Aslan’s song of creation is thinly veiled Christology. It parallels the prologue to the fourth Gospel which, in turn, parallels the Genesis creation story. At the center is the power of God’s word and the connection between creative intent and reality. God speaks, and it is so. There is no discontinuity between word and substance. (Of course science has created a similar model with the postulate that energy and matter are interchangeable.)

In Genesis, the breath of God moves over the deep. There are no words at first. Even when the word of command is given it is not language as we know it. Language, after all, is a human invention (cf. Genesis 2: 19). The creation is the tangible expression of God before words and beyond words. This is also the description of Aslan’s song:

A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune.

J. R. R. Tolkien, a fellow Inkling and close friend of Lewis, used a similar metaphor in his fictional creation story. The Silmarillion begins with a description of the music of the Ainur. The first sentence of the book reflects his monotheism: "There was Eru, the One…" In this myth, the Holy Ones are the offspring of thought. Again, there are no words in the beginning.

Wordless creative speech sounds like an oxymoron, but that is the implication. The prologue to John’s Gospel confirms the concept where the logos (word) is not a word at all. It is a life. Is belief without words possible? Would it constitute being with no discontinuity between intent and reality? Is it religionless Christianity?

Where do the words come from then? In Tolkien’s work, he invents a world and invents the language which the occupants of Middle Earth use to define their world of experience. Lewis makes Narnia more familiar. Have you ever wondered how English school children got on speaking the native language of the talking beasts? As in our world, the humans have invented the way to think about the world, and they shape those thoughts through words. The words of Narnia are imported with the evils that mar an otherwise good creation. The language of Narnia is an import from the British Isles. As strange as Lewis’ other world is, it is also vaguely and understandingly familiar.