Kathryn Jean Lopez interviews David C. Downing, author of Looking For The King: An Inklings Novel; here's a taste:
LOPEZ: How important is wit in a novel?
DOWNING: I suppose that depends on t 
he novel. I stand in awe of The Brothers Karamazov, but I don’t recall too many chuckles while reading it. I tried to vary the moods in my novel, to balance out some more somber conversations about faith and doubt, hope and suffering, with lighter scenes of people just enjoying each other’s company.
LOPEZ: Looking for the King was published by a Catholic publisher, Ignatius Press. Do you consider it a Catholic novel?
DOWNING: The Inklings, a literary circle of over a dozen men, was about equally divided between Catholics and Anglicans, and they tended to stress the convictions that they shared, not their points of disagreement. There were some tensions occasionally, but I think these have often been overstated by those eager to find dissension among fellow Christians.
I would like to follow Lewis’s lead and consider this a “mere Christian” novel, not one that belongs on one side of the Reformation or the other. I do think that Charles Williams’s meditation on co-inherence, on the mystical meaning of the Eucharist, offers as high a view of that sacrament as one can find in any congregation of believers.
LOPEZ: Could Narnia’s Aslan be Mohammed, as Liam Neeson recently suggested?
DOWNING: Neeson is a fine actor, but he is not a theologian or a Lewis scholar.
Of course, Mohammed said he was a prophet of Allah; he did not claim to be divine himself. So the analogy doesn’t really work.
I suppose what was meant is that Aslan could represent the God of any religion. That is high-minded and well-intentioned, but it doesn’t do justice to the Chronicles. You can pick up just about any guide to the Narnia books to discover how deeply rooted they are in Lewis’s Christian faith. In my book Into the Wardrobe, I argue that the Chronicles constitute Lewis’s Summa Theologica, the fullest and most comprehensive expression of his Christian worldview.
I wouldn’t presume to give Mr. Neeson any tips about acting. And I think he would do well to avoid any politically correct but puzzling remarks about the spiritual foundations of the Chronicles.
Read the entire interview on National Review Online.
Related Ignatius Insight Articles:
• The Missing Storyteller and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader | David C. Downing
• Films That Tread Into Narnia | David C. Downing
• Looking For An Inklings Adventure | An Interview with David C. Downing
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