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Bret van den Brink
Dr. Monika B. Hilder
ENGL 391
1 December 2021
Harrowing the Witch’s Castle: Reading the Soteriology of Narnia with Gregory of Nyssa
In his apologetic and theological works, C.S. Lewis tends to stick to “mere Christianity,”
avoiding the brambles of interdenominational disputes. In his fiction, however, he allows himself
greater freedom to explore controversial ideas—a prime example of such is the nature of Aslan’s
sacrifice in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Although a children’s novel, and not an
allegory of one-to-one correspondence, the closing chapters of the novel constitute a careful
meditation on the Atonement. As the very mechanism of salvation, it is one of the most hotly
disputed issues in theology; and, as Charles Taliaferro persuasively argues, Lewis favours a
Ransom Theory of the Atonement, also known as the Christus Victor model (75-77). This essay
will not examine the metaphysical issues involved in soteriology, for even Lewis cannot be
expected to give a satisfactory account of the hypostatic union in a children’s novel, but rather it
shall examine the narrative of salvation that the novel presents. In particular, this study will
examine the interactions between Aslan and the White Witch in light of the entangled
soteriological concepts of divine deception and the harrowing of Hell as they appear in the works
of the fourth-century Greek Church Father Gregory of Nyssa. Engaging with these ideas through
the medium of fantasy, Lewis awakens wonder in the impoverished and demythologized
imaginations of his modern audience members, reinstating the cosmic dimension that the
doctrine of salvation held for its patristic hearers.

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To begin this essay, it will be useful to establish the degree of Lewis’ familiarity with
Gregory of Nyssa, particularly as demonstrable in his writings before 1950, the year in which
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was published. His general knowledge of Late Antiquity,
approximately coterminous with the patristic period, is immense, as a consultation of the indexes
of his academic works would show. As a student he studied “Christian Greek,” reading the
works of Athanasius and other Church Fathers (“On the Reading of Old Books” 224). Though
there are other patristic ransom theorists of whom Lewis’ familiarity is more demonstrable, such
as Irenaeus, Origen, and Athanasius, this study primarily uses Gregory of Nyssa’s works because
he “discusses with especial fullness this subject of Christ’s dealings with the devil” (Aulén 48).
Though I am unable to find any direct reference to Gregory of Nyssa in Lewis’ works, there are a
few that point to his familiarity with the author. Firstly, in Poetry and Prose in the Sixteenth
Century, finished in 1953 but started years earlier, existing in an “embryonic state” in 1944,
Lewis comments on the quality of Thomas Cranmer’s translations of John Chrysostom and
Gregory Nazianzus (v; 195). This latter author is closely associated with Gregory of Nyssa; both
theologians are members of a group known as the Cappadocian Fathers whose fame derives from
their defence of Nicene orthodoxy. Secondly, in The Discarded Image (admittedly, published
long after the novel) Lewis discusses John Scotus Eriugena’s translations from Greek into Latin,
and Gregory of Nyssa is one of the authors whom he translates (70). Thirdly, there is the
coincidence that Lewis wrote the novel during a surge in scholarly interest in Gregory of Nyssa’s
works (Ludlow 170). Fourthly, if by no other means, Lewis is certainly familiar with Gregory of
Nyssa’s theory of atonement through secondary sources, including Gustaf Aulén’s influential
study Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement
which he references in a 1942 letter (L2, 529). Considered together, these factors make it certain

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that Lewis was familiar with Gregory of Nyssa’s theory of atonement when he wrote the novel,
and it is probable that he read some of the works of Gregory himself, or at least works situated in
the same tradition.
Among the Church Fathers, it is generally accepted that Christ’s sacrifice was a ransom
for a sinful humanity which, according to eternal justice merits death, but who the ransom was
offered to is disputed: the general contenders were the Devil, Death, and the Father (Aulén 33).
In Gregory of Nyssa’s thought, Christ deceives the devil not by lying to him, but by using the
Prince of Lies’ tendency towards misjudgement resultant from his adherence to untruth. Blinded
by arrogance and greed, the devil thought that Christ had limited his divinity in becoming
incarnate, and so “he hoped that if he came to take hold of [Christ’s] flesh through death, then he
would take hold of the power contained in it” (qtd. in Alfeyev 63). Yet, the devil was mistaken,
and rather than taking Christ’s power over life, “life would come to dwell in death” (From Glory
to Glory 15). For Gregory of Nyssa, the ransom was a way to breach Death’s kingdom in a way
that agrees both with God’s eternal justice and that involved the devil’s cooperation.
In Lewis’ novel, God’s justice is portrayed as “the Deep Magic” (134). The Witch
explains that according to this magic, “[E]very traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and for
every treachery I have a right to a kill” (142). At this point in the novel, this means that
Edmund’s life is “forfeit” to the Witch; as she says, “His blood is my property” (142). According
to this Deep Magic, even Aslan cannot “rob” the Witch of her “rights by mere force,” for if he
did “all Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water” (142). Gregory of Nyssa makes
precisely this point when he writes that “there was a kind of necessity for him [Christ] not to
proceed by way of force, but to accomplish our deliverance in a lawful way” (Aulén 49).

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On this point Jay Ruud draws a dichotomy between a “Devil’s Rights theory of the
atonement” and Anselm’s substitutionary theory of atonement, contending that Lewis concurs
with the latter in critiquing the former for the reasons that God could “simply forgive human sin
and ignore his own justice” and that “the devil could have no rights, since there was no justice on
his side” (19-20). Ruud’s mistake here is threefold. First, he fails to distinguish a ransom theory
in which the ransom is offered to the devil with one in which the ransom is given over to the
Father. Secondly, neither God (at least as he was conceived from the patristic era through the
high Middle Ages) nor Aslan could “ignore his own justice”: God, omniscient, omnipotent, and
omnibenevolent is the perfect subsistence of goodness and to “ignore his own justice” would
entail a logical contradiction. Thirdly, the Witch can be understood to have rights, not from her
justice but from her residence in Narnia, a universe whose justice is founded by the Emperor
Beyond the Sea. These nuances must be kept in mind when determining which model of
atonement the novel most-closely aligns with, particularly in areas where differing theories are
quite similar.
Like Gregory of Nyssa’s understanding of the devil, the Witch is blinded by her greed
and makes the deal to exchange Aslan’s life for Edmund’s with “fierce joy” (144). She
recognizes that the deal will “appease” the Deep Magic, but quickly oversteps the bounds of the
deal when she says, “[W]hen you are dead what will prevent me from killing him as well? And
who will take him out of my hand then? Understand that you have given me Narnia forever, you
have lost your own life and you have not saved his. In that knowledge, despair and die” (155).
Though the Witch recognizes the authority of the Emperor to some degree, she envisions Aslan
as being of like power to herself and therefore vulnerable to usurpation.

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Of course, the Witch is wrong about this point; she is merely a creature, and Aslan is in
some sense co-equal with the Emperor as Christ is co-equal with the Father. The Witch’s
“knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time,” but if she like Aslan had access to the
Emperor’s eternal counsels, she would have seen “a magic deeper still” which dictates that
“when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table
would crack and Death itself would start working backwards” (163). As the veil in the Jewish
temple was torn asunder upon Christ’s death, so Narnia’s Stone Table is cracked into two pieces;
as the Old Testament is Fulfilled in the New Testament, so the Deep Magic is fulfilled in Deeper
Magic (163). As in Gregory’s soteriology wherein Christ achieves his victory by manipulating
the devil’s blinding greed, so Aslan achieves his by using the Witch’s greed against herself.
Another feature of Lewis’ portrayal of Aslan’s dealings with the Witch merits note.
Contemporary religious studies have a tendency towards demythologization, desiring to scrape
away the fantastical elements, such as the early Church’s universal presupposition that God and
the devil are personal agencies, to uncover the story’s essential kernel of truth. Lewis’ tale
pushes back against this. The shell is the necessary bearer of the truth. By giving Aslan and the
Witch, in place of Christ and the devil, such personal agency in the novel’s soteriological scenes,
he restores something of the mythic element underlying the doctrine of atonement. Furthermore,
Lewis’ chosen medium of fantasy allows the reader who is unwilling to accept either these
mythic elements or these doctrines to engage with them at an emotional and imaginative level.
Another element in Lewis’ work that engages the religious and irreligious reader alike is
the perennially-accessible image of seasonal change. The winter and spring of Narnia are
grounded on the idea of seasons being the archetypal images of the Fall and the Redemption. In
the classical world this cycle is reflected in the myth of Demeter’s mourning as her daughter

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annually descends into Hades, and inheriting such a mythological idiom, this idea finds similar
expression in the Church Fathers. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, describes the postlapsarian
world as a “winter of disobedience” when “the love of God was chilled by repeated sin” (From
Glory to Glory 188). But, through the Incarnation there “came One Who brought spring to our
souls,” and under his guidance “[o]ur nature began once again to blossom and reveal its beauty
with its own flowers” (189). Though rarely conscious of these archetypal narratives of the
seasons, modern readers still experience the sensuous dying and resurrection of the world.
Reprising this archetypal pattern, Lewis has Aslan arrive at the height of winter, at Christmas,
the time when Christ’s incarnation is celebrated; his arrival marks the turn towards spring and
the melting of snow. Rowan Williams, interpreting the snow as “a layer between ourselves and
reality,” observes, “The possibility of joy is bound up with the sense of something between us
and the world melting away” (70). Moreover, as the snow melts, to the Witch’s chagrin, flowers
sprout (121). The sprouting of these flowers foreshadows the virtues that Aslan’s influence will
germinate in the children’s hearts; this spiritual blossoming is most evident in Edmund after his
private conversation with Aslan, which can be understood as an epiphany moment. Whereas the
Witch’s dominion relies on obscuring the cosmic order of things, Aslan’s arrival heals the
environment of Narnia, making the world into what it originally was and was forever meant to
be; or, to use more patristic language, his arrival attunes Creation to its archetype in God’s mind.
Crucial for Gregory of Nyssa’s soteriology is that Christ deceives the devil as a means of
entering Hell, the Kingdom of Death, to destroy its fortifications from within. This is the
traditional harrowing of Hell wherein Christ frees death’s captives, most notably Adam and Eve
(Alfeyev 49). Lewis uses this imagery to great effect when Aslan invades the Witch’s castle,
changes her captives from stone to flesh, and when he gets the giant Rumblebuffin to break

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down her gates. This last detail particularly resembles the patristic narratives. John Chrysostom,
for example, writes that “Today he [Christ] broke in pieces the doors of bronze and cut asunder
the bars of iron. . . in order that the whole prison become useless” (qtd. in Alfeyev 64). Similarly,
Rumblebuffin “tackled the towers on each side of them [the gates] and after a few minutes of
crashing and thudding both the towers and a good bit of the wall on each side went thundering
down in a mass of hopeless rubble” (172). In both scenarios the lines between spiritual and
physical captivity are blurred, and in both scenes the barrier between captivity and freedom are
obliterated; those who remain captive do so of their own free will.
Of course, Lewis moves this event out of sequence when he places it after Aslan’s
resurrection, but his novel is not simply an allegory. It is possible, moreover, that Aslan’s charge
into the Witch’s castle is not meant to simply reflect the harrowing of Hell as believed to have
occurred between Christ’s death and resurrection, but rather the spiritual death and resurrection
imitated in the sacrament of baptism. For patristic authors, the descent into Hell and baptism
were closely connected (Alfeyev 51). This baptismal interpretation is rendered more plausible in
that the means of transformation reflect sacramental practices: particularly, the way that Aslan
breathes life into the statues, in addition to the obvious biblical imagery, closely resembles the
ancient liturgical custom of insufflation during baptism. In this manner Lewis captures the
thrilling event performed by Christ’s historical sacrifice and the activity involved in every
person’s salvation.
One fascinating question associated with the harrowing of Hell is how many people
Christ liberated in his ascent, and whether his ascent was a one-time affair, or if his ascent
forever opened the possibility of post-mortem redemption. Gregory of Nyssa, like Lewis’ great
influence George MacDonald, famously taught that Hell was purgatorial, and ultimately all

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people would be brought into communion with God. This, however, was a minority position.
Another minority position was that Christ ascended with no one except Adam, Eve, the
Patriarchs, and a few righteous Israelites (Alfeyev 74). The majority position for the Christian
East, according to Alfeyev’s treatment of the matter, is that “Christ’s descent into Hades [is] an
event of universal significance” whose “saving action” extends “not only to past generations but
also to all those who followed” (205). Nonetheless, as John Chrysostom writes, “This call [to
salvation] is not coercive or forcible” (qtd. in Alfeyev 80). In the majority view, Christ’s descent
into and ascent from hell leaves salvation as a universal opportunity: those who have not
accepted Christ in this life may, if they are willing, do so in the next.
Opposing Gregory on this point, Lewis’ own theology best fits into this last category. It is
well-known that Lewis held the theologoumenon that people could be saved after their deaths,
though not everyone would be saved due to the abuse of free will. For Lewis, those characters
who refuse to submit themselves to the dominion of the White Witch are transformed to stone,
and those characters who submit themselves to the Witch become her slaves (168). (One ought to
note here that although it is not ideal to be transformed into a statue, such is merely a bodily
transformation, leaving the virtuous soul intact.) When he breaches the White Witch’s castle,
Aslan frees all those who were turned to stone; that is, all those who have actively defied the
White Witch, including the virtuous giant. Aslan is scrupulous in his emptying of the castle: he
says, “Leave no corner unsearched. You never know where some poor prisoner may be
concealed” (171). Moreover, after the Witch’s death in the final battle, her surviving companions
“either gave themselves up or took to flight” (178). The former option suggests the first stages of
their rehabilitation while the latter suggests a vicious resolve. As Howard Worsley comments,
“Aslan does not move with vengeance but with justice, and any act of punishment is brought

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about by the hand of the wrongdoer themselves” (164). In Narnia, new life is available to anyone
who harks its call: this corresponds to the major stream in Patristic thought in which all people
who accept Christ in his descent, Israelite and pagan alike, are liberated from hell.
One could suggest that The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe resembles a rousing paschal
homily from a Church Father. As Rowan Williams notes, the modern imagination is rather less
receptive to a narrative that simultaneously claims to be historical and offers so outlandish a
notion as a descent into the underworld, but in fantasy, Lewis can explore the cosmic dimension
of salvation in all its strangeness (28). Of course, Lewis does this in the form of a children’s
fantasy novel, and not directly coded in one-to-one parallels through allegory. Nonetheless, they
share a common shape—this shape is that of spiritual creatures in need of redemption. The
homilist and the novelist alike must make their audiences aware of their sinfulness: as the
homilist awakens his audience to an awareness of their sins as a disruption of the moral order of
God’s universe, the natural consequences of which are humanity’s bondage to Death, so Lewis
achieves this awakening through his presentation of Edmund, and by making his readers acutely
aware of the consequences that his collaboration with the White Witch had for himself, his
family, and for the whole of Narnia. And, having heightened the moral sensibilities of their
audiences, neither the homilist nor the novelist leaves them wallowing in their depravity, but
rather offers them the consolation of grace. Evil, whether of Gregory’s devil or Lewis’ witch, is
blind; and the powers of the good, whether of Gregory’s Christ or Lewis’ Aslan, can work
goodness from evil. For Gregory all shall be saved, and for Lewis all may be saved. But for both
thinkers, the dungeon’s gates are broken, and the snow is melted; prisoners are being freed, and
the flowers are unfurling: go forth into the world, so they exhort their audiences, and blossom
with the virtues of a ransomed spirit.

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Works Cited
Alfeyev, Hilarion. Christ the Conqueror of Hell: The Descent into Hades from an Orthodox
Perspective. Translated by Basil Bush, et al, St. Vladimir’s Seminary P, 2009.
Aulén, Gustaf. Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of
Atonement. Translated by A. G. Herbert, Wipf and Stock P, 2003.
Gregory of Nyssa. From Glory to Glory: Texts from Gregory of Nyssa’s Mystical Writings.
Translated by Herbert Musurillo, St. Vladimir’s Seminary P, 2014.
———The Catechetical Oration. Translated by Ignatius Green, St. Vladimir’s Seminary P,
2019.
Lewis, C.S. The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Vol. II. Edited by Walter Hooper,
HarperCollins, 2004.
———The Discarded Image. Cambridge UP, 2016.
———The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. HarperCollins, 1994.
——— “On the Reading of Old Books.” God in the Dock. Edited by Walter Hooper, Eerdmans,
2014, pp. 217-225.
———Poetry and Prose in the Sixteenth Century. Oxford UP, 2002.
Ludlow, Morwenna. “Contemporary Interpretations.” The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa,
edited by Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco and Giulio Maspero, Brill, 2010, pp. 170–174.
Ruud, Jay. “Aslan’s Sacrifice and the Doctrine of Atonement in The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe.” Mythlore, vol. 23, no. 2 (88), Apr. 2001, pp. 15–22.
Taliaferro, Charles. “A Narnian Theory of the Atonement.” Scottish Journal of Theology, vol.
41, no. 1, 1988, pp. 75–92.
Williams, Rowan. The Lion’s World. Oxford UP, 2012.

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Worsley, Howard. “Children’s Literature as Implicit Religion: The Concept of Grace
Unpacked.” Implicit Religion, vol. 13, no. 2, July 2010, pp. 161–171.