(urth) OT: The Problem of Susan

[David Duffy]

On Wed, 3 Nov 2004, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:

> ... it's currently fashionable to trash Lewis and especially the
> Narnia books, and Gaiman is nothing if not fashionable. In this case,
> I wish he hadn't been.
>
> Charles and Rostrum are quite right in their interpretation of Susan's
> obsession with "lipstick, boys, and invitations," but they miss
> something even more important - Susan is most emphatically _not_
> "denied Heaven." This is the "Pullman Heresy" that is, I think, at the
> heart of the trash-Lewis fad.
>
> Susan is not damned; she simply doesn't die in the train crash. The
> books neither say _nor imply_ anything about her eternal fate, and
> in the one place that I know of where Lewis had anything to say
> about it - in a letter to a child - he was of the opinion that God kept
> her alive so that she could come back to Him by some other route.
> (That's from memory, so the wording is probably nowhere near
> CSL's.)
>

I am irresistibly reminded of Luther explaining how dogs also go to
heaven:  "Be comforted, little dog, thou too in the Resurrection shalt
have a tail of gold." ;)