The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe: Edmund’s Conversion in the Light of Moral Law
This was written for Dr. Michael A. Dauphinais' Class, C.S. Lewis: Theological Apologetics, in July, 2021. Part of the assignment was to write a paper as though for a presentation to non-theologians.
Good evening, and welcome to this evening’s presentation of Theology on Tap. You might have been surprised to see the advertising for this event. I can just hear the comments: “A children’s book? You want me to go to a bar and talk about some children’s book?” On one level, you are absolutely right: I want you to go to a bar and talk about some children’s book. But on another level, C. S. Lewis’s “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” is much more than some children’s book. It is a tale of right and wrong, of personal growth and conversion; it is a theological text in words a twelve-year old can comprehend.
Now, I will concede that most young readers of the book will not see this, at least not on a conscious level. But they will see the difference between Edmund’s behavior and that of his siblings; they will see the self-centered evil of the White Witch, who calls herself the Queen, and they will see the total self-giving unselfishness of Aslan, the true King of Narnia. Tonight, we are going to talk not just about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but also portions of Mere Christianity, a work of Lewis which is of a more theological nature. Let me add that Lewis’ title here does not denigrate Christianity; he uses the phrase to mean those beliefs which present “an agreed, or common, or central, or ‘mere’ Christianity.”[1] In the essays contained in Mere Christianity, Lewis does not wish to resolve the various dogmatic differences among Christian sects, but to instead focus on what we have in common, specifically the Moral Law. The Moral Law is our true guide to right and wrong. As Dr. Michael Dauphinais, Chair of the Theology Department and Father Matthew Lamb Professor of Catholic Theology at Ave Maria University, has stated.
“The key idea for[Lewis] is that the moral law leaves us in a dilemma: with it we are in the wrong, without it our sacrifices are meaningless. He wants us to see this in ourselves in [Mere Christianity] and then see it in Edmund in [The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.]”[2]
As Lewis himself puts it:
“You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong - only because root cruelty was pleasant or useful to him.”[3]
Now, consider this in connection with Edmund’s behavior in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which, from the very beginning, is negative. Edmund and his siblings have been sent to the large country home of a retired Professor for safety’s sake during World War II. In Chapter 1, Peter, the eldest, is describing the place as one where they will have a lot of freedom. Susan, a bit younger than Peter, says she thinks the professor is “an old dear.”[4] “‘Oh, come off it,’ said Edmund, who was tired and pretending not to be tired, which always made him bad-tempered.”[5] The next morning, he is just as grumpy. As he will continue to show, his temperament, at least in part, is informed by his lack of attention to the Moral Law. Edmund is not himself intrinsically evil, but his lack of attention to the Moral Law, his indifference in discerning right from wrong, have set him on a path of evil.
When, a short time later, Lucy, the youngest, claims to have visited an enchanted world called Narnia, reached through a wardrobe in a spare room, her siblings find her story beyond belief. It is understandable that all three of her siblings do not believe Lucy’s tale. Peter and Susan are both concerned about Lucy’s sudden flight into either fancy or lying. However, Edmund’s behavior goes beyond normal disbelief: unlike Peter and Susan’s concern, his reaction was to call Lucy “Batty”[6] He continues to plague her, teasing her about her claims:
“…Edmund could be spiteful, and on this occasion he was spiteful. He sneered and jeered at Lucy and kept on asking her if she’d found any other new countries in other cupboards all over the house.”[7]
Once he himself follows Lucy into the wardrobe and thus finds his way to Narnia, his attitude does not really change: “I say, Lu! I'm sorry I didn't believe you. I see now you were right all along. Do come out. Make it Pax.”[8] When Lucy does not respond, he is dismissive. “‘Just like a girl,’ said Edmund to himself, ‘sulking somewhere and won't accept an apology.’”[9] We see here Edmund’s lack of self-awareness. He sees things only through his own viewpoint; he does not see that his weak apology, given only after he is proved wrong, falls short. It is his own words that show us where he is lacking. As Lewis writes,
“You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation then by looking at a house he has built.”[10]
What Edmund’s words tell us is that Edmund is selfish. As Peter later verbalizes, Edmund likes "being beastly to anyone smaller than [him]self.”[11]
The first person Edmund meets in Narnia is the White Witch, who calls herself the Queen. He never questions anything she tells him, is willfully blind to her manipulation, and is captured by the idea of glory for himself, particularly the idea of being placed over his siblings. He remains loyal to her even after hearing what other creatures of Narnia have to say about her. He chooses to ignore everything Lucy reports she has learned from the Faun, Mr. Tumnus, and does not pay attention to the tales Mr. and Mrs. Beaver tell. In Edmund’s first meeting with the White Witch, Edmund never questions why she asks so many questions about his siblings or why she insists on meeting them. His greed and ego get in the way. The White Witch has told him she will make him a Prince, and later a King, and will make his siblings minor royalty: “There’s nothing special about them,” he responds. He has been seduced into evil, both by the magic of the Turkish Delight, and by the same sin that led Adam and Eve to fall: the lure of greatness, the sin of pride.
When Edmund returns through the Wardrobe, he still denies that Narnia is real. Even after he has visited Narnia, he lies about it to Peter and Susan:
[Edmund] “decided all at once to do the meanest and most spiteful thing he could think of. He decided to let Lucy down.... ‘Oh yes, Lucy and I had been playing - pretending that all her story about a country in the wardrobe is true. Just for fun, of course. There's nobody there really.’
Poor Lucy gave Edmund one look and rushed out of the room. Edmund, who was becoming a nastier person every minute, thought that he had scored a great success, and went on at once to say, “There she goes again. What's the matter with her? That's the worst of young kids they always – ’”[12]
He stops abruptly when Peter interrupts him. Later, when the others find out Edmund has been lying about Narnia, they don’t rebuke him beyond Peter’s “Well, of all the poisonous little
“The Moral Law is not anyone instinct or any set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.”[15]
Edmund’s Moral Law is out of tune, so far out of tune that Edmund is morally tone-deaf. Even when he ought to know that he was wrong, and accept the criticism, his response is to turn the blame onto the others, to denigrate their goodness to prop up his own lack of moral fiber.
“The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other.... [You are] admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real right than others.”[16]
We will see later in the story that Edmund does know that there is a real Right. He is not lost to goodness, he can be helped to find the real Right. When he receives the help, he does repent and convert.
After Edmund has been rescued from the White Witch, who was moments from killing him, he has a conversation with Aslan. This is where we see Edmund’s conversion of heart:
“[T]hey saw Aslan and Edmund walking together in the dewy grass, apart from the rest of the Court. There is no need to tell you (and no one ever heard) what Aslan was saying, but it was a conversation which Edmund never forgot.”[17]
It is Aslan’s love and forgiveness which brings about Edmund’s conversion. Lewis tells us:
“God is the only comfort. He is also the supreme terror: the thing we need most and the thing we most want to hide from.... Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger - according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way.”[18]
Lewis further describes what a conversion of heart entails:
“It is after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that power - it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk.”[19]
Edmund’s conversion has begun. From the unkind, egotistical prig he is at the beginning of the story, he becomes a hero of the final battle to save Narnia:
“It was all Edmund’s doing, Aslan,” Peter was saying. “We’d have been beaten if it hadn’t been for him. The witch was turning our troops into stone right and left. But nothing would stop him. He fought his way through three ogres to where she was just turning one of your leopards into a statute. And when he reached her he had the sense to bring his sword smashing down on her wand instead of trying to go for her directly and simply getting made a statue himself for his pains. That was the mistake all the rest of us were making.”[20]
After the battle, when Edmund has been gravely injured, Lucy gives him a few drops of the curative cordial which Father Christmas had given her. The cure is complete, he is now healed in both body and soul:
Edmund was “not only healed of his wounds but looking better than she had seen him look – oh, for ages; in fact ever since his first term at that horrid school which was where he had begun to go wrong. He had become his real old self again and could look you in the face. And there on the field of battle Aslan made him a knight.”[21]
As we know from Mere Christianity, “only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly.”[22] Edmund repented, and in his repentance, he has found his way back to goodness and the Moral Law.
Works Cited
Lewis, C. S. The Lion, The Witch, And the Wardrobe. Reprint, London: HarperCollins Children's Books, 2015.
Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. Reprint, Coppell: Valde Books, 2021.
[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. Preface, p. iii
[2] Michael Dauphinais, comment in Class Discussion #1, July 6, 2021 (hey, I figure the people at Theology on Tap need to know who you are!)
[3] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. Book II, Chapter 2, p. 25
[4] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Chapter 1, Lucy Looks Into a Wardrobe, p. 1
[5] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Chapter 1, Lucy Looks Into a Wardrobe, p. 1-2
[6] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Chapter 3, Edmund and the Wardrobe, p. 27
[7] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Chapter 3, Edmund and the Wardrobe, p. 29
[8] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Chapter 3, Edmund and the Wardrobe, p. 32
[9] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Chapter 3, Edmund and the Wardrobe, p. 32
[10] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book I, Chapter 5, p. 16
[11] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Chapter 5, Back on This Side of the Door, p. 45
[12] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Chapter5, Back on This Side of the Door, p. 44-45
[13] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Chapter 6, Into the Forest, p. 55
[14] C. . Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Chapter 6, Into the Forest, p. 55
[15] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book I, Chapter 2, p. 6
[16] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book I, Chapter 2, p. 7
[17] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Chapter 13, Deep Magic from the Dawn of
Time, p. 126
[18] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book I, Chapter 5, p. 17
[19] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book I, Chapter 5, p. 17
[20] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Chapter 17, The Hunting of the White Stag, p. 162
[21] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Chapter 17, The Hunting of the White Stag, p. 163
[22] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book I, Chapter 4: The Perfect Penitent, p. 33
ct Penitent, p. 33
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