A theme throughout C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series is the idea that Aslan (the analog for Jesus in the series) is “not a tame lion.” This phrase generally conveys that Aslan (and by extension God) is not what we might expect or even want. Mr. Beaver, when asked if Aslan is safe replies, “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.” Lewis here captures what is sometimes called the terror or majesty of God. We cannot fully understand God or God’s purposes for us and for the world. And, when we encounter God, it is often a frightening experience, as we see recorded throughout the Bible. In this essay, however, I focus not on the unpredictability or unknowability of God, but rather on Lewis’ argument that, despite God’s overall unknowability, there is at least one thing we can know about God: that God is good. This same theme—the importance of what we can know about God despite God’s transcendence—is also critical to understanding the story of Job.

To begin, we must examine the last book in the Narnia series, The Last Battle. In this book, an ape named Shift cons a donkey named Puzzle into pretending to be Aslan in order to effectively take over Narnia. Shift, speaking in Aslan’s name, orders horrible things such as the destruction of forests of living trees, killing dryads and desolating the country, and the enslavement of the citizens of Narnia to their enemies, the Calormene Empire. Throughout the book, Shift justifies these despicable actions through an appeal to Aslan’s fierceness. For example, he states,

Aslan says he’s been far too soft with you before, do you see? Well, he isn’t going to be soft anymore. He’s going to lick you into shape this time. He’ll teach you to think he’s a tame lion!

The other Narnians also appeal to the idea that Aslan is not tame and therefore cannot be predicted or understood in order to justify the terrible actions they understand Aslan to command. For example, Tirian, the rightful king of Narnia, and his unicorn companion, Jewel, fail to stop Shift until it is too late because of their doubts about Aslan’s character. When they hear that Aslan has returned to Narnia and has ordered destruction and bondage for her citizens, Tirian says to Jewel, “He is not a tame lion, how should we know what [Aslan] would do?” Though Tirian and Jewel eventually discover Shift’s plot, their initial doubts ultimately lead to the end of Narnia and indeed to the whole world in which Narnia exists.

The Narnian’s, and in particular Tirian and Jewel’s, failure lies in the fact that they possess a kind of unthinking faith in Aslan. In their blind faith, they believe that they can know nothing about Aslan because they cannot fully understand him. Though Tirian and Jewel are shown to know Narnia’s history with Aslan throughout the story—Jewel, for example, gives an extended history lesson to Jill, a girl transported to Narnia—they are unable to extrapolate anything meaningful about Aslan’s character from that history. Thus, when an Aslan appears in their midst who clearly wishes evil rather than good, they tragically fail to recognize that Aslan is fundamentally good and cannot be in league with evil. Lewis thus demonstrates that faith in God, devoid of any knowledge of God’s character, can lead to deception and destruction.

On the other hand, in the biblical story of Job we see an attempt to separate God’s power from God’s goodness by Job’s friends (though in this case Job rightfully sides with goodness). Briefly, the story of Job is one in which a righteous man is tested by Satan, with God’s permission. Most of us are familiar with the beginning of the story where Job’s possessions, servants, children, and health are all swiftly taken away from him. What we often forget is that all of this happens in the first chapter, and the book of Job is forty-two chapters long. The bulk of the book consists of an intricate, and often difficult to understand for the modern reader, debate between Job and his three friends who ostensibly came to comfort him.

In her magnum opus, Wandering in Darkness, philosopher and theologian Eleanore Stump devotes considerable care to the debate between Job and his friends. Though the three friends represent different positions, they generally argue either that Job is not actually righteous (even though we, the reader, know that he is) or that God is just in bringing about punishment against Job because God is God and can therefore do whatever God sees fit. Job rejects both of these positions. He maintains his righteousness and refuses to believe that his God would wantonly cause evil and suffering because he knows that his God is good. Stump notes that, since God ultimately sides with Job and rebukes Job’s friends, Job’s position is vindicated. She writes,

In denouncing the comforters’ willingness to kowtow to God, Job takes his stand with the goodness of God, rather than with the office of God as ruler of the universe. Without losing his personal commitment to the person of God, Job refuses to accept what God does just because it is God who does it. If, per impossibile, divine power and divine goodness were to be opposed, then in the way in which he reacts to his suffering Job is in effect choosing to be on the side of goodness rather than on the side of power, even if the side of power should be God’s side. In this choice, Job is as fervently on God’s side as it is possible to be. Goodness separated from power still has something divine about it and is still worth committing oneself to; power separated from goodness is, one might say, just satanic… And so by being angry at God and by insisting on goodness over power, even in God’s case, Job in fact draws closer to God.

In summary, Job knew God well enough to know that God’s power cannot be used for evil. If Job had to choose between goodness and power, he chose goodness, because he knew he would find God there. And, in the end, Job is rewarded with a greater knowledge of God’s character. Many people note that Job’s wealth, power, and additional children are given to him at the end of the story by God, but Stump emphasizes that Job’s real reward is found in chapter 42, verse 5. In this verse, Job responds to God’s speech and states, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” Job, like few people in history, is granted the ability to directly experience and know God. She writes,

…in the course of the divine speeches, God has been somehow directly present to Job… The sight of the face of a God whose parental love is directed even toward rain and ravens is also an explanation of Job’s suffering. It explains Job’s suffering to Job not by giving him knowledge that, but by giving him Franciscan knowledge of persons with respect to God and God’s relations to Job.

In other words, God does not answer Job’s anger and cries of anguish by giving Job additional facts, but through self-disclosure. After their meeting, Job has a kind of intimacy with God that answers his questions. Job knows God, and therefore knows God is good, and that is enough.

To bring these stories together, Tirian, Jewel, and the other Narnians should not have been taken in by the scheming of Shift because, like Job, they should have known enough about Aslan to know that he would never be wrapped up in evil. The Narnian’s insistence on maintaining their inability to fully comprehend the mind and purposes of Aslan stopped them from recognizing perhaps the most basic fact about him: he is good. Together, Lewis and the ancient author of Job remind us that, while there is much we cannot know about God, we can know that God is upright, God is virtuous, God is good. Our faith should make it possible for us to follow God when we don’t understand and the way isn’t clear, because we know that when we follow God we follow in the way of goodness itself.

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