QUESTIONS ABOUT ASLAN

[AnimalOfNarnia]

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[The Rose-Tree Dryad]

When we first meet Aslan in LLW, he's described as having a crown. What's with this? Doesn't his status as a leader show just from the fact that he's a lion? Or does he indeed wear crowns and robes, or other sorts of royal clothes, on occasion?

Well, his father is the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea (sometimes also referred to as the Emperor-Over-the-Sea), and he's "royalty" in the sense of being an emperor. It would make sense that Aslan might wear a crown because of that. Still, I have a hard time imagining him wearing robes.

t the end of the series it's said that Aslan "no longer looks like a lion". This is really sad, because...well, that's what he is, or at least what I always think of him as. I don't want to get too religious here but I don't really like seeing him as Jesus, since he is not a human. Yet, I've heard there have been suggestions that he takes the human form of Jesus. I don't want to be sacriligious but I don't like this idea, because, well, he looks so much better as the Lion he is!

There's really no way for us to know exactly what happens at that point. There is the famous "There I have another name" line in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and a lot of people think that refers to Jesus Christ, and with good reason, I'd say. Even so, if Aslan appeared to the Friends of Narnia as Jesus Christ, that doesn't really mean that he's not Aslan anymore or really a Lion. In this imagined universe where a Son of God is sent to save multiple worlds, I would think that he would be Aslan (and a Lion) just as much as he is Jesus and a Man. They're both aspects of the same being. Does that make sense?

Like I said, though, we have no idea what happened next in that particular scene. It's possible he was turning into the Lamb from Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Still, it makes sense to me that Aslan would appear to the Friends of Narnia as Jesus Christ because that would be confirmation of Jesus being his "other name."

I know these are a lot of questions; I didn't originally intend for them to all be in one topic. Aslan is my favorite, though. After seeing him in the movies and re-reading about him in the books, I realized how amazing he is.

He is a truly great character in literature.

[Dr_Cornelius]

It's intriguing that Lewis says he "no longer looks like a lion", since he takes such pains to prove that Aslan *is* a real lion, and not merely a spirit using a lion-ish appearance. The idea that Aslan isn't *really* a lion is exactly the kind of prideful theory that Bree (who early in *The Horse and His Boy* declares that he "can't bear--those creatures"--he can't even call them "lions" because of how deep his contempt is) entertains, and Aslan refutes him quite forcefully. Another thread here discusses how Aslan says he has eaten whole realms in *The Silver Chair*, and how this goes to prove further that Aslan is a real lion who derives sustenance from eating flesh and blood (or, at least, who is capable of eating flesh and blood; he may not *need* them for sustenance, but he is certainly capable of consuming them physically).

So why does Aslan no longer look like a lion at the end of *The Last Battle*? Probably for the same reason he resembles a lamb at the end of *The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*. I've often wondered what was different about Aslan after his resurrection; in what way was he *better* than before. Did he simply come back in the exact state he was in before he felt the blade of the Stone Knife? LWW mentions that he looked bigger after his resurrection, but PC also tells us that Aslan gets bigger as the kids grow older (or, probably, more *mature*), so that's not necessarily an objective change.

I have a bit of a theory that draws on Christian theology. The Catholic Catechism states in a section titled "The condition of Christ's risen humanity,":

By means of touch and the sharing of a meal, the risen Jesus establishes direct contact with his disciples. He invites them in this way to recognize that he is not a ghost and above all to verify that the risen body in which he appears to them is the same body that had been tortured and crucified, for it still bears the traces of his Passion. Yet at the same time this authentic, real body possesses the new properties of a glorious body: not limited by space and time but able to be present how and when he wills; for Christ's humanity can no longer be confined to earth, and belongs henceforth only to the Father's divine realm. For this reason too the risen Jesus enjoys the sovereign freedom of appearing as he wishes: in the guise of a gardener or in other forms familiar to his disciples, precisely to awaken their faith.

Jesus still has a human body, and the same human body as he possessed before, but now it is a glorified body which can transcend space and time and manifest itself in different ways--including, for a Catholic (or an Anglican, like Lewis), the appearances of bread and wine in the Eucharist. I think the same would apply to Aslan: After rising again after his execution, Aslan can control when and how he appears, even though he still possesses the body of a lion; it's just a *glorified* lion's body now. This could also explain why he can appear to some people but not others in *Prince Caspian* and seem to bilocate when chasing two horses, or change into the appearance of a small cat, in *The Horse and His Boy*. He is still a lion, but now, like Jesus, "enjoys the sovereign freedom of appearing as he wishes", "able to be present how and when he wills."

Does the lion Aslan transform into the human body of Jesus at the end of *The Last Battle*? Maybe...Christian theology affirms that the Second Person of the Trinity will always have his human body, but there's no indication in the Chronicles of Narnia that Aslan always needs to be Aslan. At the end of Narnia's chronology, could the Son of God abandon the lion body and appear in his human Incarnation? "The dream is over."

I'll need to think about this more; there's probably a lot of insights about theophanies and christophanies you could bring to bear on this question. Thanks for sparking these thoughts!

[PhelanVelvel]

Personally, if Aslan is a divine entity, I don't think there would be anything particularly meaningful about switching from lion to human. There is nothing particularly special or divine (in my perspective) about the human form. I interpret that portion of The Last Battle more that Aslan has ceased to rely on a physical incarnation and has instead become an entity without need for describable form. Now, Lewis may well have intended to mean that Aslan has become human, implying that Aslan has "become" or revealed himself as Jesus...I can't say for sure. I like him best as a lion, too, but if he does have to lose his lion shape I would rather he didn't turn into a human and rather transcend the physical plane.

[The Rose-Tree Dryad]

Interesting thoughts!

Something else that occurred to me is that maybe he no longer looked like a lion because he had fulfilled the purpose of that form. His claws and his jaws, for instance, are often associated with discipline and punishment throughout the course of the series. Now that the Friends of Narnia were in Aslan's Country and they had shed their dragonskins, so to speak, perhaps there was no more need for Aslan to have a form associated with power and ferocity. And since the Lion is the king of beasts, it also makes me think of this verse in Corinthians 15. Maybe doing away with Aslan's fearsome form was part of giving his power back to the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea, now that the old Narnia is no more and everything how now been made subject to Aslan. It's a possibility, anyway.