Narnia's Christianity Test
According to Time, whether the new movie is Christian rests largely on whether one passage from the book makes it into the movie. Link. Excerpt:
Aslan's sacrifice on a huge stone table (not a cross; and performed with a stone knife, Aztec-style), and his subsequent miraculous recovery could have been borrowed from any number of world religions.
It is the book's explanation for this key sequence that makes it exclusively Christian. After Edmund Pevensie betrays Aslan and his brother and sisters, the Witch claims his blood in accordance to the laws of "Deep Magic." Aslan concedes this and offers himself up in proxy, announcing glumly, "I have settled the claim on your brother's blood." Miraculously revived, he explains, "the Witch knew the Deep Magic. But if she could have looked a little further back... she would have known 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."
This is Christianity in a kid-lit veil. Like any good sermon, its key points can be traced to Biblical citations–here mostly from the Letters of the apostle Paul. Edmund's treachery corresponds to the sins of humanity, which Paul explains is inherently doomed to violate God's Law ("The Deep Magic"). Because of this violation, writes Paul in Romans, humans are literally owned by Satan ("slaves of the one whom you obey"); and "the wages of sin is death." The idea that Aslan, because he is sinless, can voluntarily pay for Edmund's blood with his own, is the powerful Christian doctrine of blood atonement, developed from texts like the First Letter of Peter: "You know that you were ransomed... with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot." Like Christ's, Aslan's resurrection is inevitable ("If Christ has not been raised, then ... our faith is in vain," Paul writes in First Corinthians.) And it conquers not just his death (or as Aslan would say, causes it to move backwards) but that of all believers, who will also see resurrection. Paul rejoices: "Death is swallowed up in victory... O death, where is thy sting?" In The Lion, Aslan and Lucy Pevensie celebrate with a "mad" game of tag.
