Second, I run into cognitive dissonance when trying to equate Aslan and Jesus. Fantasy novels do not purport to be objectively true, but, within the bounds of their imaginary worlds, I believe that everything they chronicle really happened. Christianity, on the other hand, does purport to be objectively true -- it claims that the events it chronicles really did happen in our own world -- but I do not believe that claim. I acknowledge that Christianity is obviously subjectively true for millions of people, but it is not true for me. So trying to equate Aslan to Jesus is asking me to equate a truth in an imaginary world to a fantasy in the real world, and it gives me a headache... because I do believe in Aslan, within the bounds of Lewis's world, but I do not now, never have, and never will believe in Jesus Christ in a religious sense. It is actually easier for me to equate Aslan with a hypothetical pagan lion-god of the ancient Mediterranean world, because for me such a god and his mythology would be fantasy, and would therefore have the same 'reality' as Aslan.
Interestingly, I can sometimes pull a trick whereby I equate Aslan with Jesus, if and only if I treat Christianity as a collection of fairy-tales. The trouble is that Christianity is not a dead religion but is alive in the world today, and I experience it as such -- which means I'm not equating two fictional deities but rather equating a fictional deity to a deity who is claimed to be real, and whom C. S. Lewis definitely believed in. And since I do not believe any deities are real in our world, I stumble.
I think that if I were only reading the Chronicles of Narnia and not thinking and writing about them, it might be easier for me to say, "Yes, okay, Aslan is meant to be Jesus, which means he's 'the immortal, all-powerful, not safe but good, Creator son of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea who has conquered death,'" and leave it at that. But once I start participating in the narrative more than the bare minimum -- in other words, once I try to bring Narnia to life in my own mind and writing -- I run into that cognitive dissonance where, while I can write about a fictional deity that my characters believe in as if that deity were real, I cannot write about a 'real' deity that I don't believe in as if that deity were real, because that feels as though I'm breeching the boundary of my story and proselytizing a lie.
This is very odd to me, since I can and have written characters who believe in some sort of Christianity, and have not had a problem with treating their beliefs as real. I have also written fanfiction for Angel Sanctuary, a manga series which uses various religious figures as characters. (I am fairly sure you would consider the series blasphemous and horrifically immoral, btw, so don't feel you have to seek it out! I'm just mentioning it to show that I don't always have a problem writing religious figures as if they're real within story boundaries.) I think the difference is that in a story that treats angels and demons as characters, I am not being asked to believe in them as religious figures, just characters. And in a story about religious people, I am only being asked to treat their beliefs as a real, which I can happily do, since their beliefs obviously exist and affect the way they live and interpret their lives.
The problem is that Lewis is attempting to persuade readers not just to treat his beliefs as real, but to accept the object of his beliefs as real -- to accept his characters as more than characters. And I can't do that, because for me Jesus-as-Christ is not real. So in order to write Aslan as a deity, I have to divorce him from Jesus and consider him a fictional pagan lion-god, who has no more attributes than the one directly ascribed to him within the books, and who can be interpreted without regard to Lewis's beliefs and any other Christian theology.
REALLY long comment, part 3
Interestingly, I can sometimes pull a trick whereby I equate Aslan with Jesus, if and only if I treat Christianity as a collection of fairy-tales. The trouble is that Christianity is not a dead religion but is alive in the world today, and I experience it as such -- which means I'm not equating two fictional deities but rather equating a fictional deity to a deity who is claimed to be real, and whom C. S. Lewis definitely believed in. And since I do not believe any deities are real in our world, I stumble.
I think that if I were only reading the Chronicles of Narnia and not thinking and writing about them, it might be easier for me to say, "Yes, okay, Aslan is meant to be Jesus, which means he's 'the immortal, all-powerful, not safe but good, Creator son of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea who has conquered death,'" and leave it at that. But once I start participating in the narrative more than the bare minimum -- in other words, once I try to bring Narnia to life in my own mind and writing -- I run into that cognitive dissonance where, while I can write about a fictional deity that my characters believe in as if that deity were real, I cannot write about a 'real' deity that I don't believe in as if that deity were real, because that feels as though I'm breeching the boundary of my story and proselytizing a lie.
This is very odd to me, since I can and have written characters who believe in some sort of Christianity, and have not had a problem with treating their beliefs as real. I have also written fanfiction for Angel Sanctuary, a manga series which uses various religious figures as characters. (I am fairly sure you would consider the series blasphemous and horrifically immoral, btw, so don't feel you have to seek it out! I'm just mentioning it to show that I don't always have a problem writing religious figures as if they're real within story boundaries.) I think the difference is that in a story that treats angels and demons as characters, I am not being asked to believe in them as religious figures, just characters. And in a story about religious people, I am only being asked to treat their beliefs as a real, which I can happily do, since their beliefs obviously exist and affect the way they live and interpret their lives.
The problem is that Lewis is attempting to persuade readers not just to treat his beliefs as real, but to accept the object of his beliefs as real -- to accept his characters as more than characters. And I can't do that, because for me Jesus-as-Christ is not real. So in order to write Aslan as a deity, I have to divorce him from Jesus and consider him a fictional pagan lion-god, who has no more attributes than the one directly ascribed to him within the books, and who can be interpreted without regard to Lewis's beliefs and any other Christian theology.