Where Everybody's Crazy

I watched the Narnia film a couple of days ago. Before I launch into some theology, let me say that I really enjoyed it, and it was everything I expected from a film version of the book. Now, boring theological nargery.

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is, as everyone knows, a Christian allegory about the work of Christ. This is no big secret. The interesting bit is that Lewis, to create a good story, used one of the very oldest explanations of the work of Christ, called the "ransom model": that God pays up Christ as a ransom to the Devil to win back the human race, and then it turns out God has tricked the Devil by delivering over Christ to death when Christ was stronger than death and broke free from it. You can recognise that in the Lewis book, and in the film. You will also recognise that it says nothing about judgement, or punishment, or propitiation.

This gives evangelicals a huge headache, although I suspect they don't realise it. You see, they will want to use the film to promote their cause - indeed, I saw that at St Aldate's tonight. They will want to draw parallels between the self-sacrifice of Aslan and the self-sacrifice of Christ. However, during the Soteriology Wars of 2004-5, the evangelicals had some very nasty words for the ransom model, for various reasons: the idea of God doing a deal with the Devil was unreasonable; the business about being stronger than death was just a bit bizarre; and, well, it just wasn't the propitiatory sacrifice model, so it obviously couldn't be right. It is not the One True Model, and we can't possibly use it as an explanation of Jesus' work.

Suddenly, however, the ransom model is actually useful again in communicating culturally. What will evangelicals do? Will they resist the temptation to grab at what they believe to be a flawed model and continue to hold fast to what they believe is true, or will they grasp the opportunity Hollywood has handed them, and integrity be damned?

I have a feeling I know which option it's going to be.