Worthy Of God In C. S. Lewis's The Last Battle

When questioned about who will get into heaven, most Christians provide a simple answer. This answer usually is along the lines of “only those who are Christians,” or “those who have accepted Christ into their hearts as their Lord and Savior.” Now there is nothing wrong with these thoughts, as I believed these to be the case for a long, long time. More recently, however, I’ve begun to take on a different though process which is more along the lines of that which is seen in C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle. In the essay we read, Worthy of a Better God, James Sennet presents us with the ideologies that people may believe in when it comes to heaven or the afterlife. The first two, universalism and pluralism, are not ones that Lewis or I personally

He grew up in a religion full of lies and falsehoods, and served Tash as a wonderful and benevolent god. Though that was what Emeth had been told, Aslan states that ‘Child, all the service thou has done to Tash, I account as service done to me.’ ( ) Tash was a being of absolute evil and wrongdoing, whereas Aslan was the opposite. In worshipping Tash in the manner that Emeth did, Aslan truly knew that those acts were for him. Even Emeth realized his mistake when he first met Aslan after passing through the Stable Door, knowing upon first sight that Aslan was a great, honorable, and majestic creature. Although probably incorrect, I had another thought when I was introduced to Emeth. __________ He was insistent on passing into the Stable Door, and although we’re given the picture that Emeth just wants to lay eyes on his lord, I sometimes wonder if he did so out of doubt. Did Emeth need to see visual proof to truly believe in Tash? Whether out of doubt or out of extreme faith, Emeth took those steps forward and found what he truly sought,

Lewis might not even be right in the way he handled Emeth, but he also could be. Many times when this argument comes up, there seem to be exceptions to who gets saved. For the longest time, I believed that Christianity was an exclusivist religion, but even then, I thought that young children who died would be saved. They hadn’t yet reached an ‘Age of Accountability’ and couldn’t be held accountable for what they did or didn’t know. But if that’s the case, what is the age where we draw the line? If this was how salvation worked, Emeth must have passed that age long ago. What I’ve come to realize is that some people, however old or young, have never actually seen or heard the good news of Christ. Who are we to say they are condemned to hell for this? Those who have never known who Jesus is never have the chance to accept nor deny him. Emeth was told nothing but false statements of Aslan that put him out to be an evil creature, and was never really faced with the truth until he came face to face with Aslan. If Emeth knew of Aslan in his true being before passing through the Stable Door, I’m convinced that he wouldn’t have been placed into Aslan’s