Thursday, April 24, 2008

Stretching a bit: Prince Caspian and the Book of Acts

In devotions, my family has been reading the book of Acts. Specifically, we have been reading chapter 10. The roman Cornelius, described as "a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, and gave many alms to the Jewish people and prayed to God continually" (Acts 10:2), sees a vision telling him to send for Simon called Peter... Peter in turn sees a vision of many different animals, and God tells him to take and eat. Peter is abhorred at the thought of eating unclean animals, but God shows Peter all these animals are now clean. Peter then goes and visits Cornelius and explains his vision: "I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him" (Acts 10:34,35). Amazing words! The gentiles were now welcome into the covenant. It wasn't exclusively for Jews...

I also am reading Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis in anticipation of the new movie coming out. Last night, I was reading of Caspian's tutelage by Dr. Cornelius about Old Narnia, and this line struck me: "For I know that you also, Telmarine though you are, love the Old Things" (Prince Caspian, p. 49).

This reminded me so much of the book of Acts. In both stories there is a man/boy who loves the old things/old ways (even though some of those ways are changing). There is the man/dwarf who will share the good news/stories of Old Narnia with the man/boy. Also something that struck me as curious, is the name of the Roman is also the name of the dwarf: Cornelius. Was C.S.Lewis being clever in these connections? Or is it the crazy imagination of an English minor? I don't know, but I was interesting in this connection... Please feel free to share your thoughts (even if you think I'm crazy).

3 comments:

Ascottishsamurai said...

Okay, first things first, the fact that you even NOTICED that is really impressive. I have no idea if it was purposeful or not, but I have read the book of Acts, and I have read Prince Caspian (sadly, more times than I have read the book of Acts) and I never picked up on that correlation.

From what little I have read about C.S. Lewis, it would not surprise me. I gleaned a bit about his personality from the book A Severe Mercy, and that would seem likely...but I am just a mere novice when it comes to knowledge of the man.

He definitely has some very quote-worthy material though!

Oh, did you ever get your email problem resolved, by the way?

(Note: I deleted the post before, which was essentially this post, in order to edit a little redundancy...sorry if it caused problems. lol.)

Laura said...

No, I still haven't fixed the email problem... That's why I haven't replied to your most recent email (Though, I am a TERRIBLE correspondent).

No problem... I just deleted the "deleted" post. :)

Ascottishsamurai said...

Lol. Join the club...I'm pretty sure we've got jackets.

Well, I do hope that you will be able to change your ways for my sake, as I really enjoy getting to talk with you when I do, be that blogging, or email, in person, or whatever.