I have recently finished teaching a course on The Chronicles of Narnia for Homeschool Connections and have received an excellent question from one of my students, which I thought I’d share on the Ink Desk, together with my response.

Here’s the student’s question:

I have a question about The Last Battle that I was hoping you could answer.

It is clear from the descriptions and nature of Tash that he is a demon, and therefore pure evil.  How can anyone in the service of Satan do anything virtuous?  How could Emeth serve evil virtuously? He even said that the name of Aslan was hateful to him, so I do not understand how he merited a place among the blessed.

Here’s my response:

You have asked an excellent question.

Here’s the solution to the problem: Although Tash is objectively a demon, he is worshipped by a culture which believes him to be a god. The parallel would be Homer worshiping Zeus, or a native of the Amazonian rain forest worshiping his own local deities, or a Muslim worshiping Allah. These are false gods but the people who worship them believe them to be true gods. If they are not culpable for their ignorance, i.e. if they’ve never had the opportunity to learn to know the True God, their worship of the false god is not blameworthy. If they live virtuous lives in accordance with the Natural Law, they are worshiping the True God without knowing it. This is Emeth’s situation. He is a virtuous man raised in a culture which is ignorant of the Narnian God. He is rewarded for his virtue, which is the fruit of his free will responding to God’s grace (even though he is unaware of the latter’s role in his life) and is not punished for an ignorance for which he is not to blame. He is saved by what the Church calls the baptism of desire, i.e. he is a good man who would have desired baptism had he ever known what it was.

 

I hope this is clear.