timelessness and applicability of post-biblical Christian writings. The assumption, by and large, of biblical writings is that their application to our context is timeless i.e. what was written then, into a specific historical context, is particluar to our context today - bar some allocation for changes in history. But how can we assume this when it is so clear that post-biblical writings need to be read while keeping in mind that the context may not apply to us. What makes the biblical texts different. I can't accpet the argument that it is because they were Spirit inspired - is the same not true of post-biblical writings? And if a context does not apply to us, how do we glean wisdom and insight from the content?

At a deeper level I suppose this is about what makes up canonical writing and what doesn't.