Dr Paul Allen

Cover of The Idea of the Holy C. S. Lewis called modern Christians to recovery of reverence for God —who, in the now-famous Chronicles of Narnia image of the lion Aslan, is depicted as good but not safe. Likewise, evangelical mystic A. W. Tozer complained in the early 1960s that “in the majority of our meetings, there is scarcely a trace of reverent thought … little sense of the divine Presence, no moment of stillness, no solemnity, no wonder, no holy fear. But always there is a dull or a breezy song leader full of awkward jokes.” The first reference to “ fear of God ” in the OT is Genesis 20:11, where the Mesopotamian Abraham complains that there is no “fear of God” in Philistia. It is against this backdrop that “fear of God” (yir’at ’elohim), “fear of the Lord ” (yir’at yhwh/’adonay), and “fear of the Almighty” (yir’at shadday) are to be understood throughout the OT itself.  Indeed, yir’ah alone is sometimes used in the sense of “piety” (Job 4:6; 15:4; 22:4) o...

Image via Wikipedia What Aslan Means to Liam Neeson From a  Daily Mail  interview with actor Liam Neeson, the voice of Aslan in the  Narnia films : Aslan symbolises a Christ-like figure but he also symbolises for me Mohammed , Buddha and all the great spiritual leaders and prophets over the centuries. That’s who Aslan stands for as well as a mentor figure for kids – that’s what he means for me. Poor Liam Neeson. He can't win. He probably feels like he has to distance himself from the narrow, Christian message of The Chronicles of Narnia by recreating Aslan for himself in a more palatable, relativistic form to avoid upsetting the culture at large. And why not, if all that matters is what a text means  to us , rather than what the author intended that text to mean? But now he has upset Narnia fans, and with good reason. Neeson's image of Aslan as the god (or leader) of many different religions is quite explicitly argued against in The Last Battle when the Calor...