"Every real country is connected to Aslan's Country, if you travel far enough inwards they all meet." Did then Lewis really imagine Two Separate Worlds?
What an interesting question you ask, my friend! All the More so for the teasing . It's always a joy when I can draw an answer this sort of thing straight out of the threads of the story.
So our philosopher says there can be but one world whilst the Bishop insists God "could have - had he chosen".
But did Lewis create "a different world" really? In VODT, he writes that the pevensies had their own imaginary world, but unlike yours or mine, theirs was real, a place you could only reach "by magic". Now it so happens that from other clues we infer that you cannot get to Narnia from Earth via any ordinary kind of space ship,
no matter how "far" you travel, so it would seem the point is proven.
Yet in Last Battle, on the
other side of the stable door , Lucy is looking into the distant blue mountains on the verges of Aslan's Country when she notices that no matter how far you look, if you look very hard and carefully, you can see everything in perfect detail: every tree, twig, leaf, and blade of grass. Whereupon she notices that she can see her parents waving back at her from their flat somewhere in England. And Lewis states 'Every country- every Real Country, is connected to Aslan's Country:
if you travel far enough inwards, they all meet together. ' (paraphrase)
So then, did Lewis really "create a separate world"? Different yes, separate no.
More to the point, what are the Bishop and Philosopher REALLY asserting? (lastima- doe non ter o orixinal.)
Now unfortunately, our good Bishop did not provide footnotes (called marginalia in his day) we have not even any idea if the authors of these "errors" were classical, or natural philosophers, (or alchemists for that matter) physicians, theologians or what. Such things mattered less back then. The loss is that we cannot be sure of the supporting arguments, in order to better understand the idea.
Let me venture a guess. It is a matter of consubstantiality. If our philosopher says in this case it is impossible for God to make Two Molehills, it is doubtless because he perceives that this would require Two Moles - in this case it requires that God be two things separate, distinct - non-consubstantial. But surely God can be in two places at once? Yes, but that isnt what we're talking about. In short, our "heretical" philosopher perceives an absurdity:
that the Unity, or that the Absolute , must be a Duality in order that there truly be Two Worlds.
Then indeed "heaven and earth CANNOT be full of your Glory." The argument is a matter of some subtlety being a question of deep magic (and is not exactly Satisfactory in my mind either.) Now, this is only speculation on what they were talking about (and it would be imprudent to post an bench experiment on the internet for any careless fool of an Uncle Andrew to dabble in deep magic.)
In any case, Lewis neatly makes it into a paradox.
It only looks like two worlds, but it is the same Absolute that pervades in each, and each are therefore in communion with the other: different, but not separate, not apart, in fact quite unified.
(of course for argument's sake I am supposing that God/Aslan created a Narnia - Lewis only happened to write about it. I wont take up Heinlein's "world as myth" theory here.
Doubtless Mary Van Natten would like it very much if I did.)
