Sacred Book, Deeper Magic:
Reflections on the Ingrafted Life
By Jamie Bennett
⳩ Proclaiming the Truth, Goodness, & Beauty of the Deeper Magic (the Gospel Message of Jesus the Christ), as Revealed through the Sacred Book, to All Pilgrims Who Seek the Way to the Celestial City and her King. Further Up and Further In. ⳩
Welcome future and fellow Pilgrims.
This is a Christian site, which means that the presupposition of its author is that the claims of the Christian Faith are true, good, helpful, and universal to the human condition and that it corresponds to the revelation of our Sovereign God. On this site you will find sermons and sermon related posts.
I use the term “Sacred Book” to acknowledge that the content of this site has a high view of Scripture (the Bible) and that the sermons and sermon related content uses the Bible as its basis.
The term “Deeper Magic” is an allusion to C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, and refers to Aslan’s substitutionary provision for Edmund…it’s deeper because it goes back before the Creation of time and the cosmos. “Deeper Magic” in this sense is a metaphor for the will of God in his saving work. More info on that below.
Finally, you will see that I refer often to Christians as Pilgrims, and I am taking this directly from John Bunyan’s usage in The Pilgrim’s Progress. This is one of my favorite stories and it is certainly an apt metaphor to refer to the Christian life as a journey or pilgrimage.
Ultimately, I hope the teaching represented here glorifies the Triune God. I hope some of these matters also bless you. Please feel free to engage, interact, or drop me a line.
About the Sacred Book
Through an analogy (while not exactly the same but similar): as Christians assert that Christ has two natures (both fully God and fully man), the Bible is also the product of God and man which is what the doctrine of Inspiration claims. However, if all Scripture is God-Breathed and superintended by the Holy Spirit, then its teaching, proclamation, and descriptions in their autographs (originals/final completed products) are without error and therefore it is the inerrant revelation of God. This is the logical conclusion of the doctrine of Inspiration. The classic doctrine of Inspiration states that Scripture comes directly from God through a human agent; if that’s the case, then it must be inerrant, because God does not err. Thus, the Bible is a Sacred Book that reveals to us the True Story of God’s interaction with human beings through mostly a narrative form but also through lyrical and didactic material. It is a reliable rule and guide for all matters pertaining to the Christian faith.1
About Deeper Magic
In The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, the witch Jadis claims her possession of and the right to kill the boy Edmund who was a traitor to his family (kind of like Adam). She calls this The Deep Magic. The Deep Magic can be seen as an allegory for "Natural Law", a philosophical concept that claims there are innate rules of right and wrong, -cause and consequence, reaping and sowing- understood by all human beings as part of the created order. The source of this law is said to be above and outside of humans (i.e. from God) and is a concept central to all civilizations.
Jadis' claim on the blood of traitors relates to her role as an allegorical form of Satan. As told in the Bible's Book of Job, Satan was given the right by God to test the worthiness of humans, and if they failed that test - as Edmund apparently did - Satan could claim them as his own.
Aslan himself is very clearly an allegory for Jesus Christ - he is even called the Son of the Emperor-beyond-the-sea - and his knowledge of the Deeper Magic is something that Jadis (a.k.a. Satan) does not possess. By allowing himself to be sacrificed in Edmund's place, Aslan is mirroring the Crucifixion, where Christ offered up his life for the sins of humankind.
Immediately after Aslan’s resurrection, the Great Lion explains that the Witch’s apparent triumph was destined to fail because, although she knew and could use some magic-even the deep magic- “there is a magic deeper still which she did not know” since “her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time.” Lewis is contrasting the demonic powers of this age with the eternal power that belongs to God alone. Evil may seem to gain the upper hand, and it certainly appeared so to Christ’s disciples immediately after Jesus’ death on the cross, but there is a “deeper magic” which stretches back beyond time, before the foundation of the world, when God chose to save his people by the sacrifice of his Son (Eph 1:4).
The Deeper Magic, in this sense, is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Everything on this site and in my life is shaped by this truth.
About Jamie
⳩ I am a Follower and Servant of King Jesus, Mdiv Student @ Luther Rice College and Seminary, Husband to my high school sweetheart, & Dad to an amazing son and an awesome daughter. I am also the Discipleship Pastor at TBA Church in Lakeland, Florida. My wife and I are high school sweethearts.
