'Deeper Heaven' with Christiana Hale
On her splendid guide to the Ransom Trilogy
Early in our conversation, I was a bit surprised when Christiana Hale—author, Latin teacher, and newly minted lecturer at New Saint Andrews College—made a casual confession. She didn’t read through the Ransom Trilogy, the ambitious, interplanetary sci-fi series that’s adding more converts to C.S. Lewis fandom by the day, until college.
I’m one to talk; I didn’t read them until grad school.
By that time, I’d already devoured The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, and The Great Divorce. You’ll hate me for saying it, but I took Till We Have Faces on a tour of southwestern Ireland, complete with winding bus drives through foggy crags, quaint towns, and green hills dotted with sheep. But it took the syllabus of a first-year C.S. Lewis class, (taught, as Christiana’s class was, by Douglas Wilson), to pull me through Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength.
What a pull it was.
As Christiana tells it, the Lewis class that put the Ransom Trilogy back on her radar also introduced her to a new love: Lewis’s own fascination with medieval Christian cosmology—a framework that set all of life, space, heaven, the spiritual realm, and even the planets in a ‘kindly encircling’ harmonic orbit orchestrated by God himself. Through her research, her reading, and a Master’s program that helped her focus the undergraduate thesis that became ‘Deeper Heaven: A Reader’s Guide to the Ransom Trilogy’ published by Roman Roads Press, she’s been feasting on the themes and ideas Lewis baked into his novels ever since.
But it might be accurate to say she’s opened her own banquet hall on the subject. The short, graceful chapters of ‘Deeper Heaven’ form a delectable menu. Thoughtful and descriptive, they walk us through the themes of preparation, sacrifice, marital splendor, and joyous warfare that Lewis seeded throughout his three novels. The chapters that compare Elwin Ransom’s journey from Thulcandra (Earth) to Malcandra (Mars), Perelandra (Venus) and the stages of Dante’s Divine Comedy, or break down the medieval notion that the planets in our solar system had influence and personalities—Jupiter or ‘Jove’ is jovial, Mars is tough, and unbreakable to name a few—make their case richly.
‘Deeper Heaven’ is not intimidating to someone who may know C.S. Lewis from the Narnia series and nowhere else; after reading through it, I’m reminded how much the line Lewis wrote in one of his letters about someone else applies thoroughly to himself:
“What he thought about everything was secretly present in what he said about anything.”1
I caught up with Christiana after she’d been making the rounds, taking her banquet to an interview with guide-mentor Douglas Wilson, and even to New York City for a chat with Eric Metaxes.
In between her Latin classes, Lewis lectures, her own novel writing, and no doubt plentiful grading, she sat down with the Crocodiles to talk a little shop. Here’s what she had to say—and here’s where you can find ‘Deeper Heaven,’ A Reader’s Guide to the Ransom Trilogy.
‘Deeper Heaven’ with Christiana Hale
C.M: How far back does your affinity for Lewis go?
Christiana: I was first reading ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ before bed when I was eight or nine. When I encountered Lewis in high school, I learned pretty fast that he wasn’t just a children’s book writer. By that time, I was working through ‘Mere Christianity,’ ‘The Screwtape Letters,’ ‘Till We Have Faces.’
Same question, but for the Ransom Trilogy.
I read the Ransom Trilogy for my freshman year rhetoric class…of course, that class was taught by Douglas Wilson, and he opened up layers to them that I never knew existed. So I kept reading them. I fell in love with those layers, the whole Medieval cosmology, and all of these threads Pastor Wilson was pulling out. I remember thinking ‘if that cosmology is there in Narnia, how much more of it’s there in the Ransom Trilogy?
When did you first want to write a book on them?
The book was really built on my undergrad thesis, and the reading I completed for research. Books like Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia reinforced how important medieval cosmology was and how it influenced Lewis’s whole body of work; even the Narnia Chronicles. So when I needed another thesis for my Master’s Program, the book project became that thesis. The more I read, the more I realized that there’s not a lot of secondary material on the Ransom Trilogy.
Compared to say, Narnia?
Yes, exactly. Ward’s book, for example, is more Narnia focused. Everyone loves the Narnia Chronicles, and when I told people I was looking into what Lewis was going for when he wrote the Ransom Trilogy, I got a few puzzled expressions. ‘Wait… those books?’ I started wondering if I should refocus my research into more of a guide for the layman reader. That’s the short version—it was my Master’s thesis and Roman Roads published it a few years later.
It looks like the Ransom Trilogy is getting some traction among serious readers. Do you agree?
I think so. For one thing, there’s been a few more books about the Ransom Trilogy over the years. Along with ‘Planet Narnia’ …and ‘Deeper Heaven’ of course. Is that in response to a rise in interest? Or is there a rise in interest because those books have been coming out? I’m not sure. But what’s also happening is the Ransom Trilogy is proving itself very prophetic—especially in the last two years.
Why do you think that is?
Well, I think the main reason is that Lewis knew the way human beings work. Even more than in other dystopias like 1984 or Brave New World, the insidious issues in human nature and human institutions creep under the surface, and they have this thick veneer of respectability. You see that with the rise of the N.I.C.E. in ‘That Hideous Strength.’ What starts out as this respectable, well-oiled technocracy reveals itself as demonic, deranged, and completely detached from reality…kind of like some of the insanity we’re seeing from quote-unquote respectable institutions right now.
Did you want to touch on the Trilogy’s prophetic elements when you were writing your book?
I wanted to touch on everything!
Christiana Laughs.
Any chapter in the Ransom Trilogy is a chapter you could write a whole book on…and of course there’s so many themes you can trace through all of Lewis’s writing. Writing the book was an exercise in restraint, in sifting information. I had to keep my eyes on the prize and remind myself this was a reader’s guide; not a comprehensive one.
“Allusions are what make great literature like a cave. Even if the only tool we have to explore it is a dollar-store flashlight, even if we can only see a few feet ahead at a time, we can still hear the echoes and know that there is more to see, more to find.”2
-Deeper Heaven
What’s the strongest criticism of the Ransom Trilogy you’ve heard?
Most of the criticism I’ve heard centers on the third book, or on there being a lack of cohesion between all three. Of course, ‘That Hideous Strength’ is quite different from the first two books, both in atmosphere and themes—and with the appearance of Merlin. If you leap from the first two books to the final act and if you don’t see the overarching theme he’s developing… It seems like quite a leap.
And how would you counter that?
Christiana laughs again.
Well that’s one of the reasons we love Lewis. He was a sponge; he loved knowledge, history, languages, and he soaked up everything around him. So what might look random, or a little disjointed coms from Lewis’s personality, and his love of including things nobody else would think of bringing into a cohesive whole. He dares that leap and somehow, he makes it work.
What’s the deal with Merlin? Did you come across what inspired, or maybe dared Lewis to bring Merlin into the final act?
So, what happened between books two and three is that Lewis became great friends with Charles Williams, a guru on the Arthurian Legend that includes Merlin. Lewis grew to love that. He loved everything and a lot of it comes down to his personality. The fact that he loved everything drove Tolkein a little nuts—Tolkein was more perfectionistic where Lewis was a little more slapdash… But Merlin fits perfectly within medieval cosmology. When he communicates with the Oyarsa about what’s happening, he’s hearkening back to a time in history that was more enchanted, when sorcery wasn’t completely dark and wicked. He might come across as random, but he’s somehow endearing… and of course, Lewis gets away with it.
What surprised you while you were researching your book?
One of my favorite things about researching is the moment when you find more support for a point that you thought was already there. I remember making an argument about something that Lewis was saying, but couching it in hypotheticals—like all of these things point to this being the case, but I don’t want to come across too strong about it…and then I remember looking up something in his letters and finding direct evidence for what I was saying. Those moments when I was able to remove all my hesitation and come out and say ‘yeah, this is what he was doing, because he says he was doing it’ were incredible. It felt great to go ‘no, I have Lewis on my side on this one.’
What do you hope discerning readers will take away from ‘Deeper Heaven?’
I hope readers come away with the point that our worldview matters. I hope people look at Lewis, look at the Ransom Trilogy, and walk away thinking: ‘How does the way we view the world influence the stories we tell?’ and ‘what do those stories make us feel?’ I mean, we believe that God created the world, but what does that do to us personally when we step outside at night and look up at the sky? What do we actually believe about up there? When we step outside and look out at the night sky, do we look at it the same way a theistic evolutionist would—‘oh, it’s all bright balls of matter with burning gas?’ …of course, I’m writing as a Christian and I’m writing to Christians, so I don’t want to shy away from that.
We’re sure glad you didn’t.
I mean, Lewis confessed Christ, he never shied away from the matter so I didn't want to either. I felt like if I didn't present the gospel at least in some way in my book I would be doing a disservice. Lewis has all kinds of names worked into his cosmology, but clearly, the death of Christ is there. And in ‘That Hideous Strength,’ there’s a corollary to the evolutionary, materialistic, reductionist worldview that's everywhere in our culture. We're seeing that come out in so many ways, and even from Christians who claim we are created in the image of God… as the world around us goes berserk, we need to remember what the true story is.
Would you modify your message for a non-Christian reader? Maybe for someone who’s piqued by Lewis and the fact that he wrote these ambitious sci-fi novels?
I think at the end of the day any worldview you have… you’re seeking truth, right? You’re asking, ‘Who are we?’ We didn’t choose to be born, but we have been born into this world and one of the first questions we ask is why. Right? That’s the favorite question of toddlers. Why? Why? Why? So imagine that each of us has a particularly curious toddler attached to our leg and with everything we do they ask why. We answer and then ask another why and then another and another…at some point you're going to get to a point that’s just your foundational axiom. There's no further place to go. And whatever that is, that's your God. So you do have to grapple with those questions. Who are we and why are we here and where did we come from? And every answer to that is going to be some sort of story. You weren’t here before you were here so you have to tell some sort of story, whether that’s the evolutionary myth, or whether that’s a tribal myth…
Turtles on turtles holding the world up.
There’s all sorts of things like that. But there’s some story as to where we came from and how we got here. The question’s then: what does that story tell you about yourself? How does it inform the way you see everything around you because it will… and will it be consistent? That’s what we’re asking for, consistency. Because if—and this is what I think our modern culture tells us—if there is no God, if all matter came out of nothing and is just constantly mutating and evolving and all we are is just more matter, then matter is God. We are matter, we are God, which means we can just shape ourselves into anything we want, which leads to all the crazy stuff that’s going on today. And if that’s true, and if we really can… then nothing matters. Why should any morality matter? Why should there be any should? Suddenly there’s no foundation for right or wrong other than my own preferences.
How do we build outward from truth and consistency when we write stories?
We imitate Lewis.
Christiana laughs.
I think that’s why Lewis is such a good example; we need good storytellers. Christians of all people should be the best storytellers because we have a handle on the true story, the one God is writing in the world, the one he’s revealed to us in his word. And storytelling is how God gave us his word, right? The Bible is a story, and he created the whole world by the power of his word…so we are word-oriented people. And the fact is that good words and good storytelling just bypasses our defenses. There's something for just doing it well, right? Not doing it ham-handedly or trying to shove a message down people’s throats, but rather, just good storytelling, saturated with truth. I think there’s no better time for us to do it than the present because we’re surrounded by proof that the culture doesn’t know how to do it.
Very true. You can point to Disney, Amazon.
I was just thinking that. Rings of Power, anyone?
Christiana laughs.
I haven’t actually watched it yet, but it sounds like they're just taking things that have been done before and trying to recreate them in their own image—which shows a lack of understanding about what actually made that good story tick. I mean we should be asking: why is Tolkein and the Lord of the Rings still around and why is it still so popular? But instead, the powers that be: ‘well, if we get the rights to Tolkein, we’ve bought the goose that laid the golden egg.’ But it’s like what they really do is they slaughter the goose and they put the golden egg up on this pedestal without realizing it’s going rotten. The egg’s going bad and they don’t have the golden goose anymore because they don't understand what produces that sort of lasting quality… sorry, I’m off on a tangent.
I think you’ve painted Jeff Bezos a pretty good diagram.
Yeah the culture does that a lot with good, solid Christian art. They see that it works, right, and so they think ‘Oh, well we can do that and make a lot of money.’ But they don't actually know what made it work.
“A story can have a deeper truth than that of being historically accurate. We get a taste of this when we encounter truly great stories…we can know that stories are fiction while also recognizing that they are instrumental in training our imaginations.”3
-Deeper Heaven
If you have to pick a favorite book from the Ransom Trilogy, which one is it? Be brutal.
Ohhhh! …If I'm a hundred percent honest it's actually Perelandra. It’s a really hard question because I love the trilogy so much. The more I read the trilogy and write about it, the more I see each of the different books as a whole, despite the fact that the first book’s set on Mars, the second’s set on Venus and the third one is on Earth—and they are vastly different. But ‘Perelandra’ has such a special place in my heart.
Why is that?
It was very convicting and moving when I first read it. I still remember exactly where I was when I read certain scenes where Ransom grew as a character. The scene where it's night and he's on the island and Weston is—well he’s really the unman now and possessed by a demon—and he keeps saying Ransom’s name over and over and over again. It's torture to Ransom. He’s wrestling with himself, and he finally realizes what he's going to have to do…he’s figuring out that stopping Weston from corrupting Perelandra means physically fighting him. And it’s him grappling with that and realizing that he doesn't think he can do it… he’s pinned to the board, right? He can’t bring himself to not do what he knows is being asked of him. That whole scene is basically an internal soliloquy, a monologue of Ransom wrestling with himself that’s so well done and so indicative of Lewis's understanding of how people work. Right? He just lays Ransom open and we all look at that, and we all see ourselves.
Yeah, that scene lays all of us out.
It really does. So that book has lots of things like that that were convicting and moving and so well done and so deft that I have to go to ‘Perelandra’ every time. It’s just beautiful, that book. How Lewis describes the floating islands and Ransom’s conversations with the green lady… I think that is one of my books that’s the most marked up. So I’m going with it!
I was going to ask about your favorite scene, but you already got there. That scene when Ransom understands it’s time to fight Weston or die trying… and because God chose him for this and ransomed him is incredible.
I also love the scene where… it’s kind of silly, but later on when Ransom actually bashes the head of the unman in with the rock and he says, ‘In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, here goes!’
It’s a great line.
Christiana Laughs.
You expect the ‘Amen’ but intsead, here it goes! That’s one of my favorite lines.
What would you recommend to someone who read the Ransom Trilogy and loved it? And if they want to bite off a little more Lewis?
Yeah, if you really love the medieval cosmos sort of thing, I’d say ‘The Discarded Image’ or some of Lewis’s studies in renaissance literature. Those are really great because they lay out all the academic underpinnings.
‘Deeper Heaven’ has quite the bibliography.
Yes! Bibliographies are a great place to go and do more reading. Because if we want to be good writers, we have to be first good readers. Lewis’s writing echoes with the memory of the ages because read prolifically. He loved the great epic poems, things like Dante’s Divine Comedy which was one of his favorites. So if you haven’t read Dante, go read Dante! Try to understand why Lewis loved it so much. Read ‘Paradise Lost.’ Read ‘The Aeneid,’ in the original Latin if you can. Learn Latin!
What can we look forward to? What would you like to write next?
So there's a few things I’m working on right now. I have a novel that is finished and I am hoping will be picked up here in the next year or two… and I’m working on drafting another novel. I’ve done a lot of work on the planning and I'm going to be jumping into writing that. The other one that’s been on the back burner constantly has been a ‘Till We Have Faces’ reader guide.
We’d love to see a guide on ‘Till We Have Faces.’
Yeah, something along the same lines of ‘Deeper Heaven’… because that is the other book of Lewis's that I’d say is the most odd or strange or unapproachable. There’s also not a whole lot written about it, so I’m currently in the stage of reading, researching, gathering my thoughts. So we'll see what happens! I'm really busy with teaching right now and I'm kind of riding the wave of ‘Deeper Heaven’ with talking about it and giving interviews. But I'm definitely still chipping away at my other projects.
Thanks for coming on Shelf of Crocodiles and chatting with us.
Thank you so much!
And from all of us Crocodiles, have a Merry Christmas!
Christiana Hale, “Deeper Heaven” 238.
Christiana Hale, “Deeper Heaven” 162.
Great post! I admit I've only tasted because I'm reading the ransom trilogy and want to avoid possible spoilers. I plan to come back and fully devour when I finish the books.