Does Nicaea II Have a Home in Narnia?

Why Icon Veneration Lives Comfortably in C.S. Lewis' Anglo-Catholic Universe

At the Council of Nicaea II, the Catholic and Orthodox Church proclaimed that images of Christ and the saints were not only permitted in the Church but that honoring and reverencing them was a commendable practice that sprung forth from the apostolic faith. Today, most Protestants reject the theology of Nicaea II and have no images in their worship space except for a bare cross while others may allow the use of images of Christ and the saints but only for decorative and didactic purposes. To my surprise, C.S. Lewis does not fall into either of these camps and even seems to promote the theology behind Nicaea II within his beloved world of Narnia.¹

In my recent interview with Michael Garten on the very topic of icon veneration, he pointed out to me an example of this in chapter 13 of the Silver Chair. In this scene, we see the characters ‘paying homage’ to Aslan by honoring and reverencing his image which miraculously appeared on a shield.

"Look, friends," he said, holding out the shield towards them. "An hour ago it was black and without device; and now, this." The shield had turned bright as silver, and on it, redder than blood or cherries, was the figure of the Lion.

"Doubtless," said the Prince, "this signifies that Aslan will be our good lord, whether he means us to live or die. And all's one, for that. Now, by my counsel, we shall all kneel and kiss his likeness, and then all shake hands one with another, as true friends that may shortly be parted. And then, let us descend into the city and take the adventure that is sent us."

There are several interesting aspects to this scene in relation to Nicaea II:

1. It is not just a spontaneous act by one character, but a ritual led by their Prince in which all were to participate. “Now, by my counsel, we shall all…”

2. The ritual involves the body—kissing and kneeling—which are acts of reverence and paying homage. “we shall all kneel and kiss his likeness”

3. The Narnians do not believe they are paying their homage to a metal shield but to Aslan himself through the image.

4. Aslan seems to receive this reverence and affection from them whose unseen Presence can be felt among them in the darkness of Underland.

The theology of Nicaea II can almost be felt when Lewis uses the phrase, “kiss his likeness.” The 7th Ecumenical Council infallibly taught that when Christians kiss and revere the likeness of Christ in image, this veneration actually goes to Christ and not to the ink on the wooden panel. No idolatry is committed. The Seventh Ecumenical Council makes it clear that we only worship the Trinity, and states:

“For each time that we see their representation in an image, each time while gazing upon them we are made to remember their prototypes, we grow to love them more, and we are even more induced to render them veneration of honor (proskynesis) by kissing them and by witnessing our veneration, not the true worship (latreia) which, according to our faith, is proper only to the one divine nature, but in the same way as we venerate the image of the precious and vivifying cross, the holy Gospel and other sacred objects which we honor with incense and candles according to the pious custom of our forefathers. For the honor rendered to the image goes to its prototype, and the person who venerates an icon venerated the person represented on it.”²

But do we have any evidence that Lewis practiced ‘icon veneration’ in his own devotional and liturgical life as an Anglican? I was surprised to find that we do in the context of Lewis venerating the cross on Good Friday. For those who are unaware, many Anglicans, like Catholics and Orthodox, venerate the cross during a Good Friday service every year. In the liturgical West, each person will walk up to the altar where a cross stands. People may do a simple bow before the cross, while others may kiss the cross or even kneel to kiss the pierced feet of Jesus if it is a crucifix.

We know about Lewis venerating the cross, because his friend, Henry Blamires, was uncomfortable doing this act of veneration among the ‘high church Anglicans’ and shared his thoughts with Lewis. Here is the description of this story according to Lyle W. Dorsett, in his book, Seeking the Secret Place: The Spiritual Formation of C. S. Lewis.

“There is no question that Father Walter Adams [CSL’s director/confessor] and the monks in SSJE [Society of Saint John the Evangelist] were very ‘high’ churchmen. And it is obvious that Mr. Lewis increasingly found himself spending more time in the Anglo-Catholic room of the church. This is evident in his love for the church calendar and in his use of it as a way to identify with Christ through the year. Also Lewis embraced such Catholic traditions as the Veneration of the Cross in Good Friday services. Nevertheless, when Blamires said worshiping with the Anglo-Catholics could be difficult at times because of some of their practices, L [Lewis] quickly came down on the other side: ‘Well, what for instance?’ Blamires said he loved the Good Friday liturgy overall but found the part where they ‘were expected to walk up and kneel and kiss the foot of the crucifix’ to be going too far, finally saying, ‘I couldn’t do that.’ Immediately L responded: ‘But you should. The body should do its homage.’ Blamires concluded that L was at times quite high on the Anglican spectrum and at other times rather low. It all depended upon the doctrine and the practice.”³

Some Anglicans will make the argument that venerating a plain wooden cross is different than venerating images. This argument does hold some weight since there were some Frankish theologians in Charlemagne’s court who rejected image veneration as well as Nicaea II but who were completely fine venerating a wooden cross or relics of the true cross.⁴ Perhaps it is possible that Lewis did reject image veneration and simply held the views of those 8th century Frankish theologians.

On the other hand, Lewis’ words and actions seem to go further than their understanding. He isn’t kissing just any wooden cross. It is a crucifix with an image or statue of Christ hanging from it. Lewis does not simply kiss the wood of the cross but he kneels to kiss the feet of our Lord in the image. When he is asked to define what he is doing, he states that he is paying homage to His King and that our bodies must be involved in this act of reverence. Everything about this scene from Lewis’ life seems to parallel the scene we see in the silver chair: kneeling and kissing the likeness of their King out of love, fidelity, and reverence.

St. Theodore the Studite states beautifully what the veneration of the cross and icons does to our souls and senses:

“When we look upon this life-giving tree [i.e the Cross], it heals our vision which, having been deceived, formerly looked to that alluring tree in paradise. Pressing our lips [i.e. kissing] and eyes to this life-giving tree, we are delivered from the taste of the tree that produced death. How great is the gift which stands before us!”⁵

It is also the case that Lewis’ Church of England embraced images of the cross and Christ fairly early on. When Pope St. Gregory the Great sent St. Augustine of Canterbury as a missionary to England, there was no hesitancy to hold back images of Christ even in very pagan territory. Upon their arrival, they held a procession with the Cross and an Image of Christ. St. Bede writes (Ecclesiastical History of the English People),

“They came endowed with divine not devilish power and bearing as their standard a silver cross and the image of our Lord and Savior painted on a panel.”⁶

After preaching the Gospel to the pagan king, Æthelberht gifted them a place of worship in Canterbury, where they proceeded “in accordance with their custom carrying the holy cross and the image of our great King and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

But some historians and apologists might protest this historical example since they say that Pope St. Gregory the Great was opposed to the veneration of icons. This actually isn’t true though his articulation may not be as developed as St. John Damascene’s explanation and distinctions. He did reject the worship (adoration; latria) of images which belongs to God alone, and he certainly emphasized the didactic and devotional role of icons in churches, but nowhere does he condemn the honor and reverence to be given to sacred images of Christ and the saints. He writes,

“May your Fraternity exhort them… to draw from the contemplation of what is represented [icons] the ardour of compunction and to prostrate themselves humbly in adoration of the only and all-powerful holy Trinity.”⁷

In his book, ‘The Spirit of the Liturgy', Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XIV) sounds very similar to Pope St. Gregory the Great when he writes,

“The image of Christ and the images of the saints are not photographs. Their whole point is to lead us beyond what can be apprehended at the merely material level, to awaken in us new senses in us, and to teach us a new kind of seeing, which perceives the Invisible in the visible. The sacredness of the image consists precisely in the fact that it comes from an interior vision and thus leads us to such an interior vision. It must be a fruit of contemplation, of an encounter in faith with the new reality of the risen Christ, and so it leads us in turn into an interior gazing, an encounter in prayer with the Lord.”⁸

For some Christians, venerating the cross or sacred images comes too close to worship. However, it is important to remember that the word ‘venerate’ can just as easily be translated as ‘reverence’⁹ which can sound a bit different in the English speaking world. For example, Christians are capable of giving reverence to the Bible without worshiping it. My parents always taught me to never stack other books on top of the Bible since we should give God’s Word a special place in our hearts and in our homes. Another example is the pledge of allegiance when Americans cover their hearts with their hands out of reverence for the flag. They are not offering sacrifices to the flag (worship) nor is the flag simply used for decorative or didactic (teaching) purposes. It is given reverence. If Americans are able to distinguish reverencing the flag from worshipping it, then it seems likely that we as Christians can simply embrace the basic distinctions in Nicaea II and give reverence to Christ and the saints in holy images without worshiping those images.

In conclusion, it does seem that Aslan and the magical world of Narnia fit well within C.S. Lewis' Anglo-Catholic universe. Just as Aslan enchants Narnia, so Christ enchants our world. This enchantment is never in opposition to ritual, sacrament, creed, icons or even hierarchical leadership (i.e. ‘High King Peter), but instead, grace often comes to us through these ways. For Lewis, Christ’s enchantment opens up a new reality to us where a brightly colored icon might even miraculously appear to us during very dark times.¹⁰ Therefore, let us pay homage to the image of our King and take the adventure that He send us!

1. Some Anglicans readily embrace the teaching of Nicaea II and the veneration or reverencing of sacred images. Anglican Daniel Logan gives a spirited defense here: https://northamanglican.com/in-defense-of-images/

2. Full text of the 7th Ecumenical Council: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3819.htm

3. Dorsett, Lyle W., Seeking the Secret Place: The Spiritual Formation of C. S. Lewis (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2004) [Lyle Dorsett, Interview with Blamires, October 23, 1983, Wade Center. Footnote (not endnote) 24: (97)]. Reported on website: https://gratefultothedead.com/2010/07/26/c-s-lewiss-spiritual-formation-confession-purgatory-mary-and-other-catholic-dimensions/

4. The Frankish arguments against Nicaea II’s theology are made in Libri Carolin where they argue against icon veneration but commend the use of icons as a form of teaching. The theologians condemn iconoclasts who destroy images, yet they also maintain that veneration of the cross (a symbol or icon) and relics of saints are good and holy practices of the church. *It isn’t entirely clear to me how venerating the cross is different from venerating a crucifix or a painted icon of the cross or a painted scene from the Gospels.

5. St. Theodore the Studite. Oration on the Veneration of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross for the Sunday of Mid-Lent. Cited here: https://www.pappaspatristicinstitute.com/post/on-the-cross. He also connects ‘cross veneration’ with ‘icon veneration’ here: “Even in the case of the figure of the Cross, when what is seen (when it is the source and subject of the miracle) is something inanimate—as when the form of the Cross appears in an icon—we say that every image that has the form of Christ is of a nature to work miracles, whether it is animate or inanimate, since it has within itself both the shape and the form of the archetype, and thus it is obvious to everyone that it is identified just as much with the honor and veneration of the original as much as it is with name of the original. If these things appear to be a digression, they are in fact a refutation and overthrow of the heresy of iconoclasm, which seeks to overthrow the mystery of Christ’s dispensation of salvation. For the one who abolishes the image clearly abolishes with it the archetype, insofar as the two—as anyone with any intelligence knows—are simultaneously known and bound together.”

6. The Venerable Bede. The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. ed. Judith McClure and Roger Collins. Oxford University Press, 2008. Pages 39-40.

7. Excerpt from Pope St. Gregory’s letter to Bishop Sergius cited by: Beyly, Sarah. Theological Aesthetics East and West: The Reception of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicaea II (ThM Thesis). She also writes, “Even Gregory the Great, who is often quoted in support of the “sober” understanding of images believes that there is more to them. As previously mentioned, Gregory used language which can be said to be the seedlings of that which would flower at Nicaea II.”

8. Ratzinger, Joseph. The Spirit of the Liturgy, Pg. 133

9. Fortescue, Adrian. "Veneration of Images." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 7. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07664a.htm>

10. ‘Icons made without hands’ have miraculously appeared throughout history. A popular example in the West would be Our Lady of Guadeloupe where Mary’s image miraculously appeared on the tilma.